Occasionally I reflect on what my yoga practice and teaching mean to me. It’s obvious that for me this feels like a practice of light, a recalibration back into our light - especially when things get dark and heavy. It’s the reason I found the mat in the first place and it tends to resonate a lot.

I once read somewhere that you don’t come to a contemplative practice unless you have something to contemplate. Interesting. Well, I guess then a lot of us have much to think about and that this throws up some difficult questions and, you know, the occasional existential crisis here and there. It goes without saying that this light can’t exist without its counterpart, darkness. Strive as we may as towards brightness and beauty, we’re complex, imperfect beings and we’ll never reside solely in them. Instead we’ll traverse the line between light and dark, most likely bringing both, in equal measure, to ourselves, others and to the circumstances we perceive to unite or divide us. And that’s ok, we deal in opposites all the time and these are polarising times.

However, if we’re going to find ourselves impacted by both we may as well choose consciously to learn as much as we can from each aspect. We can choose to find value in darkness. Rather than reducing our practice to a false concept of ‘wellness’ based in a culture of avoidance we can recognise that, paradoxically, darkness can itself be blindingly illuminating and that the void is never really empty. So know your darkness, own it. Take what you need from it just don’t hang out there too long – we are after all beings of light. And on the days where just reading the news would have you slide willingly under the oily waters of inertia, remember; there is always beauty, there is always light. Turn to receive it and reflect it outwards to others: You bring light in.