Dear Yogis,

What a gorgeous weekend, sunshine, mild breeze and for more than 10 minutes, perfectly designed for “spring cleaning” and I started.  I am still mildly decluttering.  I walk around the house and all I can see is stuff. Lovely stuff but totally meaningless.  I have always thought that houses and their contents are everything we don’t need, and that is why, from a material point of view, losing everything in Ash Wednesday bushfire was accepted calmly. I knew I hadn’t dealt completely with the material, and stuff would come back, and it has with a vengeance (starting with a sculpture of the buddha’s head).  It started the day after the bushfire.  I was trying to walk off into the sunset, but the world hadn’t dealt with me yet, so everything conspired to keep me – and I went with it.  One foot in –  one foot out.

My look has changed little over the years (except my hair) but one thing has not, the fact that on any day I am probably wearing one of three outfits I like and find usable in the studio and for lunch.  I have done a little there but there is heaps to go. The next step is to get rid of about half.

The hardest is going to be the bookshelves.  This makes clearing the clothes look easy.  First I have to decide what I am going to be, do and have before I can clear the books.  My dad read to me before I was born, and I was able to read by the time I was about four.  Even then I treasured my books almost as much as my brushes and paints.  I read fast with good comprehension, so I can get a book in the morning and have it read by the time I go to bed.  A student asked me if I had read all my books.  The answer is yes – and now they are friends.  How can I get rid of friends.  I love them more than most folk love their toilet rolls.

The kitchen is easy, as is the office. The bathroom has been culled but not entirely…  Now that we are going through covid the world will be different when lock downs are over (if they ever really are).  We are forced to face the clutter.  You can decide to live with it, find more designer boxes for it to inhabit, or you can chuck most of it out.

When I lived at home and did the declutter my mum used to say “Don’t throw it away. You spent good money on that!!!” A guilt trip of her making born during wars, depression, migration and privations of all sorts.  Mum even saved and stored string and brown paper bags.

When you are part way through decluttering you will be able to keep going because you will realise as I have done,  it is not about wasted money, dreams and opportunities, but the beginning of saved money, saved dreams and saved opportunities.

TALKING ABOUT OPPORTUNITIES. Please visit the web site.  Look at the home page under ZOOM or the menu under the topic you are interested in and sign up for the lectures, courses on offer.  I look forward to seeing you.

NAMASTE – JAHNE

Dear Yogis,

Another Zoom Teaching yesterday, which, apart from a beginning hiccup went smoothly.  We loved it.  I loved it (which I never thought I would say).

Coming ZOOMS  
HYPERMOBILITY: Tuesday 7.30 to 9pm. $35 (starts on July 28th) for the  lecture series of 3 sessions on the topic . You have long said you wanted to know more, but have not used the books and youtube we have offered – as shown in your modules.  Here is another way.  Please join us.

TAROT TRAINING COURSE: Saturdays at 2pm to 4pm.  This is full. But you can be put on the wait list for the next series. The course costs $157 which includes a deck of Revelation Tarot Cards.  If you have taken the course and want a refresher $50 to join the class for ongoing sessions. Join as many you like in groups of three sessions.

TEACHER TRAINING:  First Sunday in each month $20. This month we are speaking of The Yamas and The Purushatras.

TEA LEAF READING: The course.  Saturday mornings 10 to 12noon date to be decided, please register your interest.  Includes cards and kit.  $225 for six sessions.   We are waiting for the cards to be printed – they are this new..  Until they arrive we will use the old method of tea and pot.  Once the cards are printed I will send you the Card Kit.

To join any of these ZOOM classes.  
1.Let me know you want to join.  
2. Direct Debit the fee into Commonwealth Bank
BSB 063 806 Account 1019 1251 Yoga First.  
3. When I have this I will send you the course ID and Password so you can get into the  ZOOM class.

I am not a techno whizz.  I am learning about ZOOM every time I use it.  There can be misunderstoods, there can be small difficulties,  BUT we seem to get there in the end.  We help each other out until everything is smooth.  You don’t have to be fabulous to join.  Not in tech or in yoga.  We learn from each other.  Please join us.

 

YOGA:

This morning I offer you words from LIGHT OF ASIA by Sir Edwin Arnold.  It is a treasured book of mine and in verse describes the birth life and teachings of The Buddha.

“Enter the Path! There spring the healing streams
Quenching all this! there bloom the immortal flowers
Carpeting all the way with joy! there throng
swiftest and sweetest hours!

More is the treasure of the Law than gem:
Sweeter than comb its sweetness: its delights

Delightful past compare.  Thereby to live
Hear the FIVE RULES aright:-

Kill not – for Pity’s sake – and let you slay
The meanest thing upon its upward way.

Give freely and receive, but take from none
By greed, force, or fraud, what is his own.

Bear not false witness, slander not, not lie:
Truth is the speech of inward purity.

Shun drugs and drinks which work the wit abuse;
Clear minds, clean bodies, need no soma juice.

Touch not thy neighbours wife,
neither commit Sins of the flesh unlawful and unfit.

…. Scatter not rice
but offer loving thoughts and acts to all.  
To parents as the East where rises the light:
To teachers as the South whence great gifts come:
To wife and children as the West where gleam
Colours of love and calm, and all days end;
To friends and Kinsmen and all men as North;
To humblest living things beneath, to Saints
And Angels and the Blessed Dead above:
So shall all evil be shut off, and so the six main quarters will be safely kept.

Have a lovely weekend/week.  Join us when you can.

NAMASTE.  JAHNE

 

Good morning Yogis,

I hope that we are back on air,  there was a hiccup, not with my writing, but with Mailchimps sending practices.  So, over the next couple of weeks, I am going to comb through the contacts we send the newsletters to, and if you never respond, if you haven’t clicked on it and read it (yes computers record this), I will take you off the list.  If I am left with just a few dedicated readers, well, it is what it is.  Buckle up guys.  It is a time of decision and weeding in this particular garden.

BEES:  Studying bees is like studying ourselves.  My palate never gets sick of the taste of honey, and because I love honey I have always admired the insects who magically make it.  I also am in awe of their community has often been the model for human society.  You can find references in Virgil, in Homer, in Plate Shakespeare, Marx and Tolstoy and of course our special friend Pliny the Elder.  His book, completed in AD77 …

Bees have a government. They pursue individual schemes but have collective leaders.  What is especially astonishing, they have manners more advanced than those of other animals, whether wild or tame.  Nature is great in  that from a tiny, ghost like creature she has made something incomparable.  What sinews or muscles can we compare with the enormously efficiency shown by bees?  What men in heavens name, can we set alongside these insects which are superior to men when it comes to reasoning? FOR THEY RECOGNISE ONLY WHAT IS IN THE COMMON INTEREST.

The inscriptions on many old beehives reads “NON NOBIS” meaning We work but not for ourselves”.  When in old drawings we see the old fashioned SKEP hive, it stands for some view of the goodness of work.  Sometimes this skep encourages us to reflect on the golden age of the past when work was simpler and slower.  However, in the bees world, there are no sickies, no holidays.  You are born, you work you die, no time off even to go to school..  No sooner had man admired the life of the bee and their tirelessness than he felt that he (or his wife) should emulate them in some way.

In Victorian times (as noted by Mrs. Beeton) the beehive was a symbol of industry.  It shows in one illustration that the world could be ordered.  A world in which different people did different tasks and no one envied the position of their neighbour.  A place for everyone and everyone in their place.  Like good supermarkets, industries, and families, a  good hive needs a balance of foragers and receivers.

At this time of covid there is much we can learn and receive from bees.  Honey has long been known as a medicine and strengthener of the bronchi. Muhhamed Ali the boxer took a mixture of vitamins and honey before his fights… and said that he “…danced like a butterfly, stung like a bee”.

Is there a beehive in your garden? Is honey part of your diet? Try my honey cough drops you will find the recipe on www.wildnweedy.blogspot.com.

Let me know you are there.  Don’t forget we will be zooming Teacher Training, The Tarot Training and Anatomy/Physiology lectures.  

NAMASTE.  JAHNE