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.
Take Care: Why is it Hard to Indulge Ourselves?
When Indulging Becomes Self-Care
When we first moved to Mitchells Island, we hadn’t yet winterised our house. Like a lot of people, we had mostly completed the interior but still needed to install a fireplace and block-out curtains. That first winter was painfully cold. Temperatures at night hovered around 3 degrees, with high winds and an unseasonable amount of rain.
There’s a windless, sheltered spot on one of our decks. During the day if the sun came out, I would grab fifteen minutes of unmitigated rays. […]
Take Care: What is Self-Advocacy?
It might be an expression that’s been around for years, but I’ve just woken up to what a great one expression it is: self-advocacy.
It’s similar in meaning to self-care. But ‘self-care activist and mentor’, Christy Tending says it’s just the beginning. In her blog post, she says:
The art of self-advocacy means boldly declaring what we need in order to feel whole and well and like ourselves.
I was reminded of how advocating for ourselves can be a life or death matter when I read the news yesterday. […]
Take Care: Restorative Yoga is the Great Healer
Restorative yoga helps you recover from illness
As I started up my Take Care blog series last week, I was reminded by my friend Lesley of the healing properties of restorative yoga practice. Lesley speaks from experience when she writes:
Dearest Eve, thank you for your article. As you know, I have used restorative yoga and yoga nidra to support my recovery from illness. It has helped in so many ways – supporting my immune system, helping with pain management & reduction (fibromyalgia), reducing fear/anxiety, and keeping me smiling through some very difficult times. […]
Take Care: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying
A few years ago, my friend and yoga colleague, Donna Cavanough, told me about a book that she had read called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. When I visited Donna’s home, she showed me the impeccable organisation of her pantry, kitchen cupboards and bedroom drawers and wardrobe. She had followed author Marie Kendo’s notions and created a beautiful environment from what may have formerly been chaotic spaces.
Unfortunately, I am still, at age 73, rebelling against the ideas of organisation that my mother tried to instil in me. […]
Take Care: How Yoga Can Help With Diabetes
We’re fortunate to have yoga teacher, Rachel Zinman, contributing her wisdom in today’s post.
I met Rachel when she was the twenty-something yogini she describes below–passionate about yoga but needing to push herself to the limits.
Then, as it happens, life intervened. Type 1 diabetes became her unforeseen teacher and has led Rachel to be able to share her learning with many others.
She will be launching her book Yoga for Diabetes in Taree and teaching at the Yoga Shed in early July.
Here’s Rachel:
I’ve often struggled with finding the best way to nurture myself. […]
Time to Bolster Your Immune System
Bolstering Our Immune Systems
Does anyone need to be told that we are well into the cold and flu season?
We are approaching the shortest day of the year. But we’re fooling ourselves if we don’t see that the Aussie winter is just beginning to settle in.
As smart yogis, we can bunker down, take care and look after our immune systems so as not to succumb to colds and flues.
For optimum health, all of us know to eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables, Vitamin D and lean protein. […]
Take Care When You Get Those Back Pain Blues
There are many ways of dealing with back pain. We can seek western or eastern medical treatment. We can lie in bed until the pain mercifully passes. […]
Take Care: It’s Good Yoga Practice
Welcome to Take Care
From today Yoga Suits Her blog will feature daily posts relating to taking very good care of oneself. Being kind to oneself. Practising self-care.
Why do I want to emphasise self-care at this time? Because I’ve noticed recently that I haven’t been doing well in this department.
I have much room for improvement in the area of self-care. And maybe you do too. Little things, like resting when I’m tired, taking time to prepare meals carefully and eating mindfully. […]
Allowing Yourself to Feel: Being With Sadness
Recently, I’ve had two episodes of feeling overcome with sadness. Not depression, but awash in sadness. You might have had times like this, too. They seemingly come out of nowhere and when I experience them, I feel compelled to figure out what’s going on. My hope is that I can defuse the melancholy as soon as possible, once I understand it. Thinking can take me out of the experience of being sad, as I build a narrative around the emotion. Sometimes the sadness is simply a black cloud that envelops and it’s not something to be understood. […]
Yoga and a Hysterectomy Recovery Program
Recovering from a hysterectomy can be a daunting process. There’s an emotional side to it: the loss of a major organ. A hysterectomy can also precipitate the sudden onset of menopause. On the physical side, the suggested healing time is six weeks, a long time to be dealing with discomfort and restricted activity. Mentally, it’s a time for taking it slow and easy, perhaps a difficult discipline if there are children to look after and home and work to juggle. Yoga was the perfect companion in my smooth recovery from a hysterectomy.
Yoga Practice For Wintery, Windy Weather
If you are situated high up on a windy hill as we are, or even in one of those urban wind tunnels created by high-rise buildings, be prepared. For winter, rug up, muffler up, and go head down, bum up, in your yoga practice.
Choose Healthy Living: Limit Future Pain
It would be a very nice thing if we were able to get through our days and years without pain. I’m talking about any sort of pain–emotional, mental, physical or spiritual. A nice thing, but we know it’s not going to happen.
I’m here to tell you that getting on in years is a further impediment to being pain-free. There are ‘inconveniences’, such as loss of hearing and changes in vision. And there are the discomforts of stiffening muscles and rusty joints. Then there’s the outright pain of that goes with serious medical conditions which can happen at any age.
Lately I’ve been thinking more and more about how I can preserve the relative good health I enjoy. I want to avoid future pain, too, to the extent that is possible.
Housing for New Times: The Shedders
Who are the Shedders? If you know me at all, you would know I’m a community junkie. I’ve created several yoga communities over the 35+ years that I've been teaching. I’m part of the Manning Valley singing community. There's our Mitchells Island community that includes...
Alison Rose Gray 1952-2018
Walking out of the Manning Great Lakes Memorial chapel yesterday, I overheard a couple talking. He said, ‘We used to go to weddings.’ I completely got him. The service that I had just attended was the fifth funeral in the last year, with nary a wedding in sight.
Alison Rose Gray was one of my first students when I began teaching in the Yoga Shed eight years ago. She loved yoga and would often enrol friends in coming along with her. […]
There’s Nothing Like a Dame: Women Together
I’ve been happily immersed in a woman’s world recently.
It started with reading an advanced manuscript of Ana Davis’ rich and empowering book, Moving with the Moon. Ana has written a yoga book, which will be available later this year, that is for all women, . It describes how yoga best applies to women. It shows us how we can benefit from doing feminine yoga, for all of our lives.
Almost as I finished the book, it was time for me to catch my flight to Adelaide. […]
Supported Bridge: A Healing Pose
The healing benefits of supported bridge
Do you have poses that you do rain or shine and in all seasons. Your body and mind say, ‘This is an every day pose. Bring it!’ Supported bridge (Setu Bandha Sarvangasana) is one of these.
It can be performed in a variety of ways. […]
Yoga Retreats Are The Way to Go Forward
Sometimes we need to retreat to go forward.
In my mind, attending a yoga retreat is the best way to go forward in your yoga practice. I would venture to say, even in your life, as retreats offer you periodic renewal.
When Sydney was still my base, I lead retreats in the lower Blue Mountains over a 12 year period. Twice a year our students attended these weekends of inspiration, regeneration and enjoyment. We yoga teachers of Sydney Yoga Centre experienced similar benefits to the students and returned to the city renewed. […]
Yoga Forward Bends: An Inside Job
Have you noticed that there seem to be an infinite variety of yoga poses? Truly! If you are doing home practice it can be confusing what poses you’ll do and what sequences.
Equally, you may get stuck in a rut if you just do the same old, same old postures for efficiency’s sake. I noticed this had happened to me and, in particular, regarding forward bends. I had fallen into a routine of doing the splits, head-to-knee poses and double leg forward bends, and that was about it. […]
On This International Women’s Yoga Day: Nude Yoga Girl
On this International Women’s Day there are yoga classes being held around the globe in celebration of womanhood.
I will dedicate my own practice today to women everywhere in this amazing time of #metoo posts and consciousness-raising relating to gender inequality.
Coincidental with IWD, my Australian Yoga Journal arrived in the mail today, with a surprise. There was Nude Yoga Girl on the cover, a woman whom I’m told prefers to remain anonymous. If you want to see the full cover, you may need to do it in person.)
Nude Yoga Girl and the magazine are exercising compete freedom of expression in displaying nudity in such an out-there way. The staff at the magazine say that they are willing to take this risk knowing that it may offend some people. The reason why? Because we need to know about the many offshoots that represent the way the image of yoga is changing. Does this mean that yoga has lost its soul? No doubt, you’ll have your own opinion. If you read the magazine, you can find out what some yoga ‘authorities’ have to say on the topic.
Rx for Age-related Grumpiness: Meditation!
Grumpiness can be sparked by various transgressions. It annoys me if someone doesn’t recognise the importance of my personal sensitivities or take into account my pet peeves. Unfortunately, annoyance and grumpiness leave bad energy–like a black cloud over my head which sits there even though there are blue skies all around.