Ashtanga Yoga Plymouth

🧘‍♀️✨ Celebrate International Yoga Day & the Summer Solstice ✨🧘🏻‍♂️

Join us on Sunday 21st June as we gather in the beautiful secret garden of RWY to honour International Yoga Day and welcome the energy of the Summer Solstice.

This year’s International Yoga Day theme is “Yoga for Healthy Ageing”, highlighting how yoga can support wellbeing throughout every stage of life. Ashtanga Yoga is particularly effective for building strength, flexibility, balance, mobility, and mental focus. By linking breath with movement through the structured sequence of postures, the practice develops both physical vitality and inner calm, helping practitioners maintain an active, healthy lifestyle as they age.

Whether you are a regular Ashtanga practitioner or are curious to experience the practice for the first time, you are warmly welcome. Modifications and options are offered where needed, making the class accessible to a range of abilities and experience levels.

🌿 Benefits of Ashtanga Yoga
• Builds strength and stamina
• Improves flexibility and mobility
• Enhances balance and coordination
• Encourages healthy posture and joint function
• Reduces stress and promotes mental clarity
• Cultivates discipline, mindfulness, and resilience

☀️ Event Details
🗓️ Sunday 21st June
🕙 Arrive at 10:00am at Block Gym for a 10:10am start

👉 Book here - www.plymouthyoga.co.uk

🌦️ If the weather isn’t on our side, we’ll practice in the Block Studio.

Come and celebrate the longest day of the year with movement, breath, and community….Every Body welcome 🙏✨

🌿What if your greatest source of calm was already within you?

Forward folds remind us to soften, surrender and listen.
In a world that constantly pulls our attention outward, Ashtanga yoga invites us back to ourselves.

Why not join us tomorrow at 6pm at Compton Church and experience the power of this wonderful moving meditation for yourself. Strengthen your body, steady your mind, nourish your nervous system, and reconnect with yourself - one breath at a time 😊

✨ No perfect postures required.
✨ No competition.
✨ Just breath, movement and presence.

Every Body welcome 😀🧘‍♀️🧘🏻‍♂️🙏

Celebrate World Men’s Health Week with Ashtanga Yoga! 🧘‍♂️✨

This coming week is all about supporting men's physical and mental wellbeing - and Ashtanga Yoga is one of the most powerful tools for doing just that.

Regular Ashtanga practice can help:
✅ Improve strength, flexibility, and bone health
✅ Support cardiovascular fitness
✅ Reduce stress, anxiety, and insomnia
✅ Enhance focus, resilience, and mental clarity
✅ Aid recovery and overall athletic performance

Despite common misconceptions, yoga has traditionally been practiced by men for thousands of years and Ashtanga yoga is often an essential part of training for athletes across a wide range of sports - from rugby and cycling to surfing and swimming.

It's been great to see more men joining our classes and experiencing these benefits first hand.

Why not bring the man in your life - or come along yourself - and discover the endless benefits of Ashtanga Yoga 😊

📍 Block Gym
🕙 Tomorrow at 10am
🗓 Book here - www.plymouthyoga.co.uk

All bodies. All levels. All welcome 🧘🏻‍♂️🧘‍♀️🙏

👇 Tag a man who could benefit from a stronger body, a calmer mind, and some time just for himself

DIVERSITY 😀 We've all been there - walking into a class for the first time and wondering what to expect.

Will I fit in? Will everyone else be younger, stronger, bendier, or know exactly what they're doing? Will there be anyone like me?

The truth is that our Ashtanga yoga community is wonderfully diverse. It spans many decades in age and length of practice, with every level of experience, and a huge range of backgrounds.

In this week's classes there was a PT, a few retirees, a pregnant GP with a strong established practice (who can modify), a physiotherapist, a yoga teacher, a runner recovering from injury, and a couple of Indian students who enjoy my classes because they remind them of the yoga they experienced growing up in India, particularly through school PE lessons....as well as complete beginners, and practitioners who have been attending my classes for over a decade.

And often, you would never know.

Every Body is equal, but every body is unique.

One of the great gifts of Ashtanga Yoga is that the sequence remains the same. There are no surprises, allowing us to settle into the practice, switch off from the noise around us, and make each posture and each vinyasa our own. 

The practice can be modified to suit how we feel on any given day, whether we're building strength, recovering, resting, adapting to life changes, or simply showing up exactly as we are.

Our intention is not to perform. It is to move the body, steady the breath, and calm the mind.

Ashtanga doesn't belong to one age group, body type, ability level, or stage of life. It belongs to Every Body 😊

So if you're wondering whether there will be someone like you in class, there's a very good chance there will be.
And if there isn't, you'll still be welcomed exactly as you are 😊🧘‍♂️🧘‍♀️🙏

See you again on Sunday morning at Block Gym and Monday evening at Compton Church 🙏

BALANCE ⚖️
In Ashtanga Yoga, balance is more than the ability to hold a posture. It reflects the relationship between our strength, breath, focus, and nervous system health.

Research has shown that the ability to balance on one leg is an important indicator of overall health and longevity as we age. When balance begins to decline, it can signal changes in strength, coordination, sensory awareness, and nervous system function. It also increases the risk of falls and loss of independence later in life.

What we experience on the mat mirrors this reality. Some days balance feels effortless; other days it is challenged. The practice teaches us to observe without judgment and to return to the fundamentals: grounding through the standing foot, engaging bandha (the core), softening unnecessary tension, and maintaining a steady gaze and breath.

And the good news is that balance is highly trainable. Every time we hold a standing posture, move mindfully through Surya Namaskar, or refine our drishti, we are strengthening the systems that support balance. These seemingly small actions accumulate over years of practice.

Ashtanga reminds us that balance is a skill we can continue to cultivate throughout our lives 😊

Come practice with us tomorrow at 6:00pm at Compton Church and invest in a steadier, stronger future….one breath and one posture at a time…..Every Body welcome 😀🧘‍♀️🧘🏻‍♂️🙏

If you need just one solid reason for continuing to practice Ashtanga yoga when it’s so much easier to stay in bed, this is it.....Added bonus, the only side effects are increased strength, flexibility, stamina, and wellbeing👌💪❤️🙏
Discover the endless amazing benefits of ashtanga yoga for yourself....moving the body to still the mind.....next class tomorrow at 10am in the lovely BLOCK Gym studio.....Every Body welcome😃🧘‍♀️🧘🏻‍♂️🙏

And you can enjoy the Royal William Yard market afterwards 😀

Book your spot here - www.plymouthyoga.co.uk

Neuroscience has shown that just one hour of yoga increases GABA, the brains major inhibitory neurotransmitter that’s mimicked in drugs like Xanax. Ashtanga yoga in particular, with all its forward folds, and then counter balance backbends, also stimulates 2 very important nerves in the brain resulting in a feeling a calmness, that ‘yoga stoned' feeling we know so well😊

I’m thinking of restarting Wednesday classes due to a few recent enquiries. They would be an hour long….

Who’s interested?
And if so, what start time would suit? 6pm, 6.15pm, other?

Please comment or dm 😀🙏

Happy World Environment Day 🌍💚

Spending time in my happy place - nature and yoga - the two things that always ground me 🌊🍃🧘‍♀️🙏

“Life is like the ocean. It can be calm and still, or wild and rough, but in the end, it is always beautiful.”

One of the greatest gifts of the Ashtanga yoga practice is learning to move with life’s natural rhythms rather than resisting them. The practice doesn’t remove challenges or difficult moments, but it teaches us to meet them with greater steadiness, awareness, and acceptance.

Just as every breath contains both an inhale and an exhale, life is a continuous flow of opposites - effort and ease, strength and surrender, growth and rest. The tides roll in and out, and our practice reminds us not to cling to either. Through the discipline of Ashtanga, we learn to stay present, grounded, and balanced amidst the constant ebb and flow.

Ashtanga teaches us to find peace in this ebb and flow of life. And when we can access the quiet space beneath the noise, we begin to find clarity within the chaos. That, for me, is the true beauty of Ashtanga yoga.

Eternally grateful for this practice and all it continues to teach me✨💖🙏

See you on Sunday morning at Block Gym and Monday evening at Compton Church for a balancing, calming yet energising Ashtanga yoga session….Every Body Welcome 😊🧘‍♀️🧘🏻‍♂️🙏

Grateful 🙏 If you've ever attended a class, recommended me to a friend, or cheered me on, thank you so much 😊🙏

As many of us know, it’s not always easy running a small business nowadays
So I thought I’d share some small things that could help in a big way 😊

✨ Tell your friends about my classes or write a review 🙏 Spreading the word means so much ❤️
✨ Like or share my posts and stories
✨ Book a class and join our lovely community 😀

Every recommendation, like, review, and booking genuinely makes a difference.
Thank you so much for supporting my small business and helping me share the practice I love with more people ❤️🙏

See you again on Sunday morning at Block Gym and Monday evening at Compton Church….Every Body welcome 😀🧘‍♀️🧘‍♂️🙏