Was looking up today as I walked around Phnom Penh. It wasn’t strictly wise, as pavements here are monstrous obstacle courses, tiled, slippery with rain, displaced by tree roots, used as cars and bike parking areas, they are often the final resting place of old wooden yellow house shrines and covered in dusty building detritus. No one walks on the pavements. The streets heave with activity, tuk tuks, motor bikes, big f… you sport utility vehicles (SUV’s, I’m personally not a fan of acronyms). Big black or silver SUV’s, tuks and millions of motor bikes driven by drivers who take the road rules and traffic lights as suggestions rather than rules of law. That attitude applies to building safety regulations. It horrifies me to see men welding with no eye or foot protection.

Anyway I was walking in mild heat under mostly grey sky. I knew it would rain soon, the air pressure was gathering gravitas. The juxtaposition of temple facades and modern edifices has a jarring quality in Phnom Penh given that planning permission is given willy nilly to the highest bidder and many of the modern building have a generic design quality to them. Yet many of the older buildings seemed festive today, verandahs sporting colourful bunting and brilliant scraps of blue sky carved into by elegant old roofs. The security guards lolling outside apartment gates, by mid morning have taken off their shoes and sleep propped against a wall, the heat and pressure increasing.

I guess my trust in my ability to navigate this treacherous terrain has improved. I walk with the rest of the population along the side of the roads, swivelling my head as I navigate to check for silent bikes, push carts of snacks and drinks, and motors of all descriptions. Navigating the air waves too with a dismissive wave of my right hand answering the incessant inquiry, “Tuk madam?” and the bewildering call, “Mobi?” Which translates as, “Does Madam want to take a motor bike to wherever she is going?” Rendered into the strange vernacular of the Khmer language, why use two or more syllables when one will do the trick?

It did rain, a gentle drumming on a blue roof, as I watched from a verandah the temple across the road darken from yellow to mustard and felt the air steam up into a sauna of heat. Thank the gods for iced water and shelter.

In the last few months in Phnom Penh I have saturated my self in subtle forms of energy healing. I have studied many forms of sound geometry and form, as it applies to human movement and consciousness. Every year that I have practiced yoga, learnt a new skill, such as swimming or Reiki, or healed an injury, I realise that this miracle, we experience as life, is unfathomably complex. So I seek immersion in the experience of life rather than in attempting to understand. I have reached a point where I can look chaos in the face and even if I can’t see it I know there is order and all I can bring to the party is good grace and love.

Over that last few months I have returned to my roots in yoga, Nāda yoga. My first experience of a state out of time and space occurred when I listened to the world’s sounds as abstract impressions and a synesthetic awareness of reality has informed my awareness ever after. Nāda yoga (नादयोग) is an ancient Indian metaphysical system. It is equally a philosophical system, a medicine and a form of yoga. Nāda yoga means “union through sound.” It is the ancient spiritual art and science of inner transformation through sound and tone. Meditation on sound is one universal path to Self Realization, accessible to anyone and appropriate for people of any religion or spiritual aspiration.

So this Tuesday coming, I am offering a relaxation and Nada yoga class or Sound Bath, I will play the crystal bowls tuned to 528Hz, you get to rest and experience. This frequency has an incredible quieting effect on your body and mind. The 528Hz frequency was used by Lennon to record the peace protest classic Imagine, among the most popular recordings of all time. I am privilege to be able to play a full set of crystal bowls in this so called love or miracle frequency. All hype aside the sounds are transcendent and uniquely available at Enso Healing Space.

Healing Phnom Penh

FOUNDATION YOGA

Back Foundations Yoga Improves your posture and enables you move from pain to performance

Foundation Yoga as applied to managing back pain uniquely incorporates the therapeutic practices of the Foundation Technique and traditional Hatha Yoga to create postural integrity and correct imbalances in your body. The practices are self limiting and each stage is mastered before the next is attempted, creating a strong and integrated body that is protected from injury with balanced strength and flexibility.

The first training is to strengthen and balance your spine and legs and to create lyric and graceful upper body and arm movements, the second stage is to create graceful leg movement while strengthening your arms. Traditional yogic breath techniques, yogic sequences and innovative corrective movements are introduced slowly with ample repetition to learn and integrate an enhanced level of physical, emotional and spiritual expression.

Back Foundation Yoga is designed to give your body every chance of enjoying strong, coordinated movement for the rest of your life. Simple short daily routines are gradually taught giving amazing results in improving your posture

Cure Back Pain with Back Foundation Yoga Training

The movements of Foundation Training strengthen the postural chain and synergist muscles of movement. You will learn to decompress out of pain and elongate your spine. With integrated movement every step you take makes you stronger and pain free.

Improve your Athletic Performance with Back Foundation Yoga Training

The principles of Back Foundation Yoga can be applied to many sports and fitness activities. Increasingly major athletes are achieving breakthroughs in their sports in terms of ease of movement.

“My golf game has improved out of sight with Foundation Training.” Peter M., Randwick, Australia.

“I can dance all night, Foundation Training made a huge improvement to my leg and hip pain.” Shirley P., Lilyfield, Australia.

“I don’t care how strong an athlete you are, if you take the time to master this technique and include it with your existing training program your athletic ability, strength and poise will improve dramatically.” Maggi Nimmo, Foundation Training and Foundation Yoga Instructor. maggi@magginimmo.co

 

 

The equinox has just passed, the sun sitting directly over the equator drives the shadows into light and it’s freaking hot. I venture out in the morning and late afternoons, even then scuttling from shade to shadow. Phnom Penh is ticking over, buzzing, grinding with new buildings. Scaffolding wrapped in huge sheets of green plastic. From the roof top where I teach yoga I’ve counted 14 new buildings swathed in green. Many of the designs are generic across Asia, perhaps a consortium of Chinese business men are reusing a design again and again. Hotels, apartment blocks and high end shopping mauls all the same in Sri Lanka, India, Singapore and Cambodia.

Local residents are displaced to build these colossuses, and the safety standards are appalling, people weld with no eye protection and wield electrical equipment wearing flip flops. Whole families live in the building sites, children snake amongst the wood and metal. From my house I can hear the teevees, arguments, crying babies, general hilarity and music. I live next door to a large half built apartment block. The incessant buzz of machinery in the tall structure annoying as it is, ceases in the evening where more normal sounds of neighbours emerge. I can smell the meat and onions being cooked and despite the noise I appreciate the deep shade afforded by the monolith over our little house.

I am teaching yoga in Phnom Penh, and like any new enterprise the way to proceed is difficult, the market is diverse, expats, volunteers at NGO’s, well to do locals, travellers and poor families. Yoga is a luxury item, freedom from stress is a luxury item, yet it is the only way to live that know of. I can’t imagine living without a period of contemplation every day. Most people can’t afford or want the luxury of self awareness.

I am working with a swim coach and heaving my way through laps of butterfly, it feels like I am on every level swimming against the tide but my stronger legs, arm and torso tell me to keep sweeping my arms through the water and hope it takes me somewhere.

As the Kylie’s battle it out in cyber space for naming rights, as the Dumphs and Burnies lock horns in the US of A, as the huddled lifejacket masses of Africa and the Middle East flee war and poverty across the Mediterranean the world turns. New cars are purchased and old ones go into land fill. Sea creatures eat plastic and bloat with hormones. Almost as many migrants and refugees crossed the Mediterranean into Europe in January and February of 2016 as in the first six months of last year.

We look, inert, at a picture of a child crouched on the ground, a vulture hopping from leg to leg nearby. Porn site abound, the unending and unthinking gluttony of the masses consume meats and sugars and fats that cause directly city blocks of primitive virgin forest to be felled, so more sugar can be grown, cows grazed or economically viable, land destroying crops, grown. Quick fixes make millions and give no satisfaction.

Do I sound negative? Well yes I am negative I am disgusted by the carelessness and lack of care with which we all go about out lives. I am no exception, the AC blares from time to time and the electric lights flash even as I write this. I feel helpless against the tide of destruction I see everywhere. A small gentle gesture of love, a smile, a curtesy, that’s all I can give. What is that against the tide of consumerism, the unconscious populations struggling for survival. What can I give to assuage the tsunami of rubbish rising with the melting polar ice, soon to cover Pacific Islands. Is the loss of unique species worth the survival of one, humanity. Is humanity greater in consciousness than the bio diversity, afforded by the multi-forms of life on this planet? Is the sacrifice of diversity an evolutionary step or have the inhabitants of this planet created an end game.

The earth, the soil is connected by fungus strands that signal data, communicate from plant to plant, from forest to forest. Great tracks of that communication system are destroyed, the implications of that, the land divided up into isolated patches struggling for survival. Plants in a pot one is loved and spoken to kindly, the other is yelled at, the third is ignored. Of the three plants the one that did the worst is the one that was ignored. Children are isolated from their parents, friends, the earth, themselves by devices. I don’t think anyone who is caring for a child and at the same time looking at social media on their phone realises just how much damage being isolated and ignored can be to another human.

I have no idea where to begin to assuage my own sense of isolation from the world, I attempt to Mind My Own Business and you know I have lost my smile from having to zip my lip. “None of my Business.” I intone, ”Yes that’s right what you are judging is really something you have not owned in yourself yet.” Well that coping method is getting old along with me.

I am overwhelmed with the distress I am feeling from the earth and the pain and living deaths I see behind peoples eyes. I have moments of great inner happiness and derive a great deal of strength from the meditation practices I pursue. That’s what I do I watch my friends make the same choices over and over, and then complain or mourn the consequences flaying about in the quick sand of their own creations. I am no different, my visceral attachment to life drives me to eat and my psychological need for communication drives me to listen. I find it difficult to say what is in my heart because my heart is breaking for the planet. The sadness I feel is because on some level we all have a blueprint or a fantasy about how life should be and it consists to a large extent of material accruements and is mostly unachievable, so we blunder about confused trying this and that and wondering why we are still fat, unhappy, poor, alone.

The refugees in the middle of the Mediterranean clutching their children, fearing for their very lives are reaching out asking for help and we close borders. These times are a test of our humanity and to survive this crisis we need to find the best in ourselves and share that, become that. Connect and find out what who we are in the faces of those who need our full humanity to manifest itself now.

I’m a bit worried by the implications of the fire monkey year. A trickster has entered the consciousness of Asia, an agile fellow who can piss on us all from a great height and laughing, swing away on his strong arms. As a result of his strength and intelligence, the monkey is exploited as a mythic source of healing. Black-faced spider monkeys and brown or tufted capuchins are each used to treat many ailments. For example, in Bolivia, spider monkey body parts are used to cure snake bites, spider bites, fevers, coughs, colds, shoulder pain, sleeping problems and leishmaniasis (a parasite infestation caused by mayfly bites).

In India many people believe that eating the blood of macaques (Macaca assamensis and Macaca mulatta) treats asthma. Assamese macaques are eaten to cure rheumatism. Other monkeys or lorises have their bones or skulls ground up into powder administered with tea, or have their gall bladders ingested or blood or fat used as ointments. Not really so clever, these Asian beliefs and practices, as wild animals organs and parts are often vectors for disease.

The Great Western Medicine is above this sort of nonsense, I hope you can tell I am being sarcastic. In 1960 a scientist named Bernice Eddy discovered that rhesus monkey kidney cells used to make the Salk polio vaccine and the then experimental oral polio vaccines, could cause cancer when injected into lab animals. Later that year the cancer-causing virus in the rhesus monkey kidney cells was identified as SV40 or simian virus 40, the 40th monkey virus to be discovered.

At a conference in 1997, on SV-40 and human cancers held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), there was no disagreement among both government and non-government scientists about these two facts. The only disagreement was whether SV40 was actually being identified in the cancerous tumors of children and adults alive today and, if it was, whether the monkey virus was in fact responsible for their cancer. Non-government scientists working in independent labs around the world said, “Yes.” But the scientists connected with the U.S. government said “No.”

The ancestors are acknowledged at the Chinese New Year, the first dark moon in the year is new year’s eve and the new moon’s crescent appearance, the next day, marks the beginning of the next year. A feast is prepared and paper symbols of wealth, gold, money, rich clothes, certificates, even watches are burnt in a fire outside for the ancestors in hell and where ever else they go, so that they have the spiritual means to live well. As we burnt the symbols of wealth the ancestors get to eat our laid out feast, then we all eat their ghostly leftovers.

It’s a family event, full of good humour, family ill will, suppressed feelings, easy conversation, strange withdrawals. I think I am describing a ritual like Christmas, and it is a bit like Christmas but all the dosh and goodies are sent via flame to the dead olds so they can get on with the afterlife and stop haunting us. A happy ghost means a happy home. Money is spent on food, symbols and paper, rather than plastic land fill for kiddies who will discard the toxic non biodegradable toys in a short time.

The first day of the year of the fire Monkey means a quiet day in Phnom Penh. Many schools have schedule a day off and many shops are closed, but the big retail centres are in full swing their eyes quickly turned from the retail opportunity of the Chinese New Year to Saint Valentines Day. The red hearts, cute cuddly bears, cards are all newly displayed amongst the red decorations of the New Year. It looks quite festive. I must admit I felt like barfing but I was curious as to how the changes in retail strategy, to sell, were turned around so quickly in a country so slow, in other ways, to change. It just goes to show you that the human mind is a profit exploiting machine. I’m not very optimistic about changing that, but I will be teaching a class on love on February 14th at 2:30pm, for pairs of people (bring a friend, relative or partner for free) at Nataraj, #52 Street 302 Phnom Penh. Come along if you’re in town we can meditate at the end of the class on the Buddhist concept of Metta, Loving Kindness and develop the skill of Ahimsa, the practice of compassion.

So we are in the year of 2016. Will this year be significantly different for you?
What are you doing or going to do to feel okay, healthy, happy?

What is your deepest ambition or value? Do you want to be rich? Famous? Loved? What makes you feel fulfilled?
Well good relationships keep you happy and healthy, good warm connected relationships are accurate indicators of future health. Social connections to family friends and community are important.

Loneliness is toxic and decreases your lifespan by increasing all forms of illness mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. Pain and ill health are increased, magnified and exacerbated by feelings of isolation and disconnected dysfunctional relationships.

In the long run we as fallible humans, all want a quick fix but the quick fix does not satisfy the deep tribal need to connect and love.

What to do?
Patanjali in The Yoga Sutras suggests this four behaviours will move you towards the possibility of happiness and fulfilment.
Dispassion: do not take another persons behaviour personally, when you are offended, annoyed or angry attempt to see the offenders point of view. Physically relax and soften your eyes it changes you on the inside chemically and enabled you to stand back from negative behaviours, your own and others.
Compassion: Take the time to see the world from another persons point of view and then you might at least understand them. That’s not to say that you stand aside and let injustices or violence be perpetrated but if you at least see another point of view the world will shift its perspective for you
Be Friendly: again relax your eyes and smile or at least stay neutral and observe a situation. Give yourself permission and time to respond and not react to situations. A pleasant word or kindness can diffuse potential hostilities.
Non Envy: Do not envy the luck, beauty, wealth, fame or success of another. Celebrate their success and realise that the lives of others, their inner worlds, are unfathomable to us and their success hard won.

FOUNDATION TRAINING CLASS
I will be in Balmain from the Monday 4th January till the 12th, if you wish to be in contact for a therapy appointment, cuppa, yoga session just give me a ring or text on 0403095779. I look forward to catching up.
I will be staying near Punch Park so for those of you wishing to participate there will be another Foundation Training Class on Thursday the 7th at 10:00am.

The run up to Christmas, one step at a time… waking in the quiet first light for some reason I hold my hands up and wonder just why my nails have dirt under them. I don’t remember doing any thing to pull the dirt in, but there it is. Then the stumble to the kettle, nooooo I don’t wake up all perky and nice, I shuffle to the kettle amongst other things and while it does its boil thing I stretch tall, locking my legs into place with strong muscular contractions, then exhausted I take a cup of tea back to bed, I’m not a fan of bounciness in the morning.

The day got weird after that, the local shopping centre with its up-tempo Christmasy loud musac, its announcements, its general retail buzz augmented with an Asian sensibility of general Babylonian cadence left me sensitised and reeling. The bus, the rain, the air of distraction I carry my parcel and letter to the postoffice, and there was attended by a Postal counter hopper who complained that she had lost her umbrella yesterday, a designer umbrella, no less, and then said unexpectedly, ”I try to be patient especially this time of year.” I replied “Yes its a sign of great love.” She grinned at me, I breathed in aware that I was breathing and let out a long slow breath as I jostled through the lines towards the exit.

I try to keep it quiet these days but at the same time feel like I’m disappearing. I went to see the eccentric artist Grayson Perry’s exhibition at the MCA and there’s a man who cannot but make an impression, he is in no danger of disappearing, and the social commentary is sharp, funny, irreverent, ribald and arty. Lots of fun and easy access to a rather jaundiced and wayward view of English culture, it taints your spirit and it is impossible to move through a crowd the same way after experiencing Grayson’s take on the massed human experience. That is the object of art to change,colour, taint and impress your spirit with irrational and surprising emotions and feelings.

So where does it come from this impatience and unhappiness, this dirt in the tendrils of your spirit that irritates and is there for no good reason?

I offer this breathing exercise from Thich Nhat Hanh to ameliorate the the creeping irritations of the days to come:
Breathing in I know I am breathing in. Breathing out I know I am breathing out.
Breathing in my breath goes deep. Breathing out my breath goes slowly.
Breathing in I feel calm. Breathing out I feel ease.
Breathing in I smile. Breathing out I release.
Breathing in I dwell in the present moment. Breathing out I know it’s a wonderful moment.
I’m in Sydney for another few weeks, then I will return to Cambodia. If anyone wishes to see me for an appointment or have a private movement session contact me on 0403095779.