sadness & gratitude

Guruji r.i.p.


Aum
Trayambakam Yajamahe
Sugandhim Pushtivardhanam
Urva Rukamiva Bandhanaat
Mrityor Mokshiye Maamritat
Svaha





light and love

i wish i was the moon

on my way home tonight i met a little hedgehog who'd strayed from his neighborhood, probably the park a block away from where we met. i was still so amazed - never have i seen a hedgehog on a city street! poor thing, i hope it found it's way back home again...

another long day...

... has come to an end. i'm so tired and really should be in bed by now... all i can think of is how i'm gonna be able to wake up tomorrow and drag myself to practice? tomorrow, though, i'm not in such a hurry. if i can only get to the shala reasonably early i will have time to do my whole practice.

you can tell spring is here and that the temperature is warmer because there is a really nice heat in the shala these days. it doesn't take as long to work up a good body heat and a nice sweat. soon we will have to open windows if we're not to faint from overheating ;-)

i do love my shala! we're a nice little group who sweat together every other morning and we have a very dedicated teacher taking such good care of us. some day when i'm not this tired and have a little more time i'll write a little more about my shala mates and the wonderful room i've landed in. i imagine it's a lot like Liz's shala over in Austin. whenever she's telling stories about their group i feel like she's talking about us :)

are you human?

this has sort of been my theme song today... i love the rhythms and the mystical tone of it, especially the last minute or so. it's been my friend in the ipod all day long.



i was expecting a crazy day when i woke up this morning. it kinda was, but not as crazy as i could've been, had all the things that were planned come true. lucky me they didn't. but still, i've been running from a meeting to the next, having just moments in-between to get other stuff done. and the rest of this week looks a bit the same... ugh... what a contrast to the relaxing life i had this weekend!

my mind is blank at this point... i'm so tired i can hardly recognize any verbal thoughts at all. i should just get to bed fast now. tomorrow i need to be at the shala really early if i am to have a decent practice. so, goodnight, sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite!

Gemini

on the boat, on my way back home after a lovely couple of days with Gemini. it's been a pleasant mixture of work an relaxation. she also treated me twice, needles and she got to try out her new moxa-lamp. really, REALLY nice :) imagine laying on the bed, all covered up with blankets and covers, with acupuncture pins in all the little trigger points that usually hurt and give you pain. and on top of this, a constant heat coming from this 'lamp', warming the achy shoulder, scaring all the cold and pain away... i almost fell asleep!

she's a very special person, my Gemini. she amazes me all the time, so wise and strong. i forget she's so much younger than i am, but then i realize that all the energy she has is of course much due to her youth. me, i'm an old lady in comparison ;) anyway, sometimes it's like she can see right trough me. so very observant and curious. always asking questions. it's like she's constantly building a puzzle. but it's not only for her own 'pleasure' or 'fun', it's because she wants the best for people around her. being educated in traditional chinese medicine and acupuncture she's diagnosing through watching and listening to people. you can get statements from her like "he's got a weak liver", "there's a lot of wind in her neck" or "you have weak yang". so, i have cold and wind in my left shoulder. she's also working on balancing my yang, since that imbalance is the reason for my winter depressions. and she's not only working with the pins. i often get moxa and also she has a little electric box that she connects to the pins to run electricity through them.

not to forget the food! i always get advice on what to eat and how to prepare food and so forth. today she gave me the recipe for a black bean soup with miso, ginger and sesame oil. soooo good and really easy to make. i have some in a jar with me here on the boat and now i'm going to heat it in the microwave oven at the cafeteria. yum!

here i am

i arrived to Gotland at midnight the day before yesterday and Gemini picked me up at the boat terminal. we slept at her friends place in the centre of Visby before going out to her house yesterday. we had a full day and so much to do, that i didn't have time for my assignment, bad girl...

Gotland is a beautiful island and the weather has been gorgeous since i arrived. still cold, but sunny with a clear bleu sky. spring is a little later here than in Stockholm, but here i have the time to really drink it in and enjoy the wonders of nature coming to life.

Gemini is renovating this house that have some parts as old as a couple of hundred years. let's just say there is A LOT to do. right now she's having a couple helping her to make a fantastic plastered brick stove, with a baking oven and it will also be the main source for heating in the wintertime. this couple have a business together where they build and make those very special stoves. she is russian and he is native here from Gotland. they are such a cute pair, lovely people! i think they stole my heart :)

the sun is setting and i'm sitting in Gemini's garden while she's finishing up some stuff. we got up at 6 this morning, did practice (we took resting day yesterday), had a long nice breakfast and after the couple arrived we took the car to go and run a lot of errands. when we got back at 2pm some friends of Gemini came over for lunch and we barbecued in the garden. so now, at 6.45pm, i'm totally done. i wonder if it's ok to go to bed already? ;)

yawn... (april 30)

today has been a long, long, ridiculously long day - started at 5.20am getting up to practice and it's now 9pm and i'm finally on the boat. (i'll have to post this later cause i can't seem to reach my wireless broadband from here.) ugh, i'm completely exhausted, on the edge of passing out... it takes about three hours to get there so it'll be midnight when poor Gemini is picking me up. we'll see if she's up to driving out to the house at that hour, or if we can borough her friend's flat in Visby and crash there till tomorrow.

jeez, i'm so exhausted i can't even write! my brain is shutting down. i'm in my seat and people are running back and forth around me - going to the bathroom, getting food in the canteen, finding their seats or whatever. i just had Karunesh's heart chakra meditation on the ipod and it's soooo soothing! i think i'm going to fall asleep as soon as i shut down the laptop.

saw my sweetheart Bumblebee today. there really wasn't enough time but i just didn't give a damn, i had to see her before going away. she's a fantastic kid, the youngest at her daycare, and everyone loves her because she's so cut and happy. since she started about a month ago she's developed so fast. i guess it's because she's trying to keep up with the older kids, doing the same things as they. was so amazed to see her climbing the ladder to the slide, all by herself!!!

ok, i'm breaking my own rules here... as i'm totally incapable to think this is taking waaaay to much time to write. so, i'll stop here. i think you get the picture. i'll take a nap and hope i can fall asleep when i finally get to go to bed, for real...

yawn...

of busy bees and bumblebees

been busy bee today! i hardly had time to stop for two seconds and think of anything else but work. tomorrow i'm taking half day off and half the day is free anyway since it's Walpurgis Night and on friday it's May Day which in this socialist country is a holiday, ha ha!

anyway, i'm not going to watch any bonfires tomorrow cause i'm going to Gotland to visit Gemini, my dear friend and acupuncturist, who bought herself a house there. the boat leaves in the evening and i wont be there until midnight, but i have about a ton of things i need to do before i go. first thing, of course, is practice and after i'm having breakfast with Gentle Rock. we try to do that after practice once in while but lately we both seem to have been so busy, having to run off to work as soon as we're done with practice. so, tomorrow we'll have a chance to catch up a bit more than a few words in the shala and comments on FB :)

after that i'll go home to pack, finish up some work i didn't have time for today and do my taxes... bleh... ya ya, it needs to be done so i'll just do it.

and then, in the afternoon, comes the prime of my day! i'll be going to pick up Bumbles at daycare :) yay! i just have to see her before i go away for the whole weekend. i'm looking at her lovely little face right now. here is the pic i have for the desktop background on my laptop.


oups, time's up and i'm going to bed. 15 minutes isn't much, but hey! that's the whole point of this assignment. i gotta be quick and dirty ;)

homework

this is an experiment. i have given myself as 'homework' to do every day for the coming weeks that i'm going to blog for 15 minutes every day. i should've started this last week, but i've been putting it off... haven't been able to push myself to do it! part of the experiment is that i should just write and not edit myself (too much!) and not do any spell checking (which i just did!). i think i'll just have to look at it as a process cause i just wont be able to let go of that completely, not just yet anyway...

so, i hope these 15 minutes will be enough time to just dump what's on my mind at the moment. i'll have to accept that sometimes it wont be a masterpiece, well, most of the time it wont, he he...

oh, the mamas and the papas just came on my play list - california dreamin'... on such a winters day... next winter i should really try to go to california!

i caught a cold last week and haven't been practicing since last thursday. but today i was back on my mat :) was ok, stuffed nose but still able to breathe. only did up to janu sirsasana a. you don't want to overdo it on the first day, ha ha ha!

time's up! have a great day! CU tomorrow :)

Happy Birthday!

A few weeks ago we celebrated Bumblebee's first birthday and today is my 1 year blogiversary!


So much has happened in a year... The blogosphere is changing; my practice is changing; my left shoulder is still bothering me but it's slowly healing under the guarding eyes and hands of my wonderful teacher Mercury; my job situation is changing, don't know yet if it's for the better or if I'll finally decide to go elsewhere. We'll see what happens...

I still have hopes for this blog, but like I wrote in my very first post, I've never felt I had much to say about myself or my life in a blog or a web site, and that may be the key to why I haven't been able to keep up my writing for the last months. I'm a very social being (some of you know this from other channels :) and I think maybe my way to express myself is in the interaction with others. Blogging is a somewhat lonesome activity up to the point when/if readers start to comment. Anyway, I AM working on it, so please, bear with me...

And the baby is not a baby anymore! She's growing into a little girl so fast you can't believe it!!! She's got six teeth and is walking and talking. Alright, no real words yet, but talking she is. Here's a little clip to prove it :) (sorry about the really poor quality of this... my camera is finally quitting on me... need to get a new one!) The clip is from after her birthday party. Everyone is running around, cleaning up the place, while she is still, after so many hours and soooo many people, just a sparkling little bundle of sunshine! How is this even possible? I love her so much it hurts...

If this can't make you smile, what can?

I'm watching this over and over again, and I find myself with this silly, giant smile on my face every time! I'm going to kill myself with this cuteness!!!



At the same time I'm worried and sad for sweet Annabella and her Scout... I'm sending hugs and warm, happy thoughts their way, hoping everything turns out well. And since I can't give Anna a real orchid for her new office, here is a virtual one. Love to you both...

Of Bumblebees and Owls

Who would've thought?

I just lived through a wonderful weekend, so delightful in many ways and I also got a lot of stuff done that I've been putting off for far too long. I guess therapy is kicking in? Seriously, even if I still have a long way to go, it's really nice to see some progress, be able to feel a difference from just a couple of months ago.

On Friday I had the day off and after I'd dragged my sorry ass through practice, it was so nice to go back home, have breakfast and then take a nap before my dad came over to help out with a few things. In the evening I met up with Grace and a few of her colleagues for dinner before we went to see Vicky Christina Barcelona. How wonderful it is to have a good laugh in the company of friends!

And then, on Saturday night, Game Boy and LeapYear had a cocktail party to celebrate their 80th birthday! Muzzy and The Ed also came and there were a lot of other couples that I've met before but don't get see very often (everyone has kids!). It was a lovely evening and I had quite a few glasses of champagne :) Still, aiming to get up to practice the next morning...

Strange enough, it wasn't too hard to get out of bed, even though my head felt a bit heavy. Went to the shala with absolutely no expectations at all. Well, maybe just a little... that it would be a somewhat dense practice and that I wouldn't do it all... To my great surprise, my breath found the flow almost immediately, and for the first time in a very, very long time I noticed small, but distinct changes in almost every asana. Overall, I seemed more aware than usual which made it the most delightful practice. And if that wasn't enough, my shoulder and arm almost didn't give me any trouble at all :) Afterwards we went for the usual Sunday coffee at the nearby coffee place. What a joy!

For the first time in such a long time, I'm going to bed, on a Sunday night, feeling happy and content with my weekend, and even slightly positive about the upcoming week. I can't tell you how good that feels...

xxxx

"I'm out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message"

Who put chewing gum in my brain?

I'm so fcuking tired I can hardly keep my eyes open, and thinking a thought through is nearly impossible. I almost didn't get up to go to practice this morning because my head didn't want to leave the pillow and later I fell asleep on the bus to work...

Besides that I just need to brag a little, although, most of you will probably think I'm even more insane than you ever could imagine ;-)

We've been away with work for two days on some kind of development conference for my unit. We went to a charming place outside Stockholm, in the archipelago. In the evening of the first day there was some time for recreation and a few of us decided to take a sauna. The facilities were excellent! A wooden fired sauna on a pier and only a couple of meters to get in the water. And so I did. For your information (Carl!) it was 52 degrees and just marvelous :-D

Silly Chitta?

Is it alright for someone how's supposed to be kind of depressed to make silly stuff like these? Well, I couldn't resist :) Make your own at www.yearbookyourself.com