The Yoga with Eve Grzybowski Blog
I’ve been blogging for 15 years now. 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 YSH 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.
A Sutra a Day: IV-21 – Mind-stuff Watching Itself
Okay I’ve run out of steam. I can’t think of a single anecdote from my life that will illustrate the Sutra of the day. I can’t even think of anything in my experience that will even obliquely describe today’s Sutra.
However, Chip Hartranft will save the day with this great explanation of the distinction between awareness and consciousness, which has been the theme of Chapter IV with its Sutra being all about freedom. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-20 – Finding Serenity Against the Odds
Do you keep diaries? I did for many years. I filled up many of those blank page books; they were like my portable and private therapists, a written record of ruminations and attempts to sort feelings. I suppose you could say blogging is a modern day, more focussed way of diarising.
I came across one of my old books by accident today. (I burned a lot of the old diaries because I sorely needed to move on from past traumas.) This particular book is special. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-19 – Blinded by Science
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In studying today’s message from Patanjali (as below), it seemed to lend itself well to a phenomenon to which we all fall prey – even esteemed and supposedly detached scientists – so I decided to ask my husband in as a guest blogger to describe it. So here’s Daniel:
I found this definition of science on a website:
“Science is a way of understanding the world, not a mountain of facts. Before anyone can truly understand scientific information, they must know how science works. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-18 – When Words are Not Enough
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Do you get into intimate conversations where you want to communicate something significant or personal and find yourself frustrated that your words seem inadequate to what you want to communicate? I don’t mean you lack vocabulary or that you can’t find the right words. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-17 – The Object of Your Affection
Today is my husband and my nineteenth marriage anniversary. (The above photo accompanied our wedding invitations. We both had more hair then.)
Last year we forgot all about celebrating until the day before. Daniel saved the occasion by arranging a seaplane trip to Noah’s restaurant on the northern beaches. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-16 – Indulging Perspectives
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One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn is that my reality is real only for me. Assuming that others should agree with my world view, and perhaps even adopt it, has been the cause of suffering for me in the past.
When I started teaching yoga 30-plus years ago, I was gung-ho in my interpretation of the Iyengar method. I learned from a tough teacher and I tried to be one. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-15 – Would You Rather be Right or Be in Love?
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Shortly before I went away on a several week break recently, I had an argument with one of my housemates. You know how it is when you’re rushing around getting ready to go, stressed by packing, and completing those pesky chores. I was not at all in the space of anticipatory delight.
I won’t bore you with the details of the dust-up; let’s just say there was a display of anger, hurt feelings and cross words. My lower self was clearly on display. […]
Sorry Day or Australia Day
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I wish the yoga sage Patanjali, whose writing I’ve been reflecting on in this blog for many months, had a wise aphorism to steer me towards a proper demeanor for January 26th. […]
Patanjali’s Sutra – Impossibly Pithy?
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I’ve set myself the goal of learning what can be known, novice as I am, of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra.
Certain of these terse aphorisms make sense to me, but others I find are too obtuse. Nevertheless, I keep at it. […]
Yoga Connections
I’ve been on the road (and away from my Patanjali studies) for a a week now. It’ll be another week before I settle back into my routine – i.e. early morning practice. I’ve done a little asana practice along the way, in the bedrooms and living rooms where we’ve stayed. Not quite the same, though, as my friendly green tin shed at home.
However, I’ve had the delightful experience of re-uniting with old yoga students from 25 years ago who now live in the Kalang Valley (Helen’s painting is below). […]
Summer Ripe
Northern hemisphere peoples eat your heart out. Here on the Eastern seaboard of New South Wales, it’s the height of summer; and my present location – Bellingen – is especially in full bloom.
The produce shops are overflowing with stone fruit, grapes, melons, berries and sweet corn.
Streets are arrayed with bowers of crepe myrtles, hydrangeas, frangipanis, bougainvillea, grevilea, hibiscus.
People are drawn to pack up a picnic blanket and a few provisions and head for a park after work; or take a swimming costume and beach towel, and set out for the sea. […]
Do You Compete in Yoga?
I think I’m getting there finally, gradually – that is, being non-competive, in my yoga and in my teaching.
It’s taken a few knocks on my head along the way: years of dealing with osteoarthritis and a couple of rounds of major surgery. […]
Yoga teacher as Beginners
I’m sorry to say that last year I made myself miserable as I participated in a weeklong printmaking in Bellingen.
Of course I didn’t realise I was making myself unhappy. I believed it was circumstantial – meaning i thought it was the fault of someone or something else that my work wasn’t as good as others’.
This year I’m enrolled in the same course, same teacher, same place, but I decided I needed an attitude change. […]
A Very Wise Country! (and, a Patanjali pause)
Source: sunset.com via Sharon on Pinterest
Australia as a country presents as laid-back, the home of a ‘no worries’ culture, and at no time more so than December-January.
It used to be the case that the whole place closed down from the time the kids got out of school (mid-Dec.) until they went back (early Feb.). […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-14 – What's Your Opinion Worth?
More often than not we are required to make quick decisions and then we move on and live with the choices we made. Life is usually being fired at us point blank and there’s not a lot of time to reflect even on the important stuff so as to arrive at our best options.
So it goes with impressions of people, also; isn’t it often the case that we sum up a person on first meeting, slot them in to a pigeonhole, and then there they stay.
It happens with yoga poses too. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-13 – Early-to-Rise Rewards
I feel very happy this evening – Day 5 – of an early morning yoga intensive that I’ve been running this week in the Yoga Shed. Thank goodness it’s been scheduled for 7 am because by 8:30 the tin shed is starting to cook.
Tomorrow is the final session and we will do a restorative practice. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-12 – What do You Make of Time?
I wish, as a yoga teacher, I had more sway with my students in encouraging them to do their own practice. It’s not that I want them to disappear from the classes I teach. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-11 – Memories
Is it being too attached to still think about the departed, even after fifteen years?
My sister’s birthday has just past. She herself passed at the age of 51. I’m well on the other side of that age so I think of it as being young – too young to die.
Sue was her name. I miss her still. When we were together, which was not often as she lived in the States, I would teach her yoga. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-10 – The Most Basic Instinct
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One of the strange but ever present states of affairs in all beings is the desire to live forever. Even those in the presence of death every day have this illogical impulsion. This is what inspires the instinct for self-preservation in all of us.*
I just finished a must-read novel by Barbara Kingsolver called Flight Behaviour. […]
A Sutra a Day: IV-9 – Pesky Patterns
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We have guests staying with us at the moment. It’s the time of year that, if you live in the country, especially near a river and a beach, you will have visitors. I love it.
Unfortunately, one of our guests who is staying with us has not been well. Nothing too serious, but off-colour enough to be a-abed. She doesn’t want to be made a fuss of but, as the hostess, I feel responsible. I end up being solicitous. […]