Tonight I became all choked up while singing “Amazing Grace”, as our community choir was using it for our warm-up.
What was that about? I don’t follow any faith so it wasn’t a religious experience, but the group singing was palpably moving. It just caught me in the throat and that was it.
Many years ago at Sydney’s Circular Quay, I was waiting for a ferry when I found myself drawn to a young man positioned right in the middle of the pedestrian traffic singing show tunes, of all things. […]
Community
The Other Drink (in the Series – YTAPT – Yoga Teachers Are People Too)
Yoga and coffee go together like your two interlocked hands. A good yoga class builds thirst and appetite for a good cafe latte, or some version of that delicious brew. Why is that? And, does it matter? The stimulant loosens people’s tongues and makes them want to stay around chatting for hours. It’s the stuff of community-building.
I started drinking coffee when I was 16 because I thought it would help wake me up for my early morning summer school classes. I’m embarrassed to say it was instant coffee, but what did I know of the world of coffee. […]
Next to Godliness
Did you know there is a past tense of the word forego and it is forwent? Just so you don’t think I’m being showy when I say, I forwent my regular yoga practice this morning. I substituted 18 minutes on the stationary bike and two hours of cleaning the yoga studio.
Once you’ve seen the 72 squares space I practice in, you’ll wonder how someone could spend so much time tarting it up. Well, the usual dusting and vacuuming was de rigeur, as well as shifting spiders and skinks to the garden. […]
I'm back!
As of today, I’m announcing to the world I’m back on deck teaching – in the Yoga Shed at Mitchells Island.
Yesterday was exactly 3 months since my surgery, and I’m fit and well. Certainly beach walks, fresh air, green vistas, and daily yoga practice have gone a long way towards my feeling reconstituted. Life is good. […]
Something New Under the Sun
It’s not often that someone beats me to the yoga room, but Mike did today. So lovely to have his deep appreciation and experience in yoga beaming into the Shed. He did some thoughtful backbends, and I did my arm and shoulder weights routine, followed by an abbreviated yoga practice. Mike exited and Heather entered.
All of us Shedders ended up at the Waterbird Cafe for our regular Saturday morning breakfast, with the SMH quiz to tease our brains.
The beach walk is a daily ritual, you must know by now. […]
Home
What a treat! I was able to practice with the Simply Yoga teachers this morning. Sigh. I miss having that routine in my life.
Speaking of routine, I waived my regular yoga practice while staying at the Fallows. Good thing it was only a week long. No walks either, but plenty of drinking and dining at Sydney eating establishments. As a result I feel trendified and rather overfull. […]
Inside Job
Attending classes are a tremendous way to be introduced to yoga and to enjoy the comraderie of others. I was completely hooked on classes when I learned Iyengar yoga in the early 80’s. I can’t believe it now, but I used to do more than one class a day. I think the cost of a class was $8 then, and the price went down to $5 if you were enrolled in the six-month teachers’ training course. Come to think of it, all the classes were two hours long! I don’t know if I was passionate or just obsessed. […]
Sangha Three
One of the most attractive communities I’ve been privileged to be part of is the Yoga Sangha.
I had no idea when I started on my yoga path that this community is a human worldwide web. Not long after I completed my 10 week beginners’ course in Spring City, Pennsylvania, I moved to California and looked for my next class. […]
Sangha (Part Two)
A little while back, I wrote about two of my communities, my two women’s groups.
Community has been a continuous and important theme in my life. There’s an old movie called “Witness” that is set in an Amish community in America. I saw that movie 4 times and probably could see it again – no, not just for the youngish Harrison Ford – but because of the way the people portrayed worked together so well. There’s a scene of a barn-raising in the movie that made me cry every time I saw it. […]
Good
As a newcomer to country living, I thought I should join in some community activities.
Last week I went along to “Windsong” a community choir that meets weekly in Wingham, a little town about 30 minutes from us.
Can I sing? Sort of. If my life depended on it.
I didn’t have an entirely happy experience last week. I had to concentrate so hard on looking at the sheet music for following the alto harmony that I’m not sure what I sounded like. […]
Sangha
A blog is a discipline. I read somewhere that there are 184,000,000 blogs in the world. I would have thought there were even more. Most blogs die an early death, after just one month.
I’m pleased to say, I’ve been a blogger (please someone think of a better word) for four years. If success is rated in terms of readership, I’m probably still just muddling along, unlike Julie of “Julia and Julie”. […]