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...]
My Private Yoga Session with Vincent Bolletta
by Kara-Leah Grant Ever since I interviewed Vincent Bolletta last year I've wanted to do a private yoga session with him. I knew from that interview that this was a man who knew his yoga inside out, on the energetic and physical level. Over the last few years, I've worked with a couple of teachers, both teaching in the Ashtanga lineage, Peter Sanson and Paul Scrivener. The problem is, I'm not an Ashtangi yogi and while I deeply respect the intelligence of the Ashtanga sequence, it's not … [Read more...]
Reflections on Teaching the Worst Yoga Class of My Life
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...]
How My Ashtanga Practice Taught me to Practice Courage
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 an … [Read more...]
The Basic Principles of Building a Home Yoga Practice
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...]
‘Gentle is the New Advanced’ A Review of J. Brown’s Yoga DVD
by Seka Ojdrovic-Phillips, Spirit Fire Yoga Life hurts. This helps. So goes J Brown’s slogan on his simple DVD cover. Much like his cover, J’s teaching transcends hollow mantras and trite maxims to get to the heart of the practice. Though initially skeptical upon learning that Yogi J hails from Williamsburg, Brooklyn (AKA the hipster incubation tank), his sincerity is undeniable. The timing of this DVD release coincides with a time in my personal practice when I’m over the “brand” of th … [Read more...]
The Benefits of Practicing Yoga While Watching TV
By Kara-Leah Grant, author of Forty Days of Yoga 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 p … [Read more...]
How avoiding feelings avoids the present moment and avoids life
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 a … [Read more...]
Do too many perfect yoga images do yoga a dis-service?
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 p … [Read more...]
Book launch winners announced and book… not launched!
By Kara-Leah Grant, Musings from the Mat Editor's Note: Forty Days of Yoga has now launched. You can buy it here. Oh yes... last night at 8pm I was already to go. The landing page was ready, the email out to the book launch folk was ready, I had an article scheduled for The Yoga Lunchbox and all the files had been proofed, formated, exported and zipped. Time to launch! I did the competition draw and sent out a free link to the book to the three winners, Anita Anderson, Jacqui Gee a … [Read more...]