In yoga and meditation, we learn various techniques and tools to help calm the body and the mind, to re-balance, to find ease and to find 'a pause'.
These last few weeks have in many ways been 'a pause' for all of us. Whether our daily lives and activities have changed a little, a lot, or perhaps not at all. We have all been given an opportunity to stop and reflect. This in itself is a practice of yoga.
Read More"Waiting is a state of mind. Basically, it means that you want the future; you don't want the present. You don't want what you've got, and you want what you haven't got. With every kind of waiting, you unconsciously create inner conflict between your here and now, where you don't want to be, and the projected future, where you want to be. This greatly reduces the quality of your life by making you lose the present.” Ekhart Tolle
We all find ourselves waiting. Waiting for this phase in human history to be over, for the solution, for the answer. When we project ourselves forward into a future we cannot know, we are missing what is happening NOW.
So how do we get to the now?
Read MoreWe all carry worry around with us. It’s a part of being human. We worry about things we can change and things we can’t change. Some of us worry more than others. It is ok that we worry. We all do it.
The tools and practices of yoga and meditation help us to calm the swirling thoughts of our mind by helping us to bring our awareness inwards, by helping us connect to the peace of the present moment. From this space we are able to take a moment to step back, view the world with more perspective, even change our perspective and then deal with the challenges in a calmer more responsive way.
Whether you practice yoga or meditation or not here are some simple ways to help you calm your mind and your worries and give yourself some space through being more present:
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Every week we bring our hands together at our hearts and say “Namaste” to end the class. It is a gesture to close the class and to enable our class community to thank each other for our practice together. Like all aspects of our yoga practice there is much to study, learn and enjoy in these simple practices as part of our yoga journey. There are deeper meanings to these gestures which I share with you here.
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Everyday has possibility for change and growth. Every day is a new start, or can be. Each moment is also a new beginning. Remind yourself of this each day, not just at New Year.
For some of you new year may be a great time to make resolutions, or intentions, to make positive changes big or small. But maybe the time is not right for you, it feels too pressured, or your heart is not in it. Either way, here’s a couple of little ways to start the year with lightness and joy. They cost nothing, require no equipment and you can use them daily with no pressure, judgement or failure if you don’t do them, but lots of added well being if you do.
Read MoreMy yoga bookshelf is getting pretty full, but there are a few books that I return to over and again as resources for my practice and my teaching. I’m sharing them here as they are all really accessible for any yoga student and I hope I inspire you to buy one as a gift to yourself this Christmas.
Read MoreIt's now a couple of weeks since we sadly had to say goodbye to our beloved dog Duke.
We all resonate with losing a person we love. Losing a pet is a slightly different experience, for some it can be harder in some ways. I am not an expert in how to deal with grief of any kind, and I believe there can be grief in other situations not just in the death of a loved one. But I do want to share my experience of the early days after losing Duke and how my meditation practice has helped.
Read MoreWe all have a happy place, maybe more than one. Not just holiday destinations. Maybe its snuggling under the duvet, sitting in the garden, places where we connect with friends or family, places we call our own.
But there’s also another happy place that we all have the ability to connect to. It’s with us everywhere we go. It’s the space within us, underneath our minds and bodies, underneath our thoughts emotions and dreams…
Read MoreIn this blog post I will share some of my thoughts on how to begin to practice your yoga at home more often, how to overcome some of the challenges and the ways in which practising at home can really enrich your experience of yoga experience.
Read MoreHow often does something an occurrence in our daily lives turn our differently to our expectation? e.g. A conversation that we've been dreading that turns out positive, a response to something that's the opposite of what we thought, an event unfolding very differently to what we had in mind...
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