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Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

~ Recovery from PTSD & depression + yoga, silliness & poetry…

Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

Tag Archives: Rockwiz

Kudos & house guests

12 Wednesday Aug 2009

Posted by Svasti in Awards, Fun, Life

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

antique coffin, bellydance, blog award, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, cat flu, Cleo, cranky horse, cursive writing, Dead Can Dance, Egypt, Espy Hotel, handwriting, house guest, Interview with the Vampire, late night contemplation, Meme, Miss Cleopatra the Cat, pyramids of Giza, Rockwiz, snoring, True Blood, vampires, whoosh, Yulunga

Its been busy over here in Svasti-land, where yoga teacher training swallows my Saturdays whole (takes the rest of the week to digest every succulent morsel), and a family visit on Sunday which should’ve taken up only 65% of my waking day instead took the whole dang thing (result of train break downs and seemingly generous offer of a ride from parental unit, but oh, we’ll drop you and your bike off at a train station as close as possible to us and as far as possible from your place). Its my fault, I shouldn’t have assumed they’d do otherwise.

Yup, the weekend went whoosh!

Consequently, not much writing was done, even though on Friday my wonderful-super-special-lotus-book arrived (from the marvellous Karin). I love it!! And to introduce it to its new home, I’ll take it sightseeing (for inspiration) and some happy snaps of my little treasure seeing some of the landmarks of Melbourne-town.

Here it is this morning, catching a tram to work with me… more photos to come (in another post)!

(You can click on all pics to enlarge)

It was rather foggy this morning

And… for the next week I have a house guest! He’s the 23 year old son of one of my fellow yoginis. In fact, she and I shared a bamboo hut together for four weeks in Thailand last year where I inflicted her with my snoring on a nightly basis, poor thing. Maybe sending me her son is payback?

Nah! 😉

He’s here from Brisbane (major climate difference to deal with) doing some work experience in sound engineering, interning with the Guy in Charge of Sound for Rockwiz – which is filmed in the iconic and handily positioned Espy Hotel.

Lucky thing!

He arrived Monday night, so there’s been plenty of good hostess duties going on and yup, not much time for writing (except when I’m at work where there’s little else to do! Haha…)

Blog lurvvvve

Seems I’ve won the jackpot of blogger-friend love, with BlissChick, Brooks & Linda-Sama all listing me as fellow blog award folks for the exact same award!

This is it!

This is it!

Personally, I think that’s kinda cool to be triple tagged. They’re all very special chicks, so I am honoured!

And I also think that given this warm three-sided embrace (nothing dirty here folks, move along!) I should respond. But hey, you’re only getting one lot of seven things from me.

Tidbits about me I haven’t told you before (I think) x7

1. Call it the curse of being taught cursive writing in primary school, but I have two types of “E”, “s” and “F/f” that I produce in my handwriting. I never know which one I’m going to use until it arises. This is what they look like…

Notice the variations on F, S and E!

Notice the variations on F, S and E! (This is really how I write)

2. Sunday night when I really needed some sleep, instead I was kept wide awake with contemplations on the nature of fire, fiery natures, anger and sex. All topics I’m chewing on at present. There might be a post or two in there somewhere and I’ll share with y’all sometime (perhaps).

3. I’ve got a bit of a thing for vampires and own the entire series of both Buffy and Angel on DVD. Plus season one of True Blood (awesome show). I dream of them every now and then, and it’s always an adventure.

4. I was once stood on by a very cranky horse. While I was on holiday in Egypt, believe it or not. We were planning a jaunt around the pyramids of Giza – my boyfriend on a camel and me on a horse. I’d been persuaded this particular horse was okay to ride even though I really didn’t think he was. So we start riding and the horse was definitely not okay. He veered away from where we were meant to be going, wouldn’t respond to riding commands, dumped me in a puddle and came back around to stand on my left inner thigh. For the rest of the trip, I had an enormous bruise which was a little tough to explain at the swimming pool!

5. My very first ever belly dance performance was held as part of a very fun dress up night one of my ex-boyfriends and I organised when the movie Interview with the Vampire premiered (see point 3). We organised approximately forty people to head to the movie all dressed up like vampires, arriving in style in stretch limos.

Interview with the Vampire group at the premiere in Sydney

Yes, I'm in this photo somewhere...

After the movie we wandered a few blocks from the city to Darlinghurst. There, we’d booked out the entire upstairs area of a fantastic Indian restaurant in a gothic styled building. A friend brought an antique coffin (of course) as a center piece.

Goth kids sitting on a coffin

A coffin, candelabra & plenty of gothicness

We had a quartet of violinists (buskers we’d met on the street) playing as people arrived. And my debut bellydance performance was there, among that environment. I danced to one of my favourite tunes, Yulunga by Dead Can Dance, and I absolutely loved it!

My first ever performance as a belly dancer!

That's me with the veil!

6. As a result of much dancing, performing and teaching others, I developed a theory about human movement (I later realised its not an original observation at all – just tapping into existing knowledge in the world). Its especially clear when people dance – most people either move with their head/neck/genitals/limbs only, or head and heart plus limbs/genitals. Very few people move with their whole body, or sense their lower torso. Even fewer have the ability to isolate the muscles in this area.

Its no coincidence that the lower torso is where we store suppressed emotions and fears. They live in the body until we work with them, and/or they make us sick. Bellydancing especially is great for liberating that part of the body and its one of the reasons I like teaching men as well as women to shake their thang.

I also firmly believe that all kids should be taught to dance and learn at a young age so they avoid feeling self-conscious.

7. Last week Miss Cleopatra (Cleo) the Cat decided it was a good time for a dose of cat flu. Which caused a lot of worry and necessitated a trip to the vet. The vet of course, informed me she also needs approximately $500 worth of dental work in the next couple of months. Sigh.

Payin’ it forward…

You’re also meant to pass this on to seven other people. For the first time in ages, I’m playing along. But only coz there’s some people I’d like to learn a little more about…

  • Holly from Earth to Holly
  • Christa from Giggle On!
  • Amanda from Anthroyogini
  • Mama Dharma
  • Clinically Clueless
  • Caroline of Laughing Yogini
  • Jaliya of A Post-Cynical Seer (and a couple of other blogs too)

~Svasti

-37.814251 144.963169

Kymberly Getting Flattened

16 Monday Feb 2009

Posted by Svasti in Awards, Fun, Therapy

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Anne Hathaway, blog award, Blood moon, Ella Hooper, EMDR, Friday 13th, Hoodoo Gurus, Magic Dirt, Rachel Getting Married, Rockwiz, Sidney Myer Music Bowl, SPiderbait, The Laughing Yogini, The Seekers, Therapy, Twitter

On Sunday, someone I adore told me via Twitter to cheer the fuck up – which made me giggle… seriously I’ve been a little maudlin lately. I know it, okay??

New therapist

Friday’s session with the new therapist was pretty much just a history taking session. All about me (not a topic I enjoy so much). Before I even got there I’d already cried at work… cycled a short way to the therapist’s place then cried again before three sentences had passed my lips.

It’s still such a large glowing ball of pain and grief with the power to open one of its many waterways at the drop of a hat – which really annoys me. As I told AN (new therapist), I’m sick to death of it all.

But AN thinks she can help clear out all of the physiological responses, the trauma reactions that make no sense. Stuff that’s preventing me from moving forward. GOOD!

I’ll see her again in two weeks for a two hour session – she says it won’t be easy, but the effort will be worth it. Fingers crossed, eh?

Got home from that session, sat still for a bit while the internal car crash of my emotions slowed down and stopped reverberating through my molecular structure.

Rocking under smoky skies

Luckily for me, that evening (Friday 13th) was far from unlucky.

My very good friend L had gotten us tickets for some event – I wasn’t even sure what it was. She just said – be outside the Arts Center at 6.30. Cool.

It was a brilliant night, unexpectedly so! There’s a very funky TV show here in Australia called Rockwiz, and in honour of the 50th anniversary of the Sidney Myer Music Bowl (fashioned after the Hollywood Bowl)… they did a live show there… under the smoky skies and blood red setting sun, tangible evidence finally, of the bushfires surrounding Melbourne.

Essentially it’s a music quiz show involving both members of the audience and rock stars making up teams. Between question sets are live performances of various songs related to the theme of the night.

We were also treated to a performance by a very youthful looking Judith Durham (wearing an outfit from her 70’s wardrobe) plus Ella Hooper (used to be Killing Heidi), Cram from Spiderbait, Adalita from Magic Dirt and a whole bunch of others. Lots of good musos!

The night ended with a classic 80’s Aussie rock band – the Hoodoo Gurus – playing a mini set of their hits (including Come Any Time, What’s My Scene, Bittersweet, 1000 Miles Away). The Hoodoos still rock!

Got home though, and noticed the moon… nasty looking reflection of the fires (still) consuming my home state.

Again with the blog awards

Woke up Saturday to discover the lovely Caroline of Laughing Yogini had bestowed the Triple Award on this blog… must be award season again ’round these parts.

[Pranamming deeply in gratitude for the acknowledgement]

One day I’m gonna just hand the lot of them out to a bunch of blog folk, but it won’t be today!! 😉

Rachel Getting Married

On Sunday, by some happy accident (my own inability to get places on time), I’d intended to see Milk, but ended up watching Rachel Getting Married instead.

Personally, I’ve sub-titled the movie Kymberly Getting Flattened.

A really amazing move, but capable of causing lots of tears. It’s not lightweight viewing.

Containing more than enough ‘ouch’ moments I could relate to, there was also plenty I couldn’t.

Like… the outbursts of intensely personal arguments in front of others. I found myself feeling quite mortified on Kymberly’s (Anne Hathaway being brilliantly dark) behalf when family secrets are vomited in front of family-in-law to be, friends and strangers alike.

My family just never does that shit, and while I recognise the benefit of speaking freely like that… it’s akin to running a rake over my soul.

Kym has a dark secret. One of those ‘don’t go there’ stories, stuff everyone in the family desperately wishes never happened. I can relate…

The person about whom so much is avoided and ignored, although not entirely. Where no one wants to face up to the reality, or to their own part in what happened. And everyone tries to pretend it’s over but then, hits a speed bump drawing ugliness from the depths.

Reflected in Kym’s misery and deep abiding self-loathing, she even managed to say it out loud – I can’t forgive myself.

For how many of us does this ring true? Certainly, it’s something I struggle with.

Not to mention the intense sisterly dynamics, the emotionally distant mother, the father trying to keep it all together (and not very well).

There were times in the movie when I palpably felt Kym’s wish for obliteration, way before she crashed the car… a wish I’ve had for myself more than once.

Thing I liked most of all is the way the movie ends – Kym isn’t healed, no one has magically gotten better. Life goes on imperfectly, everyone doing what they can. Loving each other as you do with family, but not necessarily liking everyone all the time.

Kym has the sort of strength I think you can only get from being wounded and making a firm decision to get better – and her power is in her resolve, as fragile as that might seem at times.

Again, I can relate…

~Svasti

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