The third Edinburgh Yoga Festival is happening in May.  It raises money for Edinburgh Community Yoga because teachers donate their time and their venues.  It begins with a full weekend of events mostly at the wonderfully named Serenity Cafe, then over the week to May 20th various yoga teachers around Edinburgh are donating the money from a session or two.  You can see the whole programme on the website  www.edyogafest.co.uk

My contribution is called 

Celebrating the vital layer of our being - Sunday May 13th 2018, 1.30 - 3 pm at the Serenity Cafe Edinburgh.

The pranamaya kosha or energy sheath is the “energy department” of our system, the link between body, mind/emotions and spirit.  Prana is life; and pranayama is the control and expansion of prana.  Following the two popular 4-seminar programmes “Progressive Pranayama” I facilitated in 2017, in this 90-minute session we  will begin to look at how we can...

In my first yoga teacher training, despite the best efforts of our tutors, I now know (though I didn't at the time) that I just didn't "get" pranayama.  It felt too slow and I often ended up gasping and having to take extra breaths.  But in 2001 I  discovered that Philip Xerri was going to run his year-long Pranayama Foundation Course in Edinburgh.  It's not an exaggeration to say that it completely changed my practice - and of course my mind, which is intimately connected with the breath.  Philip himself encountered  pranayama originally with Phil Jones in Wales, and went on to train in India with Swami Gitananda.  Philip would tell us stories of how Phil, an ex- miner, survived on very little remaining lung tissue because of his pranayama practice.  Philip gave us a daily practice schedule, building up progressively,  that would often take 45 minutes.  Three quarters of...