A meditation on meditation

So I’m a week into my attempt to meditate daily, and it’s going well so far I think. As far as any kind of technique goes, I have simply been watching my breath. Every time my mind wanders (which is ridiculously often), I just gently steer it back to observing the breath, trying to feel it enter and

Lego and crayons – remembering how to play

This weekend I took a bit of time out of my experimentations with a more ascetic lifestyle – I’m definitely enjoying lots of time to write and meditate but we humans are naturally social creatures and reclusivity is only appealling to me if it has clearly defined limits!  Look – me being social! By the way,

Damn those coconuts

The other day, thanks to the seasoned wisdom of some some friends who’ve been coming here for years, I solved Mysore’s greatest mystery. Since we arrived, I’ve been finding dirty brown splodges over my clothes after they’ve dried on the line. I’ve already had to admit defeat on two t-shirts, including my favourite blue vest, which

Home Alone 2

So, Chris has left again to complete the second (mahoosive) leg of his moped trip through India – this time he has around 2500 km to cover up to Delhi rather than the 600 km covered on the first leg, gulp. He reckons it will take him between 8 and 10 weeks. So I am

Stop looking, start finding

As previously mentioned, when we returned from our wonderful rural road trip the other day, my enthusiasm to get back on the yoga train was flagging somewhat. Coming back to Mysore had once again prompted unwelcome feelings of being a bit lost and confused about the whole thing. In desperation, I asked Chris to share with me some

Karma bananas

I feel like being in India is teaching me all kinds of little but important lessons. Perhaps it’s because I have the luxury of time each day to do asana, pranayama and meditation, such that I’m more open to them; I think such life lessons are probably there for the taking at any point, as long

Autumn clear-out

For as long as I can remember, I have loved having a good old sort-out, especially of my wardrobe. When my three sisters and I were little, around once a year my mum would herd us into a bedroom, at the centre of which would be a huge mountain of all of our combined clothes.

Jumping-through negativity

Last Saturday I ran my first jump-through workshop. For those who don’t know, the jump-through is a dynamic linking sequence that is used between postures in ashtanga and vinyasa krama yoga. I had deliberated for a long time about whether it was a good idea or not to run the workshop.  I wanted to pass on

It’s all in the balance…

This Thursday sees me running the first of my monthly ‘yin’ style yoga classes, with long-held, supported postures and a slow, meditative pace. This might seem a strange thing for a die-hard ashtangi to be doing, but I suppose that is the point of this post. We need both the yin and the yang. The

Mindfulness: why ‘coming back down to earth’ is a good thing

“Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child – our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” Thich Nhat Hanh All too often we live in our heads: in our fantasies of how we would like