my yoga journey
I tied my first mala recently. I was feeling fragile. I didn't want to move, but I also didn't want to sit silently with my thoughts. What could I do to soothe myself? Somehow making a mala seemed like a good answer. Yoga practice is weird that way. Unexpected answers to questions I never used... Continue Reading →
How much do teachers share their own practice with their students? I find this a constant balancing act. How to root teaching in my own experiences and practice while generalizing it enough to be accessible to a group? I went to class recently where I was baffled by a lot of what was offered, not... Continue Reading →
An artist comes into one of my classes each month to sketch the students in their asana practice. She’s a yogi herself and is learning to draw the human body in movement. We have some great conversations about how to read anatomy in the way we each need to. She told me that in life... Continue Reading →
I recently saw the film Walk With Me, about the Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. At first there was something slightly surreal about tucking into my chocolate ice cream, and Hubby with a glass of vino, settling back comfortably to be a voyeur on the simple Zen life. But life is a paradox, so I... Continue Reading →
I'm reeling. Not just wobbly from physical fatigue as muscles I didn't know I had assert themselves with increasing soreness. I'm also reeling mentally from so many new ideas and possibilities... I'm just back from a weekend of workshops which involved some of the most physically intense asana and pranayama practice I've ever attempted, some... Continue Reading →
I've been thinking a little about Śavāsana recently, doing a tiny writing assignment for my teachers. In the nice way of coincidences this weekend I also fell into talking with Hubby about introducing a more restorative aspect into his practice. As he's becoming more free of chronic pain I see him getting onto a bit... Continue Reading →
Some time ago my yoga teacher suggested I meditate on the difficulties I'm having physically: on why my physio has identified limited thoracic spine mobility along with grumbling shoulders and neck. What is this really? It's been weeks since he dropped this idea on me and I have been avoiding it ever since! Bad yoga... Continue Reading →
Now that I’m teaching yoga in a gym setting, there are all sorts of questions I ask myself about my own practice, my teaching, and about what yoga is — or what I might reasonably assume a regular office worker wants it to be in their mid-week lunch break. Interesting questions, for which I don’t... Continue Reading →
How hard is it to sit still? It's one of those things that seems easy until you try it! I took up yoga precisely to help me with sitting still. Ah, the irony that movement has become such a dominant part of my practice now...! But even so I like to think I'm a tiny bit better now... Continue Reading →
I was introduced to the concept of mauna this week. Silence, the silence that underlies everything, the real essence and heart of things. Not just an absence of noise, but something more profound. Something essentially beyond description. I wonder: is the practice of yoga just about learning to get comfortable with this quality of silence, the essential loneliness of existence? And perhaps... Continue Reading →
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