Compassion Is Action: What a Lizard on a Beach Taught Me About Love

I'm writing this from a place far from home, where the sand is hot enough to dance across and the afternoon air hums with insects. I came here to rest. What I didn't expect was to be reminded, so completely, of why I teach what I teach — and why compassion sits at the very heart of everything Inner Lifetime stands for.

Let me tell you about the lizard.

The man and my compassion for the lizard

He was walking the beach the way these men do, with a large, beautiful lizard draped over his arm — a creature so striking that people stop, point, gasp, reach for their phones. The arrangement is obvious: hold the animal, take a photo, hand over some money. The lizard is not a companion. It is a living prop, carried up and down a strip of sand in the heat, day after day, so that strangers can have a moment of novelty.

I don't agree with it. I never have. I've been an animal lover my whole life, and the sight of any creature being used for profit lands in me like a small grief.

Here's the thing, though. The Jade of a few years ago — the pre-yoga Jade — would have done what so many of us do. She would have felt a flicker of fear at the size of it, kept her distance, and quietly disapproved. She would have hoped, from afar, that the lizard was okay. She would have felt sorry. And then she would have walked on, carrying that low, helpless ache that comes from seeing something wrong and doing nothing.

This time was different. This time my arms went out before my mind could talk me out of it.

I held him. I drew him in close, right against my heart. And I quietly apologised — on behalf of all of humanity — for him being treated as a pawn, for being carried around as a thing to be photographed rather than a life to be honoured.

When the man reached for my phone to take the picture, I said no. I didn't want a photo. I wanted the lizard to know, in whatever way an animal can know such a thing, that for one moment he was loved. Not held for a transaction. Not held for a memory I could scroll past later. Held by someone who saw his worth, who valued his life every bit as much as I value my own.

And when I asked the man — gently — whether the lizard was loved and cared for, he grew uncomfortable and walked away. I don't think anyone asks him that very often.

"You're just enabling him" - Is this compassion?

Not everyone in my company agreed with what I did. Someone said, quite reasonably, you're just enabling that man. And I understand the argument. By holding the animal and paying for it, even without the photo, was I feeding the very thing I oppose?

I still don't agree with animals being used this way, and I'd change it in a heartbeat if I could. But I also believe in action over abstraction. The system that put that lizard on that beach is not something I could dismantle from where I was sitting — on the sand in the evening, watching the fire shows, everyone drinking, the music far too loud for a lizard to bear (and my heart ached at that thought). What I could do — the only meaningful action available to me in that exact moment — was hold him with love. So that's what I did.

And the conversation didn't stay between me and my own company. It opened up to some strangers we'd met that evening, and rather than picking a side they said, actually, I can see it from both views. I think that holds real power too. A debate that makes someone pause and genuinely consider another perspective is itself a kind of action — and I hope they carry that outlook forward with them long after the beach.

This is the part I most want you to hear, because it's the philosophy I've built a studio around.

Compassion is not sympathy

We use these words as though they're the same. They are not.

Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone/ something. It's looking at suffering from a safe distance and letting your heart ache. It's real, and it's human, but it asks nothing of you. You can feel deeply sympathetic and never move a single muscle.

Compassion is something else entirely. The word literally means to suffer with. It asks you to understand the situation, to put yourself in the other being's place — and then to do something. Even if the something is small. Even if the something won't fix the whole problem. Compassion without action is just sympathy wearing nicer clothes.

That's why I held the lizard rather than simply pitying him. The pity would have been about me — my discomfort, my disapproval, my need to feel like a good person. The action was about him.

The dogs, the geckos, and the bugs in the pool

It hasn't stopped with the lizard.

There are wild dogs here, the kind most people step around or shoo away as a nuisance. I've spoken to every single one of them. When the day is red-hot, I find them water. It costs me almostnothing and it might be the only kindness they receive all day. It might not.

I've befriended geckos and frogs. I talk to the birds and the flying ants. And I have lost count of the number of bugs I've fished out of the swimming pool — talking to them the whole time, helping them dry their wings, setting them down somewhere safe to recover.

The old me would have wrinkled her nose. Ew, a bug. Or, more comfortably, oh, it's just swimming, it's fine — that little story we tell ourselves so we don't have to act. But so often it isn't swimming, is it? So often it's drowning, and we look away because looking closely would oblige us to help.

Yoga changed how closely I'm willing to look.

A tree, a nest, and a thought about the stars

I had the luxury of being in the company of large rock with the most beautiful tree growing through it and around it— the kind of tree that stops you mid-step. One day I stood there just listening to all the life pouring out of it. And I decided to practise underneath it. No camera. No recording. Because here's the thing: as much as I was surrounded by breathtaking scenery, I wanted to be present. I wanted to soak the place in, not use it for a cute or aesthetic post. That never sits right with me — and honestly, if I did, would I be any different to the man with the lizard? Taking something alive and turning it into a prop for a picture? This is one of the many difficulties of promoting yoga, and having marketing that doesn't betray your yogic values.

So I just practised. And it turned out I'd set up right beneath a nest of birds, because throughout my hour, little fruits from the tree kept getting tossed down onto my head. After the first startled moment, I smiled. And then — rather than treat it as an inconvenience, rather than let some ego-voice insist that animals shouldn't disturb us — I welcomed it. Every little fruit that landed on me made me happy. Each one was nature reminding me it was there, and I felt so completely connected to it.

That's when the bigger thought arrived. It probably came from some children's film — A Bug's Life, something like that — where a single tree or a small patch of land is an insect's entire universe. I started wondering: what if they can only see so far? What if, just as we look up at the stars and feel something so vast it sits beyond our understanding or control — so we switch off — that's exactly how a bug feels in its own short life? What if their eyes see "stars" that are actually so much closer to them: a bird flying overhead at a blurry, impossible speed, a whole cosmos contained in one tree?

It sent me spinning, in the best way, into challenging my own outlook again. Because here is the paradox I keep landing on: we are all connected as nature — and yet we are also profoundly different, each of us bound by our own limits, our own narrow window on a world far bigger than we can perceive. Holding both of those truths at once feels, to me, like the beginning of real humility; another founding principle of Inner Lifetime.

Why small acts are never actually small

Here's what I'd ask you not to do: don't assume a small act of kindness makes no difference because it's small.

A cup of water for a thirsty dog. A bug lifted from the water and laid in the sun. A moment of genuine love offered to a frightened, exploited creature on a beach. On their own, each of these is tiny. But kindness doesn't work in isolation. If we all did this — if every one of us chose action over the comfortable shrug of sympathy — the cumulative power of those small acts would be enormous. They would stop being small. They would become a force that genuinely shifts the energy of the world we live in.

That's not wishful thinking. That's the whole principle quietly at work in a yoga practice: that what we do on the mat, in private, in the small moments no one sees, ripples outward into how we move through the world.

The flying ant that started all of this

I should tell you, really, that this whole post was inspired by a flying ant lol- stay with me.

I was sitting in the humid evening air with my laptop open, having decided to have a chilled evening in, after a huge downpour earlier in the day, and there it was — big, with a fat little belly and what I was sure was a sting. My first reaction was an honest squeal. But then I did what I've been doing with all the insects on this trip: I took a photo and asked AI what it was and whether it could hurt me. The answer, to my genuine surprise, was no — and in fact I haven't met a single bug or animal here (yet) that would attack unprovoked. (What a thing to discover.)

It was just coming out after the rain, in the heavy humid air, doing its thing. Minding its own business. Other than simply existing, it was doing absolutely nothing wrong.

So I went from sitting a careful metre away to letting them crawl on me and fly off again. And I sat there thinking — who AM I? This Jade never existed before yoga. And what a beautiful journey it is to be on. I'm so grateful that what started as empathy and a love for animals has grown into this: a true appreciation and love for the whole planet, and for existence itself.

What this has to do with yoga

People sometimes assume yoga is about flexibility, or fitness, or an hour of calm. It can be all of those things. But for me it has always been about connection — to my own body, to my breath, to people - both those unlike me and still holding compassion for them, and those who have similar values with whom I choose to spend my time with (literally over 90% of these peole are who I have met through the studio in Lincoln) AND increasingly... to every living thing that shares this planet with me.

Since finding yoga I have never felt more connected to nature. To plants. To bugs — yes, including spiders. To every animal that walks, crawls, flies, or swims here. The practice didn't just make me calmer; it dissolved the distance between me and everything else. It made it impossible to look away. The reality is, things we don't understand can feel scary and unsettling, but it just takes. a few inward questions abiut what it is and before you know it, that fear and unsettled feeling can shift.

Compassion is one of the founding principles of Inner Lifetime, and I don't mean it as a soft, decorative word. I mean it as a daily, sometimes inconvenient, sometimes uncomfortable practice. Understanding the situation. Stepping into another's experience. And then — always — taking whatever action is available to you, however small. To people - a hug, an ear, a smile - to anything else, anything that helps encourage connection as opposed to the egoic driven idea of separation that our western world encourages.

The lizard didn't get freed that day. The man walked off uncomfortable and likely will choose to not remember this, the system unchanged. But for one moment on a hot beach, a creature used as a prop was held by someone who saw him, valued him, and loved him.

That moment was real. And I have to believe he felt the difference. I certainly did,

I hope you've enjoyed reading this - it has been an emotonal process even writing this. I can smile at that, and without thinking myself 'silly' or 'ridiculous' - it is who I am and I am holding myself with compassion.

I hope you can all do the same to yourself, to your fellow humans, and to every other bit of life that shares this planet with us.