On Presence

It’s always been important to me as a teacher not to over-talk as I guide a class.

Students need time to digest the cues and there’s often so much happening internally as we’re on the mat that adding a lot more ‘on top’ is, not only superfluous, but potentially overwhelming.

Often the most simple cues are the most effective. What’s more, part of the magic of yoga is a quality of awareness that can arise in moments of stillness. As Francis Lucille says nicely, ‘’The perfume of presence comes through in the gaps’’.

I try to give my students enough quiet moments - to digest, to be with themselves, to have a break from all the input that our everyday lives are anyway so full of. Very often silence is golden. What a privilege, a luxury and a relief it is to breathe quietly together.