Falls Forest Retreat
So, you think you want to give a yoga retreat?
Putting on a retreat is a matter of having all the right ingredients and then just following the recipe.
The first crucial stage is having a vision – the intention for what you want to accomplish. This can be as simple as wanting to get students together in a natural setting to deepen their experience of yoga.
My intention for holding the recent retreat at Falls Forest was to support Dr. Mary White in showcasing her stunning property at Johns River, New South Wales. […]
Two very important organs of your body nestle under the back ribs and serve as a vital filtration system for wastes. The kidney organs work to pass urine through the ureters to your bladder for storage and elimination.
If you get extremely run down, you may develop an ache in your lower back that is not muscular and arises when the adrenal glands, situated near the kidneys get overstimulated.
Traditionally, the family of poses that are meant to soothe the adrenals and tone the kidneys are forward stretches. […]
Brook McCarthy has written useful advice for yoga teachers in her recent e-newsletter. Basing her comments on the premise that are so many yoga teacher trainees being churned out of the many programs available, she suggests the market will be soon saturated and teachers will not be able to make a living out of just teaching. Her solution? Diversify. Take up writing and speaking. Become a teacher trainer or mentor. Or, “go hard and narrow”, as Brook describes it. […]
“Lazy Dog Pose” is one for the yoga therapy tool box, especially for hip osteoarthritis sufferers who can use it to postpone their need for surgery..
Another pose that can create release in the afflicted hip is this elevated lunge position:
If you can work with a helper, the following pose can offer relief:
When I had double hip surgery about 1-1/2 years ago, my practice of yoga had managed to forestall the operation for many years. […]
Once the aircraft’s doors have been armed, and the plane has lifted off the tarmac, wing flaps up, I enter a no-time zone. This works better for me than trying to figure out time zone changes and strategise how to wrest the most sleep out of the worst sleeping conditions possible. We’re now about an hour out of Aukland, and it’s 2:15 am in Sydney. I’ve had about 2.5 hours sleep on a 10 hour flight, in fits and starts. Disturbed sleep seems like a perfect scenario for practicing pranayama and meditation. […]
I’ve just been deliberating about what to entitle this post so that it would accurately describe the yoga class I did with Berkeley, California teacher, Donald Moyer, and maybe capture some of what I got out of it.
What I experienced was more than doing asanas under the instruction of a skilled, gracious teacher. […]
It’s a worthwhile exercise to stop and ponder what it is that makes a good teacher.
I often pose this question to myself as a teacher of yoga but it obviously is an important exercise for any teacher.
On this trip to the USA, I’ve stopped in to a few yoga classes in various cities so I’ve had the opportunity to “check out ” different schools and teachers. Here are a few observations:
Good teaching in yoga is founded on having a deep and practical grasp of the subject matter. […]
The yoga community is far-flung and varied. I’m in no way a purist so, to me, variety is good – healthy even.
I attended a yoga class the other day in Napa, California, which was located in an unusual position, that is, above an eating and wine tasting establishment. […]
Yoga is portable. If you have been attending classes for umpteen years and have not yet made the transition to doing yoga at home, you may not have made that discovery. So, here’s another incentive talk 🙂
Nowhere is the portability of yoga practice more appreciated than when you’re on the road. Even in the most modest lodging, you’ll find space to do a few back-saving postures.
The “hanging partial squat” or “bed chest opener” are so necessary after driving Highway 101 for many hours, as we are on this vacation. […]
Yoga teachers have a hard time conveying what this age-old, enormous wisdom system is.
One way to explain it is to pass on esoteric philosophical concepts as they appeared in ancient spiritual texts – difficult to understand and not the real experience of yoga; another way is to take those yogic ideas and water them down or recast them in contemporary terms – and perhaps much of importance gets lost along the way.
In any case, yoga practice can be a subjective experience that is difficult to explain in words. […]
I am reminded of the importance of good posture everyday in so many ways.
Here in Tucson, Arizona, I’m visiting my older sister whose “bad back” has finally caught up with her. As a seventy-seven year old, and having exhausted many different therapies, she now is facing a lamenectomy and L2-5 spinal fusion, next week. […]
Oh, I know, the above title is so corny. Sorry. It’s just that I’m feeling anticipatory homesickness, if you can put those two things together. Today I leave beautiful Mitchells Island, northern hemisphere bound, and will be gone for about 4 and a half weeks. I’m looking forward to new experiences and seeing old friends and family in the U.S. and Canada. But, there is nothing like home, and I’m feeling wistful. Apart from the beauty of where I live – my home, yoga space and green vistas – there’s comfort, safety and the springboard into my vocation. […]
It’s so easy to fall into the role of a people pleaser as a yoga teacher. Maybe teaching is even one of those sorts of helping professions that attract people pleasers.
Here’s how it can go…. […]
I’ve been teaching in the Yoga Shed here on Mitchells Island now for a whole 15 months now. Most of the people attending my classes, apart from veterans Daniel, Heather, and the occasional drop-in from Sydney, are beginner-ish – whatever that means in terms of yoga practice, as in yoga there isn’t what you could call a really standarised curriculum.
The Yoga Shed students who are regular attendees are progressing nicely and demonstrating some understanding of various postures. […]
Yoga isn’t everything. I don’t mean to be an iconoclast, but the truth is that Life is also a very good teacher, and there are many good teachers in the world who are not strictly speaking yogis. Think Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi or Mother Teresa.
I’m going to spend this weekend with two of my favourite teachers at a workshop called Love, Intimacy and Sexuality. […]
I was reminded after class today of the importance of proper grieving by one of my yoga students. We were chatting about his dad’s immanent death and the bitter-sweet process that he and his whole family have been in of letting go.
Earlier this year, when Daniel went to his mother’s funeral in the U.S., I went through my own private grieving at home. Grief for my mother-in-law but also for losses within my own family.
Death unleashes the most powerful emotions, if we let it. […]
There are a few tomes around these days that are collections of sayings that your mother said or puns that your dad made. There could easily be a compendium of yoga teacher quips, as the words get stepped down generationally, like parents to kids and guru to acolyte.
Some of the advice you get from a yoga teacher is anatomical, as in “unshrug your shoulders”, or “let your breath animate your body.” Some is mental, as in “let your thought activity slow down as you watch the content of your mind”. […]
When asked what gift he wanted for his birthday, the yogi replied: “I wish no gifts, only presence.” ~Author Unknown
Okay, okay, it’s a corny pun, But the above quip might also be seen as rather clever because it sums up the very aim of yoga practice – the cultivation of presence.
Today I was talking to my friend, Jen on the phone. Like me, she’s a yoga teacher. I mentioned something to her which I’d forgotten I’d told her before. She remembered it in detail. […]
I hold teaching to be a great pleasure and privilege. How I lucked into this profession has got to be by grace. I was a 35 year old, wondering what I would be when I grew up, and then I stumbled into a yoga teachers’ training.
Grace was there when I was able to apprentice with a very experienced teacher for several years. Afterwards, I flailed around for a while, attempting to find my own voice. […]
