By Adrienne Smith, Power of Your OM It is estimated that by the year 2020, anxiety and depression will be the leading cause of death - over heart disease and over cancer. Yikes! While anxiety and depression can come from legitimate chemical imbalances that require medication to curb them, medical researchers are finding that cultivating awareness of our thoughts and the physical state of our being, in combination with medication (if necessary), will prove a better defense to anxiety and … [Read more...]
The True Meaning of Yoga and Why It’s Not About Asana
by Kara-Leah Grant Let's get technical, technical, I wanna get technical... Let me hear your ego rock... OK fellow yoga students. Here's the deal. The word 'Yoga' gets bandied about all over the place, but it's rarely defined. We assume that we all know what we're talking about, but often we're talking about different things. First up, physical postures are not Yoga. They are called 'asana'. When you go to what is commonly called 'a yoga class', you are likely attending an asana class. You … [Read more...]
How I Dropped the Ball on Day 338 of My 1000 Day Practice
by Kara-Leah Grant Today is Day 138 of a 1000 Day practice I'm doing. It should be about Day 500. But earlier this year, on Day 338 something happened and I dropped the ball. I've been doing Forty Day practices for nearly a decade now. At first, it took great dedication, commitment and mindfulness to practice yoga every day for forty days in a row, especially when I was doing the same practice each day. I learned so much about myself, how my mind worked, and where I was sabotaging … [Read more...]
Patanjali’s Five Key Attitudes for Committing to Your Yoga Practice
by Kara-Leah Grant Today was Day 300 of a Tantric yoga practice I'm doing, which got me reflecting on what it takes to commit to yoga. Every day, no matter what, I sit and do this particular yoga practice, which consists of seated spinal rotations with pranayama, chanting with visualisation and mudra, and meditation. My intention is to do 1000 days in a row - that's almost three years of dedicated, committed practice. If I miss a day, I have to start again on Day 1. It's taken me over fifteen … [Read more...]
An Overview of Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of Yoga
This article is an edited extract from K-L's new book, The No-More-Excuses Guide to Yoga, from the section called Yoga History, Philosophy and Concepts. It's a huge topic area, but in seven chapters, there is a succinct overview of much of the territory you might come across in yoga class - including Patanjali's Eight Limbs of Yoga. by Kara-Leah Grant, author of The No-More-Excuses Guide to Yoga One of the most famous of the yogic texts is The Yoga Sutras. These were either written by, or … [Read more...]
Drishti and The Relativity of Truth
by Melissa Billington How you’re looking is how you’re going to see it. And how you’ve seen it is how you think it should be. Unless you see it and change it. A story is not just a story. It’s your view to life itself. Your interpretation creates your world. This is a quote from my play, PocaHAUNTus—shapeshifting history into Herstory, that I’m in the middle of writing. Writing this play has been an enormous challenge because one of the main premises is the relativity of truth, as the … [Read more...]
Mind the Gap and It Will Set You Free. Promise
by Gabrielle Harris When I was about nine, Dad bought a strange woman to our house. She was dressed in white and had an exotic name. Our sleep-out was turned into a shrine. Suddenly suburban life was looking up. The lady was handed some cash and I had to give her something of value to myself. I gave her my teddy. I didn’t want to give her my teddy as I was attached to it. It’s good to have attachments when you are nine; it gives you something to work on in later years. Little did I know … [Read more...]
Yoga trippy – an Indian viewpoint of Western Yoga
an essay by guest author Ali Halle Tilley Yoga is an ancient practice, which can bring transformation and liberation to the disillusioned, disenfranchised masses[1] of the Technological Age by combining universal moral codes and postural sequences, with breathing and meditation techniques. One main challenge for yoga practiced in the West, however, is the contagion of consumerism where yoga students and teachers buy into what is currently fashionable and dismiss what is genuine. This … [Read more...]
How to Apply the Right Yoga Practice to Your Daily Life
by Kara-Leah Grant Life is busy. Most of us are juggling some combination of work, family, socialising, passions & hobbies and health & well-being. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, the things that we know make us feel the best - like regular yoga practice - can be the most difficult to maintain. This is especially true when we go through a life change, or a particularly stressful period. Right when we need it most, our yoga practice falls away. Our job changes, or we … [Read more...]
Is asana practice a totally over-rated part of yoga?
Think yoga, and likely you'll think of a person bending their body into a posture. You'll imagine the cover of Yoga Journal and think, that's yoga. Except it's not. It's one aspect of Yoga - Hatha Yoga, or physical yoga. Yoga has many paths one can walk, including Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Tantra Yoga, Mantra Yoga... some of these paths don't involve twisting and turning of the body at all, yet they are still yoga. … [Read more...]