The Great Night Of Shiva. Lord Of Yogis

Dear Yogis

Today is Lord Shiva’s Day – the lord of yogis and the first yoga guru! This evening will see huge celebrations in India. The celebrations are called Maha Shivaratri, the Great Night of Shiva, to mark ‘overcoming darkness and ignorance’. Lord Shiva is known as the destroyer; he destroys illusion. He teaches us that everything is constantly changing. The illusion he is trying to help us destroy is that we cling to desires and look for permanence where there isn’t any. This is our delusion, the cause of suffering.

I was asked recently in an interview to describe the philosophical underpinnings of the way I teach yoga. I like the question because I remember a time when I couldn’t bear philosophy or spirituality. Actually, these belong to the brain like air belongs to the lungs and beats belong to the heart.

What is philosophy for anyway? The clue is in the word. It is a combination of two Greek words: philla, love, and sophia, wisdom. Philosophia means love of wisdom. The ancient Greek philosophers were concerned with yoga-like questions too: noticing how disturbed the mind can be, developing guiding life principles; understanding that life on autopilot, the unexamined life, is not worth living, developing ways to overcome adversity, discovering the benefits of meditation.

Physical yoga is a nice thing to do; nice to see pretzel postures become possible, nice to gain strength and flexibility, nice to eventually memorise the Ashtanga sequence and flow through it, letting the body do its dance. But all of this is pretty dull and meaningless without noticing the way the mind behaves. That’s the philosophical underpinning of the way I teach yoga: notice how the mind behaves and help it out by calming it down and giving it direction. This is what Lord Shiva teaches: give your mind focus, direct it towards knowing the ‘real self’. That’s yoga!

Training

The only thing I’m signed up for at the moment is Ty Landrum’s Breathing into Alignment: An Ashtanga Yoga Asana Intensive from Friday 10 April 2020 to Sunday 12 April. I wrote about his workshops last year. Come with me.

Before that, on April 2nd, I’m going to Kythera for a weekend workshop with Kristina Karitinou Island. This will be the third time I’m going for this magical weekend. Let me know if you fancy coming.

Home Studio

By the time I write this Friday, classes are pretty full up. Thursday at 6.00 always has space!  Book through this website. If the class you want doesn't show up then it means that it is booked up. Pop me a text or email and I'll create a waiting list.

Yoga in the News

BBC Radio has: How meditation changes your brain. An assignment from the Dalai Lama was this: use the tools of modern neuroscience, currently used to study anxiety and depression, to study kindness and compassion. This is a really good listen, and short

The BBC has: Bellator Dublin: Lewis Long hoping yoga gives him MMA advantage. ‘Long has gone on to become a yoga instructor and has warned against some of the pre-conceived beliefs surrounding the discipline. "It's so unbelievably tough, people go into yoga thinking it's just flexibility and you can get quite a bit of that, it just depends what you want.” Find out about Gamma oscillations! Find out how long it takes to change the brain.