Dear Yogis,

Thank you to those people who have responded to my call out and will be subscribing to the new newsletter – “HEMPISH”.which will be a newsletter dedicated to HEMP AND HERBALS.  Taking these subjects out of the yoga beautiful newsletter…and into the hands of people who are interested, use the herbals, and are interested in all aspects of health and wellness..

Life is not just about asana, as we have been reiterating in both our ‘Gita class on a Sunday and our Sutra class on Tuesday.

ZOOM SATURDAY 2pm – The Tarot/Pendulum making, and painting class.  This has been one of our most popular classes.  This is a class that I really look forward to.  It is fantastic.
ZOOM SUNDAY 10am – The Bhagavadgita class
ZOOM TUESDAY 7.30PM – The Sutras.
You can always find details about any of these classes on the front page of www.yogabeautiful.com.au, or on the drop downs under Classes or the subject you are looking for.

THE ART OF YOGA (OR THE YOGA OF ART)
Because I have been painting and drawing every day, when I go into the newspaper shop, or hop on line, I have been ending up in the ART SECTION.    Yesterday I picked up the latest edition of ART GUIDE AUSTRALIA.  A fabulous guide to art, artists and galleries throughout Australia.

This month, one of the featured artists is Guy Warren who is 99 years old (in his hundredth year as he would say), and still  looking terrific and drawing, painting or scribbling EVERY DAY.  We all know that no matter if we are a cricketer, a pianist, and artist or a yogi, to be the best we can be we have to practice our craft every day.

I love it that he has shows planned next year in King Street Gallery, the National Art School, and Nicholas Thompson Gallery in Melbourne and Gallery Lane Cove in Sydney.  What a fabulous schedule!

We could all stretch ourselves but we don’t because we have doubts and those doubts slow us down.  That is one thing that working in the Friday and Saturday art groups helps with… it calms our doubts because we get feed back from people who are seeing what we do and see our work with fresh eyes..

The American Philip Guston said that “Doubt is the acute awareness of the existence of alternatives”, and Australian Art Critic  Robert Hughes (who always called a spade “a …..shovel”) said “The greater the artists the greater the doubt.  Perfect confidence is given to lesser artists as a consolation prize”.  

Don’t let doubt in yourself hold you back.  Just work through it.  I think I have told you about the painting of a ballerina I made for my grandma then I was 6 years old.  It took me such a long time to draw and I was so proud to give it to her.  She looked at it and then handed it back.  She said “That’s nice but your cousins Pat’s ballerinas are much softer and so beautiful”.  I was crushed and i still recall those words today.  But it didn’t stop me.  Even though my cousin, Pat and others did much more beautiful work than me, I kept doing it, even when I was told traditional art was ‘dead” and I wasn’t able to go to art school, because  commercial art was one of the only art options and i wasn’t interested.  I keep painting… and yoga-ing.

Where are my arty cousins? They didn’t have to work at it so I guess they didn’t value it, and never became professional artists.  The rejection made me stronger.

We all meet rejection at every stage of our lives in everything we step out to do – the better you are, the more rejection you will experience.   I became unstoppable.  No matter what happened, no matter what people said about the art or the yoga, I have continuously worked the art alongside my yoga.  They fitted together beautifully – sometimes more art, sometimes more yoga.  First hard work then comes passion (not the other way around).

YOU TOO can make this match in whatever field you have chosen.  Yoga gives balance to every life..BUT YOU HAVE TO DO IT, JUST AS YOU HAVE TO DO ART – EVERY DAY.  ART DOESN’T JUST HAPPEN.

NAMASTE – JAHNE