Yoga in One Syllable

Truthfulness, or Satya as the yoga texts term it, is something that most of us value highly in ourselves, and in others. It is also one of the key values we are encouraged to live by when we practice yoga. However, practicing Satya is somewhat more involved than fessing up to your fourth grade teacher about the rubber fight you instigated at the back of the classroom. It’s about striving to achieve harmony between your thoughts, your words and your actions.

There is no easy way to get to this state – it’s not something you perfect on the first go. Even with the best of intentions, it can be surprisingly hard to actually back up your intentions with actions.  [Read more →]

As promised, details of the India 2011 Tour are now live and online.

Plans have changed slightly, and our three-week tour now fits neatly into 16 days. Check out the unique South India travel package David and I have put together. And if you can, come along to Hazelbrook on September 4th for a chai!

The people of Australia have spoken. By comment and email you begged me to run a yoga analysis on Greens leader Bob Brown. And to prove that a vote for Green is not a wasted vote, here he is.

I’ve found it a fascinating and challenging process this week, to examine public figures without reference to my ambient knowledge about them – to simply home in on the raw facts of how their bodies work.

With Bob Brown, it’s even harder: he’s been part of Australian life for long enough to truly earn the title of “icon”.

Depending where on the political spectrum you sit, you either see Bob Brown as an irrelevant nagger who pops up on TV whenever a tree gets cut down, a national treasure determined to offer a high-moral-fibre alternative to the main parties, or an infuriating meddler whose sole purpose is to obstruct the path of progress.

But let’s not get into preferences here. Let’s instead take an unbiased look at Bob’s body politic. Is he as straight up and down as we think? Does he lean to the left or right? What’s the condition of the Green Senator’s backbone – physical, rather than moral? [Read more →]

Regular readers of these articles know that I’m not in the habit of casting my weight around on affairs of state – some places, after all, should be havens from the mudslinging, fearmongering and spin that accompany political campaigns.

In fact, I try to keep myself away from the news as much as possible when there’s an election looming. It’s not that I don’t care about who’s running the country, or where they plan to lead us. It’s simply that for the most part, the analysis you hear and read is almost as shallow as the vapid, vote-courting utterances of the politicians themselves.

But whenever I watch the party leaders on the hustings, ranting away about refugees or stimulus packages, I can’t help zoning in on the things a yoga teacher instinctively looks for, and a media strategy doesn’t take into account:  their posture, the way they hold themselves and use their bodies.

These ingrained and largely unconscious habits can clue us in to the type of person they really are – and what kind of leader we can expect them to be.

So I’ve lined up the two main candidates, to give you my analysis of what their bodies reveal. Will Tony’s action man physique win out over Julia’s well-concealed femininity? Who’s looking after themselves? Who’s got the composure, the calm, the sense of perspective to lead the country for the next four years. And because I’m not here to mudsling, I’ve also given a few prescriptions, should Tony or Julia Stumble or Tweet their way here, of simple asana they could use to work on those problems and change their lives for the better.

Ladies first, then… [Read more →]

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”

Henry Miller

I’m planning a trip to India in January, and rather than make it a complete break from all my classes, I’m inviting you along for an inspiring journey of yoga, culture, colour and spiritual rejuvenation.

The idea for leading a group to India has been in the wings for a while, and from the conversations I’ve been having with some of you lately, it really seems like the time has come.

From a yoga perspective, India takes us directly to the source of things. Every time I go there I learn things and gain new insights that I could scarcely have imagined – insights about yoga, about myself, about the powerful current of spirit and soul that flows through everything we see and touch. [Read more →]

As I’ve been planning and writing The Yoga Brain it’s given me pause to reflect about beginnings and endings. We seem to get quite excited by the idea of something new, yet as humans we often find endings difficult to accept.

But you can’t have a beginning without an ending, or an end without a beginning – spring only arrives at the passing of winter, and only with the end of spring does summer come – so there is often a bitter-sweet mix of emotion that surrounds periods of change in our lives.

Beginnings signal the possibility of something new, but with that excitement can come more than a dash of trepidation. An ending, on the other hand, means leaving behind the comfort of knowing who we think we are and the place we’ve created for ourselves in this world.

Even if we don’t necessarily like the situation we’re in, the sheer familiarity of it can seem better than the unknown and uncharted – better the devil you know, and all that. Thus an ending can be both saddening and fearful.

Yet, like a lizard or a snake, there are times when we need to shed our present skin in order to continue our natural growth. As we evolve in our understanding of ourselves we need to remember that a fundamental part of us will always remain the same: a lizard losing its skin doesn’t emerge as a possum. Amidst all the beginnings and endings that leave us with a mixture of emotions from fear to excitement, nothing occurs to prevent us from being ourselves.

So as we watch and participate in all the beginnings and endings that swirl in and out of our lives we can take both comfort and strength knowing that fundamentally we will remain the same person. And each story and lesson that comes our way can only help us to come to a greater understanding of our core nature.

Image by mikebogle

I’ve just come inside from watching a great grey theatre of thunderclouds roll in from the south and over our house. It’s a rare event for us to get thunder in the middle of winter, and in the moments before the rain finally swallowed the view, as the white cockatoos and the electric-green king parrots swooped through the sunlight to a backdrop of rain-laden clouds, I enjoyed one of those surprise moments of being suddenly swept away in the magical pattern of life.

As the seasons ebb and flow, as the leaves fall and frosts carpet the ground, we adjust our lives and habits to the changing world. We pull the ugg boots out of the cupboard, feast on warming root-vegetable soups, and spend extra minutes every morning trying to coax ourselves out of warm beds. Despite all the busy-ness in our lives, a part of us always remains connected to the natural events happening around us.

Yoga has its own role to play in helping us to become aware of our connection to this web of life. It gives us the tools to remain centred in the “now”, by calmly observing what is happening in our body, our breath and in our mind. It’s here, in the understanding of the mind, that yoga offers its greatest gifts. [Read more →]

After a lot of planning and prodding (thanks to everyone for all their support and encouragement)  I’m excited to say that this week I’m launching a six week course in yogic thinking called The Yoga Brain.

If you’ve been a regular reader of this blog, The Yoga Brain will shed more light on many of the ideas I discuss. More importantly, it will give you practical techniques to apply at any moment in your life to help you streamline your thinking and find inner peace. Here’s a brief taste of what it’s all about:

A snapshot of The Yoga Brain
The yoga brain, like the yoga body, is agile, flexible, and balanced. It is stronger, more resilient to sickness, and better able to cope with the slings and arrows that life shoots at us. The yoga brain observes situations without loading them with fear and anxiety. It is aware of the patterns that normally run our lives, but it acts consciously, without reacting, and can discern what is beneficial for the self from what is merely pleasurable.

If this sounds like something you’d like to put into your life click here for the details.

Meditation occurs in many philosophical and spiritual traditions as a way to become aware of one’s true nature and thereby reach peace within one’s self, and it forms one of the fundamental pillars of Yoga.

It’s a discipline that you can spend your entire life cultivating and refining, but as a starting point, we can think of meditation as the art of doing nothing – easy enough so far – yet being totally aware of all that is happening.

Each of us has the ability to meditate. (In fact, we’re born with all the attributes we need for a peaceful and fulfilling life. We just forget the fact because it gets buried under so much mental gunk as we grow up and have to deal with the outside world.) So why is it that sitting by yourself trying to access all this zen-like stillness can seem so damn difficult? [Read more →]

Here’s a riddle for you. What do fairy wrens have in common with riders in the Tour de France?

On first inspection it would seem very little. But if we learn to look at them as examples of cooperative behaviour, they can both shed their own light on the same important lesson. [Read more →]