One of the great philosophy books of all time has to be Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. Not only is it a brilliant description of our psyches but it offers techniques for becoming free and even enlightened.
How do we become free? By stilling the movement of the mind. Or, as Patanjali put it in Sanskrit:
Yogah Citta-Vrtti-Nirodhah.
Like many, I had a difficult upbringing. I made a decision, perhaps when I was very young, to not succumb to being a victim. […]
The weather forecast for our area tells me that it’ll be 9 degrees overnight, with wind gusts of 10 km/h and maybe some more showers. I find these sort of days and nights very unpleasant.
I “rug up” as much as any human being can, layers and layers of polytherms, muffler, beanie, socks, ugh boots, and more. But when we get those mean southwesterly winds blowing callously across the island, I just want to go to ground.
On some level, I know that the more I resist the onset of winter, the more stressful I make it for myself. […]
To me there’s nothing more that I look forward to than doing yoga first thing in the morning. Well, after my cuppa. Why bother even changing out of p.j.’s?
Even transplanted as I’ve been to Adelaide these last few days, it’s been divine practising with, and teaching a little, my six women friends here.
It reminded me how invaluable it is to have the yoga habit firmly entrenched. […]
One of the things that comes out of sharing with girlfriends is discovering what you think, for one thing, and then getting accurate feedback for another (like it or not).
This is what happens at our women’s reunion that we’re having this weekend in South Australia.
Each of us may talk for an hour or so and during this time stuff comes up that may have been lying below the surface for a while, or it surfaces upon probing.
The truly beautiful thing among we seven women here is the willingness for each of us to be vulnerable. […]
How hard can it be to dig a hole? Have you ever thought about where people would be without holes dug. Probably still living in caves.
It used to be you could just go ahead and wing it…digging your hole. Now you can do a Google Search and discover “How to Dig a Hole”. It takes 5 steps on wikiHow, as a matter of fact. The first important step is to locate your utility lines, and call your council if you don’t know where they are.*
Today I dug a hole in order to transplant a severely root-bound palm. […]
While in Sydney I came across some useful reading I wanted to share with anyone who is interested in healthy habits , and specifically around eating.
“The Seven Kinds of Hunger” is a chapter from the excellent book Mindful Eating by Jan Chozen Bays, M.D.
In it the author describes why we feel like eating and suggests that if we can tune into the kind of hunger we are experiencing, we can approach eating in an appropriate, mindful way.
Here are the seven:
* Eye hunger – I had an experience of this type of hunger last night when we went […]
When I first learned yoga and for many years, I knew nothing of the yama and niyama. I didn’t know that they are actually stepping stones in the practice of yoga.
With the popularity of hatha yoga these days, it’s common for students to do asanas hoping to make their bodies strong. However, hatha yoga is just one of the eight limbs of the tree, which includes yama and niyama.
The point I made in yesterday’s post is that progress is futile if one’s inner life isn’t evolving. […]
Oh, how I hate to bust myself. Not as difficult as standing still in a fire ant hill, but still awfully uncomfortable.
Without going into a lot of detail, today I felt some strong emotions and spoke them, tinged as they were with just a smattering of blame. Almost immediately I regretted what I’d said and then had a job to mop up. […]
I have such a privileged life. On this day in April 2011 at 10 pm on Mitchells Island, NSW, it is quiet, the weather is temperate and autumnal, and we have a houseful of dear friends.
Things can change in a flash, and they certainly do. […]
Yoga teachers try and try by any means possible to get their students to do home practice.
It seems counterproductive, in a way to, to encourage students to practice outside of class attendance. After all, it’s by students paying for classes that the teacher earns his/her livelihood. […]
If you are a yoga teacher – any teacher, really – be very careful what you say to your students because it may come back to haunt you. You are a sort of god/goddess in the classroom and your words go in and may just happen to stay there.
I know this happened to me with my teacher. I still have some of that programming although it was more than 30 years ago. […]
The Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum on Saturday ran a piece called “Beautiful At Every Age”. Basically, the article was making a case for doing exercise, especially for the senior population. […]
One of the communities I belong to is my choir. I attend the practices on Thursday nights, and always feel happier at the end of the 90 minutes. The same joyful experience as practising yoga in the Shed each morning.
A dearly beloved choir member, Leo, asked us to perform at his retirement home, which about 30 of us did tonight. There were about 35 or so in the audience in the dining room, including some staff.
I was surprised the acoustics were so good, and our choir sang so beautifully. […]
In the same year I started yoga, a book was published called Be Here Now, written by Ram Dass. He became a famous author and inspiring speaker, traveling the world spreading the good words of his Indian guru.
The message of Be Here Now was very much that – about being in the moment – which what yoga is about. Why is it so hard to be present?
For some weeks, I’ve been practising a speech I’m presenting at Yoga Australia’s inaugural conference in Melbourne this weekend. […]
I’ve had times over the last fortnight when I’ve been overcome with feelings of sadness. I think my mother-in-law’s recent death has precipitated my tears, but then some memories of my parents’ deaths have gotten into the mix. […]
As the numbers of dead and missing in Japan rise each day, I find my thoughts turn to this ill-fated nation, undone so quickly by earthquake, tsunami and radiation leaking into the environment.
What would it be like to wake up into a normal day and by the end of it, your world turned upside down?
It happens every time that someone sits down with a medico and gets a terminal prognosis. […]
I don’t know how you’re travelling these days, but I’m still feeling buffeted by the news from Japan. Do you wonder sometimes how the world is going to make it through with so many things going wrong? I do.
Moreover, recently I’ve had some feelings of grief about my family come to the surface. Maybe they were precipitated by my mother-in-law’s recent death, possibly by the tragedies in Japan, Christchurch, Queensland.
I feel okay about being sad. I’ve been watching my mind come up with a lot of…what? It can only be called crap. […]
This morning, perhaps like you, I’m still reeling from the disaster that has struck Japan – a horror that will go on for many people forever.
The above photo shows how peaceful and “normal” it is here on Mitchells Island, New South Wales, Australia at this very moment. […]
I don’t know how it’s done – how one recovers from difficulty. I’m thinking of grief, and now also, the devastation in Japan.
These things seem to work for me:
Trust feelings, find a good listener, talk, feel some more, cry. Have a cup of tea. Talk, contain the feelings, let what’s underneath surface. Receive love, cry, don’t think, feel. Rest. […]
My mother-in-law passed away today.
I feel very much saddened by her death.
I loved her.
Her dying seems tied to other griefs, and they have surfaced to get cleansed. I thank her for that.
I’m also grateful for the gift of her beloved son in my life, as well as his seven brothers and sisters.
Everyone deals with grief in their own way. When my mother died, I “moved on”. I didn’t know then that skipping over stones isn’t possible. Grief is a stalker. […]