Yin Yoga
“It teaches stillness, and from the stillness comes movement.”
“Renunciation in our day and age is the most difficult thing there is.”
Beyond consumerism there’s the the kindness we’re already capable of showing to ourselves and others.
Max’s Sketchtober
Time: a retrospective
Stonehenge is thought to be 5000 year old and was built with muscle and tools of stone, wood and sinew. Imagine moving a 3 ton block 230 km across country with that kind of tech. We might only guess at how long it took – and there are 43 of them.
Ageing after SPA ligation
Don’t we take health for granted; busying ourselves with distractions, until something happens to remind us how fragile and contingent things are.
Eight limbs of yoga – 7. Dhyana – Meditation
Whilst it’s easy to conceive of moving up the spiritual ladder a rung at a time until you find yourself floating on a cloud with yogic superpowers, that’s unlikely, right?
Rowing through the solstice
I can’t remember exactly why I started to look for a rowing boat, or looking for very long before I found one. More vivid is the long, hot drive down to collect it.
Grief at this time of year
Both Hinduism and Buddhism take a longer perspective upon mortality by viewing death not as the final act, but as a necessary step along the way. Beyond heaven and hell, salvation and damnation, this seems one of the more useful contributions from religion: the reassurance that to move on, all things must pass.
Eight limbs of yoga – 6. Dharana – Focus
The previous instalment in this series explored the fifth limb of yoga: introspection (pratyahara), that post compared our mental experience to a stream of loosely connected and often repetitive thoughts. Dharana, the sixth limb, then considers how to deal with that torrent and focus awareness elsewhere.
There’s another Rainbow Gathering
The Rainbow Festival can galvanise one’s faith in humanity and inspire different perspectives. With tickets limited to around three hundred, it’s also small enough to foster relationships and a sense of community.
Amsterdam, Berlin, the Eurostar and Brexit
Toward the end of the second “Lockdown”, the prospect of a month long, half price, first class, European rail pass seemed too good to miss. But for the best part of eighteen months that InterRail flash sale booty awaited activation.
Something about boys 