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.
Tucson Orthopedic Institute
Not a typical holiday destination, but I’m here doing my familial duty – accompanying my sister to her pre-op visit to the orthopedic surgeon.
I don’t mean to be voyeuristic; this is a scary and intensely emotive time for my sister.
But I’m a yoga therapist at heart, I guess. So, I’ve read the xrays with interest. A scoliatic spine unfortunately adds complications to a ruptured disc and disc degeneration. […]
Posture-ing
I am reminded of the importance of good posture everyday in so many ways.
Here in Tucson, Arizona, I’m visiting my older sister whose “bad back” has finally caught up with her. As a seventy-seven year old, and having exhausted many different therapies, she now is facing a lamenectomy and L2-5 spinal fusion, next week. […]
OM Sweet OM
Oh, I know, the above title is so corny. Sorry. It’s just that I’m feeling anticipatory homesickness, if you can put those two things together. Today I leave beautiful Mitchells Island, northern hemisphere bound, and will be gone for about 4 and a half weeks. I’m looking forward to new experiences and seeing old friends and family in the U.S. and Canada. But, there is nothing like home, and I’m feeling wistful. Apart from the beauty of where I live – my home, yoga space and green vistas – there’s comfort, safety and the springboard into my vocation. […]
Time Wasting
Something I’ve always liked about flying is that when the aircraft doors shut, you are basically in a time warp, in no-time, in a parenthesis in time. It’s possible to go on a self-retreat for the hours it takes to fly from Sydney to Los Angeles, and emerge refreshed and peaceful on the other side of the Pacific.
Retreating was in no way the style of my trip today. […]
Yoga and ACoA
Yoga is a rich and powerful path that helps us create a path through life’s thickets. I swear by it.
Still, as I’ve said in other Yoga Suits Her posts, it’s not the end-all and be-all. I was reminded yesterday, while listening to a friend, of my own short and helpful period of contact with the meetings of “Adult Children of Alcoholics”, a spin-off from other Twelve Step Tradition groups.
My friend was talking about how she was encouraged through attending the ACoA meetings to find there are people out there who have had similar childhood experiences to hers. […]
Tall Poppies
I will never be a tall anything. One hundred sixty centimetres short, I’m not going to beat around the bush: in a forest of generations of increasingly tall people, I am a shrub.
I actually used to think that I would be able to increase my height through yoga. At least at 66 yrs. old, I haven’t lost any height.
Okay, we’re just having a little fun here, at my expense. […]
Recovery Practice
Transparency is my aim. So I herewith admit to you that I was too tired to write a blog post yesterday. Sigh. Dog tired. Could it have been a reaction to having a week of guests staying at our country home? Including a 13 yr. old boy.
Don’t get me wrong. We were hosting seasoned travellers who never wear out their welcome by being inappropriate or un-housetrained. The whole family is delightful and fun. […]
Transitions
I’m generally intrigued by the notion of transitions.
As I apply the word transition to yoga, I mean the part of a pose when one is going into or coming out of it. It can represent a sort of blind spot in one’s awareness, if the transition is not acknowledged.
Take a simple pose like Trikonasana (Triangle Pose). You can go into the pose from Tadasana, stepping out wide (or even, as sometimes taught, jumping out) deliberately and carefully. […]
Low Back Pain
A friend has been suffering from what has been diagnosed as degenerative disc disease for several years. […]
The Price of People Pleasing
It’s so easy to fall into the role of a people pleaser as a yoga teacher. Maybe teaching is even one of those sorts of helping professions that attract people pleasers.
Here’s how it can go…. […]
Patanjali and Everyone Else
To me, the fun of yoga practice and teaching is to find associations between what we notice when we are on our mats or meditation cushions and what comes up in everyday life.
The sage Patanjali, in his pithy sutra sayings, is really talking about all of our lives, not just what occurs in the quiet of our yoga spaces.
So, for instance, when we read the sutra “yogah citta vritti nirodhah” – yoga is to quiet the fluctuations of the mind, we might think of how we fall short of a peaceful mind when dealing with teenage kids. […]
Newbies
I’ve been teaching in the Yoga Shed here on Mitchells Island now for a whole 15 months now. Most of the people attending my classes, apart from veterans Daniel, Heather, and the occasional drop-in from Sydney, are beginner-ish – whatever that means in terms of yoga practice, as in yoga there isn’t what you could call a really standarised curriculum.
The Yoga Shed students who are regular attendees are progressing nicely and demonstrating some understanding of various postures. […]
Rolling Out the Mat
Writing a blog post and figuring out what the content is going to be on any given day is a lot like rolling out a yoga mat in the morning and reckoning what sort of practice to do.
When the writing is good and the yoga practice goes well, it’s because they’ve naturally come toward you instead of having to chase after them madly with a butterfly net. […]
Finishing School
Yoga isn’t everything. I don’t mean to be an iconoclast, but the truth is that Life is also a very good teacher, and there are many good teachers in the world who are not strictly speaking yogis. Think Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi or Mother Teresa.
I’m going to spend this weekend with two of my favourite teachers at a workshop called Love, Intimacy and Sexuality. […]
Not Bad for Your Age….
I found myself saying the above cliche to my husband this evening…. I can’t even remember the context. I shouldn’t have said it. […]
Good Grief
I was reminded after class today of the importance of proper grieving by one of my yoga students. We were chatting about his dad’s immanent death and the bitter-sweet process that he and his whole family have been in of letting go.
Earlier this year, when Daniel went to his mother’s funeral in the U.S., I went through my own private grieving at home. Grief for my mother-in-law but also for losses within my own family.
Death unleashes the most powerful emotions, if we let it. […]
Holiday on the Horizon
Soon, three weeks from today, I will be in the Sonoran desert. With the speed of air travel, and the fact we are traveling east, we will be landing in Tucson, Arizona, not very long after we leave Sydney.
How much am I looking forward to North American summer? A great deal. It’s been like pushing a big rock up a hill at times getting out into the unheated yoga shed in the early morning to do my practice. […]
Rolling Stone
Yoga teachers sometimes veer from the straight and narrow (if in fact they have been on it) and I admit to having missed a day of practice. This is especially sad as I have been on the road, between Sydney and Mitchells Island. I’ll pun and say that the road certainly takes its toll on one’s body.
On the other hand, by being stuck in the car for many kilometres, Daniel and I have been able to listen to a good deal of an audiobook called Life by Keith Richards. […]
Therapy of Play
I was honored today to be taken to the workplace of my friend and yoga colleague, Maarit, in the beachside community of Mona Vale, NSW.
Maarit has lovingly created a space where she can work with individual children in the her special field called therapeutic play.
Drawing on various threads over a lifetime of study – graphic design, art, yoga teaching, psychology and counseling, Maarit’s uniquely trained to work with children and adults for whom “talking therapy” may not be the most effective medium.
I got to have a go at creating a sandplay scene myself, using some of the […]
Back Savers
Even though the work week has finished for most people, here’s a very good exercise for the next time you are suffering from computeritis. […]