This is a story about coffee and how I finally listened to my body's intuition around food. I love coffee - I love everything about it.  The smell of the beans, the sound of the beans grinding and the frothing of the milk, the taste, the ritual of it, the smoothness, sitting in a cafe surrounded be my fellow coffee lovers, I could go on and on.  I started my addiction love affair young; at 16 I was working at a small neighborhood cafe and bagel shop.  The only free things we could have during shifts were tap water or good old, American drip coffee.  So, being 16 and "broke", I drank the coffee, sometimes the water.  At first, I wasn't sure about it, but quickly I became a convert.

Now, that's not to say we can't find happiness.  The Dalai Lama says life is all about finding happiness.  (I've been reading the Art of Happiness, by his holiness, would highly recommend!)  However, what I mean, is that it never ends, this search.  It's not like one day you wake up and everything is perfect and it will stay that way forever because you've found the perfect relationship, the perfect job, the right amount of money, the ideal body then that's it.  Life is frozen and stays still, time stops and you have your happy ending, everything you ever wanted.  Cue wedding at the end of the movie and roll the credits.  The end, life sails along blissfully from here on out. Reality check.  Life is a series of never ending ups and downs, struggles and triumphs that never stop.  The end is death.  Other than that, things keep on rolling.  

I recently covered a friend's regular yoga class at an upscale Sydney gym chain.  I'm not really a "gym" person, I prefer yoga (obviously) or getting my exercise in the fresh air now that I live in a place where that is possible nearly all year.  In fact, I'm so not a "gym" person, that I can't even remember the last time I was in a traditional gym.  I think it was my university days.

I have become a walking cliche and it feels really really good.  Over the past 4 days I've been keeping to a vegan and sugar free diet lifestyle.  Cliche right, a vegan, yoga teacher who doesn't eat sugar?  Hear me out.  Both of these decisions I made due to watching recent movies and then trying on said diets for size.  The first, "That Sugar Film", convinced me to cut out refined and processed sugars.  Not too hard, I mostly already do this, but the decision just made me think more about what I'm eating.  Maybe a few less of those afternoon muffins and croissants.  

What is this ledge you speak of?  Is it real or is it only in your dreams? Is anything really real?  Do we ever see things as they really are without the cloud of our past experiences, without our expectations getting in the way?  How can two people so differently perceive one thing?  Arguments over something as simple as the color of "the internet dress"...it's black and blue, no it's white and gold.  So much time spent dedicated to finding out the "truth", what color is it really?  But what is truth except something that our mind has created.  One day we look in the mirror and feel fat, the next we look and the most beautiful face is staring back at us.

Australia, home to 9 of the top 10 deadliest spiders in the world.  Also, the biggest f'ing spiders I've ever seen in my whole life.  You can probably assume where this post is going (it has nothing to do with yoga in an outright sense, but if you suppose everything is yoga, then it's related by a thread). This morning on my way to Ashtanga practice (6:30am) ok fine yoga snuck in...

My friend, Caitanya and I are in the early manifestation/planning stages of hosting a Yoga Retreat to Bali, specifically to Ubud.  I am beyond excited as I watch one of my dreams for 2015 start to become a reality.  The planning also brings back fond memories and realizations of my previous trip to Bali and to Ubud. Specifically my 1st class at the Yoga Barn, Ubud's foremost yoga shala, with an amazing power yoga teacher, Les Leventhal.  I had taken his class in Sydney when he visited Barefoot Yoga but this was like nothing I'd ever experienced.  Yoga on a massive raised wooden platform above the jungle and rice paddies of Ubud's hidden back streets.  

Recently one my regular students told me she had a health scare.  She was rushed to the hospital as a result of feeling critically out of breath.  In the end, it was nothing serious, she was released and told to take it easy.  As a result, she's decided to take more time off work, go on vacations more often with her daughter and practice more yoga. I hear a variation of this story time and again as a yoga teacher.

During a recent class, while I was teaching and then letting savasana happen, something amazing occurred to me.  Savasana is a powerful pose.  I mean we know this, but at this moment, a few minutes into my blah blah about letting go and sinking into gravity, releasing tensions and letting the practice integrate, I just sat back and marveled.  I marveled at these 16 strangers and the fact that they were all able to lie down in each other's presence and be comfortable.  That these 16 people were trusting enough of their environment, of me, of each other, to lie face up, arms out stretched, legs splayed open, eyes closed.  That, my friend, takes trust. 

irony

ˈʌɪrəni/

noun

 a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result.