Depression

Find someone to talk about it. Someone who will not judge you. Someone who will listen, and give sound advice. Not necessarily your friend. Someone with integrity.

Reality Shift

I had my clothes on, in the pool. I was underwater – my body moving in slow motion – and there was water all around – making everything slow.

I was in another reality.

In one moment, there was a shift, and anything was possible.

I was walking beside the pool, and without warning, and unexpected, my sister’s hands shoved me from the side. I don’t remember the fall. I am only, suddenly, strangely, under water – and I can see the bright green of my cardigan – and I see myself, slow and submerged – under water, with my clothes on.

In itself, it was liberating. A moment to be savoured. They marvelled at my good humour when I surfaced. I wanted to go under again, but I could see that might be construed at madness. My good humour was already making people wary of me.

The paradigm shift. The reality, existing, beside the every day. Just one shove, one push, and it all changed. It was that easy.

What to think about during yoga?

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Personally, my attention shifts between several main purposes, depending on my circumstances.
Because I’m an instructor, sometimes I need to ‘practice’ the form and pay attention to technical detail. I like to listen to other yoga student’s experiences and see how I can incorporate their feelings into my own practice. I do this because it adds to a greater understanding of my student’s experiences. But this practice is physically based and doesn’t fulfill the need I have for meditation in movement.

* Sometimes I concentrate on the breath.

* Sometimes I concentrate on the weight distribution of my body across my feet and hands.

* Sometimes I focus on the stomach lock and ‘lifting’ the perineum.

* Sometimes I focus on the eye gaze and keep my face soft.

And then, sometimes, and more now than at any time before, I experience yoga. Yoga, that is, unity of movement. My focus is on the whole.

The mind is turned off. There is quiet. There is, and I exist within the forms.

And then, I am at one and my heart rings clearly, its vibrations moving like ripples of water on a lake through my body.

How to be unified in your practice?

Begin in the ‘right’ frame of mind
Understand what you are going to do. Turn the chatterbox off. Meditate quietly first and move into asana practice naturally.

Slow
For me, to practice ‘yoga’, I need to go slow. Hold poses for longer. Send your mind outwards. Feel yourself extend.

Smile
The inner smile is just the easiest way to feel one – smile from the inside with your practice. Feel the joy in your body. Let it lift you.

Student Advice
When you go to your yoga teacher – listen, pay attention, learn. Keep your ears open and your mind turned off. Practice with love towards your body.

When you are at home – do yoga. Be unified. Step onto your mat – let the things you have learnt in class disappear – and just be. Then you are yoga – then you are in unity, not wanting to be.

Spiritual Seekers

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Questions to ponder along the way.

Life before questions
We are caught up in the daily grind. The grind includes our routine, our constant round of ‘things to do’, our commitments and our duties.

We live.

What triggers questions?
Moments in our life when we are confused. The moments when what we see (observe) is not what we’ve been told (conditioned). There is conflict within, and we begin to question.

Moments in life when we are shifted outside, maybe for the first time, of the safety of our comfort zone.

Questions can begin at any stage and at any time. You can try to search for the answers, or ignore them and keep doing what you’ve always done.

Questions to consider
Where do our beliefs come from?

What is it that we are searching for?

What can we live without?

What do I need to keep?

How important is it for me to hold on to tradition?

Do I understand the need for rituals?

Can I tolerate other opinions and points of view as as valid as my own?

What environment do I need to perform at my best?

Do I believe in being productive?

Do I care about responsibility for myself, family, friends, society, country, world?

Is there a god?

Do I care if there is or not?

What are we here for?

Can I live without knowing the answers?

Do I need routine in my life?

Do I value my sanity more than the truth?

Is the ‘truth’ so important, that I can give up my life to follow the truth?

Do I need a teacher?

Do I need support?

Can I be different and accept myself anyway?

Can I be open minded?

Is it ok for me not to know all the answers?

Is it ok to live with the best I’ve got at the moment?

Is the environment my responsibility?

Is it enough, to be ‘nice’?

Who am I?

Who are you?

Who are we?

Do I really care?

What difference will having an answer make?

Life on the Path
Discover the basics. Discover the things you need to be a functioning human. Understand yourself and your needs and accept them. Once you have the basics covered, take the steps you need, at your pace, at your stride, and do what you have to do.

Go in peace.

The Sensation of Meditation

I’ve been meditating on and off for 14 years.

The beginning
There’s an immediate feeling of layers falling away.
The thoughts chasing each other across my mind fade away and I am instantly aware of the sounds around me. Birds, the wind in the trees, distant traffic.
It all becomes bearable.

My body is quickly at east and soft.

My eyes pick out details and I can see the light and shadow interplay.

The beat of my heart becomes like a reverberating drum I can both hear and feel as the centre of my being. Its beat is the reminder of my life, of my connection, of my energy source. It sends the blood and air through my body, and I watch it, and feel it.

The middle
All is quiet. All is alive. All is.

The end
I begin to hear the birds, and see the leaves move in the breeze. I feel the muscles in my body and my position on my mat. I’m aware of the little smile on my face. I refrain from wishing to hold onto the moment. I let it be… with a little shadow of attachment.

I smile at myself.

Happiness - the destroyer of creativity?

Its occurred to me that when I’m at my happiest, I feel the least need to express how I feel.
Is this universal?

Is all the writing, art and expression of the world just some clawing and screaming from the sad and sorry lot of us who are dissatisfied?

If Buddha was born Buddha, then he wouldn’t have gone searching for something else.. He would have just sat and smiled and that would have been that.

If Hitler was happy, he’d have just stayed home…

If I was already a tolerant and loving and happy person, I wouldn’t have studied and searched out yoga and meditation and Taoism and philosophy and ‘god’. I would have already been happy with what I was doing, and left it all alone for someone else.

Are there examples of happy people, who are not reformed unhappy people, expressing themselves?

The self help books – they are all like reformed smokers books… Reformed smokers are the biggest enemies of smokers. They HATE other smokers… especially in those early months of giving up… And they will tell everyone the pitfalls of smoking… and all of these people (including me) write and write and write and have a lot to say.

So the self help books, and people in the early days of their reformed characters, are the loudest and most annoying and insisting of speakers on how to be ‘helped’. But are they happy, actually?

When I’m my most calm. When I’m my most happy. When I’m my most ‘at one’ with myself and the world – then… there is just that. And I don’t want to say anything.

The Cache Syndrome

The Cache Syndrome

Humans suffer from what I would term the ‘cache syndrome’.

In effect, it means that ideas that have been formed in the past become lodged in the mind. These ideas seem to be coming from an indisputable main memory. However, the ideas are only coming from the cache. A temporary location to store ideas that have happened in the past that will help us to live in the future.

The problem arises when we forget to occasionally clear the cache and we accept the formed ideas as concrete reality.

An example of the Cache Syndrome
When Lisa was a little girl, her mother told her that short hair suited her best. (The mother said this because she had four daughters and she didn’t want to have the trouble of maintaining four manes of hair every morning and night, not to mention her own)
Lisa grew up with the idea that short hair suited her best. This idea went into her cache. And there it stayed, without review, until she was 35 years old. A friend of Lisa commented that she’d never seen her with long hair. As Lisa began to say ‘but I look so much better with short hair’ it occurred to her that she, in fact, didn’t know how she looked with long hair, so she wasn’t sure.
This was the beginning of Lisa emptying the cache of information tagged ‘Lisa looks better with short hair’.

The cache syndrome effects all of us on some level or another. Sometimes for quite insignificant ideas, and sometimes for ones that can hurt us for a life time.

Cache’s worth clearing
Any part of your life that brings you unhappiness, disappointment, frustration or anger – its worth taking a look at the ideas surrounding your hurt.

What do you expect from your relationships? – do you still believe what you believed before? Has your ideas changed? And why?
What does it mean to be successful?
How much do you need to ‘own’ before you are ‘happy’?
When is ‘family’ time?
Children need indulgence, not independence. What’s your ideas? Where do they come from? Has life changed you since you were a teenager, or do you still hold the same beliefs your parents gave you? Is it time to review them?

Good luck in your discovery.

An Evening Prayer

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A prayer for closing.

Reflection and Repose

The day has been and gone
And left its kiss upon my skin.

I take this moment to pause
And consider the words of the morning.

I am. You are. We are.
The All. The Creator. The One.

I discovered you in the dappled light.
I lived your essence in my breath.
I gave thanks for the earth’s gifts.
I took another step on my journey.

I’ve cared for my body.
I’ve lived the interchange of opposites
in my breath and with my senses.
Thank you for all that I have.

In giving thanks I salute your gift of life.

Let my actions that were given with love
Spread like wild flowers upon a field.

Let me forgive my lapses,
And accept my humanity.

Love is the language of a positive life.
Let me contemplate my action.

Let me speak, act and think with love,
Especially to myself.

I am. You are. We are.
The All. The Creator. The One.

An Evening Prayer

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A prayer for closing.

Reflection and Repose

The day has been and gone
And left its kiss upon my skin.

I take this moment to pause
And consider the words of the morning.

I am. You are. We are.
The All. The Creator. The One.

I discovered you in the dappled light.
I lived your essence in my breath.
I gave thanks for the earth’s gifts.
I took another step on my journey.

I’ve cared for my body.
I’ve lived the interchange of opposites
in my breath and with my senses.
Thank you for all that I have.


In giving thanks I salute your gift of life.

Let my actions that were given with love
Spread like wild flowers upon a field.

Let me forgive my lapses,
And accept my humanity.

Love is the language of a positive life.
Let me contemplate my action.

Let me speak, act and think with love,
Especially to myself.

I am. You are. We are.
The All. The Creator. The One.

Two Energies in Yoga.

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Mountain Pose in Practice

There are two forces at work.
One is positive and one is negative.
They can be expressed by the Taoist symbol.

One is not more important than the other.
They are interrelated and interdependent.

All of life can be expressed by their interplay.

Hatha Yoga
In hatha yoga, when standing in Mountain Pose, we can tap into these two energies very simply.

* Remember, the exercises in them selves are not magical or a ‘cure all’. The asanas, the meditation, the pranayama – all of these things are tools to help us get to know and express the basic philosophy of yoga – that of unity and wholeness.

Mountain Pose
Try this exercise outside.

Posture
- Feet together or hip distance apart.

- Lift and place the toes. Rock gently from side to side to bring your awareness into your feet.

- As you move up to your knees, see the connection between the feet, though the calf and up into the knee. See, in your minds eye, the connection and flow of skin, blood, and bones.

- Lift and tighten the knees.

- Pull up the thighs.

- Remember, while everything is lifted and aware – it is still ‘ light and strong’, rather than ‘tense and brittle’. Feel the difference.

- Tuck the tail bone through – we want the jutting hip bones and the pubic bone on a similar vertical plane.

- Take in a deep breath. As you breath out, gently draw the lower muscles of your stomach in.

- Lengthen through the spine. Long and tall.

- Keep the movements soft, gentle and smile a little with love and care towards your body.

- Lift the shoulders up, roll them back and gently let them settle into place. Check your ribs don’t stick out.

- Relax your arms beside your body

- Lengthen through the back of your neck.

- Soften the face. Soften the back of the neck and head. Soften the jaw. Relax the eyes.

The meditation
Once you are comfortable in your pose. Once you have breathed and felt your body. Take a slightly different perspective. See yourself as one person, standing on the face of the earth. Your feet are connected to the earth. Your head is reaching up towards the sky.

Now, as a matter of fact, you are now in the position for being the perfect conduit for the two energies – just as you stand. The earth is heavy, dark and passive. The sky is light, bright and active.

Begin with your feet. Begin to draw up the energy through the earth up into your body. As you begin to feel ‘something’ – visualize the great expanse of the sky above you. Imagine the energy of the sky begin to pour into your body through your head.

Keep both energies flowing up into your body.

They meet in your centre. In your navel. Your navel is the meeting point for the two energies. You are the perfect vessel to hold these two energies in balance in your body.

Breath.

Continue your practice.