August Theme — Circles, Spirals, and the Magic of Returning

Life is a full circle, widening until it joins the circle motions of the infinite.”
— Anaïs Nin

When we think about movement, we often imagine straight lines. We picture reaching forwards, stretching upwards, folding down, stepping back. Progress itself is usually described this way too, as we’re told to “move on,” “move ahead,” or “push forwards.”

Yet very little in nature actually unfolds in straight lines. The moon waxes and wanes, the seasons turn and return, the tides arrive and retreat, only to repeat the process. Likewise, trees lay down a new ring each year, quietly recording another cycle of growth. 

Our lives seem to follow a similar pattern. We revisit familiar places, conversations, and challenges. We (if we are lucky) find the value in returning to old questions with new eyes over the journey of a lifetime. Even in our yoga practice, we find ourselves practising the same postures week after week, yet somehow they never feel quite the same. It can be tempting to see these returns as repetition. Still, I suspect they may be fruitfully understood as cycles or even spirals: familiar paths travelled from a slightly different perspective each time. 

This month I’d like to explore that idea in a very tangible way, using the physical body as our starting point to appreciate the universality of circularity. Throughout August, we’ll be investigating circles and spirals as fundamental principles of movement, discovering how they can make our practice feel stronger, more spacious, and even more intuitive.

Because once you begin looking for them, circles are everywhere.

Our shoulders are designed to move in arcs rather than angles. Our hips are ball-and-socket joints capable of remarkable freedom. Even the spine, which many of us think of as simply bending forwards and backward, is built to flex, extend, side-bend and rotate, with each vertebra contributing a small amount to a beautifully coordinated whole. Walking is a dance of spirals, reaching for a top shelf involves subtle rotation through the ribs and shoulder, and even standing still is never truly still; our bodies make countless tiny circles beneath us to keep us balanced.

Modern life, however, asks something rather different of us. Most of us spend our days moving within a surprisingly limited vocabulary. We sit facing forwards, we type, we drive, we carry shopping, we scroll our phones, and we become very good at repeating the same few movements while forgetting many of the others our bodies were designed to explore.

It all begins with the joints. 

Yoga offers us an opportunity to remember. That remembering will begin in some unexpectedly simple ways. Before flowing through Sun Salutations or balancing on one leg, we’ll spend time circling our wrists and ankles, rolling the shoulders, exploring gentle movements through the neck and allowing the pelvis to move freely in every direction. 

Joint circles improve circulation, nourish the tissues surrounding the joints, gently wake up the nervous system, and, importantly, invite curiosity. Rather than asking how deeply we can stretch or how quickly we can progress, they encourage us to ask: How completely can I move?

It’s a subtle shift in perspective, but one that has the potential to transform the rest of the practice.

We’ll continue that exploration through the spine. Cat and Cow are often presented as opposite positions, rounding and arching, but this month we’ll soften those boundaries. The ribcage will begin to trace circles, the hips will orbit beneath us, and the head will naturally follow. Instead of travelling backwards and forwards along a single line, we’ll discover that the spine enjoys moving more like water than machinery.

Breath and intention to explore the potential of binds.  

Our breath follows a similar pattern. The inhales and exhales gradually become the other, just as waves reach the shore before quietly returning to the sea. There is no abrupt beginning or ending, only a rhythm that continues whether we pay attention to it or not. When our movement begins to follow that rhythm, transitions often become smoother, and effort begins to soften into flow.

As the month unfolds, those exploratory circles will gradually evolve into something more intentional. A circle is movement without destination, while a spiral can be seen more as movement with direction.

That distinction may seem small, but it lies at the heart of many of yoga’s more complex postures. We don’t simply rotate for the sake of rotating. We organise the body through spirals that create stability, space and possibility.

One of the clearest places we’ll experience this is through binds. For many practitioners, binds can feel mysterious or frustrating. It’s easy to assume that success depends on flexible shoulders or unusually long arms, but in reality a comfortable bind is rarely about the hands themselves. By the time your fingers meet, most of the work has already happened elsewhere.

The standing leg has found stability, the pelvis has organised itself, the spine has lengthened, the ribcage has revolved, the collarbones have broadened, and the shoulders have softened. It sounds like a lot to keep track of. Still, once we are reintroduced to these patterns of movement, we can come to appreciate that the bind is simply the natural consequence of those relationships coming together.

A sprawling and spiralling journey home. 

Throughout August we’ll explore these ideas in a variety of ways. Goddess Pose will become a place for shoulder rolls, sweeping arm circles, spiralling through the torso and generous circles of the hips, transforming a familiar posture into something almost dance-like. In Malasana, we’ll allow the pelvis to move rather than settle immediately into stillness, discovering how subtle circles can create surprising freedom through the hips and lower back.

As our understanding develops, we’ll begin weaving those same principles into more challenging postures. Fallen Triangle invites us to rotate beneath ourselves before opening back into space, almost as though we’re tracing an orbit across the mat and Bound Half Moon asks us to organise the standing leg, broaden the chest, and allow the spiral of the bind to emerge naturally. For those who enjoy deeper hip opening, Compass Pose offers another opportunity to experience how wrapping and unwinding can create remarkable spaciousness through the side body.

Running through the entire month, however, will be one posture that captures all of these ideas: Bird of Paradise (Svarga Dvijasana).

At first glance, Bird of Paradise looks like a standing balance with an impressive leg extension. Spend a little time with it, though, and another story begins to emerge.

It starts close to the ground, folding patiently into a bind. The shoulders revolve around the ribcage. The spine lengthens. The pelvis gradually finds its relationship to the standing leg. We rise without losing the organisation we’ve created, and only then, perhaps, the extended leg begins to unfold.

The experience feels remarkably similar to uncoiling a spring, with each stage growing naturally from the one before it.

Or at least, that’s the invitation, as I will attempt to guide you through the steps of the posture 🙂 Ultimately, there’s no need to arrive at any particular destination, but a reminder that in asana, as in life, much is missed if we rush. When we hurry, the pose reminds us that no amount of determination can replace thoughtful organisation.

The real practice lies in understanding how the body works together to create possibilities. And every time we step on our mats, we learn something new about ourselves, whether or not we ever arrive at what we’ve been conditioned to see as the “full expression” of a posture. 

And, as always, I hope that’s a lesson we can carry off of our mats as well. In life, we often find ourselves revisiting familiar territory, carrying experiences we didn’t have before. We return to ideas, relationships, places and practices that seem unchanged, only to discover that we have changed in the meantime. I like thinking of this as a spiral, and whether you imagine it spiralling outward or inward, the result is a feeling of greater connection to the whole. 

Using the body as a stage of inquiry. 

One step at a time, though. And as mentioned above, I’d like us to really spend August focusing on inhabiting our bodies in an empowering way.  I hope this month’s practice encourages you to notice those spirals more often: in the way your shoulders organise before your arms lift, in the little circular movements your feet and ankles make to keep you balanced, in the steady rhythm of your breathing, and in the countless ways your body adapts when allowed to move more completely.

We’ll strengthen, rotate, balance, bind and unbind. We’ll challenge ourselves, refine familiar postures, and work patiently toward more complicated shapes, but because I believe the journey toward them teaches us something about how intelligent movement is created.

And perhaps, by returning again and again to the breath, to the body, and to our practice, we’ll discover what Anaïs Nin understood so beautifully: that life doesn’t simply repeat itself. It widens, joining ever larger circles, carrying us forward not in straight lines, but in graceful, unfolding spirals.