It’s a Friday night in East London. The heatwave has paused for a brief respite and a cool shower. While the city hums and pubs, there’s a quiet corner in Victoria Park where we meet for a peaceful unwind practice. Here’s a selection of scenes from an hours practice, where we to met the ground, connected to the breath and hummed to our own rhythm.

This is an appreciation post for the in-person yoga experience. There’s nothing like the felt sense of sharing a physical space and feeling comfortably at home, in a place outside of your actual home. There are few other environments where you publicly lay, shake, roll, sigh and come into relationship with the deepest parts of yourself, without the need to perform an amount of ‘showing up’.

Prana is a sanskrit word that describes vital energy, or life force. It is difficult to measure, but it can certainly be felt moving through the body, through our relation to the world and through the practice of yoga.

I heard a wonderful definition of compassion that has stuck with me - to shake with. Acknowledging the pains and sorrows of others, and feeling it to the point where you can’t help but be moved yourself. A part of compassion is also the desire to do something about this sorrow. Compassion is active.

Why does it feel so difficult to talk about money and yoga side by side? The sanskrit word seva describes this work: a selfless service. There is something universal about these practices and I believe it is a true act of service to share them with authenticity, without an expectation of any reward in return. When I teach, it is to point a student in the direction of something which is already in them. It’s to guide them towards a felt sense of fullness that has always been there beneath the surface. Putting a price on this universal and vital work naturally feels uncomfortable.

What isn’t touching everything else? This is the question we started a weekend of teachers sangha and inquiry with Jean Hall and Anna Ashby. For me, assists are moderate and compassionate. They are a way to encourage a student's own experience of being in their body. I love to encourage independent inquiry, which is so often informed by the students themselves and can be broken with a ‘teacher knows best’ approach to touch.

If you’ve practiced with me already this month you might have noticed my current obsession…. feet. We’ve been playing with weight bearing through different surface areas of the foot (think: toes, top and sides of feet), exploring a slow motion walk that turns into a broader, floaty balance and letting our feet get really curious about space in shapes that require zero contact to ground. All in the act of resensitising our super intelligent feet to the world.

Why do I practice yoga? A short and sweet poem which just some of the things that bring me to the mat. Again and again.

I’m in the days after a long weekend of yoga, surf and slowness in the beautiful North Cornish town of Mawgan Porth here’s my insights on how I plan to teach long vinyasa yoga sequences on retreat and incorporate meditation, somatic, pranayama and qigong practices too.

What does it mean to be sensitive to the world? As a yoga teacher I believe that yoga, breath and meditation can awaken a deep innate sensitivity in all of us.

As the place in the body we might consider as the seat of compassion, the heart is able to both give and receive, experiencing a deep felt understanding for others and bathing in this compassion as it washes back to us. Through the practice of yoga, we feel the heart empty and fill continuously.

From the outside, yoga can seem like a branch of the commercial wellness industry. Yoga is marketed here in the West as a way to sharpen our bodies and minds, becoming the optimum version of ourselves. But what if we used the practice to just, be?

Two weeks on from participating in John Stirk’s profound ‘The Source’ workshop at Mission E1 I write some words about the experience and the subtle ways it has influenced my self practice and teaching since.

The body is an ocean. Conceptual as this might sound, it is the truth of our existence. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine and the philosophies of Daoism, the element of water in associated with the deepest days of winter.

In the days after a near-year long deep dive into a Daoist Flow teacher training, I’m taking a little time to reflect on my initial intentions when starting this course, observing the things that have shifted and the things that have deepened in my practice 11 months on.

Those of you who practise with me regularly will know we explore something a little different each week - with changing patterns and themes that move through the seasons. Here's a look at my creative planning process that goes on behind the scenes.

Observation gives us the opportunity to step back from the roles of student and teacher and instead observe, without participating, as the class unfolds. This is a truly fascinating space to inhabit and I’ve found the practice completely eye-opening.

This week I’ve been approaching intentions with an open and somatic approach - allowing the quality to be felt in the body, considering where it arises and how it might feel. How do you use intention in your yoga practice?

Today marks the spring equinox and 6 glorious months of long days and warmer temperatures lay ahead. If, like me, you love to spend as many hours of the day soaking up the sun's rays as possible, this can feel like a powerful and exciting time.

After our second intensive study session, here’s a few reflections from our work on primary movement patterns - where we have been questioning the way we approach patterns in asana and transitions and start to explore non-linear ways of moving on the mat.