Funnneee

The chiropractor has forbidden me to do anything except lie around with my legs raised and visit him, so I am flat on my back with laptop on lap. More on my injury and What I Have Learned at some future time, but for now, look what I found via YogaGumbo:

More at Icanhascheezburger.com

Sore Back and a Someone

My body, mind and soul are not One at the moment. In fact, the derangement is so bad that I dropped my wallet in a shopping mall on Friday morning. Silly thing to do, especially in South Africa. As a result, I had to cancel all my appointments for the day, and rush back to the mall to see if I could find it (ha!) or failing that, cancel all my cards.

Do you know, an Anonymous Someone had found my wallet, and handed it to security. Untampered-with. In crime-ridden Johannesburg! Amazing. Thank you, Anonymous Someone. I wish I knew who you were, so I could thank you properly.

And my back hurts. Well, my sacro-iliac joint on the right side hurts, actually. Right about the same place as this elephant's muladhara (root) chakra:

Chakra 1 - Muladhara, originally uploaded by venenum..

Is this not an awesome picture? Anyway, I am off to the chiropractor tomorrow to be put to rights, but thought I would share with you what this article on yogajournal.com has to say about root chakra deficiency (it's actually worth reading the whole article):

Circumstances that pull up our roots and cause a first chakra deficiency ... include traveling, relocation, feeling fearful, and big changes in our body, family, finances, and business. Some people, often those with busy minds and active imaginations, don't need special challenges to become deficient in this chakra; they feel ungrounded most of the time, living more in the head than in the body.

We experience deficiencies in this chakra as "survival crises." However mild or severe—whether you've been evicted, gone bankrupt, or just have the flu-these crises usually demand a lot of immediate attention. On the other hand, signs of excessiveness in the first chakra include greed, hoarding of possessions or money, or attempting to ground yourself by gaining a lot of excess weight.

Hmmm. Wonder why my back hurts? Good thing I know a little about how to go about correcting it. Yes, bring on the standing poses. And the standing balances: if you haven't already, check out the results of the balance pose poll here.

What's your favourite?

Ah, it seems there are some among us who like eagle pose (yes Shula, garudhasana!) The 'back breathers' among us,seem to have no problem compressing the front of their lungs, while those of use who only breathe into the front of our lungs, well, we like Other Poses more.

As the ever erudite Katnip says,

We can’t see the back of the body. Its harder to feel. Its like the dark side of the moon. Is it really there? From the symbolic perspective, its our shadow side. Kind of scary to breathe into the shadow side -huh?

Natarajasana Pose (Dancers Pose), originally uploaded by the silent k.

Now I am really curious: since the March theme for WoYoPracMo is Grounding, standing balances seem rather appropriate. For me anyway. I know what my faves are, but what are yours?




To quote YogaMum:

For March, I invite you to think about the theme of "Grounding" and apply it to your yoga practice. In late winter, plants send down roots, to establish a deep foundation that will support blossoming and growth in the spring. We can do this kind of grounding in our yoga practices as well -- whether by concentrating on the rooting aspects of the physical asanas (working on the foundation of standing poses, for example) or by thinking about what we might need in our lives to "ground" and stabilize our practice. For myself, February was a bit of an unsettled month, and I look forward to spending some time reestablishing the roots of my practice.

I feel the same: this move to Melbourne has me feeling like the rug has been pulled out from under my feet. In a good way, but bumpy and unbalanced nonetheless.

I'm looking forward to the poll results - some ideas for my practice and teaching! As always, I love hearing what you think, most especially if you think differently to me: it reminds me why there are so many permutations of yoga - because everyone requires their own uniques solution!

Help me BREATHE!

I am having Some Trouble breathing right now. I mean, obviously I am breathing. I'm still alive. But I'm not breathing, y'know?

In class today, I asked people to choose three standing balances; two they liked, one they didn't. Everyone chose tree as one of the poses they like, everyone chose eagle as the one they don't like. Odd, don't you think? So I asked why they didn't like eagle. The responses were all along the lines of:

'I feel I can't breathe'

Haha! People have all figure out for themselves what I have noticed in my practice, and from what gets taught at KYM: some poses facilitate comfortable, easy breathing, some don't. I personally don't really see the point of regularly doing the poses that don't!

This does:

boof yoga tree pose bw, originally uploaded by lastbeats.

This does:

Debbie in Virabhadrasana III, originally uploaded by LORatliff.

This does:

Debbie in Half-Moon, originally uploaded by LORatliff.

This doesn't:

Tara in Garudasana, originally uploaded by LORatliff.

They make quite a nice sequence: do the first three as a flow, then rest, and do the last one. Try for yourself, let me know what you think! Just remember to do a few squats or gentle forward bends after the balances, to counterpose.

Now, perhaps I should go stand on one leg & breathe. Just Breathe, Nadine, Just Breathe!

PS: Thank you all for your comments and emails. You support means so much! I will do my best to keep up with my blogging, but if you notice my absence, bear with me while I dismantle my life and re-assemble it on the other side of the sea!

Moving to Melbourne!

That would be me, moving to Melbourne. At the end of April! Eek! How exciting! How scary!


1. The 'Yve' Building - Melbourne, 2. Webb Bridge - Melbourne Docklands, 3. Neon Lobby - Bourke Street Melbourne, 4. Brighton Beach, Melbourne 2003, 5. melbourne at night, 6. Melbourne Royal Botanic Gardens, 7. m-m-m-Melbourne, 8. Tram,Melbourne,Australia, 9. Rialto Towers, Winfield & Rialto Buildings - Melbourne, 10. Melbourne's elegant details..., 11. Melbourne & The Yarra River, 12. Ol' Melbourne Town

Why, you ask, would I do something so extreme? Well, the short answer is that I have lost faith. I have lost faith in the future in South Africa: every day the news tells us more horror stories of violence, crime, mayhem and corruption. The politicians I thought were trustworthy turn out to be just as bad as all the rest, and our infrastructure is crumbling. Worst of all, I have lost faith that my vote will actually make any difference to all of this.

I want to live somewhere with (fairly) honest politicians, where murder is not something that happened to your neighbor last week. I wish I felt able to be an activist about this, but I am honestly just spending all my energy trying to survive. Not the best situation, and hopefully, when I feel safer and more stable, I will be able to raise some awareness and get some action going about the sorry state of a nation that could have been something so much more; we have Nelson Mandela, for heaven's sake. Maybe this is the first step? If any of you international readers are interested, visit IOL to read our daily news.

And of course Melbourne is so beautiful! So to paraphrase The Avett Brothers' song, The Weight of Lies:

Wherever you run, make sure you run
To something and not away from
Because the weight of lies don't need an aeroplane to chase you down.

(I've been listening to that album a lot lately)

I am running (?) to something great, I hope. The truth is, we all want to believe in a better future, and for me, this is the only way. If you live in South Africa, the questions need asking: Are things OK? If not, am I willing to do something about it? I answered these questions for myself and discovered that I am in some ways less than I thought, and in other ways more.

So, onward, to something (and away from), at the end of April!
I will miss, most of all, the amazing yoga community I am leaving behind. Thank you all, so much. For all I have learnt, for everything.

Paris la Belle (and some good eatin')

It is really too late to post about my visit to Paris, since it was in September last year, but I am going to do it anyway, prompted by all the talk of eating properly in the new year, diets to get rid of festive flab, and the like.

Now, mostly I escape the festive fat, but then winter arrives and it gets harder to stay on the straight and narrow. My parents, both of whom have been slim all their lives, taught us very good, moderate eating habits. But for some reason I tend to stray from that path with alarming regularity. One of the reasons I came to yoga in the first place was that I had a great deal of weight to lose. I lost it. Then the extreme eating espoused during my teacher training left me more than a little confused, and over the past few years I have found it difficult to balance enjoyment, moderation and guiltlessness in my eating. So my weight tends to oscillate. Before our two-month world trip, my jeans were tight. By the end, they barely fastened.

Thank goodness Paris was the last stop. Had it been a less beautiful city, after two months, my overstimulated senses would just have shut down completely. And then there was the food. I think about the food in Paris a lot. Wistfully. Strangely, a lot of the people carrying baguettes under their arms (yes, gasp, white bread!) looked thin and healthy. How could this be? Well, a clue came when I overheard our hotel manager ordering his lunch: a tarte aux fruit rouges. And a salade. Aha! He was balancing the naughty pastry with the saintly salad. Clever. And just so you know, he breakfasted in the hotel dining room on pain au chocolat and coffee.

Somewhere in the dim recesses of my memory I remembered a book called French Women Don't Get Fat. Couldn't find it anywhere, but my favourite scond-hand bookstore did have a copy of the sequel, French Women for All Seasons. The author, Mireille Guiliano, is a Frenchwoman who struggled briefly with her weight when she move to the US. Returning to the eating principles of her youth sorted that out rather quickly!

She gives great advice, most of which is common sense, but we all need to be reminded. Well, I do anyway. Eat slowly. Savour your food. Stop when you are full. Eat the best you can afford. Carbs are not the enemy. Get a bit of exercise every day; she favours walking, cycling and, yes, yoga!

It was such a liberating read, lifting so much of the guilt I carry around food and eating. And since reading it, I have got rid of the extra eight kilograms I lugged around India and Europe. With no guilt, no hunger, and quite a lot of chocolate. The book is now with my best friend. I hope it does for her what it did for me!