Universally Speaking
There is a lot of information to process from the Yogic teachings, all of which can discombobulate the most grounded of people. Filtering through and processing it all may indeed prove to be exhausting, but allowing yourself to challenge what you consider true is always enlightening and more often than not, illuminating. One aspect of Yoga continues to this day to challenge my beliefs, and I believe that it poses some of the same questions for others as it does me. The Yogic scriptures and teachings bring everything back to one thing: union. The word Yoga comes from the Sanskrit root word yuj, which means to unite or to yolk. We refer most often to the union of the mind, body and breath…the aim of which is to return or reunite with the source of all life, which is most often referred to as God in the teachings. This poses somewhat of a problem for me.
UK Musings
I’m alone. Approaching the end of my latest 2-week voyage over to see my England-based extended family, I find myself in the rarest of situations: Helene has taken the kids out, Kerry is off at a football game…and I’m alone in the house…the always kinetic center of it all, the flurry of activity that starts around 7am and doesn’t stop until the children go to sleep slightly more than 12 hours later. Reuniting with complete stillness after 11 days (obviously excluding those sweet hours of repose I take full advantage of), tapping back into that serenity and groundedness, literally feels like coming home…in a place I consider my home away from home. All of which reinforces my belief that home is wherever you want it to be, at any given moment. Right now, I’m home.
From Behind Our Own Shadows
We are surrounded by doubt and fear, from all directions, all around us. We are bombarded by images of who we should be, what we should wear, eat, and drive, and how our bodies should look. All these “standards” that we inevitably hold ourselves up to (in spite of ourselves and our better, innate judgement) succeed in driving, and sometimes even creating, that fear. Fear of not fitting in, of not belonging, of being outcast…and all the while, the only thing we are accomplishing is the complete and utter suppression of our true selves…of our innate light, of our inspiring individuality that stems from the source of all energy which we all come from and to which we all return.
The Devil and Greta Garbo
As my students floated through their post-Savasana haze this evening, I was approached by Lindsay, a regular student of mine, who wanted to know why we roll over onto the right side of the body when coming back into a seated posture after the deep relaxation of Savasana. I had my suspicions from an anatomical […]
Instinctually Speaking
Our annual Centre Luna Yoga Spring yoga retreat has come to an end, and now that I’m back home, languishing in the drizzle of cold rain and misty fog (beach? did someone say beach?), I thought I’d share one of the most interesting insights I brought back with me from our time in gorgeous Tulum, […]
Degrees of Muchness
I have to take my hat off to Tim Burton (once again)…the visionary behind the defining film moments that include characters like Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd and Beetlejuice has once again given me a cinematic moment that will stay with me for the rest of my life. There are aspects of Burton’s films that always […]
Plugging In
This week I have the honour of teaching 2 classes at the Palais des Congrès (Montreal’s main convention centre) for federal workers in the public sector from across Canada who are coming to our unusually temperate city (for this time of the year). Getting everyone off to the best start possible as they trek through the 2-day convention is already something to look forward to, but what I’m really excited about is the theme of the event, which is connecting to community, something absolutely essential for these federal employees who deal with the public day in and day out.
What’s Luck Got To Do With It?
Last month I came across and passed on the lecture given by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor (Would vs Do) referring to the stroke she suffered, and her subsequent insights into the left and right brains. She encouraged us to be active participants in creating the reality within which we’d like to exist by deliberately tapping into the right brain networks, the inner peace circuitry that deals with energy and imagery.
After receiving requests from students over the past week (with whom I’ve shared my latest journalistic find), I am putting up an article written by psychologist Richard Wiseman, taken from UK’s Telegraph webpage, recounting his findings after a ten-year investigative foray into the concept of luck. His findings seemed to interconnect in a very organic way to Dr. Bolte Taylor’s findings, all of which simply reinforce my conviction that we are solely responsible for being the change we’d like to see in the world and that our individual realities are largely dictated by our approach to life. Enjoy the article, and feel free to leave any insights or comments after reading it…
The Yoga of Food
So much of my time as both a student and teacher of Yoga is spent mulling over the concept of union. Union of the body, the mind and the breath, the union of energies between myself, a class full of students, and among the students themselves, the union of theory with practice to redefine our respective realities. Coming from the school of thought that we are all connected but have somehow distanced ourselves so far from one another, one aspect of the meaning of life, as far as I’m concerned, is the re-unification of mankind, with love being the guiding energy that will ultimately bring us back together. Confident in the knowledge that Yoga is one of the most effective systems of tools in bringing about that reunion, I surprisingly seem to have become somewhat complacent in my notion of the other possible roles that Yoga, and consequently union, play in my life.
Truer Words
As the first month of 2010 comes to an end, I find myself exactly where I hoped I would be when I mentally mapped out the changes in my life, the first steps of which were taken in late 2008. Leaving my previous career behind meant spending 2009 hard at work and immersed in my studies, getting the education I needed to move towards working full-time as a yoga teacher and manager of a yoga studio. I basically gave myself two years to accomplish what I felt was the bare minimum in order to justify all the time and expenses that were invested in my new endeavours.