Sweet Dreams!

More and more people these days seem to suffer from insomnia, either having problems getting to sleep or finding it hard to stay asleep and waking up in the small hours, mind racing and feeling anxious.  Millions of people consult their doctor regarding sleep problems and apparently a third of adults in the UK have regular episodes of insomnia.

It also seems to me that we are all going to bed later and later.  We’re either on our electronic devices late at night or we’re finding things we have to catch up on after we’ve got back from work or completed other responsibilities.  So we are likely to be sleep deprived, which affects our physical and mental well being.

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Boys, you’re missing out!

Today, Western yoga culture has a reputation as a female-dominated practice. It may be a little different in London, but here in Suffolk yoga classes are likely to be attended mainly by women, with men in the minority.

This is a little ironic as men were once the only ones considered able and “suitable” for a traditional Indian yoga practice.  In fact classic yoga was a system of beliefs which was entirely male, until Indra Devi- ‘the first lady of yoga’- was accepted to study under Sri Krishnamacharya in Mysore India around 1937.

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Is your Yoga Teacher trained?

I was recently talking to someone who had sadly given up yoga because he felt that the classes he had been attending had made an existing  back condition worse.  This particular person, who fortunately had not been attending local classes, felt that the teacher had pushed him beyond his limits, adjusting him too strongly in a relatively well known posture called ‘Down facing dog’-resulting in his lower back problems recurring with a vengeance.

Yoga is still very much a booming industry and people might think that teaching yoga is a relatively simple thing to do and involves little more than sitting around giving a few  instructions for a bit of stretching with some breathing thrown in.

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Listening to Silence

Deben estuary

Yesterday the sun was shining, heralding a lovely Autumn day and, thinking it was possibly the last day of sunshine before the cold, grey weather sets in, I went up to Sutton Hoo with my husband to get some fresh air and a walk.

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Losing my keys

Last week I started a Mindfulness course with Bemindfulonline.com.

The first week was entitled’Stepping out of autopilot’ and the aim is to learn to stay with our experience moment by moment.

At the start of the course it was pointed out that we are often on ‘auto pilot’ which means behaving mechanically without paying attention and that got me thinking about how much of my life I am living in a whirlwind of doing, without even being aware of the experience.

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Out of Balance? What me?

Secrets-of-Balance

We talk about life being a ‘balancing act’ and tend to recognise the importance of having ‘balance’ in our lives-  for example the right mixture of work, home life and time to ourselves.

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Slow down-you’re moving too fast!

 

slow down 1

Sometimes we feel as if we are racing through life than actually living it.

I was reminded of this last week when I felt I had a lot of things piling up, both domestically and work- related, all  demanding my attention and needing to be completed so I could move on to the next one.  I know women are reputed to be good at  multi tasking but I, for one, don’t like it!  

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Don’t Forget to Breathe!

 breathe 2

What makes us feel stressed?… Lots of things according to a recent survey, including deciding what to eat for lunch, our phone battery running out and overcrowded gyms.  These  apparently are among the worries that add up to over two hours of stress each day! Finding a balance between home and work and lack of time for ourselves are particularly stressful.

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‘Being’ not ‘Doing’

  Yoga nidra for blog (1)

In a recent newspaper article, I was reading that stress can  affect us in different ways including making us feel ‘wired’, short of patience and irritable, particularly if we are subjecting our nervous systems to constant stimulation from sounds, sights and light from information which we are connected  to 24/7.

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Switching off our busy minds

Yoga is commonly known as good for combating stress.  One of the reasons is that there is a  strong relaxation element in there and most yoga classes end with a ‘relaxation’ where people have time to lie on the mat and feel peaceful.

Recently a couple of incidents started me thinking about what we mean by relaxation and whether yogic relaxation is different to other forms.

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