A Moment To Reflect
With the intention of NOT making this post too lengthy, I feel that it would be irresponsible of me to not take a moment to acknowledge this past year and how pivotal it has been for my journey. I have the tendency of constantly focusing on the present moment and my future plans and projects, and so I felt like today, the last day of 2015, would be a great time to look back.
My Two Cents
As we creep closer and closer to another calendar year, I’ve been noticing more and more videos, social media and blog posts, webinars and courses on goal-setting as a way to profit from the New Year’s Resolution craze. Personally, I believe that New Year’s resolutions are ineffective and their own form of self-hate, as they typically come about by looking at some aspect of ourselves that we dislike and then vowing to change that aspect by committing to a practice that is not healthy, beneficial or respectful of who we truly are and how we operate in our own lives.
The Greatest Terrorist of All
We should know better. As the privileged few on this planet to have our comforts and freedoms. As the surviving few of our lineages. Regardless of our gender, skin colour or religious background, every single one of us, at some point on the historical spectrum, comes from a lineage of persecution. Every single one of […]
The Disservice of Love
Language, while being the primary mode of communication that allows us to interact with each other, occasionally fails us. With countless adjectives to describe ourselves, each other and the world around us, we have the ability to precisely construct the conveyance of our realities. But when it comes to love, flaws in the potency and effectiveness of language become more obvious the same way well-worn areas of a favourite sweater begin to thin out with time.
When Words Fail…
Thank you. Without you all, I’m nothing. Everything I do in my career and my spiritual life is an offering, and you all made it abundantly clear that you are all there to receive that offering. I couldn’t do it without you.
If You Remember One Thing…
The reason some get a thrill out of extreme sports is the same reason why some exercise or binge-watch television or love spending money or drinking alcohol or ingesting drugs or hanging out with friends or meditating or eating or listening to music or having sex or doing whatever it is that brings them contentment.
Falling Free
I’ve been back from Greece for almost two weeks and one moment stands out in my memory more than others. All the students had left the island and Stephane and I were lying down in the sand dunes on a beach after spending the morning editing my upcoming book. We spent hours there soaking up […]
Of This, I Am Sure
Three and a half years ago I woke up from having a dream while visiting my extended family in England and immediately wrote down the its contents because I knew it was somehow necessary. I then wrote about it in the blog post Repairing My Cabin, but, in a nutshell, I felt that, through the dream, I had been called to India by a sadhu or guru there waiting for me (visit the post from 2013 to read the details of the dream).
This One For Matty
The past couple of weeks have been interesting for me in that I have found myself practicing yoga more frequently than I typically do. If I can get 2-3 classes in a week, I’m happy, but over the past few weeks I’ve found myself practicing 4-5 times a week, and what it has brought me is beautifully informative. With more practice has come more strength, more awareness as to when in each individual practice I feel my body begin to respond, open and warm up. I have found myself in a new phase of relationship with my practice and my body, and as a result of the observations I’ve made, I have also found myself compelled to pay more attention to what I’m eating, when I’m eating, if I’m eating. The same applies for rest: I find myself resting when I need to, saying no to things that will interrupt that rest, and being active when typically I could just keep on resting. I am in awe of my body, how it works and responds and, ultimately, the relationship I have with it.
A Pill to Swallow
A few months ago I organized a yoga benefit to raise money for Women Aware, a Montreal-based non-profit organization that provides assistance and “long-term support to those living with the dynamics of domestic violence.” At around the same time I became part of the #HeForShe international campaign put together by UNWomen. This campaign is a call that “brings together one half of humanity in support of the other half of humanity, for the benefit of all,” essentially serving as a call to all men to raise their voices and awareness to fight the inequalities and suffrage women are exposed to simply because they’re women. I got involved with them for the same reason that I organized the fundraiser: I was traumatized at an early age when the concept of rape was explained to me and since then I have felt a visceral alliance with anyone dealing with the fallout of violence against women.