Lazy Saturdays.
Unexpected visitors. Of the welcome sort, not the creepy stalker sort
Drinking good coffee in the sun with friends.
Sunshine (sorry, Northern Hemisphere. Your turn is coming!)
Walking. There is nothing like it to clear the head
Change. I find change scary, but also exhilarating. There’s a lot of it in my life right now
The wisdom of my parents.
How excited my brother is about my upcoming visit home, the first in
two years
Reading. I am particularly excited about Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book,
Committed. I think I shall skip out and buy it post haste
Watching the Australian Open. Actually there, not on TV. Woot!
Macaroons from the Lindt store. Mmmmm
Cupcakes. Double mmmmmm
Hearing my friend talk about her vision board for 2010 and getting all
inspired to do one for myself
Baby anticipation: another friend is about to give birth, and I can’t
wait to meet the new baba!
Mums and Bubs yoga class. It’s so cute to watch the babies develop
every week. Their mothers work hard in that class though
My iPhone. I know, it’s a sick obsession. It’s also one that I enjoy
Music. Played off said iPhone
People smiling on the street. So nice

What’s Makes you Blissful?

Nadine Fawell has been teaching yoga for five years. She has logged about 3000 hours of experience, both in group and private settings. Her main influence, both as a teacher and as a practitioner of yoga, comes from the Krishnamacharya lineage. She has travelled to India twice to study with TKV Desikachar and his teachers at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram and now considers Mark Whitwell to be one of her most influential teachers. Check out her blog at: http://nadinefawell.net/

by Nadine Fawell

Things that have blissed me out this week:

The wise little sayings on the YogiTea Rooibos Chai I have been drinking lately. Some examples: The moment you love, you are unlimited (my personal favourite). Socialize with compassion, kindness and grace. The art of happiness is to serve all.

Road trips. Especially ones where I don’t actually have to do any of the driving. All the fun, none of the stress

Visiting Victoria Market and buying locally produced, seasonal, organic, delicious food at very reasonable prices.

Making Recipes out of Cooking with Foods that Fight Cancer. It’s borrowed, but I NEED my own copy. The food may be healthy, but it’s also easy and super-tasty.

Baking. Yes, there is a food theme here. Thing is, the way I see it, food is a full participation in life, a turning toward nourishment. The better and more heartily enjoyed the food, the more nourished we are, non?

My yoga practice. Someone asked me the other day how I find the motivation to practice every day. Really though, it feels so good to do yoga, and I have built the habit over such a long time, that I have to ask, how can I NOT practice every day?

The luscious possibilities of January. Every January is like this. The year is new and fresh, and we haven’t had time to get disillusioned with it yet. This year even more so because it heralds a new decade.

Having someone I trust with me when I heard some shocking bad news last week. It’s amazing how supported you can feel if someone just sits with you, makes you tea, and listens.

Speaking to my mother.

Meeting new people who are trying yoga for the first time.

New Year’s Resolutions are wonderful things!

Opportunities unfolding in the most unexpected places.

Being out of mobile phone reception for an entire weekend. It meant (gasp) that I couldn’t work at all. I felt very rested after that, can’t figure out why I don’t do that more often. iPhone addiction perhaps?

Friends, family, connection, love. Ahhhhh…

What blissed you out this week?

Nadine Fawell has been teaching yoga for five years. She has logged about 3000 hours of experience, both in group and private settings. Her main influence, both as a teacher and as a practitioner of yoga, comes from the Krishnamacharya lineage. She has travelled to India twice to study with TKV Desikachar and his teachers at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram and now considers Mark Whitwell to be one of her most influential teachers. Check out her blog at: http://nadinefawell.net/

You Make Me Feel Lovely

By Nadine Fawell

For the title of this piece, I am quoting a student of mine, who is one of the sexiest women I have ever met. The first time she walked into class, I thought *wow*. This is a woman who experiences herself as beautiful, and you can see by how she moves that she is moving in the innate sensuality of Life. It’s very powerful.

When I knew her better, I told her this. And she replied that yes, she does experience life in this way, and it’s interesting because it has removed her need for another to help her experience her loveliness. She also said that when we say to someone, after sex, for example, that we love them, what she thinks we are really saying is this:

Interesting. Because when we are in intimate relationship, be it with a friend, a lover, a child, what we are mostly seeing is the version of ourselves that this person reflects back to us. This is why relationship is so important for self-learning. Everyone will show you a different aspect of yourself. All are valid. Even in abusive situations, once you can step back and look clearly, you may see something there. I had an incident a few months back where someone was incredibly verbally abusive towards me (don’t panic, it wasn’t my husband!), and it gave me a lot of insight into some old, no longer useful, patterns of behavior and thinking that I still have, which is why I allowed the person into my life in the first place. And, for a long time, allowed them to treat me in this way. No more, though, and, hopefully, if I can keep my eyes open to it, not again.

But I feel that I had to have that particular connection in order to learn about boundaries and self-respect and choosing my battles. So I am grateful. Because although I see those parts of me that aren’t so pretty reflected in this person’s words, I love me anyway. I think I am as good as I can be.

As I have said before, over the last few months, my spiritual practice has sustained me in a deep, deep way, as have my friendships and connections with those I love and who love me. I believe that I ended my marriage in the best way I could, that I behaved as best I could. This gives me great relief. I am not saying I behaved perfectly, but I did behave with compassion and kindness and forethought. Because things could have unfolded very differently, and if they had, I would have been more hurt, and so would my husband. So this ending, even, has given me cause to say that I feel lovely. And even at the end, a beginning. I love and I am loved.

Which brings me to beginnings. I can think of no more powerful time of Shakti, Life, flowing, than the way it does between two people who are attracted to each other. Shakti is always in us, of course. It is the Divine that animates us and is always, always present, even when it feels like it isn’t. If we weren’t with That which made us, we wouldn’t be alive. Simple. But so much easier to feel when you are in a room with someone and the love hormones are flowing. Sharing food, sharing touch, talking, laughing. And sometimes, that flows into something long-term. Deep intimacy. Where the deepest learning of Life happens. And sometimes, where new Life is made.

The Ultimate Union.

Nadine Fawell has been teaching yoga for five years. She has logged about 3000 hours of experience, both in group and private settings. Her main influence, both as a teacher and as a practitioner of yoga, comes from the Krishnamacharya lineage. She has travelled to India twice to study with TKV Desikachar and his teachers at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram and now considers Mark Whitwell to be one of her most influential teachers. Check out her blog at: http://nadinefawell.net/

The body knows how to release stress. It does it every day. These tools – meditation, yoga, breathing, are just ways of accessing the built-in skills your body has.

Check out this info from my website:

Yoga & Meditation is as American as Apple Pie, Almost

The CDC – The Centers for Disease Control – conducted a nationwide survey and found that 7.5% of Americans have done Yoga (7.1% in the last month) and 10.2% have meditated, 7.6% in the last month. Here is a link to the research, in PDF form. The CDC was interested also in what Americans do, who do they call, if they have an ache, or headache, or feel stressed out. Half of Americans interviewed said they thought an alternative approach, such as yoga or meditation, would be interesting to try out.

A new bit of research was just published on how meditation affects cellular metabolism, and how meditating every day helps prevent cellular damage resulting from too much stress. And here is a US News article on meditation as a way to simplify your life.

But the breath does not just flow in and out. It also must transition from flowing out to flowing in and vice versa. These transitions can reveal to us the nature of change.

Here’s how to explore turning motions for yourself:

Pick a spot where you can pace back and forth. Walk one direction, turn, then walk back in the other direction, turn, then repeat. Do this for at least a few minutes, and as you do so, focus on the turning motion.

Now sit down and move the hands away from the mouth area or the heart area as you exhale, and then in toward your body as you inhale. Pay special attention to the moment of transition, when the hands go from moving away from you to moving toward you, and again from moving toward you to moving away. Be aware of your palms, the sensations.

Move the palms in toward your chest, as if drawing in air. Move the palms outward, as if pushing out the old air. Continue this motion for five minutes.

Then rest your hands in your lap and pay attention to the flow of breath in the same way.

As the air flows in and out, pay attention to the rhythm: in, turn, out, turn, in, turn, out, turn. The turning point is neither stillness nor motion. It is stillness in motion, or sometimes motion in stillness.