Shimmering Silvery Sound of Silence

Dear Yogis

Are you ready with your New Year Resolutions? Get your ideas together so that you can get excited by them. Yogis are great at resolutions. We know exactly how to set our focus and intention. I found my main resolution for next year when listening to an interview about the recent climate conference in Poland. The studio guest said that he converted from shower gel in plastic bottles to bars of soap. I’m stealing that idea. I can’t even remember why I stopped using bars. I’ll also add laundry liquid refills to my resolution list.

I keep meaning to make meditation a more regular practice but I hesitate to make it a resolution in case I fail to keep it. I’m adding it this year because a cure to my hesitation came when I read a booklet by Ajahn Amaro, Abbot of Amaravati Monastery called ‘Inner Listening’ (downloads and pdf here). Maybe this little extract and the one attached will spark your interest.

Inner listening “refers to attending to what has been called ‘the sound of silence’, or ‘the nada-sound… a high-pitched inner ringing tone. When you turn your attention toward your hearing, if you listen carefully to the sounds around you, you’ll hear a continuous high-pitched sound, like a white noise – beginningless, endless – sparkling there in the background. See if you can detect that gentle inner vibration... We can use it, just like the breath, to dominate our attention”.

“It becomes like a screen on which all other sounds, physical sensations, moods and ideas are projected… It helps to sustain objectivity and untangled awareness, an untangled awareness in the present.”

I have to tell you, when you first hear that shimmering silvery sound, it’s magic and there’s a feeling of a voyage-of-discovery about to begin. It’s about time I made this resolution!

Home Studio

Can I tell you what a joy it is to teach you here! It amazes me how lucky I am that you come week after week or that new yogis pitch up for a class after a Google search for yoga in Ealing. What everyone has in common is that they want a small class. Hurray! And it’s always a joy to teach you. However, the studio turns into a bedroom and playroom for the Christmas week and there’ll be no classes till 2019. Classes are booking up for the first week in January. There are classes on the Wednesday 2nd and Thursday 3rd. You can see what’s available on my website. Also attached on this email.

Training

Valentina’s last Aerial Yoga class of the year is tomorrow, Saturday 22nd, at 10.30. I’ll be there to do my assisting session which is part of the course. Come along. Book here.

In 2019 I hope you’ll join me for some classes and workshops with the phenomenal teachers who come to this country and give us the best of their years of learning and teaching. It’s always such a joy to train with David Swenson or discover phenomenal teachers like Gregor Mahler. London is a blessed place to be a yogi!

Yoga in the news

Yoga exponent Geeta Iyengar, daughter of B.K.S. Iyengar, passes away, reports the Hindu.

“Like her father, Geeta Iyengar kept ill-health through much of her childhood…This caused her father great consternation, as he was not able to afford the high cost of medication; he instead recommended that she practice asanas to improve her health, spurring her lifelong devotion to Yoga.”

Happy Christmas, Happy holidays, Happy Kwanza, Happy Eating with loved ones.