Recently I’ve become enamoured of a social media site called Pinterest. It does two things for me: 1) connects me with other lovers of images, and also (2) with lots of interesting, striking images. When I look at the Pinterest section devoted to yoga images, I see a majority of perfect bodies doing perfect poses. The practitioners’ postures are truly works of art. […]
Thursday night I attend my community choir. It makes me happy to go along and sing with a whole group of people who enjoy joining together in harmonies.
The dedicated choir director, Telly, lets me lead some yoga stretches at the beginning of the 1.5 hr. session, so the group follows along as I demonstrate and instruct.
I think about what will prepare us best for singing, so we do stretches that open up the lungs, loosen the rib cage and release tension from shoulders. […]
Over the last two days, we’ve been working our bums off on our little rural spread on lush Mitchells Island. We’ve had fantastic professional help from Peter Nixon, Paradisus Garden Design and our local builder, Matt Peters. But we decided that, to save money, we would do some of the labouring work ourselves. I don’t know that this is necessarily a good idea. […]
Near the end of last year, I was out in the Yoga Shed, all by my lonesome, practising yoga, and my mind drifted. (I think I was doing supta baddha konasana or some such very relaxing pose.) I was thinking about what other people might be doing in their yoga practices these days – old cronies of mine, like Peter Thomson, Pixie Lillas, Shandor Remete. […]
Sometimes on our communal property we have big jobs to do…like this one today. The excavator dug out a long swale with the turf left thrown up on the side for us to unroll and replace it. Simple but backbreaking work, made for stocky and stalwart labourers, not for sexagenarians whose exercise mainly consists of clicking away at keyboards. We survived. Heather and Rick came to yoga class tonight, not needing standing poses, but rather inversions and restorative poses. Fortunately I have those in my teacher’s tool box and they were utilised. […]
Grief happens when facing the results of ageing. This is not news to anyone over 40 who finds out they will soon need to buy their first pair of reading glasses. Or when you have to visit your dentist and hear him refer you to a peridontist (gum doctor). […]
Almost as much as I love teaching yoga, I love inspiring students to do home practice.My spirit soars when I hear that someone is gotten turned on enough to buy a yoga mat, remember the postures they learn in class, and even begin to bend the practices so that they make a good fit for their individual lifestyle.The habit of practising yoga has such a huge momentum for me that it’s what gets me on the mat each morning (except Sundays!). […]
The asanas can be grouped into families: standing poses, seated poses, abdominals, forward & backward bends, inversions, restorative poses. And, finer tuning might include: lateral forward bends, standing forward bends, passive backbends, prepatory poses, and so on. It’s certainly handy to have a coat hanger to help organise the huge miscellany of yoga postures. The style of yoga called Iyengar, is often taught in a monthly schedule where week one emphases standing poses, week two, forward bends, week three backbends, week four inversions/pranayama/restorative. Standing poses are a stand-out group among the clans of asanas because of their all-round utility. […]