It strikes me that I should say something about prāṇa. David Williams, subject of the last three Friday Emails, said that the whole game of yoga is increasing prāṇa.

To start with, here’s a yoga belt for £1! Secondly, I’m giving David Williams one more week in the Friday Yoga Email because he said some really basic things about yoga which may have been lost as the practice became more gymnastic and off-putting for many. In his talk about his memoir, My Search For Yoga, he took us right back to basics: what are we doing with the body and why? He gave us the goals of yoga. Here they are:

I’m returning to the subject covered last week, the thoughts of David Williams who gave a talk promoting his memoir My Search For Yoga. This week I want to offer you his thoughts on Shoulder Stand and Headstand. He referred to an old article in Yoga International: Headstand and Shoulder Stand: King and Queen No More. David said he had concluded a while ago that they were not noble postures and that they cause damage.

David Williams learnt ‘classical’ Ashtanga Yoga from Sri Pattabhi Jois in Mysore in 1973. Since then, he practiced yoga every day (apart from the allowed days off). He has never had a job; he only wanted to focus on ‘trying to be a yogi’ and being in a state of chitta vritti nirodhah (still mind). He was serious, he was vigilant, he travelled to conducive environments, and he studied every thought in his body in order to ‘be present’.

The definition of yoga is often given to be ‘yoke’ or ‘union’. It isn't a definition I can relate to! Yoga philosophy says that there is a universal and absolute consciousness that we have departed from and need to regain access to! Uh oh! This loses me. I wasn’t brought up with the idea of a God or supreme being and, for me, that ‘union’ idea isn’t working. On the other hand, there is a spiritual side of life that I want to access and be better at.

Isn’t it great to see flexibility progressing and postures getting a little easier! And yet, it isn’t the gymnastics and contortionism that keeps us coming back. The flexibility yoga offers is in the mind… yoga really doesn’t have an opinion about your hamstrings or backache! This is crucial in Coronavirus times.

In honour of the fast approaching Valentine’s Day, I thought that writing about the Heart Chakra might be the thing! Whether you think chakras are actual anatomical parts of us, or miniature washing machines in our cosmic composition, it doesn’t matter. It just offers another point of view and might open up the imagination, and perhaps inspire strength and purpose.

Look at these words! They might apply to any of us when we have moments of doubt and I thought they would give a bit of steel to the backbone:

“I was a whole person the moment I was born. I was a whole person, yes, even in my teen years. I am a whole person now. Even near death, even in death I am a full and whole person… I now evolve, change, morph in ways neither of us can predict or understand – I am still me!

“Never will I be three-fourths of a person, half of a person, nor 1/73 of a person. There has not, nor will there ever be a moment in my life when I am not a complete Human Being. Please get this”.

This week, with over 100,000 UK deaths from Coronavirus, it felt right to finish classes with compassion and thoughts of others. Savasana, lying down at the end of the class, can be a number of things: it can be meditation practice, it can be semi-sleep to soak in the benefits of the physical practice; and, in overwhelming times, savasana can be used to send loving and kind thoughts into the world to the people who might need your wishes.

Having written last week about finding your sankalpa, Joe Biden demonstrated the sankalpa of a nation when he said: “As we look ahead in our uniquely American way, restless, bold, optimistic, (we) set our sights on a nation we know we can be and must be”. It’s “The past we step into and how we repair it”, said beautiful Amanda Gorman, 22, in her poem The Hill We Climb.