Back in business.

Hi there. 

It has been a long while since I posted here.

Still here. 

Back in business.

This is a new post, at the age of 54, I am here still, together with my eight year old daughter and my wife and life partner of 26 years. When I first started this blog, I was only just starting to frame my general interest in health and fitness. Over the years, this has become more important. The biggest change happened when I began to pursue a spiritual life, guided by Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and, more recently, The Bhagavad Gita. This slotted in quite beautifully with my pursuit of postural yoga. My pursuit of postural yoga was inspired by my mother beginning with it in her youth. It has been  a constant part of her life. The spiritual path has led to a filling of the black-hole-existential void I felt inside of me with some space. I can't say that it is full of bright light yet. But maybe one day, if I live long enough, it will. So that is an inspiration to keep myself going, in a strong enough physical state, to be able to work towards that. 

Teaching yoga

What has changed?

I have been teaching yoga asana for a long time now. First I was teaching at training centres. I did that for a while. As my own practice deepened, so did my need to deepen my understanding of postural yoga. I began at a "proper" yoga studio. Since then I have moved studio once. It would be hard to explain how important teaching is to me. When I look at how I've changed over the years, I think I could explain it best from the perspective of being a teacher, rather than what I've learned as a yoga asana practitioner. My entire focus now is to be a better teacher. The areas I am working on now are communication based on the level of students, hands-on adjustment - when appropriate, anchoring of the asana in yogic philosophy, and deep respect for each individual in the class. We made some changes when moving to my current employer's studio. We structured the classes on a level basis, and I began teaching a five week vinyasa fundamentals course per semester. Of all the levels I've taught, level 0 - new beginners - have been the most exciting, challenging and interested group. I had to up my game! Suddenly I was cutting all the unnecessary language and focusing on verb (your body part) direction and /or placement. Clean and simple. This is just one example of many other bits and pieces that have become much more powerful than the sum of the parts. It is exciting.

Follow up

OK. So let's see what I end up posting. If you're interested in yoga - my website over Cobra-Yoga.com might be interesting. Otherwise - I'm still strength training, still running and still obsessed with health and life. So maybe I will see you here instead.

Big love. I wish you balance, calm, peace and strength. Namaste. 

A marathon or two at 50?

I’m 50 in February. 

 Go on then. You only live once. I won’t be trying for a good completion time. I am just after completing. 

Just had a nice 9 km in the snow. I used the 3 + 2 running pranayama breath.

Relentlessly taking responsibility

Relentlessly taking responsibility for my thoughts, actions, situation, life, needs, habits, spirituality, physicality. In order to radically take ownership of this life, I must take responsibility for it. Even if another person or situation causes me some form of harm, my response is my responsibility. My choice. This is freedom. The freedom that can be experienced even in shackles. 

I think I have to constantly remind myself of it. I find it so easy to blame others, or the situation. There is this amazing screaming lyric from a hardcore band I listen to where the singer screams "the walls are in your mind". This cliché is rendered raw by the passion of the song. It makes me think that blame builds a mental wall,  constructed one brick at a time. A wall that is a barrier to the endless landscape of possibility. 

The band is Sweden’s Painted Wolves. If you like hardcore-punk, here is a link

Feeling foolish.

"The list of mistakes you can never recover from is very short. 

But you likely realize your life will not be destroyed if your book doesn’t sell or if a potential date turns you down or if your startup goes bust. It’s not the failed outcome that paralyzes us. It’s the possibility of looking stupid, feeling humiliated, or dealing with embarrassment that prevents us from getting started at all.

The first step to being courageous is being willing to look foolish."

This is from James Clear. 

You can get his newsletter here.

https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/refer?rh_ref=e4188701

I recently culled all of the things I had signed up for over the years. I kept this though.

Rockin' home knits

Rocking the crucial middle-aged home knit style boyyyyyyy.

Article about almond milk

https://www.thecut.com/2020/01/almond-milk-honeybee-deaths.html

28.05.2021: Disclaimer. I have not put any effort in to checking whether this is correct or not.

Cleaning the clutter

Good afternoon.
Whilst looking through the draft posts in blogger today I found this one. It wasn't really a post, just a title: "cleaning the clutter". I have absolutely no idea as to what I was thinking about when I wrote that title, but it sounds catchy. I wonder if I was thinking about a spring cleaning bout at the time. It is impossible to tell as drafts aren't dated once you open them - which I just did.
However, this post that never was has made me think about my approach to cleaning. Not just physically cleaning, as in housework or tidying my desk. I love recycling. Even digital recycling. I am the kind of person who changes the name of an empty folder on their computer desktop before starting to fill it with files, rather than simply deleting it and making a new one when needed. Totally pointless. Perhaps in this case it is not completely pointless though, as I suddenly got the urge to fill in some of the gaps here and post about recycling as a form of creativity.

Recycling as inspiration :)

One of my recent obsessions was the quote "do what you can, with what you have, where you are" which, after a cursory internet search, seems to be attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. It isn't really that relevant to me whether it was Roosevelt, or Bugs Bunny - it works for me. I love the idea of making do. It appeals to the punk in me. One of the defining ethics of the punk movement was the idea of do-it-yourself. I felt that this was especially important to the later phases of punk, like my beloved "straight edge hardcore" punk. In fact, let us not get started on straight edge hardcore right now, as that is definitely going to be something that I will want to write about in the future as it too has had a massive effect on my psyche of late. Making do - doing it yourself - making something out of some old rubbish. My whole point here boils down to the fact that if I hadn't decided to recycle this post, I would have probably not written anything today. Just the fact that I decided to reuse the title has forced into being a load of words on a page. Granted, they may never be read - they're not even that exciting, but they are here in the world and it's because I took something which was rubbish and used it in a new way. Reinterpretation. I like this a lot . Reinterpretation of trash causes creativity. How about that?

Indeed. Right on Theodore.