Beginners Yoga Course

The next 6 week Introduction to Yoga Course starts in Poole, Dorset on Thursday 4th November 7 - 8pm. Cost £30. The course is restricted to 6 participants and places are filling up so contact me soonest to be sure of your place.

An Introduction to the Art of Sitting

"An Introduction to the Art of Sitting" starts 17th October 2010. The course, which is held for 1 hour over 4 successive Sunday evenings, is designed to help beginning meditators to understand the role of alignment and relaxation in sitting and how to find the posture to support their sitting practice. More information about the Introduction to the Art of Sitting Course

Charlie Rose: The Brain Series

I'd like to draw your attention to some interesting programmes about the brain. Last week I caught a short part of the Charlie Rose show on Bloomberg. A group of top people in their fields were sat around the table discussing the brain and anxiety. A few clicks on the computer and I discovered that the show was one of a series of programmes being made by Charlie Rose on various topics about the brain. They are being transmitted one a month and the previous programmes are available to view at http://www.charlierose.com/view/collection/10702 Each programme is an hour long. Click on the image to play (took me a while to work that out!).

Here is the blurb about the series from the website:

The Charlie Rose Brain Series explores one of sciences final frontiers, the study of the human brain.
Over the next year Charlie will interview the most knowledgeable scientists and researchers in hopes of illuminating a new topic of study. Each monthly episode will examine different subjects of the brain, including perception, social interaction, aging and creativity.
We will also look at scientific discovery and advances in technology, in the hope that someday terrible illnesses such as depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s will be history.
Our special colleague on this journey is Dr. Eric Kandel.
He is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist and professor at Columbia University. He’s also affiliated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
He received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2000 for his research into the biological mechanisms of learning and memory.

Last night I watched the first programme "The Great Mysteries of the Human Brain: consciousness, free will, perception, cognition, emotion and memory" which introduced the series. I am looking forward to watching some of the other programmes in the series over the coming weeks. You can cherry pick - it is not necessary to watch the programmes sequentially - although it may be useful to watch the first programme if you are not familiar with the basic biology of the brain and nerve cells.

Refurbished website now live

The latest incarnation of the Yoga with Anne website is now live. Although it needs a bit of tinkering (more photos and a bit more colour) it is more or less as I want it. I am particularly pleased with the drop down menus (I must get out more!). I hope that it is easy for you to navigate around and find the information you need. If you have any difficulties or have suggestions as to how it could be improved then please let me know.

Gravity, Breathing, Posture

Check out this great series of three articles on gravity, posture and breathing by Aline Newton. The three parts are:

1. Breathing in the Gravity Field
2. New Conceptions of Breathing Anatomy and Biomechanics
3. Posture and Gravity

Website rewrites - latest news

Well I have now finished the rewrite of Mark's website and implemented it. No major problems reported so far! It needs a few more photographs but otherwise we're quite pleased with it. Now that it's written in HTML I'm hoping that, subject to my learning the necessary technical skills, it should be easier to update and enhance than the previous incarnation which was created using Publisher.

And so I turn to the rewrite of my site. Over the years it has accumulated many pages. To convert them all is daunting and a Herculean task. I have decided (well, almost!) that I am going to rewrite the core pages;  delete the rest and start afresh. I did think about simply leaving the old pages there but with all the links from and between those pages that would turn into a nightmare. So they are going! Looking at the stats provided by my wesite host most of these pages are rarely viewed so I hope that they won't be badly missed.

I am taking the site that I have created for Mark as my starting point so that will save a lot of hard work but even so it still takes ages cutting and pasting and formatting... but the anticipation of a shiny new site drives me on! Have a look at Mark's website and let me know of any way that you think we could improve it or content that you would like to see.

Habits

Last weekend I lead a workshop with the title "Watch out, habits about". Here are a few thoughts about habits:

• Habits are neither good or bad - they're just habits. At some point whatever we are doing had some benefit to us or helped us in some way - even if it's not obvious how!
• A habit may no longer be useful to us and it may even be unhelpful now.
• We are usually unaware of our own habits.
• Other people's habits are much easier to see!
• A habit usually involves a compromise of some sort. If the habit no longer confers any benefit then we may be paying dearly for it.
• Our habits dictate our actions and our actions re-enforce our habits.
• We can't forceably change a habit. We have to become aware of it and understand it and then let it go.
• Don't replace the old habits for new ones; or take on someone else's habits; or rely on someone else's authority - find out the truth for yourself.
• Examining our habits can be difficult and there may be resistance to looking at them particularly where our identity is tied up with them.
• Habits exist in body, breath and mind.