My Friday email last week was all about adjustments. I know some of you miss them! I’ve been thinking about this because we seem to be in an era of re-evaluating the Ashtanga culture of adjusting.

I’ve often wondered how it will be to teach in person again. One major part of teacher training is how to assist and adjust a yogi. You can then go to special workshops about how to adjust. I’ve been to plenty. But do people want to be touched and tugged, pressed and pushed? Before my teacher training, all of my yoga was learnt in gyms and I don’t remember this gusto to heave people into shape.

Recently there was an Ashtanga Conference of celebrated teachers and something was said that fascinated me about Mysore practice – that 90 minute daily practice of unchanging Primary/Second Series postures that the devotees love. Everyone memorises and practices The Same Thing! Well, it looks like a new dawn is on the horizon!

On Juneteenth, June 19th, a day of reflection on the end of slavery, the Ashtanga world got together to discuss ‘Ashtanga Yoga 2021 & Beyond’, how inclusive, modern, inviting and how sincere the yoga world is. When I say ‘the yoga world’ I mean highly respected teachers such as my teacher David Swenson and others on the world circuit like Eddie Stern and Adam Keen.

Did you see the tennis and the extraordinary slides of Novak Djokovic? No wonder he won! Sliding on the grass ended the hopes of other players but Djokovic kept sliding and hitting. Yes, of course he’s a yogi (and a vegan)! Here’s another thing! “He has spoken at length about how meditation has helped him to achieve ‘happiness and joy’ away from the sport. When the results weren’t coming, Novak has claimed it was due to a ‘lack of balance on the court emotionally’.”

What would be the easiest yoga pose, do you think? Would it be the one actually called ‘Easy Pose’… Sukhasana or crossed-legged position? I might have to take this to the authorities for disinformation! It isn’t easy! There doesn’t seem to be a Guinness Book of Records record for sitting crossed-legged and I’m not surprised.

Have you heard of the yoga teacher, Mary-Jo Fetterly who had a skiing accident and became a quadriplegic? She became paralysed but immediately ‘transformed injury into inquiry’ with her yoga toolbox. She used mantras and pranayama to retrain herself and has been breaking all records of recovery from quadriplegia ever since. That’s the Toolbox!

Dear Yogis!

I mention Uddiyana Bandha (drawing the navel in) a lot in class, increasingly aware that my belly is less and less toned as the lock-down months continue! Uddiyana Bandha in Ashtanga is used throughout the practice which isn’t easy. However, some movements of the practice help to remind us of the abs and to tone the belly. For example, lifting half-way up from a forward fold can only have one purpose, that of drawing in the abdomen and creating that cavity in the belly.

Monday June 21st is International Yoga Day. It came after a speech at the UN by Indian PM Narendra Modi in 2014. In that speech, and in subsequent speeches to mark the day, you can see the political hopes that yoga will help tackle issues of the world... issues being tackled by the 17 sustainable development goals of the United Nations! Well, they would say that!

I’m reading a book about the breath. Not an unusual thing for a yoga teacher… but this isn’t a humourless pranayama book. The author, Oliver James is a ‘breath expert and body-led psychotherapist’ who has studied all kinds of ‘schools of breath’: “Holotropic Breath; Transformational Breath; Quantum Light Breath; Shamanic Breath; Wim Hof Method”… an expanding list of breath expertise.