The Yoga Village

03/01/2026

We wish you all a very happy and positive start to the new year. This month, our Saturday workshop will be on the subject of Saṅkalpa (संकल्प), an intention that goes much deeper than a typical "new year resolution". Saṅkalpa is how the conscious mind programs the unconscious. It is a seed thought that we plant during deep relaxation (and pratyahara), when our senses are withdrawn and our critical impulses are quietened. From its deep roots, the resolve has the power to shape our perception, behaviour and experience.

We currently have some spaces available: January 17th 10am-3pm: mats, blankets, cushions, tea, chocolate and lunch provided! Contact theyogavillage108@gmail.com

Just bring a willingness to rest deeply, as your deeper mind and intuition guide you gently into 2026.

21/12/2025

Hello, it's Hannah. Happy winter solstice and Happy Christmas to all our friends, class students, teacher trainees, yoga philosophy day regulars, yoga kids, babies and all our past and present yoga people! We wish you a very nurturing and rejuvenating winter break, and an abundance of quality time for you and your loved ones. This card was painted for me by Carrie who comes to postnatal yoga with her baby Alice. I absolutely love it and I think is a perfect way to share our Christmas wishes with you all. See you in the New Year. (Image: Carrie Duce).

04/11/2025

We continue our journey into yoga philosophy through practice... Our last Saturday (in October) brought us to the Gunas. Next one (November 15th) we return to the chakras, now moving to Vishuddhi and then to Nada Yoga (the yoga of sound) in December. Yoga is endlessly interesting, deep and the Western misconception that it is an exercise form does nothing to acknowledge its true scope and profound nature. What is always fascinating is to explore any relevance and connection our modern minds make between the old teachings and the current issues we deal with in our lives, relationships and health. Can yoga help us? Is there something unchanging in the human experience that connects us to the deep thinkers and meditators of thousands of years ago? Do the fields of modern psychology and medicine interweave with yoga in illuminating ways? Yes of course, and this field is very much alive

05/06/2025

Our next Saturday yoga day - 14th June 10am-3pm with lunch provided - coincides with the approach of the summer solstice. As usual we'll adopt our safe, relaxing and therapeutic approach, this time to explore solar vitalising techniques - in movements and poses, energising breathing practices and uplifting visualisations. Manipura chakra, at the heart of our philosophical focus for the day, is the solar plexus centre and offers us connection to confidence and personal power. 🧡🌞 Please feel welcome join us, contact Hannah for more information

30/05/2025

New and upcoming sessions 🧡

Sunday 1st June - yoga circle for bereavement, with Zephyrs charity

Thursday 5th June family yoga starts 4-5pm (kids yoga Tuesdays 4-5pm)

Saturday 14th June 10am-3pm, journey through the chakras: Manipura

Monday 9th June Towards Solstice - solar vitalising techniques from the yoga tradition, restorative yoga, weekly 8-9.15pm

Wednesday 11th June Introducing meditation, restorative yoga, weekly 7.45-9pm

Tuesday 17th June new pregnancy yoga class starts (fully booked) (also classes Monday and Wednesday)

Monday, Tuesday and Thursday mornings postnatal yoga with babies

All our classes and one to one therapeutic sessions are listed on the website Https://theyogavillage.co.uk

See you soon!

27/04/2025

It has always bothered me that the majority of people (in the West anyway) think of yoga as a form of physical exercise. Now, after twenty three years of teaching and nearly forty years since my first class, I continue to affirm that the reason I find yoga so endlessly fascinating and fulfilling is because it is a vehicle into the mind. Yoga techniques, including many meditation practices, guide us in the most uncharted, deepest areas of the psyche, and allow us to explore a holistic concept of mind. As well as going much deeper in existential terms, this concept of mind also includes the body, recognising that the body stores mental and emotional experience and that any healing path cannot separate mind and body.

One day each month for the next four (of the 18 month sadhana course we are running) will be devoted to the model of human experience called the chakras, and we have already spent three days on this subject. Of course that is no time at all, merely a tiny introduction. Nevertheless, along with many other subjects in the yoga philosophy field, it is an opening to understanding yoga in a different way. As Jung succinctly expressed, “The chakras.. represent a real effort to give a symbolic theory of the psyche. The psyche is something so highly complicated, so vast in extent and so rich in elements unknown to us… that we always turn to symbols in order to try to represent what we know about it.” (Carl Jung, in his essay, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga)

For a longer piece see my Substack below... The photo is me (second from left ) and friends completing our two year yoga teacher training, in Bihar India, 2003.

I am finding it really fulfilling to run our yoga sadhana course, which is eighteen months of diving into, reflecting upon and learning more about yoga philosophy and practice.

09/02/2025

AUM... We chant it at the end of all our restorative yoga classes, the symbol hangs on our yoga room door, and sometimes we even use it as a sound massage in postnatal yoga... In our upcoming Saturday (adult) workshop we will explore in greater depth this most sacred of mantras. Aum is a three syllable sound, a portal to aspects of being: past, present, future (and the timeless now); waking, dreaming and deep sleep (and pure presence); and the co-existing cosmic forces of creation, preservation and dissolution.

Beyond theory, we are dedicated to experience, and to exploring how ancient practices may be meaningful for us right now in our own life. For example, bringing dream consciousness to our waking awareness is a healing process, integrating past wounds. "There is a form of implicit memory that is profoundly unconscious and forms the basis for the imprint trauma leaves on the body/mind…When this stuck energy is restored to the whole organism, we can begin to live more fully—to create, accomplish, communicate, collaborate, and share” Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger

02/02/2025

Well, The Yoga Village has been going twenty years this year!! Twenty years during which we've been fortunate to enjoy the company of hundreds /thousands of wonderful mums, babies, children and families. We've never chased awards, but especially as it is our anniversary year, it does feel like a lovely gesture from all those who have nominated and voted for us. There are a lot of franchises in the market these days and we are proud that we are small, local and independent; we are also unusual in being both experienced and properly qualified to teach yoga to all our students, and will always maintain high standards in an unregulated industry. Thank you 🧡🙏🏼
If you'd like to vote here's the link
https://form.jotform.com/243616134095051?fbclid=IwY2xjawIMVaBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZhW7xG2RjSU7mkX9sntmIACIGv5oYqvawfgh9D6mdhqgnWS2kry0qBjdA_aem_39hCMAE8fokcj5cCUjqVlg

What means most is not winning anything, but that those who know us have enjoyed and appreciated their time in our classes.

30/01/2025

"I'm still friends with the yoga group and now our children are three... ten... sixteen...years old!" We hear this often and how lovely it is!! All our groups offer more than six week blocks, giving mums loads of time to get to know each other. Beth and I are qualified yoga teachers and postnatal specialists with a broad spectrum of practices up our sleeves - no script, but a creative and person centred approach to postnatal recovery yoga. While our Monday and Thursday morning classes are currently full we have spaces on Tuesday mornings. Https://theyogavillage.co.uk/postnatal-yoga/

09/12/2024

The Hope Project was set up in honour of our yoga teacher, Swami Pragyamurti, and her amazing work for some of the most vulnerable - in prisons, those with Aids, and in the townships in South Africa. Today Hope Project is taking her yoga sequences to homeless street youth in the slums of Freetown, Sierra Leone including to drug addicts, prositutes and gang members. To keep bringing hope and healing to these young people, a match fund campaign is running meaning each donation is doubled. Thank you 🙏🏼

https://donate.biggive.org/campaign/a056900002TPXC0AAP

09/12/2024

As we approach the end of the year, saying goodbye to some of our mums in the postnatal class is always bitter sweet. They have usually been coming to Yoga Village classes since their second trimester of pregnancy and now their little ones are approaching one year old...This means that we have shared many landmarks of this emotional and physically challenging and also joyful first stage of parenting, and the mums have often developed really good friendships. But The Yoga Village was designed, always, to be there for any stage of life, for life in general. Before my children were born, and now they are nearly grown up, I rely on yoga techniques just as much. So when a mum is leaving for the next chapter of her life and work, we say "see you soon" because everyone is always welcome back in adult classes, one off workshops or our deeper study sessions. Yoga is a great tool, a very broad spectrum of practices, and always far far more than exercise.

23/10/2024

Adult restorative yoga classes... We run three weekly sessions, all in a meditative relaxing style with yoga nidra:
Monday 8-9.15pm
Wednesday 7.45-9pm
Friday online 9.45-11am

£48 for a flexible six weeks, in a dedicated yoga room, free parking, mats provided and cosy low lighting ambience!

Our classes have been running weekly for almost twenty years, in quite small groups (up to twelve per class) giving us a broad and deep understanding of individuals' needs. A good yoga class is there to support your mental and emotional as well as physical health.

Https://theyogavillage.co.uk/restorative-yoga/