The other day I took part in an event where many of my yoga students also participated. I was talking to a person who had come to my yoga class just once, and she said she hadn’t come back because she found yoga too boring. Maybe I should have been offended, but instead I thought ‘Oh, you really didn’t get it, did you?’ It was her first yoga lesson and she didn’t find it too easy. So it wasn’t the case of a seasoned or super-fit student being in a wrong class. But maybe I was

Have you ever fallen asleep in savasana, corps pose? I have. Most of us have. Although you are not meant to, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. After all Dalai Lama said ‘Sleep is the best form of meditation’. If you can relax enough to sleep among strangers on a hard floor, it can’t be that bad. Many years ago I took my then teenage daughter to a Yoga nidra class. She slept almost throughout the class. She was going through a hard time and I knew she wasn’t sleeping well at ni

As a part of my Yoga Philosophy course at Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, I wrote an essay on authenticity of contemporary yoga. My conclusion is that Hindu culture and Hindu religion are tolerant and flexible, and yoga has developed incorporating and adapting to new influences. Therefore as long as it contributes to promote human wellbeing, whatever style it takes it is still yoga. A friend of mine is a professional contemporary dancer and many years ago he took up yoga pur

(Thought from the recent meditation retreat) On the first day of the retreat, my mind was surprisingly cooporative. I managed to watch my breaths mostly. Then after the second or third sitting of the day, I started feel sad. There is big sadness in my life, as in many people’s lives. But I learned to manage it. I can cope. I keep up my work and keep the family together. Everyday life is going as smoothly as it can. While I was sitting there, I started feel the sadness intense

Finding Peace in the Imperfect World. This was the theme of the meditation retreat I recently attended. Nice title. I didn’t give it much thought before I went. During the Q&A session with the teachers, someone asked if it is wrong to be ambitious in social causes, such as to end child poverty or to achieve world peace ect. Discussion followed but soon digressed to something irrelevant. I was left to think on this while people somehow started to talk about veganism. Imperfect