My Story

Hello there!

So you found me, but that begs the question:

Who were you looking for?

It’s not a trick question

Some people know me as Tom the cook.

Some people know me as Tom the Yoga teacher

Although those two things might seem quite separate they are wholly intertwined.

I have been a cook for most of my life. Mostly in London which is not just where I live, it’s where I’m from. Cooking led me to yoga and I’ve practised yoga for a long time since then.

I began cooking in earnest in the early nineteen nineties. I was part of a movement that came to be known as Modern British. Much of this movement came to prominence in pubs like The Eagle in London, where I worked for ten years.

A lot of Modern British menus had a strong Mediterranean accent back then. Inspired by the cooking of French bistros or Italian Osteria, as opposed to starchy restaurants. The emphasis was firmly on good things, presented without fuss or fanfare.

What unites all the above is a celebration of simplicity. Food served to nourish and delight rather than impress or befuddle. And it’s caught on in a big way. In twenty - first century Britain you don’t have to go far to find a small kitchen, serving a short, ingredient - led menu. It might still be in a pub or a restaurant but these days it could easily be a pop-up in a shipping container or a kiosk in a food hall. And it needn’t have a label like Modern British. It might not want to be defined as anything.

At the beginning of this century UK food production began to diversify at speed. Small scale farmers and producers started selling their thing to home cooks as well as chefs: first via a proliferation of farmer’s markets and indie alternatives to big supermarkets and then online. Newspapers and magazines started asking cooks like me to help people buy and cook it at home. Writing gave me a profile and, with it, the confidence to open my own place.

In 2007 three friends and I opened a small British Bistro at number 32 Great Queen Street, in the middle of London. Now you know a bit about me it won’t surprise you to learn that we decided the address would do just fine as a name (although nobody ever remembered the 32 part). We served a short, daily changing menu championing small scale producers and seasonal ingredients. We were good at this and a lot of people came along to enjoy it..

The switch from being ‘just a a cook’ to someone who owned a successful business made me very anxious and - around that time - a friend suggested that I try yoga to help with my nerves. I knew nothing about yoga and, if I’m honest, I thought it all seemed a bit strange. But I did what I was told.

I’m very glad I did because yoga quickly began to have a profound effect on my physical and mental well-being. Like all the best things in the world, including good food, yoga is life-enhancing.

It started small. After all, in those days I had almost no control over my hours and had to fit “a little bit of yoga” into whatever gap I could find in my schedule.

‘Mysore style’ or, to use its real name, self - practice Astanga Yoga, just happened to fit this gap perfectly. The Mysore method teaches you self sufficiency. You don’t need to be free at the same time each week for a class. All you need is enough space and time for a practice.

Astanga Yoga London, where I first practiced, where I still practice, is entirely dedicated to teaching this method. You can read more about the method here

It soon became clear to me clear that for the method too work its magic, I had to treat it like a kind of therapy. Not a sport or a skill that I could master but a form of healing.

To this day I still approach my yoga mat saying to myself : “never forget it’s therapy”.

This isn’t always easy to remember, especially in the beginning because it does feel a bit sporty and you feel clumsy. You want to be “better” at it. But if you can keep your practice free of goals or achievements then it simply allows you to show up and do something without worrying about how it’s going or how ‘well’ you’re doing it.

It felt a bit like medicine. Take x 1 practice a day.

That was why I started doing it every day.

Soon it began to have an effect on the rest of my day. As I became less of a slave to anxiety it drastically improved my approach to work and the environment in the kitchen.

The’ little bit of Yoga’ was growing. It’s slightly funny to look back at this time in my life because although I knew that the practice was improving my mental and physical health, I still saw it as something very munch separate from my work.

I had an acute awareness that the practice came from a spiritual tradition. The people teaching it to me seemed very spiritual as well. On the other hand, I saw myself as anything but spiritual. I’d been an avowed atheist most of my life. I had a restaurant which served naughty, very ‘non yogi’ things like meat, fish and booze.

There were lots of ethical considerations within that framework. Some were about the environment, others about animal welfare or workers rights but I mostly saw my work as being about giving people a really good time without it costing the earth (no pun intended).

I now believe with all my heart and soul that anything which is offered up in the right spirit is actually a spiritual practice. It could be your life’s work; which is not to say it has to be the work you do for a living. Most of us have at least one job which is not our actual job, parenting being just one example.

For me the lines between life and work were a bit blurred anyway. Cooking has always been right at the centre of my life. Ask most cooks why they do it and they will tell you they simply love feeding people. I know I do. For much of my career I also cooked as a volunteer on the side. In many ways this was the most rewarding part of my life’s work. I say this not to humble - brag but because it had a profound impact on my beliefs about food and wellbeing.

I grew up in a family that had communal cooking at its heart. In my very early years we lived with my paternal grandparents. My grandad was a Methodist minister. He ran a large church and youth club in London’s Walworth. My grandmother cooked there. She’d trained to be a Cordon Bleu cook but her path changed when she became a minister’s wife. I can still remember getting under her feet, but never getting told off for it, in the big refectory kitchen at the church. Years later I would become very familiar with community kitchens of another kind.

For ten years I volunteered with an organisation called the Food Chain. As a gay man living in London through the height of the HIV / AIDS Pandemic, I felt a strong desire to do something, anything, to support those affected. I knew how to cook and I’ve always done so with the belief that food can make most situations at least a little bit better.

The Food Chain delivered meals and hampers to people at home, some of whom were otherwise totally isolated, whether through illness, prejudice or both. The Food Chain was a weekend service and we were under no illusion that the meals alone could change the course of someone’s prognosis. The meals were more about human contact and emotional support than anything. The food we cooked followed mostly mainstream nutritional guidelines and we received regular training on the subject. For the first time in my life I also learned about using diet as a complimentary therapy. I was learning a lot about nutrition from the point of view of scientists, some of whom provided training to volunteers.

At the same time I was learning the other kind of science that comes with cooking for a living. The kind that was once known rather anachronistically as ‘domestic science’. Perhaps a better description is kitchen science. This is how a chef learns why bread rises and how not to split mayonnaise.

Some of this is down to physics and chemistry. But in any kitchen worth its salt there is another kind of wisdom shared along the way. A wisdom as old as the hills and therefore timeless.

This wisdom teaches us about the more subtle, nurturing properties of food. Some of it has roots in herbal medicine. Some of it is more homely. You might connect to this knowledge by way of Ayurveda in India, Cucina Povera in the Mediterranean, or maybe your Grandmother’s stove. This kind of wisdom might prescribe peppermint for unsettled tummies. Bitter greens in winter for dulled palettes and sluggish circulation. Stocks and broths to ward off the cold and a cup of tea for a broken heart. The fact that all of this is mostly anecdotal only seems to add to its magic. The irony is that the older the advice, the less it seems to end up being debunked by modern research.

In the twenty first century this timeless wisdom rubs shoulders with something that’s got increasingly “shouty” over the past few years. It has its roots in both popular and nutritional science. You could call it Populist Nutrition.

Nutritional research, like all the sciences, has expanded and diversified at an astonishing speed in the last few decades. This has led to the most amazing discoveries about our bodies and how to feed them.

But the speed of some of this progress can be bewildering for many people. Ideas go in and out of favour so quickly that outdated messages can stick around, leading to conflicting advice.

When you add the internet and social media into this mix it amplifies and intensifies all the above. ideas about food and health which were once considered fringe or radical can suddenly appear to be mainstream. Meanwhile, decades of food scares and scandals have made people suspicious of advice they regard as mainstream.

Perhaps you’ve been confused by some or all of this. Maybe you’ve wondered if you get enough vitamins or minerals or which supplements you should be taking.

Perhaps you’re not sure what is really meant by the concept of “superfoods” or if you eat enough of them.

Perhaps you have been confused by the term ‘wellness’ .

Perhaps you worry that some foods are actually making you unwell. You may have asked yourself if you have allergies or intolerances you didn’t know about before.

You may have been tempted to try any number of diets over the years . Paleo, keto, rainbow, raw…to name but a few.

Perhaps you worry about the ethics or environmental impact of your diet.

If any of the above seems familiar, you’re not alone.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of great research out there about diet and health but it is often very difficult to separate sensible advice from wild claims. It’s not always easy to tell the difference between moderate eating plans and extreme diets.

The people most vulnerable to this confusion are often those who are most interested in their health. And I’ve met a lot of these people, because yoga people are definitely interested in their health.

These days I talk more about how I cook and eat and how it helps keep me - and my practice - happy, healthy and sustainable.

After a lot of curiosity about what other people had to say I’ve learned that hidden amongst the most of the populist messages is the same, timeless advice that I’ve encountered throughout my life’s work. As a restaurant chef, as a volunteer cook, as a home shopper and a home cook. Ive learned to trust this advice and I have found the voice with which to share it.

I speak from thirty years of experience as a cook…

For most of those I’ve been a yoga student.

If I’ve learned anything over the decades it’s this:

Nothing beats the old motto : everything in moderation.

This motto is handy in the kitchen but it can help you on the yoga mat as well.

How to strike this balance in the kitchen and on the mat has become my life’s work and hopefully this website will help me to share it with you.

I run a Mysore self practice programme, near to where I live, focusing on small numbers to ensure everyone gets the kind of help I’ve been given in my own practice. Both Astanga Yoga London and Oru Space have a strong commitment to making the practice accessible and affordable. My years in hospitality make me quite uniquely qualified to help shift workers or those with long, unpredictable hours create a sustainable and nurturing practice. I can run workshops or classes for you and your staff at a time and venue to suit. If you’re looking to practice with me click here.

Cooking to support my own practice has also led me to start cooking for yoga retreats and workshops. I also run my own workshop called Astanga Yoga, A Recipe for Life. Click here if you want to know more about my food philosophy or if you are thinking of hiring me as a cook.

Thanks for reading!

Tom