What’s Up, Doc?
It’s happened again. Last night I sat down to watch Gasland, a documentary on the USA’s turn to natural gas as an alternative energy source and the devastatingly harmful repercussions of the method of drilling that is being practiced all over the country. I knew that I was running the risk of getting worked up, as my history with the investigative journalistic approach to documentary films has shown me that I’m very quick to get riled up when injustice is exposed…and I know that I’m not the only one.
When Everything Aligns
Do you ever have those moments when everything seems to fall into place? When you suddenly look around and see everything that was there all along, but the lighting is somehow different…there’s a certain clarity or focus that brings everything down a notch, into a realm of peace and silence….I seem to be having moments like these more and more this year…moments where I feel perfectly connected to the sky above me, the ground below me, and the people around me.
The Newest (business) Model
The past week has been somewhat of a cross-country whirlwind for me…I left Montreal on Monday for Vancouver to attend the 1st (hopefully) annual Lululemon Ambassador Summit, an all-expense paid trip organized by the Canadian retail giant. Along with 119 other ambassadors from all over North America, I was flown out and put up at a gorgeous hotel in the downtown core of the city, where we spent the next few days attending lectures from keynote speakers and participating in goal-setting, social networking, and other inspiring workshops…all orchestrated by Lulu, all to ensure that we, as the faces of the company in our respective communities, were living our best lives possible.
Quickpost 07/28/2010
I know I’ve said it before, but humour me…it’s all about the breath. Without a long, even, steady, nourishing breath, the practice becomes a test in endurance, seeing if the body will carry us through the series of postures and sequences without giving up…and with an unsteady, erratic breathing pattern, giving up is inevitable. The body cannot function on a breath that doesn’t serve it, so this week I’m asking my students to try and tune me out. I’ll keep my instructions to a minimum, but will constantly direct everyone back to the breath.
In Our Hands?
Ever since I made the decision to delve into the world of Yoga as a career, I’ve found myself on occasion contemplating the concept of free will versus fate or destiny. When I worked in retail management, opportunities presented themselves to me as I first began making my way in that industry, and due to my age and inexperience, I assumed that life would continue to unravel in a similar fashion…I would continue to follow the paths offered by these opportunities, and all would be rosy. After allowing this philosophy to guide me through 13 years, I found myself lacking any sort of satisfaction or contentment from my professional life, at which point I decided it was time to retreat, regroup, and rethink my approach to my own life.
Not From Here
I paid a long overdue visit yesterday to my first yoga teacher, Joan Ruvinsky, who spoke to us about an expression that comes from Maine that goes something like, “You can’t get there from here.” I’ve already mentioned in past posts how the occasional expression or saying will resonate with me due to its succinctness, to its relevance to my experience so far…this is one of those sayings.
The Weight of Inversions
One of the funniest things I hear from students on a semi-regular basis is that they really want to “do the fun poses.” I’ve stopped asking them to define “fun” for me as the answers are always the same: headstand, handstand, crow, etc…The balancing postures, especially the inversions, hold a shiny allure for newcomers and experienced yogis alike. I am no exception, as one of the postures that encouraged me to explore yoga as a physical practice was Sirsasana. Standing on my head was a commonplace occurrence when I was a child, so when I discovered that there was a spiritual practice that incorporated what I already was familiar with, I began to dig deeper.
Quickpost 21/06/10
After spending the day with all the fathers in my family, I came home and caught an episode of Les Francs-tireurs documenting the world of extreme sports in our lovely province…from base diving to speedboarding, most of the people interviewed who spent their time pushing the limits of adrenaline-chasing gave the same answer when questioned what drew them to and kept them coming back to their chosen extreme sport: it was what brought them to their personal state of meditation.
Just A Thought…
I attended Jae Steele‘s workshop last week at Luna Yoga and walked away with a lot to think about. Jae was in town to promote her new vegan cookbook, Ripe From Around Here, and so I figured that her workshop would be mainly food and nutrient-based, but we ended up talking about an essential ingredient […]
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.