Restorative yoga is the yoga of rest and relaxation, the yoga of your parasympathetic nervous system. It is the most yin of all the modern yoga styles, a mere bolster or two away from meditation, still and sublime, yet incredibly supported. It’s day 4 of a holiday, that part of your vacation where you abandon your efforts to relax and simply melt into the hammock.

Busi is 57 and not very tall, 5’4 if I had to hazard a guess, she walks with a slight limp, I am not sure why and I have never asked. Busi is hard of hearing, the result of TB medication taken years ago, she wears hearing aids, but still needs to lip read, she cannot hear much yet she still teaches because “this work is important, and people need it”.

February Is the month of love, and here in the southern hemisphere it’s the peak of summer, the height of fiery yang to which the heart belongs. Love and fire. I would like to offer you another perspective to the capitalist take on cupid’s union, a little more devoid of sentimentality: one that is free and truly about freedom.

2022 has seen record temperatures across the world. Europe had a searing summer, the UK saw water restrictions after its lowest rainfall but warmest summer to date. The world in the wake of post pandemic climate change. When we shut down, we saw a glimmer of possibility for our habitat, we slowed production, realized we needed each other more than material things. We barely took a breath before it was business as usual, mass production, fast paced living and we are back where we left off. Temperatures are sky rocketing, water increasingly scarce and we are too busy to pay proper attention. I think we are in trouble.

I was going to write this blog about death (yes, death) but I have decided to write about love, not instead of, but as a tribute to, death, birth, life and all its interwoven moments and rhythms that comprise human existence, underpinned with love, loss, change, and surrender.

Recently a client returned from what she termed “bootcamp for the soul”, a 10-day vipassana retreat, consisting of 10 hours of daily meditation in a simple room in Worcester, her conclusion was “We really do choose our own reality”.

My sister recently came for a long overdue visit. She moved with her husband to the UK at the beginning of Covid, a hard transition, but she has found a house, adopted some cats, and made a home.

I am a huge fan of the sunshine, the warm air on my skin feels like an embrace, the light warming my bones, which makes me shine from the inside out. In summer my spirit radiates, and I am dazzled by the luminance of life that exudes bright and bold colours.

Rhythm and synchronization are concepts employed in music, linguistics, psychology, biology, and physics. Rhythms of life. Rhythm, the patterning of the universe and central to the human body and experience. The primal beat of the drum and indigenous dance has its evolutionary roots in the beat of the heart. Rhythms are found in language, movement, the way we breathe, think and live. Rhythm is all around us, it’s the base of creation, in the rise and fall of the sun, the shift of seasons, the lapping of the waves and the sounds of nature, the inhale and exhale of your breathe. Rhythm is the language of life.

This year seems to have been one endless winter, the memory of the short summer washed away by the pouring winter rain. There was a lot of it. The rainy season and bitter cold, all of which seemed quite fitting in this year of 2021 with all its collective angst, was one of the most brutal winters we have had in a while.