Shane and I are one messy, joyful, chaotic, cohesive example of relationship as yoga, yoga as relationship. Our relationship reflects us to us.

Life has a funny (and often very unfunny) way of throwing curve balls, ranging from the inconvenient to the utterly devastating. Relationships, of any loving variety, are our buffer, they soothe the hardship of being human and they tell us so much about ourselves.

When you look around at your relationships, what do you see reflected back at you?

When you know where you’re going and you look after the vehicle that’s going to get you there, you’re in with one hell of a good shot at arriving at a place where you have the ability to do whatever you want to do, because what you’re doing is what you love. One step at a time, in the right direction.

It is deeply inspirational to be a part of a community. This one here, Lismore on Bundjalung country. It’s a place where everyone is welcome regardless of age, religious or sexual preferences, skin colour, ability or disability. It’s a real meeting point of togetherness and that is powerful. It’s a brief moment to be a part of everything and free from separation and that is healing.

Our chests become tight with panic and fear, our shoulders lift as we are challenged by our opposers, absent is any space for deep listening. We are living in an age of unprecedented local, national and global trauma. We are living in a time of things - at least on the surface - coming to a head. Fires, floods, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, racism, discrimination, sickness, conflict. But what lies underneath all of this turbulence that is our get out of jail free card in terms of tension? How do we find an attitude of relaxation in a relentlessly challenging world?

Not only is this statement the first step, it is also utterly essential when embarking on a journey of change. This is one of the reasons why no matter how you might try, you cannot change anyone else. If they’re not ready, no amount of push is going to gift them the sheer doggedness that transformation can take.

Visualizing and imagining objects or aspects of nature, remind us of certain qualities that we need to draw from at different times to fuel us, nurture us, to inspire or simply allow ourselves to just be. In nature exists all of the archetypes, in fact, just in the trees alone! Some are so nimble, others so sturdy, some need little soil, others burrow so deep.

Do not dismiss anything as too small.

This little nugget applies to goals as well as obstacles as well as markers of change. So often we’re obsessed with the big things. Big things are great motivators but all big things are propped up by a hundred thousand small things. Once you know and accept that, you’ll understand the power of having tiny achievable goals that you do repetitively, as much as you accept that changing one tiny part of a massive pattern, is what starts to break that pattern apart, as much as you’ll begin to recognize small changes of habit as enormous milestones of progression.

Cleaning your room, or car or office so there is space and order again allows us to feel clear, more available to function better and even empowered and of greater purpose. Clearing the body and mind of some of the debris allows it to function more freely, under less stress or conditioning,

There is an allowance then for us to be empty of stuff and therefore we feel lighter and joyful and more adaptable in each moment. Simple practice. Empty empty, happy happy.

There's a very good reason why gratitude gets so much time in the sun.

Here's three very easy ways to weild the powerful weapon of gratitude, to slay negative thinking:

BUT with love, with genuine kindness in our hearts, we can create so many opportunities to be heard. We can make friends with those who are supposed to be our enemies, we can see beyond the labels and the subcultures and simply see the human underneath. The human that is scared or suffering or simply wanting like almost everyone, to be safe and happy too.

In the context of the broader world, there are a LOT of overwhelming things being constantly absorbed - enormous things polarising our thoughts, our relationships and challenging our conditioning: referendums, capitalism, racism, climate, interest rates, cost of living, homelessness, violence - how did you feel in your chest just reading that list?

ACCEPTANCE asks you to drop the shoulders, take a little smile at the corners of your mouth and nod to what is, whilst digging in to the effort of being the best you can be across all aspects of your life and simply seeing what happens. Unattached to outcome, completely diligent to the effort.

It’s difficult on hearing the word addiction to not paint a picture of the person it’s being related to. But you know who it relates to? You. And me too. If you are in a human body, you will almost certainly have this tendency. There is no us and them, it is simply a sliding scale.

Find the things that help you become unstuck, rebirthed, the best version of you, rather than a puppet to patterns that helped you through tough times but now poison everything you touch.

It's sitting, quiet, still for a moment, allowing the day or the event as it was to land on you. Its being open to receiving the answers, the images, the atmosphere, letting things be but being open to see - what is truly there. No judgement, ideally not even any words, not good, nor bad, just beautiful, playful curiosity.

Can you sit still for long enough to let the light of the world impress upon you?

Ten letters with so much breadth of circumstantial usage but in every scenario the same inherent meaning: the coming together of two or more things.

Connection. I would say that I live in a state of deep steady connection with nature but in an eclectic state of connection with humans. I’ve learned to love other humans, learned to converse with them, I’ve even got quite a palette of learned social human nuances that help land me in a little less hot water with humans but by and large, humans have never been an easy place of connection for me. Fascination, yes, connection, challenging but disconnection? No.

Wading our way through our very own unique and messy combination of patterns, is HUMAN. Being human is the twinkle of remembering that there is something more to this weird worldly existence. It is the confusion of not being quite sure how to name it nor often how to live it in a way that correlates with all that's presented in the societal systems and constructs as 'The Way'.

It is the seeking of some clarity in the confusion of cruel and clouded paradigms that ridicule kindness and compassion, and celebrate consumer gluttony to mask the reality of economic enslavement and environmental devastation ie the bizarre distinctly human practice of shitting in our own lunchbox.

Love in itself is utterly pure. Nothing but treasure. But like all of our human experiences it is wrapped up in our…well…human experiences. It becomes entangled, like a frog in a hair ball, with all of our hang ups, all of our hurts, all of our desires and all of our fears. Although not a single one of those things is love. So what are we to do?

If you threw all of the components of your life into a gigantic cauldron and were asked to distill it down to the essence of it’s meaning, what would that look like for you? Would it look like relationships? Career? Being in service? Adventure? Or would it all mix into a lovely shade of brown?

Yoga therapists are Yoga Teachers with substantial additional training (a minimum of 2 years study and practical mentoring with ongoing requirements for professional development) to be able to work at this deeper level with vulnerable or fragile students in a therapeutic setting. A Yoga Therapist draws from the principles of Yoga and the full range of Yoga practices, bio-medical knowledge and assessment skills to establish a professional relationship with the student.