Here is the video I mentioned earlier. You will need a block, or a thick book (do they still make telephone books? I miss them. I used to browse them casually haha.) or a sturdy cushion. If you have none of those then a couple of folded towels/blankets will do the trick.
Remember it is okay to use props in fact using props can help you deepen your experience so don’t feel like you’re going backwards in your practice if you use one.
I hope this is helpful!
Sometimes I’ll be meditating or you know doing something super ascendant (you know I’m kidding right) and someone will rock over already talking to me.
“Oh, were you meditating (or insert some other high minded activity I might possibly be doing)?“
“Yes I was” spiritually patient tone (ha, not really)
“Oh… ok” reluctant tone
“No it’s alright what were you saying?“
“Ok just quickly then…” and insert important (to them) information.
I wonder if it was really that important.
And in that same way I am rocking up to just quickly tell you just quickly that I will upload another yoga tip video sometime later today, or tomorrow, but maybe today.
Now you can wonder was this really that important.
It’s weird, over time, a lot of time, the less I minded those “just quickly” interruptions the less they happened?
Whilst teaching yesterday a student asked me “did you do yoga on the weekend?” and as a matter of fact I did. But with multiple interruptions so a 45 minute session ended up taking 2 and a bit hours because someone wanted breakfast, then someone was hungry again and wanted lunch, and also I had to help someone open a water bottle also where was that book they were reading and I did not even mind.
So maybe the interruptions do continue but I just don’t mind as much. Is this… ascension?!
Just kidding.
This is a ten minute sequence I filmed (awkwardly!) on my Instagram so that my overseas client would be able to do it whilst we figure out the time zones to schedule our next session together.
Do you feel like practice has to be a certain length or else it’s not really a practice? If you don’t have an hour you feel as though you’ll just have to wait until a later time? If you had the choice between
One hour of practice a week, or
Ten minutes a day everyday
What would you go for?
That full hour still looks appealing haha but you’re left with six days a week without that mindful movement.
When you are in the early days of setting up your practice, try adding these small habits of moving consistently and regularly, however briefly. It’s only a suggestion and if you find it turns out you have more time, add on. If you don’t have more than ten minutes, no big deal, you’ve already done something and you can go back out in the world.
Clutter is a real mind messer arounder. I get it now. It is so easy to fall into a trap thinking you need a bigger space for all your stuff. To some extent yes, of course we need a cupboard to put things into but a penthouse? A five bedroom house? Probably not.
One of the things about our living space is the lack of cabinetry, so I bought some to make up for the lack of storage space. But how about that, I still had a crap load of stuff all over the place that needed to be put away, yet there was no where to put it. What now mighty mind?!
Obviously it was a case of me not using the space I had intelligently and also there being WAY TOO MANY THINGS. It has been very obvious what needed to be done but it was a case of finding the time to do it and overcoming the sensation of overwhelm that left me feeling too exhausted to get started.
Over the last month something overcame me and it was a funny time that I suddenly felt this urge considering it was one of the busiest months in our life yet I was just brimming with energy ready to tackle things.
Today I tackled a small but pretty important space, the kitchen counter, specifically the space above my little toaster oven and just next to it, and the spice cabinet above it.
One of my goals is to clear the dining table and have enough counter space to do things on it. I don’t have a proper workspace so the dining table is my little art studio/office space. So every meal time we have to shovel everything off down one end so we have enough space for our elbows. Yeesh. B is very kind and doesn’t say a word about it but how much better would it be if we had a clear table. Also my altar faces our dining table so it would be good to clear the clutter.
Looking into the spice cabinet I can see I haven’t used the space properly, I tried with those little Ikea metal shelves but it wasn’t organised enough so I couldn’t fit alot of stuff in and things overflowed out onto the dining table and kitchen counter.
Let me show you, I hope you feel the same physical relief I felt after getting this done! It’s incredible how clearing clutter can affect your mental state. It felt so wonderful that now I might even bake some banana bread! (It felt like a pain in the arse to clear things out the way and get things out of the cabinet to do any baking. And I used to sell baked goods so how hilarious is that?)
I highly recommend it if you also have clutter hanging around that you have been meaning to get to.
How are you?!
I’ve seen a guy address his audience “Hi there friends and lovers”. Can I pull that off without people thinking I’m serious? Anyway, I missed being here! The last couple of years have been busy and the last year has been a lot of growth. Every year we grow but the last year I have done things like tidy up and organise stuff. I mean…. that’s GROWTH. Place still a mess though but there are spots of tidiness.
I’ve been teaching quite a bit too (for someone with no promotion and unattached to any studio), people have floated towards me and it has been such a blessing.
In fact, it is now almost 10am on a Monday and I just finished teaching someone. How good is it to be freshly showered after yoga?!
Now ready to cook some soup for the day whilst listening to Louise Hay.
How good is it to feel happy?
I wish you a blessed and happy day.
xox
Sometimes it feels like the more I try to do “quickly” “out of the way” and then I can go do my morning routine the less I get done or at least not without a great deal of struggle. Face palms away!
If I just say you know, I’m going to go do my morning routine first and then everything else I feel much better, things get done very smoothly and well indeed and I don’t find myself wondering where did all the day gone and how did nothing get done at all?
Some snippets from the past few days and this morning.
How was your morning so far?
Many years ago (many? errr it was long enough!), I accompanied some of the people I knew to a photo shoot for a book on yoga.
They needed some photos for back bends and asked me if I could do the modelling. I said sure! I thought I had a flexible back, (cue narrator voice, “she did not have that flexible a back“) no worries, what do you need. I thought I was helping. Helping who?
Can you guess how this ends?
I got into wheel pose, fresh, not very warmed up as practice was already a few hours ago. All fine, do this do that, ok we got the pictures. Man did I feel twingey that night! And I never had back problems so it was pretty alarming.
Pride comes before a fall but also before a backbend before you are properly warmed up. A little wordy but it gets the message across.
To this day, I don’t even know if the book ended up getting published and if the photos were really used.
I’ve learned since that jumping to attention and trying to people please is not the wisest move. You can pause and work up to it.
Something for me to laugh about.
Have you had this type of lesson?
I burst out laughing yesterday afternoon when I saw my phone alert. I have a meditation app as do many of us these days (an app for everything, no?!) and on the dot at 3pm it pinged me.
There are two mistakes along the way to mastery: Not starting and not going all the way.
Buddha
I wasn’t laughing at the quote, more that I had just seen another video from Shaolin Temple about discipleship, quite a funny video in which the proposed disciple was constantly evading his master (Sifu) and his upcoming haircut. I had been thinking about how when it is time to practice, just practice don’t think about excuses and I had confirmed with myself that 3pm was afternoon practice time. That was when my phone pinged me and I saw the quote which is the same one used by Sifu too. It just all seemed very … oh never mind, stop thinking just go practice.
(Do you know what I mean though?)
Here is something I am working on in my yoga practice. Trying to improve my flexibility, if you intend to try, please warm up first with sun salutations or something similar. The aim in this is to keep the upper body in the middle, and to creep the hand holding the strap down the strap to the ankle. Honestly I find manouvering my hand down in this fashion quite confusing because up is down and left is right and where am I who am I hahaha. But it’s a pretty groovy experience all the same, I kind of… enjoyed the strangeness? Give it a try!
What are you doing this weekend? Something? Nothing? Everything? Haha, here are some suggestions, let me know what you enjoyed!
Our Zenaissance 