May
21

Truth(bomb)s To Meditate On

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My philosophy and meditation guru, Jason Lamberth, dropped truth bombs like it was his job while we were in Bali together. He spoke with sincere conviction – making each statement land with such weight. Now that I’m back in Vancouver, I flip through my pages and pages of notes from our classes together to find one of these gems to consider while I meditate in the morning. My favourites thus far have been:

Let your shit entertain you. Not drive you.

Nothing can make you happier than you already are.

If you find the wisdom in pain, you can find the joy in it.

You can’t escape your own obsessions. You can only stop feeding them.

Wisdom and ignorance can’t be in the same mind at the same time.

It is no accident why I am experiencing what I am experiencing.

Don’t breathe because you want to do the asana better.
Don’t breathe because the teacher told you to.
Breathe because you love someone.

Others will attempt to piss you off, until you don’t attract people who piss you off.

The antidote for any tough situation is always ‘clean up your own shit.”

And, as he dropped these bad boys, he would always remind us that ‘nothing I say is true until you make it so.’

So take what you want, take what you need, and leave the rest.
Your Truth is yours.

Now, take a tall, comfortable seat….

 
Pick of the Post: Elisapie – Life Is What You Make It

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May
19

I Was Gonna Marry You

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All good things come to an end.

And those endings create the space to begin again.

So really, good things never ultimately come to an end.
It’s only how we experience them that changes.

Love lives on. And on. And on.

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May
10

The Final Few Days in Bali

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For the last 15 minutes of our yoga practice Wednesday morning, I was in full blown tears.
Yep, bawling my eyes out on my mat.

(And I don’t mean a little sniffle and a single tear. No, I mean ugly crying like a hormonal women watching The Notebook. Bawling.)

We had just begun to hold shoulder stand for 6 minutes when this wave of emotion started to pour over me. At first it confused me. “Why am I crying? What is this bringing up for me?” It confused me because I couldn’t find an answer to these questions. These tears weren’t attached to any emotion, thought, or experience that I could pinpoint. They were simply tears – and a whole lot of them. So I let them come – and they kept coming through shoulder stand, all the way into savasana, and then for another 40 minutes (!!) after practice had ended.

There I was in the shower after practice – still crying – asking myself what the France was going on.
I dried myself off from my shower and the tears finally ended.

Later that afternoon I headed over to the Yoga Barn for my first colon hydrotherapy treatment. (I’ll spare you the details of that unique experience.) With the help from a hilarious technician from Calgary, I spent another solid hour getting rid of more sh*t in my body (pun intended).

By 4 pm, I felt high – and not in the usual way Vancouverites may use that phrase. It was as if I had overdosed on bliss. I couldn’t stop smiling, my head was so clear, and everything my friends said to me for the rest of the day was hysterical. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced happiness like that before – if that is even what you’d call such a feeling.

And now, after my final exams have been completed and I only have a few more classes left before I board some planes to take me home, I can confidently say that this has been an experience like nothing I’ve had before. If I do say so myself, some serious sh*t has really gone down here in Bali.
And I’ve never felt better.

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May
07

Only Love Can Save Us Now

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We’ve been playing with the power of dedication throughout my training.

Simple experiments to see what happens when what I do is no longer for me, or my desires, but for someone else – to relieve their pain or to show them my gratitude or love.

“What would you do if your best friend asked you to do this next pose?”
“What if your next pose could take the suffering away from someone you loved? Make it so.”
“Imagine this pose was your gift to the person you love the most. How does that feel instead?”

Today we did a sequence of poses that tested our dedication towards all beings.

Our first wheel was dedicated to those we love.
5 breaths for my sister, my parents, and for my friends back in Vancouver.

Our second wheel was dedicated to those suffering.
5 breaths for homeless youth, my friends in rocky relationships, and for family members requiring medical attention.

Then came the last wheel. It was to be dedicated to someone we wouldn’t ever want to dedicate something to. Someone we judged. Someone we may have negative feelings or thoughts about. Someone that has ‘done wrong.’

And, as soon as the teacher said that, I thought of this little dude:

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Not him exactly. I thought of all those kids involved in the Westboro Church pickets. Cause boy do I have some judgements and disagreements there.

And then I dedicated my next 25 breaths in wheel to them.
When it got hard to hold the posture, and all I wanted to do was get out of it, I was reminded of how easy it is to judge instead of love – how easy it is to ignore or dismiss that which is hard to accept.

What takes work is finding the good in it.
And then dedicating every breath, literally, to the goodness in them.

Because more Love wins, always.

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May
06

Will We Overcome This?

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Dont give up
I know you can see
All the world and the mess that we’re making

Can’t give up
And hope God will intercede
Come on back
Imagine that we could get it together

Stand up for what we need to be
Cause crime won’t save or feed a hungry child
Can’t lay down
And wait for a miracle to change things

So lift up your eyes
Lift up your heart, singing

Mercy will we overcome this?
Oh one by one, could we turn it around?
Maybe, carry on just a little bit longer
And I’ll try to give you what you need.

- Dave Matthews Band, Mercy

This tune popped into my head today when a little more faith and resilience was needed.
Maybe you need to hear it today too?

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May
04

Yoga Teacher Training: In The Numbers

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13,000 kms: the distance between Bali and Vancouver
13 hours ahead: time difference between Bali and Vancouver
4: books to read prior to the training
1, 6, 9: number of mats, Pacebreaker Shorts, and Metal Vent Tech tops I packed
12: faculty members from around the globe
3: sweet sweet training mentors
24: students on the training
3: other rad students from Canada – whom I absolutely adore

15,000 times: a rooster crows starting at 5 am (or so it feels like)
1: morning that my alarm went off AFTER 6 am (even on a day off) – #notavacation
20 minutes: walk from my pad to the studio
30 degrees Celsius: average daily temperature

69 hours: spent in Noble Silence – not speaking or interacting with anyone else
12 hours: dedicated to morning meditation
57 hours: dedicated to asana practice
16.5 hours: dedicated to teaching asana (or practicing if you weren’t the one teaching)
… that’s over 1,900 chaturangas!
72 times: Edward touched or referred to his mula

8: restaurants that served great raw food that we rotated around for our meals
15: raw chocolate bars consumed during the training
35: fresh smoothies enjoyed
3 days: of juice feasting
2.5 litres: of water during my max “colon whisperer” round

8: full body massages that cost less than $10
1: massage that involved a yogurt scrub and a rose petal bath
23: late night dips in my pool
2 hours: spent hiking up the volcano Mt. Batur to catch the sunrise
7: monkeys that tried to steal Michelle’s bananas outside the Monkey Forest
4 people: who told me I looked like Adam Levine. #bestcompliment

26 days: between hello and goodbye
26 days: I will never forget

Thank you so much for the intense and unforgettable last four weeks friends.
Until our next adventure…

Full Group

Pick of the Post: Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole – Somewhere Over the Rainbow

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May
02

Intensive Training Day …ish

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After morning practice, she says:

So you’ll be divided into small groups again like we used for teaching. This time you’ll be either with Damien, Heather, Daniel or Sue (our faculty and mentors). For those really diving into the cleanse today, I’d recommend you not drink anything after 10 am. Because when the doors close at 10:30, they will close for good and you won’t have time to run to the bathroom. I really recommend you dive in to today though because, if you do, the results you will experience will be so amazing. If you dive in, I’m convinced that you may even be able to levitate.

Because today …. we’re going to the beach.

Intensive training day turned into a day off at the beach. Beach time yoga, sun tanning, and enjoying each others company for the first time since this training began – yes please!!!

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May
02

They’re Going To Pop Up Eventually

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This week is a cleansing week – juices and detoxes and colonics, oh my! As part of one of our discussions, we began to talk about the emotional impact of cleanses. When we got to the part about what happens when we try to control our emotions or override them, our teacher said:

Not wanting an emotion is like pushing down a beach ball underwater.
It takes energy to do it and its going to pop up eventually.

“Nope, that girl at work doesn’t irritate me.”
“Nope, I gotta contain my enthusiasm around this to appear mature.”
“Nope, I’m not nervous about that new project.”
“Nope, I don’t like that cute boy.”

Experience them all and see how much fun you can have with them.
They are, after all, going to pop up eventually…

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Apr
29

The Trick To Headstand

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After last week with Tripsichore Yoga, we learned a number of tricks to make arm balances and inversions easier.

Today, however, our meditation/philosophy professor taught us another “trick.”

He suggested that if “working hard” actually worked to create success, then everyone who worked hard would be successful. He went on to say that if going to class and practicing your headstand diligently worked to achieve headstand, then everyone who showed up to class would be in headstand.

It doesn’t work like that.
If you want to get a headstand, a promotion, or a new lover – help someone else.
Relieve someone else’s suffering, or sickness, or loneliness and what you want will come rushing towards you.

This is the trick to how yoga, on and off the mat, works.

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Apr
28

It’ll All Be Brown In The Morning

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Having a full afternoon off from training is a rare occurrence.
This week, it was perfectly timed with the arrival of my dear friend Michelle.

Her arrival at my pad in Bali started with the best hug ever. The kind that only a month away from each other can truly create. We laughed in each other’s arms for a solid 5 minutes and then headed immediately to the pool to catch each other up on life, home, career, and boys.

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The last five days have been wild and overwhelming. My training heated up in intensity and my downtime was filled with Michelle-induced fun. The most romantic couples massage I’ve ever had, a lunchtime adventure in the rice fields, an evening performance of traditional Indonesian Trance dancing, and night time giggles in bed after my nightly swim have made each hour out of class totally blissful.

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What was most remarkable was the epic day Michelle created for us today. We awoke at 2 am to make our way to the base of Mt. Batur, the volcano in the middle of Bali, to begin our 2 hour hike up to the peak with Anton. Thankfully the sun wasn’t out, as we worked up quite a sweat in the pitch black – I can only imagine what it would have been like it the sun was beaming down on us.

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Once we watched the sunrise from above the clouds, we headed back down to then get driven to the start of our next leg of the adventure: a bike ride through the small villages of Bali. Flying downhill made me remember how much I love life on two wheels and weaving through jagged rocks on the tiny rice field paths made me thankful that yoga teaches me how to balance.

After a beautiful lunch overlooking a koi fish pond, it was 3 pm and our 13 hour adventure (!!) was coming to a close.

Michelle’s time here in Bali is also coming to a close.
She heads back to her new home in Australia tomorrow as I begin week 3 of training.

What I learned this week from Michelle’s visit and my training was that it’s nice to turn up the intensity every now and then.
To have someone call me out with such love and generosity.
To come home to a less than empty bed.
It’s also nice to enjoy the sensation of “sun-kissed” skin that results from adventures with unforgettable friends – even when our time together is limited.

Because it’s all a part of the flow.

It may be red hot tonight.
It may also become a beautiful brown in the morning.

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