It’s 10am on a Friday morning and yoga teacher Jo Steele makes one last check of her lesson plan.
In front of her are five blue mats with a classmate on each. Sweeping her gaze across the room, Jo can see her 80-year-old mum, Jean, at one end and her 16-year-old daughter, Sophie, at the other.
The other three mats are occupied by Steve (55), a drum teacher, mum and café owner Lucy (44) and me (a yoga newbie, 52).
Jo then switches her eyes up to a wall-mounted TV screen where six other yogis have tuned in via Zoom. They include Val, who recently had a hip replacement.
Today’s one-hour class, Jo tells us, is about ‘testing our balance to create stability and strength’. I take it all in, already pleasantly surprised – and I’ll be honest, a tad relieved - by the range of ages and body shapes.
I’ve thought for a while that yoga might be a good thing to try. But then I’ve seen the images of perfect people on golden beaches being backlit by sun and felt this was an exclusive club that I didn’t really belong in.
My fear was that I’d turn up to a yoga class and be the only one who hadn’t been on a retreat to India. The only one who hadn’t found their true selves during a two-week break in Goa.
But any feeling of 'imposter syndrome' evaporates immediately.
The relaxing music quickly gives way to Elvis Presley’s A Little Less Conversation and we’re all shaking it loose (wrists, hands, elbows, shoulders and feet) and just smiling. Wow, I didn’t quite expect this.
As the class progresses, the 60 minutes are punctuated by chuckles and the odd ‘oops’ as we follow Jo’s lead.
I’m taken aback by the honesty. There are no egos, no feel of failure. Sometimes, with a little extra focus, we can do the moves. Or, if not, we’ll do one of the modified versions that Jo demonstrates.
Before I know it, the hour is up and we bring our palms to the heart centre (I’ve always thought that’s a lovely thing to do and relish the bow from staff when entering a Thai restaurant). Jo reads us a quote, its impact heightened by the stillness and quiet, and a thoroughly good time has been had by all.
This has been a physical workout but also a time to feel serenity and zone out of the real world. That’s a pretty impressive two-for-one. Well played yoga. I like you already!
That’s my take but the expert, of course, is Jo. After the mats were rolled up and the chairs (yes, you can use chairs to aid balance!) folded away, she told me about her journey so far, how she created her own business and why yoga could be a “life-changer” for so many people if they decided to give it a go.
When did you first get interested in yoga and was it instantly a part of your life?
I’ve done yoga since I was a teenager. One of my mum’s friends was training to be a yoga teacher and she used to practise with me and my mum. I always felt it was a nice stretch to do after I’d been running.
It was like that probably until I was in my 30s. So maybe 10 years ago I suddenly started to see it as more than that. Sometimes I was choosing yoga instead of some high-intensity cardio. For a while, it was a little bit of an internal battle and I kept thinking ‘but I’m not doing my exercise’, I should be doing that and yoga’s more the add-on. But actually I found yoga was giving me more benefits.
Running used to be how I calmed down when too busy at work or generally stressed. But that stopped working and that’s when yoga took over and I thought there’s more to this than just stretching your muscles; it’s a whole body experience. It can change my emotions and make me feel better.
How did you make the jump from just doing yoga to wanting to teach it?
Well, I didn’t realise at first that I did want to teach it. I work in a school for children with complex medical and physical needs – Penny Field school, big shout out! – which is a brilliant school and I work with the most vulnerable children in Leeds.
I started reading a book about yoga therapy which explained how yoga could be used for people with disabilities and special educational needs. It explains how yoga is not about creating a perfect shape but rather it can be used as a method to relieve pain and allow somebody to feel more comfortable in their own body.
For some children in my class, just moving their arms slightly might suddenly bring a wave of comfort that they couldn’t achieve themselves. So it’s often a passive experience. If a child cannot raise their arm independently, we can support them to achieve the movement and you see the relief on their face.
I remember lifting a girl’s arm up: she has a severe scoliosis (curvature of the spine). We did a gentle stretch with her arm and once we got it to a certain point – and it can take time just to do that – she took the deepest breath that I’ve ever seen her take and this little smile came on her face. I thought ‘this is actual magic’. If you can bring that relief into somebody’s life, that’s awesome.
I had a friend training to be a yoga teacher. I told her about my school and the yoga therapy book and she looked at me, and my husband looked at me, and they both said: “Why aren’t YOU training to be a yoga teacher?!” It had never crossed my mind so this was a real lightbulb moment. I went from having no thoughts about it to suddenly thinking ‘oh my god, I really want to be a yoga teacher’.
It’s one thing wanting to become a yoga teacher but what do you have to do in terms of exams and qualifications?
There are lots of different schools. You can go to some places for only a week to learn to be a yoga teacher but mine was 200 hours. I was looking for a course that focused on anatomy and physiology and how yoga can be adapted to suit everyone’s individual needs.
I enrolled on a Dru Yoga teacher training course. Dru Yoga is different to any yoga I’d done before. It’s based on Hatha so it’s a slower form of yoga, lots of flowing movement, breathwork and it’s really safe.
In terms of my training, I also did a post-grad course, through Dru Yoga, of Yoga for Back Care and Wellbeing, hence the back class I run on a Thursday.
What advice would you give to someone who was thinking of becoming a yoga teacher? What qualities do you think they might need?
To be a good yoga teacher I personally think you need to have that drive within you to want to explore it, to want to understand your own body and help other people understand theirs. It’s not just about exercise. To really feel what yoga brings, you’ve got to delve into more than just the physical. It can take a lifetime to fully appreciate what yoga can offer.
You’ve now got your own yoga business. Tell us a bit about how that started up and what advice would you give to someone thinking of doing the same?
People seem to do it very differently. For me, COVID completely changed anything that I ever thought would happen. There’s no way I thought I’d have a yoga room in my garden because previously you needed to hire a hall.
I had a small room at Baildon Golf Club that was only big enough for six people. Then COVID happened and I switched to Zoom. There were loads of teething problems but I actually loved it: the students can just do it from home. I really enjoyed the freedom of Zoom but I was thinking when we came out of lockdown, is that going to be the end of Zoom now? Do I need to go and find a room again?
But I did a questionnaire for my students and, although some wanted to do it live, the majority wanted to stay on Zoom because it fitted in with their life; they got used to it, there was no rushing around. They felt safer at home and didn’t necessarily want to be in a room with others.
That’s when the idea of hybrid teaching came along. I wanted to have a small group in with me, like I had at the golf club, but I could also Zoom the class to others at the same time. So I tried it in the house. It worked but it was a lot of faff moving furniture around every night so we came up with the idea of building a yoga room in the garden that could house around five people.
My advice for those starting up? I think you’ve just got to give it a go and see. You’ve got more options now with Zoom. I know teachers who tried to start on Zoom but it just wasn’t for them and they didn’t carry on with it.
But I love it, I think it’s great and really like the fact you can record it and send it out later for those who were too busy to do it live. You’re basically offering far more to your students than you could before.
Is yoga good for your mental health?
Yes! I’ve been reading another book and it talks about how humans were meant to move and in our lifestyle these days people are becoming more and more static. Think about teenagers compared to what they used to be like say 30 years ago. There’s a lot of sitting, a lot of rounded spines.
You can do a little test yourself to see how you feel emotionally. If you’re sat in a hunched position with a rounded spine all the time you start to feel a bit down and enclosed. Whereas if you stand up tall and lift the chest and head, you feel joyous!
It’s scientific: when you are stressed, you release stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. This causes an increase in your heart rate and blood pressure. So yoga encourages you to slow down and that enables you to reduce the impact of stress by decreasing those stress hormones and stimulating the release of feelgood hormones such as endorphins. It also eases anxiety by teaching breathing techniques and improving sleep patterns.
As you’ve mentioned teenagers, do you think yoga should be practised in schools?
Yes! I know a lot of schools who do it now. Many primary schools timetable yoga throughout the week. But, yes, teenagers should be doing it. My daughter (16) has just started after I’d been trying to get her involved for ages.
She came to one of the classes in the yoga room, being a bit nosey, and said afterwards, “I can’t believe how different I feel. I feel amazing.” She wouldn’t just say that, because I’ve tried to get her to do things before and she’s said “it’s not for me” or “it’s boring”.
Do you need to be spiritual to enjoy yoga?
No. I wasn’t spiritual at all, probably until quite recently. Even when I started on my course, I wasn’t. I felt I was open-minded but I didn’t really know much about chakras (energy points in the body). I was more interested in how the body works in a scientific way.
But over time, I think the more you do yoga you might start to feel certain things or opinions shift and that’s what happened to me. I have experienced changes physically, emotionally and spiritually. This has happened over time as I have deepened my yoga practice.
Are there any books you’d recommend for particularly keen yogis?
This is the one that started making me want to do yoga therapy at school.
Chakras – Seven keys to Awakening and Healing the Energy Body by Anodea Judith: That’s the one I read for my chakra assignment when I knew little about chakras. I want to re-read it now that I feel very different to how I did before.
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: This book will give you all the background and basis for all we do in yoga and why. But also ways to live your best life and find true inner happiness! It’s very much yoga philosophy which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and not essential to enjoy the practice of yoga but I do think if you love yoga you start to want to know about this stuff.
Yoga For Everyone by Dianne Bondy: This is more of a practical guide and emphasises that the shape of your posture is of far less importance than modifying to make it right for your body. We are all different and our bodies hold tension and tightness in different places.
What would you say to people thinking about joining a yoga class but felt a bit apprehensive that they wouldn’t quite fit in?
I would say, try it! Because there will be a yoga class that is right for you; it’s just finding it. I do think there’s yoga for everybody. There’s a little thing here I put on Facebook quite a lot:
I think this simple message is very true because you might be a super-fit athlete who wants to do really fast-flowing strength-challenging yoga but that’s not for most people.
There’ll be people who want some challenge, with a little bit of strengthening and there’ll be people who literally just need gentle movement to release tightness and tension. Some may benefit simply through breath work but it’s all still yoga.
Can yoga be a life changer?
Yes, it absolutely can. It changed my life. I’ve had a lot of my yoga students say that, that it totally changed how they feel and, more importantly, how they think.
Sometimes I think you can get stuck and caught up in a whole cycle of busy, stressful work and family life, and it can take over your well-being. You’ve got this to do, that to do and this deadline to meet and actually what yoga does is slow you down.
It slows your body down, slows your mind down, it brings focus back to yourself. If you are not right in yourself, then nothing else is going to be completely right in your life because happiness stems from within.
How often do you practise yoga?
I do yoga every day! How? Because yoga is also standing correctly, sitting correctly, thinking about positioning your body, giving yourself mini movement breaks - so it doesn’t have to be an actual yoga class.
If I’ve got my paperwork time in the afternoon, I’ll quite often stop and I’ll move around for a little bit with my shoulders, maybe for 30 seconds, and then crack on. So, yes, in terms of that I definitely do yoga every day!
What has yoga done for you as a person?
It has made me understand myself. It’s made me accept myself and be able to look and accept others for who and what they are. No judgement. Lose your ego, that’s a good one for me. When I ran and was competing against myself I’d get frustrated if I came in 30 seconds slower. But why? Why do that? Don’t beat yourself up about it. You’ve just been out for a run… brilliant!
Can you give us your three favourite yoga positions?
No! I’ll tell you why because it changes. This is the beauty of yoga: there is yoga to suit your mood and there is yoga to suit your body and what it needs at that moment.
So there may be times, for example, if I feel quite anxious or a bit stressed, I might need to release tension through the shoulder girdle and back so I’ll try some ‘cat’ to mobilise my spine. Or I might want to do a nice open, lying twist.
Sometimes, to really energise your body, you may want to do a ‘sun sequence’. If you’re feeling you need to calm down, try more restorative yoga postures. Once you get to the point where you can read your emotions and read your mind and then know what to do to correct it, that’s the ultimate state, the nirvana.
But, okay, if I had to pick three that weren’t based on current mood or feeling, I’d go:
Downward Dog: Love it. You can’t beat a good downward dog! It stretches and strengthens the whole body. I think the important thing to do is move around in it and really get into any niggle you’ve got. The important thing is to make sure your spine is really long and straight.
The Bhumi Flow: All about balance and stability and that lovely opening again, that funnel of joy, that always makes you feel better.
Forward Fold: It’s something I do every day. It’s simple, literally just folding forwards and letting your spine release. It’s a great way to release tension.
How about your favourite yoga quotes?
My favourite quote will change depending on what I need to hear. Sometimes I say a quote and you totally see the people it’s gone ‘bing’ with. It totally resonates and they’ve thought ‘that is so me, I do that all the time’. And then you can see people whose reaction is ‘erm, okay, whatever you say’.
But, in another week, those people will get it and the first group might not be feeling like that anymore so I do think it depends.
But I’ve got some quotes I do really like, linked to the Yamas (the first limb of the ‘Eight Limbs of Yoga’ originating from the ancient Indian philosophical text, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Yamas can be translated as ‘restraint’, ‘moral discipline’ or ‘moral vow’).
“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realise there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu (Chinese philosopher)
“Contentment does not mean that I desire nothing. But rather, it’s a simple decision to be happy with what I have.” – Paula Rollo
Interview conducted and feature written by Dave Tindall for Female First.
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