Thursday, December 31, 2015

Looking back looking forward

"Welcome to the last practice of the year"!

That's how I was greeted when I went to the Ashtanga studio this morning. Nice! And it was a pretty good one, which was also nice ... I'm really enjoying practicing at the new studio with Christian, another thing that has clicked into place in my life this year.

2015 has been a great year for me. Really feeling settled in my new life down in the Byron shire, and grateful that someone - 'life', is looking after me so well. I'm kind of reluctant to go on about how happy I am as part of me (the negative part of course!) thinks that will bring bad things down on me! Who knows ... But life is indeed good! Regular yoga practice, the wonderful choir, music / singing lessons, big overseas trip, and of course an amazing 5-day 'event' with Maharaji. Each of those things I could write an entire post about ... But I won't!!

I spent Christmas in Sydney with John and Gina, nephew Peter and his wife Tammy, and lots of other extended family members. It was a really nice few days, including swimming in the seawater pool at Curl Curl, and going to a lovely exhibition at the Gallery of NSW - from the National Gallery of Scotland.

And now I'm home again ... And looking forward to a wonderful new year ... No big overseas trips planned for 2016. I'm going to settle in and enjoy life here!


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Thursday, December 17, 2015

Changes, new things

Now that the choir concerts are over for the year, my life is quieting down a bit, and there's time to give more attention to other things ...

One of these has been my yoga practice, and where I actually go to class. It's been quite hard ... 2-3 years ago when I was deciding where I should move to when I sold my place, one of the things that drew me down here was the opportunity to practice at Dena Kingsberg's shala. I know it wouldn't be with her as a teacher - she only teaches here in monthly intensives for part of the year, which are usually booked up almost a year in advance. But there are daily public classes at the shala and I was going to those.

As I'm sure I have said here before, I was going to the 10am class ... The shala has only one yoga room, and so obviously when there is a 7am intensive class then the only morning 'slot' is after that has finished. And anyway - I live 30 minutes drive away and thought I'd never be able to get up, showered and to the shala by that early in the morning. But then, when Dena went to Europe in the middle of the year to do workshops, Christian, one of her students who had been teaching the 10am class, started doing a 7am class as well. And because I had been finding a mid-morning class seemed to end up taking up half the day, I decided to give it a go. Which was, of course, a complete revelation to me!

So then after a few months of this I went overseas, where I went to Dena's Bali workshop, and then practiced at AYL in London, all at 7am or earlier! And then I came home about a month ago. But Dena is now doing the intensives again and so I have to go to a 10am class ... But ... Christian has left and started up another Ashtanga practice place in Byron Bay - The Ashtanga room. Which of course has an early morning Mysore programme!

I agonised over what to do about this for days - it felt faintly disloyal to Dena to go away and practice at Christian's place. But in the end I felt I had to do what was right for me ... I emailed her to explain what I was doing, and why, and she was fine about it - said she completely understood my reasons etc! And anyway, I'm still signed up to go to one of her month intensives in May - which will be another high jump for me but hopefully a wonderful time!

And in the meantime I have now been practicing at Christian's shala - the Ashtanga Room for a couple of weeks, and it's been lovely. He is a wonderful teacher.

Well, after that long long explanation (which must imply that my feelings of awkwardness/slight disloyalty are not completely gone!!) I'll just mention that the other change in my life is a new VW Golf car! Which I'm pretty thrilled with! A very large step forward from my old car ... Has AppleConnect, Bluetooth, all sorts of things that were unheard of when the little Yaris was built!!


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