Movement conditions the body. Stillness conditions the mind. When the body and mind are in harmony, movement and stillness condition each other.
– Master Nan Huai-chin
Originally from Hong Kong, Jesse is a zen practitioner, vinyasa practitioner and a scholar of postcolonial literatures. Her interests include decolonisation, culture and spirituality. She is a registered yoga teacher and received her training from Andiappan Yoga, a lineage of traditional yoga based on Thirumoolar’s teachings and yoga therapy from Chennai, India.
Yoga is a tradition that offers different modes of storytelling and inquiry. Vinyasa yoga is one that uses an embodied practice to enliven the human experience. Zen is one that uses a direct method to invite the non-discursive mind. Both activate sympathetic joy and equanimity.
‘Zen’ originated from what Patanjali called ‘dhyan’, the seventh limb of yoga in the Yoga Sutra. Meaning meditation or absorption,‘dhyan’ became ‘chan’ [禪] when the Indian monk Bodhidharma arrived in China in the 5th century CE. It then became ‘zen’ when it arrived in Japan in the 13th century. Dogen developed it into the Soto Zen tradition, which Jesse practices.
Zen and yoga are two sides of the same coin. They are spiritual practices for the heart, body and mind. To share her sadhana, Jesse designed a style of yoga called ‘zen vinyasa’. In the class, she combines a dynamic flow with various meditative practices from buddhist, yogic and taoist traditions. She practises taichi from the tianzhen lineage.
Jesse is the founder of Yoga at Girton, an initiative that introduces yoga as a lifestyle in 2022. She is a trained first aider with the British Red Cross, and a mental health first aider. She has previously taught at non-profit organisations serving lower-income women, mothers of SEN children and addiction-recovering communities, also in tech companies and colleges in Cambridge.