A sanctuary where ancient wisdom meets the wild heart of the Earth. Here, we dig deep beneath the surface, uncovering the roots of yoga’s timeless teachings, peeling back layers of history, myth, and misunderstanding. What on Yoga Earth is a place to awaken curiosity, to question, and to rediscover yoga as a living, breathing way of being. This is more than movement, it is a call to live gently, to honour the cycles of nature, and to heal ourselves as we heal the Earth. Through thoughtful exploration, we shine light on yoga’s power to soothe stress, nurture the body, and inspire us to walk lightly upon the land. Join us as we wander through stories of the body, breath, and spirit, and uncover how yoga invites us all to become caretakers of the planet, mindful warriors of peace and balance. Together, let us root our practice deep into the soil of truth, compassion, and radical care.
Title art: Mycelium Sun by Raya Wolfsun.
Ancestral Memory, Nervous System Repair & the Yoga of Coming Home
You Are More Than You
You are more than your own story.
You are the echo of forest women, of salt-harvesters, of weavers and warriors, of those who sang in the dark.
You are the breath of those who never got to exhale.
You are the tears of those who had to hold it all in.
You are the prayer your ancestors didn’t have the language to speak.
Their breath is in your breath.
Their resilience is in your marrow.
Inheriting is remembering.
Remembering is how we heal.
Through presence.
Through pause.
Through gentle movement.
Through practices that do not impose but invite.
That do not fix but honour.
Through spaces where no one is touched without consent.
Where no one is forced to perform.
Where bodies are not aesthetic projects but living repositories of ancestral gold.
That do not shape the body into silence, but allow the silence within the body to speak.
This is the yoga that matters now.
Our Histories In Bone And Tissue
Somewhere beneath the rhythm of breath and the layers of doing, beneath the choreography of postures and the habits of holding, lives a deeper story, written not in words but in tissues, in fascia, in marrow. The body is not merely a vessel for our lives. It is a record of them. A spiralling, living archive of all we have endured, inherited, and remembered.
Trauma Wears Many Faces
Trauma is not limited to the battlefield.
It takes many forms:
abandonment
enmeshment
systemic oppression
spiritual bypassing
medical neglect
coercive control
cultural dislocation
chronic anxiety of living in the modern world
digital overload and overwhelm
burn-out
Some histories are too quiet to be heard. They tremble beneath the breath, coil inside our shoulders, tighten the jaw, curl the spine. It’s the sudden drop in the belly when a door slams.
It’s the vigilance of the nervous system scanning for danger. They live in the myofascia, the soft tissues, the tremor of a hand that forgets how to unclench.
Even if our lives seem “safe,” trauma can be inherited, absorbed, or silently activated by the chronic anxiety of being alive in a modern world bombarded by climate crises and digital disconnection. If left unchecked, like a leaking tap, our inherited or personal experiences, drip by drip, slowly wear down the vagus nerve, the great wandering highway of the parasympathetic system.
Our patterns, our ancestral memories, those conditioned grooves etched into the mind-body, are not random. In yogic language, they are saṃskāras. Saṁskāras are more than memory, they are energetic grooves. Every thought, action, or emotion - especially those charged with intense emotion, unprocessed or overwhelming - leave a trace, a subtle impression or residual imprint carved by experience into our citta (the field of mind and feeling). Over time, these traces coalesce into patterns: beliefs, reflexes, fears, postures, identities. They shape how we relate to the world, often without our conscious awareness.
Modern science is beginning to echo what many yogic, Indigenous, and earth-rooted traditions have long intuited: the body is not separate from memory. It holds the residue of what we’ve lived, and sometimes, of what those before us never got to fully process.
The Body Is Not A Vault We Escape, It Is A Living Archive.
We inherit more than the colour of our eyes or the length of our limbs. Emerging fields like epigenetics, the study of how environmental factors influence gene expression without changing the DNA sequence, show that trauma can imprint itself across generations (Yehuda et al., 2018); stress-related adaptations are passed on at a cellular level, altering how the nervous system and immune system respond to the world (Heijmans et al., 2008); somatic psychology (Levine, 2010), and interpersonal neurobiology (Siegel, 2012) now confirm what many ancient cultures have always known:
Our bodies carry ancestral memory.
Not just metaphorically, but biochemically, neurologically, somatically.
Tracing a Living Tradition Through Change, Continuity, and Cultural Forgetting
Towards A Truer Timeline
One of the most persistent myths in modern yoga circles is that yoga is 5,000 years old. You’ve heard it. Maybe even said it. You’ll see it on websites, in teacher trainings, and in glossy magazine articles. It sounds impressive, ancient, mystical, unbroken. But when we look closer, this neat timeline unravels, it isn’t true.
The claim comes from a single archaeological seal, repeated so often it became canon. But yoga, as a structured spiritual system, is not 5,000 years old. It’s closer to 2,000. And the yoga most of us practice today? Not even 150.
What really puts the claim to bed is this: the Indus Valley Civilisation (c. 2600–1900 BCE) and the later Indo-Aryan culture were two completely different civilisations. The Indus people had their own cities, symbols, and language, none of which can yet be read. The Aryans arrived much later, bringing their own language, rituals, and eventually the Vedas, which seeded what we recognise as early yogic thought.
And here’s the key point: there is a gap of several centuries between the decline of the Indus Valley (around 1900 BCE) and the rise of Vedic culture (c. 1500 BCE). That’s not cultural continuity, it’s a civilisational break.
To honour yoga, we need to honour truth, not myth.
The Seal That Launched a Myth
Between 2600–1900 BCE, the Indus Valley Civilisation flourished in what is now Pakistan and northwest India. Among its ruins, over 2,000 carved steatite seals have been found, small, finely inscribed tablets, many depicting animals, humans, or mythical beings, paired with an as-yet undeciphered script.
Visit our Substack to read more: Yoga Isn’t 5,000 Years Old: And That’s Beautiful
A Respectful Critique of the 200-Hour Teacher Training Model
Yoga is sacred. It’s a living lineage, a spiritual technology for awakening, not a brand, not a product, not a weekend qualification.
And yet, in today’s yoga world, something feels off. Many of us feel it. The rise of fast-track teacher trainings, the dilution of depth, the loss of lineage. And behind it all, quietly sitting at the helm: Yoga Alliance. And while it calls itself a registry and not an accrediting body, it still exerts enormous influence over what people now expect yoga to be.
We’re not dismissing every YTT. Many are heartfelt and sincere. Some transform lives. But when even well-intentioned trainings are filtered through a framework designed for mass certification, without strict quality control, cultural context, or embodied mentorship, the lineage becomes diluted.
With thousands of trainings flooding the market, often marketed with yoga selfies, quick certifications, and promises of becoming an ‘influencer instructor', this post is a collective reflection. An invitation to ask:
Is the system that governs much of modern yoga education fit for purpose?
Can someone embody yoga in 200 hours?
Can they guide others through its profound physical, psychological, and spiritual terrain after a fast-track, often commercialised, training?
What are we participating in when we fast-track our path to teach a tradition meant to be lived, not performed?
What Is Yoga Alliance?
YA was originally formed as a grassroots response to the increasing commodification of yoga in the West. But over time, its own structure has become emblematic of that very commodification.
YA is not a governing body. It is not peer-reviewed. It does not represent a single lineage. And yet, in many spaces, especially in the U.S. and U.K., it holds a de-facto monopoly on yoga teacher legitimacy.
Yoga Alliance (YA) is often seen as the gold standard in yoga teaching. Many assume it’s an international regulatory body or a government-sanctioned board.
It’s neither.
Yoga Alliance is a private, U.S.-based non-profit trade association (501 (c) (6)) that maintains a voluntary registry for yoga teachers and schools. It has no legal authority to certify or accredit anyone.
It exists to set standards for trainings and maintain a database of teachers and Registered Yoga Schools (RYS).
But here's the thing: anyone can create a 200-hour yoga teacher training and apply to be approved, for a fee.
Ask yourself:
Do yoga students know what YA is?
Does YA accreditation guarantee quality or safety?
Why do so many studios and employers require it?
This form of regulatory branding can distort the purpose of yogic learning. When schools teach "to the certificate," they risk diluting the lineage in order to meet a marketable outcome.
As one long-time teacher put it:
“It’s become more about creating yoga teachers than creating yoga practitioners.” Yoga Alliance RYS Standards: https://www.yogaalliance.org/Credentialing/RYS
How Much Does Yoga Alliance Earn From Teacher Trainings?
Yoga Alliance charges:
$400–$600 USD (~£315–£475 GBP) for a school to register its 200-hour program
$65 USD (~£51 GBP) annual renewal
Plus $50 USD (~£40 GBP) for each new program submission or update
Once approved, the school can run unlimited trainings under that banner.
Teachers then pay:
$50 USD (~£40 GBP) to register as RYT-200
Plus $65 USD (~£51 GBP) per year to remain listed
Multiply this by thousands of schools and tens of thousands of teachers, and we’re talking millions per year in revenue.
According to their public records, Yoga Alliance made over $12 million USD (~£9.4 million GBP) in a recent year.
What Are the Training Standards?
YA’s 200-hour syllabus is broken down into five core categories:
30 hours of Anatomy & Physiology
50 hours of Asana, Pranayama & Meditation
30 hours of Philosophy, Ethics & Lifestyle
40 hours of Teaching Methodology
10 hours of Practicum
With the remaining hours left to the school’s discretion
Trainings can be:
In-person, online, or hybrid
As short as three weeks, or spread out over months
Taught by anyone who meets minimum standards, often just 2 years of teaching experience
No degree, mentorship lineage, or cultural training is required. And there is no minimum requirement for how much experience a student needs to begin the training, many trainees begin with less than a year of yoga experience, some, mere months. There’s no requirement for consistent personal practice beforehand, nor proof that a student understands the yamas and niyamas, the ethical roots of yoga.
Despite the surface appearance of balance, YA’s curriculum is heavily weighted toward asana (posture) and teaching methodology, with far less emphasis on the embodied lived experience of yoga, its philosophical roots, or ethical application. The deeper aspects, pañcakośa theory, sādhana, niyama, dharma, cultural context, and the heart of yogic worldview, are often glossed over or condensed into a few slide-deck hours.
In many trainings, history is flattened into a generic timeline, ethics reduced to a list, and yoga’s Indigenous epistemologies, rooted in liberation and inner revolution, are left untouched. What results is not so much yoga as a spiritual science, but yoga as a performance-based practice with a teacher toolkit.
A Standard That Isn’t One
There is no formal testing. No check on whether schools truly meet the depth yoga deserves. And no real safeguards for students, except if they happen to file a complaint.
Many trainings deliver only a surface-level introduction to complex topics like trauma-informed teaching, cultural appropriation, philosophy, and accessibility. Some students graduate without ever having taught a live class. Others teach classes before completing their own studies.
This dilution isn't the fault of new teachers. It's a systemic outcome of a model that trades depth for deliverability.
To truly embody yoga, to live it, takes more than hours.
It takes relationship, time, discipline, and community.
It takes confronting ego, navigating discomfort, and reweaving your life around truth, not convenience.
Do They Ever Reject Applications?
YA rarely publishes how many applications are denied. Anecdotal evidence from within the yoga community suggests very few schools are rejected, especially if they tick the required boxes and pay the fee.
Is this oversight or just open-door capitalism?
And crucially: Is this information public and transparent?
While some details are available on the YA website, it is not easy to access reviews, complaints, or full syllabi before enrolling.
This raises the question: Is Yoga Alliance truly upholding the yamas, truthfulness (satya) and non-harm (ahimsa), if essential information is obscured?
How Are Complaints Handled?
YA offers a formal grievance process, which allows students or teachers to report ethics violations or subpar trainings.
But:
Complaints must be submitted through an online form
There’s little transparency about how many are upheld, what action is taken, or how this informs broader quality control
There is no public “blacklist” or accessible record of schools with repeated complaints
For prospective students, due diligence is difficult. You have to trust the school’s marketing or know someone who’s already attended.
If you want to explore this yourself:
→ https://www.yogaalliance.org/
→ Check under “Complaints” or “Grievance Procedures”
Can We Really Embody Yoga This Way?
Yoga, at its heart, is a path of transformation. It asks us to live in alignment with dharma, to walk with humility, to embody, not just teach, its wisdom.
Can that happen in 200 hours, online, with no accountability for integration?
Can a system built on quick certifications and profit margins uphold the spiritual, ethical, and cultural depth of this tradition?
Many teachers feel ill-equipped after graduating
Many trainings fail to prepare students for trauma-informed, inclusive, or culturally respectful teaching
And the land from which yoga arose? Often entirely absent from the curriculum
Is Yoga Alliance a Capitalist Racket?
Many of us came through this system, we did our best with what was available.
But we must ask:
❓ Is Yoga Alliance truly serving the evolution of yoga?
❓ Or is it functioning more like a capitalist credential machine, trading spiritual legitimacy for financial gain?
In a time when the world is aching for depth, truth, and rootedness, do we really need more fast-tracked yoga instructors, or more deeply committed practitioners?
Cross-Referenced Voices & Further Reading
You and I are not alone in questioning this. Many have written, spoken, and researched these issues. A few to explore:
Podcasts
Yoga Is Dead Podcast – https://www.yogaisdeadpodcast.com
Why I boycott Yoga Alliance - Why I Boycott Yoga Alliance | Teachers - Nyk Danu Yoga
Academic Sources
Lau, Kimberly J. (2000). “New Age Capitalism: Making Money East of Eden.” → Explores how spiritual traditions are repackaged in capitalist frameworks, including yoga.
Singleton, Mark (2010). “Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice.” → Contextualises how modern yoga diverged from traditional roots, and how institutions (like YA) shaped that shift.
Jain, Andrea (2015). “Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture.” → A must-read for understanding how yoga became a consumer product and lost its countercultural edge.
Gleig, Ann (2019). “American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity.” → While focused on Buddhism, Gleig explores what happens when spiritual systems meet corporate models—parallels with yoga are illuminating.
Theo Wildcroft, Post-Lineage Yoga (2020). "Post-lineage Yoga – From Guru to #MeToo" On how yoga traditions are evolving beyond lineage and institutions like YA.
Transparency Note & Sources
It wasn’t easy to gather this information. Much of it was buried beneath pages of website jargon and paywalled documents. We’ve done our best to ensure accuracy, but if you find any misinterpretations, please let us know.
Sources:
Yoga Alliance financials via Guidestar and IRS Form 990: https://www.guidestar.org
Yoga Alliance RYS Standards: https://www.yogaalliance.org/Credentialing/RYS
Yoga Is Dead Podcast: https://www.yogaisdeadpodcast.com
Andrea Jain, Selling Yoga, Oxford University Press, 2014
In Closing
This post isn’t anti-YA. It’s pro-yoga.
Pro-transparency.
Pro-integrity.
And most of all: pro-practice.
It's a call.
A call to remember yoga as a state, not a status.
A path, not a performance.
A lineage, not a lifestyle brand.
May we protect what is sacred.
May we listen deeper than branding.
May we walk the path, not just teach it.
Let’s walk it with integrity.
Let’s make space for depth again.
Let’s serve yoga, so yoga can serve the world.
She comes clothed in dark.
Not to destroy life,
but to end the lie it was built upon.
To slice through illusion.
To make space for truth.
Kālī is not here to comfort.
She is not a goddess to pray to for sweetness or ease.
She is the force that interrupts what has gone too far.
The wisdom of endings.
The intelligence of collapse.
She is a myth, yes. But more than that, she is a mirror.
In a time of ecological unravelling, societal disintegration, and spiritual forgetting, Kālī is not a symbol of fear.
She is a response.
THE MYTH: WHAT THE END OF THE STORY TEACHES US
The earliest known myth of Kālī comes from the Devī Māhātmya (~6th century CE), a Sanskrit text within the Śākta tradition, which upholds the goddess, not the god, as the source of all power.
In it, a figure of unstoppable replication threatens the world. This being, Raktabīja, produces a new clone of himself each time a drop of his blood hits the ground.
Efforts to destroy him only create more of him.
Destruction breeds itself.
Overgrowth becomes its own kind of violence.
The gods, unable to contain this force, call upon Durgā, the Great Feminine. She fights with precision, but even her strength is outpaced by endless duplication.
So she concentrates everything, her rage, her insight, her clarity, and from her brow emerges Kālī.
Black-skinned, wild-haired, unsparing.
She drinks the blood before it can fall.
She consumes the unsustainable system.
She silences the cycle that could not stop itself.
And yet, once she begins, she cannot easily stop.
Not until she is witnessed, not punished, not shamed, simply seen, does her dance slow and return to stillness.
Like many myths, this is not a literal history, but a symbolic narrative that encodes collective wisdom about balance, breakdown, and rebirth.
KĀLĪ BELONGS TO MORE THAN WOMEN
It is easy to frame Kālī as a goddess of feminine rage, and she is.
But she is not only that.
Kālī is not confined to gender.
She is not a symbol reserved for women, nor is she bound to cultural archetypes of femininity.
She is for anyone who has been silenced, exploited, consumed, or reduced.
She is for every being who has been turned into a resource.
Kālī belongs to:
– the worker wrung dry by the logic of productivity
– the land stripped of its forests
– the river poisoned to serve a bottom line
– the child who carries generational trauma in their bones
– the culture erased to make space for someone else’s empire
She belongs to survivors, of abuse, of colonisation, of forced silence.
She belongs to ecosystems teetering on collapse.
To bodies exhausted by burnout.
To people left out of dominant narratives, queer, trans, racialised, displaced, disabled.
She rises wherever life has been taken without care.
Kālī is not the feminine in the way we’ve been taught to understand it, soft, receptive, nourishing.
She is the feminine as force. As clarity. As the untameable current that restores balance by ending what cannot continue.
And in this sense, Kālī is planetary.
She is ecological intelligence made myth.
She is the wisdom of collapse, not as tragedy, but as necessary correction.
She arrives when systems have gone too far.
She does not punish.
She does not destroy for pleasure.
She clears the field so that life, real, honest, interdependent life, might begin again.
ECOLOGY: INTELLIGENCE IN THE ENDING
Kālī is not chaos.
She is what corrects chaos.
We live in a system that multiplies without rest.
Endless growth.
Endless output.
Endless extraction.
This mirrors the myth of Raktabīja, the figure whose blood spawns infinite copies of himself, unstoppable and overwhelming.
Each drop that falls breeds more of the same, a cycle of exponential replication that cannot be contained by force alone.
Our current societal model functions much the same way:
the capitalist imperative drives relentless production and consumption, turning land, people, and resources into commodities.
Every “solution” often creates new problems, compounding rather than resolving crises.
Profit and growth become ends in themselves, bleeding into every corner of life.
But nature does not grow endlessly.
It knows when to die back.
It knows how to compost what has gone too far.
It understands that cycles must include decay, pause, and regeneration.
Kālī is that knowing made manifest.
She is the fierce intelligence that drinks the “blood” of unsustainable growth before it can multiply and overwhelm the whole.
She embodies the necessary endings we must face to rebalance a system spinning toward collapse.
She is the wildfire that clears what chokes.
The decomposition that feeds new roots.
The moment where systems collapse, not as failure, but as release and renewal.
She is not against life.
She is for life that is rooted, reciprocal, and real.
WHY THIS MYTH MATTERS NOW
Myths endure because they say something essential, even, or especially, when we’ve forgotten how to listen.
This myth tells us:
– Not all growth is good
– Not all loss is failure
– Not all collapse is catastrophe
Kālī does not offer comfort.
She offers clarity.
She is not the end of life, but the end of what blocks it.
And in a time of spiritual bypassing, ecological grief, and systems collapsing under their own weight, her presence is not metaphorical.
It is medicine.
HOW DO WE WORK WITH HER NOW?
To work with Kālī is not to light incense and chant her name while clinging to comfort.
It is to stand, trembling or steady, at the edge of what must fall.
And to listen.
It is to ask:
– What must end for truth to emerge?
– What am I still feeding, out of fear or habit?
– What have I allowed to grow too large, too fast, for too long?
Kālī doesn’t ask for worship.
She asks for honesty.
She asks that we stop feeding what is already starving us.
To walk with her is to refuse the script of endless productivity, of constant performance, of more, more, more, even when those scripts are dressed in spiritual language.
It means looking clearly at the ways we’ve been trained to consume:
– food without reverence
– content without pause
– bodies without consent
– resources without responsibility
– time as if it were limitless
We do not fix this by “consuming better.”
We begin to heal by consuming less, with awareness, with care.
Kālī teaches that some things are not meant to be healed, they are meant to be composted.
So we ask:
– Where can I choose slowness over speed?
– Where can I honour repair instead of reaching for replacement?
– Where can I give back what I took without care?
You offer her:
– the roles that suffocate you
– the lies you were taught to believe
– the beliefs that say you are only as worthy as you are useful
– the identities that feed ego but starve the soul
You let her take them.
You let her clear the field.
You let yourself live more simply, more deeply, more in rhythm.
Then, in the silence that follows,
you listen.
This is not a passive silence.
It is a sacred stillness, where clarity returns.
Where grief has space.
Where deeper values take root.
It is from that silence that a new kind of life begins:
not louder, not faster, but wiser.
More aligned with the living world.
More aligned with truth.
This is how we work with her now.
This is how we begin again.
KĀLĪ: THE END THAT BEGINS AGAIN
Kālī is not the destroyer of life.
She is the destroyer of what consumes life without giving back.
She is the blade that makes way.
The storm that breaks the spell.
The threshold between what must fall and what might still flourish.
She is not the end of the world.
She is the end of the lie.
And when the lie ends,
we begin again.
This reading of Kālī resonates with strands of ecofeminist thought (such as Vandana Shiva's work on Earth democracy) and with depth psychology (as seen in the writings of Marion Woodman), where symbolic forces act as inner teachers in times of transformation.
And find out about what the symbols in ॐ mean in this next blog post. It offers the deeper roots: the states of consciousness, the Tantric pronunciation as Om̐ (pronounced: om-ng), the swara (swuh-rah), the bindu (bin-doo), the sound’s ascent, and how all this quietly echoes through modern science:
There’s a quiet mathematics woven through the fabric of yoga, a language of ratios, cycles, and measures that speaks without words. Nowhere is this more beautifully embodied than in the number 108.
Numbers are more than counting, they are symbols of cosmic rhythm. In yoga, 108 reduces to 9, the sacred feminine cycle of gestation & renewal. Across cultures, 9 carries the imprint of the Goddess, from Navarātri to the Ennead, from the Muses to Celtic triple cycles. Even the word feminine holds “nine” within it.
The Significance of 108 in Yoga
In the yogic and Vedic traditions, 108 is not chosen at random. It reflects a harmony between human life, planetary patterns, and the unseen architecture of consciousness.
Astronomical Resonance:
The distance between Earth and the Sun is about 108 times the Sun’s diameter.
The distance between Earth and the Moon is about 108 times the Moon’s diameter.
This proportion means the Sun and Moon appear the same size in our sky, a symmetry visible in solar eclipses, events long regarded as spiritually potent.
Sacred Geography:
Traditional India speaks of 108 pīṭhas (sacred goddess sites), each a pulse point of Śakti across the land.
The Body as Microcosm:
Āyurveda teaches there are 108 marma points, vital junctions where body, mind, and prāṇa meet. These are subtle mirrors of cosmic constellations.
Mantra & Meditation:
Repeating a mantra 108 times is said to align practitioner and cosmos, bringing the mind into resonance with the order that sustains life.
When we reduce 108 numerologically: 1 + 0 + 8 = 9. This is where the spiral turns inward.
Nine: Completion, the Goddess Number
In many numerological and esoteric systems, nine is the number of completion. It is the final single digit before the sequence folds into a new cycle.
In Sanskrit cosmology, 9 is tied to pūrṇatā, fullness, wholeness.
Nine months is the human gestation period.
The goddess festival Navarātri, literally “Nine Nights”, celebrates the nine forms of Durgā, the Divine Mother who creates, sustains, and dissolves worlds.
This sacred nine is not limited to India.
In ancient Egypt, the Pesedjet, the Great Ennead, was a council of nine deities who together governed creation, including Isis, the great mother.
In Greek myth, nine Muses presided over the arts and sciences, each an emanation of divine inspiration.
Among many Indigenous North American peoples, the number nine appears in ceremonial cycles, often representing the completion of a sacred round before renewal.
In Celtic tradition, triple goddess motifs (maiden, mother, crone) repeated three times formed a nine-fold aspect of the divine feminine.
Across continents, nine appears where the feminine principle, the life-giver, the creatrix, the transformer, is honoured.
The Word Feminine and the Number Nine
The English feminine comes from Old French feminin, from Latin fēminīnus (“womanly, female”), from fēmina (“woman”).
The Latin fēmina likely comes from the root fēlare, “to suckle, to nourish,” tying the word directly to life-giving force. This etymology encodes the ancient association between womanhood, nourishment, and the generative principle.
In the Proto-Indo-European family of languages, similar roots appear:
Sanskrit dhātrī, “nurse, mother”, from dhā (“to hold, support”)
Greek thēlḗ, “teat, breast”, source of thēlys, meaning “female”
Old English fēdan, “to feed, nourish,” from which “food” derives
These linguistic echoes suggest a shared ancestral recognition: the feminine is the nurturer, the sustainer, the one who completes the cycle so life may begin again.
Now, in modern English, feminine contains “nine”, not by historical design, but by spelling coincidence. Yet in the symbolic language of numbers, this is striking:
The word for the creative, nourishing principle holds within it the digit of gestation, fullness, and renewal.
Nine is not only the number of months it takes to bring forth life but also the number that, in numerology, signals a return to source, just as the feminine principle returns life to its origin and begins again.
The Spiral of Numbers, the Spiral of Life
1 — the singular source, unity
0 — the void, infinite potential
8 — infinity turned on its side, the eternal cycle
Together: 108, the measure of the cosmos, the breath of the divine.
Reduced: 9, fullness, the goddess number, the culmination of a cycle.
In this way, each time you move a bead on your mālā, each mantra you whisper 108 times, you are stepping through a symbolic gestation, from source to fullness, before the cycle begins anew.
From Vedic India to the temples of Heliopolis, from Greek oracles to Celtic stone circles, numbers have carried the same truth: the feminine principle is a spiral, not a line, and in the turn from 108 to 9, we return to her.
Fractals, Fungi, and Flow: Practising Yoga with the Pattern of Life
We Are the Web
Beneath the forest floor,
the mycelium hums.
Beneath our breath,
Spanda pulses.
A silent song. A thread of life.
The spider spins her listening lines.
Our nervous system listens too,
through the vagus nerve,
through the gut’s wild garden
of unseen kin.
In yoga,
we tune to this web,
not just stretch and stillness,
but the spirals of fractals,
the echoes of stars,
the music of string theory
vibrating everything into being.
You are not separate.
You are shaped like the whole.
Move slowly.
Breathe deeply.
You are part of the pattern.
Yoga and the Web of Life: Spanda, Mycelium, String Theory, and the Inner Forest
Yoga is a practice of remembering, of reweaving ourselves into the pulse of life. Beneath every breath, posture, and still point, there is movement, a silent tremor of becoming. Across ancient yogic wisdom, Earth-based cultures and modern science, we find a shared truth: everything is vibration, everything is connected.
From Spanda Yoga to string theory, from the living soil of the mycelium network to the spiralling patterns of fractals, yoga offers us not only a map inward, but a map back to the whole.
Spanda: The Sacred Pulse of the Universe
In Spanda Yoga, Spanda means “the divine vibration”, the original movement of consciousness as it stirs itself into form. Practicing yoga with this awareness is to feel not just our muscles stretch, but the universe expand within us.
Spanda reminds us: even in stillness, there is a pulse. Every cell, every breath, every star, all throb with this primordial rhythm.
Mycelium and the Wisdom Beneath Our Feet
The mycelium network, the underground fungal threads that connect forests, is Earth’s own connective tissue. It passes nutrients and messages, warning of danger, sharing what’s needed. This is cooperation made visible beneath the soil.
In yoga, we practice this same unseen communication: breath and body synchronising; nervous system and mind listening; teacher and student moving in resonance. We become part of the great underground web of support and sensing.
The Spider’s Web: Stillness That Feels Everything
A spider’s web is both delicate and deeply intelligent. It holds tension and stillness simultaneously, a responsive field, tuned to the tiniest vibration.
In yoga, we cultivate a similar structure in ourselves: strong yet yielding, attentive yet calm, able to feel the subtlest messages from within and without. Like a web, our awareness expands in all directions.
The Vagus Nerve and the Breath of Connection
The vagus nerve connects brain to heart, lungs, and gut, our internal thread of calm and restoration. When activated through pranayama, chanting, and slow movement, it supports rest, digestion, emotional safety, and ease.
Yoga awakens the vagus nerve’s quiet intelligence, gently rewiring us from stress to safety, from isolation to intimacy.
The Gut Microbiome and Earth’s Inner Ecosystem
Within our bellies live trillions of microbes, the gut microbiome, shaping our mood, immunity, and digestion. Beneath the earth lies a mirror: the soil microbiome, the planet’s digestive and regenerative system.
What we feed ourselves, we feed the Earth, and vice versa. Yoga encourages awareness of nourishment, guiding us toward balance inside and out.
String Theory: The Universe as Vibration
String theory suggests that all matter is made of tiny, vibrating strings, loops of energy that sing the universe into being. Sound familiar?
Spanda. Nada yoga. Mantra. Breath. Every ancient yogic tradition and Earth-based culture speaks to this: we are vibration, and yoga is the art of tuning.
When we move mindfully or rest in stillness, we are not separate bodies on mats. We are ripples in a cosmic field, resonating across time and space.
Fractals: The Infinite Patterns Within
Fractals are repeating patterns found in nature, from ferns and coastlines to galaxies and lungs. No matter how closely you zoom in or pull back, the same pattern emerges. Nature doesn’t build in straight lines, she spirals and mirrors.
In yoga, we feel these spirals in our spine, in breath cycles, in the rhythm of the seasons and the lunar tides. Fractals teach us that we are never apart from the whole, we are shaped like the whole.
Just as a single leaf contains the shape of the tree, your body contains the echo of the cosmos.
Yoga: Living in the Web of Connection
When you step onto the mat with reverence, you step into a living field of:
Spanda: the pulse of being
Mycelium: the underground wisdom of connection
The Spider’s Web: stillness that listens
The Vagus Nerve: breath as healing thread
The Gut and Earth Microbiome: inner and outer ecology
String Theory: vibrating consciousness
Fractals: patterns that repeat through all layers of life
Yoga doesn’t just connect us to ourselves. It reminds us that we were never separate. It tunes us to the living web that sings beneath our skin, beneath the soil, and across the stars.
The Body Is Not the Enemy: Classical Yoga vs. Śaiva Tantra
On Dualism, the Feminine, and the Sacredness of Being
The Body: Obstacle or Cosmos?
When we speak of “yoga,” we are often drawing from two very different streams of thought: Patañjali’s Classical Yoga (c. 4th century CE), rooted in the Sāṅkhya worldview, and the later flowering of Śaiva Tantra (c. 6th–12th centuries CE). Though both traditions seek liberation (mokṣa), they diverge profoundly in how they understand the body, the feminine, and the relationship between self and world.
In the Yoga Sūtras, Patañjali defines yoga as:
yogaś citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ - Yoga Sūtra 1.2
This often-cited sūtra is typically rendered as:
Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.
But such a translation flattens the nuance and metaphysical terrain of the original. The word nirodhaḥ does not simply mean "cessation" or "suppression", it can also mean to enclose, to contain, to hold in place. Scholars like Christopher Wallis have drawn attention to this: that what is being cultivated is not the silencing of the mind through control, but a gentle absorption into the spacious field of awareness. A kind of deepening inward, where thoughts no longer disturb one’s identity with the Self.
Modern re-readings, from the nondual lens of Śaiva Tantra, suggest that nirodhaḥ arises not through force, but through orientation, intimacy, and continuous absorption. In each, the dissolution of mental activity comes not by suppression, but by presence. By leaning into presence so fully that distraction dissolves.
This seemingly small difference in translation opens onto a profound divergence. Where Patañjali’s Classical Yoga leans toward ascetic discipline and dualistic separation, Śaiva Tantra turns toward embodiment, integration, and the recognition that liberation is found not beyond the world but through it.
Dualism and Disembodiment in Classical Yoga
Pātañjali’s Yoga Sūtra, composed around the 4th–5th century CE, sits squarely within the Sāṅkhya philosophy, a dualistic worldview that sees Puruṣa (pure consciousness) and Prakṛti (nature, matter) as fundamentally separate.
Liberation here is achieved through withdrawal (pratyāhāra), concentration, and ultimately the isolation (kaivalya) of puruṣa (consciousness) from prakṛti (matter). The body and senses are viewed as temporary instruments, often impediments to true freedom. The body is not celebrated but disciplined, a vessel to be subdued so that consciousness can disentangle from material entrapment.
To illustrate the dualistic ethos of Patañjali's tradition, consider the example of pratyāhāra, the fifth limb in the eight-fold (Aṣṭāṅga) system of Classical Yoga. Practitioners are instructed to withdraw the senses from external stimuli, as though the world is a snare to be escaped.
Embodiment Divided: How Classical and Hatha Yoga Saw Women
Women, sensuality, and relational attachment were often implicitly aligned with those distractions, and thus positioned as obstacles to spiritual progress. This aligns with a broader ascetic ethos that values detachment from the world, and from embodied relationality. The world is something to transcend. Women, sensuality, and emotion are seen (particularly in commentarial traditions) as dangerous distractions to male yogis seeking stillness.
While Patañjali's Yoga Sūtras themselves do not explicitly name women as obstacles, this view is reflected in classical ascetic commentary and practice, where the feminine is coded as potent temptation, something to move away from rather than toward.
This ethos appears in the famous sutra:
“Brahmacarya-pratiṣṭhāyāṃ vīrya-lābhaḥ.”
“Established in brahmacarya (continence), one gains vigor.” (Yoga Sūtra 2.38)
While the sutra itself is gender-neutral, commentators like Vyāsa and Vācaspati Miśra made its intent explicit: brahmacarya meant not only celibacy but also avoidance of women. Women, along with sensuality and relationship, became coded as distractions from the yogin’s goal.
By the medieval period this ascetic stance became even more direct. In Svātmārāma’s Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā (15th c.), the injunction is blunt:
“Fire, women, and long journeys should be avoided.” (HYP 1.61–64)
Here, women are listed alongside dangers like fire and arduous travel, not as partners in practice, but as obstacles. Similarly, the Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā prescribes gendered asanas, instructing men in Siddhāsana while relegating women to a variant called Siddha-yoni-āsana. These textual traces reveal how Classical and Haṭha Yoga often inherited a view of the feminine as something to control, contain, or sidestep.
Even outside explicitly yogic texts, the cultural climate reinforced this suspicion of women. The Mānusmṛti, an influential dharmaśāstra, is unambiguous:
“It is the nature of women to seduce men; the wise are never unguarded.” (Manu 2.213)
“Women are capable of leading astray the ignorant as well as the learned.” (Manu 2.214)
Such statements make visible the gendered assumptions that shaped the worlds in which many yogic texts were written and practiced.
Tantra’s Radical Reversal
By contrast, Śaiva Tantra, particularly the nondual schools of Kashmir such as Trika or Krama, reimagines the body not as an obstacle but as a microcosm of the universe, vibrant with divinity. It is a gateway. The world is not an illusion to flee, but Śakti herself: the dynamic, creative pulse of reality. In Tantra, to reject the body would be to reject the goddess.
Here, the universe is not something to reject. It is Śakti, the ever-unfolding, self-revealing play (līlā) of consciousness. The world is real, not illusory. It is made of the same vibrating awareness as the divine.
The body is a sacred text.
The senses are instruments of revelation.
Each breath, each sound, each touch,
doorways into the infinite.
Where Pātañjali tells us to retreat inward and restrain, the Tantrik sages invite us to lean in, to taste, to experience fully, not in hedonism, but in recognition. The goal is not to escape the body but to become so intimate with it that it dissolves into the All.
Everyday Practices of Tantric Oneness
Unlike Classical Yoga’s emphasis on meditative withdrawal, nondual Tantra democratises practice, offering countless portals to unity embedded in daily life. Consider these:
1. Eating as ritual: Every meal becomes an offering (naivedya). Chewing is an act of communion. The tongue is Śakti tasting her own creation.
2. Walking as worship: Feet become sacred as they touch the Earth. The land is not inert matter, it is alive. Every step is a conversation with divinity.
3. Breath as mantra: Without needing to sit in lotus pose, simply listening to the natural so-ham of the breath, I am That, becomes a gateway to truth.
These are not symbolic gestures. They are direct methods of awakening. The sacred is not found beyond the world, but through it.
The Feminine as Power, Not Temptation
Nowhere is the contrast more stark than in how each path regards the feminine.
As previously discussed, in many classical systems, women are spoken of as distractions, sensual, unstable, impure. They must be avoided, or controlled. This patriarchal gaze is woven into layers of commentary and custom that still haunt modern yoga culture.
But Tantra radically reclaims the feminine, not just as equal, but as primordial power. Śakti is not lesser than Śiva. She is Śiva, in motion. The feminine is not a deviation from the spiritual path. She is the path.
Women practitioners in Tantric traditions were not just included; they were often revered as teachers, holders of mantra, givers of initiation. The goddess was worshipped in all her forms, fierce, erotic, mothering, wild.
To honour the feminine, in Tantra, is to honour life itself.
The Body as Cosmos
Pātañjali’s system moves toward dis-identification: You are not your body. You are not your mind.
But Tantra says: You are not only your body… but your body is divine.
The human body is seen as a microcosm of the universe, containing all the elements, all the deities, all the channels (nāḍīs) and energies (tattvas) of the cosmos.
There is no need to "transcend" the body. Because the body already is sacred.
As the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra reminds us:
In every ordinary moment, the divine is waiting to be recognised.
Two Views, Two Paths
Both traditions offer profound tools. But they rest on different cosmic assumptions.
If Classical Yoga seeks to rise above the world, Tantra seeks to root deeper within it.
The One in All
To walk the Tantric path is to risk deeper entanglement with life, to meet the full spectrum of existence and see it not as illusion (māyā) to overcome, but as mystery (mahāmayī) to revere.
Both Classical Yoga and Tantra offer medicine. Sometimes we need the sharp blade of discernment, the discipline of detachment. Sometimes we need the warm embrace of embodiment, the courage to feel it all.
But we must be honest about their differences.
One speaks of escape from the storm.
The other asks us to dance in the rain, until we remember we are the rain, the dancer, and the sky.
Final Reflection
What if the path to liberation was not a ladder out of life, but a spiral in?
What if your longing was not to flee the world, but to feel it more fully, until there was no more separation between self and star, between breath and being?
What if the body you inhabit, aching, breathing, remembering, was not a burden to transcend, but a temple already holy, already whole?
May your path be deep. May your practice be true. May your body be the altar where the cosmos remembers itself.
Further Reading:
The Recognition Sutras by Christopher Wallis
Tantra Illuminated by Christopher Wallis
The Heart of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar
Abhinavagupta: The Kula Ritual by Douglas Brooks
The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (trans. Edwin Bryant)
Cultural Appropriation & Yoga: Untangling the Knots, A Complex Conversation
The yoga taught in studios across London, New York, or Melbourne is, at first glance, remarkably similar to that found in many South Asian cities today. Sequenced postures, breath awareness, moments of meditation, and even playlists of gentle ambient music. In many ways, the globalisation of yoga has meant that it has become a shared, somewhat standardised form, whether taught in Mumbai or Manchester. Yet beneath this surface similarity lies a tangle of history, cultural shifts, and ongoing negotiations about how to honour a tradition while also allowing it to evolve.
A Complex Conversation
The question of what to share, what to protect, and how to teach with integrity is not only an Indian story. Many Western teachers, aware of the weight of colonial history and the risks of cultural appropriation, have also wrestled with these questions:
How to honour the roots of yoga without freezing it in time
How to adapt language, methods, and accessibility without hollowing out the depth
How to recognise privilege and historical harm while still participating in this living tradition.
Why the Term "Cultural Appropriation" Has Risen Now
The phrase has become more visible in recent decades alongside wider conversations about colonial history, systemic inequality, and the preservation of Indigenous and marginalised cultures. In many cases, communities have watched their traditions mined for profit while they themselves remain excluded from the benefits. The pushback is about balance, dignity, and reciprocity, not about shutting down sharing altogether.
Cultural Appropriation vs. Cultural Exchange
From the dawn of humanity, we’ve been exchanging words, music, tools, food, rituals and architecture. Ideas migrate like seeds on the wind. Cultures have met on trade routes and at river crossings, exchanged marriage vows across borders, sung each other’s songs under foreign moons. Language itself is the story of shared breath. Many tongues, from Greek to Latin to English, carry Sanskrit roots, just as Sanskrit absorbed Dravidian, Prakrit, and Persian influences.
Yoga itself has been adaptive and syncretic for hundreds of years. Indian yoga didn’t remain a sealed “pure” tradition; it absorbed ideas from Buddhism, Jainism, Sufism, European physical culture and modern gymnastics (especially in the early 20th century with figures like Krishnamacharya engaging with British and Swedish calisthenics).
That means influence has always been part of yoga’s story, but earlier exchanges often happened through cultural dialogue, shared philosophical ground, and mutual respect, not the globalised commercial extraction we see now.
Cultural exchange is mutual sharing that enriches both giver and receiver. It’s what has allowed human beings to grow, adapt, and evolve. Without it, we’d still be living in isolated fragments of the same human tapestry.
In modern yoga for example cultural exchange happens when the core philosophical and ethical frameworks remain intact, even as forms adapt (e.g., trauma-informed yoga or yoga therapy grounded in both ancient principles and modern science).
But cultural appropriation is different. It’s not the meeting of equals, it’s when a dominant culture takes elements from a marginalized culture without understanding, respect, or consent, often stripping away context, sacredness, and connection to the people who birthed them. What remains is a hollowed-out version, commercialised or aestheticised, while the originating community may still face discrimination for practicing the same traditions.
In modern yoga for example, cultural appropriation happens when its complexity, history, and context are stripped away, leaving a product (e.g., "45 mins sculpt", "power yoga", "aerial yoga", "yogalates" “goat yoga” or “beer yoga”) that uses the name but not the heart of the practice.
The two can look similar on the surface, and that’s where the blur comes in.
Navigating Survival, Politics, and Cultural Pressure in a Colonised and Post-Colonial World
Why did many of the most famous 20th-century Indian yoga teachers shape their teachings in ways that made yoga more acceptable, appealing, and “modern” for both Indian middle-class students under colonial influence and for Western audiences?
1. A Changing India
The early 20th century was a time of upheaval and reinvention. When yoga left India under colonial and postcolonial conditions, the power dynamics shifted.
India was under British rule, yet also experiencing surges of nationalist pride, reform movements, and cultural exchange. The British Raj certainly influenced perceptions of Indian traditions, often favouring what seemed “rational” or “scientific”, but the story was not one-way. Indian teachers, scholars, and reformers actively reshaped their traditions in dialogue with both local and international ideas.
The British Raj framed Indian traditions as “primitive” or “superstitious.” To gain legitimacy, Indian teachers often emphasised physical fitness, science-friendly explanations, and stripped-down spirituality that resonated with Western and Western-educated Indian students. Later Western industries often filtered, simplified, or rebranded yoga for Western tastes while marginalising Indian voices.
What might have once been exchange became, under these imbalances, appropriation, especially when Indian teachers had to teach a “safer,” “exotic-but-not-too-exotic” yoga to be accepted.
2. Indian nationalism and physical culture
In the decades before independence, physical vitality became linked to national pride. The physical culture movement sought to renew India’s strength and spirit, and yoga, reframed as a discipline of health, agility, and moral focus, was part of that vision.
Around the early 1900s, teachers like T. Krishnamacharya were part of a nationalist fitness movement aimed at strengthening India's body and spirit to resist colonial rule.
At the Mysore Palace, Krishnamacharya taught an athletic, flowing style of yoga to boys like B.K.S. Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois. These young students would later become pivotal in carrying yoga beyond India’s borders.
He integrated āsana with Swedish gymnastics, Indian wrestling, and calisthenics, not simply to please colonial tastes, but to meet the needs of their students, to strengthen the body, and to position "modern" physical culture, yoga, as relevant and powerful in India.
3. Global appeal and economic survival
By the mid-20th century, the West’s curiosity about Eastern practices grew, though often with selective interest, philosophy and ritual were sometimes less sought after than dynamic physicality.
Post-Independence, teachers like B.K.S. Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois found eager Western audiences. Many of these Western students wanted physical discipline with a touch of exotic mystique, not necessarily the full philosophical or ritual context.
When Iyengar, Jois, and others began teaching abroad, they brought with them the same evolving yoga that was already becoming popular in Indian cities. In fact, the yoga practiced today in South Asia, particularly in urban studios, is often very similar to what is found in the West, because both grew from these same 20th-century lineages.
Simplifying or reframing practices often meant more students, more income, and more reach.
This means the global “yoga body” is not simply a Western creation; it is a shared inheritance of adaptations made in India that travelled outwards, and then circled back through further exchange.
Examples of this adaptation
T. Krishnamacharya incorporated Swedish gymnastics and Indian wrestling moves into āsana sequences, particularly for young boys at the Mysore Palace.
Pattabhi Jois’ Ashtanga Vinyasa, presented as “ancient”, was in fact a modern, flowing style influenced by physical culture drills.
B.K.S. Iyengar used props and a highly anatomical focus to appeal to Western medical and therapeutic sensibilities.
Satyananda Saraswati systematised yoga nidrā, kriyās, and simplified mantra practices, making them accessible to Western students and publishable in books.
The double edge of adaptation
Positive: It made yoga accessible globally, creating pathways for cross-cultural learning. It also gave Indian teachers visibility and income in a Western-dominated world.
Negative: These adaptations often reinforced a Western-palatable image of yoga as mostly physical exercise, leaving behind ritual, philosophy, and community frameworks, which in turn fed the dilution and commodification we see today.
Yoga, Exchange, and Appropriation
As we have just explored and summarised yoga’s history is itself a story of exchange and adaptation. Over the centuries, it absorbed influences from Śramaṇa and Vedic traditions, from Buddhist and Jain thought, from Persian mysticism and Greek philosophy. Its philosophies travelled along with traders, seekers, and invaders, evolving in practice and form.
Modern postural yoga, as it’s often taught today, owes as much to 19th–20th century Indian innovators as it does to Swedish gymnastics, British military drills, and the emerging physical culture movement. Figures like Krishnamacharya blended traditional āsana with callisthenics and even elements of gymnastics to appeal to a changing India under colonial rule. If this hybrid form grew through intentional cultural cross-pollination, does it still count as appropriation when taught in the West?
The answer isn’t simple.
If we’re teaching yoga purely as a fitness fad, without acknowledging its roots, we risk erasing its philosophical and cultural depth.
If we treat Sanskrit words as trendy slogans or wear sacred symbols without understanding them, we reduce living traditions to mere aesthetic.
But if we engage with yoga’s history, lineage, and philosophy respectfully, recognising its Indian roots while acknowledging its modern hybrid form, our teaching becomes an act of cultural exchange, not theft.
A Living Tradition
Yoga is neither a relic to be preserved in glass nor a brand to be endlessly rebranded. It is a living, breathing path, one that will keep evolving as it meets new bodies, new cultures, and new challenges.
Sharing yoga means holding the tension between fidelity and fluidity, between respect for the past and responsiveness to the present.
It means asking ourselves, again and again:
Am I carrying this practice forward in a way that keeps it alive, and keeps me honest?
How can I teach in a way that honours lineage without pretending to be something I am not?
Am I offering these practices with full acknowledgment of their origins?
Am I giving my students access to the depth, the philosophy, the ethics, the meditation, rather than presenting yoga as “just stretching”?
Am I making space for South Asian voices in my learning, my references, my events?
How We Can Honour & Mitigate Harm
The question is not whether cultural borrowing should happen, it always has and always will, but how it happens. The difference between cultural exchange and cultural appropriation often comes down to consent, credit, context, and care.
To honour yoga’s complexities, we can:
Teach the whole path: Include philosophy, ethics, breath, mantra, mudra, nidra, relaxation, energy body and chakras and meditation alongside postures.
Learn the history. Understand the origins of the practices you share.
Name and credit the roots and lineage. Acknowledge the cultures and people who carried them forward. Share stories of the teachers and traditions that shaped your practice.
Credit and contextualise: Name the sources of chants, postures, and teachings.
Deepen our study: Learn from South Asian teachers and scholars, not just asana specialists, both in person and through reputable online platforms.
Go beyond aesthetics. Engage with the depth, not just the surface.
Support living traditions. Buy directly from artisans, study with teachers from the culture, contribute to preservation efforts.
Stay in conversation. Be open to feedback from the communities whose traditions you are sharing.
Use Language Thoughtfully, Consider when to use Sanskrit, and pronounce it with care. Avoid using sacred words as branding gimmicks.
Stay humble and curious: Recognise we are participants in a living, evolving tradition, not its owners. Recognise that this is an ongoing learning process, not a box to tick.
When Does It Stop Being Appropriation?
Perhaps the moment cultural borrowing stops being appropriation is when it becomes exchange rooted in relationship. When there is mutual respect, shared benefit, and awareness of history. When the act of teaching or practising is not one of extraction, but of stewardship.
In this light, yoga’s modern form, in both South Asia and the West, can be seen as a shared creation, born of countless dialogues, adaptations, and even tensions. It is neither frozen in time nor bound to a single cultural image. But it is also not ours to dilute beyond recognition.
Yoga asks us to walk with awareness, of our breath, our body, and our impact. To teach with integrity is to stay in that awareness, even when the path feels uncertain.
When we teach or practice yoga with humility and awareness, we can be part of a long, rich lineage of respectful cultural exchange, one that recognises the full humanity, history, and sacred meaning behind the practices we inherit.
Final Reflection
Yoga’s journey is not a simple slide from “pure” to “polluted,” nor is it a seamless story of universal sharing. It is a living, braided tradition, one strand carrying ancient philosophy, one carrying modern adaptation, and one carrying the marks of globalisation and power.
If we walk carefully, we can keep those strands woven together. The path is challenging, but it is also the path that leads forward, not to preserve yoga in a glass case, but to keep it rooted, vibrant, and responsive, without losing the soil from which it grows.
Reference and Further Reading
1. Understanding Cultural Appropriation vs. Cultural Exchange
Start broad, what the terms mean, how they’ve evolved, and where debates arise.
Young, James O. Cultural Appropriation and the Arts. Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.
Scafidi, Susan. Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law. Rutgers University Press, 2005.
Ziff, Bruce, and Pratima V. Rao, eds. Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation. Rutgers University Press, 1997.
Rogers, Richard A. “From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation: A Review and Reconceptualization of Cultural Appropriation.” Communication Theory, 2006, 16(4): 474–503.
2. Historical Patterns of Cultural Exchange
To see how ideas, foods, languages, and practices have always moved between peoples.
Frankopan, Peter. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. Bloomsbury, 2015.
Sen, Amartya. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity. Penguin, 2005.
Standage, Tom. An Edible History of Humanity. Walker & Company, 2009.
3. Colonial Contexts & Power Dynamics
For understanding why cultural appropriation debates sharpen in the context of colonialism.
Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton University Press, 1993.
4. Yoga’s Modern History and Globalisation
Focusing on how yoga moved from India to the West and transformed along the way.
Singleton, Mark. Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Alter, Joseph S. Yoga in Modern India: The Body Between Science and Philosophy. Princeton University Press, 2004.
Strauss, Sarah. Positioning Yoga: Balancing Acts Across Cultures. Berg, 2005.
Newcombe, Suzanne. Yoga in Britain: Stretching Spirituality and Educating Yogis. Equinox, 2019.
5. Ancient History of Yoga
For those curious about the deep historical roots of yoga beyond modern interpretations.
Mallinson, James & Singleton, Mark. Roots of Yoga. Penguin Classics, 2017.
Simpson, Daniel. The Truth of Yoga: A Comprehensive Guide to Yoga's History, Texts, Philosophy, and Practices. North Point Press, 2021.
Wallis, Christopher D. Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition. Mattamayura Press, 2013.
6. Yoga, Cultural Appropriation & Ethics
Exploring the intersection of practice, respect, and responsibility.
Jain, Andrea R. Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Mohan, A. G. & Ganesh Mohan. Yoga Therapy: A Guide to the Therapeutic Use of Yoga and Ayurveda for Health and Fitness. Shambhala, 2010. (For context on traditional frameworks)
Shukla, Shreena. “How Not to Appropriate Yoga.” Journal of Yoga Studies, 2020.
Rosen, Richard. Yoga FAQ: Almost Everything You Need to Know About Yoga—from Asanas to Yamas. Shambhala, 2017.
7. Contemporary Debates & Voices from the Diaspora
Hearing from South Asian and Indian diaspora teachers and scholars is essential.
Jagannathan, Meera. “The Problem with How We Talk About Cultural Appropriation of Yoga.” Quartz India, 2018.
Patel, Rumya S. Yoga and the Roots of Cultural Appropriation. Self-published, 2021.
Mohanraj, Sharanya. “Decolonising Yoga: Beyond the Buzzwords.” Medium, 2021.
Podcasts like Yogaland (episodes on cultural appropriation), Yoga Is Dead, and The Love + Liberation Podcast.
🌿 Why We Created Yoga Nature
A practice for people, animals, plants, and the living world we are made of
Yoga Nature was never just about teaching yoga.
It began as a response.
To the forgetting.
To the disconnection.
To the deep ache of living in a world that so often treats nature as backdrop, resource, or afterthought.
We created Yoga Nature because we believe yoga is more than movement.
It’s a way of remembering.
Remembering that we are not separate from the land,
not visitors on this Earth,
but expressions of it.
Your breath is not yours alone.
It is shared with the trees.
Every inhale made possible by leaf and root.
Every heartbeat echoes the pulse of the soil beneath you.
Your blood carries the memory of oceans.
Your bones were forged from the minerals of ancient mountains.
Your body is made of stardust and soil,
just like the deer, the crow, the mushroom, the moon.
🌙
When we move with awareness,
when we rest with intention,
we enter into relationship.
We tend to something deeper than the self,
we tend to the threads that bind us to the living world,
and to all the beings who don’t have a voice in human affairs,
but who deserve protection, care, and reverence all the same.
This is why our practice follows the seasons.
Why we lean into stillness.
Why we honour the intelligence of the body, the cycles of the land, the silence between sounds.
We are tired of the natural world being neglected.
Tired of the idea that healing is only personal.
Tired of forgetting what we are made of.
At the heart of Yoga Nature is this truth:
We are nature, both within and without.
And when we remember that,
even quietly,
something begins to shift.
We move differently.
We listen more closely.
We begin to belong again.
🕊️
So this is not just a space for humans to feel better, though we welcome you, always.
It is also a space that holds the unseen lives of animals and plants, winds and waters, soil and sky.
A place where the practice becomes a prayer.
Where each breath is a thread of kinship.
Where our yoga is rooted in something ancient, tender, and alive.
If this speaks to something in you, you’re welcome to practice with us , online, in-person, or simply by pausing with the land beneath your feet.
Let your yoga be a remembering.
Let it be a way home.
Together, we can be a quiet revolution.
A movement made not of noise, but of listening. Of care.
Of deep respect for all that lives, and all that gives.
For the intricate symbiosis of roots and wings, fungi and fur, bodies and breath.
Together, we can help create a world where all beings are honoured.
Not for what they can produce, but for simply being part of the great circle of life.
And now, it is time to act.
We lovingly invite you, in your own way, in your own time,
to change just one habit.
One small act that helps protect the voiceless ones.
It might be choosing to walk instead of drive.
Eating a plant-based meal three times a week.
Letting a patch of garden grow wild.
Cutting back on plastic.
Turning off the lights when you leave a room.
Honouring water.
Giving thanks.
It all matters. It all ripples.
And together, our quiet gestures can become a tide of care.
At Yoga Nature, the rhythm of the earth informs all that we do. As the seasons shift, so too does our energy, our practice, and the way we show up in the world. That’s why each year, as the height of summer arrives, we close our doors throughout August. This is not a holiday in the traditional sense, it is a conscious, intentional pause. A sacred time of seasonal rest.
Honouring the Natural Cycle of Stillness
In nature, August is a time of ripeness and fullness. The sun has lingered long, the fruits have ripened on the trees, and the land begins to soften in preparation for the inward pull of autumn. While society might urge us to push through, keep producing, and maintain a constant state of doing, yoga reminds us of the power in not-doing, in simply being.
This period is our invitation to step back, reflect, and breathe. Just as Shavasana (corpse pose) completes a practice and allows the integration of all that has come before, our August pause is a collective exhale, a settling into stillness that nourishes us for the seasons ahead.
Rest as a Revolutionary Practice
In the yogic tradition, rest is not passive, it is an active surrender, a letting go of striving, achievement, and output. Practices like Yoga Nidra, meditation, and pranayama all teach us the art of yielding. Rest is the fertile void from which true insight and creativity emerge.
In a world that celebrates productivity, choosing to rest becomes an act of deep self-care and spiritual rebellion. It wisely aligns us with the principle of the conservation of energy and reminds us that restoration is essential, not optional.
Space to Replenish and Renew
By closing in August, we allow ourselves as teachers time to rest, reflect, and renew our own practices. We offer ourselves time to sit in stillness, walk slowly, reconnect with nature, and listen deeply to what arises in the quiet. This time gives space for new seeds to form, both creatively and energetically, so that when we return, we do so with fresh clarity and heartful presence.
We also trust that you, our community, will benefit from this pause. Whether you take this month to practice quietly at home, connect with the natural world, or simply give yourself permission to do less - may you feel the blessing of rest in your bones.
Living Yoga, Beyond the Mat
To rest is to remember our wholeness.
To rest is to trust the cycle of the seasons.
To rest is to practice yoga, not only with our bodies, but with our lives.
As August gently holds us in its golden light, we invite you to honour this sacred pause with us. And when we meet again in September, we will step forward with grounded energy, renewed spirit, and deeper connection: to ourselves, to one another, and to the ever-changing, ever-wise rhythm of nature.
A gifted yoga class to support this blog: youtu.be/ILsamQmaUDg?si=zHhRYySbir99wFzn
🌱On the kinship between blood, breath, and the green world
Some truths are so simple they shimmer.
You are not separate from the forest.
You are not above the green.
You are not a visitor here, you are kin.
At the molecular level, your blood mirrors the leaf.
The red in your veins and the green in a leaf differ by only one element.
In haemoglobin, it is iron that carries oxygen through your bloodstream.
In chlorophyll, it is magnesium that allows plants to transform sunlight into sugar.
Two life-giving pigments. Two molecular signatures.
One breath.
This is more than chemistry.
This is cellular poetry, a truth written into our very structure:
We are green beings in disguise.
🍃 The Forest Within
When you inhale beneath a tree, you are not simply taking in air, you are participating in an ancient, reciprocal rhythm.
Trees breathe in our exhaled carbon. We breathe in their gift of oxygen. But this breath exchange is only the beginning.
The forest communicates chemically, sharing its intelligence through phytoncides — aromatic compounds that trees release to protect themselves. When we walk in woodlands, we inhale these molecules, and they do for us what they do for the forest:
Lower stress hormones
Strengthen the immune system
Activate the parasympathetic nervous system, our inner brake pedal
And beneath our feet, the earth’s microbiome speaks too.
Soil-dwelling bacteria like Mycobacterium vaccae, released into the air when we dig, walk, or breathe close to the ground — have been shown to boost serotonin, support cognition, and stimulate the vagus nerve, the long, winding thread of calm that connects brain to body.
Every time we sit on the ground,
every time we breathe in the scent of moss and loam,
every time we move gently and attentively in nature,
we are co-regulating with the forest.
We don’t just benefit from the green world.
We belong to it.
The Vagus and the Vine
The vagus nerve, whose name means “wanderer”, weaves through the body like mycelium through soil.
It touches lungs, heart, gut, and voice.
It governs rest, digestion, emotional regulation, and resilience.
It is, in many ways, our inner forest path.
When we practice yoga, when we move slowly, breathe deeply, and sit in stillness,
we awaken this pathway of peace.
When we walk in the woods, or breathe the forest’s medicine, or touch soil with bare hands,
we nourish it.
This is not a metaphor.
This is earth-based neuroscience.
The Breath That Binds Us
We are not machines. We are not algorithms.
We are living ecosystems.
Just as the forest has its microbiome, soil rich with bacteria, fungi, and minerals, so does your gut.
Your inner terrain is a mirror of the land’s terrain.
Both are shaped by breath, food, sunlight, and care.
When we sever our connection to the Earth, we lose more than meaning, we lose health, resilience, and a sense of home.
To care for the forest is to care for our nervous systems.
To restore soil is to restore the gut.
To breathe with awareness is to remember we are woven into the very same web.
🌾 Sustainability Is Sensory
Sustainability doesn’t start with policy. It starts with presence.
It begins when you step into a woodland and remember that your body recognises it.
That you are not outside the forest, you are its echo, its cousin, its breath returned.
To protect the green world is not an act of charity.
It is an act of recognition.
Because what lives in the trees, lives in you.
🌀 Come Practice Among the Green Ones
Join us at Yoga Nature Sheffield
for seasonal, earth-rooted, soul-reminding yoga.
Where the forest breathes with you.
Where your body is not corrected, but welcomed home.
The Yoga Beneath the Noise: A slower, deeper practice that soothes more than it shapes.
Long before yoga became a workout, it was a way of waking up:
to the breath, to the earth, to your own essence.
This piece explores the true roots of yoga:
🌱 Embodied wisdom beyond performance
🌀 The pulse of spanda and the sacred body
🌍 Mycelial webs, the vagus nerve & inner ecosystems
🌒 Earth-based rhythms and seasonal remembering
At Yoga Nature Sheffield, we offer yoga that nourishes the nervous system, honours the body, and returns you to what’s already within.
Rooted, real, and deeply restorative.
Yoga was a practice of presence.
Before mats, mirrors and memberships, there was breath.
Stillness.
Sitting with the sacred.
Yoga was never created to sculpt a body.
It was a path of awakening, of remembering what you already are.
Not becoming more.
Becoming home.
🕉 A Glimpse Into Yoga’s Past
The roots of yoga stretch back thousands of years, into the forests of ancient India, where seekers sat in stillness to listen deeply.
The earliest texts, like the Vedas and Upanishads, speak not of poses, but of devotion, meditation, and liberation. Asana, meaning “seat,” was simply a stable posture for long periods of inner stillness, not a gymnastic feat.
It wasn’t until Tantra emerged, between the 5th and 9th centuries CE, that the body was truly honoured as a sacred vehicle for awakening. Tantric philosophy brought a profound shift:
🌀 Divinity is not elsewhere. It is here, in this breath, this body, this earth.
From Tantra came the recognition of spanda. The subtle pulse of life, the throb of the cosmos in all things.
True yoga arises when we attune to that pulse, not when we override it.
🌍 Earth-Based Wisdom: A Shared Remembering
This remembering lives not only in yoga, but in the earth-based traditions found across cultures.
Wisdom keepers across continents knew that everything, stone and stream, breath and bone, carried spirit. There was no divide between the sacred and the everyday. The body was not a tool to conquer, but a vessel of deep knowing.
Like yoga’s roots in the forest-dwelling sages, earth-based practices honour:
the spiral of the seasons
the rhythms of sun and moon
the interdependence of all living systems
At Yoga Nature, we honour this shared remembering.
A weaving of global roots and ancestral echoes.
One essence. Many languages.
🧘 What Fitness Yoga Often Misses
Contemporary yoga has often lost its roots in search of results.
Fitness-style yoga tends to:
Prioritise form over feeling
Centre aesthetics over awareness
Push the nervous system rather than soothe it
Ignore breath, presence, and subtle energy
Missing are:
The energetic body
The inner inquiry
The connection to something larger than self
In this version, the body becomes a machine.
In true yoga, the body is a field of remembering.
🌿 Yoga Today: A Path of Reclamation
At Yoga Nature, we return to living lineages not by replicating the past, but by honouring its essence. We root our practice in the earth, the breath, and the body's wisdom.
Our approach weaves:
Tantra’s reverence for embodied divinity
Spanda’s pulse of aliveness
Earth-based wisdom that sees body and land as sacred
The healing science of the nervous system
Seasonal and somatic rhythms
Trauma-aware teaching and rest-led philosophy
We move slowly
Because the deepest truths come in the pause.
It’s in the silence.
🌌 Inner Ecosystems: Microbiome, Mycelium & the Vagus Nerve
Yoga doesn’t only shift the body, it awakens subtle networks:
The vagus nerve, key to emotional regulation, is stimulated through slow breath, deep rest, and mindful movement.
The gut microbiome, like the mycelium of the earth, is nourished by rhythm, calm, and conscious living.
The mycelial web, underground and alive, mirrors the interconnection of all life, much like the subtle body in yogic maps.
These are not metaphors. They are realities of the living system, within and around us.
🕊 You Were Never Disconnected
Yoga is not about becoming more. It's the art of becoming home.
Yoga is not reaching out, it's falling inward.
Yoga is not a tether, it's a thrum. A remembering of the pulse beneath all things.
You are already the thing you seek.
This is the whisper beneath the noise, the sacred under the surface.
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.
A radical remembering of the Tantrik body. Beyond colour, psychology, or upward ascent
You’ve heard it before:
“There are seven chakras, each a spinning wheel of coloured light.”
“They correspond to your glands, your emotions, your wounds.”
“To grow spiritually, you must open and align them, from root to crown.”
Cakras (Sanskrit: चक्र cakra, pronounced chuh-kruh), often visualised today as spinning wheels of rainbow-coloured energy climbing the spine, have become yoga poster icons, chakra crystal kits, and psychological self-help diagrams.
This system is everywhere: yoga studios, social media, energy healing courses.
But it is not ancient and it is not Tantrik.
In early Tantrik visualisations, each cakra is described as a living shrine, not a colour-coded wheel, but a ritually constructed maṇḍala.
“The body is a shrine. Not a ladder. Not a staircase. Not a spectrum to fix or ascend. It is a mystery, made of sound, breath and starstuff.”
In this blog, we’ll explore:
What the classical Tantrik cakras really were
How the modern rainbow system evolved
What the correct bīja mantras are (and aren’t)
How cakras were actually used in Tantrik ritual
What we’ve forgotten, and what we can remember
A powerful, simple Tantrik practice of descent
And finally, we’ll compare the modern Western model and the Tantrik ritual body visually, for clarity. As a bonus we have included a comparative view of cross-cultural energy maps and serpentine forces.
A note before we journey deeper:
This is not written to dismiss or devalue the modern New Age cakra model. For many, it has offered real comfort, insight, and transformation, and we honour that. It’s the very framework we ourselves were taught, and for many years, shared with others in good faith.
But like all sincere practitioners, we are on a path of remembering, of unlearning, and of deepening into the roots of what we offer. This is about getting our history clear, not to draw lines in the sand, but to speak more truthfully about where these teachings come from, and what they were originally meant to reveal.
We believe it matters: how we speak, what we share, and what we pass on. That’s why we’re committed to sharing what is authentic, aligned, and true to the traditions we love, and to doing so with a spirit that is discerning, honest, and open.
If something here feels mistaken or incomplete, we warmly invite you to reach out. We are always listening, always learning. ❤️
The History: From Esoteric Tantra to New Age Marketing
Original Sources
The earliest references to cakras appear in early medieval Tantrik texts, particularly within Śākta and Śaiva traditions of India. The concept likely evolved between the 6th and 10th centuries CE. In the original Tantrik systems of Kaśmīr Śaivism, Śākta Tantra, and Haṭha Yoga, the subtle body (sūkṣma-śarīra) was a sacred terrain filled with nāḍīs (subtle channels), cakras (wheels or hubs), granthis (knots), bindus (points), and devī-thrones - each layered with specific mantras, deities, and ritual significance.
The earliest descriptions of cakras are found in medieval Tantrik texts like the Ṣaṭcakra-nirūpaṇa (c. 1577 CE), which presents a 6-cakra system culminating not in sahasrāra as a chakra, but as a symbolic crown or void. Other earlier texts, like the Kubjikāmatatantra, offer 5, 9, 12 or more centres. Some lineages didn't refer to cakras at all, instead working with nāḍīs (channels), bindu (point of emanation), mantra nyāsa, spanda (vibratory consciousness). or the entire body as shrine.
Read more on our Substack: Cakras: The version you know isn’t the original
A sound bath is a sensory immersion. You lie down, relax, and allow the vibrations of gongs, chimes, singing bowls, and voice to wash over you. There’s no movement. No goal. Just sound, presence, and space.
Led by our gifted sound healer Mark Firth, each sound journey here at Yoga Nature is woven with intention, aligned with lunar and Celtic rhythms, and held in a deeply restorative field.
🌿 Why 45 Minutes?
You might think shorter is easier, but the body, like the Earth, responds to cycles. 45 minutes allows you to move through the full arc of deep rest and renewal:
The First 10 Minutes: The body is settling, releasing held tension, shifting from sympathetic (fight-or-flight) to parasympathetic (rest-and-digest).
The Middle Phase: You drop into deeper brainwave states: alpha and even theta. This is where healing begins. Emotions may surface. Insights may arise.
The Final Stage: The body absorbs the vibration. A subtle integration begins. People often describe a “lightness” or “clarity” here.
Anything shorter often feels like an interruption. At 45 minutes, there’s enough time to fully receive the medicine of sound.
🎵 The Benefits of a Full Sound Journey
Deep Nervous System Reset
Sound baths can reduce cortisol levels, calm the vagus nerve, and help shift chronic tension patterns.
Emotional Unwinding
Sound vibrates through water, and we are made of water. It helps dislodge what’s been stuck or stored in the body, gently releasing emotion without needing to talk or analyse.
Enhanced Sleep & Mood
Many people report sleeping better and feeling lighter for days after a session.
Energetic Alignment
Sound clears stagnation from the energy body. Many feel clearer, more in tune with their intuition, and less “scattered” after a session.
A Portal to Meditation
Even if you struggle to sit in silence, sound can carry you into a meditative state with ease, without needing technique or effort.
🌙 Why It Matters at Yoga Nature
We root our sound baths in seasonal awareness, lunar cycles, and the Celtic calendar. The timing is never random, it's a deliberate invitation into stillness, reflection, and transformation.
Whether it’s the Dark Moon of Samhain or the Golden Light of the Summer Solstice, each 45-minute session is a ceremony of letting go, of coming home, of remembering what it means to truly rest.
"Sound doesn't heal us — it returns us to the place where healing begins."
🪷 What to Expect
Come as you are. We’ll guide you into rest with 45 minutes of gentle postural yoga, then invite you to lie back, close your eyes, and receive.
We recommend bringing:
A yoga mat (or use one of ours)
A blanket, cushion, and warm layers
Water, an eye pillow, and anything else to feel truly supported.
📅 Explore Our Sound Bath Calendar
Held at key seasonal and lunar moments, our Sonic Sanctuary Sound Bath Yoga sessions book quickly.
View our upcoming dates and give yourself the gift of vibration and stillness: Sonic Sanctuary: Sound Bath Yoga in Sheffield
Our upcoming timetable of Sound Bath Yoga classes in Sheffield. These classes combine 45 minutes of gentle, grounding postural yoga with a d
Teaching Seasonal Yoga: In Rhythm with the Celtic Year and the Lunar Body
In the natural world, nothing blooms all the time. And yet, modern life asks us to do just that, to be endlessly productive, energised, and available, regardless of the season. But our bodies, like the land, speak in a different tongue. A cyclical one. A remembering.
At Yoga Nature, we teach in rhythm with the Earth. Not just in broad seasonal sweeps, but in the subtle shifts between, guided by the Celtic calendar and moon phases, both of which offer a gentler, truer sense of time.
🕈 Why the Celtic Calendar?
The familiar four seasons are based on equinoxes and solstices. But the Celtic calendar is rooted in Earth-based wisdom, agricultural rhythms, and the lived experience of the land. It divides the year into eight key festivals, spaced evenly through the turning wheel:
Imbolc (early Feb) – first stirrings of life
Spring Equinox – balance of light and dark
Beltane (May 1st) – fire, fertility, flowering
Summer Solstice – peak light and outward energy
Lughnasadh (early Aug) – harvest begins
Autumn Equinox – balance again, but waning
Samhain (Oct 31) – the veils thin, descent begins
Winter Solstice – deep stillness, and the spark of return
Rather than locking us into rigid seasonal boxes, the Wheel honours the thresholds between, where much of the inner work happens. It helps us orient our practice not just around what we see, but what we feel.
🌝 Moon Phases as Inner Weather
Just as the Celtic festivals map the outer terrain, the moon charts our inner tides. Over 28–29 days, the moon mirrors the cycle of expansion and contraction that we experience in our nervous systems, energy levels, and emotional states.
Here’s how lunar and seasonal energies interweave:
🌿 Living the Cycles: Tips for Tuning In
Let the season speak through you, not as something to copy but something to notice. You are not separate from the Earth’s rhythms.
Use the Celtic festivals as markers, not rules. portals into different energies. What is stirring at Imbolc? What is releasing at Samhain?
The moon is your mirror. Track its phases not as a doctrine, but a conversation. Let it guide your sensitivity, not your schedule.
Rest is not the opposite of progress. Rest is its own intelligence. You are allowed to rest in spring, to bloom in winter, to pulse with the unpredictable.
Hold the paradox: you can feel both inward and outward at once. There’s no wrong rhythm, only your own.
🌸 A Gentle Practice: Your Cyclical Self
At any point in the month or year, you might take a few moments to check in - with breath, with body, with being:
Where is the moon now?
Where are we in the wheel of the year?
What is the felt sense of that in me, not as a concept, but a texture?
What is my inner season, in this moment?
What does that season call for - not what should I do, but what would feel kind?
Let the answers rise without force. Let your body speak before the mind.
Let your practice respond, not perform.
You are not late. You are not early.
You are right on time with the turning world.
💬 Join us for seasonal yoga in Sheffield
If you live in Sheffield you can join us in-person for yoga that honours the seasons and rhythms of the year. Or you can join our online studio for a wide selection of seasonal classes.
🌐 www.yoganaturesheffield.org.uk
📧 [email protected]
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