This blog has moved to its own URL.
To follow me in your favourite reader
Go to Suburban Yogini
Click the orange button with 'Subscribe' next to it and follow the directions.
Or just paste http://suburbanyogini.com/feeds into your "Add" window.
To follow me on Google Followers
Open Dashboard
Scroll to just below ‘Blogs I'm Following' and click the 'ADD' button. Then just enter the url http://suburbanyogini.com in the pop up box and you should be good to go.
If you are kind enough to link to me on a blogroll or links list I would really appreciate it if you could change the link to Suburban Yogini.
Any problems drop me an email at suburbanyogini at gmail dot com
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
blogoversary and an extract
Today is my two year blogoversary, so yay for me! Way back when I made that first post I was just on the verge of giving up my corporate job to teach yoga full time. I had no idea what the future held and I certainly had no idea how many great bloggers I was going to connect with through this medium.
Life's changed even more since then what with our move to Cambridge last year - and I have great hopes for the future!
So to celebrate the last two years, I thought I'd tell you about one of the many steps on my journey from yoga student to teacher (not that we ever stop being students of course!).
One of the hardest lessons you have to learn as a yoga teacher is to not take things personally. The first time nobody turned up to class I wept and wept. It wasn’t until the next day I realised I’d got my term dates wrong and everybody assumed we were still on vacation. Sometimes people come to class, sometimes they don’t. It’s not your fault. You don’t know what’s going on in their lives and shocking as it may seem, yoga class doesn’t always take priority.
Sometimes you will get a student who comes once, and then you never see her again. You have to learn not to beat yourself up about that too. Sometimes they just won’t like you and that’s OK, because if it wasn’t for not liking a teacher, I wouldn’t be teaching yoga myself.
I used to go to a lunchtime yoga class twice a week at the gym near my office. It was perfect – it stretched my body and relaxed my mind halfway through a stressful day. No matter how busy we were at work, or how badly my boss didn’t want me to take a lunch break, I always made sure on Tuesdays and Thursdays I got to my midday yoga class. My sanity, and thus the sanity of the rest of my department, depended on it.
This particular Thursday the regular yoga teacher was away. I was always disappointed when my regular teacher was away. It happens to all of us. There is always a strange sense of loss when a cover teacher arrives. I’ve seen it in the eyes of students when I have covered another teacher’s class for them. I see it in my own student’s eyes when I tell them I won’t be there the next week and another teacher will take the class. Much as we know intellectually that we shouldn’t be attached to one teacher and one style of teaching, emotionally it is far harder to let go.
So let’s return to that distant Thursday lunchtime. I unrolled my mat with a feeling of frustration, not knowing what was in store.
I then took what, at that time, seemed to me to be the worst yoga class of my life. There was no flow, we seemed to be up and down and up and down more times than (insert suitable metaphor here!), and before I knew it, almost apoplectic with internal rage I found myself against the wall being told to “press myself against the mirror”. I’m sorry to say that I then did the unthinkable, perhaps one of the rudest things I have ever done. I walked out of the class before it had finished.
I never do this. I’m one of those people who stay in the cinema until the bitter end even when the film is so long and boring I think I may pass away. I always finish books, even those with which I lose interest on about page twenty and when it comes to yoga classes I am the mistress of etiquette. I never arrive late and I never, ever leave early. I always stay until after Savasana and the closing meditation. Except for this one time.
To this day I can’t tell you what drove me so mad about this teacher. To be honest, I can’t remember her name or what she looked like or much else about the class, apart from having to press myself against the mirror.
Later that afternoon I bemoaned to my office mate about the uselessness of my lunchtime teacher.
“I could do better,” I said.
She smiled. She knew nothing at all about yoga but she did know me.
“I know you could,” she said. “So why don’t you?”
~~~~
This blog is on the move to its own URL. I will be double posting until Monday 8th March and then the whole blog will move over to SuburbanYogini.com.
To follow me in your favourite reader
Go to Suburban Yogini
Click the orange button with 'Subscribe' next to it and follow the directions.
Or just paste http://suburbanyogini.com/feeds into your "Add" window.
To follow me on Google Followers
Open Dashboard
Scroll to just below ‘Blogs I'm Following' and click the 'ADD' button. Then just enter the url http://suburbanyogini.com in the pop up box and you should be good to go.
If you are kind enough to link to me on a blogroll or links list I would really appreciate it if you could change the link to Suburban Yogini.
Any problems drop me an email at suburbanyogini at gmail dot com
Life's changed even more since then what with our move to Cambridge last year - and I have great hopes for the future!
So to celebrate the last two years, I thought I'd tell you about one of the many steps on my journey from yoga student to teacher (not that we ever stop being students of course!).
(Mr Park say "oh hai")
One of the hardest lessons you have to learn as a yoga teacher is to not take things personally. The first time nobody turned up to class I wept and wept. It wasn’t until the next day I realised I’d got my term dates wrong and everybody assumed we were still on vacation. Sometimes people come to class, sometimes they don’t. It’s not your fault. You don’t know what’s going on in their lives and shocking as it may seem, yoga class doesn’t always take priority.
Sometimes you will get a student who comes once, and then you never see her again. You have to learn not to beat yourself up about that too. Sometimes they just won’t like you and that’s OK, because if it wasn’t for not liking a teacher, I wouldn’t be teaching yoga myself.
I used to go to a lunchtime yoga class twice a week at the gym near my office. It was perfect – it stretched my body and relaxed my mind halfway through a stressful day. No matter how busy we were at work, or how badly my boss didn’t want me to take a lunch break, I always made sure on Tuesdays and Thursdays I got to my midday yoga class. My sanity, and thus the sanity of the rest of my department, depended on it.
This particular Thursday the regular yoga teacher was away. I was always disappointed when my regular teacher was away. It happens to all of us. There is always a strange sense of loss when a cover teacher arrives. I’ve seen it in the eyes of students when I have covered another teacher’s class for them. I see it in my own student’s eyes when I tell them I won’t be there the next week and another teacher will take the class. Much as we know intellectually that we shouldn’t be attached to one teacher and one style of teaching, emotionally it is far harder to let go.
So let’s return to that distant Thursday lunchtime. I unrolled my mat with a feeling of frustration, not knowing what was in store.
I then took what, at that time, seemed to me to be the worst yoga class of my life. There was no flow, we seemed to be up and down and up and down more times than (insert suitable metaphor here!), and before I knew it, almost apoplectic with internal rage I found myself against the wall being told to “press myself against the mirror”. I’m sorry to say that I then did the unthinkable, perhaps one of the rudest things I have ever done. I walked out of the class before it had finished.
I never do this. I’m one of those people who stay in the cinema until the bitter end even when the film is so long and boring I think I may pass away. I always finish books, even those with which I lose interest on about page twenty and when it comes to yoga classes I am the mistress of etiquette. I never arrive late and I never, ever leave early. I always stay until after Savasana and the closing meditation. Except for this one time.
To this day I can’t tell you what drove me so mad about this teacher. To be honest, I can’t remember her name or what she looked like or much else about the class, apart from having to press myself against the mirror.
Later that afternoon I bemoaned to my office mate about the uselessness of my lunchtime teacher.
“I could do better,” I said.
She smiled. She knew nothing at all about yoga but she did know me.
“I know you could,” she said. “So why don’t you?”
~~~~
This blog is on the move to its own URL. I will be double posting until Monday 8th March and then the whole blog will move over to SuburbanYogini.com.
To follow me in your favourite reader
Go to Suburban Yogini
Click the orange button with 'Subscribe' next to it and follow the directions.
Or just paste http://suburbanyogini.com/feeds into your "Add" window.
To follow me on Google Followers
Open Dashboard
Scroll to just below ‘Blogs I'm Following' and click the 'ADD' button. Then just enter the url http://suburbanyogini.com in the pop up box and you should be good to go.
If you are kind enough to link to me on a blogroll or links list I would really appreciate it if you could change the link to Suburban Yogini.
Any problems drop me an email at suburbanyogini at gmail dot com
Thursday, March 4, 2010
things i love thursday (9)
Nine weeks into the new year already! How did that happen? It seems like only yesterday it was Christmas...
This week, before my list of five, I want to ask you a question dear readers. I've got a few posts planned for over the next few weeks but is there anything that you'd like me to write about? Anything to do with yoga, health, food or my life in general? Any nosey questions you've always been wanting to know? Now's your chance! Dear readers who don't often comment, go for it now! You can even comment annoymously if you like!
And so on with things I love this Thursday.
* Practicing yoga with Himself - over the last few weeks with some gentle persuasion Himself is getting back into yoga and I love practicing alongside him.
* The big brushlike tail that my cats get when they are trying to scare off other cats in the garden.
* Spontaneous takeaway pizza on a Wednesday night when I realise I'm missing a vital ingredient for what I had planned for dinner.
* The first signs of spring - I think there are crocuses (crocii??) sprouting in my garden :)
* Flight of the Conchords finally annoucing UK tour dates!
~~~~
This blog is on the move to its own URL. I will be double posting until Monday 8th March and then the whole blog will move over to SuburbanYogini.com.
To follow me in your favourite reader
Go to Suburban Yogini
Click the orange button with 'Subscribe' next to it and follow the directions.
Or just paste http://suburbanyogini.com/feeds into your "Add" window.
To follow me on Google Followers
Open Dashboard
Scroll to just below ‘Blogs I'm Following' and click the 'ADD' button. Then just enter the url http://suburbanyogini.com in the pop up box and you should be good to go.
If you are kind enough to link to me on a blogroll or links list I would really appreciate it if you could change the link to Suburban Yogini.
Any problems drop me an email at suburbanyogini at gmail dot com
This week, before my list of five, I want to ask you a question dear readers. I've got a few posts planned for over the next few weeks but is there anything that you'd like me to write about? Anything to do with yoga, health, food or my life in general? Any nosey questions you've always been wanting to know? Now's your chance! Dear readers who don't often comment, go for it now! You can even comment annoymously if you like!
And so on with things I love this Thursday.
* Practicing yoga with Himself - over the last few weeks with some gentle persuasion Himself is getting back into yoga and I love practicing alongside him.
* The big brushlike tail that my cats get when they are trying to scare off other cats in the garden.
* Spontaneous takeaway pizza on a Wednesday night when I realise I'm missing a vital ingredient for what I had planned for dinner.
* The first signs of spring - I think there are crocuses (crocii??) sprouting in my garden :)
* Flight of the Conchords finally annoucing UK tour dates!
~~~~
This blog is on the move to its own URL. I will be double posting until Monday 8th March and then the whole blog will move over to SuburbanYogini.com.
To follow me in your favourite reader
Go to Suburban Yogini
Click the orange button with 'Subscribe' next to it and follow the directions.
Or just paste http://suburbanyogini.com/feeds into your "Add" window.
To follow me on Google Followers
Open Dashboard
Scroll to just below ‘Blogs I'm Following' and click the 'ADD' button. Then just enter the url http://suburbanyogini.com in the pop up box and you should be good to go.
If you are kind enough to link to me on a blogroll or links list I would really appreciate it if you could change the link to Suburban Yogini.
Any problems drop me an email at suburbanyogini at gmail dot com
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
A letter from TKV Desikachar
My Dear Friends
Greetings from Chennai, India. I write to you about an important decision I have taken at this point in my life.
I became a student of my father in 1961, and almost immediately started teaching under his direct supervision. Next year in 2011, even though I will be completing 50 years of association with yoga, I remain a humble student of this great discipline.
In the past five decades, much has changed in the landscape of yoga, and in the reception it received around the world. What was once considered a strange oriental practice, is now a household name in every corner of the globe. I am very happy about this status, and am proud to have played a small part in witnessing these changes.
In all of my association with yoga, my link with it has only been sustained through my relationship with my teacher, the grand master T Krishnamacharya. I consider it the greatest blessing I have received to be his student, and to serve his teaching tradition. Krishnamacharya's contribution to the field of yoga can be generally categorized in the three domains of health, healing and spirituality. It is for this reason, that he was a complete yogi and his work timeless.
I have traveled far and wide over these years to share his most precious teachings with audiences around the world. And today much of yoga's influence on the domains of health and healing, is attributed to his wonderful contribution. The time has now come for me to focus on the spiritual domain of his teaching, and ensure that this will exist for future generations of yogis. I want to give my time and effort to not only translate the work of my teacher in this domain, but also to experience it through practice and reflection. Hence starting in 2011, I have decided to greatly reduce my travel commitments, and will mainly teach here in Chennai.
I am not retiring from yoga, but rather only reducing my travel outside the country. You are always welcome to participate in projects that I am going to teach here in India, be it at the KYM or the KHYF. My commitment to the KHYF network, the KYM and all of my students is steadfast, and will continue as always.
My son and student, Kausthub, has assured me of his whole hearted support for my decision and I am very confident that he will find the right way to support you all. He has already shared with me some of his new ideas for doing this and you will be informed of these plans in the near future.
I want to thank all of you, who I have met during my years of travel, for your affection and kindness. I would like to you embrace this decision.
Warm regards
TKV Desikachar
Chennai, INDIA
~~~~
While it is a shame that Sri Desikachar will no longer be teaching outside of Chennai the part in this letter that struck me the most was this:-
In the past five decades, much has changed in the landscape of yoga, and in the reception it received around the world. What was once considered a strange oriental practice, is now a household name in every corner of the globe. I am very happy about this status, and am proud to have played a small part in witnessing these changes.
So much time is spent, both in the blogosphere and the real world, debating "Yoga in the West". Are we spiritual enough? Austere enough? Flexible enough? Should we be vegetarian? Do we have to look like the models on the front of Yoga Journal? Should I teach unless I can do every posture (clue: nobody can do every posture!)?
But when I read these words from the founder of the school of yoga in which I teach, I realised that none of these debates matter. They certainly don't appear to matter to him, so they certainly don't matter to me! What matters is we are practicing yoga. All over the world in many different styles and ways we are practicing yoga. If Sir (as he is colloquially known in Chennai) is happy, then I am happy.
Keep practicing, in whichever way and whichever style is appropriate to you right now. Don't worry about what you look like but instead on how you feel. Open your heart and enjoy!
Join me on the Spring into Yoga 2010 Challenge!!!
(Kathleen has pointed out that for some of you it's more of a Fall into Yoga 2010 Challenge. Autumn is all about letting go, so join in and let go of those blocks with certain postures, or with practicing yoga more regularly!)
~~~~
This blog is on the move to its own URL. I will be double posting until Monday 8th March and then the whole blog will move over to SuburbanYogini.com.
To follow me in your favourite reader
Go to Suburban Yogini
Click the orange button with 'Subscribe' next to it and follow the directions.
Or just paste http://suburbanyogini.com/feeds into your "Add" window.
To follow me on Google Followers
Open Dashboard
Scroll to just below ‘Blogs I'm Following' and click the 'ADD' button. Then just enter the url http://suburbanyogini.com in the pop up box and you should be good to go.
If you are kind enough to link to me on a blogroll or links list I would really appreciate it if you could change the link to Suburban Yogini.
Any problems drop me an email at suburbanyogini at gmail dot com
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
spring into yoga!
"Practice and all will come!"
I don't know about where you are but there is a distinct feeling of spring in the air here in Cambridge. The days are definitely longer and brighter, the bulbs in the garden are all poking their heads through the soil and the air feels lighter somehow, more oxygenated! This Yogini definitely has a spring in her step, awful pun very much intended.
I'm sure you've all heard of WoYoPraMo. World Yoga Practice Month is usually January and the yoga world all pledge to practice every day. I did not take part this year as I spent the first week of this January coughing up my lungs with bronchitis.
Besides I've never practiced every single day of the week. I believe in at least one rest day a week as a time to allow the body, mind and breath to assimilate the practice. I also think that it is vitally important not to set goals that are unachievable. It takes a very strong person not to feel a little let down by themselves if they have not achieved a goal that they have set.
A five day per week practice sits perfectly with my life right now, and so for the month of March I want to continue with my five days a week, but I want to focus specifically on poses that I have a tendency to avoid. These include Baddha Konasana, Janu Sirsasana and Dhanurasana. Those things we choose to avoid are often the things we need the most, so I will be working on these postures as mindfully as I can (rather than cursing myself in my head!) and keeping in mind my thoughts on 40 days of Ahimsa by being gentle with myself and not pushing or straining. Just being in these postures that I so dislike.
Spring always reminds makes me think of the word "bloom", as everything is just bursting, ready to bloom into life. And that is exactly what I want to be happening on my yoga mat right now.
I would love it if you would join me dear reader. No earth shattering goals, nothing you can't stick to but if, like me, you practice regularly, try to practice at least one posture you don't like (and we all have them) every day in March. If you practice yoga but not as regularly as you'd like, try to put aside 20 minutes 2 times a week (my 20 minute practice might come in handy here!). And for those of you who have never tried yoga before, why not go to a class, any class, just once sometime in March!
I'd love to know how you get on so do share!
~~~~
This blog is on the move to its own URL. I will be double posting until Monday 8th March and then the whole blog will move over to SuburbanYogini.com.
To follow me in your favourite reader
Go to Suburban Yogini
Click the orange button with 'Subscribe' next to it and follow the directions.
Or just paste http://suburbanyogini.com/feeds into your "Add" window.
To follow me on Google Followers
Open Dashboard
Scroll to just below ‘Blogs I'm Following' and click the 'ADD' button. Then just enter the url http://suburbanyogini.com in the pop up box and you should be good to go.
If you are kind enough to link to me on a blogroll or links list I would really appreciate it if you could change the link to Suburban Yogini.
Any problems drop me an email at suburbanyogini at gmail dot com
Monday, March 1, 2010
Fiona Robyn's long awaited Blogsplash!
Ruth's first entry is below, and you can continue reading tomorrow here.
*
These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It’s a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we’re being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.
The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they’re stuck to the outside of her hands. They’re a colour that’s difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.
I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I’m giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether it’s all worth it. I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I’ve heard the weary grief in my dad’s voice.
So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I’m Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I’m sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?
Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat; books you have to take in both hands to lift. I’ve had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I’ve still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.
Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about; princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad’s snoring was.
I’ve always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I’ll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say; ‘It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for’, before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It’ll all be here. I’m using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I’m striping the paper. I’m near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I’m allowed to make my decision. That’s it for today. It’s begun.
Continue reading tomorrow here...
links to the new blog
A few of you have pointed out that there was a problem with the links to the new blog in my last post. I have no corrected this - sorry about that. Here are the instructions again for good measure!
~~~~
This blog is on the move to it's own URL. I will be double posting until Monday 8th March and then the whole blog will move over to SuburbanYogini.com.
To follow me in your favourite reader
Go to Suburban Yogini
Click the big orange button with 'Subscribe in a reader' next to it and follow the directions.
Or just paste http://suburbanyogini.com/feeds into your "Add" window.
To follow me on Google Followers
Open Dashboard
Scroll to just below ‘Blogs I'm Following' and click the 'ADD' button. Then just enter the url http://suburbanyogini.com in the pop up box and you should be good to go.
Any problems drop me an email at suburbanyogini at gmail dot com
~~~~
This blog is on the move to it's own URL. I will be double posting until Monday 8th March and then the whole blog will move over to SuburbanYogini.com.
To follow me in your favourite reader
Go to Suburban Yogini
Click the big orange button with 'Subscribe in a reader' next to it and follow the directions.
Or just paste http://suburbanyogini.com/feeds into your "Add" window.
To follow me on Google Followers
Open Dashboard
Scroll to just below ‘Blogs I'm Following' and click the 'ADD' button. Then just enter the url http://suburbanyogini.com in the pop up box and you should be good to go.
Any problems drop me an email at suburbanyogini at gmail dot com
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