Part of my rhapsodic descriptions of Mitchells Island living are coloured rosy by the great people who I share our property with. We’ve known each other for decades.
Five of the six of us are yoga practitioners, and it’s pretty cool when we’re out in the yoga shed together for pranayama or asana practice.
A few years ago when we were still in the planning stage of our communal experiment, we hit a barrier, not surprisingly financial. It looked like our vision of living together was fast going down the gurgler. One of us had a great idea. […]
What is it about this time of the year that sets us on a wild emotional ride? Well, maybe not you, but certainly I have been on one.
Some of it was self-inflicted, as in getting overtired and not communicating that important bit of information. Just becoming increasingly crabby until…there is an outburst…like an summer electrical storm – then a downpour, and finally clean air.
I find it’s so hard to stay conscious all the time. Being in a relationship, living in community, sets up extra challenges.
Yoga doesn’t solve all these problems, but the mindfulness we cultivate helps. […]
I stumbled out to the Yoga Shed this morning having had fewer hours sleep than I wanted. The reason? I was up late racing to finish “Nomad”, this month’s selection of our book club, which was scheduled to meet this afternoon. I have to admit I didn’t finish the book in time. However, I highly recommend it, mainly because of the courage of the author, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She’s a feminist, writer, lecturer and fearless critic of Islam. I will finish the book as a vote of support.
Fortunately I had a Fatigue-fighting Yoga Sequence up my sleeve. […]
Last night I went to a celebration. A friend had just successfully completed a property settlement on the house she and her daughter live in, all part of the process of her husband becoming her “ex”.
She was staging a bonfire-lighting and had recommended to her guests that they bring along something that they would like to get rid of in the fire. Our neighbours just across Scotts Creek hauled over some old bamboo blinds that went up in flames pretty spectacularly. […]
I am 65 and 3/4 years old and my artificial hips are 7 months old.
If you were wanting a city to road test new hips, you couldn’t do batter than Manhattan. […]
Crystal balls are not really a necessity. Not at all. To see your future look to the folks in the retirement villages and nursing homes.
Even though fifty is the new forty, sixty is the new fifty, and so on, one day if you live long enough you will get to be an 80, 90, 100 year old. […]
It’s sunrise in this flat, white-dusted desert, and the car we’re getting a lift with from Burning Man to Reno is stuck in a queue. We’ve been advised it’ll take 30 min. to get out, much better than the 3 hours it took to get through the entry point a week ago.
I love the desert. […]
Last night was the ritual of burning The Man.
We arrived at The Man site and took up seats on our blanket right in the front row, waiting for the fire show to start.
First there were marching bands. Have you ever seen a fiery tuba or flaming kettle drums? Setting a wild rhythm, the flame-throwers, eaters, twirlers, dancers appeared next, certainly the biggest pyro show I’ve ever seen. […]
It’s been almost 7 months since I had bi-lateral hip replacements and I thought it was time to have a look at how my yoga poses were coming along. Through the eye of a camera.
Daniel was kind enough to take some photos of me posing 😉
Now, you probably know that I would have deleted the not-so-hot images. […]
When I woke up this morning completely blocked and breathing from my mouth, I thought of the only thing that would help – yoga practice.
So here I am in the Shed, writing to you, occasionally lifting my head to look out at the view – dewy, green grass with birds swooping in and out. Given this is Australia, the birds are not ordinary: king parrots, eastern rosellas, and kookaburras, for instance. (The magpies have been having sex this week, right before our eyes.)
I have faith that my practice will pull me together on all levels. […]
Two weeks tomorrow Daniel and I will be in the U.S.A. I have mixed feelings about returning to the land where I was born. Not because I don’t want to be there, but because I don’t want to not be here.
I’ve so appreciated the gentle changes that have occurred in our environment since moving to the country eight months ago. And the bigger changes that we’ve bestowed on house and garden over that time. […]
The above phrase could be interpreted as perfunctory, even careless, when applied to someone who has a chronic illness or terminal disease.
We could have the best intentions in saying it but when someone’s condition is so debilitating, “I wish you well” or some version of that could only be seen as empty, unfeeling communication.
I had a number of comments from readers regarding yesterday’s post about dealing with fatigue. They were from people who struggle with poor health every day. […]
Being tired is definitely not sexy. It’s not even a good look.
It’s the pits waking up in the morning, feeling fatigued, and then fretting that this is the best you’re going to feel all day.
That was me at 6 am. Even viewing the dawn’s pink cotton candy clouds couldn’t help. […]
Oooh, it’s wet on NSW eastern seaboard. My Canberra friend wrote that even the dessicated capital city had had rain. Ninety-eight percent humidity has become normal and you could squeeze liquid out of the air, even when it doesn’t rain.
We are growing unanticipated things on the wetland portion of our land – the area that dried out completely in our several years’ drought.
I’m not complaining, no sir-ee, not in this wide brown country called Oz. […]
I did a fabulous yoga practice this morning. It’s one that I will present for Yoga Therapy Trainees in Byron Bay next week.
The sequence is a “download” from The Path to Holistic Health by BKS Iyengar and comprises poses for treating colds.
When I was still teaching in Sydney, I can’t tell you how often the teachers and I at Simply Yoga would do this sequence as a way of looking after ourselves. […]
In this mini study of the Koshas, we’ve come to Jnanamayakosha, also known as Vinyamayakosha. The level of being that this “sheath” represents is sometimes called the wisdom or intuitive body – the level of intelligent thought and conceptualisation.
I have to admit I don’t fully understand all the terminology and perhaps that is because we have gone from looking at the physical level to more and more subtle ones.
So, I’ve intuited what I think this level is about. […]
It’s time to get back to a yoga platform here, after my efforts to try and save local beaches the other day and yesterday’s bemoaning of the brazen marketing use of social media.
Let’s talk about Koshas, a word that resembles “kosher” but is as far from Jewish dietary restrictions as Grevilleas are from Geraniums.
Koshas, a Sanskrit word, are often defined as the layers or sheaths, of a person. Another way koshas are described is like a set of Russian dolls – five of them. […]
There are startling sights to be seen on the rural landscape.
Our garage is a stone’s throw from Farmer Scott’s fence line. Exiting from the car today, I faced his big, beefy cattle, chomping away in their lush meadow.
The cows look pregnant. I’m not an expert, but these bovines are seriously bulky, especially up close.
Sunday on our Saltwater Beach walk we came across an exceedingly dead wallaby. The skull was exposed and the roo was a funny bloated grey colour. […]
Yesterday it was eye pillow-eating mice in the Yoga Shed (two of which have now been dispatched to that big granary in the sky) and this morning my right knee went.
That’s a layperson’s term for what happens when walking down a flight of stairs, and suddenly, a knee decides not to do the flex thing that it’s been successfully performing for 65 years.
How could this happen? My knees have been one of the most steadfast bits of my body. […]
