This week, I started reading Rod Stryker’s The Four Desires, his book about ‘mental prosperity’ and ‘the yoga of fulfilment’. Y’know, I always found these huge promises of yoga quite unobtainable. Fulfillment? My best life? Really? Yoga isn’t huge; For most people it’s the subtle change that happens while you’re doing other things like posture practice. However, in the first few pages I knew I could trust Mr Stryker’s book which, by the way, is a workshop book and has tasks for the reader.

Apparently only 9% of us want life to go back to what it was. The majority of us have had some kind of little or long Road to Damascus. It may be the realisation that comes with the commute detox. It might have been the insight that comes with being with family, kids or elders, and hearing the birds reclaim their morning chorus.

Happy Easter! The traditional story of death and resurrection is taking on a metaphorical meaning for our culture and society, eh! Many people contemplate the rebirth that’s coming. Will we keep some of the gains of lock-down? For example, did you hear the loud and proud dawn chorus? Some of us are dealing with tough times. Some of us are bored. Some of us are really quite pleased with the lock-down. Does yoga help?

Well, now that you’re locked down, under house arrest, what about starting or improving your meditation practice! I know... the reluctance. Once you get going, though, you’ll add it to your yoga practice and it will become all-of-a-piece.

The yoga we practice was born in ancient times and was pretty much only concerned with meditation.

Unexpected side-effects of the lock-down... Are you saving water on the showering and spending it all on the hand-washing? Are you hands dry and splitting yet?! Are you finally eating the forgotten things in the freezer? And are you enjoying yoga online more than you could have ever imagined? There’s no travelling, no tackling transport, no rushing to class and rushing home. New problems to do with camera angles, audio, and cats and dogs joining the class have taken us into a whole new world of yoga practice.

How's home life suiting you? I suddenly find that my little home studio can take many more than six mats. I've signed up to Zoom and I can have 100 of you in one class! So here are some details. Download Zoom here - it's free. So far, all the evening classes have had 20 or more and my best friend in Paris has joined us. I love it!

Yoga at home is the new vogue. This is a great thing and a good opportunity for all of us whether teaching and learning. In any case, yoga is ultimately supposed to become a more reclusive activity. And anything that gets you to roll out a mat at home is good. So, while you’re Namastaying at home I’ll be Namastreaming from my Home Studio.

Whaddaya know! It’s Friday the 13th. Make it lucky! Week after week I ask gym-going yogis to use their own yoga mat. Week after week people don’t! Now that we have the ‘worst health crisis for a generation’, says the PM, and ‘many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time’, please use your own mat! I don’t want to lose my loved ones. This borough, Ealing, has five confirmed cases of Coronavirus sufferers. They will have infected others. Who knows if they were on that mat before you!

Cherry blossom is peeping through. ‘Meteorological winter’ is coming to an end. Lent began this week (and ends 9th April) and, along with the beginning of Spring, this feels like a better time to make New Year Resolutions than after Christmas chaos. This is a natural time of renewal after the darkness of winter. Yoga, and many eastern philosophies, reminds us that we belong to the natural cycle of birth and death and, crucially, rebirth.

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.