Category Archives: pleasure

pleasure

What’s the Invisible Ingredient That Yoga Schools Offer?

Posted on April 9, 2013 | Leave a comment

 

I think yoga schools miss the crucial bit of information in their advertising that explains why yoga class attendance can be so enticing. It’s not because of building a body beautiful. And not because all stresses will be dissolved in the arms of savasana (yoga relaxation) at the end of each class. And, it’s not even because any annoying ailments or injuries with which you arrived will miraculously be cured by doing yoga postures.

The thing that is so enrolling about good yoga schools is invisible, in a way. It happens over time, but doesn’t even take that long.

It makes you feel good about yourself, the school, the teachers, and yoga.

You encounter it in other domains in your life, potentially many of them. And, this special thing gives meaning, purpose, and direction.

I was thinking about this special thing as I was teaching my class yesterday evening in the Yoga Shed, as I watched people chatting at the beginning of the session, setting up their mat-stations.

I was thinking about it as I (apparently) lost control of the group at various junctions when amusing comments were made – some by myself, some by others – demonstrating the importance of levity in yoga teaching.

I especially noticed it at the end of the class, when people slowly, peacefully roused themselves from savasana, then sat with hands in namaste and connected in the spirit of good will, silently.

Of course the thing I’m talking about is community and being a yoga family.

 

 

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Posted in community, Health, pleasure, Yoga teaching 

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Practice Makes Pleasure

Posted on April 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

Source: yoga.in via Allied on Pinterest

 

I can tell when students in my classes have taken up doing home practice. I’m such an old hand at figuring this out that I can even guess at how many practices a week they do.

What is it that gives them away? Well, these students are continuously improving in their poses. How quickly they evolve is in direct relationship to how much personal practice they do.

Another thing is the high level of attention these yoga practitioners have when they attend classes. I can see their minds ticking over and mentally filing away individual poses to try on later or even the whole sequence of the class.

A great place to get the content for practising on your own is from your regular class(es). When I attended classes at the Iyengar Institute in Poona, we paid for and did six sessions a week over a month’s period. Then, as a bonus, you could pay a little more and do an extracurricular practice each day when the yoga room was populated with serious practitioners, as well as the Iyengar family and other teachers.

Mr. Iyengar would be watching like a hawk to see if what you’d been taught in the public classes translated to what you did in your own practice.

If your memory isn’t so great, rather than try to remember the whole class program, just take away a few poses that intrigue you, either because they are challenging or because they are novel.

The expression ‘practice makes perfect’ doesn’t necessarily fit with yoga philosophy. But a good outcome from the work you do on your own might be that your level of enjoyment and interest is such that ‘practice makes practice attractive’. Then, you’re truly hooked!

 

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Posted in Philosophy, pleasure, Yoga practice, yoga sequence, Yoga teaching 

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Do You Have a Guru?

Posted on April 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

IMG_1918_3

I have a guru. One who I didn’t actively seek out as a teacher.

He happens to be my husband. He’s a perfect guru, too. You know someone who throws you back on your own resources and holds a mirror up to you so you can see your own reflection.

Most people don’t like to look in the mirror and I’m no exception. However, how else are you going to see how beautiful you are?

In December last year Daniel suggested a sponto* trip to South Island, New Zealand. I mumbled something about bad timing and expense, but it turned out to be absolutely The Best Thing and good for our relationship.

I dragged my feet when he suggested we get a 5-day pass to the Byron Bluesfest, from which we’ve just returned. And again, it was fabulously fun – music, dancing, rain, mud, and more music and dancing.

Surrender to your guru if you have a good one.

*Aussie for spontaneous.

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Posted in Humour, pleasure, Wisdom

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Here Today, Maybe Not Tomorrow

Posted on March 26, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’m getting far too good at stopping and smelling the roses. That’s the price I pay to be semi-retired, living in the country. What does semi mean anyway?

I took a small detour on my way to yoga practice this morning to admire and photograph the heavy mists hanging all around our property.

Misty am

And then, I found myself attracted to the tibouchina that was just bloomin’ its heart out.

Tibouchina

Of course, the brugmansia stopped me in my tracks, too.

Brugmansia

Finally, just when I thought I was going to get into the Yoga Shed, the butcher bird caught my attention. I didn’t record him, but I found a youtube video for you to listen to:

Sometimes mindfulness happens in little soundbites, or, as Henri Cartier-Bresson said:

We… deal in things which are continuously vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth can make them come back again.

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Posted in Nature, pleasure, Wisdom, Yoga practice

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How Do You Say ‘Alert and Relaxed’ in Sanskrit?

Posted on March 17, 2013 | Leave a comment

 

Do you shut down in yoga class when your teacher uses Sanskrit words and concepts? Or, are you the opposite? You relish the opportunity to extend your learning about yoga, even to the point of assimilating an unfamiliar language.

Probably you stand in the middle; you don’t mind a smattering of the Sanskrit but not so much it keeps you in your head. That’s the position I occupied until last year when I decided – okay, I’ve been into yoga for 40-plus years – about bloody time I studied Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra.

I’m a late bloomer in so many ways; it’s one of the advantages of living a long life!

So, study I did and now that I’ve grasped some of the philosophy of yoga a la Mr. P. (as one of the students calls the Old Sage), I’m sharing what I’m learning in my classes. I even had the audacity to create a Patanjali study group, which has been meeting on Saturday afternoons.

Here are a couple of key concepts from Sutra II-46:

Sthira-sukham asanam

Asana must have the dual qualities of alertness and relaxation.

Various Patanjali interpreters have widely differing meanings for the above concepts. B.K.S. Iyengar is characteristically expressive in his comments in Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali:

Whatever asana is performed, it should be done with a feeling of firmness, steadiness and endurance in the body; goodwill in the intelligence of the heart, and awareness and delight in the intelligence of the heart…. Performance of the asana should be nourishing and illuminative.

Oh my! How’s a yoga teacher supposed to convey all of that?

I was very heartened to hear from one of the study group students that she felt her yoga had transformed along the lines of sthira and sukha since she’d been attending my general classes.

Something’s working :)

 

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Posted in Philosophy, pleasure, Wisdom, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Yoga teaching 

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The Big Wet

Posted on March 3, 2013 | Leave a comment

“If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

Australia is a crazy place to reside climate-wise. We live between drought and flood, cyclone and dust storms, biting arctic winds in the extreme south and near-equatorial heat in the far north.

Our household on Mitchells Island has been under a heavy blanket of rain over the last few days. I cancelled the Patanjali study class yesterday because I thought the students might have trouble getting in and out, with water levels rising.

Our local waterfront cafe has been flooded, not as bad as the inundation of 2011, but still, it’s closed for business for the next while.

Our beach is covered once again with sticky foam and seaweed, plus driftwood, washed down from the Manning River.

Our closest town is experiencing moderate flooding from the same river and workers are out in force with truckloads of sandbags.

You might wonder how there can be any bright spot on the horizon with such dismal weather. Well, there are always surprises living in the country.

I woke this morning to the sound of bellowing cattle, so I grabbed my camera because I had an idea about what might be happening. The herd had gotten marooned on the wrong side of Farmer Scott’s pastures and were complaining loudly as they forded the flooded paddock.

Swimming Cows

Then, I spotted a shy pheasant coucal on the wet lawn and when it took off, I captured it in flight!

Pheasant Coucal

Finally, as I was leaving to get out of the wind and slashing rain, I spotted a lone white-faced grey heron….

White-faced Heron

Opening up to a weather pattern, not resisting it, can be seen as another yoga practice – simple mindfulness.

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Posted in Nature, pleasure, Yoga teaching 

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A Sutra a Day: IV-28 – Valentine’s Every Day

Posted on February 13, 2013 | Leave a comment

Heart_illo

Illustration by Gretta Kool

By the time some of you read this post, you may already be in trouble. Did you remember that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and did you plan accordingly? Gifts of flowers, chocolates, sweet and sincere cards are expected by many people. Like all expectations, if you don’t meet them, you may be up a creek.

To put this love holiday in perspective, it’s an American import to Australia, much like Halloween. Many down-to-earth Aussies may prefer not to play the Valentine’s game and express romantic love at other times and in other ways.

What is love anyway?

I’ve been reading Love 2.0 by Barbara Fredrickson, professor of psychology and leading scholar in the ‘positivity’ field, who puts a new twist on love. Our idea that love is a stable quality makes it likely that love will become perfunctory. Rather, she suggests that love consists of ‘micro-moments of connection between people – even strangers. Coming to a new appreciation of what love is has the potential to transform our lives as we then extend it to all of humanity – including ourselves.’

Is this so far from Patanjali’s wisdom? Maybe not. He advises us to eliminate the kleshas (afflictions), especially avidya (ignorance of our true nature).

Our true nature is open, unlimited, free, conscious, self-luminous, and self-evident.  This is our moment by moment experience, although we may not be aware of it. – From  - The Transparency of Things by Rupert Spira

Patanjali’s designed a how-to book on meditation so we can become fully-expressed, authentic human beings. Barbara Fredrickson’s book comes at it differently, but nevertheless her book is an aid to strengthen our capacity to more truly connect to ourselves and others, on-goingly and not just on Valentine’s Day.

Hanamesam kleshavaduktam

The removal of these (pratyayas) is prescribed like the destruction of the kleshas.*

*Four Chapters on Freedom, commentary on Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Satyananda Paramahamsa.

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Posted in community, Dhyana, Philosophy, pleasure, Wisdom, Yoga practice, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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A Sutra a Day: IV-17 – The Object of Your Affection

Posted on January 30, 2013 | Leave a comment

D&EEngagementToday is my husband and my nineteenth marriage anniversary. (The above photo accompanied our wedding invitations. We both had more hair then.)

Last year we forgot all about celebrating until the day before. Daniel saved the occasion by arranging a seaplane trip to Noah’s restaurant on the northern beaches. A profligate save, but an unforgettable one!

This year, while not overlooking the event, we thought and thought about what to do, and came up with the idea of going out to a local restaurant later this week.

Obviously it’s become not such a big deal now that we have longevity in our relationship. Every year, though, we have renewed our 11 marriage promises to each other. Here’s a sample:

I promise to create our marriage as beautiful, loving and joyful day by day.

‘Beautiful, loving, and joyful’ is not that easy to do, as you veterans of long marriages would know, because you will fall into taking-for-granted conduct. You think you really know your partner; and over the years, you develop a sort of behaviour of emotional shorthand, that is, unless there’s an effort to keep diving more deeply into relationship. The question is: are you willing to keep getting to know newly the person walking this committed path with you?

Do we ever know people or even ourselves? I can honestly say I don’t know Daniel completely and, at the same time, I love him more than ever.

Taduparagapeksitvac cittasya vastu jnatajnatam

An object is known or unknown dependent on whether or not the mind gets coloured by it.*

*The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, translation and commentary by Sri Smami Satchidananda.

 

 

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Posted in Philosophy, pleasure, Wisdom, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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A Very Wise Country! (and, a Patanjali pause)

Posted on January 13, 2013 | Leave a comment

Source: sunset.com via Sharon on Pinterest

 

Australia as a country presents as laid-back, the home of a ‘no worries’ culture, and at no time more so than December-January.

It used to be the case that the whole place closed down from the time the kids got out of school (mid-Dec.) until they went back (early Feb.). Restaurants closed for long breaks (unless they were at coastal holiday destinations); small shop owners packed up their families and set out for caravan park vacations; tradesmen, hard to pin down at the best of times, hung out their ‘gone fishing’ signs, and meant it.

I came from the Super Power country with the Protestant work ethic, so it took me a little while to get in the easy-going Aussie groove. Even though some Australians have gone the American way, I’m still practising being lackadaisical. From another standpoint, I’m recharging my batteries.

Now that our January intensive yoga week is complete, Daniel and I are heading north for a week of Camp Creative fun, followed by a week of Sydney festival amusements. I couldn’t help myself, though. I am going to teach a couple of workshops on the Gold Coast Jan. 19 & 21.

I’ll be putting a bookmark in my Patanjali’s Sutra project for a while (hey, only 19 Sutra to go to be complete). But, I will stay in touch to let you know how our holidaying/yoga goes in the far north.

Post Script: The other thing in which Australia shows up for me as wise and even leaderful is the fact that it has legislated a carbon tax. Good on ‘ya, Prime Minister Julia and team!

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A Sutra a Day: IV-4 – All Together on 31 December

Posted on December 31, 2012 | Leave a comment
282812051571436347_HGFsZzEe_c

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

source: flicker.com via Gwen on Pinterest

December 31st is an occasion to which many people assign great meaning. It’s not really inherently significant – it’s just another day.  But we seem to agree that the last day of the year signifies an ending and, because we have the opportunity to complete something, that makes it meaningful.

I live in a small community consisting of three couples and for many years we’ve sat down together on New Year’s Eve and shared the accomplishments and sometimes even failures of the previous year. It’s such an interesting exercise to troll through one’s year to acknowledge victories and defeats and then just let them go as a way of emptying out for a new year.

The six of us have contributed so much to each other in our separate-and-together journeys to become conscious individuals. What we have created in terms of a unique living situation, the support in fulfilling projects we are passionate about and just plain enjoyment would have been impossible without each other’s input.

What I love about New Year’s Eve is the way the whole planet will light up with revelry, camaraderie, music, dance and, of course, fireworks. You can see this on television, in your own backyard, or ,as I will, on the banks of the Manning River.

This evening I did a mindfulness meditation practice which reminded me that time is like a flowing river: no water passes your way twice. Moments never pass you by again either, so please, on the cusp of 2013, cherish every moment that life gives you and have a wonderful New Year!

Nirmana-cittani-asmita-matrat

Individual consciousness develops only in contact with another individual consciousness.*

*The Essence of Yoga – Reflections on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Bernard Bouanchaud.

 

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Posted in community, pleasure, Wisdom, Yoga practice, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

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