Saturday 9th June 2007
Yoga stuff
I must not drink espresso before practice
I must not drink espresso before practice
I must not drink espresso before practice
I must not drink espresso before practice
I must not drink espresso before practice
I must not drink espresso before practice
Simi’s Saturday morning class doesn’t start until 8.30am - abnormally late for me to be doing yoga. By 8.30am I've usually finished practice and am sitting happily in a cafe with my beloved post practice espresso, recovering and pondering the meaning of yoga and life.
Although this is the third Saturday morning class I’ve been to, I haven’t been able to go without a caffeine fix first - it's just too late in the morning. So there’s no hiding that I’ve got a caffeine addiction – two strong coffees per day is my absolute limit but I wouldn’t go without them. My entire day is built around those two caffeine fixes.
Needless to say this morning’s practice fuelled by caffeine was shaky, bendy, intense and scatty. A pretty mixed cocktail. Every now and then I noticed my mind was miles away – I’d be in a pose, the five breaths were happening automatically but my head was cut off from my body, it was somewhere else, off in a fantasy world, creating elaborate scenarios then playing in them, completely oblivious to what I was doing in the here and now.
But since I did the entire practice without stopping or cheating, I’m happy with it on the whole.
I shouldn't go for quantity over quality, but these days, just DOING a practice, however it turns out, is reason to celebrate.
Simi spent a little time correcting the finer details of my Chaturanga Dandasana this morning; I need to engage more Uddiyana Bandha, place my hands a little further back towards my waist (or more correctly bring my torso further forward) and pull back the lats more. It’s all stuff I know (and taught) but funny how the bad habits creep in over time and we need reminding to APPLY what we know.
Same thing in Sirsasana…my weak right shoulder naturally wants to slack off in Headstand and I have to constantly nag at it to get it lifting up and back. As soon as my focus shifts to anothe rpart of my body the shoulder drops again. Sneaky little thing it is.
Sirsasana is such a complex pose: finding just the right sweet spot on the head, lifting the shoulders to prevent the cervical spine from compressing, pressing the tail forward and the thighs back, engaging and lengthening the inner legs…so much going on while balancing. The mind really has to attend to all those little details when it’s training the body to be safe in the pose. But there comes a time when the muscular body knows what to do and how to work, and that’s when the experience of this pose becomes more subtle and other dimensional layers begin to reveal themselves.
The feeling tone
I’ve started experimenting a little with the feeling body in my practice. I think of an especially emotive word (like Love, or Essence) and consciously infuse the fullest expression of that word's meaning though every cell of my body. What results is a palpable and uplifting feeling of expansion, a melting, a warmth all over, not unlike the energetic fullness after orgasm where the nervous system is peacefully alive, but it’s created entirely by thought, and by allowing the thought to evoke a feeling and allowing the feeling to infuse and permeate the body fully.
I’m reminded of the experiment done by Dr Masaru Emoto that was featured in the film “What the Bleep Do We Know” where a special kind of photographic image was taken of the water crystals in a bottle of distilled water. Then a word was written and taped to the same bottle of water and left overnight. The resulting image taken of the water crystals had dramatically changed. Various words were tested and the crystals reformed and changed shape each time.
http://www.thank-water.net/english/index.html
It was fascinating to connect the qualities of the shape to the word -I think if you put all the words in one line, then put the water crystal shapes in another line, you'd easily be able to match the word to the corresponding crystal pattern. What a nice game to play.
As it was pointed out in the film, if a thought can change the shape and structure of water crystals, consider what it does to the human body which is made up of on average 61.8% water. I have no doubt that every thought we have impacts on our body at a cellular level, as well as on the environment around us, which includes the people around us. If we truly are all connected then everything and everyone is One Being, we are all parts of The Whole, and what happens in one part of the being reverberates like a ripple throughout the rest of the whole.
Anyone who has done a period of serious meditation will have experienced the effect of a single thought on the chemistry of their body. In the stillness of meditation such effects are magnified, seen and felt very clearly.
So what I’m getting at is that when I consciously conjure up a particular word and allow the energy behind it’s meaning to imbue it’s essence throughout my physical being, the effect can be felt all over so it must be impacting and transforming on a cellular level.
I don't know where this will go, if anywhere, but it's little insights like these that gradually change the culture in the petri dish, ever so slightly. Today I am different to yesterday and tomorrow I'll be different again. Changing, changing, changing...anicca, anicca, anicca...
My life often feels like a quantum science experiment.
Going solo
Until now, I hadn’t realised that I’ve never lived alone. What a small revelation.
This surprising fact has only just emerged because in 6 weeks I’ll be moving into a new place – on my own – for the first time.
My habitation history from birth til now goes like this:
Birth to 15 years old: home
From 15 – 21: in and out of share houses with friends and sisters, and back home in between houses
At 21: married and raised 2 children in a family home
At 34: walked away from abusive husband with the 2 children but no possessions. He kept everything and I had to start from scratch with nothing, while raising two teenagers.
At 41: my daughter moved out and my son and I continued to live together until the beginning of 2006 when his urgent need for independence from Mum and his lack of money (no job, no income) meant that I, at age 45, sacrificed my own needs (as Mums do) and moved out. I lived with my Mum for all of last year until she finally sold the family house, then I came to stay with my friend Renate in February for 6 months while her husband was overseas.
Times almost up.
I hadn’t thought too much about what would happen when I the time came to move out of Renates. I knew the universe would provide and I now trust that process implicitly.
As expected, the Universe provided.
A chance conversation out of nowhere revealed an opportunity to take over Fleur’s dilapidated residence in an old mansion for one year from the end of July. Now this is almost impeccable timing by the Universe, and almost unbelievable when pondering how beautifully the circumstances were orchestrated for it to come about. The arrangement suits both our needs absolutely perfectly – like two jigsaw pieces that the Universe found and fitted together.
The mansion is amazing – it’s divided into four residences, rent is cheap as chips because it’s run down and barely habitable. But my part has two enormous rooms off a huge entrance hall (one room I think was the mansion’s ballroom) with open fires in both rooms, there’s a pokey kitchen and a pokier, grotty, little bathroom, minimal furniture and enormous ceilings that are so high you can barely see them. The place is impossible to heat, but will be great in summer, and it must be the best possible yoga space you could imagine.
But…I’ll be living alone – wow. What will that be like, and will I really love it as much as I think I will - being such a social recluse already it may just bring about my total disappearance from civilisation.
My life is feeling even more like a quantum science experiment.
Bush Flower Remedy
I finished the Boab Essence and Angie recommended Angelsword essence next.
It’s a confusing name – do you pronounce it Angel’s Word or Angel Sword???
I’m not sure of why she prescribed that one, but I’ve been taking it for a few days now.
Is it affecting me in any way? Don’t know that either.
What I just realised is that in this weblink to Angelsword, it describes the flower as appearing like a fleur-de-lis.
The apartment I'm moving into belongs to Fleur Elise.
Life really is a quantum science experiment.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Yoga stuff
I must not drink espresso before practice
I must not drink espresso before practice
I must not drink espresso before practice
I must not drink espresso before practice
I must not drink espresso before practice
I must not drink espresso before practice
Simi’s Saturday morning class doesn’t start until 8.30am - abnormally late for me to be doing yoga. By 8.30am I've usually finished practice and am sitting happily in a cafe with my beloved post practice espresso, recovering and pondering the meaning of yoga and life.
Although this is the third Saturday morning class I’ve been to, I haven’t been able to go without a caffeine fix first - it's just too late in the morning. So there’s no hiding that I’ve got a caffeine addiction – two strong coffees per day is my absolute limit but I wouldn’t go without them. My entire day is built around those two caffeine fixes.
Needless to say this morning’s practice fuelled by caffeine was shaky, bendy, intense and scatty. A pretty mixed cocktail. Every now and then I noticed my mind was miles away – I’d be in a pose, the five breaths were happening automatically but my head was cut off from my body, it was somewhere else, off in a fantasy world, creating elaborate scenarios then playing in them, completely oblivious to what I was doing in the here and now.
But since I did the entire practice without stopping or cheating, I’m happy with it on the whole.
I shouldn't go for quantity over quality, but these days, just DOING a practice, however it turns out, is reason to celebrate.
Simi spent a little time correcting the finer details of my Chaturanga Dandasana this morning; I need to engage more Uddiyana Bandha, place my hands a little further back towards my waist (or more correctly bring my torso further forward) and pull back the lats more. It’s all stuff I know (and taught) but funny how the bad habits creep in over time and we need reminding to APPLY what we know.
Same thing in Sirsasana…my weak right shoulder naturally wants to slack off in Headstand and I have to constantly nag at it to get it lifting up and back. As soon as my focus shifts to anothe rpart of my body the shoulder drops again. Sneaky little thing it is.
Sirsasana is such a complex pose: finding just the right sweet spot on the head, lifting the shoulders to prevent the cervical spine from compressing, pressing the tail forward and the thighs back, engaging and lengthening the inner legs…so much going on while balancing. The mind really has to attend to all those little details when it’s training the body to be safe in the pose. But there comes a time when the muscular body knows what to do and how to work, and that’s when the experience of this pose becomes more subtle and other dimensional layers begin to reveal themselves.
The feeling tone
I’ve started experimenting a little with the feeling body in my practice. I think of an especially emotive word (like Love, or Essence) and consciously infuse the fullest expression of that word's meaning though every cell of my body. What results is a palpable and uplifting feeling of expansion, a melting, a warmth all over, not unlike the energetic fullness after orgasm where the nervous system is peacefully alive, but it’s created entirely by thought, and by allowing the thought to evoke a feeling and allowing the feeling to infuse and permeate the body fully.
I’m reminded of the experiment done by Dr Masaru Emoto that was featured in the film “What the Bleep Do We Know” where a special kind of photographic image was taken of the water crystals in a bottle of distilled water. Then a word was written and taped to the same bottle of water and left overnight. The resulting image taken of the water crystals had dramatically changed. Various words were tested and the crystals reformed and changed shape each time.
http://www.thank-water.net/english/index.html
It was fascinating to connect the qualities of the shape to the word -I think if you put all the words in one line, then put the water crystal shapes in another line, you'd easily be able to match the word to the corresponding crystal pattern. What a nice game to play.
As it was pointed out in the film, if a thought can change the shape and structure of water crystals, consider what it does to the human body which is made up of on average 61.8% water. I have no doubt that every thought we have impacts on our body at a cellular level, as well as on the environment around us, which includes the people around us. If we truly are all connected then everything and everyone is One Being, we are all parts of The Whole, and what happens in one part of the being reverberates like a ripple throughout the rest of the whole.
Anyone who has done a period of serious meditation will have experienced the effect of a single thought on the chemistry of their body. In the stillness of meditation such effects are magnified, seen and felt very clearly.
So what I’m getting at is that when I consciously conjure up a particular word and allow the energy behind it’s meaning to imbue it’s essence throughout my physical being, the effect can be felt all over so it must be impacting and transforming on a cellular level.
I don't know where this will go, if anywhere, but it's little insights like these that gradually change the culture in the petri dish, ever so slightly. Today I am different to yesterday and tomorrow I'll be different again. Changing, changing, changing...anicca, anicca, anicca...
My life often feels like a quantum science experiment.
Going solo
Until now, I hadn’t realised that I’ve never lived alone. What a small revelation.
This surprising fact has only just emerged because in 6 weeks I’ll be moving into a new place – on my own – for the first time.
My habitation history from birth til now goes like this:
Birth to 15 years old: home
From 15 – 21: in and out of share houses with friends and sisters, and back home in between houses
At 21: married and raised 2 children in a family home
At 34: walked away from abusive husband with the 2 children but no possessions. He kept everything and I had to start from scratch with nothing, while raising two teenagers.
At 41: my daughter moved out and my son and I continued to live together until the beginning of 2006 when his urgent need for independence from Mum and his lack of money (no job, no income) meant that I, at age 45, sacrificed my own needs (as Mums do) and moved out. I lived with my Mum for all of last year until she finally sold the family house, then I came to stay with my friend Renate in February for 6 months while her husband was overseas.
Times almost up.
I hadn’t thought too much about what would happen when I the time came to move out of Renates. I knew the universe would provide and I now trust that process implicitly.
As expected, the Universe provided.
A chance conversation out of nowhere revealed an opportunity to take over Fleur’s dilapidated residence in an old mansion for one year from the end of July. Now this is almost impeccable timing by the Universe, and almost unbelievable when pondering how beautifully the circumstances were orchestrated for it to come about. The arrangement suits both our needs absolutely perfectly – like two jigsaw pieces that the Universe found and fitted together.
The mansion is amazing – it’s divided into four residences, rent is cheap as chips because it’s run down and barely habitable. But my part has two enormous rooms off a huge entrance hall (one room I think was the mansion’s ballroom) with open fires in both rooms, there’s a pokey kitchen and a pokier, grotty, little bathroom, minimal furniture and enormous ceilings that are so high you can barely see them. The place is impossible to heat, but will be great in summer, and it must be the best possible yoga space you could imagine.
But…I’ll be living alone – wow. What will that be like, and will I really love it as much as I think I will - being such a social recluse already it may just bring about my total disappearance from civilisation.
My life is feeling even more like a quantum science experiment.
Bush Flower Remedy
I finished the Boab Essence and Angie recommended Angelsword essence next.
It’s a confusing name – do you pronounce it Angel’s Word or Angel Sword???
I’m not sure of why she prescribed that one, but I’ve been taking it for a few days now.
Is it affecting me in any way? Don’t know that either.
What I just realised is that in this weblink to Angelsword, it describes the flower as appearing like a fleur-de-lis.
The apartment I'm moving into belongs to Fleur Elise.
Life really is a quantum science experiment.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
