What is a yoga intensive?
We teachers often call yoga courses which run over several days ‘intensives’, but what does that mean? Are they really intense? Is that a contradiction in terms?
Another word that’s used these days for this type of course is ‘immersion’. I think that’s a better expression. Intensive brings up the sense of extreme or severe effort. Immersion is more like plunging in and steeping yourself in the content.
We’ve just completed a week of early morning classes at the Yoga Shed for 15 students. […]
guest post via Michael Hollingworth
The Facts
We all know that meditation is supposed to be good for us, but here are some facts that make a tight case for it.
Fact number one: The human brain is the most complex known object in the universe. There are 100,000 miles of circuitry – enough to go right round the earth four times. […]
The Bird
I spotted a satin bowerbird building his ‘love shack’ in a sheltered part of our garden. My Wiki source says that these clever birds are endemic to eastern Australia. If you’re from another part of the world and aren’t familiar with bower birds, here’s a pic of a male:
I’ve known for a long time that bowerbirds are collectors of objects. They especially love blue things: drinking straws, bottle caps, and clothes pegs, for instance. […]
I love yoga and I love my yoga practice.
I often hear from people that they would like to be able to do home practice but somehow they never quite get there. Maybe this describes your experience. You might have bought all the yoga gear, dvd’s, YogaAnywhere practice cards, books, but ended cup only doing self-practice for a short time. […]
While meditating this morning, I started to mentally create a to-do list. You may have had a similar experience; in the absence of other stimulation your mind starts to fill up the void with the overflow of your too-busy life. These might take the shape of conversations you had with people which you didn’t finish satisfactorily. Or, tasks that you promised completion of and then didn’t deliver. […]
I did a meditation this morning to the voice recording of Jon Kabat-Zin in which I was able to practice accepting my busy mind.
I know that meditation is supposed to be about stilling a chattering mind, but I think I’ve discovered a precondition to having a quiet mind, which is having a good look at what the mind is really up to.
In the case of moi, at the times when I’m sitting for meditation, my mind is most often planning, and especially busy creating new projects. […]
Next week I’ll be teaching in the Byron Yoga Therapy Course which I’ve had the honour of doing for the last four years.
What is yoga therapy? In one sense it’s a contradiction in terms because the basis of Patanjali’s meditation yoga is that an individual is whole and complete and doesn’t needing ‘fixing’. […]
Yesterday I wrote about how difficult I find it, at times, to pay attention. I’m finding the practice of mindfulness meditation gradually helping me improve my concentration.
Another aid for focussing the mind is the practice of pranayama – attention to the breath. Today I wanted to link back to Patanjali and his Sutra regarding pranayama. […]
In our household of six, there are three of us who have cottoned onto mindfulness meditation.
Michael started it through his involvement in a course of study he is doing where there is a big emphasis on the importance of mindfulness.
And then, Daniel learned about and practised meditation in a structured nine-week course offered in Taree last year.
Finally after umpteen years of trying to meditate, I down-loaded some of Russ Harris and John Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness recordings to my iPhone, and climbed aboard the meditation bandwagon.
Now Daniel and I meditate together. […]
When I woke up in the dark today, and it was only 2:37am, I was hoping I would fall right back sleep. Instead I spent the next hour in the slipstream of my thoughts, not awake enough to still them and not sleepy enough to bypass them.
Finally, I did something I’ve never done before. […]
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For some reason, maybe because of teaching some workshops on ‘How to Work with Older Students’, I seem to be preoccupied with ageing. It may be because I am, er… getting on myself.
A newsletter landed in my email today from my friend and colleague Maggi, who was writing about ‘Age and Attitude’. She says,
‘I have a bad attitude to ageing. […]
A friend who is staying with us for a few days is a meditator of decades, going back to his early teachers, Muktananda and Osho (when he was Rajneesh). […]
Am also encouraged by recent findings that the body may cease aging when one is past 91. The study (reported in a 2016 New Scientist) by Michael Rose (a professor of evolutionary biology), says that if you are lucky enough to live that long, you stop ageing. He notes that one’s health may not improve but it certainly does not get any worse. Whilst that advice is far not mainstream, population statistics do show that ageing seems to stop at 93 – and does not speed up again until we get a telegram from Queen Elizabeth (the Last) at 100.
Thus, if one makes it to 99, you are no more likely to die at any given point than someone of 93. (From 110 plus may be a different matter but I’ll let you know). …
In the absence of internet information, I decided to create my own holistic way of dealing with my upcoming surgery.
I started talking with my friends to share my journey. The simple fact that I was willing to be open and vulnerable helped eliminate any residual shame.
I started keeping a journal in which I could collect information on hysterectomies, and more importantly, write down questions and feelings as they arose. …
