by Kara-Leah Grant I've just finished a Forty Day Meditation and Manifestation practice. It's something I completely made up. I'd been wondering for many months about combining daily meditation with a conscious manifestation process because I'd observed in my own life that the first key step for creating anything new is always getting clear. Usually, before I write, I meditate or walk first. This helps to shift me into the ground of being, and out of my head. Out of this space, creativity and … [Read more...]
If All Ambition Falls Away, How Does Anything Get Done?
by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat It's a crisp, clear, clean autumn morning in Napier, New Zealand. Almost a frost, but not quite. Cold enough for me to see my breath as I stood waiting for the jug to boil. I have entire day stretching out before me with no appointments and no yoga teaching. My only commitments today are to The Yoga Lunchbox and writing. Something's missing though. Something that's been with me for a long, long time. Possibly since childhood. Actually, … [Read more...]
Why a Great Yoga Teacher is Sometimes Crucial to Progress Your Practice
by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat Six weeks or so into regular Mysore-style classes with Peter Sanson and I've having some serious insights and openings - not just on the physical level, but also on the emotional, mental and energetic level. But of course - how could it be any other way? These things are all intertwined and I've known this for a very long time. Before I found Peter, I'd been searching for a yoga teacher for a decade or so, while doing a home practice and sporadically … [Read more...]
What is Love? Deep Acceptance of the Other, and Opening to Vulnerability
by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat I've been pondering the nature of Love over the last year or so, holding many deep conversations with my wonderful girlfriends and reflecting over two decades of short and long-term relationships. I've got plenty of material to draw upon! And you know what? I think I've got it. I know what love is - and what it is not. Love is a deep acceptance of the other person. Out of that ground of deep acceptance arise actions that create one's day to … [Read more...]
What if Non-Attachment is Merely a By-Product of Liberation?
by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat I'm sitting at my computer listening to a great DJ mix on Soundcloud, doing my daily work for The Yoga Lunchbox. Formatting and editing articles, dealing with advertisers, answering emails, posting on social media. Underneath the surface, as I work, I'm aware of a shift in my energy. This shift happened a few weeks ago. Maybe a month. I'm not quite sure. Whatever it was that had been driving me incessantly to publish on the internet - ever since … [Read more...]
Why Letting Go is a Crucial Aspect of Loving Well
by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat It's the summer of 2000 and I've just come back to Whistler, BC after nine weeks living on the side of a volcano in Maui. I'd been on a mad adventure with a man I'd meet waitressing that winter in Whistler - but that's another story. My life is packed full of stories from that time, many of them involving men. I was young, carefree and a permanent traveller. It was four years since I'd graduated my Journalism Course and bailed on New Zealand, … [Read more...]
Keeping New Year’s Resolutions is not about willpower or discipline
by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat I was up early on New Year’s Day. It’s one of my favourite ways to start the year. Early morning, the world seems fresh and alive and ripe for new opportunities and new ways of being. The possibility of new choices and new ways of being seems stronger. 'How will I live this day?' 'How will I live this life?' On January 1st, this sense of potential and possibility feels stronger. New Year’s is a time for resolutions, as we make up our minds we’re … [Read more...]
Why do I resist my yoga practice when I know it’s good for me?
This is something that's come up a few times lately from readers - why is it so hard to get on the mat when I know it's good for me and I feel so good afterwards? Oh boy, have I been there! Here's my experience, what helped me bust through that resistance once and for all, and what I learned in the process. My first yoga experience was a ten-week Iyengar course in 1995. I knew, without a doubt, that yoga was going to be an integral part of my life. That it was Super Duper Important and … [Read more...]
Surviving and thriving in the Christchurch earthquake
Like many yoga workshops, the recent Anusara Workshop in Christchurch with Noah Maze shook up our concepts of reality, purpose, values and life. Only in this workshop, Heroes and Heroines: Stories and Practices of Yoga, it wasn't the teachings nor the practice or even the teacher doing all the shaking, it was the earth herself. On Saturday morning, at 4.35am... just hours after a stimulating two hour practice to kickstart the weekend underpinned by the mythology of Hanuman the Monkey … [Read more...]