On my return from holidays, I was quite shocked to hear that our closest beach had lost about a half kilometer of it’s length as a result of recent flooding and storms. That’s a big chunk.
The area concerned is at the mouth of the Manning River, but the dunes all along in a southerly direction to Old Bar Beach are seriously eroded too.
A sad part of our loss is the potential encroachment of the sea on the little tern breeding ground. These tiny birds appear to be very vulnerable, and have been declared endangered.
I looked up the word “erosion” in the dictionary; there are a huge number of synonyms for the phenomenon, including some pretty fancy ones like: deliquescence, sublation, and decrement.
What’s going on in our region could be blamed on global warming, or perhaps it’s just another expression of the ravages of time. Degeneration occurs in us humans, too – our physical bodies losing bone, cartilage, or muscle as we grow older.
I was working therapeutically with a friend of mine this weekend and suggested some ways she could make space in her painful hip joint and strengthen the muscles around it. It’s a matter of buying her time before the need arises for a joint replacement.
Many of my peers are looking at The March of Time, up close and personal. What’s the best thing we can do for ourselves in terms of yoga practice?
I would suggest doing physical practice in a tender and sensitive way. Put your best effort in when you can and, most importantly, approach your practice in a loving and respectful manner.
Patanjali in his Yoga Sutra gives us much of the wisdom we need as background to practicing, especially when we encounter the tough transition times of poor health and aging. If we understand the causes of our suffering, then we can deal with them. If not, as he says in Ch. 2:5, one will mistake that which is impermanent, impure, distressing or empty of self for permanence, purity, happiness, and self.
Nature’s transformations are natural, even inexorable. All we can do is what we’re meant to do – discover what really matters. Back to the meditation cushion.