I Know the Way

I Know the Way

I know the way back now.  I used to get lost for weeks, months, years, so consumed with the busyness and chaos I couldn't even breathe, let alone feel to the depths of my being.  After practice - years of yoga, meditation, retreating for a few days at a time into the profound silence and peace of an ashram, a meditation centre, I started to touch that depth.  I got glimpses of a place of silence inside of me that just sees life happening; watches as things arise and fall and doesn't need to respond. 

Decisions, decisions

Decisions, decisions

I am a terrible decision maker, whenever there is a decision to be made about a life direction, a change of some sort, I panic.  I freeze often in uncertainty.  I FaceTime my parents, I talk to my friends, I agonize and debate, I write pros and cons... I discuss and deliberate for ages until I finally, after much agony and stress, come to a decision.  What should I study?  Where should I live?  Who should I date?  What should I do to expand my business?

Embody Love

Embody Love

I've been so embattled recently, against myself.  Be better, eat healthier, get up earlier, you're lazy, you're not going anywhere, you'll be alone forever.  These are the phrases that were running through my head like a tape stuck on reply of my least favorite song at top volume.  Torturing me over the past few weeks without me even realizing it!  The tormentor was a hidden demon, while I was left wondering why I felt so down all the time.  Over the weekend, I attended Tammy Shemesh and Vanessa Wolf's workshop as part of the "Embody Love Movement".  Held at Balmain Buddha, a beautiful and heavenly space set up for healing the soul.  

New York City Madness

I've recently returned to Sydney after 6 weeks in my home country, the U.S.  As I lived in New York City for many years, I visited a few times to see old, and amazing, friends.  These are some of my reflections on NYC, the great city that never sleeps, but the same place that ran me ragged after 8 years of trying to keep up.  It's a love / hate relationship.

New York, here I am, the first time back in 2 years.  How are you these days?  So much has changed in myself and in you.  

I step out of the bus from Boston and put my bitch face on; walking into the subway, ready for whatever it is that will assault my senses and possibly my person.  I shove people out of the way without a sorry and am shoved likewise.  I live surrounded by a constant din of noise, activity, buzz, something alive, like the city itself has a pulse.  The pulse beats deep within the streets and deep within my veins until the two become one, united in their timing.  My pulse becomes rushing, hurrying to catch the quick, illusive and ever changing pulse of the city.  Not for once can you imagine the city will slow down to meet you.  You must constantly be on your game, ready and alert to meet the pace of the streets, of the subway - as fast below ground as above.  Never even daring to pause for long enough to breath deep.  Not that the grime and the rats below ground or the sky scrapers above blocking the sun and any decent view of the sky are conducive to slow ujjai breaths.  It's more of a hold your breath city.  A city that demands you bring your absolute best to everything you do, and even so, there will be someone better, smarter, thinner, wiser, richer than you.  As they say, if you're 1 in a million, there are 9 of you in New York.  

 

 

Flowers

Flowers are a thing of magic.  They appear out of tiny buds that shows the infinite potential for life.  From the smallest seeds, a tree grows and grows, that tiny seed holding all the information and potential energy needed to produce the frangipani flower I hold in my hand.  That little seed only needed a bit of nourishment from the sun, the rain, the earth and her soil.  Then, little by little, with some patience, its full potential becomes reality.

A non-snowy winter

I was looking through my phone recently and came across a picture from my parents of the backyard of the house I grew up in covered in snow.  “winter wonderland”.  Waves of nostalgia washed over me.. I remember the days we would have off from school because the snow was too high for the school bus to make it to our houses.  On those days we would strap on our snow pants and boots, bundled up in jackets and hats and rush outside to the awaiting untouched fresh snow of the back yard.

Connection and Tears in Yoga

This morning, Les Leventhal, one of my favorite yoga teachers, was in Sydney putting on a workshop.  His classes always seem to provoke some kind of insight or deep, intense feelings in me.  Last time I practiced with him in Bali, I had this sense of shedding the external layers of who I am to get to my inner being, throughout the progressively more challenging sequence he taught [link to post].   Today his workshop reveled an intense sadness, loneliness and the desire to be held and taken care of.  Not such a nice insight as last time but a very important one nonetheless.  I woke up this morning feeling this way (without actually knowing it until later). 

Registered with PACFA (Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia),

ACA (Australian Counselling Association) and AAYT (Australian Association of Yoga Therapists)