The Yoga with Eve Grzybowski Blog
I’ve been blogging for 20 years. At first, I was quite nervous about publishing my thoughts. Because I was shy about writing, my old posts were almost exclusively photos of the view from our bedroom in our Tambourine Bay house.
Remarkably, my original Ville Blog still exists. Does anything on the internet ever go away? It ran from November 05, 2006 to January 12, 2010 and it’s still just where I left it. If you’d like to have a look, the address is http://thevilleblog.blogspot.com.au/.
These days, because there are way too many posts to browse through – over 1200 – I’ve put some major themes together in The Vault. I hope this makes it easier to find exactly what you want.
Derryn Hinch 1944-2026
People still find it surprising, sometimes outright shocked, that Eve the Yoga Teacher was married to Derryn Hinch. To some, he was simply a shock jock, an iconoclast. Someone once told me that they’d always assumed he was a chauvinist — which was the complete opposite of how I experienced him. Our romance faded decades before he died, but he never stopped being, to me, lovable, and a good man.
Peter Nixon 1962-2026
Yoga teachers are not very good at making boundaries regarding their role of teacher and/or friend. Especially when students show up as charming as Peter Nixon. He hadn't been coming to class for very long before he asked if I'd like to have dinner with him...
International Yoga Day at the Yoga Shed
International Yoga Day has come and gone–a wonderful time to reflect on the contributions yoga has made in our lives.
Even though International Yoga Day is a worldwide event, in all my decades of teaching, I seemed not to have gotten around to celebrating it. As I am semi-retired now, it occurred to me that this year I would put on an event at the Yoga Shed to draw our community together and to remind ourselves of the gift of yoga.
Exciting News: Ad-free Yoga Videos
I’ve moved my entire video collection to Vimeo and worked with Daniel to redesign eveyoga.com as a clean, easy-to-use home for all of them — completely free for you to enjoy, with no interruptions. You’ll find a browsable display of all my classes, plus a search function to help you find exactly what you’re looking for, whether that’s a particular style or something to address a specific need.
Being Old: Going Slow
One golden nugget that I’ve discovered about being old, along with my energy reduced and my brain slowing, is that I have more time to think. I can arrive at solutions that resonate with what I feel or believe. I can be less reactionary. I don’t have to have answers, and I can just listen, without forming responses.
Being Old: On Irrelevance
It’s such a simple thing for us to do when we’re out walking and see an old person, to pause, make eye contact, smile and give a nod.
Ultimately, we are looking at our future. For some of us, it’s already here.
Being Old: An Introduction
I’ve been away from blogging for quite a while, except for a few friends’ obituaries that I felt compelled to write. But now I’m back to write on a subject that is very here and now for me and been on my mind for a long time.
Aging, and all the baggage that goes with it is a common topic of conversation in the circles in which I move, one which I tire of.
Are you, too, dear reader, tired of it?
In the Face of Grief, Words Fail
It’s likely I will never know the right thing to say. And maybe just sitting with the awful unfairness of dying and death and opening the heart is a useful pre-verbal stage. Especially if there is nothing to be said in the disconsolate face of grief.
Yoga Isn’t Everything Part 3
I’m present to the often-overlooked component of successful classes, that is, the magic that can happen when people gather in community. Why overlooked? It’s like the water a fish swims in, invisible, but all-encompassing. When you are part of a healthy community, you feel included and look forward to regularly meeting up with others.
Yoga Isn’t Everything Part 2
Motion is lotion Lately, I’ve been reading articles about the key predictors of longevity. Mobility consistently ranks near the top. It’s essential for maintaining the body’s ability to perform everyday activities—walking comfortably, getting up and down with ease,...
Sorry: Yoga Isn’t Everything – Part 1
I have several important needs at age 80 that are not covered by yoga. Or, they are covered to a certain degree but not entirely.
Some of the areas I’m working to improve are: my sense of balance, ease of movement, coordination and strength.
Yoga and Aging
Yoga and I go back a long ways. We began our relationship, one that I describe as my longest, in 1971. My needs at that time, as a new mum, were vastly different than they are now. Then, I was excited to be learning this new thing that was just for me. I discovered I was good at yoga poses and that was good for my confidence.
I did my first training to be a yoga teacher in 1980. At that time and for some time, I was able to do impressive poses, dropping back from a headstand and then pushing up into a backbend, for instance. Perhaps audaciously as a newish teacher, I opened a yoga school in 1985 and not so long after created the prototype of a yoga teacher training.
Peace and Ease in 2025
I can hardly believe it, but we've had the privilege of presenting the 'January Intensive' on Mitchells Island for 13 years. What is it? It's a five-day, early morning course that gives you the opportunity to kick off the New Year with yoga, meditation, relaxation...
Ascending the Mountain 2025 – Save the Dates
Our workshop is practical, a sharing of the tools and practices that have helped us at different stages of our lives. But it is also rich in the stories from these various seasons, where yoga has been a constant companion.
It will be great to hear of your yoga journey wherever you are on it. And I hope you will come along and join Libbie and me in Sydney Oct. 18-19, 2025.
Do You Live in a Bubble?
My life, for the most part, happens within a beautiful bubble. I live on Mitchells Island, the boundaries of which are the mighty Manning River and the Pacific Ocean. There are many of us living happily in our safe bubbles along the Eastern seaboard of Australia, and other places, of course.
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.
RIP Billy O’Riordan 18/7/56 – 23/11/23
I’ve met the most fascinating humans through my chosen profession. But none of them more so than Billy O’Riordan who passed away this week.
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
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
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.