A Sutra a Day: I-15 – Detachment Begins At Home

A Sutra a Day: I-15 – Detachment Begins At Home

A strange thing happened this morning, a disturbing thing for me.
Yesterday we had a house guest who was travelling north to Queensland and wanted accommodation overnight. After her arrival, we shared a meal, chatted, and then I set her up in a comfy bed. I suggested breakfast and a beach walk the next morning before she had to continue her drive.
After my early morning yoga practice, I headed off to make breakfast for us and discovered a good-by letter from our guest on the kitchen bench top. […]

A Sutra A Day: I-14 – Do Practice and All is Coming

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. […]

A Sutra a Day: I-13 – What Matters

A Sutra a Day: I-13 – What Matters

A friend and colleague has said that, rather than practising yoga to achieve a perfect posture, we should be aiming to be nicer people.
As simplistic as that sounds, it’s not simple.
The loftiest goal that I have for myself is to live life in love, i.e., to be a loving person. The trouble with having a high aim is that it makes an annoying foil for all opposing qualities. […]

Memory = Our Own Textbook – Sutra I-11

Memory = Our Own Textbook – Sutra I-11

One of the reasons students give sometimes for not practicing yoga at home is that they can’t remember the poses and/or the sequence that they fit in.
The original yogis – the ones who were reputed to dwell in forests and caves – were experimenters and not too worried about poses and sequences. Their interest was in the mind and consciousness, but modern yogis, we’re mainly, or at least that’s where we begin,
Memory can be a blessing and a curse. […]

Perchance to Dream? Sutra – I-10

Perchance to Dream? Sutra – I-10

I am many, many times blessed at this time in my life for having unbroken, deep sleep almost every night.
Maybe my time is coming as I hear of huge numbers of seniors not sleeping well, and the problem worsening as they age.
There’s a hormonal reason for having difficulty sleeping at night that relates to melatonin and growth hormones production decreasing with age.
Less melatonin has many older adults feel sleepy in the early evening and wake up in the early morning. […]

The How of Yoga – Sutra I-12

Saturday Night Yoga Practice – Sutra I-6

What are you doing on tonight, Saturday night? Going out for dinner, dancing, partying, at home recovering from the week, watching one screen or another?
Obviously, I’m seated at my mac, writing a post. I imagine I hear you murmuring to yourself , my god, she needs a life.
I used to have the life of an oftentimes wilder version of myself. In my thirties, I lived in New York, worked as a flight attendant, and par-teed. […]