by guest author Peter Fernando, Meditation and Mindfulness Are you wanting to start your own home meditation practice? The number one piece of advice I have for you is: Just do it! Having said that, a recent question that came in asked for more details, so in response to that reader, here's... Six Useful Home Meditation Tips 1) Don't meditate in front of the TV (even when it's off), or in front of the computer. If you take some time to create a meditation-only space in your home, it's … [Read more...]
Learning to wait, and wait, and wait some more
by guest author Nadine Fawell, a Melbourne-based yoga teacher, blogger, and author of the yogAttitude cards. She is most interested in yoga's power to heal body, mind, and spirit. I was very sick a while back. I was too ill to leave the house for three weeks, and, two moths later, I am still coughing. When I went to the Doctor, she told me, “It’s a virus. I can’t do anything for you: go home and sleep it off.” I am, essentially, convalescing. I can’t walk too far or too fast, I get … [Read more...]
How dropping my story helped me change my yoga practice
I've been practicing yoga for over a decade now, and I'm still tight and inflexible. That's not quite true of course, but when I compare my flexibility to that of the images of yoga we see in the media, or the popular teachers on DVDs... I fall well short. And I find it perplexing. It doesn't make me feel less than in anyway, and I'm well aware that the point of yoga is not flexibility, rather flexibility is a by-product of practice. But how long does it take to lengthen the … [Read more...]
Who knew? There isn’t just one right way to do things. Even in Yoga.
by regular columnist Elissa Jordan, Adventures in Teaching One of my Dad’s favourite stories to tell about me as a little girl is the one about my favourite word: why? I carried the word with me everywhere until it was a scraggly, worn-out dirt-encrusted version of itself. There’s some discrepancy as to whether or not this was, in fact, my first word. Dad says yes. Mom thinks it was second, after no. Either way, right from the start I’ve wanted to know the why behind things. Not one to be … [Read more...]
Home is where the heart is, heart is what the home needs
The latest Musings from the Mat by Kara-Leah Grant Home. It's a deceptively small four-letter word, but oh how much punch it can carry. Our home is our whole world when we're kids, and when we grow up to be adults, we often unconsciously carry around that childhood home inside of us, even when it's not the kind of home we want to recreate in our lives. Home isn't just the place where we live though. Home is also a place where we are truly ourselves, where we let our guard, and our … [Read more...]
Why Do I Meditate?
by guest author Peter Fernando, Meditation and Mindfulness I've got to be honest with you. The desire to be a well adjusted person wasn't really what motivated me to commit to meditation practice. I remember once, when I was about thirteen, riding my bike home from school down the main street of Whanganui. It was a normal day, nothing spectacular going on. The usual concerns going around in my mind; 'I wonder if such-and-such a girl likes me...' 'Maybe I will become a rock star … [Read more...]
Unravelling the stories that shape our yoga practice
My life right now is a fluid mix of story & yoga. I'm studying creative writing at Victoria University and I'm finishing off my Prana Flow Yoga Teacher Certification (posted off all the book work in the mail on Monday! Woo hoo... now just have the exam to sit.) This combination of story and yoga has dovetailed into a deeper understanding of how we write the scripts for our lives, how we cast ourselves and the people around us as characters, and how we react to these scripts and … [Read more...]
A curious approach to sitting and back-bending
By guest author Oli Wiles, Free to Move Find sthira sukham at your desk and on the mat A friend recently posted a pic on Facebook of his 3-month-old boy sitting propped up on a sofa. The caption read: "Propped up at 3 months, eventually he toppled." It got me thinking about sitting and back-bending … Now, as you sit at your desk, it is likely that the muscles of your back are stopping you from toppling into the keyboard. In playing this important role, however, parts of your back … [Read more...]
The danger of thinking you know more than your yoga teacher
Back in February, I wrote an article called Why I may never take another yoga class ever again. And true to my word, I hadn't been to a class in six months, instead practicing daily at home. One of the reasons I'd been steering clear of classes was that in class I'd struggled with being told what to do by a teacher. Often it felt like what my body needed and what the teacher was sequencing wasn't right for me. But a few weekends ago I went to two yoga classes at a yoga studio that's … [Read more...]
How to heal your toxic emotions
by guest author Deepak Chopra, author of many books including Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment. Deepak Chopra is in Auckland on August 2nd. See the bottom of this article for event details. Emotions are mysterious and often dangerous things. Thirty years ago mind-body medicine made the connection between emotions and illness. The so-called cancer personality had its vogue, preceded by the type A personality linked to early heart attacks. Despite advances in drugs for depression and … [Read more...]