Who Are You Practising For?

I love a yoga practice that doesn't set itself up as just an exercise class - and as a teacher, bringing an idea or a thread of philosophy into class is one of my favourite things. It's where the magic happens. But some things can become stock phrases if we're not careful. That’s why I don’t always ask students to dedicate their practice at the start of every class. It can start to sound like yoga by rote - "if you have an intention, set it now" - and I'd rather bring something specific to each class than reach for the same ritual every time.

But, dedicating our practice to someone or something other than ourselves can still be a hugely powerful way to shift energy. For me, when it works, it works because it stops the practice being about how good my yoga is that day. It's a check on the ego. Instead of monitoring whether I'm stronger or more flexible or more focused than last week, the practice becomes a gift -of movement, of intention - to something or someone beyond myself. And when that happens, it stops being a performance.

That's what I love about it, and that’s why I keep coming back to it.

We've been working on headstand in class recently, which I've been putting off teaching for a while.

Teachers often offer headstand as an option to those who already have it ("from here, come into headstand if that's in your practice"), but then it only ever belongs to the people who can already do it. Or you can make it a workshop moment during class, which is genuinely valuable, but can break the flow and sometimes less confident yogis check out. However, when I asked my students, quite a few said they'd love to work towards it. So I wanted to find a way to bring it in without the whole class becoming a build-up to one pose.

But this month I wanted to try it differently. Instead of making the class about headstand, we dedicated our practice at the beginning of class - to a person, a memory, something we love, or want to honour. And throughout we returned to that intention.

So when headstand came up, some of the pressure came off - and a few students who would normally opt very decisively out of anything involving being upside down at least gave it a go. There were wobbles. One slightly dramatic sideways exit. But the attempts felt more important than whether anyone “got” the pose.

I love this Mark Nepo quote:

"Birds don't need ornithologists to fly. We spend so much time wanting to be seen and named... Yet the spirit doesn't know it's being spiritual anymore than water rushing knows it's a stream, and the heart doesn't know it's expanding with compassion anymore than a hawk spreading its wings knows it's being a hawk...

...As much as we want to be seen and known, it is the giving of attention that keeps us awake."

That's it, really. That's what dedicating a practice is for. Not as a ritual or a trope, but as a way of remembering that the practice was never really about us in the first place.

We no longer need an audience to fly.