Diary of a Lockdown, day 78: reading about race

Is this a tipping point? After all the moments when people said “never again”: like after the 1981 riots, like after Cherry Groce, like after Stephen Lawrence, like after Grenfell… As the list goes on and on you realise that racism doesn’t sink as easily as a statue of a slave-trader under murky waters. I’m […]

Hooked by Tamsin’s South London story

Brixton author Tamsin Grey first thought of becoming a writer when she was just seven, but buried the idea in her 20s and 30s considering it, ‘deeply embarrassing and big-headed’ to think she might be able to write something other people would want to read. It was only in her 40s, with an established civil […]

Five best yoga books – updated

Since I first published a list of my five favourite yoga books two years ago, it’s been the most popular post on this blog. I’ve kept reading and come across yoga books I love even more. So, here’s my revised top five: 1. Intelligent Yoga: re-educating mind and body – Peter Blackaby Published in 2012 […]

Yoga can wreck your body – so should we give up?

An article in the New York Times, How Yoga can Wreck Your Body, has been causing a stir. Science journalist William J. Broad tells horror stories of yoga teachers who have snapped their Achilles tendons by forcing heels to the floor in downward dog; brain injuries, nerve damage and even strokes caused by neck injuries […]

What did Gil Scott-Heron have to do with yoga?

Gil Scott-Heron was one of my heroes. As an English student in the mid-80s, songs like The Bottle and Pieces of a Man were the soundtrack to many good nights out; but they also told me that poetry and philosophy weren’t just things done by the dead white men on my degree syllabus. Twenty-five years […]

The yoga teacher from death row

Today, yoga teacher Sunny Jacobs is a smiley, sweet-voiced 63-year-old woman , who walks with a slight limp (the result of a car accident) and lives quietly in Ireland with her partner, a brood of dogs, cats, chickens and goats and a prolific vegetable garden. It’s a long way from the Florida jail where she […]