Why Yoga Isn’t a Trend for Me

Hello you,

I wanted to begin this year by sharing a few thoughts that have been sitting with me for a while now.

I don’t often get the chance to sit and write in long, uninterrupted stretches these days between running the studio, finishing my final year at uni, and being a mum to a one and four-year-old (and a wife, somewhere in there too).

However, when the space does open, these are the reflections that keep rising to the surface.

Before I go any further, I want to say something that feels important.

There are many philosophies within yoga. Some see the world as an illusion, or the physical realm as a distraction from the divine. Some view the body as something to transcend. Some see the body as a hindrance. These teachings have their place, and they’ve shaped yoga in meaningful ways.

I personally live and share yoga through a non-dual understanding. One that sees the body as divine and as a tool for awakening. Consciousness condensed into form. The miracle that allows sensation, breath, emotion, connection, love and loss to be felt through the body.

I’m sharing this so you know where I’m coming from, and so my words make sense even if your own beliefs look different.

For me, yoga is not about escaping life. It’s about meeting it more fully.

From this perspective, yoga isn’t about self-improvement or striving for a better version of yourself.

It’s about remembering what you already are beneath the noise, the habits, the stories.

We use the body to experience life.

We use sensation to know aliveness.

We use breath to feel ourselves moving with the world.

Everything has taken form so that life can experience itself through you.

The practice is not about fixing or achieving.

The postures, the breath, the stillness become ways of listening. Of tuning in. Of remembering that awareness is already here, already whole, already present in every moment.

This is the yoga I return to, again and again.

The kind that lives in the small moments.

As the new year begins, I’ve been reflecting on things I’ve read recently. Posts calling yoga, a trend or a phase.

However, for me personally and many others I’ve had this conversation with, once yoga really touches you, something shifts in a way that can’t quite be undone.

Your relationship with your body changes.

Your relationship with your thoughts softens.

Your sense of separation begins to thin.

And slowly, you realise that yoga isn’t something you do. It’s something that becomes part of your life.

Maybe some people move away from the physical asana and into quieter expressions of the practice.

Maybe the shapes fall away, or the rhythm changes. But that doesn’t mean the yoga left or was a trend.

For, once you’ve met yourself through yoga, once you’ve felt that subtle reorientation toward awareness and presence, it’s not something you unlearn.

I also want to share from personal experience. Life changes. Practice ebbs and flows.

After COVID, my own practice fell off the face of the earth. I had my first baby, and suddenly yoga looked nothing like the daily practice I once had. Some days it was a breath. Some days it was a moment of stillness. Some days it was simply getting through.

The form may shift.

The intensity may ebb and flow.

Life may pull you in different directions. But the imprint remains.

The path isn’t linear. It loops and deepens and softens over time. And for those who have practiced for a long time, yoga rarely becomes something you outgrow.

It just finds new ways to live through you and the season of life you find yourself in.

This year, I feel called to write more from this place. Not as someone with answers, but as someone walking the path alongside you.

Whether you’re new to yoga or have been practicing for years, whether you come for movement, stillness, or something you can’t quite name yet.

Here’s to 2026.

To curiosity over certainty.

To presence over perfection.

To the slow, unfolding remembering of who we are.

May your practice meet you exactly where you are.

Something to sit with,

Jess