13/09/2026
After returning from the summer break, I asked the students in my Thursday class a question before we started a new term together. They’re all returning practitioners, so I asked them to write down:
What makes our yoga classes different from other movement practices?
I didn’t give them any prompts. I was curious about what they noticed.
Here are some of their answers, in no particular order:
🌿 “Yoga is a polar opposite and complementary to my running.”
🌿 “Yoga uses breathing to support movement of the spine.”
🌿 “Focus on the whole - physical, breath, spirit.”
🌿 “Working within comfort, instead of pushing against it.”
🌿 “I can use what I learnt at home.”
🌿 “Yoga gives me time to feel my body consciously rather than just take it for granted.”
🌿 “I find yoga to be a lynchpin for my other fitness activities - especially the breathing part.”
🌿 “Calmness, slower pace, internal experience.”
Reading these made me smile. Not because they said what I might have said, but because they captured something I care about in teaching yoga.
For me, yoga isn’t simply another way of moving the body. The movement is important, of course. But the relationship between body, breath, and mind makes the practice so rich and open.
