One of the most important ways to cultivate a feeling of community among yogis is for them to participate in a yoga retreat, whether it’s for just a weekend or for a week. It’s a privilege and a pleasure to be able to get away from the daily grind and immerse yourself in undistracted yoga practice, preferably in a peaceful, natural setting.
A popular venue for staging yoga retreats of Sydney Yoga Centre and Simply Yoga was out west of Sydney, between Richmond and Kurrajong, a place called Camp Berringa. […]
Peter from Dingo Creek Rainforest Nursery visited us today and read us poetry from the bush at the back of our block.
What I mean is, he led a little expedition with Mike, Daniel and Heather into the 2.5 acres of our wetland, an area we usually stringently avoid. […]
Australia has a hard, even at times cruel, climate, one that keeps complacency at bay. It seems one of the most extraordinary things to me that our farmers keep going back to husband the land after fires, floods and plagues. Tragic stories of lost properties and livestock  abound accompanied by stories of communities pulling together for mutual support, as in the recent Queensland flooding.
We’ve been very blessed this season on Mitchells Island – spared, as we’ve been from the 40 degree temperatures of the Drought Years and saved from the northern floods of this year. […]
At present, I’m exactly 180 degrees direction from the happy sunshine of a desert island. I’m in Bellingen where the creeks and rivers are threatening to overrun, the rain is coming down horizontally at times, and the pastured cows are up to their thighs in grass.
Why would anyone go to the sodden eastern seaboard for a week smack in the midst of the worst flooding in years? To do a Writing Course, so I can be a better writer. […]
Lots of people ask me what the best thing is about having moved to the country. Maybe they are trying to build a case for doing the same?
Every time I get this question, I make it up. I don’t have a pat answer. I also don’t remember what I said the last time.
I know that sounds strange. It’s because describing what’s good about being here is almost beyond words. […]
…and, I would very much like your input as to what you would like to see in Eve’s Yoga Suits Her.
I’m planning on -relaunching my blog on January 1st 2011, which is exactly one year from when this incarnation of my blog appeared.
What a great opportunity to put in your suggestions. I aims to please (even though sometimes it may seem I’m here for my own e-musement, only partly true!). […]
Six years ago I and my communal accomplices began planning our retirement. At that time we had no idea exactly what it would look like, but we started talking it over, bouncing ideas, and found enough of a common vision to take some concrete steps….Steps that ultimately led to living on Mitchells Island, with some of us retired, some semi-retired, and some still working.
That’s how it goes. Create a vision, make a plan, and then it turns out more or less.
Friends of mine in the U.S. […]
The above is the banner subtitle for “Yoga Suits Her”. I admit I have meandered from this theme occasionally, even writing from urban locales like Manhattan, San Francisco and Sydney. However, it is true that I have been on a journey of relocating my longtime yoga practice from city to country.
Hardly a day goes by when I don’t feel blessed to be in such a beautiful natural setting and to have the ease of practising yoga in a studio adjacent to our home.
I get distracted, though, sometimes. Like this morning. […]
Ever since returning from the U.S. last week, I’ve been happily ensconced in the Yoga Shed each morning around 6:30. My body is remembering the grooves it used to slip into with ease before holidays and even before major surgery through up barriers to progress. I am very blessed by having this studio to play in, Heather to practice with and the amazing green vistas we look out on.
You can hear things growing this time of year. […]
Daniel and I had a beautiful last day in Northern California. Old friend, Melissa, took us into S.F. to lunch at the Legion of Honor Cafe in Golden Gate Park and then to the exhibition of paintings from the Musee D’Orsay – featuring Van Gough, Gaugin, and much more at the De Young Museum. Brilliant!
I kept thinking as I walked around dazzled by paintings like “Starry Night” and “Beach at Heist” how much I was missing the green vistas of our home on Mitchells Island. […]
Our current port of call is our friends’ houseboat on this man-made lake in Northern California.
There’s hardly anyone about because this is the end of the season with cooler temperatures – maybe 10 degrees o’nite. But daytime in the mid-twenties.
So with a dearth of other boaters, it’s absolutely peaceful here and the houseboat’s flat roof is perfect for yoga practice and very conducive for meditating.
We’ve slept under the stars on the roof, bundled in our doona, and searching out northern hemisphere constellations, like the Big Dipper. […]
Nestled among four mountain ranges,
Tucson Arizona is beloved to me as I went to high school and university way back when.
I formed my tastes for the desert, country and western music and mouth-watering Mexican food here.
I misspent part of my younger years drinking pitcher beer and making out under fragrant lemon trees in full bloom.
Happily I have relatives here to visit or I might skip Tucson’s western charms in favor of alluring undiscovered regions.
And happily, the rellies thus far have been congenial.
My yoga mat is a bit dusty after a couple days or non-use. […]
Over the last month of traveling in the U.S.. Eek, it really is a whole month. Yes, I have squeezed in a few poses here and there, but most posing has been done in front of a camera.
Daniel and I have seen some wondrous sights on this trip: the giant granite monoliths of Yosemite, the monstrous and ancient sequoia trees, the iconic monuments of Washington DC, and most recently, the beautiful blue ridge mountains of Shenandoah park.
It’s fascinating being a tourist in one’s own country. This place is so vast and varied. […]
The secret to longevity…. The giant sequoias have got it.
We visited them in their Mariposa, California home today…hundreds of them. The biggest towering up to 300 feet and 20 to 30 feet in diameter at their base.
These whoopers can live to be 3,000 years old. […]
A new experience! My first visit to Yosemite today. What an extraordinary experience being in the land of John Muir and Ansel Adams.
Muir was a sort of Wilderness Yogi, a visionary, who put his passion behind creating Yosemite as a park for us and for posterity.
I was blown away by the scale of the granite mountains and bouldered river beds shaped by glacial movements over ages.
To see the shiny, vertical rock faces with tiny figures climbiyng them was truly breathtaking. […]
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 first moved to Australia from the U.S., I was much more of a free spirit than I am now. I was a flight attendant for T.W.A. for three years before landing in Oz and I didn’t even quit the job; I just took a leave of absence in case I wanted to move back “home”.
I would say that I didn’t have a sense of place, not even my birthplace, Chicago. I’d lived in N.Y., several suburbs in L.A., and Tucson, Arizona. […]
We live on a property which has been colonised by pine trees over the years, not a very nice variety of pine either. Even the saw millers don’t want to take them because the wood is so soft.
At one time we were told that the property had been cleared by the previous owners, and then within a couple of years, all the pines had returned. Opportunistic is such an apt word for them.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m as much of a tree hugger as I can be, but this is a complicated problem. […]
…no. If anything my cold is worse (mucous, hard to write that without the “yuk”) and now something else is happening, a sort of southerly movement of scratchiness down into my chest. I found myself apologising to Daniel this morning for my libido suffering from this cold, too. Sigh. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot.
Nevertheless somethings are under control: my yoga practice, for one, and I even managed to teach a class tonight, for another.
Also, I have an unblunted appreciation for the signs of spring that appearing all around our garden and our neighbourhood…. […]
