Yoga
Our yoga gurus will bring this ancient form of exercise to your door. Focus on your strength, flexibility and breathing to boost physical and mental wellbeing.
Top Tips from our Experts
Tass Cambitzi
Tass began her yoga practice in 2000. She started sharing elements of the practice, including meditation, mindful movement and self-study early on and transitioned to full time teaching in 2014. She has taught for Triyoga, Lumi Power Yoga, Equinox, KX and Third Space to name just a few of her home studios. She has been teaching full time since 2014. Tass is well known for her strict attention to alignment and efficient biomechanics in the practice, whether in the pursuit of greater strength, mobility or a better understanding of the self in a wider context.
Why Yoga?
Although we hope to go about our whole day with an attitude of wellness, namely looking after ourselves, being kind to ourselves and others, minding what we eat and our activities; in reality, there is a limited amount of time, perhaps an hour or so, that we can dedicate entirely to formal exercise and wellbeing practices. But this limited formal time is so important as it guides and strengthens our intentions over the other 23 hours.
So, you need a good bang for your buck practice to cover all the bases – something that will mobilise and lubricate, something to lengthen and strengthen, something to break a sweat and get you to breathe deeper, something that encourages you to gather your focus and realign with your highest intentions, whilst also being a moment of complete release. In which case, yoga is your go to.
Yoga is an ancient practice, often associated with seated meditation and pretzel-like movements with complicated names. Lots of people are put off it because of cultural appropriation that has diluted the practice with talk of chakras and veganism. The word ‘yoga’ comes from the root Sanskrit verb ‘yuj’ which means “to yoke”. It was used mainly in agricultural terms, yoking the ox to the plough so that one wayward energy and one inert energy joined forces to become useful and practical. We all have an ox and a plough in us. One wayward, manic, chaotic energy that would eat and fight and mate and play all day given the chance; and one heavy, immoveable, lazy energy that would sit in a corner inert without being given a push or a pull. Yoga is a way to yoke these two energies (sometimes called Yin and Yang in the yoga world). Your practice is intended to strengthen both energies, with a little dose of the other. Shall we say it creates a useful and purposeful balance?! That means you don’t have to be good at balancing on one foot. It means you don’t have to be good at holding a 1 minute plank and, it means you don’t have to be able to touch your toes to engage. It also means everyone’s practice should, and will, look very different. The shapes we execute can look the same externally, but the results from them can be wildly different.
Tass’s Top Tips for your yoga practice:
1. Your yoga practice does not have to follow traditional sequences, formats or shapes. If you know strengthening your body would be an act of balancing yourself out because you feel weak and sometimes physically vulnerable to injury or unable to complete tasks in your life, then do strength training yogically. If you know being still in shapes for several minutes at a time would balance you out then do that yogically. If you think journaling and self-reflection would balance you, then do that yogically. In short, expand your understanding of what a yoga practice could be.
2. If you are choosing a more traditional yoga movement practice, find a teacher whose style and personal practice resonates with you. If you don’t feel good right now doing big backbends, then find a teacher who has the experience and knowledge to offer you smaller expressions of those, still working that pattern but conservatively, and is also able to provide a practice filled with things that do make you feel good and benefit you.
3. In line with number 2, work with experienced teachers, not practitioners. Teaching someone else how to move is an entirely different thing to being able to move well yourself. Teaching yoga is also massively unregulated. Someone who has recently completed a 200 hour qualification is not good enough for your body. Work with someone who has been teaching full-time for a minimum of six years. It takes time to be able to see bodies and understand why they can and can’t do things.
4. Get a great mat. Slippy mats can ruin everything.
5. Ask questions. Yoga, although ancient in its origin, is now brilliantly informed by so much knowledge from modern disciplines that have biomechanical superiority. If something doesn’t feel right, ask questions.
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