Vipassana Diary Day 2 We're beginning to have more fun in the kitchen; speed we work at is incredible. Cheryl used to have an award winning restaurant and likes to jazz up the recipes; Ken's doing an acupuncture course at uni; Mark is a Kiwi living at the centre for a few months. We've been learning from Cheryl that in a busy kitchen you have often have to warn each other when you're whizzing around with big, heavy, hot pot "behind you", "hot p...

27.6.2008 What I'll always remember about Stillpoint Watching the sunrise in the mornings The brown hawk gliding gracefully in the fields Sitting under the meditation tree and watching the cows Horses in the fields trying to eat my blanket as I stoke them Buzz and the cats Fire in the living room and staring at it for hours People on the course: Anandi, Dorris, Debi, Malin, Scott, Jamey, Juan, Inke, Ariel, Takako, Timothy, Brigid and Kay Swami and Da...

26.6.2008 What an ending! I know that we still have one more day to go but we had just emotional time when doing our 5min demonstrations today in front of the whole group. You could see the colours of people's personalities reflected clearly, some personal stories, own experiences with yoga, with life…some physical demonstration and a lot of tears. Tears of realising how far we had come on this journey of 2 months, how much we mean to each other… I absolut...

25.6.2008 Your hate becomes your challenge and your challenge becomes your love! Its amazing how much you discover about yourself, how you view the world just by being aware of your relationships with postures in yoga. I think Anandi has had an amazing journey as she has a knee injury from 2nd week of our training and had to work very hard at making more space, re-learning movement patterns and as we all call her now, becoming an expert on knees, just through h...

24.6.2008 Are men real fighters? Our lovely John (Juan) has been unwell for sometime with some persistent bug in his system for the past 6 weeks and currently feeling poorly again. Just watching him so unwell and at the same time trying his best has made me think about men, and human beings in general really. There seems to be a need to look stronger than we really are, a fight that really needs more surrendering and nurturing and yet we have the perception o...