Circle the Wagons

Circle the Wagons

Today my step-son Ben, girlfriend Jade, and their 3 Aussie friends picked up their huge RV for the trip to Burning Man Festival.
Since Ben heard about the event a year ago, he’s been planning and saving for this exciting trip.
Daniel and I are hooked up with a dear friend Donna to join Kevin (old yoga student from ’85) and Californian Laura in their RV. We’ll leave for Burning Man tomorrow morning. Fortunately the site of BM – hard Nevada desert – is not expected to be as hot as some year’s past. […]

Routines Take 2

Happily, a few years ago on another trip to San Francisco, I discovered a yoga school, would you believe based Iyengar-style, nearby.
I can walk there from Cousin Merle’s on 8th Avenue, which I did this morning. Much better using the studio instead of the small floor space of our visitor’s accommodation.
I did a Level one (read “beginner-ish) class with a very good beginner-ish (read 1 year) teacher. […]

Circle the Wagons

Routines

On the road today, it’s still today although I’ve travelled from Sydney to LA to San Francisco in 17 hours.
My early morning yoga routine went skewiff when I was nursing a cold, and then preparing for this long trip.
I pride myself (uh-oh) on being disciplined and now, while traveling, i notice it’s darned inconvenient to reImpose a yoga practice routine.
I know I will, nevertheless, partly for you the reader; […]

Not Perfect

Not Perfect

It’s been almost 7 months since I had bi-lateral hip replacements and I thought it was time to have a look at how my yoga poses were coming along. Through the eye of a camera.
Daniel was kind enough to take some photos of me posing šŸ˜‰
Now, you probably know that I would have deleted the not-so-hot images. […]

Circle the Wagons

Giving

One week from tomorrow I will be an attendee at one of the bigger festivals on the planet called Burning Man. It’s held somewhere named Blackrock, Nevada.
As a joiner of this instant, albeit temporary, community of 50k or so, I’m encouraged to bring gifts.
Something from Australia seemed
appropriate, even from Mitchells Island.
Here’s a photo of my offering. […]

Deadline

Most times I love words (you might have guessed). I enjoy good writing in film or in a book. I adore going with a writer when they arabesque a metaphor and it flies like Baryshnikov or Nureyev and they take you along in their leap of imagination.
I don’t like words when they roll around in my head like the empty bottles on my car’s back floor, especially when I’m supposed to be sleeping.
I’m describing last night. My before-holidays to-do list ran in a continuous loop on my frontal brain screen until about 1:30 am. […]

Potted Versions

I may be way wrong on this observation, but I’ve been detecting a growing penchant for micro versions of stuff.
An obvious example is a Tweet. I think of it as a kind of micro blog limited to 120 characters. That’s characters, not words. Is it possible to write anything meaningful in such a constrained environment? Well, it would seem yes. Twitter is meaningful to millions of people around the world in all nations and all races, judging by so many little Tweets whizzing around the planet. […]

Everything in Its Place

Everything in Its Place

When I first moved to Australia from the U.S., I was much more of a free spirit than I am now. I was a flight attendant for T.W.A. for three years before landing in Oz and I didn’t even quit the job; I just took a leave of absence in case I wanted to move back “home”.
I would say that I didn’t have a sense of place, not even my birthplace, Chicago. I’d lived in N.Y., several suburbs in L.A., and Tucson, Arizona. […]

Tug of War

Tug of War

We live on a property which has been colonised by pine trees over the years, not a very nice variety of pine either. Even the saw millers don’t want to take them because the wood is so soft.
At one time we were told that the property had been cleared by the previous owners, and then within a couple of years, all the pines had returned. Opportunistic is such an apt word for them.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m as much of a tree hugger as I can be, but this is a complicated problem. […]

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…. […]

Yoga Practice Cycles

A yoga teacher trainee whom I was working with asked a smart question: What should I practice when?
If you do the same sequence of poses every single day, as in Astanga Vinyasa Yoga, it’s not a problem. However, what do you do if your practices are more flexible?
Well, it depends on quite a lot of factors – season, age, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause (male or female), time of day, day of the week, etc.
To help my trainee, I sat down and worked out the attached scheme. […]

Sheltered

When I woke up this morning completely blocked and breathing from my mouth, I thought of the only thing that would help – yoga practice.
So here I am in the Shed, writing to you, occasionally lifting my head to look out at the view – dewy, green grass with birds swooping in and out. Given this is Australia, the birds are not ordinary: king parrots, eastern rosellas, and kookaburras, for instance. (The magpies have been having sex this week, right before our eyes.)
I have faith that my practice will pull me together on all levels. […]