Wendy's Bowl - the Song Continues

Each time I strike it, the sound goes straight to my heart. It’s a Tibetan singing bowl. A special one for which I have just been honoured to become its carer. I don’t think owner is the right term; I believe these bowls come to us bringing their special meditation and healing qualities for us to share.

This one belonged to Wendy Martindale, friend, former yoga student, ‘boss’ and mentor at the New Brunswick Museum and inspirer of my recent ‘Warrior Women’ – Yoga for Breast Cancer programme.

Wendy’s partner, Harvey, gave it to me a couple of weeks ago.  As August 1st would have been Wendy’s 60^th birthday, a day she had planned as her retirement, it was an appropriate, if stingingly sad time.  Wendy lost her warrior’s fight with cancer two years ago in July. Harvey had earlier given me her mala (prayer beads) and yoga books, providing a deep continuation of friendship and the sustaining power of yoga. A wooden box handmade by Wendy’s father is a fitting keeping place.

 

Wendy was one of the first people I met when we moved to Saint John. Wondering if the Museum might have work for a writer with my background. It didn’t at the time. But when Wendy, a previous yogi, heard I was also a yoga teacher, she was ready to sign up. And she did as soon as I began an early evening, after work class.

Later I began working part-time at the Museum, helping Wendy get through her hectic schedule. We cried together when I had to move to Moncton, but the connection remained strong. When I applied for a Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation grant for my ‘Warrior Women’ programme, Wendy wrote a moving testimonial about the amazing benefits, physical and spiritual, yoga offers to women adjusting to a ‘new normal’ body as they “continue to continue”.

 

Wendy’s bowl, as it will always be known, is an interesting design; brown with a pale gold band running round the upper rim. Symbols cover the sides and base with some inside. So far my research has not found any matching symbols or mantras, often etched or painted on. Next month I’ll again be at a workshop given by Fr. Joe Pereira, so I’ll take the bowl with me.

 

Researching Tibetan bowls is a lovely, if time consuming, process. Almost every web site has an audio track so you can hear the amazing sounds.

Tibetan singing bowls are thought to be made of a many-metal alloy  of silver, nickel, copper, zinc, antimony, tin, lead, cobalt, bismuth, arsenic, cadmium and iron. Other research suggests they may be a pure mixture of copper and tin.

 When stuck with a wooden mallet the clear, rich vibrations quickly inspire centring and stillness. When the mallet is gently circled clock-wise round the outer rim, harmonic overtones produce an ethereal singing sound, the vibrations are felt though your body and mind. It is this aspect that is very important in healing

 

In yoga and meditation we strike a bowl to signal the beginning of a practice session. By sounding to all four directions they offer a summons to the here and now, clearing the space of negative energy, opening it and the practitioners to new energies, deep meditation and healing. Sounding a bowl can also signal a change from sitting to walking meditation; a period in which meditators inhale and retain the breath until the sound ceases, or the end of a practice.

Thank you, Harvey. Thank you, Wendy. Your bowl has another good home and will continue to sing.

 

 

 

Landscape as textile

Last week I drove from Moncton to Quispamsis to interview Riel Nason, prize-winning author of the locally set and inspired novel ‘The Town That Drowned’.

 This entry is not about that interview. I don’t want to spoil the reading of it in the fall issue of Atlantic Books Today. So patience.

 It’s about the strikingly visual textile landscape I experienced on the drive. A perfect midsummer day. Blue, green and white.

When I have time to spare from my yoga teaching and writing I love to work with fibre and thread. On that day the sky was a piece of silk, palest translucent cornflower on the horizon to rich lapis high above. Weightless clouds were fine gauze, swansdown or fluffy kapok ready to fill a cushion. I wasn’t seeking any Polonius-like “camels or whales”,  just allowed the pure whiteness to float above and settle on my imagined collage.

Harvested wheat appeared as giant reels of golden thread rolling across yards of soft green velvet. Distant hills were two-dimensional tapestries; tree and bushes appliquéd and hooked.  The highway, lined with strong vertical evergreens, provided a frame.

Driving the highway can be boring, sometimes sleep inducing, so little traffic. It’s definitely a case of the destination being more important than the journey. Usually I have music playing, but that day silence seemed called for and I gave my visual imagination full creative licence

Quilting in my Garden

Three things I love a lot – yoga, writing, stitching.  (And there is a yoga pose known as ‘The Eye of the Needle’)

 Needlework and mixed media collage are among my favourite creative projects – when I have time.

Perhaps that’s why one of my favourite perennials is hostas. The leaves have such a wonderful quilted appearance; they might have been cut out and stitched in the garden studio of a horticultural goddess. Shades of blue-green, green with white couched stripes, green with gold-edged binding.

One of the houses I lived in as a child was row house in Liverpool, England. It had literally what North Americans call a ‘yard’, just a few square feet of paving stones, nothing green or growing. That’s why I am so sad to hear grass, plants, flowers, bushes and trees, all clumped together and described as a yard. So bleak, so colourless, so uninhabited, so un–flourishing.

I first saw hostas as a grown-up. On an assignment on Kent in the south of England, I made my visit into a long weekend and included Sissinghurst Castle. This had been the home of Vita Sackville-West and her husband, the diplomat Harold Nicholson. In the 1930’s they created amazing gardens there. One of Vita’s then-pioneering ideas was the creation of a number of gardens each defined by a single colour.

 With their purple and white flowers hostas are featured in the gardens of both those colours. But it was the leaves that enchanted me. Not just the size and shape but the lines of what might have been stitches, not perfect, for this is nature, but so wonderfully delineating these plants.

Wherever I’ve lived since I’ve always planted hostas, and marvel each spring as they spread their quilted patches.

Among my favourite flowers are peonies. Their petals are like the hand-made paper and fabric I tear for my collages.

Sparingly cut for the house just one or two make a superb arrangement, the delicate perfume enhancing their wrinkled edges. Even the dark spear-like leaves make a singular arrangement.

Appropriately I’ll let Vita have the last word on flowers.

“A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even one solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it.”

Chester Calling

Actually it was yoga calling. A few weeks ago I enjoyed another Iyengar workshop in what has become one of my favourite places to visit. Chester is a charming 250 year-old ocean-side village on the south shore of Nova Scotia. As usual I stayed at the appropriately-named Windjammer Motel

‘Cultivating Maturity in your Yoga Practice’ the workshop was led by Marlene Mawhinney, a senior Iyengar teacher, the founder and director of Yoga Centre Toronto. Marlene has spent many months over the years studying in India with the Iyengars and brings a similar stringent precision, and detail to her instructions, combined with light-hearted humour.

 Leigh Milne is a dedicated yoga teacher who frequently hosts these inspiring workshops. I  joined about 40 other teachers and senior students for an intense, demanding, invigorating, intense and fulfilling weekend. The Iyengar style uses props such as belts, blocks, blankets and bolsters. Marlene demonstrated and made individual adjustments on our bodies. “There's a little bit of each of us in all of us", she said. Which is why demonstrations benefit everyone, and add to the sangha or community we create whenever we come together to practice.

Much of what Marlene said resonated with me. In particular her thoughts on prana or breath. “One Breath at a Time” she kept reminding us. So true off the may as well as in our practice .“Find the breath that leads you into the posture, that keep you there and deepens, and the breath that leads you out” was another teaching gift I received. Some posture work will be integrated into my own practice, then in coming sessions shared with progressive students. Others will be shared with all levels so they benefit.

It’s always good to combine study with time to relax and make new discoveries.  Though most of my days in Chester were spent on the yoga mat I made the most of a few free hours on Saturday afternoon to explore more widely than on previous visits.

Taking time to walk around the village centre I had an interesting talk with Angie DeMont owner of Hibiscus Boutique, a store filled with eye-catching fashions and jewellery with a different appeal. I have more than sufficient clothes and jewellery but love to talk to people who also enjoy them. A chance remark about my Ganesha pendant and soon Angie was telling me about her visit to India and her interest in Yoga and Ayurveda. The connection is always there.

A drive west along Highway 3 brought me to Blue Shutters Antiques and a conversation with Bobby Young who co-owns the shop with Peter Fitch. Some years ago I sold antiques in Ontario and Britain and am still drawn to things that speak to me of days past.

Also on Highway 3 I dropped into Linens For Life, where Elaine LeBlanc offers a lovely selection of fine linen clothes and bedding. The section showcasing the bed linens is restful space with sun slipping through two skylights; more like a hotel room. Alongside the store is a quaint tea room. A keen gardener Elaine takes pride in the store’s surroundings.

Turning east on the highway I spent a lot of time enjoying Oceanview Garden Centre, one of the most comprehensive and delightful  garden centres  I have visited. Filled with colourful glass, decorative gifts, candles, shawls, teas and jams, some of which I purchased, it also offers everything a gardener could wish for to create a beautiful outdoor sanctuary.

Outside the selection of statuary, metal ‘flowers’, water garden accessories and colourful bird houses is quite enchanting.

The further along the coast to Chester Basin where I spent time sitting by the water, reading, making notes from the workshop, and dreaming some dreams. I collected a couple of beach stones to bring back for our garden before it was time to head back to Chester for the evening.

Yoga Workshop Time

I spent the last two weekends of April at yoga workshops. First, in Bedford, Nova Scotia, with Swati Chanchani from Yog-Ganga, an Iyengar centre located in the foothills of the lower Himalayas. A demanding three days with this vivacious, charming but strict lady; with much to absorb and process, to take into my own practice and share. 

The second workshop, in Hampton, New Brunswick, was with Doug Keller, from Virginia, U.S.A. A warm, generous man he gave us many insights into how we can use yoga as therapy for physical problems such as tight hamstrings and hips, lower back injuries, tense shoulders; all problems exacerbated by 21st century lifestyle. Doug’s generosity extended to sending all who attended a 91- page document containing most of his weekend comments, complete with fascinating anatomical drawings.

On Sunday, May 27 I was one of the presenters at ‘Healthy Self- Healthy Family’ a workshop for woman organised by Elaine Mandrona and JoAnn Thompson Franklin of Tidewater Physiotherapy Centre for Wellness in Lower Coverdale. Elaine also prepared a delicious lunch for everyone.

Knowing that yoga can be practiced literally anywhere I offered an introduction to Chair Yoga. Not just for people who are elderly or physically incapacitated, chair yoga can be practiced in the office, at home when you need a stretch or a twist without getting out your yoga mat, while travelling by car or ‘plane. I have done yoga on planes and in airports in Toronto, London, UK, Dubai, El Salvador.

It’s very important when 21^st century lifestyle is so static to be able to move your body, and breathe properly. You’ve probably heard the recent comment “Sitting can kill you.” You can see from these photos everyone had fun while doing good things for their bodies. That’s one of my principal beliefs in teaching – to laugh and enjoy while stretching, twisting, flowing and finding stillness.

Living, Living. Not Much Time for Anything Else.

I’ve been neglecting this diary for the past couple of months. But living took precedence over writing about it.

Not that writing was, as ever, far away.

During March and April I facilitated a writer’s group at the Senior’s Centre in Moncton. A diverse group of people drawn together by a desire to write.  Some were interested in writing family history, some poetry, others fiction, still others newspaper columns. We spent time discussing the ‘bones’ of good writing - grammar punctuation, spelling imagery, imagination. I gave them assignments, not always the most popular part of each week, but I believe good discipline and focus and an opportunity to have their writing read by others and get feedback.

Shortly before this project ended we began another session of Warrior Women; my yoga-inspired classes for women fighting and surviving breast cancer. I was honoured to receive a second grant from the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.  Sharing space with my good friend Jim Grant of Pneuma Transpersonal Coaching, I promoted yoga at the Holistic Fair in Riveview.

During our winter yoga session the Progressive class included discussions on Indian Festivals, culture and customs and Hindu deities, some of whom are referenced in yoga postures.

It has become a tradition for the Progressive class and myself to share an Indian meal in the week’s break before the spring session begins.

A week ago  Julie and Monique (two of my Warrior Women) and I went to see ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ and really enjoyed it. Some of Britain’s stellar actors, a gentle story without violence and the glorious colours, light and bustle of India. Some reviews I‘ve read make we wonder if the writer has actually seen the movie

Critics can comment on the story of the acting but if they haven’t been to India shouldn’t make comments about life in that country.

We are now in the fifth week of our spring session.  The Progressive class is studying Ayurveda and other classes continue to deepen their practice and enjoy being part of our sangha, or community.

Stripes Redux. Double the Fun

In January I mourned the disappearance of our ‘pet‘ chipmunk. The one who had lived in our garden and under the deck for many years.

 With a sad heart I had to believe it was time for him to leave.

But no. Imagine my joy when when one day last month I absently glanced out of the kitchen window, and there he was, as perky and bright-eyed as ever.

Now whether this is the same Stripes who had decided to hibernate – good idea – or a new-born we’re not sure. But as ever it is good to have a chipmunk back as part of nature’s outdoor bounty.

In fact we have seen three of them; chasing and racing round in circles. One evening last week I was bending down by the plants beneath the cherry tree and two of them almost ran over my toes.

Welcome back, all of you chipmunks. Now I must go and serve up more peanuts.