Out of all the thousands of poses in the world, how do you know which of them to practice.
Or, if you’re a yoga teacher, how do you know what to teach?
Of course, it depends on many of variables, the most important one being, read your body. Another indicator is read the seasons.
At the moment we’ve been doing summer gardening – especially cutting back weeds and hauling full wheelbarrows of them for disposal. […]
In this morning’s yoga class there were six students: one with a pinched neck nerve, one with a strained rotator cuff, one with dodgy knees, one with an arthritic ankle and elbow tendonitis, one with a sore back, and one ‘normal’ (at least for the time being).
In looking at a group ‘remedially’, I saw a collection of ailments. Looking through the holistic lens of yoga, I saw students who are totally fit to practice yoga according to their ability.
For my money, I believe everyone should adapt yoga according to their individual needs and constitution. […]
Is there an epidemic of hip replacements going on? I know of three yoginis who will have the surgery done within a month time frame – mid-March to mid-April. To be fair, I also know women who haven’t done yoga who, for various reasons, had to have replacements.
If you’ve been following this blog, you know my story of bi-lateral surgery, performed more than 3 years ago. […]
Oh my! My head is spinning!
I left paradisiac Mitchells Island at 9 am to drive south as I was scheduled for root canal therapy in Sydney in the early afternoon. The dental specialist that performed the procedure, an endondontist, did the 75 minute treatment while I was looking up at the ceiling watching Mr. Bean videos, hearing easy- listening tracks on the stereo, and, at the same time, trying to do mindfulness meditation. […]
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I got up on the wrong side of the bed today….
What does that mean anyway? I felt out of sorts, out of kilter, glum.
How did I know that was the case? The first comment out my mouth, Daniel took the wrong way. So naturally I thought he was the one ‘up on the wrong side’.
I did my morning mindfulness meditation anyway, and let myself be in the experience of feeling out of sorts. […]
Typing is a nine finger exercise tonight.
What lies beneath the bandage you don’t want to know. Okay, if you must know… the car door closing has made short work of my finger nail.
I haven’t cried while jumping up and down with desperate pain in a very long time. […]
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Have you ever heard of an exercise that’s done in personal development courses called “If you really knew me….”? It’s designed to create a greater depth of intimacy among the members of the group by sharing something of a personal nature. By opening up about a subject where there’s been fear or embarrassment attached to it, the speaker has an opportunity to let go and move on. […]
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One of the students from my Patanjali study group has inspired me. He was talking about his week and how he struggled to free himself from making judgments about people. […]
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Over the years I’ve developed a deep love and appreciation for yoga. Sometimes I joke and say that it’s the longest relationship I’ve ever had.
In the beginning I did yoga to help me lose weight after a pregnancy and to keep fit. I discovered I was good at doing the asanas so that gave me an ego boost and led me to do yoga teacher training. […]
In the early part of my life, I alternated between being a very good girl and a bit of a hell-raiser. I do have a few regrets, but I did manage to create some vivid memories along the way, as well as some great accomplishments.
I would say that the thing that tempered my tempestuous side was partly the discovery of yoga, but even more so becoming part of a wholesome community.
There has been a kind of evolution in my involvement with various communities. […]
Do you keep diaries? I did for many years. I filled up many of those blank page books; they were like my portable and private therapists, a written record of ruminations and attempts to sort feelings. I suppose you could say blogging is a modern day, more focussed way of diarising.
I came across one of my old books by accident today. (I burned a lot of the old diaries because I sorely needed to move on from past traumas.) This particular book is special. […]
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Shortly before I went away on a several week break recently, I had an argument with one of my housemates. You know how it is when you’re rushing around getting ready to go, stressed by packing, and completing those pesky chores. I was not at all in the space of anticipatory delight.
I won’t bore you with the details of the dust-up; let’s just say there was a display of anger, hurt feelings and cross words. My lower self was clearly on display. […]
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I wish the yoga sage Patanjali, whose writing I’ve been reflecting on in this blog for many months, had a wise aphorism to steer me towards a proper demeanor for January 26th. […]
Is it being too attached to still think about the departed, even after fifteen years?
My sister’s birthday has just past. She herself passed at the age of 51. I’m well on the other side of that age so I think of it as being young – too young to die.
Sue was her name. I miss her still. When we were together, which was not often as she lived in the States, I would teach her yoga. […]
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One of the strange but ever present states of affairs in all beings is the desire to live forever. Even those in the presence of death every day have this illogical impulsion. This is what inspires the instinct for self-preservation in all of us.*
I just finished a must-read novel by Barbara Kingsolver called Flight Behaviour. […]
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Do you know people who radiate inner beauty? I do.
These are the individuals who may not have all their features arranged perfectly or be a perfect size 10. But you just want to be close to them and hang out with them; you hope a little of their light rubs off on you.
The good news is that, if you can see positive qualities in another person, you have the template within you for creating what you admire in them. […]
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The feeling of heaviness inhibits; the feeling of lightness confers great freedom… to make the changes and transformations that are indispensable to life.*
Here are a few things I’ve done at different times in my life to create the quality of lightness:
1. Emotional cleansing – you know those occasions when you bare your heart to a compassionate other and it enables you let go of guilt, negativity, judgment, righteousness and all those things that were weighing you down.
2. […]
I have a sore throat. And a scratchy cough. And a voice that’s not very dependable, like a junior kookaburra practising his chortle.
I pulled down the big B.K.S. […]
Tonight I was part of what I would call a healing circle. Once a month my husband’s men’s group invites their partners to join them in one of their meetings. The structure of the night varies, but it seems that it always provides a place where we can come together to share deep feelings – some joyful, some soulful, some sad. It’s a safe haven where all emotions are welcome.
I’m always amazed how such profoundly transformational work can occur just by dint of careful listening and being with whatever is. […]
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If you are a teacher, you may have had similar experiences to mine when I’ve tried to remember after a class I taught who had been in attendance. When I’ve engaged in conversations with students as they were paying at the end of a class, I’d tend to forget to mark them off the role. […]