A Sutra a Day: III-25 – The Heart’s Ascendance

A Sutra a Day: III-25 – The Heart’s Ascendance

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. […]

A Sutra a Day: III-24 – Concentration as a Muscle

   Is it possible to think your way into being strong or flexible or healthy or kind or rich? Lord knows, wouldn’t we would like to think our way to being independently wealthy, handsome and adored? Or any number of other wishes to be granted. We might want be immortal or a perfect weight or successful in our careers. In this chapter of Patanjali’s Sutra on the cultivation of exceptional faculties, III-24 says that when one has perfect concentration on an elephant, for instance, one can gain physical strength. T.K.V. […]

A Sutra a Day: III-21 – Invisibility: A Power or a Weakness?

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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. […]

A Sutra a Day: III-20 – Dropping Assumptions

A Sutra a Day: III-20 – Dropping Assumptions

For part of my very early childhood years, my home was a dangerous place. Without going into details, there were often violent scenes. I learned a survival strategy which in psychological terms is called ‘hypervigilence’, and it carried over into my adult years.
I was adept at scanning my environment for perceived threats, whether they were sights, sounds, people, behaviours, or smells, and I would do this even when there was little likelihood of danger. […]

A Sutra a Day: III-17 – Clean Slate Coming

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Recently I’ve been through a painful situation involving close friends. It would seem that difficulties arose because of miscommunications, faulty memories, and judgments.
Although the unresolved situation has just resurfaced, it has been going on for decades, so long that it would take a private investigator working for months to unravel what was said and what was done.
I tried to avoid the bad feelings I had been experiencing over the years by stuffing them down, and just getting on with ‘the rest of my life’. […]

A Sutra a Day: III-14 – Recommended Reading

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I’ve been going along with my blog theme A Sutra a Day now for five months. Picture me every night sitting down at my messy desk, thumbing through up to eight Patanjali Sutra texts by various translator/commentators.
After reading each interpretation, I think about what I’ve read and then overlay a map of my life to see if there are any points of intersection. Sometimes I’m lucky and, bingo, the fit is serendipitous. […]

A Sutra a Day: III-20 – Dropping Assumptions

A Sutra a Day: III-11 – Retreat to Evolve

A friend recently asked if it was a hard transition for me to move away from the city, stop full time work and live in semi-retirement.
How could it be hard; this is meant to be living The Dream, isn’t it? Peace and quiet, a beautiful natural setting, unstructured time….
However, for me to have gone from full-time employment and the cultural stimulation of Sydney to rural life and fewer income-generating opportunities has indeed involved some gears grinding.
I have no regrets, though, except for the geographic distance from friends. […]

A Sutra a Day: III-20 – Dropping Assumptions

A Sutra a Day: III-4 – A Feel for Stillness

Are you a lover of books? I am and I have been forever, since I was a wee sprout. There’s nothing better than a novel that you can sink your teeth in on holidays or at bedtimes for winding down before sleep.
I went for many years reading every Self-help Book I could get my hands on, and some of them I actually did find helpful: Women Who Love Too Much, Addiction to Perfection, The Road Less Traveled, Owning Your Own Shadow, and many more. […]

A Sutra a Day: III-20 – Dropping Assumptions

A Sutra a Day: II-44 – Self-Exploration

When I began writing the “Yoga Suits Her” blog a few years ago, I chose the title because I liked the play on words, not because I intended studying Patanjali’s Sutra.
But, son of a gun, that’s where I’ve ended up. That wily Old Sage has reeled me in, and it’s been a good thing too. Patanjali recommends in Sutra II-44 self-study of the sacred texts, and here I am finally doing it – after 41 years involvement with yoga. […]

A Sutra a Day: II-42 – It is What it Is

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There are yoga concepts which people gravitate to more than others in the same way that we like certain star signs more than others, or colours, or authors.
The notion of santosa is one of these. Who wouldn’t be attracted to the idea of contentment?
It’s not easy, however, to be content. Some of us lean towards perfectionism (not mentioning any names here), which makes it difficult to be happy with the way life is in this moment. […]