What The Root is, how it came about, and what it will hold for you: a private, quiet home for the notes from your practice.
Something happens in a class that is hard to keep hold of. A posture lands in a new way. A breath does something you had not felt before. A single sentence about where to place your attention turns out to be the thing you needed all along. And then the week arrives, with all its noise, and by Thursday it has gone soft at the edges.
The Root is our answer to that.
What it is
The Root is a private members’ space for Blossom Yoga. The notes from your classes, your workshops and your retreats, gathered in one place and kept for you. Not a public feed, not another thing to keep up with. A quiet room you can step back into when you want to remember what you learned.
How it came about
Like most useful things, it started small and for a practical reason.
After each meditation workshop I write up what we did, and at some point I began sending those notes round to the people who had been there. A blog post is public, and some of what is taught in a room is kept for the room. A private place to hold the rest simply made sense.
Some of what happens in a class cannot be written down, and we do not pretend otherwise. But a great deal can be held in a few good notes, and a note you can return to a month later is worth far more than the one you meant to make and never did. So we built somewhere to keep them. It grew from there.
What it will hold for you
If you practise with Blossom Yoga, The Root is where that practice is gathered.
- The notes from the classes, workshops and retreats you come to, organised so you can actually find them: by what it was, and when.
- Written up by Ania and James after a session, in our own words, so what you took from the room is still there once the room has gone.
- Yours to keep, between terms and between years.
It is members-only, and deliberately so. It is for the people who come to their mat with us, not a sign-up for the whole of the internet.
Svādhyāya
There is an older word for what The Root is for. Svādhyāya, the fourth of the Niyamas, is usually translated as self-study: the part of practice that lives away from the mat. Reading a little, reflecting, noticing how a Tuesday evening on the floor turns up in the rest of your week.
It is a commitment we take seriously in our own practice, and The Root is one way we hope to support yours. Somewhere to return to what you were shown, sit with it, and let it find its way into how you actually live, rather than letting it go soft by Thursday.
What is coming
We are only at the beginning of this.
In time, The Root will hold more than notes. Guided practices you can return to between classes, so a Tuesday evening at home has something to lean on. Short pieces of video for the things that are easier shown than described. Materials from retreats, kept for the people who were there. We are building it slowly, and in the direction the practice actually asks for, rather than piling in features for their own sake. If you have an idea for what would help, I would genuinely like to hear it.
How to step in
The Root opens to members soon. When it does, if you have been to a class, a workshop or a retreat recently, your notes will be waiting for you. There is nothing you need to do in the meantime except carry on coming to your mat.
If you would like to know the moment it opens, join our newsletter and we will tell you. That is the one place the opening will be announced.
One small thing, before you go
If your practice with Blossom Yoga has meant something this year, there is a quiet way to pass it on. A few words on Google helps someone in Norwich, or out in the villages, find their way to a mat they did not know they were looking for. If you have a moment, you can leave a review here. It genuinely helps, and we read every one.
And if you simply want to be kept in the loop, on The Root and on everything else, the newsletter is the place.
See you in class.
