As you probably know last week I ran the second of my Seed & Sow One Day Retreats at PAUS. with another wonderful bunch of people. The sun shone for us again and I've had such lovely feedback I'm feeling very humbled.
Here's a little instagram reel taster
I spent a lot of time planning and preparing the content as I wanted to make the best possible experience for my guests, as well as them trying something different and fun.
The theme 'Seed & Sow' developed after a trip to Copenhagen at Easter with my daughters as I loved the whole ethos of the place. You can see people respect each other and have an appreciation for nice things. There are lots of very nice high quality vintage shops and you can see they live much more sustainably. Apparently, the Danes work/life balance is much better than a lot of other places in the world too. We've got a lot to learn.
It comes down to 'Slow Living' which I referred to a few times in my blogs before (and the Kinfolk Books), which is about living a more meaningful life.
So in my theme of Seed & Sow, it's the 'action' of sowing that's important. This is an important message in the Bhagavad Gita. When Krishna tells Arjuna to do your duty and be present to the process.
Intentions without actions are worthless. In todays society it's easy to have intention overload looking for happiness outside ourselves.
Sharing yoga feels very much like sowing. Sharing something from a time honoured tradition. Respected, practised, learned and shared over a period of time. (I've used this idea before - see photo). I love the idea of more people doing yoga but there's a lot of money being made through yoga too, which sometimes I feel doesn't sit with the yoga tradition. I feel a really important part of sharing and sowing yoga is remaining
authentic to where it has come from along with our own linage and journey.
It occurred to me when I was thinking about the idea of 'sowing', when we see updates pop up on our laptop. How many times do we hit, remind me later, or tomorrow? Perhaps we should see this as a reminder to ourselves that we need to refresh, update, take action now in order to reach our potential? A reminder to ourselves that change is good. It doesn't mean easy either, in fact 'easy doesn't change you'. This is something I talk about practicing physical yoga when trying new sequences or difficult poses.
We have to keep on sowing or pressing update for this to happen.
Part of sowing for me is sharing things I'm passionate about too. So I love sharing some design ideas as well as trying to do my bit to live more mindfully. I gave all my guests a goodie bag with a little sewing kit (see photo) as well as some parsley seeds to sow and a seedy treat.
I also shared a tutorial for beginners embroidery which is really good too. Here's the link if you're interested.
Learning how to fix things, buy fewer (perhaps better quality) and recycling are things which are close to my heart. This is why I loved what I saw in Copenhagen so much.
If I don't see you in class, have a lovely weekend. Perhaps start something you've been meaning to do for a while?
In the next blog I will share some thoughts on seeds.
Namaste.
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