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Nine Ways to Master Yourself, and Therefore Life

June 10, 2016 by Kara-Leah Grant 24 Comments

by Kara-Leah Grant There are two ways to live life. One is as a victim, getting upset and angry at what life throws at you, and trying to change the people and circumstances around you to make life easier. The second is as a Master, taking whatever life throws at you and using it to change yourself, making yourself stronger and more resilient so life becomes easier and easier. If you've been wasting energy on trying to change people around you, or wasting energy on reacting to the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Living Your Yoga Tagged With: Acceptance, blame, home practice, letting go, master, mind, resistance, responsibility, slave, solutions, surrender

Reflections on Teaching the Worst Yoga Class of My Life

January 29, 2015 by Kara-Leah Grant 1 Comment

by Kara-Leah Grant On Saturday I taught my first yoga class in five weeks, as it's summer holidays here and I've been doing just that - holidaying. Possibly it wasn't prudent to take so much time off teaching when I've got a major festival within a week - i.e. Wanderlust. Although as I've been on a Forty Day Practice, my asana practice is stronger than it's ever been. However it turns out a strong asana practice doesn't necessarily make me a stronger teacher. I turned up on Saturday … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Musings from the Mat Tagged With: ashtanga, home practice, intuition, wanderlust

How My Ashtanga Practice Taught me to Practice Courage

September 22, 2014 by Guest Author 1 Comment

Eight limbs of yoga, as defined by Patanjali in Ashtanga Yoga (as opposed to Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga as taught by Pattabhi Jois)

by guest author Pip Bennett After all that darkness of my last article, I decided I wanted to up my practice. I wanted to devote myself and commit to the Ashtanga practice as it demands: six days a week. To take on the challenge and see the benefits of a regular practice. Two weeks later, I hadn’t practiced yoga even once. It’s now been a couple of months since then. I did get myself back into the yoga room, but only for a couple of weeks. Turns out that although you can do yoga anywhere and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: How Yoga Helped Me Tagged With: ashtanga, commitment, confidence, courage, dark spaces, dissatisfaction, failure, home practice, iyengar, philosophy, running away

The Basic Principles of Building a Home Yoga Practice

March 10, 2014 by Kara-Leah Grant 9 Comments

by Kara-Leah Grant As a yoga teacher, my goal is to inspire my students to practice yoga at home. It's great when people get themselves to classes three times a week, but the true benefits of yoga really start to unfold when you commit to just showing up on your mat by yourself and seeing what happens. In a class, your focus is both internal and external. You're listening to the teacher and watching the demonstrations while also paying attention to what's going on inside of you. When you … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Home Yoga Practice Tagged With: forty days of yoga, home practice, home yoga practice summit

The Benefits of Practicing Yoga While Watching TV

March 11, 2013 by Kara-Leah Grant 2 Comments

By Kara-Leah Grant During class on Wednesday, as we moved from posture to posture, I drew my students attention to the way they were beginning to intuitively move their bodies in counterposes and releases after a more intense posture. They weren't thinking about it, it was just happening as their body moved spontaneously and they followed along. One of my students looked up and exclaimed: That's what's happening when I watch TV now! A-ha! One benefit of practicing yoga while watching TV is … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Home Yoga Practice Tagged With: bad, conscious, forty days of yoga, guilt, home practice, television, tv, unconscious

How avoiding feelings avoids the present moment and avoids life

February 15, 2013 by Kara-Leah Grant 3 Comments

By Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat This morning, the wonderful woman who looks after Samuel four days a week while I work told me she's finishing up with PORSE (home-based early childhood education) on April 6. This is a big deal. I live in a small town with no kindergaten or other early childhood education facility. There is no other childcare available (right now). I'm also a single parent working from home and those childcare hours are my livelihood - not just for my business but … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Home Yoga Practice, Musings from the Mat Tagged With: Acceptance, avoidance, being, change, feelings, home practice, presence, resistance

Do too many perfect yoga images do yoga a dis-service?

February 3, 2013 by Kara-Leah Grant 5 Comments

By Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat Check out that image to your right. It's beautiful. A beautiful woman in a beautiful setting doing a beautiful posture. I love to look at images like that. But it's not the kind of image I've chosen for the cover of my book Forty Days of Yoga. I've chosen an image of me sitting on a chair - not even a beautiful chair - just a nondescript chair on a white background. I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I'm not doing a recognisable yoga … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Musings from the Mat Tagged With: book, commit, forty days of yoga, home practice

Forty Days of Yoga: A journey to create a home yoga practice

January 9, 2013 by Guest Author 9 Comments

by guest author Sara Foley, Smells Good, Feels Good I said: what about my eyes? God said: Keep them on the road. I said: what about my passion? God said: Keep it burning. I said: what about my heart? God said: Tell me what you hold inside it? I said: pain and sorrow? He said: ...stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you. ~ Rumi I am one of Kara-Leah’s ‘beta readers’ for her upcoming book Forty Days of Yoga – Breaking Down the Barriers to a Yoga Home … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Home Yoga Practice Tagged With: deserve, discipline, forty days of yoga, home practice, sara foley, self-worth

The world doesn’t need another yoga practice progamme

December 13, 2012 by Kara-Leah Grant 6 Comments

by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat Last week, after publishing the article outlining Forty Days of Yoga, I received an email from a reader excited about the  book. She was particularly excited about having a set programme of yoga she and her students could do. Pause. A moment of clarity. Forty Days of Yoga is not a set practice programme. There is no instruction on asana at all, and for very good reason. The world does not need more information on what postures to do, how and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Musings from the Mat Tagged With: book, forty days of yoga, home practice, home yoga practice, sequence, set practice

Getting back on the bandwagon: The evolution of a home practice

October 22, 2012 by Kara-Leah Grant 1 Comment

by Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat I'm practicing again, most days. Happened as soon as I arrived in Glenorchy and put Samuel back into childcare. It happened because I made it a priority. It happened because I knew I needed it. Craved it even. It happened because I wanted it. It wasn't that I'd ever stopped practicing - I still was. Every day I taught yoga, I practiced asana. At home, I practiced bits and pieces or asana here and there, a seated session after dinner, a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Musings from the Mat Tagged With: book, erich schiffmann, evolution, home practice, sharing sadhana, victoria bailey

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