I believe that if you want to transform your health and well-being and maintain them over time, it is the self-care system of Yoga that provides the most effective, accessible and complete approach available.

Yoga has become more popular in the 21st century than at any other time during its, many thousands of years long history.

Although this popularity has made the benefits of yoga practice accessible to more people, it has also resulted in an overly competitive marketplace rife with false promises, false assertions and confused misunderstandings.

A greater number of less experienced teachers has led to almost runaway levels of fragmentation and an ever-increasing number of individual interpretations all vying for your time, money and attention.

Ultimately this leads to more confusion for new students, who have no reliable way to judge the quality of what is on offer or the results they might expect from doing any of it.

I think that now, more than ever, clarity of purpose and method is needed to achieve the best results for both teachers and their students.

By attempting to make modern lifestyle-focused versions of what were once esoteric practices, we have reduced much of the nuance within the system of yoga to just another method to get fit.

This is a great shame because there is much more to yoga than the superficial benefits that are typically being presented.

Now while we all want to look and feel better, these things ought to be side-effects of living well and looking after yourself. Not the primary focus of your life.

Thriving is about much, much more than exercise, no matter how refined and efficient any programme claims to be.

When the goal is to develop as a ‘whole person’, health and well-being follow this intention automatically as a wonderful side-benefit.