By guest author Keeley Mitchell, Zi Living For better or for worse, the holiday season is here. The verdict is still out for me on whether it is for better or for worse. Like most, when the holiday season comes, I often start to feel stressed and overwhelmed. It is like I am on the verge of an anxiety attack at any minute because I am trying to do everything and still create the perfect holiday experience for my family. This year I tried to cancel Christmas with the proclamation that … [Read more...]
An interview with Kalikamurti on living the life you choose.
Supplied by Anahata Yoga Retreat Anahata Yoga Retreat, just outside of Nelson, warmly welcomes Kalikamurti Suich from Alice Springs, Australia over the Labour Day Weekend to share with us her experience, insights and knowledge. She is leading “Life of Choice”, a retreat offering a fusion of traditional yoga and modern psychology aimed at helping participants choose their lives. We asked her a few questions to gain a deeper understanding of what she offers and how it can benefit us. This … [Read more...]
How to take your teaching even further – assist!
by guest author Elissa Jordan As a yoga teacher, over time, a funny thing starts to happen. Walking down the street you stop seeing people covered in their clothes and shoes and hair. Instead you start seeing collections of muscle and bone, alignment and postures carried around in a thin casing of skin. The knocked knees, the hunched shoulders, the sunken chests taunt us. I’ll sometimes mouth the suggestion of taking your shoulders back and down. Sometimes whispering the instruction to … [Read more...]
Starting a Home Meditation Practice
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...]
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...]
Be a Tree: Interpretive Yoga for Adults
It’s Autumn: trees are delighting us with a riot of colour, littering the ground with jewels from their branches. We can take a hint from Mother Nature and enjoy a similar process ourselves, letting go of old, stagnant, nonessentials. Releasing has many more nuances than just ‘getting rid’ of something. Pay attention to Nature move through a full cycle of gestation, birth, growth, and decay and you’ll see letting go as making space. Indeed, Spring blossoms and leaves come to be … [Read more...]
Kickstart 2010: Are we having fun yet?
If you started your 30 days of yoga sadhana on January 15th then you’ve been practicing for 10 days now. You are one third of the way through your sadhana. Are you having fun yet? Maybe that seems like a strange question. Maybe you expect yoga to be serious? It is. At least, it is profound. My experience of yoga has been that it leads me into all of my own darkest places and then helps me find the steadiness and the ease that I need to go through each of them. Yoga can be intense. … [Read more...]
Kickstart 2010 with a commitment to your yoga practice
by guest author Marianne Elliot Okay – as promised – here is everything you need to know to join me in starting 2010 with yoga. I’ll be starting my 30 day sadhana (Kara-Leah wrote more about sadhana, what they are and why we do them here) on 15 January because it is the first new moon of the year and that’s generally a great time to start new things. I’m inviting you to join me. Make your own commitment. My commitment is to practice a particular set of asana, pranayama and … [Read more...]
How to fit well-being into your holiday season
Ah, 'tis the season to be jolly, and merry, and over-indulge, because by golly you've earned it. 'Tis also the season to rush around like crazy, attending parties and drinks, buying presents and gifts, and squeezing as much fun and leisure into your holiday break as possible. In short, 'tis a time of madness, when long established patterns of well-being - think solid eating habits and regular yoga practice - fall by the wayside like Christmas wrapping paper on Boxing Day. To make it … [Read more...]
What’s it like to do 108 sun salutations in a row?
By Kara-Leah Grant, author Forty Days of Yoga Mention doing 108 sun salutations in a row to most people, even regularly practicing yogis, and their eyes widen as their mind says "No way!" Yes way! Not only can your average yoga practitioner easily complete 108 sun salutations, but it's such an energizing practice, that at the end of 108, some people actually feel like they want to do more. Remember, yoga is not "exercise". It doesn't wear out the body, but energises the mind, body and … [Read more...]