Dear Yogic,

ZOOM
MONDAY: 1PM RESTORATIVE with bands and weights (“ZEN DOODLES” CLASS 6.45 pm – start date pending your interest)
TUESDAY: 1.30pm The Tao of Watercolour, “ZEN DOODLES” No art experience required. Start date pending your interest.  7.30PM DISCOVERING THE CHAKRAS.
WEDNESDAY: 12.30 RESTORATIVE YOGA,  5.30 RESTORATIVE YOGA,  6.45pm MINDFULNESS MEDITATION/YOGA NIDRA

 

Although it is cold here, the sun is streaming in the windows… shortly I am going for a walk, and I am really looking forward to exploring the world in the sunshine.  The photo to the left is my garden with the stupa.

This morning I have been thinking about my ZEN DOODLE CLASSES, The Tao of Watercolour.  I think ZEN DOODLE says it all.  It is a wonderful way to express what we do.  Of course I always take things one step further, but the doodle and the colour is everything that you will do.  It is amazing what can be achieved when you turn the mind off for a little while, and let the colour lead the dance.  Chase it across the page…..

Please join us “ZEN DOODLING” on a Saturday as part of the MAKE YOUR OWN TAROT CARDS at 2pm, and as a stand alone class on a Tuesday afternoon at 1.30. and Mondays at 6.45pm.   Email me to register your interest: yogafirst2@bigpond.com


CARING

Caring for one another even in these times of COVID is almost impossible, simply because we don’t know each other well enough to know how to help. The answer is for people with the spiritual gift of “caring”, maybe this is you, you don’t need a diploma – just a spoonful of wisdom.  Enough wisdom to give counsel or even just listen to the children of God.

In order to do this consistently with your community, or your yoga community you must get to know your group if you have any hope of giving them consistent wise counsel.

What does this have to do with SIMPLICITY (which seems to have been our focus)? The answer is a simple one – we cannot enter a life of simplicity without the help of one another.  Covid is helping because it is causing us to re-evaluate everything that we do and have.  For example, some people need to take a rest from study, even yoga study, but they will never do it unless someone tenderly urges them to take this step of simplification.  Others need to be encouraged to get out of their attitude of laziness, procrastination and excuses and get back into their study.

Please do not read this in a structured way.  I am not talking about rules, or “shoulds”.  Just suggesting that we might try to find ways to receive and give help and counsel from people who have been gifted with the spiritual gifts of discernment and wisdom.  “The CARE OF SOULS” is an ancient ministry.  “Doing what you can, where you are, with what you have” (The Buddha).


I AM HERE FOR YOU – BE WHERE YOU ARE FOR OTHERS.

NAMASTE – JAHNE

 

 

Dear Yogis,

Have you ever in your life really, really taken on SILENCE? The Desert Fathers renounced speech in order to learn compassion.  I heard a story about the Abbot Macarius who said to the Church community in Scete , “Bretheren Flee.”  Confused, one of the community asked, “How can we flee farther than this, we are already in the desert?”.  Macarius put his finger to his mouth and told them “Flee from this.”  When Arsenius the Roman teacher who gave up everything he owned, money, wealth, status, for the quietness and solitude of the desert, prayed “Lord lead me in the way of salvation.” he heard a voice saying ‘BE SILENT.”

Silence changes us.  Not just being quiet for a little while – SILENCE. True silence frees us from the need to control others.  Most people won’t be silent because it makes them feel helpless.  Maybe we use words to manage and control others…a manic stream of words rushes out of us in a vain attempt to straighten others out.  We want people to agree with us.  We are constantly judging and trying to change others. Silence is one of the Deepest Disciplines of the Spirit because it puts an end to that aspect of our life.

Maybe this time of Covid is the perfect opportunity to put aside activity to learn to pray/meditate.  Prayer is at the centre of The Desert Experience. To pray is to change. To pray is to welcome into our lives the simplicity of detachment and compassion (prayer in action).

SEE YOU ON THE PRAYER MAT.

NAMASTE.  JAHNE

Dear Yogis,

ZOOM
SATURDAY: 12.30 RESTORATIVE Yoga with weights and props   2pm MAKE YOUR OWN TAROT with a Watercolour introduction.
SUNDAY: 10AM YOGA TEACHER TRAINING (The Bhagavadgita) . Anyone interested welcome $20 per class with a free repeat next Sunday morning. Go to www.yogabeautiful.com.au – look on the home page for details.

 

SATURDAY AGAIN.  

Mushroom season is still with us…(especially in my area).  I have to remind you that whilst we are isolated with covid and it is lovely to walk in the forest and wonderful to forage for fungi MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.  Always refer to a book, or better still,  a fungi expert – before you put your prize in the stew.   I love making remedies as you know and I keep learning and making. My olive leaf extract is “legendary” (it saved me often enough too), and soon Red Reishi, Chaga and Turkey Tail mushroom tinctures will be on our shelves.  I have been encouraging you to use natural where you can, and include hemp in all your recipes.  We are on the change of seasons and usually that is when our immune systems need a helping hand, especially in a covid world..

SURVIVAL

It is a big word, and we need to know what it means to all of us.  What is the biggest single organism on the planet. Answer -Fungi. If you guessed a redwood tree or a blue whale, you would be wrong. The largest organism is a fungus.

Next time you purchase white button mushrooms at the grocery store, just remember, they may be cute and bite-size but they have a relative out west in the USA that occupies some 2,384 acres (965 hectares) of soil in Oregon’s Blue Mountains. Put another way, this humongous fungus would encompass 1,665 football fields, or nearly four square miles (10 square kilometers) of turf.

Armillaria has the unique ability to extend rhizomorphs, flat shoestringlike structures, that bridge gaps between food sources and expand the fungus’s sweeping perimeter ever more.

A combination of good genes and a stable environment has allowed this particularly ginormous fungus to continue its creeping existence over the past millennia. “These are very strange organisms to our anthropocentric way of thinking,” says biochemist Myron Smith of Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. An Armillaria individual consists of a network of hyphae, he explains. “Collectively, this network is called the mycelium and is of an indefinite shape and size.”  (The photo to the left and below is of rampant fungi near my home, not a honey mushroom, although I believe,  in the same family – Armillaria)

All fungi in the Armillaria genus are known as honey mushrooms, for the yellow-capped and sweet fruiting bodies they produce. Some varieties share this penchant for monstrosity but are more benign in nature. In fact the very first massive fungus discovered in 1992—a 37-acre (15-hectare) Armillaria bulbosa, which was later renamed Armillaria gallica—is annually celebrated at a “fungus fest” in the nearby town of Crystal Falls, Mich.

WHY SHOULD I KNOW?
Because scientists are discovering that this mycelium is a fantastic food source for bees.  Bees use it historically and in the examples above are assisted by bears which tear at trees (like cats on a scratching pole), allowing the mycelium  to be visible, and giving bees access.  Bees also are assisted when the mycelium in the ground and in fallen logs is made accessible, by animals or natural disturbances.

Knowledgable growers are now starting to grow different types of mycelium on rice and on wood chips to assist bee nutrition,  and have found they can reverse hive collapse by feeding a product they call MYCOHONEY which is a sweet syrup made from the sugars in mycelium. Is this important – not only important, critical for the the ongoing survival of bee colonies.

This mycelium is also finding its way into mushroom products for humans.  It is early days, but with the fungi measuring the size of 1,655 football fields, this potential nutritional source can help a lot of people.  Maybe this is the MANNA from heaven described in the bible? It was sweet, and occurred all along the route the Israelites took in their escape from Egypt. I think only Mycelium could do this.

Whilst this field of mushrooms above looks like individual fungi, lift the pine needles and you will find the white thread like mycelium connecting each fruiting body.  It is one organism.

THERE IS SO MUCH FOR US TO ATTEND TO, to understand,  in order for our planet to survive.  Our loss of connection to the earth and the Divine has left us without clarity, and without purpose.  We need to discover that the holy lives all around us (and within us).  Holy books are not just books of rules, but a pathway to consciousness. To manifest our creative gifts in this spiritually unimaginative world, we must create from the centre of our beings.  Our souls must encircle each other, and the planet, so that we may join with one another to create a workable civilisation.

JOIN WITH ME IN THIS.

NAMASTE.  JAHNE