Graciously

The brainchild behind Red Bull does yoga…. www.carpediem.com A 14 day yoga plan to tone your body and help you get rid of unwanted extra padding….

Some ‘asana’ and pranayama, including Nauli (day 11) taught in 10 second MP4 clips on the internet…….. interesting!

Yoga is happening, but I just don’t have much time to write about it. I feel that I am slowly getting back into the London routine, although don’t feel totally ’settled’ yet. I am still craving excitement and don’t really get that in London. Especially with the number of hours spent in the office. I need to start planning my next holiday!! It will be a yoga retreat, I expect!

Internet and speed dating is pretty rubbish – plus I don’t have time to be seeing anyone anyway!

This post has nothing to do with yoga and everything to do with wasting resources. I feel very strongly about wasting paper and get quite fired up by the amount of junk mail that gets sent out.

Yesterday I received a colour printed glossy A3 promotional leaflet from British Gas. Not mailed directly to me, but the kind where someone is paid to leaflet drop to a particular building. There are about 200 flats in my building, which I expect all received this leaflet. The leaflet was advertising how much more energy efficient we could be with a new British Gas Boiler.

I have two things to say to British Gas….

1. The building is serviced and hot water and heating are supplied (Oil run, I am told).
2. There is no gas supply to our building.

WHAT A TOTAL WASTE OF INK AND PAPER AND TRESS AND RUBBISH SPACE!!!

I may e mail them and mention how many other ways they can help save our environment. Rant over – I feel better now!

Far too much business goes on over lunch…. if you don’t want that pie and pint, then you are left out of important issues. It shouldn’t be this way.

I am starting to feel tired. I think, as a general rule, I always feel like this, so until I took a three month break, it just felt like normal. Now I am noticing it and I don’t really like it. Life always seems to involve dashing from one place to another to get things done. This can’t be a good way to live, but what other way is there?

I have to work in the day, I can’t work less than the hours I do now and get my job done. So, the job won’t give, therefore, if I am to have more free time to relax I would have to give up yoga, or singing, or seeing my friends (or paying the bills, buying food, cooking meals, doing laundry!). I expect lots of people feel like this, it’s not good.

Thinking back to my three months off, I spent a lot of my first 6 weeks asleep (on the beach, granted). I didn’t read any books, I just didn’t have the energy. Once I was on the sand, the eyes just closed. After that period, I felt more energised, started partying, probably partly because I actually had the energy to stay up and socialise.

It wasn’t until the last couple of weeks of my trip that I actually felt refreshed. Able to spend a day just chilling out and reading, in essence, enjoying my free time because it was free. Not desperately needing it to recharge my batteries.

But I can’t take three months off every year. I don’t want to give up my hobbies, and I can’t afford to quit my job. Oh well, I suppose I’ll just have to be tired then.

My practice this week has been good so far, I am still amazed by the openness of my usually pretty crap backbends – I still attribute this to evening practice, but it’s great nonetheless!

On Monday night, despite being really tired I hardly slept, but I did notice that having had only about 4 hours interrupted sleep that my mind was more at rest – too tired for thoughts that dart in and out of my mind and interrupt my concentration.

Awake at 4.45 am…. not good, I have been awake since about 3 and have given up fighting it. Was it that sneaky MochaLatte that I drank before my yoga class last night? I wonder. The class went well, there isn’t much more to say about it really.

I was pleased yesterday to hear from a friend that I made when I was in Thailand. He was keen to take up yoga and I did some basic Ashtanga with him for a week in TNP. He has now signed up at Triyoga on a beginners yoga course. It makes me happy to think that I have given someone else the desire to bring yoga into their life. I think that was all I was looking to achieve by taking the TT course.

Other than yoga, you may (or may not!) want an update on the internet dating! I have had quite a few e mails, from people who seem to be nice, but I am not sure I have clicked with anyone yet. It’s hard to find the enthusiasm to write a sparkling e mail at the end of a day when you are tired. I imagine it would take someone quite special to give you that buzz over the internet that you would get if you met someone you really liked in the flesh. I also get the impression that men like to make the first move…. either that or the three people I sent e mails to didn’t like the look of me!

I am disappointed with myself. I went out on Friday night and got so drunk that I couldn’t make it to yoga on Saturday morning – I have never done that before. I won’t say I regret my night out, I don’t think regret is an emotion which is anything but destructive, but when I reflect on it, I didn’t gain anything by being so drunk, I just felt rough in the morning.

I didn’t make it to AYL this weekend either, partly due to being a lazy bum, and partly for financial reasons. I did practice though so I am happy with that. Yoga with my present teacher is paid for until 30th May 2007, and basically I have NO MONEY at the moment having paid for the redecoration of my flat, getting my car running again and other expenditures. Although I want to do Mysore style practice, I think it will have to wait until June, when I will have to start paying for my classes again anyway. Boo. I wish I could win the lottery, then I wouldn’t have to work so much, would have more time for yoga and wouldn’t have to worry about how much I pay for it.

Ohh and that reminds me that I need to pay up for the Tripsichore workshop with Ed Clarke. I am not sure that it is really ‘yoga’, more like acrobatics; but it looks like jolly good fun, if I can actually do any of it.

I have been thinking quite a lot about Vanessa’s post and comments on the TBB message board. Although I am of the opinion that different kinds of yoga work for different people, and that some people really enjoy a led class, I think Vanessa is right about sticking to a style and to a guru and making it work for them. (Not really able to verbalise what I want to say here – too late at night and too tired.) Also, I think everyone should give self practice a go. The longer I am away from it, the more I miss it. I really found tonight that I couldn’t get into any kind of flow doing the led class. Sometimes I felt I was in the postures too long, others were too short. I didn’t know what was coming next, I had no focus, citta vrtti, citta vritti, citta vrtti…. Maybe that was related to my mood today, and the sugar rush from too much cake this afternoon and the subsequent coffee that I had to try and wake myself up from the slump….. but really I felt as though I should have been doing Ashtanga, I could have got a flow going, let my mind settle a little. Very soon I am going to try and go to Ashtanga Yoga London, maybe even as soon as this Sunday, but sometimes it can take a bit of a shove to get me into somewhere new… we’ll see. My TT is over in just over a months time, so I need to take the plunge.

I have been thinking a lot about teaching, and although I have enjoyed what I have done, I absolutely don’t feel ‘qualified’ to teach anyone. Part of me feels that if I can help get one person interested in yoga (and ultimately to be taught by a proper teacher) then that is a good thing, but I still have too much to learn. I didn’t take the TT course because I wanted to teach yoga, but because I wanted to learn more about yoga, the history behind it, read the sutras and The Bagavad Gita and have a forum to discuss them with people who are interested in sharing their ideas and interpretations. Wah, I think I am getting carried away now.

On a lighter and non-yogic note, I have had a number of emails already from the internet dating site. I am not sure that I like the look of any of the people though. I am trying not to be dismissive of people based on their profile or their appearance, but I think I am. I am really sceptical about the whole thing, if I am honest. I will persist, I have nothing to lose! My quandary for the day was what to do with an e mail from a person you are not interested in. Just ignore or reply along the lines of ‘I am sorry to advise you that your application to get to know Clare has been declined. She will retain your information and pass it on to any other interested parties….’ ohh, and on that note, another e mail has just come in – I’d better read it!

Tonight was another led primary class, taken really, really slowly. It was quite enjoyable as I was feeling really open. Back-bends were fab, no pinching in the lumber spine, really open in the chest…. something I cannot achieve at all in the morning. We only got up to the Marichis but I snuck in a kurmasana at the end because I am worried that if I don’t do it every day I will get crap at it again!

I also went to the gym today and had to do gym stuff as the Body Combat class was full. I did a run then some leg weight stuff. I cut out weights about 14 months ago as my yoga teacher didn’t think it was doing me any good, and I have to say that I noticed how much less strong my legs are than they were before. I am tempted to put in one leg work out per week now…. I think the cutting out of weights was suppose to reduce teh bulk in my shoulders, but actually, I think my arms are actually much stronger now from all of the vinyasas than they ever were when I lifted weight!

The songs that I am loving today are Ghosts – stay the night and Gwen Stefani – have had them on repeat pretty much all day!