Green Deva

If October has you feeling like you'd like something slow and considered in your week - classes are on Tuesdays at Mayer Hall in Bebington and Wednesdays at Encore Music and Wellness Centre in Hooton.

No prior experience needed. No particular level of flexibility required. Just a willingness to turn up and see what the session offers.

Feel free to message if you'd like to know more.

The question I hear most often from people thinking about starting yoga is some version of: am I too late?

Too stiff. Too out of practice. Too far from where they imagine they should be before they begin.

I always want to say: there isn't a waiting room. The practice doesn't have a minimum entry requirement. You just turn up and we start from there.

That's genuinely how it works. Whatever you're bringing with you on the day - tired, rusty, slightly sceptical - is fine.

We work with what's actually there.

"Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break and in all earnestness." ~ Patanjali, Yoga Sutras 1.14

The phrase 'without break' can sound like a demand for perfection. But I don't think that's what Patanjali was after.

What I think he means is something quieter: that the practice works when it becomes a thread running through your life rather than an event you attend.

Not daily in the sense of never missing a day. Daily in the sense of never quite letting go of it.

That's a different kind of consistency.

And a much more human one.

If you're new to yoga and want to understand it a bit better first, Yoga Basics on the website (www.green-deva.com/yoga-basics) is a good place to start.

And if you're ready to try it in person, I teach Tuesdays in Bebington and Wednesdays in Hooton - you'd be very welcome to join us.

Yoga Basics New to yoga, or just want to understand it a bit better before you dive in? This is the place to start.

If working with breath and stillness deliberately is the part of yoga that interests you most - rather than as a side effect of the physical practice- it's worth spending proper time with breathwork on its own.

The Living Breath was built around exactly this. More on the website, under courses, if you'd like a look -> www.green-deva.com

"Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break and in all earnestness." ~ Patanjali, Yoga Sutras

Consistency over intensity, every time.

Next time you're halfway through a stressful email, or stuck in traffic, or waiting on hold - try lengthening your exhale for a few breaths.

Same signal, same switch, off the mat as on it.

The effects of a settled nervous system don't stay on the mat.

Sleep tends to come more easily.

Digestion works better.

The small daily irritations don't niggle away at you quite so much.

It's not about the yoga itself - it's what the yoga leaves behind.

"When the breath wanders, the mind is unsteady. But when the breath is still, so is the mind." ~ Hatha Yoga Pradipika (attributed alongside Patanjali's teachings)

Something to notice next time you catch yourself holding your breath.

It's not one deep breath that does it. It's the repetition - a longer exhale, again and again, class after class - that eventually teaches your nervous system this is a state it's allowed to come back to.

No single moment fixes anything. It's the practice of it.

That's really what the breath is doing, every time you're on the mat.