Living in Community

We Are Living in Interesting/Confusing Times

We Are Living in Interesting/Confusing Times

There is much that we can be grateful for, even with the virus skulking in the background, but now moving more and more in the foreground.

It is my wish for myself and for you that we make it through these uncertain times holding each other in loving kindness. To me, this is the point of sitting in meditation and doing our yoga practices, isn’t it?

Self Yoga Retreat: My First Week

Self Yoga Retreat: My First Week

This was the first week of Corona Time when I was not teaching yoga. Not because of holidays or my being ill, but as a community service. I didn’t want to stop, but by talking it over with my dear husband, I arrived at, ‘this is the right thing to do.’

I wasn’t the first yoga studio to close, but I think I was a week ahead of most of the ones I know. I couldn’t quite stop, though. What’s the harm of a pop-up class on the beach? I did end up running a morning session on Sunday at Main Beach, Old Bar.

Colour Your Life With Creativity At Camp Creative

Colour Your Life With Creativity At Camp Creative

Camp Creative–Fertile Ground for Creativity
It’s several days now since returning from a week at Camp Creative. This event, based in Bellingen, has something for everyone. Sixty different courses representing music, visual arts, writing, crafts, young people’s activities, dance, lifestyle, and voice. A remarkable time, as evidenced by the concert of performing artists who came together on the last night. This is a showcase for creative work in the areas of instrumental music, singing and dance. Some performers were first-timers, others more seasoned, all with their creative juices flowing.
I particularly like seeing the range of ages represented. […]

Pop Up Yoga is All About Enrolment

Pop Up Yoga is All About Enrolment

Pop Up Yoga
Pop Up Yoga is the sort of yoga that might turn up in your local park or at the beach, especially as the weather warms up in Australia.

I went to a pop up kind of event at Flynn’s Beach, Port Macquarie, this morning. It was partly organised by the Yoga Shala and partly by the Coastal Warriors. Seventy-five people attended and funds were raised for the Coastal Warriors. They are a dedicated group of volunteers who clean up the local waterways. […]

The Case for Joining Yoga Associations

The Case for Joining Yoga Associations

Beware of the preface, ‘Back when I was a girl’. Or, boy, or youngster. What is about to follow this phrase is likely to be a thinly disguised judgment about the way things are going to hell now. Life used to be simpler, the air was cleaner, and people could still afford to buy their own home.
Yet in many ways, life is better for us. […]

Communal Living and Another 15 Minutes of Fame

Communal Living and Another 15 Minutes of Fame

I believe in the importance of community so much that I’ve chose to live communally. We are three couples, living under the same roof, sharing our lives together. This experiment in a different way to do retirement has been highly successful. We’ve been the subject of media attention even from the inception of our vision thirteen years ago.

The Shedders and the Power of Vision Planning

The Shedders and the Power of Vision Planning

Are you good at vision planning?
I think that I’m pretty good at planning for the future. Perhaps planning is an inherited trait. Either you are or you aren’t. There are those of us who plan from when we open our eyes in the morning to when we close them at night. (It’s possible that planning is going on even in our dreams.)
For me, the bad thing about planning is when I overdo it. It can squeeze the life out of any spontaneity and fun.
The good thing is that planning can lead to getting what you want. […]

Eve: Ambassador of Yoga

Eve: Ambassador of Yoga

I was recently selected to be an ‘Ambassador of Yoga’ by the Australian Yoga Journal. The magazine has created a community of 10 ambassadors, two men and eight women. You can see us in the latest issue.
Like me, you may be wondering what such an ambassador is or does. The editor says that the AYJ will rely on our group to help connect the magazine to ‘the greater yoga society in Australia.’ She adds, ‘We’ll be tapping into their expert knowledge…passion and wisdom.’

A New Sangha of Yoga Teachers

A New Sangha of Yoga Teachers

A bright ideaOne thing I thought of earlier this year was getting local yoga teachers together for a once-a-month practice. The idea I had was that we teachers would come together with one individual leading a yoga practice, and that that person would nominate the venue. Well, it’s happened. So far, we’ve met three times with an average of six of us at each practice. It’s been a great success, not the least seeing each others’ yoga studios. We meet early…7:30 am for an hour and a half practice and afterwards go out for breakfast. […]

The Gallery Door Closes on Yoga

The Gallery Door Closes on Yoga

Yoga is an art. As art belongs in a gallery, so does Yoga!I wrote the above candid caption as part of a promotion for the exciting new yoga classes I’d been invited to teach at the Manning Regional Art Gallery in Taree. I love this special gallery, a community resource for countless people, and I adore yoga. What could be better than putting the two together? Over these last two years, the classes proved to be popular. […]

The Digital Yoga Curator

The Digital Yoga Curator

Like most people, I wear many hats. Hats relating to being a home manager, wife, yoga teacher, community volunteer, and so forth. Just today I became aware of a hat that I put on almost every day but have been overlooking. It’s time to lay claim to the title of yoga curator. You might well ask what I do as a yoga curator. Well, I spend part of my morning reading the news, perusing blog posts, googling yoga information, listening to podcasts, and communicating through Facebook. […]

What are Shedders and What do They Do?

What are Shedders and What do They Do?

For the seventh time this year, and over past years, too, I’ve been featured in the media.
Is this because I’m a celebrity yoga teacher? Not at all… Even though one of these media exposures was a full page interview of me in Focus Magazine to promote the upcoming Ekam Yoga Festival.
Most of my renown has happened because my housemates and I have become the darlings of how-to-do-retirement-better media coverage.

Yoga – A Compliment to Palliative Care

Yoga – A Compliment to Palliative Care

The Class of 2015
The happy group of seniors pictured above are the latest crop of palliative care volunteers to have completed an inspired training on the mid-north coast of NSW. The photo includes facilitators Karen Rudge and Rob Crombie. You might notice yours truly in the front row.
While pride is not always an admirable trait, I can’t help but feel proud to have trained over the last eight weeks with such a genuine and generous group of people. […]

Judith Lucy on Mitchells Island to See the Shedders!

Judith Lucy on Mitchells Island to See the Shedders!

Here’s a little look-in at our home and gardens and us.
In this film excerpt below we are being interviewed about our inspiring communal lifestyle by Australian comedian Judith Lucy. It’s part of a six-episode series called Judith Lucy is All Woman. You can view all of this episode or even the whole series on the ABC’s iView. […]

A Light's Gone Out, But the Fire Still Burns

A Light's Gone Out, But the Fire Still Burns

 

In 1978 I fell under the spell of a yoga teacher named Martyn Jackson. Martyn taught a kind of yoga that he’d learned in Pune, India from his teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar.He alleged that, in the sixties, he was one of few western students to study with Mr. Iyengar.
Martyn went to Pune from New Zealand to undertake one-to-one lessons with Mr. Iyengar. He had a story about arriving on Mr. […]

Yoga is for Everyone: Let’s Prove It!

Yoga is for Everyone: Let’s Prove It!

We yogis are a force worldwide. Those who practice yoga represent about 3% of the adult population in Australia. The numbers in the United States are likely to be even higher. We who do yoga can do good and we do.
It makes me happy that we yogis want to give back after having received so much from our practice. We join organisations with a social conscience like Yoga Off the Mat and Into the World and Care2Causes. […]

The Bliss of Hanging Out with the Goddesses

The Bliss of Hanging Out with the Goddesses

I’m a tribal person, an extrovert who likes being around people I like, many of whom are women.
For the last eight years, I’ve lived with my husband and two other couples in a co-housing situation. This means that I am blessed to have two other women at my fingertips, who offer female fun, understanding and life skills.
Over 34 years of directing yoga schools, teaching classes, and training teachers, women have formed the majority of my students. That’s yoga for you. I asked a male swami one time why he thought yoga attracted more women than men. […]

What If We All Pull Together?

What If We All Pull Together?

More than 25 years ago, I saw a movie that crystallised a deep longing I’d held perhaps all my life. You might remember the film – Witness? If you don’t remember the film, you might remember a relatively young Harrison Ford playing a cop who has to hide out in an Amish community. He’s deemed an outsider but the community takes him in anyway and protects him.
One particular scene did me in. The Harrison Ford character participates with the Amish people in a ‘barn raising’. […]

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