Fifty shades of good times

Tags

cycles of transformation, Energy, falling in love, Happiness, Health, inky silver highway of the universe, joy, jumping beans, moon glow, self-love, vitality

Of course there’s that old saying – and it’s apparently true – that the Sami people (NOT the Inuit, mind) have a vast array of words to describe snow.

Recently a certain reader of this blog (who never actually comments here and yet somehow, over the interwebs we’ve managed to strike up a friendship); wondered via IM, if my life must be going pretty well right now since I’m not blogging that much.

So I’ve been thinking about that idea that we only tend to write when things are not going well, or that we write less when we’re happy and life is great… I mean, when life is crappy, there’s a lot of material to work with, right? And when we’re happy, we’re happy. We tend to stop looking so hard when we’re in the zone of blissfulness. Right? Hmmmm…

I guess so. There’s a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest this could be a real phenomena. But I don’t think that that’s what’s going on for me.

Don’t get me wrong. Life at the moment is stupendously good. So good I’ve started wondering if I’m a little bit crazy because who the hell feels THIS good on a regular basis? Ha!

Instead, it’s more that I’ve been going through endless cycles of transformation. My health. My yoga practice. My yoga teaching. My work. It’s this whole thing of coming back into my own power (as cheesy as it sounds, right?).

A whole new set of mantras for me: Power. Health. Vitality. Energy. Happiness. Joy.

I’ve got that feeling you get (yep, I still remember even though it’s been an aeon so it seems) when you first fall in love. That rush of hormones and the way the world looks extra-bright-and-shiny. Nothing’s too much trouble. Life is just rocking-ly good in every possible way.

It’s like I’m getting to know happiness, as you would someone you’re dating. My own happiness – generated by my experiences in the world instead of being brought on by the close proximity of someone I’m dating (because readers of this blog know that I’m still 100% date-free, sadly).

And like the aforementioned snow, I’m finding that there are many shades of happiness to be discovered.

Like… pleasure to be alive that closely resembles a hive of jumping beans living just under my skin, grooving to the rhythm of their own funky tunes.

Or the way the moon glows and sends special secret just-for-you winks as it glints in the inky silver highway of the universe.

And how things I already enjoy that usually make me happy in that run-of-the-mill contented puppy kind of way (yoga, kirtan, being in nature, hanging with niece-lings etc)? Yeah, well now those things bring on all kinds of crazy highs.

I walk a little straighter. More and more, people stop me in the street to ask for directions as though I’ve got an “Ask For Help Here” neon sign blinking over my head. Strangers compliment my smile and I can’t remember the last time that happened before now.

Or this: one of my regular yoga students (someone I’ve felt a little connected to for a while now) suggesting we have lunch together and then refusing to let me pay. She made my head spin with compliments on my yoga teaching (I’m still such a newbie teacher you see) and tells me I’ve helped her so very, very much. We agree to hang out again some time.

I find myself asking: who is this person with all of this good stuff going on? She doesn’t resemble the reflection I’ve seen in the mirror for the past few years very much. In fact, my current reflection doesn’t resemble that old image of me at all…

This. This much happiness.

It’s crazy. As if I’ve fallen in love.

And perhaps I have. Only this time, it’s got nothing to do with the glory of some tall, dark ‘n’ handsome hottie admiring my many fine qualities. Or endless make out sessions that make a girl flush with glee. Or all the rest. You know.

What’ve I got instead?

Well, there aint no one else around to fall in love with except my own self.

Seems that 2012 is the year for developing a bit of self-love, eh?

Just ask Kerry or Nadine who are all up in the self-love business, too.

It’s good stuff people, I tell ya!

~Svasti

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Turning 4-0 and positively Hobbit-like

Tags

Bali, Beauty, Birthday, Forty pieces of silver, freedom from suffering, Happiness, hobbits, LoveX massage, Middle Earth, pampering, peace, spa day

[Note: this is a scheduled post]

Hopefully today I’m nowhere near a computer at all.

For shortly after midnight on AEDST (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time), I turn 40: the milestone many people either loathe or love.

Personally, I’m down with it all. Maybe its because I’ve already been through all sorts of life-upending crises, so I don’t need a mid-life one to shake things up.

If everything is going according to plan (like the rest of this trip to date), today will be spent doing yoga, meditating, having a wonderful breakfast, indulging in an Ubud-style spa day, writing and then whatever takes my fancy. I intend to partake of beauty, inner reflections, nature, pampering and good food, while immersed in the magic that is Ubud.

To celebrate I’ve got a couple of things for y’all.

First up…

I’m making like a hobbit from Middle Earth! But no, it’s got nothing to do with large hairy feet. In fact, mine are all nicely buffed and polished right now.

Those lil dudes have an awesome tradition of giving gifts to others on their birthday, and I’m following suit. Just because I’m feeling grateful for pretty much everything at the moment.

So I’m gonna purchase a few things while I’m here in Bali that’ll perhaps end up with YOU. You can trust they’ll be yoga themed and beautiful.

Right now I’m thinking I’ll buy three little gifts, since I only brought a tiny bag with me (a triumph of my packing abilities!). And it will be a lucky dip. As in, I’ll draw the winners and send them whatever I’ve bought and it will be a surprise. 😉

Sound good?

To put yourself in the running for a birthday present from me, just leave a comment below. Simple, yes?

Secondly, I present to you…

Forty pieces of silver (part 1 & part 2) – half a lifetime of learnings over two posts, coming over the next couple of days. Stay tuned!

So, happy birthday to me and happy birthday to you, too.

May all beings know beauty, peace, happiness and love. May all beings know freedom from suffering.

Enjoy your day or your evening and know that I’m thinking of my lovely blog readers, friends and family (at least a little bit) while I indulge in blissful pursuits, self-care and enjoy my birthday present to myself (a short trip to paradise!).

[Edit: the winners have been drawn!]

Much love,

Svasti xxx

Don’t put off your happy life

Tags

Happiness, Inspiration, Karma Card Project, Love, positivity

I’ll admit it – I’m copying Nadine here, but it’s for a good cause – for spreading some love and positivity around!

The above image is from Yes and Yes’ Karma Card Project.

Go check it out and either buy some cards or download the artwork (free) and sprinkle some inspiration around your part of the world, will ya?

~Svasti xo

Joyful living

Tags

bleeding from the heart, Cycling, Depression, Friends, Happiness, Jill and Kevin's wedding dance, joy, Nieces, Skiing, yoga classes, Yoga teacher

Watched this today…

Found my eyes were leaking (a bit) and I have to admit I felt a little envious of the joy being expressed.

Most of the time, we western-world folk do not express this much fun and happiness in our day-to-day lives. Or even weekly. Maybe not even monthly.

Sure, some people might. But most of us don’t due to habit, cultural acceptance, and generally because most people are bleeding from their hearts instead of singing.

Aren’t we?

We hurt, we try to keep our hurt to ourselves and we barely ever notice that everyone else around us is doing exactly the same.

This morning as I wandered around my flat getting ready for work, I realised that (for now) my interactions with depression are in recess.

I’ve got more energy than I’ve had in ages and I can actually get out of bed in the morning with relative ease. I’m starting to be much more excited about becoming a yoga teacher (OMG, I’ll be qualified at the end of the year!).

And yet, still… it’s possible to wander around and feel less than joyful for most of the day or week. Especially when doing a job I could care less about (except for getting paid).

My joy comes from my yoga classes, my nieces, cycling, and talking to my friends (most of them live far away).

But this morning I also realised I could add more joy into each day.

A little like the way BlissChick schedules time to dance regularly.

Because joy shouldn’t be something we experience infrequently like clinging to a life raft within a sea of unhappiness…

Then there’s Tricia’s latest post (a meme) – 6 things that make you happy.

There’s a world of difference between depression going away and actively seeking out the things that make you smile.

While the thrall of depression has lifted, the habits I formed to cope with that existence also need to be broken down. The staying in and not socialising. The having fewer expectations of my life. The not taking care of my appearance or what I eat. The not looking to the future… these are but a few.

In Tricia’s comments, I wrote my own 6 things that make you happy list (definitely in no particular order):

1. Thinking about becoming a yoga teacher
2. My fan girl night (meeting my celebrity crush earlier this year) – still makes me smile!
3. My glorious nieces
4. My yoga school’s spiritual home in north-east Thailand
5. Snow skiing
6. My wonderful friends (both virtual and IRL kinds)

It’s not a bad list, but if the meme had asked for 10 things, I might’ve come up a little short.

Which is ridiculous when there’s so many things to be happy about, right?

So. Here’s to the energy behind the wedding dancers in the video.

Even if we don’t actually break into dance as we wander throughour days, we each deserve the feeling that goes with this kind of celebration.

And I’ve decided the next step to climbing out of the dark, dank abyss of depression includes adding more activities into my life that are designed to tap into that kind of joy. Yes!

I’ll let you know how I go.

~Svasti

Yoga retreat notes & good news

Tags

Depression, Happiness, Homa, Mudra, PTSD, Reincarnation, Retreat, Sanskrit, Thailand, Yagya, Yoga

Feels like an absolute age since I wrote a post, but actually it’s only been a week (didya miss me or what?).

I’m finally back home after a very wonderful break. Got in last night, actually.

And I realised, last week was the first time I’ve actually stopped doing stuff (non-stop) for six months – since I got back from Thailand.

There was the Great Job Hunt for a couple of months there… then a month of schlepping a long distance commute once I actually had a job (bus plus two trains) to work every day, from my parents’ place in Suburbia-Urbia to the city.

Then there was the house hunt, then moving, Christmas, unpacking for a good two months and finally… a week of bliss, hanging with some of my very good friends, studying things I like studying. Ahhhhh…

There, in a large double story house in western Sydney, we had little to do but hang out together, focus on our studies, meditate, do yoga, cook, eat and swim. Very relaxing…

Did I mention I was surrounded by people who love me? People who’ve known me for years, fellow students of my Guru? [grins]

So, besides relaxing, what did I accomplish? Well…

• I’m now confident, when faced with a page full of transliterated Sanskrit, that I can pronounce (most of) what I see. I can break it down, sound it out and figure out how it goes together. I can work out the meter it’s chanted in too, for the most part. I even know the meaning of a bunch of said Sanskrit words.
• I can perform puja with sixteen upacaras (offerings). I’m not 100% brilliant yet… but well on the way.
• Not to mention yagyas/homas (fire ceremony) – especially with my brilliant new sruk and srva (offering implements) carved from Jack fruit and all the way from Bali (brought back by one of my friends). They’re cool – the sruk is ‘female’ and the srva is ‘male’ (photos to come).
• Oh! And you should see my mudras (ritual hand gestures)! I mean, really!! We learned around twenty or so… and lemme tell ya, it aint easy. Fingers are generally pretty stiff (mudras are yoga for fingers) and given my entirely undiagnosed dyslexia… well, when you’re trying to work out which finger connects with another… hmmm, it can be challenging. But by the last day, I’d finally conquered ‘denhu’ mudra (cow mudra) – the most complex of the lot!
  And before you ask, photos of mudras will be later this week…

Now, for the news!

Then, while I was up there, only logging on once a day or so to check emails… I got the email I’d been waiting for.

I was accepted into a certificate level Hatha Yoga Practitioner training course!

Hooray!!

The course can be done as a one year certificate, but it’s also the first year of a two year Advanced Yoga Teacher Training course.

So, it’s a step towards my goal of attaining yoga teacher qualifications, which is important in a number of ways.

Ideally I want out of working in my current industry. Actually, I’d be happy if I could do that part-time and then teach yoga and belly dancing part-time as well.

There was a time, many years ago now… where I made a decision. I abandoned my hippie/arty lifestyle in favour of earning some decent money. I’d struggled on not much money for a long time and bit the bullet.

It was the beginning of working in the corporate world. A place I never felt very comfortable, but which afforded me all kinds of opportunities – study, travel, and finding my way into my current line of work.

I’m part way there, having left the realm of the corporate world (with no plans to return); I’m now working in small business as a consultant.

But having emerged from the worst (I hope so anyway) of my depression and the deathly grip of PTSD flashbacks… I want to make another choice.

Happiness.

I want happiness. I want to do work that speaks to my heart and soul, and that’s aligned with my spiritual path. I want to love my job, not just like or tolerate it.

Because I’m tired. Of doing things for other people, putting my own needs second to other things and people. Y’see, if I’m happy, then I can serve others so much better!

Life isn’t meant to be so hard. We create our own suffering, feeling we ‘have’ to do certain things. Because society, family or friends expect us to. Because we’re told that’s how life is.

Well, I say screw that.

My theme for 2009 (if I had such a thing, and I don’t really) is something like taking the reins. Taking control, cutting through the bullshit, and bringing more peace and joy into my life.

Coz damn, regardless of whether there’s such a thing as reincarnation, we only ever live one life at a time.

I’m determined to be of service to others, to bring my external and internal worlds into alignment.

And regardless of whether anyone else is, I’m planning on being proud of the life I’ve led…

~Svasti

Defenceless

Tags

Defenceless, Fear, Happiness, House of mirrors, Post-traumatic stress, PTSD, Pustule, Strong, Vulnerable

It’s time for the invasion.

Though… seems it’s me, willingly opening the gates.

One by one barriers and boundaries have dropped away. The deeper I dig, the less I have by way of protection.

That’s a good thing, I say, to no one but me.

Dangerous… fighting for my sanity half-naked. Perhaps…

Yet, how else to reclaim what’s mine? How else to eject a festering seeping pustule?

I see now how you’ve held me. With your naturally repugnant scent inducing fear at twenty paces. Hackle-raising, gut wrenching, agonising.

But it’s a trap.

A scary house of mirrors playing mind games so real… so real I can’t remember what it’s like ‘outside’.

Wisdom arrives and says: The constructs that protect me also keep me within the grasp of those I’m defending against.

One begets another, each making the other more real, more concrete, self-perpetuating…

And then I know the only answer there is: There’s no going back to how things were…

If it’s my happiness I want, the way isn’t back to a place where that pain never was.

That place, it doesn’t exist any more. If it ever did… there is only now.

And neither is it the way, just sitting where I am. Waiting. Hoping. Ignoring won’t work any longer. Can’t truly forget… and distractions never last.

I must walk through the center. Spot-lit and unlovely, not even ready for a fight. No defences.

Here I am, so I say. Come on, then…

I’m learning your ways. Just a spectre here, not real. Your entry is via my waking nightmares… where you live again. Solidifying in my projections, gaining strength.

I’ve just remembered something though, standing here bereft of armour.

A lesson learned once, and now returned.

You can hurt me all you like but I won’t be giving in. There’s a point (perhaps I’m not there quite yet) at which vengeance loses impact.

So while I may look weaker, I’m prepared.

And I grow tired of this game…

~Svasti

Hormonal warfare

Tags

Anxiety, Desire, Eye contact, Happiness, Hormones, Intimacy, Positive, Red wine, Senses, Sensual, Sex, Spring, Tapas, Waking up

I’m like a little seed, dusty and dry but full of potential. A seed that’s been sitting in the garden shed in the dark for a very long time. Waiting. With no reason to think there was a way out from that unnatural yet safe place I’ve sheltered in, weathering the storm of recovery.

Perhaps the change of season has something to do with it?

For rather suddenly I feel exceptionally alive! It’s Spring, not yet Summer. But the weather is becoming reliably warmer and more beautiful. There’s a flavour to the air. A warm caress on the breeze. Cascading blossoms of every colour to take in with the eyes and nose.

It’s almost like I’ve never used my senses to engage with the world before. Not properly. Not like this. I can feel every hair follicle on my head. No situation is without intense sensory involvement.

Could it be… could I be… finding some happiness? Possibly really waking up after this seemingly endless numb-out?

There are difficulties still, but they take center stage less and less.

However there’s one issue that currently looms larger than any other.

Sex. Intimacy. Or the lack thereof. I posted about this topic a few months back.

Once again comes into view. The first trigger was the boy who’s recently been paying me some attention in a coy kind of way.

That situation created a lot of anxiety for me. I didn’t know how to respond at all. Especially if someone’s not being up front. I can barely hold a decent conversation with the guy, as sweet as he is. I guess that means it’s simply not right anyway. Surely if it was, it would be much easier. That doesn’t stop the anxiety running ten to the dozen though!

And I’ve just begun to realise how often I go out of my way to avoid eye contact with men I don’t know.

In that respect it was tough starting my new job, in which I have to deal with new people every day at the moment. New clients to talk to regularly. Some of them are men. It’s been a swift learning curve though, so I’m grateful for that.

And yet… gawd, there are periods each day where I’m totally and completely overwhelmed by my desire to be, erm, getting it on!!

I have the hormones of a teenager.

Except for one very minor blip, there’s been nothing on the radar at all in the last three years. So I’m apparently stuck in this way a little… because I can’t wilfully lift out of this issue with the same effort I’ve applied in almost every other area of my recovery.

I’m afraid of getting what I want, and I want it badly… but I also don’t know how to get there. And if I do get there, I’m not sure if I’ll feel safe and secure.

Amusingly, I think all that sexual energy is being sublimated into other areas of my life. I nearly lost it completely over dinner with friends on Friday night. Granted, we were eating some of the most delicious tapas I’ve had in years. I was also drinking some pretty spectacular red wine… it was very intense and sensual.

I’m just grateful for the mercies of meditation practice that help redistribute the rest of that energy!

~Svasti