Happy New Year and Ganesha’s Blessings
January is ‘The Month of Good Intentions. It’s the time to get back on track if you’ve taken a detour off the straight-and-narrow. January first is a blank canvas, a fresh sheet of print paper, a blank slate.
Saying Good-bye to My Monday Night Class
This week I dropped my Monday night class from my timetable of teaching at The Yoga Shed. I thought long and hard about stopping a class I’d been teaching for 4 years on Mitchells Island. I can scarcely believe that I’ve taught in a Monday night time slot going back to the mid-eighties.
I began teaching this class during a dark, cold winter when there was only one other regular student besides my loyal husband. […]
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. […]
Another Day, Another Dog Pose
When I wake up in the morning and look out at our rural views, I automatically think, ‘Another perfect day in paradise.’ But it’s not ‘another’ day. It’s today. It’s now, and the truth is that there’s much that’s changed in the landscape if I look more closely. For instance, I see that our local king tides have filled the channel between Scotts Creek and our nest door property.
Daniel and I do our mindfulness meditation practice, much as we did yesterday and the day before. […]
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
(via Pinterest)
Having just completed teaching one workshop, I’m now mentally preparing for teaching in the Yoga Therapy Intensive in Byron Bay.
However, I’m following my own advice to the driven, stressed-out people who take up yoga to relax: chill a little. You may have had the experience of being so intensely productive that you use up all your reserves and end up flat on your back, unable to do anything.
So, for the time being I’m dawdling. […]
A Sutra a Day: II-2 – Mental Soother
Source: crystalized-bliss.tumblr.com via Tina on Pinterest
One of the main things that gets me out to the Yoga Shed early each morning is the fact that doing practice helps soothe my mind.
The mental benefits of practice never interested me in the beginning. I thought yoga was going to help with weight loss and build muscles. And, I admit, the show-off in me liked the fact that even from my first class, I could do some advanced poses.
Soothing the eddies of the mind – citta vrtti nirodha – seems much more important as I’ve gotten older. […]
A Sutra a Day: I-27 Good Vibrations
I’ve been looking forward all day to a visit from delightful Sydney friends who are staying with us for four days.
We are very well set up for company, with 2 guest suites of rooms and another guest bedroom in the Yoga Shed. It means they can be comfortable and private when they want, and us, too.
We gathered around the fireplace on their arrival for snacks and a glass of red wine, shared a meal of homemade soup and fresh bread, and enjoyed lively conversation.
Then, we adjourned to the t.v. […]
A Sutra A Day: I-14 – Do Practice and All is Coming
I’m sometimes embarrassed to say that I do weights workouts a couple of times a week. I guess I perceive that, in the yoga world, the tools of the practice are meant to cater to the care and keeping of our body/minds on every level. We don’t necessarily need the gym.
I suppose if I did enough handstands, forearm balances, dog poses, and chaturangas, those poses would make my bones healthy and strong. But I don’t do them a lot. […]
Swings and Roundabouts
I’ve been on a gentle roller coaster ride.Early in the morning, I cleaned the Yoga Shed and it sparkled with sunny energy. Then, I did my yoga practice in the shimmering space.I don’t know why it happened; I just got caught in the ruminating jaws of my mind, and became grumpy thinking of too many tasks to do and not enough time. After a practice that was supposed to make me peaceful, I then took my grumpiness into our office and tried to deposit it in my husband’s lap. He’s too smart for that, though. […]
Yoga Practice, Not a Performance
The sun was shining this morning, the temperature balmy, and not a skerrick of a breeze – a respite from the hard rain we’ve had over the last few days. In the Yoga Shed, I felt inspired to do surya namaskar and included all the standing poses I could think up. […]
Fusion
Lots of people ask me what the best thing is about having moved to the country. Maybe they are trying to build a case for doing the same?
Every time I get this question, I make it up. I don’t have a pat answer. I also don’t remember what I said the last time.
I know that sounds strange. It’s because describing what’s good about being here is almost beyond words. […]
Big, Not Better
Yesterday I was shopping in our nearest town, Taree, and was shocked to see so many obese people around, mainly women. In one store there was a party of three overweight shoppers accompanied by a child who was already seriously chubby.
I don’t remember seeing huge numbers of fat people in Sydney, but as the distance increases from the city, I think the “avoir du pois” does too. New Yorkers living in Manhattan are toned and lithe because they walk everywhere. Even Mayor Bloomberg walks and uses the subway. But rural areas are another story.
Don’t get me wrong. […]