In yoga philosophy, the body is shaped and sustained by Prana – a life force that can be described as intelligent energy. Prana expresses itself through two intertwined qualities: shiva-prana, the guiding intelligence, and shakti-prana, the animating power.

This week in sangha, we started our new book: The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living by Eknath Easwaran. Each week, I will attempt to summarise the parts of the book we discuss. Please refer to https://www.sjholisticyoga.co.uk/post/what-is-the-bhagavad-gita if you need a grounding in what The Bhagavad Gita is.

The Bhagavad Gita is an ancient Indian text, yet it speaks to very ordinary human experiences. At its heart, the Gita is a conversation. A human being is facing a situation that feels impossible, and he doesn’t know how to act without betraying himself. He turns to a trusted guide and asks, quite simply, “What am I supposed to do?” That question is the doorway into the whole book.

The water element shapes this month of practice. Not as something to master or direct, but as something to listen to. Water doesn’t force change. It adapts, yields, and finds its way through what already exists. After the stillness and weight of earth, February offers a gentle thaw - a softening of edges, a return to sensation, and a renewed relationship with feeling.

February’s full moon arrives at a liminal moment. Winter is still very much here, and yet something has begun to shift. The days are lengthening, almost imperceptibly. The soil is no longer entirely dormant. Snowdrops push their way through cold ground, not because conditions are perfect, but because the time has come.

At the heart of Imbolc stands Brigid – luminous, many-layered, impossible to pin down to a single role or meaning. She is a goddess of thresholds and beginnings, of hearth and forge, poetry and prayer. She belongs as much to the home as to the wild places. There are more stories about Brigid than I could write in a day. And at Imbolc, she walks close.

Motherhood is so often spoken about in terms of love, devotion, and sacrifice. And all of that is true. But it is also incomplete. Because motherhood is not only tenderness. It is endurance. It is vigilance. It is the long, quiet work of holding; physically, emotionally, invisibly - and often without pause or witness. Mothers carry a lot. In their hearts, hands and shoulders. They carry worry and responsibility, mental lists and emotional weather. They carry the unspoken nee

This week in sangha we explored Ishvara Pranidhana, the practice of surrender. Our conversation moved into experiences of flow, connection, and those moments when effort softens and something else seems to carry us. We reflected on how safety, presence, and trust can open unexpected doorways, revealing versions of ourselves that emerge when we let go rather than try harder.

The edges of the day hold quiet power. In this post, I share why small, repeatable morning and evening rituals matter, and introduce two new videos offering gentle practices for beginning and ending the day with more presence and care.

A New Moon always asks us to pause. It is the dark of the lunar cycle, when nothing is visible yet, and everything is possible. A moment before momentum. A breath held in the body before movement begins. When the New Moon arrives in Capricorn, that pause becomes deeply earthy and deliberate. As January's theme is the earth element, I couldn't let this new moon go unmarked.

Svadhyaya is not about perfecting the self. It is about seeing clearly. Learning to recognise when the ego is speaking, when the past is steering the present, and when something deeper and steadier is quietly present beneath it all.

In addition to my in-person classes, I’m now offering longer, full-length yoga videos you can purchase individually for just £5. When you purchase a video, you get lifetime access, and you can download it as well if that suits you better.

Svādhyāya is often translated simply as self-study. That can sound cerebral or introspective, as though it belongs primarily to reading, journalling, or time spent alone on or off the mat. But in the lived tradition of yoga, svādhyāya is far less abstract. It isn’t something we do instead of life. It happens inside it.

In some corners of modern spirituality, the ego has become a kind of villain. Something to overcome, dissolve, silence, or eradicate. If you’ve ever heard phrases like “ego death” or “living beyond the ego”, you’ll know the tone - as if the ego were a flaw in our design rather than a part of it. Yoga tells a quieter, more compassionate story. In yogic philosophy, the ego is not a monster to be slain. It is a function of the mind - necessary, human, and profoundly shaped by ex

The Wolf Moon rises in January, when the earth is quiet and the year is still finding its footing. I always feel this moon as a threshold. Not a clean beginning, but a deep pause. A moment where the old year has not quite loosened its grip, and the new one has not yet asked anything of us.

The earth element will shape the first month of teaching this year - not as a concept to analyse, but as something to inhabit, slowly and honestly. January doesn’t ask for expansion or reinvention. Instead, it offers weight, depth, and the quiet reassurance of what already exists. Earth will become our steady companion: present in the pauses between movements, in the deliberate pace of practice, and in the way we return again and again to simple, familiar shapes.

This year, I read more than seventy books ,fiction and non-fiction, and each one left something behind. Some offered language. Some softened me. Some unsettled me in ways that later felt essential. What follows isn’t a comprehensive list, but a shortlist of books that will stay with me forever. These are the ones that didn’t just inform me, but worked on me - shaping how I think, how I teach, and how I hold space.

Each year, I take time to reflect on my work - not as an exercise in productivity or performance, but as a practice of honest listening. I look back at what worked well, what didn’t, and the growth I may not have fully recognised in the moment. This part of my reflection isn’t about failure. It’s about noticing friction - the moments where something felt slightly out of alignment, or where my body quietly asked for a boundary sooner.

Each year, I take time to reflect on my work - not as an exercise in productivity or performance, but as a practice of honest listening. I look back at what worked well, what didn’t, and the growth I may not have fully recognised in the moment. These reflections help me discern what wants to be carried forward, and what is ready to be released. They shape how I plan for the year ahead - not through rigid goals, but through intention, attention, and care. This year I truly beg

If things feel a bit much, you’re not doing it wrong. When the pressure to get it right creeps in, pause. Take one slow breath, soften the body, and come back to what matters — presence over presents, connection over perfection.