Weekly Yoga Classes in Reading, Berkshire

Both Foundation and Continuers at All Saints Junior School Brownlow Rd Reading RG1 6NP Foundation classes are ideal for complete beginners and those establishing a practice, while continuers offers depth and challenge.  Both are grounded in the viniyoga tradition and taught with respect to your individual  needs.

New Term Registrations. This terms theme…..

Extraordinarily Ordinary

Bringing ritual and heart into our practice.

Thursdays 6.30 p.m. Foundation

and 8 p.m. Continuers

All Saints Junior School Brownlow Rd RG1 6NP

Thursday April 16th -May 21st  (6 weeks £66)

This term in our Yoga Practice we will be exploring how rituals can support our practice on the mat, how they can bring a layer of connection and heart felt experience, taking our practice to a deeper sustainable level.

These ritual could be placing a found object before us a we practice and welcoming the bhavana or feeling associated with that object into our practice.  It could be offering an intention through words or mantra to focus our thoughts and feelings.   How we ignite candles or diffuse smells to connect us.  How we can explore signifying a moment before and after the time we carve out, however small, to practice. Using touch and abhyanga (placing hands on our bodies) somewhere significant on our bodies as a reminder of what we are trying to support with our practice.  Writing thoughts that come to our practice with curiosity.  Connecting to dawn and dusk as well as moon cycles. Rituals around nature and seasons but also lifecycles, relationship and community…..finding a little magic beyond our individual selves…….

We will use movement and stay in postures, breathwork and meditation to find ease and strength in our bodies, breath and mind. Foundations class welcomes beginners with plenty of demonstration and teaching to suit all, in turn continuers builds upon this  allowing us to extend our knowledge and practice.

Recent themes

Moving towards

Where your attention goes, so does your energy

Making space for Joy

Wintering through the chakras

Enhancing our energy part two the Sun

Enhancing our energy part one, the moon

Good Space

Spring

Wintering

Touchstones

putting together the jigsaw of good posture.

Pelvis

Heads Shoulders Knees and Toes

1-1 tuition now available both face to face at my home studio in Reading, Berkshire and on line, email for details.

Group classes are a great way of being introduced to yoga. However, they are limited in their ability to ensure yoga suits your particular health needs and interests. Traditionally yoga is taught on a one-to-one basis. Learning yoga on an individual basis can allow you to practice yoga tailored to your health, interests, individual needs and aspirations. Your age, health, lifestyle, occupation and culture will be reflected in a practice given.

People come for many reasons including physical rehabilitation, support for depression and anxiety, support for living with chronic illness such as M.S., pregnancy and in preparation for childbirth, stress related health problems or for a more in-depth study of Yoga to support teacher training or personal interest.

First consultation

In the first consultation, you will learn more about the process and we can discuss your reasons for coming. During this session, a health questionnaire will be completed and some simple movement to assess how your body moves. These meetings are confidential.

In addition, during this session, a personal practice will be designed and tried. The approach is client-centred and will be guided by you. An achievable practice will be given which you will need to aim to practice 3-4 times a week to experience benefit.

Through on-going meetings, your practice will be developed and refined through feedback, discussion and observation of your experience. It is usual to aim to meet for at least six sessions. After this, you can review your progress. Some students feel that this is enough for their particular needs whilst others continue to come to individual sessions for years.

The cost of the initial meeting is £85

On-going consultation rates are £65for up to an hour and £85 for up to an hour and a half. 

If you wish to rearrange or cancel a session, 48 hours' notice should be given or normal charges apply.

Home Studio address is 142 Castle Hill Reading RG1 7RW

Creating inside: Creating outside.

Pregnancy Yoga Day retreat.

Next Date TBA

A day to retreat into your Yoga Practice, Meditation, Deep Relaxation and Making Meditations to empower you in this time of change and waiting.

Escape with me for the day to immerse yourself in yoga, meditation, deep relaxation and creativity.  Birth itself is a powerful meditation where you loose sense of time and become consumed with the energy of birthing your baby.  It is the ultimate climax to a period of creativity in your body.  Pregnancy shifts things emotionally as well as physically and we call for courage as we approach birth and mothering.  On this retreat we will deepen our self awareness through yoga, ayurveda, and through creative experiences inspired by our practice. Pieces of creativity that can become art for your birth.  Working together, playing together; finding support as a group of women  as you move into motherhood.

No artistic skills are needed, very simple creative exercises to create stillness, opening, play and connection.

Cost £75 Including all materials and delicious Ayurvedic drinks, snacks, lunch and afternoon tea.

Limited to 5 people. Email to book your space!

Day Retreat Summer 2018

'Conversations in Self Care'

9th June 2018 11.30-4.30 p.m.

All Saints Junior School Hall, August House, Brownlow Road, Reading RG1 6NP. 

£60 including tea snacks, lunch and afternoon tea and cake.

Join me and our yoga community for a day exploring a beautiful and supported journey into self care.   The day itself will be a mixture of practical action and exploration through yoga, meditation, creative exercise, Ayurvedic practices and writing.   In community; making an individual manifesto and map for your self care Journey.  My aim is to create a starting point of relationship that becomes mandatory in your life. 

Yoga philosophy and Ayurveda explore in texts and practices, self care.  They hold great respect for rhythm and rituals; normalising practices that care for body and mind.  In the same way we brush our teeth, practices are embodied as essential and valuable.  There is an increasing realisation that our experience of health and disturbed health can not sustain the call for increased efficiency, productivity and even the expectation of living a 'full and meaningful life'.   We will look away from thoughts of time management and the expectation that if we could just find the right rountine or job/relationship we will feel better.  We will look at how to care for ourselves despite the challenge of modern life.  Heralding a call to do less, achieve less, and be bored more! Culturally we resist boredom to our downfall.  Stillness is an essential part of our biology.   We will look at nudges and interventions to begin a change in conversation to normalising a revolution of relationship to self care or Dinacharya.  Dinacharya practices should be held within solid yoga philosophy, which we will explore, otherwise they become vulnerable to becoming another area of our lives we feel we are failing at.  Let self care be a wobbly, heart felt but a continuing Journey together. 

I'd love you to walk this path with me.

Women's Day Retreat

                                                                                    Seasons in our Practice
Saturday January 27th 2018 11.30-4.30 p.m.

All Saints Junior School Hall, August House, Brownlow Road, Reading RG1 6NP

Escape for a day with other women who share your love of yoga and are looking for support to balance their well-being.  Through asana, pranayama and meditation practice we will look at how we can theme our practice to meet our changing needs; physically, energetically and emotionally.   In between practices I will share some principles of Yoga and Ayurveda.  Through discussion, eating, drinking and self-massage we will explore and deepen our knowledge of yoga and our relationship of self-care as women.
I will be using the model of our menstrual cycle and the changing rhythms of a lunar month to explore this theme, but it can be applied to any rhythm of your life for example the energy rise and fall within the working week or the fluctuations of the climate and weather and how it affects us seasonally.   We will look at Ayurveda and how diet and lifestyle practices in line with our dosha type can promote well-being and help to balance out fluctuating energy levels and moods.

 £55 including ayurvedic themed lunch and refreshments in breaks.

Courage and Creativity In Yoga
Embodying Yoga on and off the mat.

Saturday 8th July 2017 11.30 a.m.-4.30 p.m.

All Saints Junior School Hall, August House, Brownlow Road, Reading RG1 6NP

£55 including all materials and Ayurvedic Vegetarian/Vegan lunch and Afternoon Tea.

There are many ways to reach a state of yoga, connection and stillness.  A feeling of authenticity and being whole.  In this summer retreat we will be using asana practice to connect us to the five elements.  Using our relationship with the 5 Bhutas or elements; space, air, fire, water and earth,  we will explore asana practices that respond to these qualities in all of us and in turn connect us to nature.  We will form and breath the elements exploring a knowledge of ayurveda and how this can help us to balance our dosha type.  Perhaps you need grounding to develop your earthed relationship?  Or to cultivate a liberating sense of space in the body and mind.  Are you stuck and need to fire into transformation?  Are you rigid and would like to feel more creative and fluid?  Would you like to move through the air to find stillness at the deepest level?

From each practice we will in turn use this energy; translating it and inspiring creative exercises off the mat, helping us to distil and our love of being on the Mat and Yoga off the mat and into our lives. Through creative exercises, we will evolve mediations of making,  finding pathways to courage and a movement to living a life that feels true.

What is instinct as children; exploration, creativity, courage and a self knowing  sureness can become lost and distorted with how our experiences shapes us.  This workshop will be for ALL irrespective of perceived ability.  Take support from this yoga community, coming together, stepping for some of us, outside our comfort zone to explore mark making, clay and colour we will deepen a relationship of playfulness, creativity and courage to ourselves and nature and create a meditation to manifest off the mat.   No artist skills needed!! 

Around our work and play during the retreat we will be nourished by food that restores us through balancing our dosha and feeding our senses. Feasting body and mind and Soul!

Spaces are limited and fill quickly. To book on please email me and secure you place with £20 deposit.  Balance due (£35) beginning of June.

Space to Celebrate and Support your Pregnancy.

Pregnancy Yoga and Birth Preparation Classes

Tuesdays 7 p.m Home Studio on Castle Hill, Central Reading. RG1 7RW

(Zoom option available)

£16 per class.

An opportunity to come together, in a beautiful home studio, to practice yoga to support your pregnancy and prepare for empowered birthing, however you birth.

This is  a unique class and experience, something special, that the women I have worked with in the last twenty years have felt fortunate to find.  I made a conscious choice ten years ago to move away from large classes to small classes that enable each individual in the class to be supported and heard. To find a home from home where they could find their village as they mother.   I teach from a place of extensive knowledge, experience, evidence and compassion. It is a class for all, those that have an established practice and those that are drawn to its support for the first time.  Those that are finding ease in their pregnancy and those that are struggling with mobility or any health issues. A space to ease your body and grow accustom to the transformation. A personal class and space that will celebrate the wonder and joy and yet at the same time remain grounded in nurture, care and laughter to support the challenges. Having supported over a hundred births as a doula  I have experienced every sort of birth and choice and have developed a trusted relationship with maternity services.  Part of my role in supporting you in class is to help you navigate the best and safest care. This experience is weaved through with lots of love and humour.

The class uses the tools of yoga; asana, breath awareness and influence, meditation, sound and relaxation to support your body and mind to be strong and healthy whilst also allowing you the heart space to relax and explore your journey, connecting with your growing baby. 

Slowly through the weeks the skills to birth your baby will be explored so that the work of birth feels familiar.  That as I bit by bit drip feed you the body and breath knowledge to birth your baby, it becomes emobodied and instinctual as well as known. This practical knowledge will be shown to your birthing partner so that they can continue this support and advocacy through your birth.   Women often tell me they take such support from remembering my voice telling them to……during birth!  I don’t often blow my own trumpet but in the mass of classes out there I would like you to find your way to me❤️

Why practice yoga during pregnancy?

Birth Preparation Night with your Partner

£60-£90 (depending upon numbers) per couple

Friday 7-9 p.m. 17th April 2026

Private birth preparation and doula support sessions in your own home from £150

Partners night is a practical workshop to help your partners understand and practice supporting you in labour.  We will look at skills such as breathing techniques, movement, positioning, sound, language and massage.  We will look at how we can create an optimum birth space, managing transferring from home to hospital, what labouring women look and act like and how to support them but also common things that partners sometimes do that aren't helpful!!  How to advocate for the labouring woman and the sort of decisions that might need to be made.  How to look after themselves and an opportunity to ask questions they might have too.  It creates a useful space to look at thoughts and practicalities, to build a great partnership to take you into parenthood.    For those who are looking forward to a second or more birth, it can be valuable for looking at what worked and any challenges from last time and how to look to this birth in the most empowering way.

There is opportunity to make what I teach very specific to those in the group, so come with questions and your own particular needs!

This class is here to support you and your baby in your post-natal period. After much expectation your baby is finally here!

11:15 am -1:15 pm mother and baby yoga with lunch £20

2:15 -4 pm with afternoon tea £16

Lunch/Afternoon tea.  Home Studio Castle Hill, Central Reading

Maximum 6 mummies and babies, followed by chat and home made morning tea.

A weekly retreat!
£20/£16

From six weeks post-natal.

This class is a time to turn off the phone and avoid the never ending list of jobs and increasing demands on you as a woman and mother. It is a space for you and your baby to recover, restore, relax and discover each other.

Babies do not run to a time table or a class plan, so please feel free to stop and feed, change, be with your baby, when they need you. The class will focus on your needs but also your babies. Yoga together rather than trying to do yoga with your baby tagging along! The class will provide a mutually supportive environment. The most important thing to learn is to go with the flow, by not having too many expectations. Participate as much as you can during the class and take away with you the philosophy to cherish and nurture yourself within each day that presents-sometimes magical, sometimes frustrating, tiring, and boring!

Why do yoga together?

I have worked in partnership with Reading Borough Council's Healthy Workplace Initiative offering early morning classes at Reading Museum.

Colleagues are brought together through yoga. Each individual will learn to use yoga to increase their flexibility and strength whilst learning to engage with their breath to focus their minds. This helps reduce stress and aids clarity of thought. Practicing together brings cohesion to a team.

Courses for staff can be general or designed to meet a specific need such as stress reduction, motivation or supporting the effects of desk based working. Please contact me for more details.

Yoga for People Living with and Recovering from Cancer

on hold please request
Home Studio Castle Hill Reading RG1

Suggested donation

Please register by emailing before attending to receive further information and a health questionnaire. Accompanying friend/family member welcome, space permitting.

A restorative and gently strengthening class creating a space to use simple movements, breathing and mindfulness to increase your well-being.

In the class we will work to

reduce muscular tension
improve and maintain your range of movement
help maintain physical and emotional stability
lessen anxiety
improve sleep quality
restore and reduce fatigue
aid lymphatic flow
aid digestion and appetite
help manage pain

Your experience and the effect of cancer is individual to you and I will endeavour to work with practices suitable for you, however if this is not feasible in a group setting individual tuition is available outside of the class.

Yoga with the elderly uses yoga asana, breathing practices and led meditation to help maintain physical and emotional well-being, to maintain quality of life and independence for its participants.

Classes can be taught entirely based in a chair if necessary.

Many community groups can benefit from yoga. In partnership with organisations I can offer physically, mentally and culturally appropriate yoga classes.  This can be a tailor-made yoga class for community groups such as yoga for the elderly, for people with learning difficulties and for adults with mental health issues.