Is growing supposed to make you a tall person?
Yoga enables me to create a space in which my feelings at any given moment are valid, whilst reminding me that the way I feel now won’t last forever.
Read moreI got 99 problems but my yoga teacher ain't one
Voga. Taking the world by storm since 2014...
There has been a lot of noise in the UK yoga community recently (and the press more widely) around creating a 'national standard' for yoga teacher training. The British Wheel of Yoga (the organisation I trained under and I am currently registered with) is the governing body* pushing for this change, with the aim to 'safeguard' students from 'dangerous' teachers.
Disappointingly, what is essentially a healthy debate about inexperience and potential injuries has centred around anecdotal evidence and inflammatory language quoted in tabloid articles. So far, I'm failing to see how this approach can serve to do anything but encourage people to be scared of yoga, scared of yoga teachers, as well as making yoga teachers themselves, scared to teach.
Read moreBrexit: a lesson in suffering and the yoga of action
Final drawing for Open House for Butterflies. Pen and ink. © 1960 by Maurice Sendak.
I voted to remain in the EU. Many of my friends voted to remain in the EU. Bristol, the city where I grew up, voted to remain in the EU. Aberystwyth, the town where I studied and committed to an Ashtanga practice, voted to remain in the EU. Oxford, the city in which I now live and work, voted to remain in the EU. So I must point out first of all, despite the various motives behind our vote, it is primarily to this audience I speak (you can call this my first prejudice*).
Reeling from the shock of finding ourselves in the minority, this referendum and the pain it's caused has not only polarised opinion in our so-called 'united' country, it has drawn apart those we believed were on the same side.
Friends have forgotten the source of their friendship, liberals have found the limits of their liberalism and the rhetoric of superiority and hate has reached the far-left as well as the far-right.
Read moreMy broken collarbone: weeks 2-3
In comparison to a painful but restful week 0 and a slower than expected week 1, this week saw the healing of my collarbone injury catapult. Over the course of week 1, I was able to start moving my shoulder and slowly regain my ability to do some normal activities like brushing my teeth and washing my hair. By the start of week 2, I felt sufficiently comfortable (and confident that I wasn't going to break myself further) to begin some self-directed physiotherapy, following the exercises recommended by the good people at the John Radcliffe Hospital - you can find these exercises in the hospital's extremely good 'Helping your clavicle to recover after a fracture' leaflet by following the link.
If you have broken your clavicle and have been able to take off your sling, I can't stress enough how important it is to start moving your shoulder in order to redress muscular tightness. It is amazing how quickly the muscles of the shoulder girdle start to stiffen up, how painful this can be and how long it will take to return back to normal. From talking to many other people who have had the same injury as me (let's just say I know A LOT of cyclists...), those who left their sling on for a prolonged amount of time (2+ weeks) not only took the longest time to recover, but suffered from discomfort on the side of their injury years (and in more than one case, decades) later. From my own experience, the muscular pain I felt when starting to move my shoulder after a fortnight was already quite enough. However, by diligently following the physio exercises prescribed, not only did the pain reduce by half each day, but my range of pain-free movement increased by half each day too.
Read moreMy broken collarbone: week 1
Left clavicle, anterior surface. Plate 201 in Henry Gray (1918), Anatomy of the Human Body.
All about the 'C' words [17]
For anyone who has never broken their collarbone before, it is an odd thing to break. I don't know about you, but I've certainly never given my clavicle a second thought. To be honest, I'm not even sure I realised I had one, let alone two. If I had to stab a guess at it, I think I've said, heard and written the words 'clavicle' and 'collarbone' more than one billion times over the last 10 days. [In case you're wondering, the number in the square brackets above is the clavicle/collarbone word count for this blog post alone.]
As if that wasn't enough, an odder thing about breaking your collarbone is that it can't be immobilised completely. You just have to rest, limit any movement (by wearing a sling or, a brace) and to try not to displace the bone as it begins to heal. In the early days, however, this means that you can hear the bone ends rubbing as you move (a gross and superfluous detail I know, but perhaps of some comfort to readers coming to this with a fresh break themselves: "Thank goodness! This is normal!"). It's an off-putting clicking sound that, at best, makes you regret being able to hear.
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