by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 31, 2010 | Hip Surgery
I noticed I was avoiding writing this post as it makes very real that I am beginning the surgery process. I’ll check in to the hospital in just an hour for pre-admission, with my bilateral hip surgery scheduled for tomorrow  morning.
My intention is to keep you posted 🙂 about what this process is like, especially from a yogini’s point of view. […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 30, 2010 | Yoga practices, Yoga teachingÂ
The rocks in our local surf are rough and shiny, but I by the time I take them home they are dull, dull, dull.
Approximately four weeks of shaping, smoothing and polishing and the rocks are as pretty as gemstones. They actually have to lose a fair bit of their mass in my rock tumbler to finish up being satiny and attractive.
A number of years ago I heard a renowned yoga teacher say that it takes at least 12 years for a trainee to become a skilled teacher. […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 27, 2010 | Yoga practices
I was practising yoga out in the Shed this morning with my friend and housemate Heather. What ecstasy to have our own yoga studio a few steps from the house! Pretty much we just roll out of bed and onto the mat, more often than not still in pyjamas.
On some mornings, we single-mindedly, silently, and with gravitas pursue our yoga practice. Other times we have a bit of a goss about the neighbours or our spouses. We have been known to rehash a movie we’ve seen or discuss books. […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 26, 2010 | Yoga practices
For me, the really ugly thing about being in pain isn’t the pain itself but the way it takes me out of relationship with people and the environment. I just want to go to ground and isolate myself, like an animal crawling down its lair. This is not the way I usually express myself in the everyday world; I’m not reclusive in the least.
The pain I experience intermittently is the result of advanced osteoarthritis in my hips which I have decided not to battle anymore. […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 24, 2010 | Where we live
Our local beach at Manning Point is rough and tumble; the rips are rough and most days the tides will tumble you like a clothes dryers. That’s why it’s such a great place for rock collecting.
My very first visit there more than five years ago I was seduced by the variety of smooth stones and had to have them. […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 22, 2010 | Yoga teaching , Yoga Therapy
One of Leonard Cohen’s most loved songs, “Anthem”, has the refrain:
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
I’m of the opinion that the song’s sentiment is so popular because we humans would like not to have try to be so perfect. A good idea. It looks good on paper. Sounds good when sexy old Leonard sings it. […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 20, 2010 | Yoga practices
…does it take to make a habit?
Thirty days? Thirty months? Thirty years?
I started yoga in 1971 with a ten-week course held at the YMCA. Over the ensuing years, I did classes with various teachers in a variety of places, but practising yoga for me was intermittent until I went to the Iyengar Institute in India in the mid-eighties.
There I let myself be inspired by the commitment of the senior teachers, and became more like a wheel rolling from my own centre. […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 18, 2010 | Yoga teachingÂ
Day four of a northerly road trip with darling Daniel, of whom Libby says after meeting him for the first time, ” I thought he would be nice, but he’s really nice!”
Libby is one of Byron Bay’s older yoga teachers, in terms of age (same as me) and experience. Her ceevee includes acupuncture, Ayurvedic medicine, physiotherapy, and now work with sufferers of osteoporosis.
Daniel, Libby & I went out to dinner in Byron where one the waitrers at our restaurant was a yoga teacher. […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 13, 2010 | Yoga practices
On a roll here with my rhymes, so I’ll keep them going maybe for one more time. A couple of years back, we felled about 100 pines from the back of our property. I don’t mean to offend any tree-lovers; I’m one myself. But this variety of pine is opportunistic and will eventually overtake everything, except the lantana which has an unfortunate (for us) symbiotic relationship with them. A horticulturist recommended planting some grasses and ivies on the slope to save it from sliding into the wetland below. […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 12, 2010 | Yoga practices
This afternoon things really hotted up at Scotts Road, Mitchells Island. 35 degrees, brains coddling and bodies steaming. A visit to the local beach is a often a reliably good solution, but we’d already done that earlier in the day. […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 10, 2010 | Yoga Media, Yoga practices
A couple of years ago, I enjoyed viewing a calendar that had been put together by a group at a yoga retreat in New Zealand. It was designed to spoof the “cover girl” approach to yoga magazines and calendars. You know what I mean? Images like this:
Or even like this:
And, how about this:
The retreaters’ calendar was quite hilarious and included pics of yoga students doing lots of versions of  savasana (the yoga relaxation pose). […]
by Eve Grzybowski | Jan 7, 2010 | Nature
What else to call a creature only a little larger than your thumbnail? This one popped out of a pot to which I was transplanting a bamboo plant today. It was very lucky not to have been spliced in two by my spade.
When you think about it, it’s quite miraculous that tiny beings survive at all in nature. It’s such a bird-eat-frog world out there.
Frogs are a lot smarter than I thought, though. A little family of them lives in the circuit box on the side of the house. […]