The Body
Yoga and the nervous system – here’s the link that many of us miss
You don’t need more yoga. You need more connection.
There’s a moment I see again and again in my private sessions.
Someone arrives at the mat (often a high-achiever; running on adrenaline and quietly exhausted) and they tell me they’ve been doing yoga for years. They know the poses. They have a mat, and maybe a couple of blocks. And yet something isn’t working. They’re not feeling better. If anything, they’re feeling more depleted.
Here’s what I’ve come to understand: for many of us, the problem isn’t that we’re not doing enough yoga. It’s that we’re doing yoga the same way we do everything else; on autopilot, from the neck up and pushing through.
And a nervous system that’s already chronically oveactivated doesn’t need more pushing. It needs something completely different.
The yoga most of us learned isn’t designed for your actual body
Most yoga classes are taught top-down. The teacher demonstrates a shape. You replicate it. You assess yourself by whether your body looks like the picture.
But here’s the thing: a pose that looks identical on two people can feel entirely different inside them. One person is breathing freely, sensing, releasing. The other is gripping their jaw, holding their breath, and quietly wondering why they can’t “get it right.”
When we focus on the shape rather than the sensation, we lose the most important part of the practice: the information your body is constantly trying to give you.
Your body knows things your mind doesn’t. It knows when it’s running on empty, and it knows when it needs stillness rather than strength. It knows the difference between the tiredness that calls for rest and the restlessness that calls for movement. And, the reality is, most of us were never taught to listen.
WHAT BODY-UP YOGA ACTUALLY MEANS
In my work, we start from the body, not the textbook.
Before we even begin, we check in. Not just “how are you feeling?” but a genuine enquiry into your energetic state, your physical capacity, your nervous system’s current story. Are you wired and depleted? Flat and foggy? Somewhere in between?
Because the practice that serves you on a high-stress, high-pressure Tuesday is completely different from the one that serves you on a slow, easy Sunday morning.
This is why I don’t teach fixed sequences. I teach you to read yourself, and then respond wisely.
A warrior pose can be a regulated, empowering experience or a cortisol-spiking one, depending entirely on how you meet it. A restorative fold can be the most radical act of nervous system care you’ve experienced all week, or it can feel like restriction if your body needs to move first.
Modification isn’t limitation. It’s intelligence.
What we’re really trying to do here
Yoga, at its best, is not a fitness class. It’s not a flexibility competition. It’s one of the most effective tools we have for regulating the nervous system; for shifting out of that chronic fight-or-flight state that so many of us are quietly living in.
When your nervous system is chronically activated – and for many high-achieving, high-responsibility people, it is – your body stays in survival mode. Sleep suffers. Digestion suffers. Decision-making suffers. The capacity for joy shrinks. You can feel like you’re doing all the “right” things and still feel relentlessly flat.
That’s not a willpower problem. That’s a nervous system problem.
And a yoga practice built around sensation, awareness, and honest listening is one of the most powerful ways to begin to shift it.
A note on where I am just now
I’m almost fully booked for private sessions, and I want to be honest about that – the right fit matters to me as much as it does to you.
If something in this blog post resonated – if you recognise yourself in the high-achieving, quietly exhausted person who’s been going through the motions and wondering why it’s not working – I’d love to hear from you.
One-off private yoga sessions are available, and sometimes that’s exactly what someone needs: one hour, held carefully, to reset, to be genuinely seen in your body, and to walk away with something that actually works for your life as it is right now.
The mat doesn’t need more of your performance. It needs more of your presence. That’s where the real work – and the real rest – begins.
FREE RESOURCE
The Burnout Blueprint
This is the work I’m passionate about helping you do too. Not because I have all the answers, but because I’ve walked this path myself, and I know exactly where the footholds are.
I made a free downloadable audit so that you can clearly see how stress is showing in your body, mind and life – and tools that you can implement today to start feeling better.
