real yoga real life

Discussions and musings on the true meaning and teachings of Yoga and Vedanta

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Motivation

It takes motivation to step on my mat every morning and do my practice. Often, it’s thinking about how I’ll feel afterwards that entices me. Then on the mat, it’s the sequence of postures and practices that keep me engaged. There are things I find challenging in my practice and things I avoid, but in general it’s how I feel during and after that keeps me coming back. Motivation for my diabetes…

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Home on the range

Home on the range

I was diagnosed three days before I had to leave for India to teach a yoga teacher training. My endo told me to get a glucometer and test my levels and to try and keep them around 4 mmol.  I remember testing and seeing a 4.6 and thinking I was too high.  I was diagnosed before CGM technology became readily available and when many doctors didn’t really understand LADA (Latent Autoimmune Diabetes…

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Diabetes is really really really hard

Diabetes is really really really hard

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Zooming in and Zooming out

Zooming in and Zooming out

The last few months have been trying. Lots of juggling, no new experiments, just keeping my head above water. That’s because I have a life and it takes priority. That doesn’t mean I ignore diabetes, far from it. It means I work extra hard to keep an even keel. I double down and get laser focused. This means sticking to routines, keeping up with my yoga practice and making sure I don’t get caught…

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Flavours of Ignorance

There is only one seamless reality. That awareness flowing in and through every animate and inanimate object. Self is not available through any of the senses, yet it is throughout all of the senses. Call it the knowing principle – awareness- consciousness, we human beings personalize it as “my” awareness. Yet logic dictates that what is common to all cannot be personal. What else is common to…

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The power of effort

The power of effort

Every morning I tell myself, it’s a new beginning when it comes to my life with diabetes. No matter the circumstances at bedtime, waking up is always a fresh start. But I didn’t always see things like that. There was a time not so long ago that I dragged the past onto the present and my mornings were spent in the gloom of dreadful numbers, too many lows or other diabetes related disasters. It’s…

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The balm that frees the world

The balm that frees the world

Everywhere out there I feel trauma. Standing in the chasm is terrifying and it hurts. How can we let these insane things happen? How can we be in the midst of what looks like another world war? What can I as just one of 8 billion people do? Practically I’ve been donating to various charities like this one spare a rose, and offering my services to raise money for flood recovery here. And I’ve…

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A meditation for Peace

A meditation for Peace

Peace, such a simple word with huge ramifications.  Asked to describe peace what would you say? Being still? Feeling content? As sense of safety and security? Unending happiness, bliss and trust? Whatever words describe peace, peace is something we know intrinsically. Why? Because we experience it every night in deep sleep. Peace is the very nature of who we are. Which is why we look for it in…

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Dear Diabetes

You came so unexpectedly. You freaked me out, exhausted me and made me confused. You forced me to look for answers, but for a long time I looked in all the wrong places. Endless doctors, naturopaths, homeopaths, people without a clue as to what was going on. You hid like a rat, slowly gnawing away at me until it was almost too late. Touching was uncomfortable, walking exhausting, weight fell off…

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180 Decisions a day

180 Decisions a day

It was in a coffee shop after consuming a giant banana muffin that I made the first big decision of my adult life. Picking up the coin operated payphone wasn’t easy, but I had to do it. It was time to call it quits on college. “Are you sure?” My father asked. I had no doubt; it felt good to be an adult and make my own decisions. The decision to irrevocably change my life was easy. In fact, every…

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Indoctrination

I want to take a minute to talk about indoctrination. Specifically, indoctrination in the diabetes world. When I was first diagnosed and for the first 6 years I didn’t really understand what it meant to have diabetes. I was told by my HCP to change my diet to exercise and that eventually I might need medication. Being involved in yoga and healthy living since the age of 19, I had been taught that…

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Three sentences for the new year

Three sentences for the new year

A yoga intention setting gift for you OMG there are just 12 days left until it’s officially Christmas! I feel like December and January always sneak up on me and before I blink it’s a new year. These last two years have been gut wrenchingly challenging for all of us and as the new year approaches I am both hesitant and expectant and personally, charged and ready to respond differently to what…

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Doing it 'scared'

Doing it ‘scared’

Today marks another World Diabetes Day. A day to share that people living with any kind of diabetes can do whatever they set their minds to. We are not defined by our condition. Spreading awareness of all the facets of living with diabetes, including access to medication, daily management and mental health help people not living with this condition understand more of what we are dealing…

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Thinking outside the box

Thinking outside the box

My yoga teacher used to say “the mind is a box”, a self-perpetuating entity that endlessly recycles itself loop upon loop. In yoga these loops are called vasanas. Habits etched so deeply in that we don’t even know they are there. Think a habitual response to a stressful event. That’s a vasana I have definitely developed some indelible grooves after having weathered diabetes the last 13 years. …

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Put yourself in my shoes

Put yourself in my shoes

When I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes all I knew about the condition was that I would be insulin dependent for the rest of my life. I didn’t think much about the details about the invention of insulin until I became more involved with diabetes advocacy. I was surprised to discover that before the discovery of insulin in 1921, a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes was a death sentence. Diabetes is…

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Beam me up Scotty

Beam me up Scotty

Something not many people know about me is that I am obsessed with sci-fi and dystopian stories. I was never a big Lord of the Rings fan, instead stick me in front of Star Trek and I’m as happy as a pig in mud. I am not quite sure why I’m so obsessed, but I think it has something to do with wanting to be just like my big brother when I was little, who along with my cousin, spent hours making…

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Diabetes as a transformational experience

I’ve just completed a course on Mental Health Aware Yoga. I took the course because I wanted to learn more about how to meet the needs of students dealing with mental health challenges. As I progressed through the course it became apparent that everyone at some point or other has dealt with some sort of mental health issue. In fact, nearly half the population has experienced a diagnosable mental…

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