Discovering Balance Through Yogic Movement

Yes! Again, this is principle-based. My experience with crossfitters for example, is that they are blown away by how the modalities I share are working towards many of the same underlying aims as their regular practice, but through a different lens. A lens that can shed really helpful perspective on their regular practice and help refine and deepen it.

Strength and endurance athletes often report surprising and notable enhancements in performace: stroke efficiency improves, breathing gets easier, recovery is accelerated.

Martial artists, parkour athletes and movement generalists are often surprised by the depth of this yogic movement approach, how it complements their practices and provides resources to keep going deeper.

James, in 2015: “My practice and teaching are rooted in ‘classical’ yoga teachings of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra-s, the Bhagavad Gītā, and the Purāṇa-s/Indian Mythology. This is all also through the lens of what is sometimes referred to as the Yoga of Kashmir Shaivism, in the lineage of Abhinavagupta, as taught by Swami Lakshmanjoo last century. My first meditation teacher, Larry, was a long-term student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi before he became Swami Lakshmanjoo’s close disciple. It was through Larry that I was introduced to the wonderfully inclusive and universal teachings of Kashmir Shaivism, Abhinavagupta’s extraordinary breadth of vision, experience and inclusivity and this wonderful lineage which works with all the Vedic and Tantric literature, and which is just as soaked in heartful bhakti or devotion as it is steeped in rigourous jñāna and inquiry.

What first drew me irresistibly to the teachings of yoga were their inclusivity and practicality. When Larry presented core teachings from the tradition, I was blown away by how utterly relevant and practical these ancient stories and teachings were, and how applicable and useful the principles enshrined therein were.

When I began practising daily āsana, and a couple of years later, daily meditation, I noticed things changing in my life, in ‘good’ ways, in the sense of in the ways I aspired to. The yoga practice was helping me bring a greater balance into my life, discover more of myself and provide me with the stability and confidence to meet more of my shadows and share in the world more wholly.

When I am in the role of the teacher, I am not affiliated to any modern yoga brand. I have explored some of them quite extensively, but for me the overarching principles are much more important than the details of different brands. Yes, certainly, aṣṭāṅga vinyasa revealed much to me about breath, prāṇa, energy, sustainability, balance, ambition, greed and insecurity; together with Iyengar yoga (the latter particularly with Justin Herold when I lived in Bangkok) it also helped me develop a basic understanding of the lexicon of modern yogāsana; working with Paddy McGrath transformed my āsana practice and helped more deeply empower me in the direction of a ‘brandless’ āsana practice, and I gained much valuable insight and understandings by studying with teachers from many different schools. However, for more than ten years, my āsana practice has been resolutely my own, very personal and geared to fostering balance, or yoga, in the broader context of my life.

This means that the work I do with physical ‘yogāsana’ practices is different every day. It also changes with the season and with the location. For example, when in Mysore in the early months of the year, I often do my morning āsana exploration on my rooftop, in front of the rising sun. The climate has changed dramatically in Mysore in recent years, and these days it can be very hot in January and February in the day time. An important aspect of my ‘yoga practice’ – the cultivation and deepening of balance in my life – is time outdoors. So when in Mysore I make a point of being outside in the earlier morning and later afternoons. If I’m in Northern England in the winter, where the days are short, I might rise early and do some āsana work in the dark, but I am more likely to go outside into the sunshine, or light rain and wind, and do the practice outside later in the morning, having had breakfast earlier. I know that there are those who are stuck on the idea that you have to ‘practice’ indoors, with a ventilation window above head height, or that you have to practice at a certain time… I’m stuck on the idea that the practice should help me feel more balance, more energy and better able to deal skilfully with the various challenges of the day. I try to make the whole day practice! And in order to do this, I need to make the time I work with āsana or other yoga techniques nourishing, so I practice what nourishes me, and I get outside as much as I can.

For about a dozen years, yoga āsana was the main physical activity I did in my life, and sometimes the only slightly demanding type of movement I would get in a day. And I paid a price…

Over the last few years, I have consciously been working with yoga principles of movement in a much broader spectrum of movement activities and have been finding this tremendously useful and nourishing.
In particular, my physical health and wellbeing, and my yoga āsana, in terms of being steadier and easier in my physical body, have been tremendously helped by ideas and the broader range of movement and principles of movement evolution and development that I have been inspired to explore by the work of Ido Portal, and other Functional/Natural Movement teachers/modalities.

In the realm of contemporary haṭha yoga, I find Simon Borg Olivier’s work fantastic, and his work is a significant influence in my āsana/movement practice and teaching, as are other teachers who have introduced me to techniques from Chinese yoga aka Chi Kung/Kung Fu/Tai Chi/martial arts. In my opinion, one of Simon Borg Olivier’s great gifts to contemporary yoga is his emphasis on doing yogāsana-s actively, against gravity, so we can learn how to really work in multiple directions; and this is something that I have been working with a lot in recent years.

If I am in the role of āsana teacher then, the way that I work will be in response to what is appropriate for the group or the individual. This will be different, for example, if I am working with a group or an individual who have a certain experience in a particular practice modality,  who is recovering from trauma, who has certain limitations – and we all have certain limitations – or who is keen and ready to explore broader spectrum movement. The instruction, and what is done in the class can thus be very different in different situations.

The key element in any class I share is ‘yoga’ – the cultivation of harmony, balance and sustainable wellbeing.

In the integrated programs I like to share, each element is intended to help deepen an understanding of practical yoga principles and empower the students so they may readily implement these principles in their lives.

In yogāsana and yoga movement classes then, I seek to deepen an appreciation of what it means to foster balance and sustainability through different ranges and types of movement and how yogāsana techniques can help us balance and optimise our whole system (body, sense and motor powers, mind, emotions and intellect) energy.”