Today’s blog is something new for me. I decided upon listening to one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs yesterday that I would update one of the most popular posts that I’ve written. It gives a nod to the composer’s well-loved tune, “Anthem”, which has the refrain:
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
I’m of the opinion that the song’s sentiment is so popular because we humans don’t want to have work so hard at being perfect. […]
Twinge sounds like such a harmless word when it’s applied to conscience, a little tweak, a tiny tickle. Perhaps so inconsequential that it can be overlooked or overridden.
Is it just me or somehow does a twinge seems more significant when it has to do with the body? My husband Daniel learned the hard way (meaning enduring many physiotherapist visits) that he needed to give due respect to any back twinges. A stab of pain works as an early warning system for what might turn out to be a storm of discomfort or even incapacitation. […]
The weekend Sydney Morning Herald, mostly bought so we can pit our brains against the quiz, also offered some fascinating anti-dementia news.
More than doing sudokus and cryptic crossword puzzles, we ought to be working on keeping our blood pressure as normal as possible.
High blood pressure contributes to vascular dementia that’s caused by having a stroke. But there is some evidence that keeping BP levels healthy can help prevent Alzheimers, too.
Where does yoga fit in? Obviously as a holistic form of exercise; it helps lower blood pressure and provides blood flow to the brain. […]
What am I doing on a Saturday night? Why I’m obviously writing a post. […]
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. […]
Most people under 40 years old would not have the word “periodontist” in their vocabulary. […]
Back in Sydney, back at Simply Yoga tonight to be taken in a class by Jen Taylor. A class, as she described, taught with a restorative approach.
Such an amazing thing to be led through a class by someone whom I’ve taught for years and then mentored as a yoga teacher. In this evening’s session, I had an experience akin to being held lovingly in my own hands. […]
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. […]
I don’t really like flying; actually I don’t much like traveling. I love the new places and the new experiences once I get there, but I’m a hundred percent behind teleportation. This is coming from someone who has done the Pacific Ocean crossing from Australia to the U.S. maybe 20 times.
From someone who served with Trans World Airlines for three years as a flight attendant, with working trips to places like Reykevik, Vladavostok, Ryadh.
This time it’s only a little hop to Adelaide for the Deep Creek Women’s annual reunion, the eleventh of such gatherings. […]
Some yogis love their inverted poses while others struggle with them or find them fear-inducing. Some wonder, “Why bother?”
I admit I’m biased. I’ve been doing headstand and shoulderstand for 35 years. But I’ve also never had whiplash, compressed cervical vertebrae, or even much neck stiffness. […]
I have an ingrained habit of doing yoga practice each morning, and I’m in the fortunate position of not needing an alarm to wake me. I just get out of bed, walk to the studio, and begin. I don’t ever take this privilege for granted.
This chilly Sunday morning, I chose to do what most people do, curl up under the doona, sleep in, get up, make a cup of tea, get back in bed, have a cuddle. […]
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. […]
Today’s wake-up was at 5 am. Hey, we’re semi-retired, living in the country. Why would anyone wake up at that time if they didn’t have to? For an adventure, of course.
Way before sunrise, rugged up to the eyeballs, we headed out to the beach on Mitchells Island. Even as the car headed in that direction, we saw the objects of our expedition: the brilliant convergence of Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Mars in the northeastern sky.
You know how amazing Venus looks in the early morning. […]
A couple of years ago, I wrote an e-book with accompanied with an audio c.d. called The Art of Adjustment. It’s basically a manual for yoga teachers, trainees and keen students. I’m sorry to say the book has languished on the Live Yoga Life site where it is for sale, possibly because I retired from teaching in Sydney not long after it was launched. Well, launched is a rather grand word for what happened. Appeared might better describe its debut. […]
When I teach the yoga relaxation in winter’s chilly temperatures, I see students getting into their lying down positions, pulling socks and jumpers on, and wrapping themselves up in blankets as tight as mummies. Of course we want to keep warm but not at the risk of creating a tense and resistant position.
Here’s some guidelines for teachers to follow in giving their students the optimum set-up for a deep relaxation:
1. Use a folded blanket like a pillow to support the neck and head. Especially with lower backache or sciatica, use a bolster under the knees.
2. […]
The idea of creating our Mitchells Island community of three couples, living in a beautiful home of our design, was hatched about 7-1/2 yrs. ago. The six of us were fairly accomplished at creating a vision and then fulfilling it. I think our project was successful, in some measure, because we harnessed the powerful synergistic energy of the group.
I taught vision-making as part of The Professional Yoga Teacher course at Nature Care College for 10 years. I still hear from trainees who created their 5 year plan and then manifested it. […]
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. […]
Back when I was a girl – 27 yrs. old – I was lucky to find a yoga class of any kind. Yoga was a very fringe happening in those days of hootenannies and the Beatles’ magical tour with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
These days we can find a yoga program for every season and reason – one of the most popular niches being yoga for children.
At a recent yoga conference I attended, a panelist whose topic was “Yoga of the Future” brought out a group of kids to do a demonstration of their poses for us. […]