Posts from ‘daily life’
Gwen Bell in digital warrior 3 pose. (image via mightygirl.com)
This week, Facebook fired its yoga teacher because she banned smartphones during yoga class. The story went viral, most likely because it struck a nerve. Do we need to always be connected to our devices?
I recently interviewed Gwen Bell, a former “social media guru” (according to a 2010 Fast Company article) whose work is now focused on helping develop healthy relationships with technology. I talked to her for Where Is My Guru, which I had the pleasure of guest hosting today. Continue Reading
In this video from TEDxRegina, Nikko Snyder talks about her transformation from habitual consumption to creative production. Starting off with a year-long challenge to buy nothing new, she went on to learn how to garden, live off the grid and help others learn how to grow their own food. In the process, she’s learned about community, collaboration and empathy.
Nikko concludes by calling for a similar project on a collective scale. She gives us a two-fold challenge: practice being more conscious in consumption (keeping it simple), and do it with attention and awareness. Nikko encourages us to listen to what’s going on in ourselves and the world, and be open to whatever we discover.
I’m going to participate in the challenge for the month of July by keeping track of the money I spend. How about you? What practice will you choose to be more conscious in your consumption?
Let us know in the comments and share your experiences!
Yoga stops traffic in downtown Montreal, April 2012, in an action that may or may not have been connected to the ongoing students protests - but given that the instructor is wearing red, we can assume it was. (image via Facebook)
Last night I participated in my first casserole – the nightly “pots and pans protests” which are filling the streets of Montreal. My friend and I, armed with pots and wooden spoons, left her apartment just before 8pm and ventured into the streets.
I was full of apprehension and excitement. I had been out of town when the nightly demos started last week and had only heard accounts of the protests through my social media channels. The neighbourhood actions are a response to Bill 78, Quebec’s emergency measures to suppress the three-month long student demonstrations against tuition increases. Bill 78 restricts freedom of assembly or protest in public spaces without prior police approval.
While I’ve been an armchair supporter of the students, I haven’t felt close enough to the cause to take part in the protests. However, when new law was passed on May 18, I found myself feeling invigorated and connected. The “casserole movement” was started via a Facebook event invitation created by a Montrealer who was inspired by South American actions, and the idea, a safe and effective way for people to demonstrate opposition to a regressive law, spread through neighbourhoods around the city.
As we stepped into the quiet evening streets, I didn’t know what to expect. How do people know where to go? How do we find each other? Continue Reading
It’s Mother’s Day! And what better way to honour the mamas in our lives than by celebrating the creative divine feminine force. Listen to Where Am I, singer, songwriter and yogini Tara MacLean’s loving tribute to motherhood and read “The Four Powers of Divine Mother” by Swami Radhananda. Then call your mother and tell her why you’re grateful for her.
Divine Mother is sometimes thought of as a being outside of ourselves or as an image to worship. But she is really the power within us. Her many aspects, that are given 108 names in India, represent different powers. Four of her main powers are wisdom, strength, harmony and perfection. What would it mean to manifest those four powers in our own lives? Continue Reading
I recently received an email with the subject, “How to Live Your Yoga.” It was an e-newsletter for a weekend yoga conference at a retreat centre. While I applaud the effort to present the promise of a yoga practice, I also know that one can’t expect to learn how to live their yoga in three days of retreat from life.
It takes daily practice to really live your yoga, as Swami Radhananda suggests in Living the Practice: Collected Writings on the Transformative Potential of Yoga (Timeless Books, 2012). The book is a collection of short essays Swami Radhananda wrote over a period of 10 years for Ascent, a magazine about yoga and engaged living which folded in 2009.
“The Western challenge is to bring yoga into our daily lives,” Swami Radhananda writes in an essay titled, ‘From Earth to Heaven.’ “We can’t easily do what Eastern tradition prescribes: sit in a cave, or wander India leading the ascetic life. We have to go inward, and that knowledge has to be brought out again. We need to transplant the seeds of yoga into our lives.”
While not a guide or self-help book, Living the Practice provides an example of how once can transplant the seeds and watch them flourish. For Swami Radhananda, this happens through reflection, self-inquiry and paying attention to the symbols in her life. Continue Reading
