Tag Archives: yoga

First Steps on the Road to Delight

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Last month I began my journey along the road to delight, and it’s having some surprising results. In a short space of time, noticing the moments, feelings, things and experiences that delight me is becoming increasingly second nature. And as I become more attuned to the delightful in my life and my world, I am discovering a corresponding increase in the gratitude I feel.

These are some of things that I have found delightful over the past couple of weeks.

The Libby App

postcard 1Anyone who follows this blog with any degree of regularity will know I am a bookworm. Nothing makes me happier than curling up with a book in my favourite armchair: a deep blue velvety wingbacked piece beside my bedroom window, which places me within easy reach of a sill to put a hot mug of tea on and in the path of the beautiful sea breezes that grace the Sydney seaboard at this time of year. And while my beloved armchair (quite obviously) qualifies as an object of delight in my life, so does the recently acquired Libby app on my iPad.

I’m not sure what size or manner of rock I have been living under, but it did not occur to me until the (recently ended) summer holidays to investigate the online borrowing prospects from my local library. What an Aladdin’s cave of treasures I have encountered since! So far I have plowed through three or four books on the iPad, borrowed in seconds and returned with equal ease from the comfort of my favourite bookreading snug spot. I’ve also read more widely than I would usually, depending on what was available to borrow at the time. Who knew an app could bring me such joy? Libby is my new best friend.

I suspect Scheherazade would have approved, too.

The Ice Cream Artiste

postcard 2Ice cream — particularly, in my case, the non-dairy variety — is generally delightful.

But a beautifully crafted scoop of ice cream in a cone? That’s downright magical — especially if it’s from the artisan ice cream parlour that has miraculously opened at the end of my street. There, a man we’ll call Theo (because that’s his name) serves astonishingly delicious home made ice creams he sculpts — yes, sculpts — onto cones and into cups.

There is something truly wonderful about watching someone make something for you with such care and deliberation.

It’s also somehow humbling.

And did I mention it was delicious?

The Sound and Smell of Rain

postcard 3Summer in Australia has been marred this year by destruction and devastation on a scale so vast the word “unprecedented” has nearly been worn out. Parts of our extended family have been directly affected by the bushfires, though mercifully their homes and most of their properties have been saved.

After days and weeks of high temperatures and thick smoke smothering Sydney, however, the arrival of rain a week or so ago was more than welcome. For someone who has taken to listening to the Night Rain playlist on Spotify to get to sleep, hearing the sound of the real thing on the roof and smelling the difference in the air was unbelievably comforting. And with more of the good stuff due in the next few days, I am hopeful it will bring delight wherever it falls.

My Cat’s Response to Yoga

postcard 4Now that the kids have gone back to school, I’m turning my attention to achieving some of my goals for the year — including timetabling and prioritising regular exercise. Getting out for a walk during the cool of the early morning was something I enjoyed doing with the girls when they were on holidays (well, mostly…when they weren’t whinging), but now I have more time to myself I have been getting out my mat and doing some yoga via YouTube.

Exercise itself could be listed here as a delight — who doesn’t love an endorphin rush? But the unexpected upside of my living room yoga sessions is the way my cat responds: no matter where Tauriel has been curled up sleeping or snoozing (I’m so reincarnating as a cat in a comfortable home), by the time I find myself in savasana she is there beside me, circling around me, brushing up against me and purring loudly, no doubt drawn by the positive energy that yoga just about always brings.

So there you have it! Some postcards from my first steps along the road to delight. I’m sure there will be many more to come.

BJx

 

Laser Beams & Drishti Points

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Focus is a funny, occasionally unpredictable, thing — and that’s one of the reasons I chose it as Blue Jai’s Word of the Month for July.

Take this image, for example:

focus

What did you focus on?

Was it the cars in the street, so far below? Or did you spot the coffee first, or the hand holding the mug? Or perhaps your eye was drawn to the reflection of the clouds within the cup?

There are no right or wrong answers here — it’s just a simple way of pointing out that we all see and experience the world differently, and that our circumstances and personalities and a multitude of internal and external factors cause us to focus on different things. That means that your focus is unique: it’s peculiar and particular to you.

But what I find fascinating (because of my own peculiar and particular focus, no doubt) is that there are different types of focus, too.

I’m not talking about different types of focus in a photographic sense, but in more of a “mental toolbox” sort of way. Because I know that I need different kinds of focus to perform different tasks. For me, focus is something you might measure on a spectrum.

Part of the reason I chose focus as my Word of the Month because I knew it was something I would need in abundance in July — and different kinds of focus, too. This month, I knew I needed to complete a whole pile of deadline-based tasks for my regular job as well as to honour a bunch of equally pressing commitments for clients in my freelance work, and fit all this around the time my children would be off school for Winter Holidays. Oh, and celebrating both their birthdays, too.

No pressure?!

focus laser

Pick your point and get it done…this is laser beam focus.

Now, I’m the first one to admit that a large part of getting things done is simply to being organised and doing what you need to do, but choosing your focus certainly helps.

At one end of the spectrum is Laser Beam Focus, which I would describe as being single minded, incredibly intense, and very specifically directed. Like laser beams themselves, this kind of focus has to be coherent, meaning it has to remain spatially and temporally constant. It’s an amplified kind of focus, and not something that is sustainable for long periods — we’re human beings, after all. That said, it’s fantastic if you’re screaming towards a deadline and really need to get something done.

focus drishti

Drishti point focus…not sure whether I’d be able to pull it off in these circumstances!

At the other end of the spectrum is Drishti Point Focus, which comes (as with many things I love) from yoga. Drishti translates from Sanskrit as focused gaze, but it relates also to pratyahara and dharana, the fifth and sixth limbs of yoga, which relate to sense withdrawal and concentration. In the yogic tradition there are nine different drishti points, but most of us who do yoga regularly will probably think of the spot you gaze at in the middle distance to help you find a combination of strength and ease within a pose — particularly if it involves balancing. For me, drishti point focus is active, but it is also characterised by softness and a meditative stillness. It’s focus alright, but it’s a sustainable and nourishing sort of focus.

So my suggestion for July? That you look at your to do list and apply whatever focus from the spectrum you need to get things done. Know that there are multiple solutions to each and every task and as many ways to focus on them as there are human beings, and that part of what makes your work and life your own is that you bring your unique focus to it and to everyone you meet.

 

January Days

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Janus

Janus, the God of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. Because that’s enough for one deity’s To Do List.

I love January.

It’s a time of sultry mid-summer Sydney days, blue skies and sea breezes. A time of fresh starts and new beginnings, reflections and resolutions. It’s by far the best and longest of the school holidays. It’s the month I was born in.

Like Janus, the Roman God from whom the month takes its name, I feel strangely two-faced in January. One part of me kicks off the new year with plans and focused precision, tackling tasks I wouldn’t have time to otherwise and ticking boxes beside long overdue items on my To Do List. This part of me cleans, declutters, sorts, organises and schedules like nobody’s business, but then…

…then, the other part of me kicks back.  This part of me takes full advantage of the sun-drenched days and long golden evenings by soaking up the sunshine with a good book in one hand and a cool drink in the other, by wandering the well-trodden path the the beach to restore my soul as only saltwater can, or simply by curling up somewhere comfortable and daydreaming, pondering and wondering.

Warrior 2

One hand in the past, the other in the future, the self in the present…finding Sthira and Sukha within.

My recurrent January duality reminds me somehow of the yoga teaching that comes from the Sutra of Patanjali: that we should balance sthira (strength and steadiness) with sukha (ease — or, as it literally translates from Sansrkit, “good place”). On a yoga mat, you know without any doubt when you’re there, or even when you’re getting close to finding that good place.

And so, in my times of pondering and wondering recently, I have come to consider the possibility that the purpose of January Days is to remind us of that balance, of the need to find sthira and sukha in every part of life, of the opportunity to kick off and kick back throughout the year, of the chance to be peaceful warriors each day.

I’m going to find that good place, and to keep looking for it even when it seems as far away as a summer’s day does in midwinter.

This year, I wish you strength and ease.

 

 

 

Tabata di Casa

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old ways

True, that…

Have you ever reached a point in your life when you knew that something had to change? When you know that what you’re doing is not quite working, but you’re not entirely sure how to make the necessary alterations to your life or adjustments to your headspace to bring about the transformation you desire?

Oh dear, I hear you cry…this is not an auspicious beginning…please tell me Blue Jai hasn’t completely lost the plot and started writing a self-help tome…

Relax, people — I’m not having some kind of breakdown. I’m not about to begin documenting a life-changing journey of self-discovery, and I’m not selling anything, either.

All the same, I’m betting you know the feeling I’m talking about: the one where you feel either slightly squirmy in your stomach because you know something’s off somewhere and you need to get it out of your life? Or when someone asks you a seemingly innocuous question and you find yourself unexpectedly bursting into floods of tears in response? Or when you’re just monumentally frustrated?

Well, I think I had all three of those reactions this week.

And it was all to do with…drum roll for mother-of-all first world problems, please…my gym membership.

I know, I know — really, I do.

I know that really, technically, this doesn’t even begin to count as a problem at all.

Except that it does…

What I have been struggling with is that even though there are parts of going to the gym that I truly love (particularly my weekly yoga class, the brilliance of which I’ve written about before), I was faced this week with the realisation that there are other aspects of going to the gym that are driving me absolutely nuts — and, if I’m perfectly honest, they have been sending me round the twist for quite some time.

When I was working out, for example, I felt like I was trapped on a treadmill (which was, quite literally, going nowhere) in front of screen upon screen of soul-destroying daytime television. And when I was planning to do a class, it seemed that (more often than not) I was staring blankly at the weekly timetable trying to figure out when I could actually fit myself into one of those tiny little time-constrained boxes.

Where, exactly, is the soul in all of this, people?

Since when did we have to spend our days fitting ourselves into tiny boxes?

And so, this week, I snapped. (And cried…and lay awake until the small hours of the morning…and various other things…)  

I knew something needed to change.

So, on Tuesday afternoon, I came home from work and got a big piece of paper and wrote out a Tabata Challenge for the kids and I to do in the back yard. They were slightly bemused at first, watching me doing sets of burpees and triceps dips and woodchoppers and all manner of other things, but then they started joining in, too. We called it “Tabata di Casa”, and we laughed a lot, and they learned a lot, and it was fun.

Imagine that?

IMG_3027

An actual, real, soul-filled photo from my walk. Breathe in…breathe out…ahhhhhhh….

Then, on Thursday morning, I decided to take a walk — outdoors, in the glorious sunshine, no less — from my house down to the beach. Now, I’m beyond blessed to live where I do, but it felt like an absolute revelation to bung my runners on and my earphones in, and to take off towards the beautiful blue of the ocean and walk beside it, hearing the sound of the surf, feeling the sun shining on my face and the wind blowing through my hair. And, underneath it all, I could also feel my heart swelling and hear my soul singing.

They’re such simple pleasures, aren’t they? But they are precious, too.

So, from now on, I’m not going to force myself into tiny boxes any more. I’m not going to do things that don’t nourish my spirit or feed my soul. And, bizarrely enough, I’m not going to give up my gym membership either — because there are certain things I can’t control, and I know that I want to have the option of exercising whenever I want — even if it’s raining or blowing a gale.

What I am doing is choosing to change it up.

And that, my friends, feels good.

Breathe…

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T spoon

Just one spoonful…every now and then. You can get a spoon just like this on Esty, here.

I just put a spoonful of sugar into my tea (Earl Grey, black, piping hot).

That might seem like a very ordinary thing to do, but some time ago I banished sugar to the top shelf of my pantry. Nowadays, the sugar jar only really makes an appearance when my Dad comes over (English Breakfast, white with one).

But there are some days — and quite often, for me, they are grey-skied, quiet days — when I prefer to take my tea with a spoonful of sugar. These are the days when I feel the need for that gentle buzz only sugar brings. (And yes, you really do notice it once you’ve gone without it for some time).

If I’m honest, however, it’s not the weather that made me pick up the sugar jar, even though autumn is descending rapidly upon Sydneytown at this time of year. And it’s not the solace of stirring, either, which I’ve written about before.

No, it’s my kids.

Lord knows I love them — dearly, oh so dearly — but by the end of the school term, my kids are driving me crazy. Bonkers. Mad as a box of frogs.

After ten long weeks of school, my children’s behaviour…ummm…deteriorates.

That’s the nicest word I can find to describe the out of control crazytrain ride that confronts me before drop off and after pick up every day at the end of term. I don’t think it’s deliberate or in any way malicious: I suspect my girls are really, truly worn out and that self-regulation is, quite simply, beyond them when they have to front up for six hours each day of being ever-so-good for their teachers.

And, having picked up all the signals that the crazytrain was careening towards me this week (the least of which were tears and tantrums), I have taken steps to look after my own sanity and have managed to keep it — mostly — together. It just so happens that today, one of those steps involved stirring sugar into my tea. But yesterday, for example, I made sure I got to yoga.

T so ham

So…ham…in…out…just…breathe…

My yoga teacher is like a lovely little gypsy fairy (seriously, you can almost see her wings sparkling silvery bluey-green) with a beaming smile that is as warm and open as her beautiful heart. And yesterday, bless her, she introduced our class to a very simple mantra that has helped remind me to take a couple of deep, life-saving and sanity-preserving breaths whenever the kid-filled crazytrain has looked like it was about to derail.

The mantra: SO HAM.

It’s pronounced more like so hum, which resembles the sound of inhaling and exhaling, and allows you to connect the mantra to your breathing.

But what has really helped me this week is what so ham means: the mantra translates, very simply, as I am that. So when you connect the mantra to your breath, and repeat it over and over again, you connect also to the core of your being:

I am that I am that I am that I am that I am that I am that I am that I am…

 And I came to realise, in those moments of stillness, when I connected to myself and my breath, that even though I am a mother and a wife and a daughter and a sister and an aunt and a friend and a freelance writer and a carer and homemaker who cleans and washes and irons and makes lunches and all manner of other meals and snacks and everything else —

T peace— that really, at the centre of it all, I just am.

And no one can take that away.

So ham…so ham…so ham…

 

 

 

The Wellspring

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My First Principles: words, music, food.

Know your First Principles…

This month marks the first anniversary of the day I sat down, summoned my courage and started blogging. From the outset, I have said that this is where I come to make sense of it all, and after twelve months of showing up on the page I firmly believe that doing so has benefited me, and probably my family, too.

I believe it’s important to thank all the people who have joined me since I set sail on this voyage, and to make special mention of the mums who sought me in the school playground to chat about everything from Holiday Bonus Points to the meaning of saudade, or to jokingly re-introduce themselves after I blogged about The Name Game. I want to thank the friends who provided early encouragement (and who, to my eternal gratitude and partial disbelief, continue to do so), as well as the hundreds of complete strangers who stumbled across my little site and stayed to read a post or two. Discovering that my words have been read by people all over the world, from Argentina to Germany, Turkey to Taiwan, as well as here in Australia has been an astonishing and humbling experience.

Find your wellspring...

Find your wellspring…

I believe there is a wellspring in each of us, the source of our creativity and our connection with humanity and the planet we are so lucky to live on.  Writing this blog has enabled me to dive into that wellspring and to clarify what is important to me, what I am passionate about, and also what I am challenged by. It has provided me with a platform to speak my truth, whether I was struggling to make sense of the Sydney Siege, or speaking out against the death penalty, or fangirling over my two favourite Toms (Wlaschiha and Hiddleston), or reveling in the beauty of street art.  And writing about all these things has enabled me to connect with people in ways I never have before.

I believe that I am truer to my First Principles – my Holy Trinity of words, music and food – when I visit my wellspring regularly.   When I align myself to these three things, my most important sources of nourishment, I live a better and far more authentic life. I may not always progress smoothly; life simply isn’t like that. But honouring the things that make me who I am and finding the time and space to share them with others certainly makes it easier to deal with the inevitable ups and downs that characterise every person’s existence.  Blogging reminds me that we are all riding this rollercoaster together, and that it can be terrifying and thrilling and every other kind of emotion I can name (and probably a few I don’t know yet know precisely the right word for) along the way.  It also prompts me to remember that the same is true for each of us, the world over.

Connect...

Connect to your own greatness…

I believe I am blessed in my life to be supported by my family, the crazy trio you may laughed with – or perhaps just laughed at – and cried with over the past year.  You’ve shared our adventures and misadventures, and witnessed some of the tests and trials my husband and I have encountered while parenting two strong-willed and independently-minded girls. The Bloke, Marvel Girl and Miss Malaprop all inspire me, challenge me, delight me, frustrate me, and fill me with more joy than I ever thought possible. They also willingly put up with a wife and mother who is happiest when tapping away at the keyboard, and who considers herself incredibly fortunate to be able to do so on a personal and a professional basis – even if it means my life is regulated by the alarms I set to remind me to pick the kids up from school.

I believe, looking back, that it probably wasn’t a coincidence that I began blogging in spring, the season of rebirth and renewal.  Spring is a great time to start new things, and to watch them grow. One of the themes I have returned to again and again over the past twelve months has been seasonal change, as I’ve connected with the world as it transforms itself around me and noticed details I may not have otherwise. In the process, I have become far more aware of how I respond to the seasons and the unique ways they express themselves in this Great Southern Land. (As a side note, I would also argue that spring is probably a much better time to set resolutions than those first remorse-filled weeks of January when we lament our Christmas and New Year’s excesses and wish for the umpteenth year in a row that the festive season and the bikini season did not coincide.)

But having said that, I also believe that it doesn’t matter when you start something new: the important thing is to begin. To have a go. Or to have another go. Or even to resume doing something you love, because you know it serves you and brings you closer to who you truly are. For me, it’s writing, reading, listening to and playing music, cooking well and eating better.  It’s also exercising: running, weight training, and practicing yoga.

...and Begin.

…and Begin.

Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend a yoga workshop welcoming the coming of spring.  It was a chance to find stillness within, to connect with my breath, to meditate on new beginnings and to draw strength and inspiration from the wellspring within.  Emerging into the twilight two hours later, I was greeted by the sight of the moon, luminous and full, lighting up the evening sky.  Seeing that shining orb reminded me that I, too, have come full circle, and I remembered what I wrote in my very first blog post: that what I write here may never be great, or even particularly good, but it will be mine. The most important thing was that I began.

So rise up.  Follow your breath.  Find the wellspring within.  Connect.  And begin.