Repairing My Cabin
I’m still in England, staying with my extended family as I always do when I travel here. Over the past 15 years, these trips have always provided me with a real break from my daily life and responsibilities, and along with that have come some of the greatest moments of clarity and epiphany. Last night something happened that I’m still trying to process, and I wanted to share it with you.
UK Musings
It’s 5 am. I’m buried under the blankets in bed trying to build all the warmth possible in this cold room. It’s a wall of blackness outside, a wall that engulfs the rolling lawn behind the house. The lawn ends in a line of a variety of trees stripped of their foliage, all but the […]
My Take On Yoga
I read an article yesterday from the New York Times titled “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body”, and posted it this morning to my Facebook timeline because it created such an intense internal dialog within me. I knew that it would get others talking as well, and has it ever! The article talks about the dangers to the physical body that people have fallen victim to through their yoga practices, ranging from torn tendons to strokes, and since I posted it, I’ve had people asking me how I feel about what was included in the article and what my take is on yoga as a potential cause of physical damage.
Minding What Matters
I went into work today at Centre Luna Yoga to take advantage of the studio being closed till next week so I could close out the 2011 accounting year, and just being in the space, slugging away at the computer, brought me a sense of peace and clarity. When all the numbers were taken care of and I had turned off the computer, I found myself staring into the calm of the studio with a real sense of vision as to what I wanted to continue doing with my life and throughout the year ahead, and how to really go about that.
The Beat Goes On
As 2011 comes to a close, elements of the Hindu mythology workshop I gave this year keep creeping up int my thoughts, and I find myself listening for the drum beats of Lord Shiva…wondering if the passage of one year constitutes enough time to merit a beat. It is said that with each beat of his drum the death and rebirth of another age comes to pass, and as much as 2011 has been a year of growth and fruition of our efforts (for many of us), all the kineticism and daily events that have brought us everywhere we’ve been and that have shown us everything we’ve seen are all but a tiny blip on the radar. As we all, to varying degrees, look back on everything that 2011 has shown us, all we’ve learned about ourselves and the path we forge (or follow, depending on your beliefs), let’s remember some things, and commit to bringing these things with us into 2012:
On Our Love
I haven’t seen my mum in a month…and it’s been an intense one. She’s done her second round of chemotherapy as a treatment to prevent the genetic predisposition she has to produce a pre-cancerous protein from developing into cancer. And as one would imagine, it hasn’t been easy. With only two more rounds to go, she is physically doing amazingly. She is barreling through this like a woman on a mission…and what a mission it is. This is really the first time our family has ever been through something that could potentially shake us to the core of our being. And I have to say that I am so proud of her…her strength and certainty in how she has to deal with what she’s going through. And I feel horrible because I’ve been dealing with a cold for a month now…the one that comes and goes and comes back and goes and comes back again…so I can’t expose her to this super-irritating-won’t-go-away-nuisance-of-a-cold. But I know that she’s got all the support she needs, because my father is with her.
When the Smallest Truths Effect The Greatest Changes
This weekend I’m giving the teacher trainees a lecture on one of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Sutra 1.23 – Ishwara Pranidhanad Va. This sutra speaks to the ability to move closer to a place of truth, peace & light by putting our faith, and the fruits of our labours, towards a higher energy, towards what each and every one of us, in our own way, interprets God as being. Putting God/light/energy into the forefront. From my purely non-denominational point of view, that energy is exactly that – an energy that has taken shape in the form of light in my reality, an energy that is always within me and that I find myself tapping into and falling back on when I most need it. I’ve spoken before about God in yoga (God Talk), and how the practice is often mistaken as a religion, and I’ve also written about how I firmly understand that we all need to believe in something, we just need to figure out what that something is, and then believe in it, wholly and unapologetically (Up to You). Both these points are key in interpreting Sutra 1.23.
Full Disclosure
I’ve been thinking a lot about how many of the causes of suffering in my life and in the life of those around me are rooted in communication…what we communicate, how we do it, and where we direct it. It seems that so much of what we convey to others passes through a complex system of filters before it pours out into the space we reserve for comunication, but many times, it doesn’t even make it that far. That filtering of information happens when we analyze what we have to share, who we’re sharing it with, and a) what our feelings toward that person are, and b) what that person is dealing with in their daily life. When we have incredibly joyous news to share, we often suppress the degree of that joy if we’re dealing with someone who tends to be pessimistic or sarcastic, and conversely, when we have news that isn’t happy, we tend to keep it to ourselves for fear of imposing on others, afraid that we’ll “bring them down” once the news or information has been shared.
The Beginning in the End
I’m sitting in the airport waiting for my flight that will take me away from Santorini and bring me to Rome, and ever since I woke up early this morning, I’ve been bursting with emotion.
A Prince Among Men
I’ve just returned from the candlelight vigil on Mont-Royal to observe the passing of NDP leader Jack Layton.. I wasn’t planning on going. I literally found myself turning off the lights in my home, locking the door and walking the few blocks to the meeting spot. And I stood there and observed. I allowed all the emotion swirling around the people gathered there to wash through me, and I allowed my sadness at his passing to mingle with it and recirculate through the crowd. I stood there alone, and then, like it had been previously rehearsed, two people standing directly on either side of me turned around, put their arms around me, and I found myself in the company of Kay & Yvan, students from Luna yoga, but more importantly, friends of mine. And we stood there taking it all in, understanding the significance of the moment and the magnitude of the energy resulting from the passing of this great man.