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.
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?!
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.
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.
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!
In my last two posts (here, here) I have been writing about my recent adoption of 气功 practice and I mentioned a video which was available, and then unavailable, now it is available again. Below is the updated link for the video.
I have been doing Qi Gong everyday following the videos uploaded on the channel I mentioned in the last post, by Master Shi Heng Yi. I noticed that the video I linked in my last post is not available now, hopefully not gone forever. In the meantime here is an alternative one you can use. I do this when I am very short on time many things to do, at least 20 minutes were for my practice, then I go take care of my tasks, practice some more later in the day and evening. There are many minutes in 24 hours!
Please try and let me know what you think. How wonderful if we are all practising qigong, yoga and meditation around the world.
The teacher appears when the student is ready. Or when the algorithm does a thingy.
I came across a video of a Shaolin master teaching qigong, 释恒義 (Shi HengYi). Hmm, I thought, always wanted to get into qigong but never really did fully. I do a bit here and there from time to time but not regularly. Then I came across a talk the Master gave. Some wheels turned and I went back to the qigong video.
The teaching was very clear, straightforward and simple to follow. It was a big yes for me.
I had been experiencing a great deal of anxiety and negative thought patterns but after this I felt calmer. In Chinese there is an expression “定心丸 (tranquil pill)” – it is not an actual tablet but just something that helps a person to feel settled. The words 定心 literally means to set (put into order) the heart. This practice seems to work like that for me. It has provided me so much relief.
I also felt my energy levels were replenished and my body more healthful. I don’t know that I looked any different but I felt like I should be practically glowing and shooting sparks afterwards (in a good way – I feel like I need to add this).
Over this weekend there were live sessions and the time difference was alright. The morning session worked out to be noon for me and the afternoon session was 9pm. I slept SOOOOOOO deeply and peacefully. After the morning/noon session I was tranquil and balanced. Hopefully there will be more live sessions to join, in the meantime I will practice from what is already available (there is plenty).
If you are worried about your fitness levels, the sessions from this weekend can even be done seated. In my experience, the energy cost was much lower than the benefit afterwards. A very fair exchange!
It is my goal to improve the atmosphere (vibe if you want to use that word) around my person so when you come near me or know me you can feel better. Obviously we are all responsible for our own selves so how much a person can benefit another in that way is ??? But I would like to try to improve myself in this manner, in the end it will only help even if it is just myself who gets the benefit.
All this is not to say oh, definitely, yes, you should or you must try this out or even try the teachings from this Master. There are other teachers who provide this teaching. I’ll just add that 释恒義 is the Headmaster of the Shaolin Temple in Europe. Just because someone is a Headmaster does not always mean they are a good teacher but in this instance, he is a great teacher. The main thing (for me) is the skill at transmitting the lesson.
In the end the aim is to take this practice and make it your own to continue. All I can say is, this is what I’m doing. I have been practising for a brief period and I will continue doing this practise as it has already been very beneficial to me. If you already practise a form of breath based movement like yoga or Pilates this may be of interest to you to include in your life.
This is not intended to be a long thing, I just wanted to share what I have been studying, this is available to everyone, this is free and here it is.
By the way, you will need to move the start time a bit further along until the session actually starts, around 20-30 minutes or so.
I wish you balance and harmony. Have a great day!
EDIT:
I have been doing Qi Gong everyday following the videos uploaded on the channel I mentioned in the last post, by Master Shi Heng Yi. I noticed that the video I linked in my last post is not available now, hopefully not gone forever. In the meantime here is an alternative one you can use. I do this when I am very short on time many things to do, at least 20 minutes were for my practice, then I go take care of my tasks, practice some more later in the day and evening. There are many minutes in 24 hours!
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.
Our Zenaissance 