The Yoga Life: A Good Time and Maybe a Long Time

The Yoga Life: A Good Time and Maybe a Long Time

Around our house we are septuagenarians and sexagenarians who love yoga and do it regularly. The five of us have also been doing yoga for a combined total of about 150 years. Because of our enthusiasm for the discipline of yoga, it doesn’t even feel like a sacrifice to get up in the morning to practice.
This week when we were all out in the Yoga Shed at 7 to 8:45 in the morning, practice was even more enjoyable. We were participating in a six-day ‘intensive’ and joined for it by nine other enthusiasts. […]

So You Want to Be a Writer

Back in 2008, when I was last working as a yoga teacher trainer, I taught a course called “The Professional Yoga Teacher.” The curriculum comprised professional ethics, how to run a yoga business, occupational and health safety, and information on yoga associations and continuing professional development. The main assignment was: write and present to the group a vision plan for the next five year period.
Since “The Professional Yoga Teacher” course was usually taken in the trainees’ last term of their training, they were looking towards what/where/how they wanted to express yoga in their lives. […]

What Do Writing and Yoga Have in Common?

What Do Writing and Yoga Have in Common?

This week I’m stationed in beautiful, though at the moment sodden, Bellingen learning to be a better writer. Enrolled in a course called Life Stories with 15 other pupils, we’re part of the overall turn-out of 1,000 students of the 2011 Camp Creative.
I haven’t felt so moved and excited in a learning situation for a long time. I go into the course room, fully awake and alive to discovering some unexamined part of my life for me to dust off and bring back from the past into the now. […]

The Amazing Meeting

The Amazing Meeting

I’ve spent 2.5 days in the company of 600 or so skeptics. They came from all around the world and gathered together at the Masonic Centre in Sydney to hear inspiring and interesting presenters speak on topics ranging from “Evidence Based Medicine” to “The Spread of Creationist Teaching in Schools”.
Skeptics are fighting the good fight in Australia. One of them pictured below, in her retirement, decided to take on some of the woo-woo practitioners that she ran across when she was battling cancer in 2003. […]

I'd like to say I'm better but…

I'd like to say I'm better but…

…no. If anything my cold is worse (mucous, hard to write that without the “yuk”) and now something else is happening, a sort of southerly movement of scratchiness down into my chest. I found myself apologising to Daniel this morning for my libido suffering from this cold, too. Sigh. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot.
Nevertheless somethings are under control: my yoga practice, for one, and I even managed to teach a class tonight, for another.
Also, I have an unblunted appreciation for the signs of spring that appearing all around our garden and our neighbourhood…. […]