How Yoga Brought Me Home: Reflections from an Indian Yoga Teacher

I don’t often talk about the fact that I’m an Indian yoga teacher. It’s strange really, because it’s one of the reasons I care so deeply about this practice.

Over the years, I’ve found myself in conversations about how yoga is always evolving, how it should move with the times, and how it’s only natural that it changes as different cultures embrace it. I understand those perspectives, and I don’t think they’re without merit.

But I often leave those conversations feeling as though something important has been left unsaid.

For me, the question has never been whether yoga should evolve. Every living tradition evolves. The question is what we lose when it becomes so disconnected from its roots that we forget what it was trying to offer us in the first place.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve stayed quiet for so long. Not because I don’t have thoughts, but because I realised I wasn’t trying to argue a point. I was trying to explain why I care so deeply about protecting the heart of this practice.

To understand that, I have to take you back to a yoga class in Goa.

I’d only been practising yoga for about a year, mostly self-taught with a few classes here and there, and I was travelling back to India to see family for the first time in seventeen years. Once yoga entered my life, it felt like the only right thing to do while I was there: take a trip to Goa with a friend and experience yoga in the country where it began.

I booked onto a morning class that was taking place a few days later, without really knowing what to expect. Along with my booking came some clear guidance on how to prepare: no alcohol for twenty-four hours beforehand, arrive on an empty stomach, drink only two glasses of water before the class, and come ready to practise.

Looking back, none of it felt restrictive. It felt deeply respectful. Up until that point, my practice had mostly been me learning from books or attending the occasional class at my local gym. I’d always felt that yoga deserved respect, but this was the first time I’d experienced a culture where that respect was naturally woven into the practice itself. Preparing for class wasn’t an inconvenience or another thing to tick off the list; it was simply part of the practice. Yoga wasn’t something you squeezed into your day. It was something you prepared yourself to receive.

About forty-five minutes into the class, we were lying on our backs with one knee hugged gently into the chest. It wasn’t an impressive posture. Nothing dramatic happened from the outside. But inside, something shifted that I had never experienced before.

For the first time in my life, I felt genuine compassion for myself.

All the shame I’d carried. My addiction. The abusive relationships. The mistakes I’d made. The coping mechanisms that had helped me survive all of the pain I had experienced. Instead of seeing myself as broken or wrong, I was suddenly able to look at my own life with compassion.

I remember lying there thinking, almost as if my whole body sighed,

“You’ve been through a lot.”

It was one of the most profound moments of my life.

That class didn’t just change how I practised yoga. From that moment on, it changed how I related to myself, and ultimately how I chose to live the rest of my life.

Until then, I’d always known yoga came from India, but after that experience, it took on a much deeper personal meaning.

Growing up, I’d always felt disconnected from my Indian heritage. My relationship with that part of my identity was complicated. My dad was an Indian Muslim, so much of my experience of that side of my family was intertwined with Islam. While I have a great deal of respect for the religion, it never felt like my own spiritual path, and for a long time I struggled to find where I belonged within that part of myself.

I also grew up in a predominantly white area and was one of only a handful of non-white children at my secondary school. Looking back, I think that shaped my relationship with my heritage too. It wasn’t that I rejected being Indian; I simply never felt I had a way of connecting with that part of myself that truly felt like mine.

Apart from my dad occasionally playing Qawwali in the background and inviting me into the kitchen to make samosas, I felt quite cut off from my culture.

But when yoga came into my life, something shifted. It gave me a way back to my Indian roots that I had never experienced before. Because I felt so deeply connected to the practice and everything it had given me, I naturally found myself wanting to connect with where it came from too. That was a part of me as well.

Yoga was different. It wasn’t another belief system being handed to me; it was an experience I discovered for myself. Through that experience, I found a connection to my Indian heritage that felt authentic, personal and deeply meaningful.

I remember feeling incredibly proud.

Not because I believed yoga belonged to me, but because I realised that my heritage had given the world something capable of relieving suffering and transforming lives.

Something capable of helping people navigate pain. Something capable of helping people meet themselves with compassion. I remember thinking,

“Wow… I come from a place that gave the world this.”

That feeling has never really left me.

And, from that point onwards, I became incredibly protective of yoga.

Not possessive. Protective.

Perhaps because yoga met me with so much compassion that day, I began to feel that same compassion towards the practice itself. I wanted to honour it. To teach it well. To preserve its intention.

It felt like a responsibility. Maybe even my Dharma.

But over the years, I feel that’s become increasingly difficult.

I’ve watched yoga become commercialised in ways that leave me feeling conflicted. Practices designed to quiet the mind are now often marketed as entertainment. Social media rewards spectacle over stillness. The philosophy is frequently stripped away until all that’s left is stretching, aesthetics and branding.

I believe yoga teachers deserve to earn a good living. I really do. Sharing these practices is valuable work. But I don’t believe yoga should be exploited.

People have asked me in the past why I don’t run puppy yoga, beer yoga or events that jump on whatever the latest wellness trend happens to be.

The answer is actually very simple.

Because that’s not why I became a yoga teacher.

I didn’t begin teaching because I wanted to build a successful business, follow the latest trends or create the next big wellness brand. I became a teacher because yoga transformed my life, and I wanted to pass these practices on in the hope that someone else might experience even a fraction of what they gave me.

At its heart, my intention has always been to help people. To offer the same compassion, perspective and possibility that was once offered to me.

Yoga asks us to turn our attention inward. To cultivate awareness. To reduce suffering – or at least change our relationship with it. To understand ourselves more deeply.

I struggle to reconcile that with practices that move us further away from those intentions.

I’ve spent a long time asking myself why this affects me so deeply, and I think I’ve finally realised that it isn’t just about yoga.

Much of my own trauma is rooted in exploitation. Being used. Having my boundaries crossed. Having my humanity overlooked. Yoga became one of the things that helped me heal from that.

So watching this practice be exploited feels deeply personal.

It gave me a way back to myself. It helped me reconnect with my Indian heritage and with parts of who I was that had felt lost for a long time.

Perhaps that’s why I feel so protective of it.

I want to protect the very thing that once protected me.

And, of course, there have been times when I’ve questioned myself and my path as a teacher.

Teaching yoga isn’t an easy way to make a living. Financially, it can be very hard. I’ve wondered whether I should follow more trends. Whether I should market differently. Whether I’d have more students if I leaned further into what people expect modern yoga to be.

Maybe I would.

I’m still navigating that balance every day. But if growing my business means moving further away from the heart of the practice, it’s a compromise I’m simply not willing to make.

We all have to market ourselves in some way if we want to keep our businesses alive. I don’t think marketing itself is the problem. The challenge is knowing where the line is. At what point does sharing something become selling it? At what point do we stop serving the practice and start asking the practice to serve us?

They’re questions I still don’t have complete answers to.

But what I do know is this.

Yoga gave me back something I didn’t know I’d lost.

It gave me compassion for myself at a time when I desperately needed it. It gave me a way to reconnect with a part of my Indian heritage that I’d felt disconnected from for most of my life. It shaped the way I choose to live my life, the way I meet other people, and the way I teach.

So yes, I am protective of this practice.

Not because I think it belongs to me.

But because I know what can happen when someone lies on their back, hugs one knee into their chest, and is given the space to meet themselves with compassion for the very first time.

That’s the yoga I fell in love with.

And that’s the yoga I’ll keep teaching.

If you’d like to experience this approach for yourself, you can explore my weekly yoga classes in Weston-super-Mare and online, or practise from anywhere with the Yoga at Home Library.

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