Mindset at the round table

I’ve been watching The Celebrity Traitors, and somewhere between the suspicion, the accusations and the increasingly questionable poker faces, I started thinking about yoga.

Because really, The Traitors is a giant experiment in the power of the mind. Put a group of people together, give them incomplete information and introduce uncertainty, and watch how quickly the brain starts filling in the gaps.

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One person became convinced that he had been “picked off” and that he was a target. There was very little he could actually know for certain, but once that thought took hold, everything around him started to look like evidence. A glance, a conversation, someone's behaviour... suddenly it all fitted the story.

And then there was the group itself. They made quick, immediate decisions about who they trusted. Someone seemed honest, genuine and trustworthy, so that became the story. A few days later, the very same people were convinced that the honesty couldn't possibly be real and voted them out on suspicion of being a Traitor.

What fascinated me most was that some people knew this person was trustworthy. Their instinct was telling them something different, but they were influenced by the group and voted against what they themselves believed. Afterwards, they were genuinely shocked by what had happened. How did I let myself be persuaded?

And this is where I think yoga gets really interesting. We often think of yoga as something we do with our bodies, but so much of the practice is about becoming aware of the mind — noticing our thoughts, assumptions, reactions and stories without immediately treating them as facts.

Think about balancing in Tree Pose. You wobble and the mind might immediately say, I'm rubbish at balance. Suddenly, the wobble isn't just a wobble anymore. It's evidence.

But what if you simply noticed: I'm wobbling. That tiny shift creates space.

Yoga doesn't teach us to think positively all the time, or to override our instincts. It teaches us to become curious about our experience. To notice when we're reacting, when we're being influenced, when fear is filling in the blanks, and when we're perhaps holding too tightly to a story we have created.

A thought is not necessarily a fact. A feeling is not necessarily a prediction. And sometimes our certainty deserves a little curiosity.

Some days the most confident statements I hear from people are;

I can’t do yoga, I’m not flexible enough

Everyone else will know what they’re doing except me

If I can't do the full pose, I'm not really doing yoga

You don't talk like that thankfully. Maybe you had those false beliefs years ago, before you began to Do Your OM Thing. I see you each week... I see that one of the most useful things we practise on the mat is learning to pause before you decide what something means. Look at what happens when we give ourselves the chance to be curious. We discover that our bodies can change. Our confidence can grow. Things that once felt impossible can become possible. We become a little less certain about what we can’t do, and much more open to what we might be able to do.

And the people around us matter too. The Traitors shows us how quickly a group can make us doubt ourselves; people literally voted against their own instincts because everyone around them was telling them a different story.

I like to think our yoga community can do the opposite. Spend time with people who remind you what you can do. People who celebrate the wobble rather than judge it, make space for you exactly as you are, and quietly encourage you to trust yourself a little more. Week after week, we practise together, and perhaps some of those old stories start to lose their grip.

Maybe that’s part of the magic of practising together: we don't just discover more of what is possible for ourselves, we help each other see it too.

No banishment required.

See you every Wednesday 7.30- 8.45pm @ Hove Methodist Church or from hOMe via zoom. Click here for class details

xo Rosie