I don’t know if it’s just me, but I keep going round in circles at the moment. I’m a woman, in midlife, and a question keeps niggling at me – who am I? Underneath the decades of accumulated layers and identities? Who was I before… this? This woman who is superficially ok, but sometimes wonders what happened to that girl she once was.

Before I know it, I’ve lost an afternoon researching Human Design or the Enneagram or Gene Keys or astrology – the kind of frameworks you need a birth certificate to get a reading and that leave you feeling seen, validated and hopeful. Especially astrology. (As an aside: Did you know Carl Jung used astrology?).

These systems are fascinating, which is why I suppose I see every other yoga teacher adding them to their toolkit, why I keep being drawn to them – and probably why Jung was too. But I’ve started to notice that when I look to any of them for answers, they offer up a feeling of safe containment. Which is great – there’s a lot to be said for neat definitions. Who am I? A manifesting generator. A 4/6 profile. A Scorpio rising. (Intense, mysterious, magnetic? Yes please!). It always seems to be something positive that I can point to and say: yes, that’s me. Of course it feels validating.

But it’s not really me, is it?

It’s a way of feeling seen, yes, and perhaps helps me recognise my strengths and foibles too, in a way – but the categorisation does all the work for me. It’s a definition, but it doesn’t hold the full breadth, mess and complexity of my very human life.

Yoga philosophy takes a different approach. Rather than offering a system that tells you who you are, it offers a practice of finding out for yourself. There are no charts or personality types. Just a suggestion to be with yourself, quietly, and do the work.

What is svadhyaya? Self-study in yoga philosophy

The Sanskrit word for this is svadhyaya. It’s one of the niyamas – the personal observances in Patanjali’s eight-limbed path – and it’s usually translated as self-study, although as is often the case for translations from Sanskrit, the full definition is a little more nuanced. Because “study” implies a curriculum, a method, a body of knowledge to be acquired. Svadhyaya is quieter and more subtle. There’s no formula, training or certificate available on completion. Sometimes it feels as if there isn’t even an end to it. Svadhyaya, the study of the self, is a lifetime’s work.

Think of it as of a tuning in. Sitting still long enough to hear the frequency that’s yours.

It sounds simple, but when you've spent the best part of twenty years attuned to everyone else's needs – work, family, the ten thousand demands and the invisible labour of keeping everyone else's life on track – your own frequency gets drowned out. Turning the dial back to yourself feels clumsy at first. There's static. Noise. Sometimes ear-splitting interference or, perhaps worse, a deafening silence.

But, with persistence, you can fine tune the signal.

Svadhyaya and the Yoga Sutras

Classical yoga teachings offer us a starting point. In the Yoga Sutras, svadhyaya includes the study of sacred texts – not as an academic exercise, but as a mirror. You read not to acquire knowledge but to see yourself more clearly through what you encounter in these texts. None of us are literally Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita, standing on the precipice of battle, with god as our teacher. But we are warriors in our own lives, and self-knowledge arrives when you're willing to ask the questions and then listen, just as Arjuna does.

You can extend this principle to any practice of honest self-observation: journaling, sitting in meditation, noticing your default habits on and off the mat. You're not looking for answers from outside. You're creating the conditions for self-knowledge to arise.

Self-knowledge in midlife

What svadhyaya tends to show, especially in midlife, isn’t what most of us expect. We brace ourselves perhaps for uncomfortable truths, for the emergence of things that have been buried for years that we’d rather not confront. And yes, sometimes that happens.

But often what emerges is something quieter. A sense of recognition perhaps, or a remembering.

Because underneath the roles accumulated over decades – the mother, the professional, the organiser, the one who holds everything together – there is someone who was there before all of that. Who has preferences and a particular way of articulating herself which became very quietly subdued over time. Svadhyaya allows her to stop, and take a breath. It creates enough space so she can find her voice again.

This is why no framework can do this work for you. These systems can tell you that you’re a manifesting generator, or a type four, or a Sagittarius moon. They can offer you a definition and a sense of agency over shaping your future – and I’m all for that. But what they can’t do is pay close attention. They can’t sit with the silence and wait to hear what emerges.

Only you can do that. And that, my friend, is the work. It is my work and it is yours, too.

A svadhyaya practice to try this week

This week's offering is a small practice of remembering.

Take a quiet moment to consider brought you joy as a child. Picture yourself back then. Imagine yourself doing that activity – it might be something you were good at, and you you were praised for it, but try to separate that out. What activity or thing did you choose to do, even when no one was watching, or praising?

Now find a little time this week to do that thing again. Tell no one. Do it just for you.

Next week, I'll be introducing The Living Compass – a reflective tool for exactly this kind of turning inwards. It will be available to paid subscribers of The Almanac Room.

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I wonder how this newsletter finds you? I’m finding it really hard right now to navigate the world and make sense of what’s going on. Everything feels as if it’s turning in on itself. Extremism is on the rise, the horror of war continues, the news cycle is relentless, the economy is imploding – and don’t even get me started on the patriarchy (or the manosphere).

Meanwhile, in the yoga world, in the midst of all this unfolding chaos, if yogis aren’t balancing in scorpion pose (look it up) they’re posting photos of sunsets and telling you to breathe. Mostly on Instagram.

But what I see when I look at that photo of the sunset is actually a world on fire, and a post encouraging me to find my “inner peace” screams toxic positivity to me. When you’re dealing with real, visceral rage at a personal or systemic injustice, “love and light” just doesn’t cut it.

The question I keep asking myself is, how do we show up in relation to everything that’s going on? How do we stay grounded in the face of uncertainty? How do we stay informed and caring and compassionate without becoming overwhelmed, bitter or avoidant?

Well, yoga can help – but not with love and light.

What are the yamas in yoga?

Contrary to popular belief, yoga wasn’t created to help us bypass reality. Whether we are dealing with pain in our personal lives or witnessing suffering in our wider – or even global – communities, yoga has the tools that help us engage with the world and navigate it without becoming consumed by it. And the place where yoga begins – before the postures, before the breath, before meditation – is with how we interact with our environment. It is with ethics: the yamas.

The yamas are the very first limb of the eight limbs of yoga, outlined by Patañjali in The Yoga Sutras. Think of them as a social code: five ethical guidelines that govern how we interact with the world around us. They are thousands of years old, but they remain remarkably useful today, and they are what I return to when I find either my personal life hard to navigate or when the world seems intent on torching itself.

So my friends, here they are:

The yamas

Ahiṃsā – non-violence

Ahiṃsā comes first, and it comes first for a reason. Patañjali lists it at the head of the yamas, and the commentarial tradition treats it as foundational – the one that all the others lean against. If you’re unsure how to apply any of the principles that follow, you check it against this one.

Violent responses are created most often in our reaction to external events and others, especially when we judge or criticise. It might be simple things: irritation that the bus is late, feeling annoyed your partner forgot to pick up some milk, a friend letting you down. Feeling anger and a desire for retribution then, at the current state of the world, seems the most natural thing in the world.

In the face of injustice and horror, ahiṃsā can sound naïve. Non-violence? Really? But ahiṃsā isn’t passive non-action. It’s the practice of de-escalating the internal war so you can approach external challenges with a steady breath. A more peaceful world cannot be created through hate – not because hatred isn’t understandable, but because it devours you first. Ahiṃsā is the refusal to let that happen. Mostly (in class) I teach it as beginning with compassion towards yourself, which is harder than it sounds when you’re running on cortisol and outrage and you were late for class.

Satya – truthfulness

Satya is about radical honesty. It’s the tool we use to name what we see actually happening – to call out systemic lies, gaslighting, the slow normalisation of things that simply aren’t just. In a culture that rewards spin, satya is a political act.

But here’s the tension: yoga teaches that truth must be rooted in ahiṃsā. If your honesty causes unnecessary harm, you restrain yourself. Truth should be used to liberate, not to destroy. This doesn’t mean letting hard truths go by unchecked, it means asking whether the way you’re delivering them serves clarity or simply serves your anger. There’s a difference between speaking truth to power and using “truth” as a weapon. Satya asks you to know which one you’re voicing.

Asteya – non-stealing

Beyond the obvious – don’t take what isn’t yours – asteya asks us to look at subtler forms of theft. Taking someone’s time without thought. Taking credit that belongs elsewhere. Taking more from the planet than we need in the name of convenience.

In a world built on extraction, asteya is quietly radical. It’s the practice of noticing when you are consuming more than your share – of resources, of space, of attention – and drawing back. It applies to sustainability. It applies to how we show up in conversations. It applies, in all honesty, to how those of us teaching yoga in the West relate to the tradition we’re drawing from. Asteya asks us to take only what is freely given, and to notice when we’re reaching for more.

Brahmacharya – right use of energy

Brahmacharya is traditionally translated as celibacy, but the more useful modern reading is energy management – not squandering your vital force on things that don’t serve you or anyone else.

Your energy is a finite resource, especially when the world feels heavy and difficult to navigate. Brahmacharya asks the question: are you wasting your time and energy doomscrolling/indulging negative spiralling thoughts/arguing about things beyond your control (delete as appropriate), or are you directing it towards something more productive and meaningful? Are you pouring yourself into every fight, every relationship that drains you, or choosing the ones where you can actually make a difference? This isn’t about disengaging. It’s about being intentional with where your fire goes, so there’s still something to burn when it counts.

Aparigraha – non-grasping

Aparigraha is the antidote to the relentless need for more: more stuff, more certainty, more control over outcomes beyond our control. It’s the practice of taking only what you truly need and releasing your grip on the rest. It’s another yama easily experienced in a midlife body on the yoga mat: to let go of the idea of a perfect yoga pose.

Aparigraha is as liberating as it is in the context of activism – or even life – as it is on the mat. Letting go of relationships that don’t serve you, other people’s opinions of you. Doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because you are guaranteed an outcome. You show up, you act with integrity, and you let go of your attachment to the prize. That might sound like defeat, but it’s the only way to sustain the work and your spirit without becoming depleted. Aparigraha is what keeps you in the fight, battle after battle.

Practising the yamas in daily life

The yamas aren’t a manifesto. They’re a practice – something you return to, imperfectly, again and again. They won’t fix the world. But they might help you engage with it without being driven mad by rage.

I’ve created a table if it would be helpful for you to have something to refer to (I have this printed up on my noticeboard as my reminder):

Yamas Printable

28.1KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

These are also just the first limb of eight. The niyamas – the inward-facing observances – pick up where the yamas leave off: how you relate to yourself when the world has asked too much of you. But those are for another post.

Where to learn more about the eight limbs of yoga

The eight limbs of yoga are outlined in the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (Pāda II, sūtras 29–32). If you want to dive deeper, I’d recommend starting with a translation that includes the commentarial tradition – Desikachar’s Heart of Yoga is a good entry point. You can find this on my yoga bookshelf at The Yoga Almanac Bookshop, where every purchase you make also helps support my work. Have a browse!

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There is an expectation that arrives with students before a yoga class. The room is ready. The mats are out, the candles are lit. As people arrive, I try to welcome everyone individually, a brief checking in. And then underneath that: a reading of the room, a quiet inventory. Is everyone here? Who seems quieter than usual? What will serve this particular gathering of bodies and lives? Will the words and poses I planned still be the right ones after we begin?

And then my own questions, running alongside. Will I get through this session myself? Will my hip last the hour? Will the painkillers do their job? Will someone – anyone – have started dinner when I get home?!

I often ask everyone to take a breath, while I take a breath too. To allow for a little extra settling in, while I gather myself. I ask people to leave whatever they’ve been carrying, metaphorically, outside the room. To put things down, just for the hour, and move towards stillness. And then yoga begins. We settle into the familiar routine, the ones our bodies and brains recognise.

Later, once the movement has finished and everyone but me is in śavāsana, there is more stillness, again. And the silence of resting bodies. And I watch over, checking for adjustments, for fidgeting. Is everyone finding some rest or at least ease?

This looks like stillness. It is stillness, in a way – but it’s the stillness of something held and full, not an empty stillness. This is one type of holding and is what it means to hold space.

Women Holding Things — Maira Kalman and the work of carrying

I’ve been thinking about this since I came across “Women Holding Things,” a book by Maira Kalman, an illustrator and writer whose work is full of tender, close attention to ordinary acts of carrying and keeping. She catalogues everything women hold: the home, the family, the food, the friendships, the memories, the sorrows, the triumphs, the love – the work of the world and the work of being human. And then she writes:

“There is never an end to holding and certainly there is often the feeling of never doing enough. And then there is the next day and the next day, and one holds on.”

It resonated deeply with me. And I suspect many women in midlife recognise it too.

A while ago, one of my lovely students said something that has stayed with me. She was reflecting on what she and the others bring to class each week – their own lives, their own need to set something down for an hour. “We all come with our own shit”, she said. Her word, and the right one.

And then she said: “But of course we forget that you must have your own stuff going on as well.”

She was right. I did. I do. The class. The hip that may or may not hold for the full hour (depending on when I took the painkillers). But also the things at home, in life, and the things in the studio being built, slowly, that currently feel as precarious as a house of cards. There is never an end to the holding, as Kalman writes.

What it means to hold space

What struck me was not the observation itself – of course yoga teachers have lives outside class – but the recognition behind it. And in that moment of being seen, my work reorganised itself slightly: not as teacher and students (which, if I’m honest, I’ve never been comfortable with), but a gathering of women, each carrying something, and coming together weekly, to the same place, for community and succour.

Everyone on those mats is holding something that the others cannot see. The woman who arrived late and couldn’t settle. The one who cried in child’s pose and wasn’t sure why. The one who seemed completely fine but absolutely wasn’t. And me, at the front, holding space with what I hope looks like equanimity. We’re together in this, I realise.

Sangha, kula, and the community of a yoga class

A while ago I wrote about the sangha of community that is emerging from my classes, and specifically the kula that forms when the same women (because it’s mostly women) meet every week. And women are so very good at this human communion, this way of self-regulation without formalising it. And I realised I am included in that too. I hold the community, but the community holds me right back.

At the end of the session, I guide everyone back into the room from wherever śavāsana took them. They roll to one side. Slowly, they sit. Someone stretches their neck. Someone else releases a breath that sounds like a sigh. For a short moment we sit together in silence.

Soon, they will pick their things back up on the way out. We all will.

But for now, in this particular kind of stillness – held, and full – there is just this. The room. The candles, still lit. Us, sitting together in silence. The ordinary extraordinary fact of all these lives, briefly held together.

I'd love to know what spaces you return to each week that hold you — a class, a group, perhaps a ritual of your own. And what helps you let go, and then pick yourself back up again.

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Hello Friends,

How are you?

How are you really?

I ask because spring has a way of making that question feel loaded. This week, we have been blessed with much spring-like weather. The longer evenings are back, the trees are coming into their own and everywhere, quite insistently, the implication is that you should be busy now. Doing stuff. Living life. With Easter just gone and the bank holidays arriving soon in quick succession, it’s as if the calendar itself is trying to make a point.

Doing anything nice for the long weekend?

And the possibilities are endless: Going on a little trip. Sorting the garden. Visiting friends and family. Enjoying the world – or at least your little corner of it.

But what if the answer was: Nothing…?

There’s a particular exhaustion that comes not from the cold and dark of winter, but from being confronted by spring’s relentless optimism. Nobody thinks twice these days about the suggestion of wintering in December or hibernating in January (even if we rarely manage it). But Spring? Spring comes with different expectations.

And the truth is, despite talk of wintering and hibernation, we don’t really hibernate, and spring arrives before most of us have fully recovered from everything that winter asks of us. The long stretch of dark days. The end of one year and the beginning of the next. The relentless administration of life – that mental load which doesn’t stop just because daylight hours are short. Because instead of slowing down like the rest of nature, in winter we humans often keep going.

So of course by the time spring arrives, we are genuinely depleted.

And yet, somehow in spring, we are simply expected to pick ourselves up again. To match the season. To feel the warmth on our faces and immediately convert it into energy, plans and productivity. As if a little sunshine is all it takes to recover from months of darkness.

I’ve been thinking lately about a word from yoga philosophy: pratyāhāra. It’s one of the limbs of yoga described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, often translated as the withdrawal of the senses. But that sounds more technical than it can feel in practice.

Pratyāhāra is the moment you stop reaching outward. The moment you realise you don’t have to respond to everything that calls for your attention – even when it’s gentle, even when it’s seasonal, even when it seems like something you should want. In a season that keeps insisting on vitality, pratyāhāra offers something quieter: the option to step back from the pull of expectation – and to let that expectation pass without feeling the need to be drawn in.

This is not disengagement. It’s a different kind of attention. The ability to notice what the world is asking of you, and to choose your answer. Daisy, my dog, does not ask my permission to rest when she’s tired. She simply jumps up on the sofa next to me and starts snoozing.

So, along the same lines as “No is a complete sentence,” if someone asks whether you’re doing anything nice for the weekend, “nothing” is also a complete answer. Not a failure of imagination, or enthusiasm, or lack of gratitude for the season.

Nothing is, sometimes, exactly the right thing to be doing.

So what does rest actually look like?

Rest is not optional. It is a biological and psychological need as non-negotiable as food or water – and one we are remarkably good at not prioritising.

Simple pleasures, unhurried. Here are some of my favourite ways to rest: A good book and tea in my favourite cup, outside. A film I’ve been meaning to watch. Baking my favourite childhood cake to my grandmother’s recipe. Time in nature, without an agenda, walking where the destination doesn’t matter, where my eyes settle on whatever they settle on – the light through new leaves, Daisy happily doing something ridiculous, the froth of hawthorn in blossom.

And if you practise yoga: this is a week for a restorative. Long holds, supported shapes, the floor doing most of the work. Legs up the wall. A bolster under the spine. A yoga nidra. Let the practice meet you where you are, rather than asking you to rise to meet it.

None of this requires a plan, or a destination, or a significant rearrangement of your diary. It requires only the decision that rest is not something you have to earn first.

The season will still be here when you’re ready. The garden, the friends, the long evenings. Spring will be here to greet you when you emerge.

Love, Monika x

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It’s home to guided meditations and yoga nidra scripts, mini-courses – including Five Morning Thresholds – and more personal writing that doesn’t quite belong in the open newsletter. I add to it with each season.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about journaling lately — not as a productivity tool, but as a way of processing my thoughts and practising the yogic concept of Svadhyaya. This feels particularly important during these times which feel so uncertain, both in the wider world, but also to me personally, as I face the difficult prospect of surgery.

Svadhyaya — or self-study — is one of the niyamas, the personal observances in Patanjali's eightfold path. It asks us to turn toward ourselves with curiosity rather than judgement. Not to fix or optimise, but to witness. Journaling is one of the most accessible ways we have to do exactly that. And the good news is there’s real science behind why it works.

How journaling calms the nervous system

From a neuroscience point of view, journaling does something surprisingly simple and powerful. When we put our thoughts into words, especially by hand, we shift activity out of the brain’s emotional and threat centres (the ones that keep us reacting and looping) and into areas responsible for language, meaning, and integration. In simple terms, writing calms the nervous system because the brain moves from reliving experience to making sense of it.

This is why journaling can give relief even when it doesn’t solve anything. You’re not fixing the problem, you’re containing it. Naming something gives it shape, form and weight. It becomes something you’re holding, rather than something that’s holding you.

Why writing by hand regulates the body

There’s also something deeply regulating about the rhythm of journaling itself. Slowing down, the physical movement of writing, the pause between thoughts, this all says to the nervous system: you’re safe (enough to reflect).

You don't need the right notebook to start journaling

Some people stress about needing the right book, but that seems like procrastination to me. You don’t need a fancy notebook, the right prompts, or even to create beautifully formed sentences. You might want to light a candle and set up your desk, but it’s not necessary. A few honest lines scribbled in bed are enough.

I've been reminded of this recently, facing surgery on my hip. Journaling hasn't made the prospect easy, but it has given me somewhere to put the fear, the questions, and the strange grief arising from a body that needs help.

My journal has been there for things I’m not ready to say out loud, and that feels like its own kind of home.

🌿 Five Tips for Journaling for Wellbeing

1. Write to regulate, not to resolve
   You don’t need answers or breakthroughs. The aim is to calm the nervous system and make space for honesty. Relief often comes from naming, not solving.

2. Keep it short and consistent
   Five minutes done regularly is far more supportive than long, occasional entries. The brain responds to rhythm and repetition.

3. Lower the bar for “good writing”
   This is not a performance. Messy, repetitive, ungrammatical writing often does the most emotional work.

4. Let the body lead
   Start by noticing how you feel physically before moving into thoughts. Journaling that begins in sensation tends to settle the mind more quickly.

5. End with containment
   If you write about something difficult, close with a grounding line – a reminder of safety, support, or the present moment. This helps the nervous system integrate what’s been written.

   ---

If you'd like explore these ideas further, monthly journaling prompts come as part of my New Moon Newsletter — one of the regular gifts of a paid subscription. Next week’s post deconstructs the concept of manifesting through journaling. Subscribe to receive it directly in your inbox, and if you upgrade to paid you’ll have access to the accompanying (science-backed) visualisation exercise.

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As a yoga teacher, I have spent years teaching people to trust their bodies. To breathe into discomfort. To find ease where there is resistance. To be present with whatever arises.

I did not expect whatever arises to be this.

A couple of weeks ago an x-ray confirmed what my body has been telling me for some time, probably for longer than it should have been (had I really been paying attention): that my hip is worn out. It is old, knackered, not fit for purpose. Then I had a follow up with the doctor’s practice physio. The question he asked, “How do you feel about surgery?” now sits in my mind with a strange weight. I mean honestly? How did he think I would feel? That this hip which has carried me through decades of practice, through sun salutations and warrior poses and quiet early mornings on the mat, not to mention more than five decades of living — including birthing two children — is now ready to be replaced?

To say I don’t feel great about it is an understatement. There’s still so much walking, so much yoga, so much dancing and so much adventuring I want to do. So what now?

I am trying to be yogic about it. Really I am. And mostly I succeed.

Occasionally, usually at night, I don’t.

There is a particular irony in being a yoga teacher with a failing hip (actually it’s both hips, but that’s a discussion to be had with the consultant) that I haven’t quite decided whether to find funny or devastating. Life certainly has a deep sense of irony. That thing about throwing curveballs or serving up lemons? I’m trying my best to hit back with a smile and find that recipe for lemonade. But still.

I’ve taught, and mostly practiced, Gentle Yoga with Monika — specifically supporting people in midlife, for those experiencing the aches and pains associated with ageing in an attempt to help them find some ease in their bodies. It feels like a cruel joke now. To add irony on to irony, just as I feel I’m falling to pieces, the medical establishment is calling me “still young” for all this to be happening. (Nice use of the qualifier, medical establishment).

Everyone’s body is their home. But my body has also been my instrument, my classroom, my most reliable teacher and obedient pupil. And now it is screaming at me, demanding something from me that I don’t yet know how to give — some days it clearly doesn’t even like or respect me.

It feels like all out war.

And its arsenal is pain.

Pretty intense at times, but also relentless in the way that only chronic pain can be. It sabotages everything, turning a simple walk with the dog into a negotiation, and hovering in the background of every decision. Getting up out of a chair can be agony. this year’s holiday plans — the first without school age kids in tow! — in disarray. Pacing myself (literally) during the day if I have plans to go out in the evening. Or not making plans at all. A daily conversation between need, desire and capacity, with pain holding everything — including my mental health — hostage. It is a life lived through this lens of pain.

And above all the pain there is the waiting, and the not knowing. The NHS moves at its own pace and it has been weeks since my x-ray. It feels like the very slow turning of a tiny cog in a massive wheel. I am somewhere in a queue, post x-ray, pre-orthopaedics consult, in that particular waiting room of knowing what is wrong and not yet knowing when anything will be done about it.

The physio, somewhat flippantly I felt, told me to take the prescribed painkillers “as and when” I need them. That’s all the time, mate. (He’s male, in his late-thirties. I don’t know if that’s relevant, but it feels as if it might be.) How do I teach? How do I function? How do I manage on a daily basis? I was only given a 28-day supply.

I keep returning to the same questions I ask my students.

What does your body need right now?

Can you be with this, without needing it to be different?

Where are you holding?

These feel both completely relevant and mildly absurd. I know what my body needs — it needs a new hip. I cannot be with this without needing it to be different, because different means less pain and the ability to teach again without managing around limitation. And where am I holding? Everywhere, if I’m honest. In my hip, obviously, but also in my jaw, my shoulders, in the careful way I move. In the effort it takes to try not to think about it all the fucking time.

I have spent four years building something I’m proud of. A regular timetable of busy classes, a wonderful community of students, a business that finally — finally! — began to feel sustainable in terms of energy, time and income. The timing of this is not ideal. The timing of this is, in fact, terrible.

But I am also aware, with the part of me that has spent a long time paying attention to thresholds and transitions and yoga philosophy, that this is one of those moments. The kind that is asking something of me. The kind I will look back on later and recognise it as one of my life’s lessons.

I don’t quite yet know what it’s asking or what that lesson will be. I’m still in the moment where it mostly just hurts.

What I’m holding on to is something my wonderful yoga teacher, Tara Fraser, said to me nearly thirty years ago. She told me she loved yoga because it could be practised by anyone, anywhere — whatever their physical abilities or limitations, even from a hospital bed.

So, there you go. I guess I’ll be putting that theory to the test. Bear with me. If you’re interested, I expect there will be updates.

In the meantime, my yoga classes and the community within them are a lifeline. And when the pain is too much, there is sunshine and there is spring unfurling outside my window, there is reading and writing in bed and there is Daisy dog snuggling at my side.

There is still much to be grateful for.

If you’ve got this far reading this personal post — thank you. The Yoga Almanac is a free weekly newsletter rooted in seasonal rhythms, yoga philosophy, and the quiet art of paying attention. I write it because this kind of slow, reflective work matters — and because I believe it should be accessible to everyone, whatever their circumstances.

If something I’ve written has landed with you — a phrase that stayed, a practice that helped, a moment of recognition — and you’d like to say thank you, I’d be genuinely grateful. A cup of tea goes a long way toward keeping this work alive and unhurried.

Buy me a cup of tea

With love,

Monika

Earlier this month I wrote about how clearing out my bedside table reading pile got rid of distractions and literally created space for more: more focus on what I actually wanted to read. I gave myself permission to say goodbye to – or at least put to one side for a while – the books that I felt aren’t sustaining me right now. Plus I can now go to bed without feeling guilty that Theroux the Keyhole has been sitting there quietly neglected for, well, quite some time now. Sorry Louis: It’s not you, it’s me.

Anyway, it all felt very liberating. And it occurred to me that the same is true in life. When you become more intentional about not just which books, but which thoughts, activities, and – controversially – which people you spend time with, something quietly shifts. Your days become less crowded and more spacious. Your attention becomes less scattered and more focussed. It becomes a life shaped by choice rather than habit; a case of quality over quantity.

At the same time I wrote a New Moon newsletter all about embracing silence.

And that’s when I realised. Finding quiet and creating space doesn’t mean you’re missing out in any traditional sense.

It means you’re finding the Joy of Missing Out – JOMO!

Of course, JOMO only makes sense in context. Before we can really understand the relief of saying no and choosing less, we have to name the thing that keeps us saying yes in the first place – and that’s FOMO.

We all know about FOMO and how it makes us feel. That anxiety that everyone else is doing something more interesting, more meaningful, more fun with their lives than we are. The Fear of Missing Out. We’ve all tormented ourselves with this as we scroll through social media on an evening. I know I have. Everyone’s so busy! Doing such fun things! That creep of dissatisfaction (felt in every cell of our being) with our lives or disappointment with our selves, even when cognitively we know that nothing posted on Instagram is real, not even those “Instagram vs Real Life” stories. Especially not those “Instagram vs Real Life” stories.

FOMO plays on our deepest insecurities. It convinces us that more is better: more plans and more invitations mean we are a more fun, more interesting, more popular person. But in being that busy person, before we know it we’re simply too busy, our attention is scattered and we feel totally overwhelmed.

Here’s the thing I’ve learned in my midlife: saying yes to everything and cramming it all in doesn’t necessarily enrich your life. It depletes it.

FOMO keeps us chasing the next thing, never quite remaining anywhere long enough to feel rooted or satisfied. In staying busy, we not only feel exhausted in running after the bright shiny things that look fun, but we leave less time for the activities and people that might actually sustain us.

The irony? When you start saying no – kindly, unapologetically, without over-explaining – something amazing happens. Space appears. There’s space in the diary, space in the nervous system and you have space to notice what you actually enjoy rather than what you think – or perhaps more importantly what others think – you should enjoy.

And into that space, you can welcome more of the right things. You can cultivate and tend to yourself and your interests without the distractions of external noise and social obligations. It brings more depth, more ease – and more time for the people and practices that genuinely sustain you.

Overcoming FOMO isn’t about withdrawing from the world or closing yourself off to new adventures. It’s about becoming intentional. It’s about placing your trust in those activities and people that feel sustaining and nourishing rather than exhausting and depleting. Perhaps in the quiet spaces you can discover who your people really are, and where your new adventures will take you, rather than being “inspired” by someone else’s social media feed. I pulled away from social media when inspiration tipped over into persecution and made me feel a lesser being for not living the shiny, fun life everyone else seemed to be.

These days, I’m much more interested in JOMO – the joy of missing out. The quiet pleasure of a familiar walk, a good book, an early night, a weekend with no plans.

The relief of not needing to be everywhere or do everything.

The pleasure of simply being with myself – or a friend with whom I can simply be myself.

Of pleasing no-one but myself.

It turns out that when you stop chasing what you think you’ll miss, you make room for what you actually value.

And honestly? At this point in my life that feels exactly how I want to spend my time.

I wonder: What would “missing out” give you more of right now? Time for you, time for friends? Time for planning and putting in place a better life?!

Buy me a decaf flat white

Now we have crossed the threshold of Imbolc, we are officially in spring. Which, if you’re in the UK at least, feels hard to believe. Outside it’s grey, it’s cold, it’s miserable. Which is perhaps why its best to linger indoors a little longer.

So for me, that means clearing. Clearing cupboards. Clearing wardrobes. Clearing my bedside table. And yet, also clearing for something more. Because by saying no to one thing you open up space for something else. So I’m clearing for what I want my life to look like as the year slowly unfolds.

I’ve already written about how I’ve curated my bedside pile of books to become more intentional about my reading. Goodbye Erotic Vagrancy: Everything About Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor and farewell Abroad in Japan: Ten Years in the Land of the Rising Sun, not this year, thank you. Making the decision to focus my reading to support my seasonal work has felt liberating. I’ll say it again: saying no to one thing frees you up to say yes to something else. Something more. My reading isn’t simply a pleasant distraction from my life right now, instead it is making me feel more deeply connected to the land and the seasons and more deeply connected to my own internal landscape and season – and that is exactly what I want right now.

And I took that curated reading list and cleared away all the other books away from my bedside table. I’m sure I heard my bedside table breathe a sigh of relief. See how tidy it looks! And guess what – with more space there, I feel lighter, too.

If you would like to read about my curated booklist you can do so in my post here.

Imbolc doesn’t ask us to begin. It asks us to prepare. To clear the space. This is a season of subtle readiness rather than visible change – the quiet work that happens before anything is ready to show itself. The days are lengthening, even if the weather hasn’t caught up yet, and that small shift is enough. Spring is not here in full bloom, but it has been set in motion. For now, clearing is its own kind of devotion – a way of trusting that what comes next will need the space we are making.

And as I’ve been gently streamlining, something has emerged.

There is a common thread woven through everything I do. This writing, teaching yoga and creating a community all exist to offer support for living with more ease and grace. Mostly for people like me: women in midlife who have reached a point where they have decided to prioritise themselves once more after perhaps decades of not doing so.

I hope I provide support for the seasons when life feels clear and in flow and there’s hope and optimism, but also for the seasons when things feel messy and uncertain and there’s rage and despair – because I’ve been there, too, and the reading and the writing and the yoga have all helped.

So, instead of asking, “Do I need to do all of this?” I’ve been asking, “Does this still serve a purpose?”

If it does, it stays. If it doesn’t, it can be released without guilt.

In the case of the books, there were simply too many for me to read them all, I knew that. I chose where to focus my attention.

And in a similar vein, I’ve also been quietly refining my yoga offerings. I’ve been letting go of some online noise (yes, the retreat from Instagram is still ongoing), and allowing my work to feel more focused, less scattered.

At 55, life feels precious – and far too short to not focus on what matters. I want to give my time and energy to the work and a life that feels true, nourishing, and alive – work that lights me up. My hope is that in doing so, this offers something supportive to others too.

So if any of this resonates, you might like to sit with a few gentle questions I have been asking myself – without pressure to answer them all at once, or even completely.

What am I holding onto out of habit rather than need: old commitments, roles that expired years ago, ways of showing up that don’t quite fit who I am now?

What could I let go of that might actually feel a relief, even a little liberating?

If I’m really honest with myself, what matters most to me?

And what will quietly support that – the practices, people, rhythms, or small structures that help life feel steadier underneath it all?

This isn’t a plan, or at least it doesn’t need to be. Let the questions keep you company for a while. Often, simply asking them is enough to start things shifting, gently and in the right direction. If you want to set something in motion, you could start with rationalising your reading list and creating focus there. I can highly recommend that as a practice!

Monikax

Buy me a cup of tea

How are you? How has your first month of 2026 been so far? By this point in January the plans, the resolutions and the promise of a “fresh start” can feel a bit thin – because of course starting new projects that need energy and enthusiasm in mid-winter is a crazy thing to do, right? By the time we get to the end of January, apparently 80% of New Year’s resolutions have fallen by the wayside.

Is anyone ever surprised by this statistic? Especially if you’re a woman in midlife, you’re probably tired. I mean, we’re tired anyway, but the exhausting festive season is not long behind us. In the UK many of us also struggle with end of year tax returns in January. On top of that, for me this is a month in which I also have car insurance to renew (a job I loathe) and a family birthday to celebrate (this year an 18th!). I didn’t exactly choose to give birth in January, but I didn’t think through the implications either.

So can we please stop giving ourselves such a hard time? January is not the time to overhaul our lives, it’s a time to give ourselves a break, to meet ourselves with gentle kindness and to stop putting pressure on ourselves to meet unrealistic demands.

In yoga, there’s a word for meeting yourself here with care: ahimsa. It’s often translated as non-violence, but in everyday life it’s really about not being harsh with ourselves and meeting ourselves with kindness rather than criticism. It asks us to notice where we push, judge, or override our own limits, and to choose a kinder response instead. Practised this way, ahimsa isn’t passive or indulgent – it’s deeply intelligent. It recognises that forcing change rarely creates lasting wellbeing, and that listening with care is often the most effective place to begin.

If you haven’t made it to the gym three times this week (or perhaps even at all) when you promised yourself you would, please let that go. There’s a reason we have seasons and winter is scheduled into the calendar. The dark and the quiet have to happen because nothing grows without first lying fallow. We’ve internalised rest as the opposite of progress, but progress isn’t linear and rest is not its enemy.

Ahimsa reminds us that rest isn’t laziness, and fatigue isn’t failure. It’s information. It’s the body and nervous system asking for a different pace, a gentler conversation. Late January is a good time to practise this kindness – to stop treating tiredness as a problem to solve, and start treating it as something to listen to.

So if you’re still moving slowly, still needing quiet, still not bursting with enthusiasm – that’s allowed. Listening and being kind to yourself is an elevated form of practice, and one of the purest forms of self-care – and yoga – there is.

Love, Monikax

🌿 A Short Practice of Ahimsa

(Kindness toward yourself)

Pause for a moment and notice how you’re speaking to yourself today.

If there’s pressure, criticism, or impatience in the background, don’t try to get rid of it. Simply notice it. Then, quietly ask:

What would kindness look like right now?

It might be doing a little less.
It might be resting without explaining yourself.
It might be choosing one small thing that makes the day easier.

Before you move on, offer yourself one simple phrase – silently or out loud:
I am exactly where I need to be.

Let that be enough.

🌙 A Short Śavāsana Practice

(Rest and integration)

Lie down if you can, or sit comfortably with your feet on the floor.

Allow the body to settle – no need to adjust or perfect anything. Let the weight settle. Bring your awareness to all the points of contact your body makes with the earth below or the support beneath you.

Let the breath come and go on its own. Allow it to find its own cadence.

With every exhale imagine the day gently setting itself down around you, like a coat being taken off. Nothing more needs to be done right now.

Stay here for a minute or two.
When you’re ready, return slowly – without rushing.

Śavāsana reminds us that rest is not the absence of practice, but its completion.

Like many of us, I’ve been thinking about how I move into this new calender year. And it seems to me that whether we’re subscribed to the Near Year, New You philosophy or not (and I’m definitely not), it’s hard to completely opt out of the whole reset thing.

Because the truth is that most of us have some kind of seasonal break or celebration over the Christmas and New Year period, and then the cycle, as it always does, begins again. A new calender year means back to work, school or studies, and routine.

Given all that, it’s hard not to wonder how you’d like the year ahead to take shape, how you imagine yourself travelling through it. And while reflection is good – necessary, even – it seems madness to rush straight back onto a treadmill of any kind, whether literal or metaphorical: back to the gym, back to striving, back to what can start to feel like the tyranny of self-improvement, perpetual growth, and progress.

As I travel through this month, I’m reminded again of the vital importance of real rest and of connection with both myself and others. After all, winter, the season for slowing down, only began at the moment of solstice, December 21st. The Spring Equinox, when the world tips towards the light once more, isn’t until the next equinox on March 21st.

Which means that much of the period for true rest is still ahead of us. And it’s in the resting period, this liminal, quiet in-between space after the busyness of what has been before the rush into the next thing ahead, that the best dreaming and planning occurs. Now is the time to reflect on how we would like to move through the coming year, what our dreams might be and how we set about them with intention.

One of the truly beautiful things I have witnessed over the course of building up my yoga “business” is seeing a community emerge from what I felt initially were quite modest offerings. I mean, they still are, really. I don’t have a busy timetable, just a handful of classes each week and a smattering of longer sessions. I don’t offer much, but I offer it to the best of my ability, and I offer it with heart.

And the thing is, coming together on a weekly, or even monthly, basis has woven a thread of connection that has taken me by surprise. Laughter and confidences have been shared. Genuine affections – even friendships – have been forged.

I honestly don’t feel I can take responsibility for this lovely phenomenon, as community is created by those within it, and can’t be forced. I may have curated an environment for it to be possible, but it is the beautiful souls who show up every week with their hearts open to yoga and also to each other who have forged this alchemy together. It has shown me that women (because it’s mostly women) have an immense capacity for connection – we just need the right conditions.

And it’s exactly this quiet kind of connection, sometimes called the tend and befriend response, of nervous-system wisdom that has emerged in my community which feels especially alive to me right now.

The tend and befriend response describes a quieter, deeply human way we regulate stress: by caring, by turning toward one another, by seeking safety through connection rather than effort or escape. It reminds us that rest isn’t only something we do alone, curled up with a book or in Savasana on a mat, it is something that happens between us – in shared laughter, in being seen, in gathering without agenda. Especially in winter, when our systems seem to ask less for optimisation and more for warmth, familiarity, and belonging. Not fixing, not pushing, but tending what is already here, and befriending ourselves and each other – just as we are. It’s exactly this response that speaks to something many of us know instinctively: that we don’t always settle by pushing harder or retreating inward, but by turning towards one another.

By tending what needs care, and allowing ourselves to be held in connection.

In yoga, this is the living heart of sangha – the steady presence of a wider community that holds you – and kula, the sense of belonging that grows when we return again and again to practise together in a shared space.

Regulation happens here not through effort, but through familiarity: faces we recognise, voices we trust, bodies moving and resting side by side. Especially at this time of year, our systems seem to soften when we remember we don’t have to do the work alone. We begin to understand that rest can be relational. That restoration, repair – and healing – can unfold quietly, between us.

For women, tend and befriend mirrors what yoga has always known: that healing often happens in sangha, through shared rhythm, care, and belonging. It validates connection not as a weakness, but as a powerful form of nervous-system strength.

So as I move on through this year, my intention is to nurture this emerging community. To hold a space where I’ll help women find a calm, centred connection to themselves and hopefully to the others in the room – whether that’s in person (if you could join me I’d love that!) or virtually, here on Substack (I’d love that, too). To offer seasonal opportunities for you to rest, re-set, and create meaningful connections within this small heart of a kula. My hope is that this way of regulating feels natural and sustaining – because it needs to be, for me at least, if I’m showing up here every week. And if I hope that for myself, I hope that for you, too.

Tend and befriend honours the wisdom of gathering, rather than asking us to self-regulate in isolation our nervous systems often settle most deeply through connection, shared presence, and mutual care.

I’m still figuring out this Substack thing, but I know it can offer more than just musings. A shared space for tenderness and self-care. Is that too ambitious an ask?

This year I’m hoping for real connection. I wonder if you are, too?

Blessings,

Monikax

P.S. If it feels right, I’d love to invite you to choose one word or phrase that captures what you hope to carry through this January – not a goal or intention, but a quality, feeling, or hope you wish to nurture in this quiet time and carry through.

You might like to share your word with the community in the comments below, as a way of marking this new year together. It doesn’t have to be grand or ambitious. Sometimes, seeing our quiet words gathered side by side can generate their own form of energy.

I’ll go first.

My word is “community.”

Buy me a coffee!