Dear Yogis,

A practical, money saving newsletter this morning, whilst you are trying out the revelations in yesterday’s about meditation.

OK.  I got it.  So you are not going into the bush to forage no matter how great the results – and few of you have the room or the inclination to prepare, plant and wait for vegetables to grow, even in pots…. this may be tempered if Coles runs out of veggies, but may not apply to you today. mind you, Coles was running out of greens when I was in there over the weekend, and the “SPECIAL” price tag on an organic cabbage was (wait for it) $10!  I understand organic anything are more expensive because they are more labour intensive, but not $10 for a cabbage harder.  What will happen as this covid isolation and non-travel bites deeper?

There is an answer….Have you thought about SPROUTS and MICROGREENS?  These can be grown in glass jars in your kitchen, or in trays somewhere protected.  They give results quickly, are packed with nutrients, and you don’t have to go out in the cold!

Because they are an easy way to get vitamins, minerals and fibre easily and right away – clip and eat – I always have something growing in jars in the kitchen for clipping and sprinkling on soups, veggies and open sandwiches.    Recently I have been processing acorns for muesli and ointment, now have radishes and flax seed,  and over the coming weekend I have everything I need to start a few trays of seeds I have been storing,  Daikon being a favourite and top of the list.   I am trying my beautiful organic flax two ways 1. in a sprouting jar, and 2. as a micro green in a tray.  Chia, Alfalfa, Sunflower will all get a tray for themselves… it is easy.

When you start, some seeds will not go along with what you have planned for them at all.

Start (if you are a newbie) with Mung beans.. in about four days you will have a bundle of great greens to toss into your evening stir fry.  Lentils, peas, beans even buckwheat will try to please with lovely elegant little sprouts just waiting for a salad (or a pancake), to enhance.

If you are impatient, these are perfect.  They are quick, they are prolific, they are power packed…  the absolute easiest superfood, and great to start children in gardening.  When you buy seeds to use in this way, you can buy them on line, at grocery stores and nurseries.  You have to make sure they are within their sell-by date and all things being equal,  you should get about a 90%  germination result.   Choose young seeds over older ones because  germination rate diminishes with time.  Store in a cool dark drawer.  There is no difference between an organic seed and an ordinary one as far as reproduction and germination go.

They can be grown year round.  Doesn’t matter what is happening in the garden, they don’t care as long as the room temperature agrees with them.  Sprouts don’t care about light, although shoots need some.  A porch or a window sill will do just fine.

They are budget friendly, use almost no resources, and are champion producers turning 3oz of seed into 3 cups of food (Alfalfa even more).  You can plant them in your empty milk cartons halved lengthways and with a layer of soil, sand or cotton wool… just like in primary school experiments.  you can also use your throw-away plastic food containers.  You can use these plastic containers quite a few times before consigning them to the rubbish bin.

Soaking and sprouting is a smart way to go making valuable nutrients available – and in covid, nutrition is the number one consideration….. I will let you know how I go, and when I can I will share my seeds with you.  Flax I can share right away.

By the way Cumquats and other citrus are available right now.  You either have none, or you have so many you are letting them rot.  Don’t.  Use them or give them to someone who will use them.  I am making spiced oil with dried cumquat peel, preserved cumquats, cumquats in port, and I am thinking of chocolate dipped cumquat peel (when it is dried the peel is sweet).  What are you making….?

GROW, GROW, GROW..

NAMASTE.  JAHNE

 

 

Dear Yogis,

This covid experience experience is visiting us/me as a teacher,  and I am learning many things.   One of the things I have learned is that without you my life has less meaning.  I love teaching you, doing these newsletters, and next week, speaking to you via ZOOM. Something I never thought I would do. It is my challenge, and I have a few.

If I went to my monastery in this time I could fill my days with meditation, and spiritual routine dependent on no-one. I would have nothing to achieve, nothing except the routine to comply with. I could feel good because I would receive validation just for being there, just for making that choice. But I have not escaped to there, am not there;  like you – I am here.  I could even escape at home, and maybe you are doing it.

I know the planetary reasons I feel like I feel, I know about the retrograde (which will last a few months), and the tarot cards. I like finding reasons for how I feel…  My advice to self – turn around, look at the spiritual.  Because I am me, I am not giving up on what God has put in my heart. He is waiting for me to look again, and not settle for what appears to be.  I am waiting for our clouds to turn into rain, and new plants.  I am waiting for new ideas to grow into fruitful paths.

In the TOWER, the 16th card in my Tarot pack, I learn that there is an obstacle, a tiring one.  I could start to climb and give up, I could just curl into a ball and wait things out in which case nothing would change and things would get dark.  Or, I could climb down the ladder and run away, in which case I would learn nothing and once again, nothing would change, except I would have a feeling of failure. No matter what other choices I made I would know there was a Tower I did not climb, an opportunity I did not take.   The challenge, the Tower –  and no matter how far I ran, I would know I had given up.   Now is the time to climb the tower no matter the obstacles, no matter your imaginings…. plant good seeds, nurture them and watch them grow.

You have to have a made up mind and decide that abundance is on the way, look again and do what it takes.  Like me, you may be climbing today.  Have faith that you will have a sign of what God is doing in your life.  You will look at the world from the top of the tower.  Look again.  When you keep looking up,  keep climbing no matter the obstacles, you will be able to see what is your destiny.  Look up again.  There is a new beginning.  You wouldn’t be alive if there wasn’t something fantastic up ahead of you.

If you keep the faith, if you keep climbing your particular tower, doors will open, opportunity will track you down.  That stirring is new life.  Keep your faith stirred up, live with expectancy.  Your difficulties are set-ups, not set-backs.  No matter how things look in the physical,  rest in the Spirit.  You will still get what you have been promised.   You would not have the dream if there wasn’t a way for it to come to pass.  

Please let me into your world.  If you are interested in zoom yoga classes, weekly zoom teacher training sessions (most suitable for those who are struggling with the course), and zoom tarot and tarot training sessions…. please email me at yogafirst2@bigpond.com and I will give you the password and the code required. If you are not confident in this new technology – well, neither am I.  Let us learn together.

 I can’t give you what you want if I don’t know what it is you want.  EMAIL me.

 

Have a lovely day, no matter the weather, no matter the height of the tower.

NAMASTE – JAHNE

 

Dear Yogis,

I hope you had a wonderful Sunday, we at Teacher Training did.  I hope you can be at the next one.   It was a great class.  I did have a bad hair day – don’t often have those, might cut it off.  At present, there is no colour so I could donate it to charity.  A good use for hair.  I don’t know why colour should make a difference – but it does.

Anyway, we discussed seeds.  A good place to go because it takes in so much of what we do, what we don’t want to do, and what we hope for.  In the newsletters a week or so back we did discuss this, so dig in.

Today we are still speaking about the warrior.  We have thought about Tonglen meditation and if we all maintain the sincere motivation of wanting to take away the pains of others, in fact all living beings (including the covid virus), and providing every single living creature with their  fondest wishes and ultimate happiness, then according to the Buddhist teachers, learn to personally escape this life of suffering, ageing and death.

When we hurt another being we could not have hurt them unless they had an imprint (a seed0 in their mind that would force them to see themselves being hurt.  This would have been planted when they hurt someone in the past.

If they didn’t have this implant, this seed, then you could not have hurt them.  Nothing depended on the action – everything depended on the implant or seed.

Take for instance your acts of charity.  Any particular persons experience of poverty is the direct result of their own lack of charity, and cannot be changed unless they learn to give.  That does not mean we should do nothing.  Our own experience of giving, the intention to give, needs to be exercised for any being to experience  this expression of giving in action.  Confusing and seemingly contradictory, but not, when you think deeply enough.  Giving is the way of the warrior.  The second perfection is to live a wholly ethical life (following the yamas is the key) meaning not giving harm to any fellow creatures.

An important way is to not give in to anger when anger surfaces, at that moment when anger blazes.  There are layers of things that during the day upset us to a greater or lesser extent.  It appears to be an endless obstacle course.  As we discussed today, see them as opportunities, like the Ballet Dancer marooned in Death Valley.  Build an opera house,  live the dream. Dance your dream to reality.

I am yoga’ing a dream into reality,  We are doing our yoga, filling every class (hooray).  There are only three per class so it is easy to fill.  If you are coming look at the web site, if you decide on a class ring to discuss availability,  please bring ALL YOUR PROPS.  Disinfect them before you bring them back.

Once you have booked your space and paid, as it says on the web page, it is your space.  If you don’t come it’s your space and you have paid for it.    Like Zoom if you pay for classes and don’t take them, do you get your money back? Can you take another class free?  I don’t think so. I am like that, except I have not got 2 million people taking classes!  They could give you a freebie without feeling the pinch BUT THEY DON’T.

Please respond, please give me feedback otherwise it seems as if all these words go into the void.  That is OK of course.  I have said I will do this, and I do – my seeds are right and correctly planted.  The imprint is OK.  That is the only important thing.  But I am directing it to you – and you are not replying.  I am inviting you to the table, and you are not responding.  It is like asking a friend to morning coffee, and she doesn’t reply, she doesn’t come.  I am asking you to the blog.  Please come, please reply. It is about the seeds you are planting.

Have a lovely day.

NAMASTE  JAHNE