In modern yoga culture, asana often becomes associated with poses, flexibility, movement, and achievement. We learn to do yoga. To stretch further, balance longer, and master increasingly complex shapes.

But originally, asana simply meant steady seat — the seat of awareness.

Not performance. Not perfection. Just held stillness - Presence.

Practicing yoga this way, fateful to its real meaning and intention, in all its forms changes everything.

My intention with beanddo is to bring yoga-based tools into the fabric of everyday life. Whether you are writing a report, preparing a presentation, navigating difficult conversations with colleagues or managers, or simply moving through a busy day, yoga offers a way to create space inside the experience.

That space matters. It becomes a place where anxiety softens, clarity returns, and your natural capacity for focus, connection, and creativity can re-emerge.

One of the simplest—and most powerful—tools you can use at any moment is yogic breathing. It requires no equipment, no special setting, and no time away from your life. It can be practiced anywhere, anytime.

A core outcome of yoga practice is a more intimate awareness of the breath and the body that breathes it. I often say in class: a conscious breath changes everything. It sounds simple, but over time it becomes unmistakably true.

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week UK 2026. It comes at a time when if things weren't bad enough in the world we are also living through a growing mental health crisis.

The two are probably related. 

Current UK data suggests that around 1 in 4 people experience a mental health problem each year. Recent NHS figures show that more than 22% of adults are now living with anxiety, depression, or other common mental health conditions, with rates even higher among younger people.

Every morning when you wake up there is often a feeling waiting for you. A quiet sense of how you are meeting the moment. What life, work, family, or the world itself may be asking of you today. Sometimes we welcome that feeling. Often we avoid it. Sometimes we dread what we imagine is coming next.

Many people know the Sunday night blues. That creeping anxiety as the weekend fades and another working week edges into view. I used to feel it deeply. Around 4pm on a Sunday the mood would begin to shift, tightening slowly through the evening as Monday approached.

I’ve always worn two hats: an architect’s hat and a yoga teacher’s hat.

Both have something in common—they make you look forward. They ask a simple but persistent question: why are things like this when they could be so much better?

People could be healthier. Happier. More secure. More connected to purpose and agency in how they live and where they live. From both perspectives—built environment and inner environment—you become acutely aware of change. And not always the kind that serves life well. At their best, we should be creating places and systems where people and communities can thrive as a baseline, not an exception.

Everyone is creative. Not as an idea, but as a lived possibility, if you’re willing to access it.

This isn’t about art as a profession. If there is one thing I have learned over 30 years of working as a creative professional - creativity does not belong to a select few. It is a fundamental force, universal in nature and local in expression, moving through each of us all the time. The real question is whether we create the space for it to appear.

A day which invites us to turn our attention from the chaos that is currently filling much of our lives to something more profound, meaningful and vital. Clean air, safe water, and climate resilience aren’t optional—they’re essential.

Every action counts. Every voice matters. Here's what you can do today, even during your lunchtime to reconnect back to planet Earth, yourself and others.

For thousands of years, yogis have not so much celebrated the earth as lived in relationship with it. Through ritual, breath, and pure conscious attention, they recognised something simple and profound: we are not separate from the world we inhabit.