A simple but beautiful slow vinyasa yoga flow. This all-around flow practice will help you work with the concept of wisdom and how it can lead you to decrease your suffering and connect you with your belief in basic goodness. Expect to physically connect with your heart while practising variations of the warrior poses reconceived to embody bravery, strength, and vulnerability. This is the first class in the Brave Yogi challenge series - this class addressing: Why do you practise? Why do you want to awaken? How can you embody that? Bring your whole heart and a block.

A beautiful all-round vinyasa flow yoga class to help you work with the concept of generosity, ensuring the benefits you receive from yoga are shared off the mat by those who are in need. Expect to physically connect with a feel-good practice for the back of your heart and shoulders, which we will feel as the muscles of embrace. Who do you practise for (beyond yourself)? How can you bring this intention into your embodied practice?

This all-around vinyasa flow yoga class will help you work with the concept of discipline that is 'not too tight/not too loose' that you can use to compassionately guide the intensity with which you practice. Expect to physically connect to backbends, standing balances, and leg flexibility while regulating energy and effort. How hard should you practise? How much should you push and when should you back off? Interesting questions to explore in this class and in all your yoga classes.

This mindfully-paced all-around vinyasa flow yoga class practice helps us to work with the concept of patience to be able to sit with restlessness and emotional reactivity in your body and mind both on and off the mat. Expect to practice in a slower way than you might be used to, to slow down your practice to physically connect to your breath by first opening up space in the side body and then developing the pause between inhalation and exhalation as we move in rhythm. How can you learn to press the pause button? How do you create a space to pause between action and reaction, so that we can act with greater wisdom and patience with one another as well as with ourselves?

This all-round vinyasa flow yoga class will help you work with the concept of enthusiasm so that you have the fuel to power your practice. Expect to find your personal source of inspiration and then physically connect to joyful practices of rolling around, hip strengthening, accessible arm balances, and more that will get you going no matter what your starting point is. Where does the energy for practice come from? How can you get energised when all you want to be is lazy? You will need two bricks.

How can you tame a wandering mind in practice? How can you find solitude on your mat? This all-around yoga class will help you work with the concept of meditation in movement so that you can easily incorporate mindfulness into postures and flow. Expect to physically connect to the internal focus of your core and the external focus of your gaze while practising feel-good postures for head, neck, and shoulders.

This is a practice centred around metta, which means goodwill, care, or loving-kindness. It is the first of four boundless states, known as the brahmavihārās. The brahmavihārās are the Buddha’s primary teachings on how we cultivate an awakened heart. In this yoga class, we’ll do some heart-focused practices and gentle movements (including some inspired by Qi Gong) to explore metta, which is the wish for true happiness that you can direct to yourself and towards others. In Buddhist teachings, metta is the foundations to our heart’s love and strength as it is what guided the Buddha along his path to care for a world that was in so much pain. As we learn to cultivate metta, we can learn to support our capacity to extend care to ourselves and the world, and send wishes for true happiness to all.

This yoga class focuses on cultivating a strong and resilient heart that awakens karuna, or compassion. It is the second of four boundless states, or brahmavihārās. Compassion means to be with another’s suffering. It is the opposite of cruelty. It can be conflated with pity, which it is not. Compassion is born out of a selfless desire to stand in solidarity with those who experience misfortune. Misfortune does not have to be starvation, physical pain and loss; it can be as simple as wanting something to be other than it is, which the Buddha described as creating clinging as well as a pushing away of experience. When we begin to cultivate compassion, we start with extending compassion towards ourselves. By forging self-compassion, we create a springboard for extending compassion towards others and all beings in the world. This well-rounded yoga class focuses on heart opening and brings in qigong movements.

This yoga class focuses on the third aspect of the Buddha's teachings to awaken the heart, Mudita. Mudita means finding joy in the happiness and success of others. It is the third of four boundless states, or brahmavihārās. This well-rounded class has a particular focus on the hips and the hamstrings, two areas where many of us are tight due to either a sedantary lifestyle, or strengthening workouts. Being happy for others when they are happy are we are not, or they achieve things that we haven’t not the easiest practice. Indeed, ours is a world where comparison, judgement, envy and aggression are rife. Learning to be happy for someone when they are truly happy and shining usually requires a deliberate effort. When we can summon sympathetic joy, the rewards are magnificent and freeing. Through a cultivation of mudita, we can pull out the weeds of pettiness, envy and comparison. We become less selfish and self-centred, and grow into more tolerant, generous and compassionate individuals. Our actions can then create a chain-reaction, where a joyful and charitable heart ripples out into the world. You will just need a mat.

This gently flowing yoga and Qi Gong class explores the fourth of the brahmavihārās, or boundless states, known as upekkha, or equanimity. This fourth abode is often the most misunderstood, as equanimity can easily be written off as indifference and not caring. The Buddha’s teachings suggest this is far from the truth. His description of upekkha is that it is a perfect, unshakable balance of heart and mind, rooted in insight. When we cultivate equanimity, we cultivate a state of being even minded and calm. In this state, we learn to trust, meet and respond to life in ways that let us care deeply and fully about what truly matters. We make room for joy, pain, sorrow and challenges. We learn to meet life in ways that neither opposes nor demands more from it, and can remain steady, trusting and open to whatever grim corners we may turn in life.