by admin | Apr 13, 2014 | Uncategorized
Just a short, daily practice, if it’s the right one, can make your day SO much more; More manageable, more calm, more abundant, more enjoyable. It’s like watering a plant – a little each day and the plant flourishes. A small commitment can make big changes to your life. It’s always good to come to class and practice with others, to try things you may not try on your own, or get ideas you may not have had at home. To build on this, a personal home practice is also important to develop. Your home practice gives you time to explore where you are at, with the yoga and with life generally. And if you feel like you don’t have time for a personal home practice – ever consider that it could actually help your life flow better, so you feel less pressed for time? INSPIRED? I’m looking to develop a workshop or course that helps you develop your own home practice. To do this usefully, I need to know what you’re after in a home practice. If this topic interests you, I’d love and appreciate you helping me develop something useful by answering the questions below and emailing them to me nancy@blissretreat.com.au: Q1) What do you want from a personal practice? Q2) What are some blocks you have to doing a personal home practice? Q3) How long so you want your practice to be (be realistic, anywhere from 5 mins onward)? Q4) Do you have any specific injuries/conditions that impact your practice? Q5) Would it help to have a few home practices to choose from, depending on time...
by admin | Apr 6, 2014 | Uncategorized
Last weekend I took a flight interstate. I always find flying depleting, no matter how short the trip. I try and counter the depletion by staying hydrated which helps a lot. But this time I tried long deep breathing – and want to share with you a way to feel MUCH better after a flight. THE DISCOVERY: With all the time for it, I decided to check out what was going on with my breathing during the flight. Due to the air pressure, I was surprised by how tight and restricted my lungs felt, which meant shallow breathing for the duration of the flight = depleting. So I began consciously breathing, long and deep and immediately felt much better for it and it made a big difference to how much energy and I had on landing. Actually, I’ve often wondered if breathing deeply on a flight is all that great for you – considering the air quality – but have since learned that the air available on flights is not all recycled, half of it is fresh air from outside. Also, the recycled air is filtered through hospital grade filters – so all in all it’s not that bad. I also get motion sickness on a bumpy descent and for this used alternate nostril breathing to balance the brain – it worked a treat and the motion sickness went away. Try it for yourself. Alternate nostril breathe for the last 15 minutes of the flight, right through until landing. What was most astounding was touch-down and how much my lungs opened up once we hit the tarmac. With the...
by admin | Mar 30, 2014 | Uncategorized
You may have noticed my slight obsession with the exhale. I’ve come to consider the exhale to be the lynch pin of all yoga. It’s like the calm before the storm, the moments of preparation before the performance. It’s the groundwork that enables you to launch a project or deliver a speech; A cleared space ready for the new. About the exhale: A complete exhale assists the body to fully expel apana (old stuff, toxins, carbon dioxide) from the lungs. As we exhale, the diaphragm rises, putting pressure on the lower lungs to expel air, ridding the body of old apana settled on the bottom of the lungs. The exhale connects you to your navel centre. Through the action of the exhale, the navel point draws back towards the spine and we activate our navel centre. A strong navel means a strong sense of self – it is the centre of our being in physical form. If we shallow breathe there is very little action in the navel, the navel centre remains placid, inactive. Shallow breathing = uncertainty, uncentred. We exhale apana to make room for prana. To fully exhale makes space for a full inhale. An incomplete exhale is like over-committing in life; We continue to fill fill fill. We just keep adding. The exhale represents a letting go, an acceptance of impermanence. The inbetween space. The unknown. Opportunity. Skimping on the exhale can make you feel hurried, it creates that mental state of wanting more. If we complete the exhale it keeps us grounded in the here and now; Honouring each action as complete, each moment...
by admin | Mar 23, 2014 | Uncategorized
Late last year I met some lovely ladies in Bali who were interested to practice Kundalini yoga but felt alienated by the image we can sometimes portray of living in a constant light-filled state of positivity and elation. I was quick to reassure them that was not the case and that Kundalini yoga teachings encourage yogi’s to acknowledge, explore, accept and even love their shadow. Yes, Kundalini yoga gets us in touch with that beautiful space beyond our judgements and attachments and moves us from a finite sense of self to the infinite Self – expansiveness, truth, transformation!!! But it can also take us trawling through our ‘stuff’ – a process often not so love and light-filled. The fact is, transformation can sometimes be joyful and sometimes truly painful. In my own personal experience, practicing this yoga can be truly harrowing at times. We get to face our neurosis, our fears, our insecurities, the darkness. Because when we dig deep, we don’t always find things we like about ourselves. Living an authentic, present life involves acknowledging this, staying centred and moving through one lesson to the next. If we turn away from, or bury these parts, we deny an essential truth of what it is to be human; Yogi Bhajan encouraged us to recognise ourselves fully – the good, the bad and the downright ugly, as this is the path to truth. He said “the only difference between you and me is that I love my shadow.” It’s on this journey of delving deep, learning and transforming that we develop huge amounts of compassion and understanding towards ourselves –...
by admin | Mar 16, 2014 | Uncategorized
The big difference between yoga and other forms of exercise is that yoga is not just physical exercise, it is movement with mental presence. The word YOGA means Yoke or Union. The union of all parts of self in meditative motion. Making the shift from the mind/body separation to an experience of wholeness or mind/body union creates an authentic experience of yoga. This grounds us in the present. Not what could be, will be or might be, but what is; Reality. Living real empowers us to honestly observe ourselves within our reality and heightens an awareness that we play a role in how that reality pans out. A wholeness approach can be applied to anything – work, play, rest – and anything can be yoga, the practice of mind/body union. Unfortunately we have a tendancy to switch between mind and body which creates a disconnect from reality. There can be a tendency to move through an exercise routine like another task to tick off. We set goals for somewhere out there in the future (a certain fitness level, weight loss, etc) and disconnect from the actual experience. Mentally detached, we quickly get bored and lose interest in maintaining physical health. Or we detach from the physical while we focus on using the mind – at work for example. At the end of the work day we find ourselves in physical pain with sore backs and tight necks from sitting at the desk for so long, with little physical awareness or body connection. The joy of yoga is that there is nowhere to get to and nothing to wait...
