Sunday Morning Yoga

I experienced a delicious Sunday morning while Margot and Simon went to church. 90 minutes of yoga. A live-filmed class at San Francisco's Yoga Tree studio (where I went to follow a Jason Crandell class in August 2009), led by Janet Stone. It was amazing! There was mantra chanting, a meditation in motion, a focus on obstacles, creative flow, ending with a seated meditation. I smiled. I sweated. I opened. I moved.  On a rainy October morning, this was the perfect remedy!

My yoga practice has been floppy since September (coincidentally since I started teaching). It's been inconsistent and my practices have been short. I know that the length of a class doesn't really matter: it is better to do 20 minutes daily than 90 minutes weekly. But... there's something so rewarding and more powerful in a longer class! You get so much more out of it. It brings you to another level.

And great news: Margot loves yoga! I didn't have anything to do with it. She begs me to watch "yoga kids" - YouTube videos of children's yoga. Sometimes she joins in, other times she just quietly observes. ;)

Time for Tea

"One drinks tea to forget the world's noise; it is not for those who eat rich food and dress in silk pyjamas." - T'ien Yiheng  c.1570

I wish to share with you the following (based on the entertaining book How to be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson):

Four o'clock tea. It makes sense. It marks the point in the day at which your energy is at its lowest. It's a time for reflection, to slow down, to pause and breathe and contemplate life.

Tea should be a daily ritual.
The legendary fisherman, Chris Yates (Who???) explains that "Tea making, like tea drinking, must be a leisurely, contemplative affair, the mind calming as the loose leaves are given ample time to swirl, separate and glow in your teapot". Quite poetic, mr. fisherman.

The enemy of tea is coffee. Joyless coffee. Hodgkinson bashes coffee drinking by controversially declaring that "Coffee is for winners, go-getters, early-risers, guilt-ridden strivers, money obsessives and status-drivem spiritually empty lunatics. It is an enervating force. We should resist it and embrace tea, the ancient drink of poets, philosophers and meditators."  Ouf! That's quite an opinion!

Here's how I like my tea:

morning: a pot of earl grey or orange pekoe in my big mug:

afternoon: a pot of loose leaf jasmine with honey.

Les feuilles virvolent*

Beautiful October day! We had fun in the Gatineau Park leaves:

Stuffing the purple bag ("sac à dos" as Margot names it) with leaves

Hiding Spot

Finding the perfect leaf (or not)

Yoga in the leaves

Picking up leaves

Flying leaves

* leaves flying/dancing/skipping in the air ;)

Freshness and Zoo

FRESHNESS:

Sometimes re-arranging furniture is the remedy for a stale room. This afternoon, we moved our living room around. Fresh!

Also, the weather is getting fresh these days.

THE ZOO:

We visited the Toronto Zoo last Sunday. We took tons of pictures. Here are just a selected few:

A butterfly in the Indo-Malaysian Pavillon.

Margot really wanted to see the elephants. But once we got to them, she wasn't too impressed...

Exotic fish.

Giraffes were also on Margot's Wish List...

The White Lions were beautiful. Margot actually liked them.