Yesterday I paid a visit to Falls Forest Retreat to check it out as a possible venue for holding a yoga retreat in the Spring.
We made a party of it and stayed overnight – Daniel, Rick, and Heather and I – in one of the six two-bedroom townhouses that serve as accommodation. […]
Don’t get me wrong. I loved being in Melbourne. The Conference was terrific. I especially enjoyed socialising with old and new friends before the Conference started. I even saw a new release art house movie, something that is impossible to do on Mitchells Island.
But I was homesick almost before I left Sydney. I found the pace of the cities took me away from a quiet, peaceful, internal space I’ve come to cultivate here in the country. […]
Roll Call of Mitchells Island Birdlife:
The kookas are the first order of the day and wake me way earlier than I want, especially when one lands on our deck, right outside my window.
Still early in the morning, as I do my practice in the Yoga Shed, I can hear one lone owl in the pine forest.
Then, while I’m up-side down in headstand, I can see out the sliding glass doors to where a couple of families of king parrots are hanging right-side up around the bird feeder.
The maggies are out and about most of the day […]
Ten months ago I took my maiden flight into teaching yoga in the Yoga Shed. My wings were somewhat under-used as a result of having had double hip replacement surgery in Feb. 2010, followed by three months’ rehabilitation.
I didn’t know what to expect as my Yoga Shed advertising was typically minimalist. So I was chuffed when some students came along (and are still coming).
The old Shed needed some rehabilitating too, and today you can see the results in these photos – our own version of “Grand Designs”. […]
We’ve had a lively conversation around the dinner table tonight that was prompted by our viewing of a movie called “Gasland”. It’s a documentary that was made by American Josh Fox about the mining for natural gas occurring right across the U.S in recent years. It’s a little budget movie that’s made a big impact on environmentally-aware people and also the people who ended up with drilling going on in their backyards.
Some of these people are very unhappy about the results of drilling and gas production on their land. […]
I remember being surprised hearing from a friend who ran a bush regeneration business that we shouldn’t have to do big scale native planting to help bushland recover. We just needed to get rid of the nasties – opportunistic plants, trees, weeds. We had to get horses, sheep and cattle off the land to let it recover. The seeds and sprouts of beautiful natives that are being crowded out and trammelled simply need the right conditions to flourish again.
There’s a connection with yoga in the above view. […]
It’s a very beautiful thing to be present in yoga practice – to do our postures connecting the mind to each part of the physical body. It’s the most subtle kind of touching, the intelligence awakening internal and external anatomy.
Since it’s impossible to simultaneously quicken all of one’s body, the best that we can do is rouse the parts sequentially, a miniscule hammer vibrating piano strings.
I like the image of indigenous songlines, unseen paths that cross land or sky, like invisible Chinese meridians or the Indian nadis of our bodies. […]
It was so beautiful coming home to Mitchells Island after 5 days away because of:
• The Yoga Shed – I did Richard Miller’s “Meditative Heart of Yoga” practice and fell back into myself (Essential Self).
• Strawberry cuttings that neighbour Mandy had so generously left for me to plant in our garden.
• Fresh cucumbers delivered from Jacqui’s garden to our dinner table.
• A heavenly lavender sunset framed by a balmy, breezy atmosphere.
• My four beautiful yoga students who came for their lesson this evening, and left with love shining on their faces.
This is perhaps […]
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. […]
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. […]
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. […]
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. […]
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. […]
Viparita Karani went down very well after bushwalking at West Head and aboriginal rock art hunting in other nearby areas.
[…]
At present, I’m exactly 180 degrees direction from the happy sunshine of a desert island. I’m in Bellingen where the creeks and rivers are threatening to overrun, the rain is coming down horizontally at times, and the pastured cows are up to their thighs in grass.
Why would anyone go to the sodden eastern seaboard for a week smack in the midst of the worst flooding in years? To do a Writing Course, so I can be a better writer. […]
Lots of people ask me what the best thing is about having moved to the country. Maybe they are trying to build a case for doing the same?
Every time I get this question, I make it up. I don’t have a pat answer. I also don’t remember what I said the last time.
I know that sounds strange. It’s because describing what’s good about being here is almost beyond words. […]
…and, I would very much like your input as to what you would like to see in Eve’s Yoga Suits Her.
I’m planning on -relaunching my blog on January 1st 2011, which is exactly one year from when this incarnation of my blog appeared.
What a great opportunity to put in your suggestions. I aims to please (even though sometimes it may seem I’m here for my own e-musement, only partly true!). […]
Six years ago I and my communal accomplices began planning our retirement. At that time we had no idea exactly what it would look like, but we started talking it over, bouncing ideas, and found enough of a common vision to take some concrete steps….Steps that ultimately led to living on Mitchells Island, with some of us retired, some semi-retired, and some still working.
That’s how it goes. Create a vision, make a plan, and then it turns out more or less.
Friends of mine in the U.S. […]
The above is the banner subtitle for “Yoga Suits Her”. I admit I have meandered from this theme occasionally, even writing from urban locales like Manhattan, San Francisco and Sydney. However, it is true that I have been on a journey of relocating my longtime yoga practice from city to country.
Hardly a day goes by when I don’t feel blessed to be in such a beautiful natural setting and to have the ease of practising yoga in a studio adjacent to our home.
I get distracted, though, sometimes. Like this morning. […]
Recently I’ve been in the throes of a new writing project. I was swept along in the early days by enthusiasm and euphoria. But today I noticed that I have a mountain of work ahead of me, and I started to procrastinate and figuratively shuffle papers.
A decade and a half ago, I wrote on the topic of developing the discipline to do regular yoga practice. I glibly said things like it’s not really that hard to do; it’s just that your mind trips you up. […]