I teach yoga outside, 52 weeks of the year, to a small community in Somerset. If it's raining, we're in an unheated polytunnel. At night, there are no lights. People walk to class by torchlight, or by the light of the moon.We hear owls and foxes. Birds fly in. On occasion, we are visited by hares. In winter, the temperature drops below zero.

This is a deliberate practice. We are constantly invited to live with our sensory perception.

I have been teaching yoga in Somerset since 2012. In that time, I have come to feel strongly that what most people need from yoga is not more instruction, but more permission. Permission to pause. To notice. To rest. To trust that what they are already feeling in their body is valid and worth attending to.

I describe my teaching as enquiry-led, which means I don't instruct people into poses and consider the job done. I guide a practice of noticing, and I help students learn that they have options. The conversation is always between you and your own experience. I'm there to hold the space and ask the questions.

Over time, that changes things. Not just on the mat.

I see yoga as a privilege, because the capacity to feel this present, this connected, this alive, is genuinely rare in ordinary life. Most of us are moving too fast, carrying too much, and paying attention to everything except what is actually happening inside us.

My quiet invitation to every student is this: now that you feel this connected to your breath, your body, the ground, the earth, the people around you, what are you going to do with it?

That question doesn't need an answer in class. But it tends to follow people home.