And I get it. It feels like something. But it isn’t flow or fluidity. I would argue it’s not even yoga. It’s just rushing, doing more - and as a result, getting less of it.

Why More Isn’t More

This month I’ve been exploring what a fluid, flowy vinyasa practice actually means — And it has nothing to do with speed or chasing feel-good sensations.

It’s a theme I know too well:

I spent years refining the fluidity of the Ashtanga sequences, one movement, one asana, one breath at a time, letting my understanding of the practice shift and deepen with each one — going from the early days of performing a sequence to allowing the sequence to become a space for inner-knowing and self-cultivation.

It’s a familiar impulse, one I recognize in my students as much as in myself: the belief that more movement means more practice.

Yet it’s quite the opposite — by rushing and chasing that flowy feeling, you actually get less of your practice.

Less depth, less quality, less insight.

Fluidity isn’t something you chase.

It’s something you create the conditions for with proper technique and proper understanding of what the practice has to offer.

Where I stand: Yoga is self-cultivation — quality over quantity, refinement over speed, technique over performance.

(Which is also why I’ve never warmed to those hybrid fitness-yoga classes. I don’t come to my mat for a sweaty workout. I come to look inward.)

Let’s start with what the purpose of a Vinyasa practice actually is — as you’ll have gathered by now, it’s not flowing, which is more of a misconception than a technical truth.

What Vinyasa Actually Means

Like most Sanskrit words, vinyasa means different things depending on who’s teaching and in what context.

Vinyasa can be:

• An approach to practicing asanas (a “style” of yoga)

• A breath and movement coordination system

• How teachers refer to transitions between two asanas

And in a way, it’s a little bit of all those things.

If you look closely at the Sanskrit word, it means something like “to place in a special way.”

One definition I often share with my students is the following:

Vinyasa is placing, with intention, every movement onto the breath

Not the other way around.

The breath sets the tone, and the movement follows it.

It sounds so simple - yet achieving this is a mastery of technique and a hallmark of attention.

This is quite different from moving after the sensation of “flow” or “fluidity”, where movement generally comes first, and breath tries to catch up.

If we understand vinyasa as the transitions between shapes, then vinyasa is not the flowing of one position into another but the movement of breath that occurs within each discrete transition position - the movement from Chaturanga into Upward Dog, for example.

Subtle but important.

However, this is only part of the picture, and fluidity isn’t only in the transitions — it’s in the shapes themselves, the shapes making the transition and the asana sthithi, the static asanas.

What’s Here, Right Now

Fluidity is not only in moving onto the flow of the breath (vinyasa) but also a breath-and-awareness directing technique.

Barely three breaths in Warrior II and we’re already moving on to the next shape, wondering what’s next rather than what’s here.

Yet, yoga is in the what’s here, right now.

And I’m a big fan of that part — the now, the inquiry, the self-cultivation.

Not holding the shapes for the sake of it, but giving ourselves enough time to breathe in a shape, to study it, and let the details and subtleties reveal themselves to us through practice.

What am I doing here? What does this (shape) mean to me? What does it reveal, say about me? What is there to learn?

That is flow too - flow of information.

Each asana, each shape is like a container of information. Each time you formally put yourselves in a shape, you have an opportunity to learn something about yourselves.

And the deepest exploration rarely comes from chasing harder poses. It comes from treating the simple ones as inexhaustible.

The River Metaphor

One of my favorite ways to bring this to life for my students is the metaphor of the river:

A Vinyasa-style yoga sequence is like water traveling from its source all the way to the sea.

Water doesn’t choose to rush — it takes the shape and speed the riverbed gives it. Narrow and torrential near the source, wide and slow further down, steady in places, quick again in others. But always within its banks, until it finally merges into the ocean.

The sequence, the ordering of asanas and transitions (call them “vinyasas”)— that’s your riverbed. Some parts of the sequence are naturally “flowy” (think sun salutations); others call for steadiness (5, 8, maybe 10 breaths). Yet the breath, like the water, flows throughout.

Want to put this into practice?

Below, I guide you through three rounds of Sun Salutation A — placing each movement with intention onto your breath, then holding five full breaths in Downward Dog, so fluidity lives in the shapes too, not just the transitions. If you're not familiar with Sun Salutation A, you'll find a cheat sheet below to follow along.

00:00 - Introduction
02:16 - Practice
09:32 - Final thoughts

Your Sun Salutation A cheat sheet:

Subscribe now

What’s next? If you want to take this further than a single practice — I’m bringing a small group to the Arcachon Bay in June 2027 — the corner of France where I grew up spending summers — for Être (“To Be” in French): a retreat in yoga, presence, and the kind of slowness the Atlantic makes possible. Registration opens September 2026. Get on the interest list.

About me: I’m Hélène — a French yoga teacher and storyteller living in Westchester, New York. I came to yoga for a stiff back and found it reshaped my whole life. I spent twelve years in a Mysore room, building a strong foundation in traditional Ashtanga yoga, before immersing myself in the Katonah Yoga method, which deeply inspires me today. I remain a devoted student of Vedic knowledge and yoga philosophy. My teaching weaves ancient wisdom, storytelling, and modern movement, using the body as ground for self-exploration, self-cultivation, and personal evolution.

I finally finished editing the video I shot on the very first day, standing in the vineyards while everyone else was enjoying the pool (and escaping the 104-degree heat). It walks through the theme of the retreat, what we actually do together day to day, and — because I’m already thinking ahead — an invitation to next year’s retreat, this time by the water.

I hope you enjoy it.

Join Us Next Summer

Next summer, we’re moving to the Atlantic coast — to Arcachon Bay, for Être (”To Be”), June 25–30, 2027. If the idea of stepping out of doing and into being resonates with you, registration opens in September. You can join the interest list here.

The full recap — the closing circle, the photos, the women who made the week what it was — is coming next.

_{Photo credit: Xavier G. Photographie}

This year, we’re exploring the Five Elements—an ancient yogic framework for understanding yourself, your body, and the world around you. And I’m doing it in the place where I first discovered, without knowing what to call it, what yoga actually is.

My grandparents owned vineyards in the Bordeaux Wine region, and I spent my childhood running between the rows, my teenage years working among the vines—learning to be useful with my hands. I learned to drive a tractor, which is less romantic than it sounds, but also somehow perfect.

What I remember most clearly are the early mornings, before anyone else was awake. Walking through the vineyard in the mist, the Dordogne river still quiet in the valley below, there was a quality to those moments I wouldn’t have words for until years later, when I started studying yoga philosophy.

That feeling of being completely connected—to the earth under my feet, to the silence, to something larger than myself—has a name in Sanskrit. It’s called yoga. And it’s what the practice is actually for.

This is why the vineyards aren’t just a backdrop for this retreat. The land itself is the teaching. And the Five Elements, the framework we’ll explore together, are the language through which we’ll learn to read it.

The Five Elements Everywhere

In yogic philosophy, there’s a framework called the Pancha Mahabhutas—pancha meaning five, maha meaning great, bhutas meaning elements. The five great elements.

They’re understood as the building blocks of everything physical: rocks and rivers, yes, but also our bodies, our emotions, our tendencies, our ways of moving through life.

Walking through the vineyards next week, I’ll be seeing what I’ve always seen—the soil, the water, the heat of the sun, the wind through the leaves, the mystery of how it all becomes wine.

But now I have a map: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether (or space).

The ancient yogis built their entire practice around it. And I’ll be guiding a group of women to feel it in their bodies, to recognize themselves in it, to understand that they are made of the same elements the vineyard is made of.

“What happens in nature happens in our own bodies.”

We are made of the same five elements. Each one governs a different dimension of experience:

• Earth is our foundation, our sense of belonging.

• Water is our flow, our feeling, our ability to move.

• Fire is our transformation, our will, our capacity to change.

• Air is our breath, our connection, our ability to reach beyond ourselves.

• Ether is the space that holds it all—the freedom, the possibility, the room to breathe.

During the retreat, we explore this in the body and beyond. The elements become both tangible and personal—you learn them not just mentally, but in your muscles, your breath, your hands, your heart.

Sita: Held By The Elements, Not Tested

What I love as much as using the backdrop of our retreat location as a teaching moment is using storytelling and Hindu mythology to bring another perspective and layer of understanding to the teaching.

One of my favorite characters is Sita, the heroine of the Ramayana—one of the most ancient stories of personal evolution—a woman who endures exile, captivity, and trial without losing herself.

Sita was born from the Earth itself. Her name means furrow in the field. When King Janaka was plowing his land, she rose up from the soil—a gift from Bhudevi, the Earth Goddess. From her very first moment, she was rooted.

And what makes her story remarkable—what makes her the guide for this particular work—is something that shifts everything.

Sita is not tested by the elements. She is held by them.

When she chooses exile, the earth holds her steady. When she’s taken captive, she doesn’t break. When she walks through fire to prove her truth, the flames don’t touch her. When she prays to the waters, the waters carry her. When the wind sends her deliverance, she welcomes it. And at the very end, when everything resolves—when Sita and Ram come together—they are whole. SitaRam. The embodied and the infinite, held in one another.

Here’s what that tells us:

We, too, are held.

The earth beneath us, the fire within us, the water that flows through us, the breath that animates us, the space that contains us—all of it is on our side. Not testing us. Not measuring us. Supporting us.

This is the shift that changes everything. Most of us move through the world feeling tested by life—by our bodies, by our circumstances, by our own limitations.

But what if we were actually being held all along? What if the elements were on our side?

That’s what it means to know yourself through the elements. That’s what we explore, together, on the mat.

How It Translates in Our Time Together on the Mat

Here’s the practical piece:

Each day, we dive into one element—two hours of embodied yoga asana practice, themed art workshops, and time in the landscape itself, walking through the vineyards, sitting by the river.

In the body, we move low to high: starting at the base of the spine, through the belly, up through the navel, the chest, the throat. By the end of the week, you’ve journeyed through your whole body, and you feel it: working with one area shifts something emotionally, not just physically.

That’s the framework.

What actually happened when I put ten women through it is a different story.

Two more pieces are coming: a short video shot on location, coming back on the theme of our retreat and what ten women are exploring together on and off the mat. And the full recap: the closing circle, the photos, and reflections from the women who lived inside these elements with me for a week.

Join Us Next Summer:

If this resonates with you, I’m already thinking ahead to next summer: ÊTRE (To Be)—a retreat on the Atlantic Coast of France, exploring what it means to simply be rather than constantly doing.

The retreats are small, intentional containers for the kind of deep work that doesn’t happen in a weekly class. If you’re curious about what’s possible when you commit to a few days of immersive practice and community with other serious practitioners, that’s the invitation.

Registration opens September 2026. Get on the interest list.

About me: I’m Hélène — a French yoga teacher and storyteller living in Westchester, New York. I came to yoga for a stiff back and found it reshaped my whole life. I spent twelve years in a Mysore room, building a strong foundation in traditional Ashtanga yoga, before immersing myself in the Katonah Yoga method, which deeply inspires me today. I remain a devoted student of Vedic knowledge and yoga philosophy. My teaching weaves ancient wisdom, storytelling, and modern movement, using the body as ground for self-exploration, self-cultivation, and personal evolution.

If you’ve practiced for a while, you’ve noticed that “the body keeps the score”. The accumulated tension of a season, the particular stress of an ending — it shows up on the mat.

June, for many of us, tends to look like a very flat split. Legs stretched wide, energy sank to the floor.

This practice is about something different. About a monkey hero who faced an impossible crossing and didn’t just leap — he rose.

I’ll be honest: I’m thinking about this for myself right now. June in Westchester, two kids, end of the school year — I notice the pull toward spreading thin. Filling every newly freed slot, being more available, doing more. And I keep having to ask myself the same question I want to bring into this practice:

Is my energy actually rising? Or am I just extending further in every direction and slowly flattening out?

The Story

Hanuman is the great monkey hero of the Ramayana, the ancient Indian epic at the heart of so much of what yoga mythology draws from. Among his many powers, the one this pose is named for is his capacity for expansion: to be as small as a mouse, and as large as a mountain.

Two moments from his story are worth holding:

The first happens when he’s still a baby. He looks up at the sky and spots the sun. He mistakes it for a ripe mango — which, honestly, is very relatable — and does what a baby monkey with divine powers does: pushes off with his little legs and launches himself skyward, expanding all the way upward toward Surya, the sun. I keep coming back to this image. Not because it’s absurd (although it is, a little). But because of the direction. Up. From the root, toward the light.

Skipping ahead a little — that same Surya goes on to become his teacher. Hanuman studies with him, receives everything Surya knows, and at the end of his training, thanks his teacher by walking backward in a continuous salutation, always facing the sun as it moves across the sky. This is one of the mythological origin stories of Surya Namaskar.

The second moment is the one the pose is named for. Grown now, Hanuman has been sent by Lord Rama on an impossible mission: to find Sita, Rama’s beloved, who has been captured by the demon Ravana and taken to Lanka — what we now call Sri Lanka. He reaches the southern shore of India and faces the ocean. His companions look at him and say: You’re the only one who can make this crossing. He gathers himself and leaps.

But here’s the part of the story we tend to forget > Before taking the leap, Hanuman grows. He becomes as large as a mountain.

The crossing is not only horizontal — from shore to shore, from the past toward the future. It is also vertical. He expands upward, rising as he flies.

This is Hanumanasana. And this, I’d argue, is the real teaching of the pose — the one that gets lost when we’re trying to figure out whether our hamstrings will ever cooperate.

In the Pose

In the video below, there’s one moment I want to name before you practice, because it changes everything about how you approach the shape.

I cue my students to aim for about 80% of what they think their range can be. Not to hold them back — but because I’ve seen what happens when someone with a lot of flexibility in this pose simply sinks all the way to the floor: the energy crashes down with them. The legs do the thing. But the pose is flat. There is no Hanuman in it.

What I’m asking for instead is this: at whatever depth you find yourself, the lift matters more than the extension.

Engage the pelvic floor — Mula Bandha — and let energy rise from the root upward. Navel to the spine. Collarbones spread. Crown of the head toward the sky. The extension of that front leg is not a downward force. It is an upward-moving force. Like the leap: forward and up.

Not everyone can expand fully horizontally. But everyone can lift and expand vertically. That’s what the whole sequence is building toward — through Virasana, through the lunges, through the half-split — the capacity to find that upward quality before you even arrive in the full pose.

► 40 MIN PRACTICE: Hips & Lift to Hanumanasana — On Not Crashing to the Floor

All levels · Props: 2–3 blocks recommended

A Double Invitation:

On the mat: When you arrive at your version of Hanumanasana — whether that’s a half-split with a block or somewhere near the floor — try releasing the goal of depth for a moment. Ask instead: is something lifting? Am I finding the pelvic floor, spreading the collarbones, sending the gaze upward? If you have to come up two inches to find that quality, come up two inches. The pose will have more of Hanuman in it.

Off the mat: Transitions pull us horizontally. More directions, more demands, more doing. Summer, for a lot of us, is a shape that risks collapsing under its own openness.

Hanuman didn’t just leap across the ocean. He rose first. He was as large as a mountain before he reached the other shore.

As the school year ends and summer opens — where might you be asked to rise, not just spread?

Questions? Comments? I would love to hear from you!

What’s next? I'm bringing a small group to the Arcachon Bay in June 2027 — the corner of France where I grew up spending summers — for L'Être: a retreat in yoga, presence, and the kind of slowness the Atlantic makes possible. Registration opens September 2026. Get on the interest list.

About me: I'm Hélène — a French yoga teacher living in Westchester, NY, who came to this practice the way most people do: for a stiff back and a stressed-out nervous system. Somewhere along the way, yoga completely rearranged my life. I'm a 500-hour-certified teacher trained in Ashtanga and Katonah Yoga, and a 7-year student of Vedic meditation and philosophy — which is a fancy way of saying I am perhaps unreasonably passionate about ancient Indian texts. I share what I've learned as an outsider who became a devoted student: weaving philosophy, mythology, and movement together so your body and your understanding can grow in the same direction, at the same time.

The Embodied Journey — essays on yoga, wisdom, and becoming — is for practitioners who sense there’s something more to their practice than the flexibility gains, the stress relief, the one-hour studio class. Something the typical yoga experience isn’t quite touching.

Yoga is not about performing shapes. It’s about bringing curiosity and self-cultivation into your practice. That’s the whole premise of what I write here.

What You’ll Find Here

Most yoga in the West treats the practice as a fitness routine — a workout to check off your wellness list. I understand why. That’s how most of us arrived here, myself included (my back was hurting, and I was stiff — not a glamorous origin story, but an honest one).

But yoga was never meant to be just physical. It’s a whole system. A philosophy. A self-cultivation practice. A complete guide to being a human being that some very wise people spent thousands of years developing. And most of us are practicing only the stretchy part of it.

This is an essay-based publication, first and foremost — the writing is the thing. Twice a month, I write:

A long-form essay, beginning of the month — exploring a piece of yoga wisdom and how it shows up in the body and in life.

A shorter piece, mid-month — usually about a retreat, my own teaching, or whatever question keeps showing up in class.

Everything here sits within one of four threads I keep returning to:

• Wisdom & Philosophy — Vedic concepts, mythology, yogic philosophy, and how they apply to modern life.

• Embodied Practice — how that wisdom comes alive in the body: asana, breath, movement, sensation.

• Personal Transformation — the shift from seeing yoga as fitness to understanding it as self-discovery.

• Retreats — the themes we explore together, what a day actually looks like, and honest recaps once we’re back home.

When it’s useful, an essay comes with a short practice video (up to 15 minutes) — not a guided class, just a focused demonstration of whatever the essay is actually pointing at: a pose, a principle, a way of moving. It’s there to help the idea land in your body, not to stand alone.

Every quarter, I also host a live online class — a chance to practice together in real time. Details and sign-up here.

Your body and your understanding grow in the same direction, at the same time. That’s the whole idea.

Who This Is For

This publication is for you if…

• You’ve been practicing yoga for a while and sense there’s more beneath the surface than the typical studio class is offering

• You’re curious about the ancient wisdom, stories, and philosophy yoga was built on

• You’re drawn to the idea that movement can be a doorway to deeper self-understanding — and you’re open to exploring that

• You’re ready to experience yoga as the transformative practice it was always meant to be, not just a very good stretch

This is not a beginner’s guide to yoga poses. It’s for practitioners who already have some experience and are ready to go deeper — in both body and understanding.

A Bit About Me

Hi, I’m Hélène Roy — a yoga teacher, storyteller, and devoted student of Vedic wisdom living in Westchester, NY.

I’m French, originally from Bordeaux, and I moved to New York in 2009. I spent my 20s in hard-core finance (Bloomberg terminal, long hours, the works) and my 30s in development finance, which meant I was constantly on a plane. Somewhere in those years — through the intensity of building a career, and then the quieter but equally disorienting transition into motherhood in the suburbs — yoga became my anchor. Then my obsession. Then, in 2021, my life’s work.

I came to yoga through Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga — twelve years in a Mysore room gave me a strong foundation and taught me what a serious practice really means. Over the past two years, I’ve been studying the Katonah Yogamethodology — and training as a teacher in it — which brings a rich geometric and architectural intelligence to alignment and sequencing. Both paths matter to me, and both inform how I teach.

I’ve also spent seven years studying Vedic meditation and philosophy, and I am deeply — perhaps unreasonably — passionate about the ancient Indian texts. I’m not a scholar, and I didn’t grow up in this tradition — I’m a French woman who married an Indian man and fell in love with his culture’s ancient wisdom, through many trips to India and years of study and practice. I come to these teachings as an outsider who became a devoted student, and I share them as a bridge, not as an authority — which I think actually makes me better at translating them for people who, like me, arrived here from somewhere else entirely.

What’s Next

I’m bringing a small group to Arcachon Bay, France in June 2027 — the corner of France where I grew up spending summers — for Être (“Being” in French): a retreat in yoga, presence, and the kind of slowness the Atlantic makes possible. Registration opens September 2026 — get on the interest list.

(My November Catskills retreat, Moving Into Stillness, is fully booked — waitlist only.)

This isn’t a yoga fitness channel. It isn’t a mythology lecture series, either — although I will absolutely get excited about a good story.

It’s somewhere in between: a space where ancient wisdom becomes something you can feel in your body and carry with you beyond the mat.

I’m glad you’re here. If you have questions, drop them in the comments — I’d love to hear from you.

See you on the mat. 🙏

P.S. Every quarter, I host a live online class — a chance to practice together in real time. Details and sign-up here.