I sat a long while by the river today. The sun came and went, the sky was stacked with puffy white clouds. Birds appeared according to their individual habits. A kingfisher flew low and long over the water. A prehistoric-looking heron stalked its lunch. Half a dozen ducks came whirling in from somewhere and landed... Continue Reading →
Snow-ga
I once heard someone say you should never take up yoga if you like a good personal drama, if you're attached to making your life more exciting than it perhaps needs to be, if you actually enjoy getting a bit high on the everyday stresses. I think you'll know what I mean. I can fall... Continue Reading →
Heart and ears
At work today I've been listening to a recording of a live kirtan hosted by a local Hindu group. I did this as a strange stress relief measure as I tackled an inbox burgeoning with technical queries that I must somehow understand and recommend solutions to. It pretty much worked -- though it didn't do wonders for... Continue Reading →
Yoga + stress = practicing patience
GP appointments on the NHS are standardly 10 minutes. What can you do in 10 minutes? A lot as it turns out -- if you're experienced and have good rapport with your patient. I was back with my GP yesterday as a follow-up to my original appointment to talk about workplace stress (blogpost: does yoga... Continue Reading →
Does yoga help with stress?
"How come you're stressed? You do so much yoga". I've just been signed off work for a week for stress and my friend clearly found this slightly paradoxical, even a little amusing which is the prerogative of old friends! I don't think she was being massively critical, but like a lot of us (yogis and... Continue Reading →
Making space and giving way
I've been having a tough time of it at work recently. Too much to do, not enough time, not enough resources of any description. Necessity might be the mother of invention but all I'm able to create from this is a whole lot of stress. I can feel it in my body. The tight muscles,... Continue Reading →
National Iyengar Day, UK (almost)
Today is apparently the first ever National Iyengar Day in UK and Ireland. I had thought to mark this occasion by going to my first ever Iyengar class. A local teacher was offering a free session as an intro and it seemed like a great coincidence since blogging friends (you know who you are!) have... Continue Reading →
What a difference a day makes
A friend of mine remarked recently that she would have been sceptical about the 'transformative power' of yoga if I wasn't a living example. She used to see me as super-stressed in the office, always bringing work home, unable to let it go at the end of the day, and offering self-recrimination that I wasn't always... Continue Reading →