Black sheep, white sheep, or just asleep?
Maybe you’re neither white nor black, good nor bad. Maybe you’re not even a sheep.Perfection in an asana is achieved when the effort to perform it becomes effortless and the infinite being within is reached. From then on the sadhaka (practitioner) is undisturbed by dualities. –– Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, II.47-48, translation by B.K.S. Iyengar […]
How to turn on your willpower and stick to your yoga practice
I used to think that willpower was a moral issue. Good, strong people did difficult tasks first thing every morning and never lost their self-control when they were tired or hungry. Bad, weak people failed because they didn’t have the moral fibre to do what was right in the moment. My concept of willpower was […]
News Flash: I have a skeleton!
On the left, Arthur. On the right, my wonderful and generous physiotherapist, Judy Russell. Well, of course I’ve always had bones. But now I have a 30-inch tall anatomically correct skeleton, named Arthur. He is nowhere as big as a full-sized skeleton, but he’s engagingly solid, and while the top of his head is missing, […]
Discipline not working? Try indulgence for a change.
I heard from someone last week who bought the My Five-Minute Yoga app, didn’t use it, and wanted to be sure that the $2.99 cost wasn’t a recurring monthly fee. (No. It isn’t.) During our email conversation, I asked why it wasn’t working for her. “Unfortunately I don’t do the yoga,” she wrote. “In theory […]
Are some yoga poses lemons?
On reflection, I’d say no. There are poses that can cause harm if they are badly done. And there are poses so likely to be badly done that careful teachers rarely teach them – or more precisely, they rarely teach the final pose. That doesn’t make these poses lemons, just poses to approach with care. […]
Lord, it’s hard to be humble
Perhaps not exactly what’s meant by humility. Right off the bat, I’ll admit that I don’t know much about humility. It’s not a virtue I’ve ever cultivated. In fact, I only started thinking about it on Monday, while I was reading a piece called Yoga, Our Mirror, by Montreal Iyengar teacher Carla Ramirez. (It’s in […]