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 Grace Day
What makes some days feel like everything you do you are pushing a big rock up a very tall hill. […]
Remote
I’m not talking about an object to control electronic equipment, I’m talking about living at a distance from amenities.
I had a terrible shock last year when I needed to travel from Mitchells Island to Byron Bay to teach in the yoga therapy course. I found out I couldn’t fly there directly. No, I needed to fly to Sydney first.
Another year has rolled around. I’m wanting to get up to Byron again for the same course and encountering similar travel difficulties. I can take the train, but that takes about four hours longer than the drive. […]
Be Careful (To Appreciate) What You Wish For
Rain. Over the weeks, I’ve been working fairly hard at attracting rain to our garden, if extreme longing works to bring on precipitation.
Apart from a little respite that opened up this arvo, we’ve been sheltering indoors, eating and drinking hot beverages. Sadly, I haven’t been able to show our visitors around the pretty spots of Mitchells Island. I’ve waited so long to show off our favourite places.
On the other hand, in that 15 minute window of abatement in the drizzle, I saw the garden looking so happy, and all of the neighbourhood sparkling in the wet. […]
Honourable Guests
We’re enjoying the company of Collyn and Maarit Rivers at our Mitchells Island home over the next couple of days. […]
Yoga Camp
One of the most important ways to cultivate a feeling of community among yogis is for them to participate in a yoga retreat, whether it’s for just a weekend or for a week. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to be able to get away from the daily grind and immerse yourself in undistracted yoga practice, preferably in a peaceful, natural setting.
A popular venue for staging yoga retreats of Sydney Yoga Centre and Simply Yoga was out west of Sydney, between Richmond and Kurrajong, a place called Camp Berringa. […]
Everyday Miraculous
This quote came in my email this morning, from Angelika’s North Sydney Yoga Centre newsletter.
“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. […]
Unwanted Fat
Six years ago I lost five kilos. I don’t know where they went. Like yours perhaps, they were the niggley five that I had wanted to shed for years, so I didn’t miss them. Of course we never lose weight from exactly where we want. I’m sure my derriere and thighs are pretty much the same size as ever. One of the many annoying things that happens with ageing is gaunt. You happily lose weight but unexpected hollows appear, or extra skin. Gravity, too, over the years may have deleterious effects on parts of your anatomy. […]
Namaste
It was just as well I didn’t encounter the gesture of “Namaste” until I’d been doing yoga for many years. […]
So Many Things to Worry About
Some of my friends don’t read newspapers or watch the news because it’s all bad. I wouldn’t go as far as avoidance but I do filter what I read. Hey, I used to hang out with journalists, so I know what a beat-up is.
Gym memberships are likely to increase as a result of advice given in the Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum “Health and Well-Being” section. In a piece written on “sarcopenia” (muscle loss) resulting from ageing, we are told that a 60 year-old may have lost up to 40% of their muscle mass. […]
Puppy Training
With even the best intentions, it’s hard to be a good person all the time – or even a lot of the time. Years ago when my husband Daniel and I were relatively new in our relationship, I resolved that I would clear up any bad feelings I had toward him as soon as possible and certainly not go to sleep on them. I’ve done well with that self-promise. Not necessarily because of being such a wise woman, but because it’s more painful to be out of love with him than in love. […]
Yama & Niyama
About six years ago one of my beautiful yoga teacher trainees from Nature Care College designed these posters for me. Her name is Hui Yi and she’s from Malaysia. I thought her images were too great not to be shared with a wider audience. […]
You're Hot, You're Sweaty & You Need to Relax!
We all need to relax. Cyclones and flooding in Queensland, bush fires in Victoria, mega-snowstorms in the U.S., and insurrection in Egypt.
Even over here in peaceful Mitchells Island, this evening the neighbour’s dog monstered the gelding who got loose and ran all around our property. Daniel calmed the horse but the dog bailed me up till help arrived.
Pshew!
So, here’s an Eve Relaxation for you. Of course, it works best if you can put it down as an audio recording.
Lie down with your head and neck supported, arms and legs a comfortable distance apart. […]
The Audacity of Becoming a Yoga Teacher
Most yogis who get interested in teaching do so because their teacher is going away on hols and asks them to cover for her classes. Thrown into the deep end, dog paddling to stay afloat, I remember watching the attendances of classes I was filling in for go from 20 to 2 in no time. Certainly I was audacious to have said yes in the first place. […]
The Gift That Keeps Giving
Imagine if Beethoven had had his hearing restored and he actually heard his magnificent Ninth Symphony as he conducted it at his Austrian premier. Because of hearing nothing, he wept.
Or imagine if the incredibly prolific Pierre-Auguste Renoir had not been severely crippled by arthritis and wheel chair-bound what his contribution to painting and sculpture might have been.
On February 1st, 2010, my orthopedic surgeon replaced my osteoarthritic hips with 2 shiny ceramic & titanium ones. It’s taken time and dedication to yoga and other exercise, but I’ve restored much of my former mobility. […]
Face Book
Do you ever worry about the amount of traffic on the Internet causing gridlock? Do you ever wonder if the colossal weight of our cyber communication will one day make our commuters implode?
These days I’m supposed to be worrying about “network neutrality supporters bringing down the Internet because there’s not enough backbone build-up”, but fortunately I can’t get my head around that one.
Such preoccupied thinking obviously points to someone who desperately needs yoga to still her mind.
Seriously, I wrote an article for Australian Yoga Life last year on the subject of community. […]
Something different (reprised)
This blog has been hijacked once again. Sorry.
By popular demand… well, more because it seemed like a good idea at the time… another odd video has been produced and uploaded to YouTube for your enjoyment (?). It still doesn’t have much to do with Yoga, except that one of Australia’s best loved Yoginis appears in it and all of the performers admit to practicing Yoga.
Please let us know what you think. Is this the start of a spectacular career or what? If you like it please forward to everyone in your address book. […]
The Artist's Way
This post is using a stolen title. Of course, it’s from Julia Cameron’s major work, The Artist’s Way.
If you have been wishing and pining and hoping to write, buy a copy of Julia’s book and dive in. You’ll take up daily writing called “morning pages” and probably some creative juices will start flowing, if that’s what you are looking for.
I did the book’s program for a year, followed by a writing course with Roland Fishman in the mid-nineties. […]
Bush Poetry
Peter from Dingo Creek Rainforest Nursery visited us today and read us poetry from the bush at the back of our block.
What I mean is, he led a little expedition with Mike, Daniel and Heather into the 2.5 acres of our wetland, an area we usually stringently avoid. […]
Happy Hips
Very few people seem completely content with the way their hips work, a sad thing to say about such a pivotal part of one’s anatomy. For some of us, our hips are too tight and for others too flexible.
Here’s a sequence that will give your legs, groins and hips a good workout. For you supple yogis out there, focus on keeping firm to centre, holding the muscles around upper thighs and hips close to the bones. […]
Australia Day '11
Australia has a hard, even at times cruel, climate, one that keeps complacency at bay. It seems one of the most extraordinary things to me that our farmers keep going back to husband the land after fires, floods and plagues. Tragic stories of lost properties and livestock abound accompanied by stories of communities pulling together for mutual support, as in the recent Queensland flooding.
We’ve been very blessed this season on Mitchells Island – spared, as we’ve been from the 40 degree temperatures of the Drought Years and saved from the northern floods of this year. […]