In my life, I have nothing really to complain about. I would have to overlook that fact that I live in a brand new house in the country, not too far from the beach. I am the envy of my girlfriends because I have such an incredibly wonderful husband. I live with him in our beautiful house, and also with Heather & Rick who are the nicest, most supportive people you could know. My health is improving every day because I don’t have arthritis anymore. […]
These are terms that a keen student or teacher might run across with increasing frequency these days. They represent a specialised area of yoga that offers a holistic approach to treating chronic or acute ailments.
What sort of treatment? A range of approaches: asanas, breath work, meditation, perhaps Ayurvedic remedies, all may be used for the purpose of creating symmetry in the body and harmony in the mind. […]
I joined an on-line yoga forum yesterday, thinking I could add an interesting thread on yoga and hip surgery. I guess I think I know a thing or two now 😉
I didn’t get quite the reply I expected when a respondent asked whether yoga had contributed to the hip osteoarthritis, as she/he knew of other experienced yoga practitioners who had hip problems. This isn’t the first person who has questioned the helpfulness of yoga. Here’s my answer:
“Thank you. […]
Have you ever overdone?
Do you have the definitive solution for keeping balance in your life? If you do, then you are likely to be a rich person.
Needing to find balance is one reason people sign up for yoga. IMHO, sadly, yoga teachers are a group whose lives get seriously out of whack. Isn’t it so? “You teach what you most need to learn.”
Sometimes I subscribe to my own way of finding where my limits lie: Go over them!
That was what I did yesterday. […]
The small ruby everyone wants has fallen out on the road.
Some think it is east of us, others west of us.
Some say, “among primitive earth rocks,” others, “in the deep waters.”
A-Bud-in-a-Bloom
Kabir’s instinct told him it was inside and what it was worth,
and he wrapped it up carefully in his heart cloth.
Kabir (The Kabir Book)
About six weeks ago, and on the auspicious first day of the new year, even a new decade, I kicked off this blog with the topic “New Year’s Resolutions”. […]
Having cast off from Rehab yesterday, I’m the one now entirely responsible for my new hips. Like taking a perfectly healthy plant home from the nursery or a puppy from the pet shop, one hopes that it hasn’t just had it’s best period of its young existence.
I admit I probably overdid it yesterday. I was so excited to be home that I did my version of laps around the property (without a walking stick), admiring all the work Rick and Heather had done over the last 3 weeks. […]
You smart people who have discovered my blog “Yoga Suits Her” (eve2.chaos-central.com for Facebook readers) have probably figured out that the title is a play on “Yoga Sutra” – hence the Sanskrit-y font.
But it’s also true; yoga suits me down to the ground. Always has. Well maybe not always but since 1971 and my first taste.
When I was a flight attendant, I preferred doing yoga in my hotel room on layovers, rather than going out drinking with the crew.
When I lived in New York, I did yoga with a swami. […]
“Four Walls”, if memory serves. Is a Cold Chisel song, maybe spawned from one of the band members who did time?
I’ve been spending time between four walls, one week in hospital, one week here in Rehab, with one more to go.
It’s not like I’m in prison. I’m grateful for the remarkably cheerful staff. All the facilities are clean and my small room is comfortable for my needs. […]
Eighteen years ago, when I was first diagnosed with osteoarthritis of the hips, my ego got crushed like a stepped-on grape. I was convinced the diagnosis spelled career suicide for me as a yoga teacher. […]
I watched a movie last night that had a scene with two small kids playing on a beach, seabirds flying around. I realized that was the first time I’d seen birds since the end of January.
I’m sure there’s birdlife out there, but I’ve been inside – a week at Mater Hospital, now nearly a week at Hunters Hill Rehab, and one more to go.
I’m not complaining; this is what I’m here for. I’m not even close to going outside. […]
The wise ancient, Patanjali, identified certain human frailities and offered ways of correcting them in his “Yoga Sutra”.
One of them is particularly relevant to the above topic and in Sanskrit is called “aparigraha”, the practice of non-greed.
Greed is spectacularly obvious when we read about excessive Goldman Sachs’ executive bonuses or Bernie Madoff’s financial blood-sucking.
But greed presents with much more of a slippery edge when it plays out in yoga practice.
You might decide to go that little bit further in Uttanasana because you felt you didn’t do enough yesterday. […]
The rocks in our local surf are rough and shiny, but I by the time I take them home they are dull, dull, dull.
Approximately four weeks of shaping, smoothing and polishing and the rocks are as pretty as gemstones. They actually have to lose a fair bit of their mass in my rock tumbler to finish up being satiny and attractive.
A number of years ago I heard a renowned yoga teacher say that it takes at least 12 years for a trainee to become a skilled teacher. […]
I was practising yoga out in the Shed this morning with my friend and housemate Heather. What ecstasy to have our own yoga studio a few steps from the house! Pretty much we just roll out of bed and onto the mat, more often than not still in pyjamas.
On some mornings, we single-mindedly, silently, and with gravitas pursue our yoga practice. Other times we have a bit of a goss about the neighbours or our spouses. We have been known to rehash a movie we’ve seen or discuss books. […]
For me, the really ugly thing about being in pain isn’t the pain itself but the way it takes me out of relationship with people and the environment. I just want to go to ground and isolate myself, like an animal crawling down its lair. This is not the way I usually express myself in the everyday world; I’m not reclusive in the least.
The pain I experience intermittently is the result of advanced osteoarthritis in my hips which I have decided not to battle anymore. […]
…does it take to make a habit?
Thirty days? Thirty months? Thirty years?
I started yoga in 1971 with a ten-week course held at the YMCA. Over the ensuing years, I did classes with various teachers in a variety of places, but practising yoga for me was intermittent until I went to the Iyengar Institute in India in the mid-eighties.
There I let myself be inspired by the commitment of the senior teachers, and became more like a wheel rolling from my own centre. […]
On a roll here with my rhymes, so I’ll keep them going maybe for one more time. A couple of years back, we felled about 100 pines from the back of our property. I don’t mean to offend any tree-lovers; I’m one myself. But this variety of pine is opportunistic and will eventually overtake everything, except the lantana which has an unfortunate (for us) symbiotic relationship with them. A horticulturist recommended planting some grasses and ivies on the slope to save it from sliding into the wetland below. […]
This afternoon things really hotted up at Scotts Road, Mitchells Island. 35 degrees, brains coddling and bodies steaming. A visit to the local beach is a often a reliably good solution, but we’d already done that earlier in the day. […]
A couple of years ago, I enjoyed viewing a calendar that had been put together by a group at a yoga retreat in New Zealand. It was designed to spoof the “cover girl” approach to yoga magazines and calendars. You know what I mean? Images like this:
Or even like this:
And, how about this:
The retreaters’ calendar was quite hilarious and included pics of yoga students doing lots of versions of savasana (the yoga relaxation pose). […]
Daniel and I have been country residents now for about nine weeks now. That means that I’ve probably logged in about 60 6 am yoga practices in the Shed. I’ve hardly missed a morning…me who used to love to do my yoga practice in the afternoons to put myself back together after the stresses and strains of the early part of the day. It sounds odd, I suppose, that yoga teachers need to put themselves back together. […]
Maybe it was a little arrogant of me to be in advising mode on Day One of 2010 when in fact I hadn’t volunteered what I was up for this year. Certainly Day Three of the New Year can’t be too late. So, here goes: I am going to be a nicer person. There!
And how am I going to achieve this? Well, there are the truly obvious ways:
•Don’t yell at people. Especially my best friends and husband.
•Do be generous. […]