PeachYoga

How it felt to teach my first yoga class

I recently started teaching yoga to my colleagues. I’m so lucky to have such willing Guinea pigs to practice on. Find out how it felt to teach my first class, despite the newbie nerves.

Following my own meandering path

I spent last weekend learning how to teach yoga for stress and burn-out. But it also taught me a lot about my own meandering journey towards teaching.

Avoidance and the seeds of self-doubt

I’ve been doing a lot of avoiding lately. Not so much in my asana practice, but more in terms of thinking, processing, studying, and being alone with my thoughts. So what’s going on here?

Hips don’t lie

This is going to sound a little ‘out there’ to the sceptics among you. But for those of you who have done much yoga you will probably have heard that we tend to carry negative emotions in our hips. I had never experienced an emotional release through the physical practice of yoga. Until Monday.

Why is it so hard to do what’s good for us?

Confession time. As I write this, I’m going through a phase where I have only managed to get myself on my mat at home once a week. This is a hard thing to admit as a yoga teacher in training. But it is a common pattern for a lot of us – we are least likely to take proper care of ourselves when we most need to. So why is it so hard to actually do the things that are good for us?

Turn up the heat without saluting the sun: 4 alternatives to sun salutations

Don’t get me wrong, I love sun salutations – the flow, the full-body stretch, the generation of heat and energy. They can make a great yoga practice by themselves as well as serving as a go-to sequence to wake the body up in preparation for a longer practice. But sun salutations are not the only option.

Gratitude

Something shifted for me at this month’s yoga teacher training. I woke up the next day feeling awake, strong, and present, with an understanding of what I needed to do to restore my energy and absorb all the learning I’d been doing. I also felt a deep sense of gratitude for my healthy body and for this opportunity to learn from my teachers and fellow students.

4 reasons to be excited about anatomy

I’ve done a bit of moaning about anatomy lately as I struggled through my homework outlining all the bones, joints, and muscles in the shoulder and pelvic girdles. But the main thing I’m learning is how amazing our bodies are. Here are my top 4 reasons to be excited about anatomy.

The beauty of going back to basics

I’m in that stage in my yoga teacher training where I’m realising how little I actually know – that uncomfortable stage of the learning curve called ‘conscious incompetence’! But going back to basics can be both challenging and beautiful.

2015 – A year of balance

At the beginning of 2015 I chose the theme of balance for the year ahead. Here’s what happened.