Long before I taught yoga, I worked in workplace ergonomics.

Every day, I met people who spent eight or ten hours sitting continuously at a desk, often so focused on their work that they barely noticed what their bodies were doing.

The challenge was always the same.

How do we create a working environment that asks less of the human body? One that causes less slow-burning, long-term damage. One that leads to less pain, fewer injuries and fewer sick days.

That question fascinated me. Or, as I like to say now, fascia-nated me.

It still does.

I’m in love with the practice, I always have been. But it’s not the same practice....

When I first opened AbaYoga, 10 years ago, I believed I was teaching people how to move better. I believed in the richness of energy & effort in movement, the ‘yang’ part of the practice. I believed in Vinyasa and sun salutations. It fit my forty-something body and my post burn-out corporate mind. 

Most of us are constantly overriding ourselves. We push through exhaustion. We normalise tension. We tell ourselves we’re “fine” because there are lunches to make and bills to pay and other people relying on us. Then suddenly you’re lying in a quiet room for the first time in years with nothing to distract you from your own nervous system.

And the body finally gets a chance to speak.

Soon, I received a random catch-up call from, Ariana, a buddy from a 100 hour Yin Yoga training course we’d done in Goa. We exchanged the regular niceties and talked about plans & future training courses we were considering. When I mentioned Gong Practitioner Training she gasped…

But very quickly, it becomes clear:
The most appropriate action may be simply not to act. But correctly placed, even inactivity is doing something. That’s Yin…

Like many teachers, I spent decades practicing and teaching faster styles of yoga. Flowing, balancing, pushing strength and flexibility.

The body kept up for years — until, gradually, it didn’t.

It’s all about freeing physical tension that you thought you didnt have…