The Breath, the Beach, and the Woo
India Williams – a different kind of yoga
She has taught yoga in a rice paddy in northern Thailand, led a pilgrimage across India, and lives off-grid on a small farm with her husband. She is also a musician. But most mornings, at eight o’clock, you will find India Williams in the studio at the Gallivant, teaching the day’s flow class.
She is easy company from the first minute, warm and quick to laugh, and the room loosens a little around her. What stays with you is her range. She moves from the practicalities of running her teaching team to the philosophy underneath it, the breath, the nervous system, what meditation actually is, and never once makes you feel you should have arrived knowing more. I turned up knowing almost nothing about yoga, and less than that about its more spiritual side, and came away having learned a surprising amount.
You’ve taught for six years and run the wellness programme here for the last three. It feels like more than a hotel usually offers.
That’s the aim. People expect the class to be quite basic, and we try to give studio-quality classes instead, which can be unusual for a hotel. We’re six resident teachers on the daily schedule, each with their own style. It’s the thing I care about most, honestly.
In summer a lot of that moves out of the studio and onto the sand. What changes when you teach on the beach?
Everything. In the studio we play music, partly because wherever you are there’s outside noise to cover. On the beach you’ve just got the sea and the wind, and somehow that’s one less distraction rather than one more. People go deeper out there. The sand changes the practice physically, too. The ground is less dense, so some postures get harder, downward dog especially, because there’s less to push against. But a lot of the people who come to us are middle-aged or older, and knees can be a problem. On sand there’s a soft surface to sink into, so a kneeling lunge that would hurt on a hard floor becomes comfortable. It’s a different practice entirely.
You also run a strand of classes built around the lunar cycle, which I’ll admit left me completely lost. What’s the thinking behind them?
I’m full of the woo, I should warn you. That side of things was there from the start, three years ago, though we’ve pared it right back since. The full moon class has stayed, and Katie teaches it. A full moon is a time of illumination, the most light we receive, and in nature it’s a time of high energy, when animals are livelier.
As people get more present through yoga, they get more sensitive to all of that too, so the class is partly about settling the nervous system. Katie themes each one around where the moon is sitting astrologically that month. Even the class names come from the old names for the moons, the strawberry moon in June and so on, mostly the Native American ones, because those are the names still in use.
That mix of the practical and the mystical seems to run through everything. For several winters you’ve also been teaching abroad, training new teachers in Thailand. How does teaching teachers differ from teaching the rest of us?
Completely. You’re showing people how to teach, not just how to practise, and there’s lecturing too, yoga philosophy and the rest. The classes are three hours, very deep, and you spend a whole month with one group, so it gets intense. This winter I did something different and led a pilgrimage to India instead, which is gentler, more of a yoga holiday with a spiritual intention, visiting places that matter in the tradition, with shorter morning classes much like the ones here.
You and your husband have moved off-grid since. Has that changed how much you can travel?
It has. We run a small farm now, and the long Thailand winters have come to an end because the flights are just too long to be away for months. When I was out there I still did all the admin from a distance, which was plenty.
And alongside all of this you make music, under the name India Blue. Tell me about that.
I’m a songwriter. Independent, not signed, not making much from it, but it’s my passion. I used to spend a lot of the summer touring, but the farm has meant taking a year off performing. I’m recording an album instead, with a friend who has a home studio in Hastings, and the idea is to tour again next year.
You don’t record in London?
I try never to go. I’m a country person. London is only an hour on the train, but it feels thousands of miles away, and I find it overwhelming. I’ll go in for a concert and come straight back.
For someone who has never done yoga and finds the whole thing a little intimidating, where would you tell them to start?
The simplest thing is your breath. You’re doing it all day anyway, and nobody around you will know. Even at a desk, count four breaths in and four out. That alone slows everything down, makes you more present, and settles the nervous system, which most of us badly need.
The mistake beginners make in a class is thinking they have to nail every step. The breath matters far more than the shape. So much of yoga is built around it, you lift your arms as you breathe in and fold forward as you breathe out, and once you feel that happening on its own, a lot of the panic of keeping up just goes. People think yoga is about the postures. It’s about the breath. The postures are only there to help you breathe better.
There’s something generous in that, handing people the tools to manage without you.
There’s a difference between instructing and teaching, and both have their place, but teaching people to do it for themselves is the most valuable thing you can give them, especially beginners, or anyone living somewhere without good studios. If they can do it alone, they can do it anywhere, travelling, or when they can’t afford a class. So we always explain why we’re doing what we’re doing, not just call out the next move.
That insistence on quality must shape who you bring in to teach alongside you.
It does. The landscape has changed. You can train as a teacher for ninety-nine pounds online now, and while some of those courses are good, a lot of trainings have been watered down. It shows, too. People go to classes and get hurt, or can’t breathe properly, because the teacher doesn’t understand the anatomy. So when I bring someone in, I want substance.
Andy Gill is, to my mind, the finest teacher in Hastings. He’s been at it twenty years, and the fact that he isn’t a big name on social media tells you nothing about how good he is. We also had John Stirk down, who’s taught for over fifty years. He led a slow, restorative class, the kind where you barely move for two hours, and it was extraordinary. If every class someone takes here is good, they’ll remember the whole place that way.
Your own current preoccupation sounds gentler still.
It is. It’s a practice called yoga nidra, the yoga of sleep, which I’m training to teach. It’s almost like being guided into a very deep rest. You lie down and I talk you down into it. I’ve been doing it every day and it’s been a godsend, because it forces me to stop and do nothing. We’re so bad at that now. Nobody’s ever bored any more, and being bored is half the point. That’s when the interesting things turn up.
We finish where these conversations always do. If you were a guest here with a free day, how would you spend it?
I’d do the morning yoga, of course, and go to the other teachers’ classes; I love being taught. Then I’d have the vegan breakfast, because the croissants here are wonderful. If the weather were kind I’d walk the coast into Rye, along the beach and through the golf course, about forty-five minutes, and stop for a hot chocolate at Knoops, which began in Rye before it went everywhere. And I’ll let you in on my secret, though I’d rather it stayed one.
In the Rye visitors’ centre there’s a tiny arcade of old seaside games. You put in a pound, get six old pennies, and spend them on the puppet show and the little pinball machines. It’s the loveliest thing. Then I’d come back, curl up in the Snug with a book, and order something good. Even on a wet day, that’s a perfect one.
If you have a question for India you can contact her at india@maingalli.wonderwebsite.co.uk
