Good to the Bones

Good to the Bones

in January this year, I participated in a course called Buff Bones, a training that includes exercises that are good for my bones. Having completed the basic training, I have now qualified as a Buff Bones instructor. This means I can lead students who want to improve or maintain their bone health through this methodical movement system of body conditioning.

Stages of Ascending the Mountain

Stages of Ascending the Mountain

Then an idea came to us. We could with great authority talk about the stages of yoga we’d traversed. These stages also represented our ageing process, starting as youth and now in our late 70’s. Once we landed on our workshop theme, the content evolved organically.

RIP Kerry Riley 1948-2023

RIP Kerry Riley 1948-2023

A beautiful light has gone out with the recent death of my old friend, Kerry Riley.

Kerry is the first of my close contemporaries who has died, so his death, even though we knew it was coming was a blow, a gut punch. We knew it was coming and hoped it wouldn’t. But eventually it did, and, from what his wife, Diane, has told me, it was time. 

A Yoga Workshop for All Ages

A Yoga Workshop for All Ages

I had an insight after we finished the weekend, when I’d had a chance to digest the experience of being with our group. I think that there is a call-out from younger, middle-aged and older people for old people like Libbie and me to show up. To participate and contribute. 

Stephen Jenkinson, an Canadian writer-performer, wrote a book called ‘Come of Age’. I can’t even recommend it to you as it’s been variously described as a ‘murmuration’ and a ‘agitation’, and I’d have to agree. But it does carry this line, ‘Elderhood is a function rather than an identity.’ Quite the opposite from retiring. Retirement is definitely not on our horizon.

The Yoga Intensive: New Year’s 2023

The Yoga Intensive: New Year’s 2023

In 2011, I was able to transplant an annual ritual from my Sydney yoga school, which we called the January Intensive, to my studio on Mitchells Island. It’s a program that presents various yoga practices over 5 days at an early hour and offers an opportunity for students to kick off the new year in the healthiest of ways.
As a 50+ practitioner of yoga, and 40+ teacher, I can tell you, there are not too many more things that will make me happy than knowing yoga has been accepted by students as a companion for life. 

I’m Old and Grateful for Yoga!

I’m Old and Grateful for Yoga!

We human beings have a myriad of ways to identify ourselves. For my part,  I am a mother. I am a sister. I am 160 cm. tall. I have two artificial hips. I have been practising yoga for 51 years. And so on. 

Sadly, it is less common that even the people who are clearly old will identify themselves as old. Why is that? What are they waiting for? As a concession, someone might admit, yes, I’m getting older, as though landing on being old is always a little bit in the future.

Remembrance

Remembrance

A lovely man died yesterday—his demise spurred on by having been on kidney dialysis for some time.

I didn’t know him well; initially it was by virtue of his reputation as an Aboriginal elder, law man and artist. Millions of people across the globe viewed his art when the image of a giant Wandjina (Aboriginal spirit entity) that he designed was featured in the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.

Yoga and Hip Replacements

Yoga and Hip Replacements

Hip replacement surgery is a daunting prospect for anyone. Fortunately, the first suggestion of the surgical option usually comes well in advance of the need for the actual operation. You have time to get used to the idea. Nevertheless, a visit to the orthopaedic surgeon starts to shape your thinking towards the inevitable. This is especially true when levels of pain and physical limitations are increasing.

If, like me, you try to find more natural ways, of dealing with health issues, then surgical intervention can seem scary in the extreme. Now that I’m five years on the other side of double hip surgery, I can say that your hip replacement surgery may give you your life back. I’m thankful to modern technology performed by a highly skilled surgeon.

Are You an Amazing Yogi/Person?

Are You an Amazing Yogi/Person?

We have to be very discerning when seeking out elders. One giveaway of elderhood is the acceptance of age. No one wants to become infirm in body and mind but there’s a grace that comes with acceptance of wrinkles, grey and thinning hair and stiffening joints. 

Yes, I think that a hallmark of an elder is acceptance of imperfection, one’s character flaws and personal failings. Foibles and follies when cooked in the cauldron of life experience can create something like wisdom.

I’m still in elder training, not that I’m not old enough. The thing that I’m learning and trying to practice is authenticity, speaking my mind, hopefully without doing any harm, and holding to values without being rigid. Performing yoga poses is easy compared to this late stage of focus. It takes perseverance to keep after the truth; it’s often still buried under conditioning and wanting to please.

Yoga and the Health of Your Bones

Yoga and the Health of Your Bones

Bones represent getting down to basics. We might talk about the bones of a story. Diving deeper we say, I knew it in my bones. When Estes features bones in her stories, they represent the stripping away of the outer self – of the persona, or social mask – in order to contact one’s essence.

Those Tricky Yoga Balancing Postures

Those Tricky Yoga Balancing Postures

The theme for my yoga classes during the month of March is ‘The Quality of Balance’. Like last month’s theme–Befriending Backbends, I thought, gee, I wonder if we can make the sometimes pesky balancing poses more enjoyable, more user friendly. Cultivating balance is a key factor in ease of walking, standing, most any movement. And then there’s lifestyle balance, emotional, mental balance, spiritual balance.