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No yoga, no smile

20 Jul

I just could not get up for yoga this morning.  I had so many good intentions, and then I woke up shivering in my bed at 6am … shivering!  Seems it dropped a whole lot of degrees this morning and my alarm (which is the sound of trickling water that gradually turns into a tractor ploughing through a raging river) was not on the winning team.  Crap.  It always feels like the better option when I’m under my duvet, the outside air is frigid and I’m feeling “exhausted”, but on waking 90 minutes later, it really does not feel so good.  In fact it is almost always disappointing that I didn’t get my ass out of bed and onto my mat, and I have that glum, bummed-out feeling for the rest of the day. 

The trick is to remember that when the voice that advocates sleep at all costs starts nattering in my ear!

These from Garance made me smile this morning (despite being in the no-yoga zone).  Love advice (some of which should be avoided at all costs!):

  • If you want to seduce a man, pretend like you’re redoing your lipstick while sucking on and licking your finger. (Hopefully you are also 16 …)
  • If you’re curious whether or not you’re in love with your man, cheat on him. If you don’t feel guilty at all, you don’t love him anymore. If you feel guilty, then it’s love and don’t worry he’ll never know you did it. ( I have to say, there is a little logic here)
  • For the first date, always carry a wig and dark sunglasses in your bag. That way, if it’s awful, excuse yourself to the bathroom, don your disguise and GTFO!!! He’ll never know. (Er … he may indeed notice)
  • Just be distant and a little jaded. (Been there, done that)
  • Just give him some space. He’ll come back. (Yessss … except I’m still waiting …)
  • Find a guy. Get yourself right in front of him and simply say, “Wanna fuck?” Works every time. (They are so damn easy)
  • If you want to know if he’s the right guy, it’s like with clothes. You have to try him to know if he’s good on you. (Totally agree)
  • Don’t worry, he won’t do that after you’re married. (LOL … old dog, new tricks?)
  • He’s not that ugly. Just wait you’ll get used to it. (I bet he’s a lovely person!)
  • We should have a baby, but keep living in our separate apartments. That’s how they do it in Europe. I think it would help our relationship. (Ah, sweet, he loves me, he really does)
  • If you want unconditional love, buy yourself a dog!
  • Every night I tell Xavier that he’s quite the lucky man to have married me. And can you even imagine, he totally believes it! (Absolutely … I’ve heard this exact advice from a gorgeous, sexy Lithuanian friend … the thing is that she totally believes it herself, and that her man would really be an complete sad sack without her … which of course he would!)

right and wrong

19 Jul

 

Sometimes the really big questions pop up and it’s hard to ignore them.  Like for instance how do we decide what’s right and what’s wrong.  Take something big – like cheating – and ask the big question: Is it wrong to cheat on your partner?

The answer from most people is YES. But the question is why.  Do we base our answers on religion’s ideas of right and wrong, on society’s, on the opinions of the people who we admire and want to be loved by?  Undoubtedly many of the things we’ve thought were ok in the past, we believed in them (flat world anyone?), are now seen as just the opposite, and believing something is wrong ”just because it is”, the majority of the population believes it, or because it says so in the bible, doesn’t really hold water with me. 

I want to know why; I want a little more on the proof side of things.  But I’m not really sure there is an answer that is TRUE, and certainly, that is true for everyone. Science cannot prove that cheating is wrong.  In fact probably according to science and human biology, monogamy is not sustainable.  So that leaves us with the tricky question of ethics and morals.  Does the ‘badness’ of cheating rest in its duplicity, and if so, does swinging and polygamy then become the viable alternative?  Should we live individualistically and take what we want, because actually one cannot prove heaven/hell and karma exist (and if we don’t believe in them should we live by their rules?)?

Or does the ‘right/wrong’ exist in the way it makes one feel?  And is that then fear-based?  I know that if I cheated on a (mystical) boyfriend I’d feel guilt-ridden and apprehensive… probably because: if he knew he’d be hurt; I would be defying accepted regulations on how relationships are supposed to be; if the people close to me found out they would judge the cheating and most likely be disappointed in me; and he might end the relationship. 

I believe that these ‘norms’ need to be interrogated, that we cannot accept ways of living just because the society we live in sees them as right or wrong.  But then again, imagine a world without rules: it would be one crazy place!

 

Listen up self!

13 Jul

A friend posted the question on facebook yesterday “What would you tell your next reincarnation?” or, along the same lines, what would you tell your 10-year-old self if you could?

It’s an interesting one, and got me thinking.  Self, just so you know:

  • Get a yoga mat and practice
  • Men are really not the be all and end all.  Relationships are nice but damn they are hard work.  Friends are where it’s at.  And the ability to enjoy one’s own company.
  • Hormones will get you into trouble … sometimes the best kind of trouble that still gives you goosebumps years later.
  • Try and be as open-minded as possible and always check why you are really making the judgements you are.  Most times it’s about you and not anyone else.
  • Chocolate is a happy food.
  • Pets are not to be underrated. 
  • Work through your issues – childhood or whatever – there are professionals to help who know what they are talking about.
  • Love your body: it’s a work of beautiful science and mechanics.  Use it or lose it.  Feed and care for yourself as you would your own child.
  • Nothing is really ever the end of the world (of course unless it really is the end of the world, which is another story entirely …).
  • Commit to something/someone entirely, every time … at least you’ll know immediately if you are barking up the wrong tree.
  • Fresh flowers and high thread-count cotton sheets … luxury.
  • Things change. Relationships end.  And there is never just one option.  The only way out is through.
  • Hug.  Love.  Touch.
  • Fear fades in the doing of something scary.  It lives in the anticipation.
  • Never make someone your priority when you are their option.
  • Educate yourself.  Have informed opinions.  Ignorance means you are asleep.

What would your words of wisdom be?

Jen

xx

Indianna Jen

4 Jul

So what do you get when you spend 5 weeks in India (besides a tummy bug)?  Some reality changing scenarios, that’s what:

  • I knew India was a mad place when I spent 5 weeks there in January.  But it seems that much like the pain of childbirth (so I’ve heard), one forgets the extent of Indian madness over time.  And so these last 5 weeks I was reintroduced to just how much India functions, and thrives, on chaos.  It’s a place that I both love and hate – there’s a part of me that loves that everything functions with its own confused ‘system’ and rhythm, and can completely become part of the disorder and the ‘slowly, slowly’; and then there is a part of me that wants to kick in the teeth of a country that has so much splendour marred by so much filth and poverty, disorganisation and dishonesty. 
  • A yoga teacher training in India is a special kind of bootcamp.  It’s intense, emotional, exhausting, plagued by illness (and daily conversations about diarrhoea and vomit), and neuroses about what to eat and what not to eat (accompanied by large amounts of anti-bacterial hand cleanser).  It’s also, though, an amazing why to submerge oneself in yoga, break from reality, distance oneself from issues at home (and gain some much needed perspective), and take a month out of one’s life to indulge in life-changing experiences.  It’s not for sissies.
  • I was blonde the entire time in India, and my fellow yogis only knew me as a blonde.  What a weird situation!  It was then that I realised that although the experience was cool, I couldn’t identify with myself as blonde and I couldn’t recognise myself as blonde.  Bizarre, but true.  I think I felt a bit fractured and schizophrenic with platinum hair, which may have been a direct result of my wanting to eradicate and reconstruct myself after a traumatic few months at the beginning of this year – I fully became the cliché of the post-breakup reinvention, and although I’m not sure there is a cliché for this one (there should be), the post-biglove-ex-matrimony breakdown.  Now I am back to a darker hue (although not my own), and I feel remarkably better in my skin … at least now I recognise myself in mirrors and photographs!
  • How people come together to form groups always amazes me.  It is of course no random event, and the same can be said for the group of amazing individuals that gathered in McLeod Ganj.  It’s always a matter of truly understanding why one attracts certain people into one’s space and what they reflect right back at us.  The lessons are not always easy, but sometimes the reflections can be delightful and affirming, as well as clarifying.  I met some truly lovely individuals while away and the sadness for me is the fact that I may not see any of them again … we are scattered around the earth and came together for just one month of intensity in a Himalayan town (which already feels like some dream). 
  • I realised, while away, that I booked my second trip to India in a knee-jerk post traumatic response to two very large losses: one, the loss of a substantial and significant relationship, and the other the loss of a precious, love-saturated fantasy and considerable fixation for all of my twenties.  At the time I dealt with both in a curiously (for me) rational and detached way, only to find that as always my body turned the pain into physical trauma, and there I was sobbing into my mat all the way over in India.  I don’t think for a second that everything’s reconciled … it is one thing sorting things out while in another hemisphere, but an entirely different matter facing the reality when it lives in the same city.   But at least I think I gained some insight, some perspective and perhaps some important knowledge about my own processes in relationships (and, an important part, who I missed while away …).    
  • And finally, although I immediately feel the need to book another trip somewhere, anywhere, I know that leaving doesn’t a) solve all problems, and b) doesn’t eradicate people.  So here I am, back in Jo’burg, back to teach yoga and carry on through this dense 2011, preparing to stick it out without packing a suitcase (too soon). 

Namaste, everyone

Jen xx

I’m a yoga teacher!

24 Jun

One month in India and I’m an Ashtanga yoga teacher!  Yay for me! :)  

It was a wild month (you can check out all the action here), and tonight I leave steamy Delhi and head back to Jo’burg and my mat … I’m so excited to get home.  It’s so amazing to travel and experience other cultures and ways of living, but damn is it good to head home!  I love flying into Jo’burg – that familiarity and the knowledge that all the people I love so much are all going about their business below me.

Here are an assortment of pics from the yoga teacher training, Dharmshala, McLeod Ganj and Delhi:

Jen xx

Hopes for India

18 May

In just 3 days I’m off to India.  Again.  Yes. 

It’s a bit of a crazy thought.  When I booked myself onto this Ashtanga teacher training course it felt like AGES away, and yet here we are.  I’m beginning to feel more than anxious; I really, really loved my experience in India in January, but I had my best friend with me as scooter driver and general psychological guidance councillor, and this time I’ll be going it alone, and it will not be a holiday.  I’ll be working really hard and India can be unexpectedly intense, distressing and infuriating.  I’m also wondering how my body is going to react and how I’m going to cope with complete yoga submersion for one month. 

Oh, and if I’ll even be a good teacher!

While I’m away this blog may be on the lean side, but I will be blogging for Shape magazine, probably every second day or so, so you can always catch up with me and my sweat stained mat over there ;)

I’m hoping Dharmshala will allow:

  • a deeper, more layered yoga practice
  • a greater understanding of yoga philosophy (as I tend towards a focus on the physical asanas, rather than the meaning behind, or inside, them)
  • an integration of a whole lot of changes that have taken place since January – singledom, lost love, letting go, career and ideas of ‘success’ reevaluation, old flames rekindled, and seemingly endless opportunities for growth and lightness
  • an insight into how to heal my weak spots – physical and mental – whether that means realignment,  or ceasing and desisting :)
  • new friends
  • large gulps of Himalayan air, mental tapestries of Himalayan mountains, and ingested wisdom from Himalayan temples
  • a calm within the Indian chaos; a peace in the moment.

So I’m not expecting too much then :)

Oh, and some distracting eye-candy would not go amiss.  For sure.

 x

Committment

10 May

I had the greatest practice last night.  Hamstrings were long and warm and flexible.  Back was supple and bendy.  I was strong and filled with stamina.  Happiness.

This morning I stumbled onto my mat, dragged myself through second series and generally managed to do just the bare minimum, while sweating profusely, feeling shakey and battling to breathe.  Unhappiness.

That’s yoga right?  Much like life.  But I’m committing to it – life, yoga, relationships, direction … everything.  And not to achieve  5/10/20 year goals – that’s impossible – but committing to what’s happening today, what’s available right now.  There’s nothing worse than half-arsed participation, wishy-washy involvement and half-in-half-out contribution.  I know we all do it – it’s self-preservation because committment of any kind is a risk – but I’ve realised that committing fully, bringing the whole of oneself to the party, is the short-cut to the knowing whether someone/something is viable. 

And why waste time?  I may have fiddled around in my early twenties, playing games and enjoying the anxiety of not knowing, of thinking that I had all the time in the world, but with the fact that I am approaching 30 and the world continues to spin faster with a greater density in events and thoughts and desires, there really seems no point in wasting any time by holding anything back when committing to a particular direction.

Onward.

Things I learnt over Easter

26 Apr

Today is a work day.  Well it’s supposed to be.  But not really.  You can’t have a work day sandwiched between public holidays, especially after a four-day Easter weekend of excessive chocolate eating, hotcross-bun munching and wine drinking.  My juice fast is long forgotten!

I learnt some things while stuffing myself full of sugar:

  • There is no substitute for Lindt, whether it comes dressed in a gold bunny suit or in a slab with a little chilli or salt.
  • It would be nice if predictably unreliable men surprised me by being unpredictably reliable.
  • I have some very cool friends.
  • Wine and whiskey on the same night leave a thumping headache.
  • My chiropractor was right about energy being trapped in my lower back … backbends are back in action!
  • Long weekends spent at home seem mundane on the surface, but turn out to be deliciously indulgent.
  • It’s great to know that patterns are repeated until we get the lesson, but what would be better is knowing how to stop repeating the pattern in the first place!
  • I don’t really get the royal wedding-hype thing – although marrying a Danish/Swedish prince might be a deviation from dating less-than-royal South African men (they are royal somethings, but definitely not royalty, if you get my drift ;-)

I have been trying to find the perfect pair of everyday boots.  Which means low heel, slouchy, comfortable, and probably ankle/mid-calf.  No luck locally, but just look what is available from my favourite Scandinavian store :) (ok, only two of them are boots, but who cares?):

Which of course takes us straight back to the benefits of marrying a Scandinavian prince ;-)

x

In a pickle

20 Apr

This is the cutest cat in the world.  And he’s mine for the kissing!

Hear me roar!

4 Apr

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Maya Angelou

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