“Ksero ta vasika Ellinika” my husband proudly announced to me recently. “I know basic Greek”. He’s been using a language learning app every day for nearly a year since UK went into first lockdown. He does a couple of exercises everyday with an occasional splurge of more concentrated work. It’s a classic case of the... Continue Reading →
Shrödinger’s cat
I want to ask a question. I’ve been sitting on it for a while now, but it remains unasked. Unvoiced. Or in this modern age, unsent. How else in lockdown do we communicate other than via email? Although such is the seriousness of the question for me as the suppliant that I almost think to... Continue Reading →
Silence in class
I'm sitting on my own in a library café idly listening to the conversations around me, since I have no-one to talk to. Most people are studying something together. There are some young adults doing university work, something sciency, and a couple nearest me are learning a language and I notice the intricate script (Chinese?)... Continue Reading →
Out beyond the castle defences
We had dinner with neighbours just recently. They're only a door away but even so our interactions have been quite limited. An Englishman's home is his castle after all. A party at ours a couple of years ago is still the longest time we've ever spent together; it's just quick hellos in the street as... Continue Reading →
Defining practice
One of my yoga friends asked me recently if she could take me out for coffee: she had something she wanted to ask me. I assumed it would be a request for a favour of some kind. But no, it was advice she wanted. She started off the conversation a little shyly, then launched into... Continue Reading →
Getting a handle on yoga
We've just got new internal door handles at home! Not big news in the grand scheme, but curiously significant in my small domestic world. We'd just been putting up with the style that existed when we moved in quite a few years ago now. Neither of us liked them one bit, but they were serviceable.... Continue Reading →
What’s the answer? What’s the question?
My boss is just back from a conference so we spent some time chatting about it. The major theme for us was understanding how to organise information or data and how we find the information we need. We talked about the possible relationship between the availability of data and the questions we choose to ask,... Continue Reading →
Open to learning
The guru mantra got me from the first time I encountered it. After all I love learning, exploring, and sometimes mastering new things; I've always enjoyed finding ways to teach myself and I've been blessed with some truly phenomenal teachers through my life. I'm married to a teacher too! So I guess the surface message about learning... Continue Reading →
Month by month
I'm a few months now into my routine of a monthly private session with my teacher. It sort of feels already like an indispensable yoga must-have, but it also feels like early days in something new, something that I am/we are feeling our way into. What do I want from this opportunity? Help with figuring out... Continue Reading →
Layer (not lāya) yoga
I found myself quite naturally using the model of koshas when I was talking to a friend recently, a yoga friend that is, so it wasn't as weird as it sounds. She was expressing fear or frustration about decision-making and I was speculating that good decision-making was a matter of getting quiet enough to hear... Continue Reading →