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Welcome to the blog portion of my website, chalk-full of musings on yoga, theatre, and life.

Read on!

Project Announcement: Show & Tell

My theatre company, Xua Xua Productions, is about to launch an event that I am incredibly excited about – Show & Tell.

It’s just what you think it is – bring an object that matters to you, and tell its story! The event will become a bi-monthly community storytelling adventure, starting Tuesday, November 20th at Cocoanymph East (4 W 7th Ave @ Ontario). Come share a piece of your story!

Project Announcement: Swallows and Amazons

Once again I get to do my most favourite thing in the world: make up dances and make other people do them. I’ll be doing the choreography for Gallery 7 Theatre’s production of Swallows & Amazons by Helen Edmundson (one of the better playwrights I’ve ever encountered, no less!)

Playing March 8-23 at the MEI Auditorium in Abbotsford

When John, Susan, Titty and Roger are granted their wish to camp on an island, they eagerly look forward to a summer full of adventure and fun. Fueled by their imagination and a desire for new experiences, they set sail in their trusty boat, Swallow. When they meet Nancy & Peggy, the self-proclaimed Amazon pirates, and the cantankerous Captain Flint, their adventure turns in an entirely new and exciting direction. This Canadian amateur premier promises to be a delightful theatre experience for adventurers of all ages.

More info.

This Week at PT: Wittenberg

In what is probably the quickest turnaround in Pacific Theatre’s history, we closed The Spitfire Grill on Saturday night and are opening a staged reading of Wittenberg this Wednesday. Quick-moving, that’s what we are.

I am pretty excited for this one, as it can be summed up with a few words: Hamlet, Martin Luther, and Dr. Faustus walk into a bar, and the rest is history… sort of.

Moving On

The places life takes you are often different than we expect. We all know examples of this.

About two and a half years ago, at a party, a friend was telling me about his new venture in life: teaching yoga. Off-handedly he mentioned that he thought I’d be good at it, and for the first time ever I thought seriously about the idea. I loved yoga, after all, and truly believed it would enrich other peoples’ lives.

A year later I was in the midst of my teacher training. Not long after that I met with the managers of BCIT’s rec program and got set up to teach in the Fall.

Now, a year after that, I’ve realized I won’t be going back. Some life-type circumstances have come up, and it looks like I win’t be teaching in a regular class environment for a little while.

It’s sad to say goodbye. There are a lot if things I loved about teaching at BCIT, including a great crew of students who I got to know well over the course of the year.

I’ll miss everyone there a lot, but it’s really awesome to know I’m following the new path my life is taking. Who knows where it will go, but I know that yoga will always be a part of it, as well as theatre. Aside from that, all I’ve got is some adventure ahead.

Stay tuned!

Dedication

I recently read a post on Seth Godin’s blog about the joy of the dedication page when writing a book. As a reader, I’ve never paid all that much attention to the dedication page unless the author has done something interesting with it, but of course for the author it’s a whole different thing. As Godin says, “Even if the person you’ve dedicated the book to can’t read it, the writer benefits from the knowledge that a connection was made and that a memory was preserved.”

That’s pretty powerful stuff.

He points out that any project can be dedicated, and that once we start dedicating our projects to the people that inspire us it changes the quality of our work completely.

I don’t know about you, but I like this idea. I want to dedicate my work, make it about more than just me. Heck, that might even help me get enough meaning out of my various projects that I wouldn’t need to have quite so many of them on the go at once.

Different Everywhere

By this point in human history, most of us have a pretty good understanding that human beings are all different on the outside. We just plain look different – it’s kind of a “Captain Obvious” thing to point out.

We even have a pretty firm graspt on the fact that we are all different in terms of the way we think. That while there are some universals, we all are deeply influenced by a large array of factors coming from culture, upbringing, and our unique biology. Different brains and different experiences lead to different ways of seeing the world.

When it comes to our physical insides, however, our bones and organs, most of us have a pretty homogenous view of what we expect to find. This is unfortunate, because our insides are all totally different.

Why does this matter? Well, in some ways maybe it doesn’t. You can get through life pretty easily without knowing that someone’s stomach is in a kind of different position than yours or that your femur has a little twist in it that causes you to walk with your feet turned slightly out. No big deal.

Some of these differences can even be changed or created, that’s part of why most of us do yoga, after all – to change our bodies by making our muscles stronger and more flexible.

The key is to realize that some of these internal differences translate into different abilities in, for example, a yoga class. If you do happen to have a twisted femur, then standing with your feet parallel in tadasana is probably a pretty uncomfortable position. It would be like asking everyone else to turn their feet in.

Don’t force your outside to look the same as everyone else’s if your insides are doing something different.

Eye Yoga

I’ve already talked about face yoga here before, but what about getting even more specific – what about the eyes?

Most of us spend hours each day staring at screens, and then possibly more time looking at books and other non-electronic items that are still in a very close focal range. It’s no wonder everyone needs glasses. In fact, degeneration of eyesight is the only health problem that actually increases with socio-economic status, because of the increased time spent reading, studying, writing, and using electronics.

There are two problems with this trend: one comes from overuse and the other from underuse.

We are overusing our eyes by staring at screens and books all day long. They need a break! Give them one by simply closing your eyes and letting them rest every once and a while. Pair it with some deep breathing and see how quickly your mental energy changes. This is the first “eye yoga” pose, and might be akin to savasana.

Another great way to give your eyes a break is to cup your hands over your eyes, masking all the light, and keeping them open, so your looking into total darkness.

The second problem is underuse. While you are overusing your eyes by keeping them open and active all the time, most of what we look at is within a very limited focal range, which means we’re underusing the other aspects of our vision. It falls out of practice, and like anything else in our bodies, once we stop using it, we lose it.

Keep the variety by following the 20/20/20 rule. Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Simple, but effective. Set an alarm if you need to.

There you go! A few eye yoga exercises to keep your eyesight strong and healthy.