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.
Yoga for Back Care – No. 5
Here’s the fifth and last in a series of programs that can gradually get the yoga practitioner back on her feet after back strain or ache.
You’ll recognise these poses from the earlier sequences, presented in a slightly different order.
Adho Mukha Svanasana is done here with a strap looped around the hip creases so I’m able to traction the student’s legs away from the pelvis. You can also do this yourself by looping a strap around a railing to achieve a similar tractioning. Hold for 1 – 2 min. […]
Yoga for Back Care – No. 4
This series of programs that aids you in looking after your back is sequential and relies on gradual improvement from doing the very simple first practice published earlier the week on this blog.
Once any back strain is better, this sequence can be undertaken to build strength through the legs and hips.
Baddha Konasana*, seated on a folded blanket, 1 -2 minutes
Trikonasana, 30 – 60 seconds […]
Important Yoga Poses for Back Care – No. 3
Many studies have shown that yoga, practised regularly, can relieve back soreness and improve back function.
While yoga is contraindicated if you have severe pain, it can be a back care lifesaver with when you suffer from occasional soreness or even chronic aches. Yoga lengthens your spine, stretches and strengthens your back muscles and contributes to proper spinal alignment.
The Supta Padangusthasana Cycle, sometimes just called leg stretches or hip openers, is often “prescribed” for managing backs. These simple poses accomplish three important things. […]
Back Care Basics – 2nd Sequence
Over the next posts, these programs for back care are sequential. […]
Basics of Back Care – 1
Too often our backs cop it in one form or another: early morning stiffness, muscle soreness from gardening or sports, sleeping in an uncomfortable bed, even standing for long periods. […]
Cattleroo
I may have just tipped the balance towards being a true country girl as I noticed this weekend on our trip to Sydney that I couldn’t get my heart into the city lifestyle at all.
Well-distracted by seeing the musical, “Jersey Boys”, taking in a excellently reviewed film, and dining on artisan breads and barista coffees, I still felt homesick for our forest and gardens. More so, for the simple life.
And, the surprises Nature dishes up here. […]
How to Put on a Yoga Retreat: Part Three
Be prepared!
In leading a retreat, a yoga teacher has duty of care for any number of people. Most retreats will proceed from beginning to end with no hiccoughs, but you still, as the leader, need to be mentally and physically prepared for different situations.
On one retreat I ran, a participant became gravely ill and I had to arrange for her to be driven home in the middle of the event. […]
How to Put on a Yoga Retreat: Part Two
Advertising and Promotion
Once you’ve gotten the basic information you need for advertising your yoga retreat, make up a flier. Here’s what pioneer advertising executive Leo Burnett says your promotional material should do:
“Say to people: ‘Here’s what we’ve got. Here’s what it will do for you. And, here’s how to get it.'”
Along with your text, you’ll want to include an enticing photo of your venue. Then, get your flier out to the relevant people in your data base, onto “Events” on your Facebook, and create a Twitter link. […]
How to Put on a Yoga Retreat: Part One
Falls Forest Retreat
So, you think you want to give a yoga retreat?
Putting on a retreat is a matter of having all the right ingredients and then just following the recipe.
The first crucial stage is having a vision – the intention for what you want to accomplish. This can be as simple as wanting to get students together in a natural setting to deepen their experience of yoga.
My intention for holding the recent retreat at Falls Forest was to support Dr. Mary White in showcasing her stunning property at Johns River, New South Wales. […]
Yoga Retreats, Now and Then
On the cusp of the Falls Forest 3-day yoga retreat which begins tomorrow, I can’t help but think of the many wonderful times over the years we enjoyed at Camp Berringa, in the lower Blue Mountains. Pleasurable times, but transformative, too.
Yogis who understand what yoga is all about will book into one or more retreats a year to experience the magical conjunction of our body/minds in Nature.
Being in a natural setting is restful in and of itself. The combination of yoga and a gentle environment renews that part of us that is bone-tired. […]
Great Kidney Poses
Two very important organs of your body nestle under the back ribs and serve as a vital filtration system for wastes. The kidney organs work to pass urine through the ureters to your bladder for storage and elimination.
If you get extremely run down, you may develop an ache in your lower back that is not muscular and arises when the adrenal glands, situated near the kidneys get overstimulated.
Traditionally, the family of poses that are meant to soothe the adrenals and tone the kidneys are forward stretches. […]
Hope for Yoga Teacher Trainees
Brook McCarthy has written useful advice for yoga teachers in her recent e-newsletter. Basing her comments on the premise that are so many yoga teacher trainees being churned out of the many programs available, she suggests the market will be soon saturated and teachers will not be able to make a living out of just teaching. Her solution? Diversify. Take up writing and speaking. Become a teacher trainer or mentor. Or, “go hard and narrow”, as Brook describes it. […]
Squirming
I’m sitting here thinking about what to write, and it’s not coming easily, after having taken the night off yesterday. I excused myself because of attending an out-of-town wedding. But I’m not going to let myself wiggle out of this tonight because this is one of my disciplines.
See, that’s how I’ve trained myself to be. Pick myself up and put myself down on my yoga mat or on my Fit Ball in front of the computer, day after day, and stay there until the job is done.
Well, that’s not enough, of course. […]
Trouble in Paradise
Anyone who regularly reads “Yoga Suits Her” will know that I speak glowingly about my life in the beautiful surroundings of Mitchells Island.You can also read the story of the small, intentional community we’ve set up here.) Usually I’m a pretty positive and happy person, I think, in the midst of our island paradise. But last night I sorely tested myself and the merits of all my wonderful yoga philosophy when I was at a cocktail party (yes, alcohol does pass my lips) and spoke my mind, revealing a provocative personal opinion. […]
Unplug
I thought it a good idea to modify my position on computer technology just slightly after yesterday’s enthusiastic rave about my new iPad keyboard.
Electronic gadgets can be addictive for certain kinds of obsessive personalities – like mine. Maybe yours too?
There was a cartoon that appeared in an Australian yoga calendar a few yeas back depicting a yogini “resting” in Viparita Karani (legs-up-the-wall), arms loosely overhead with a mobile phone in her hand. […]
Least Resistance
Eve’s technology landmarks:
•Encountering the internet in the USA in 1994 and thinking, gee, that’s cool, I wonder what it can do.
•Getting my first computer, a Mac, in 1996 so I could use the keyboard to write my book, Teach Yourself Yoga. (Email, a curiosity then, later became for me a sort of cyber umbilical back to my overseas sisters.)
•Being one of the first Aussie yoga school directors to launch a website, simply yoga.com.au, in the year 2000.
•Being among the first wave of iPhone owners.
•Blogging continuously since 2007.
•(Today) Using an iPad keyboard. […]
Our Incredible Shrinking Beach
On my return from holidays, I was quite shocked to hear that our closest beach had lost about a half kilometer of it’s length as a result of recent flooding and storms. That’s a big chunk.
The area concerned is at the mouth of the Manning River, but the dunes all along in a southerly direction to Old Bar Beach are seriously eroded too.
A sad part of our loss is the potential encroachment of the sea on the little tern breeding ground. […]
Happy Hips
“Lazy Dog Pose” is one for the yoga therapy tool box, especially for hip osteoarthritis sufferers who can use it to postpone their need for surgery..
Another pose that can create release in the afflicted hip is this elevated lunge position:
If you can work with a helper, the following pose can offer relief:
When I had double hip surgery about 1-1/2 years ago, my practice of yoga had managed to forestall the operation for many years. […]
The Year of the Mother
I’ve seen, over this year, the passing of many of my friends’ mothers, including my husband’s.
No matter what the relationship to one’s mother, her death seems to exert a powerful sorting process on the psyches of her progeny. Even my mother-in-law’s death in the USA this year seemed to have a gravitational pull back to Australia, dragging up an assortment of feelings related to my family.
Yesterday I heard of the recent death of the mother of a colleague. She was of a very advanced age and died peacefully, but I still felt sad. […]
Flying Home with Patanjali
Once the aircraft’s doors have been armed, and the plane has lifted off the tarmac, wing flaps up, I enter a no-time zone. This works better for me than trying to figure out time zone changes and strategise how to wrest the most sleep out of the worst sleeping conditions possible. We’re now about an hour out of Aukland, and it’s 2:15 am in Sydney. I’ve had about 2.5 hours sleep on a 10 hour flight, in fits and starts. Disturbed sleep seems like a perfect scenario for practicing pranayama and meditation. […]