You’ve probably noticed we’ve been posting more lately.
It’s something we’ve resisted for a long time.
Not because we don’t care,
but because social media has always felt like a difficult fit.
Awkward. Dissonant.
Not quite right.
We’ve been reflecting on why that is.
Yoga, for us, is something real.
Something rooted.
A living practice of presence and remembering.
But here, online, everything gets compressed.
Stylised.
Turned into soundbites and scrollable moments.
Even the most heartfelt post can feel like a leaf in the wind.
There’s something deeply strange about putting something sacred
into a space designed for distraction.
It’s not just about aesthetics.
It’s about energy.
The pace. The performance.
The pressure to make something that ‘lands’,
even when what we’re sharing is more like soil than spark.
Something slow.
Something ancient.
Not made to be consumed.
We’ve always found this tension hard to hold.
And if we’re honest, being here takes a toll.
The flickering attention.
The overstimulation.
The constant sense of being pulled outward.
It doesn’t just drain time,
it frays the nervous system.
It scatters presence.
It weighs on the heart in subtle, cumulative ways.
And it doesn’t always feel healthy.
So yes, we’ve been posting more,
but it’s a bit of an experiment.
A way of trying to be here
without losing ourselves.
Of being in the world
without being of the machine.
Of showing up with honesty and care,
while resisting the demand to perform or produce.
And still we worry that something is being lost.
We worry that in trying to share yoga,
we sometimes betray it.
That in chasing visibility, we become less rooted.
That in packaging our lives into highlights,
we lose touch with the raw, real, beating heart of things.
Yoga teaches us to return.
To remember who we are underneath the layers.
To honour the quiet, the unseen, the imperfect.
It calls us back to the body,
the breath,
the earth.
Away from screen glow and endless noise.
Back to the slow, rhythmic pulse of being alive.
This isn’t a farewell post, or a call to unplug completely.
We’re still here.
Still sharing.
Still searching for a way to be online
that doesn’t cost us our presence.
But we want you to know:
We’re asking questions.
We feel the fracture.
And we’re tending to it.
We are trying, always,
to choose truth over trend,
practice over polish,
remembering over reach.
We hope you’ll join us in that remembering.
In carving out small spaces of honesty.
In returning, again and again,
to what matters most.
Yoga is not content.
You are not content.
This life is not for consumption.
It is for living.
In a Yoga Nature class, we usually explore meditation, an important (I would say essential) part of Yoga. But what exactly is this thing we call meditation?
Unlike the word Yoga or Pranayama, meditation is not a Sanskrit word. Rather, it can be traced back to the Greek word Melete. Melete was one of the three original Muses, goddesses invoked by poets, musicians, and philosophers to foster creativity and inspiration. Her name literally means to ‘ponder’ or ‘contemplate’, though sometimes the word is also translated as ‘practice’. The word found then its way into Latin as meditatio, and again the word’s meanings include thinking, reflecting, or contemplating something very deeply, all essentially mental activities. In the 17th century, the French philosopher Descartes called his writings ‘meditations’.
I find all of this interesting, because when we practice meditation in a Yoga or Buddhist context it is often claimed (incorrectly, in my view) that clearing the mind of thought is the aim! Almost the exact opposite of the original meaning of the word, which specifically meant to think about things very deeply. So what is going on here? Why the confusion and who is right?
I suspect that it went something like the following. In the 19th century Westerners began discovering the philosophies and spiritual traditions of the East for the first time. As part of this, they discovered those esoteric practices going by the name of dhyana in Sanskrit. As these practices had no apparent correlate in the West, we had to grasp around for a word that we could use to translate this Sanskrit dhyana and we settled upon meditation. The translation was an inadequate and possibly misleading one, I would argue, as the practices of dhyana are quite different to the earlier uses of this word as we saw above.
Regardless of how it came about, meditation is now the word we use to name these deeper, seated practices of Yoga. Let us then consider, are these two usages of the word meditation compatible? Thankfully, they could well be. The notion that meditating is about ‘stopping’ or ‘emptying’ the mind is not something we uphold in our classes. It's true that in the later stages of Antar Mouna meditation, for example, a state of no thought is cultivated and that state is certainly a nice place to visit. But even if it is possible, is it desirable to stay there? Personally speaking, I like thinking, thank you very much!
For us, meditation is more about becoming acquainted with the mind, to become able to watch it and witness the ‘mind space’ without judgement and without over-reacting. Ultimately, this can help us to think things through more clearly, to assess things and situations in a calmer and more focused manner. This leads us right back to that original meaning of the words melete, meditatio and meditation: that is, a capacity to reflect, ponder and contemplate things and situations from all different angles.
So let us take a moment to honour the muse Melete, a goddess of mediation, and a source of inspiration and creativity and contemplative, mindful thought. Something surely needed in our reactive times more than ever before!
