editor's blog

Around 300 yoga enthusiasts turned up at the London Eye on Wednesday to take part in the launch event of Carpe Diem’s Urban Yoga Week.  

The army of dedicated yogis braved the 8am start to raise funds for the West London Special Yoga Centre, in Queen’s Park, devoted to helping children with special needs. The participants’ £10-a-head donation went towards the building of a new lift at the centre.  

Thirty yoga teachers, headed by agoy’s Howard Napper, led the participants through a sun salutation routine lasting for around 30 minutes – the duration of the wheel’s rotation.

The London Eye gathering kick off a series of yoga events in the next week, all costing £10, organised by Carpe Diem. These include:

·        Highbury Fields Park, May 4 – 6.30 to 7.30pm, led by James Juiseppi

·        Finsbury Park, May 5 – 6.30 to 7.30pm, led by Nigel Jones

·        Clapham Common – May 8, 6.30 to 7.30pm, led by Khati Goupil

·        Battersea Park, May 9 – 6.30 to 7.30pm, led by David Olton

 www.carpediemurbanyoga.com

   
The Uk's first simlulateous yoga lesson was held on the London Eye this morning.

The event, lead by Agoy instructor Howard Napper, saw six participants and a trained yoga instructor in each of the 31 capsules complete a full rotation above London's skyline.

Mats were provided by Agoy, with each participant asked to donate a minim of £10 - money that will go directly towards a fund-raising project for the special yoga centre in Queen's Park, West London.

The sky high yoga class, which kicked off at 8am on May 3, marked the launch of Carpe Diem urban yoga week, aimed at making yoga more accessible. It will be the first of many Carpe Diem yoga events held across the Capital's parks and outdoor spaces this summer. Other cities - including Paris, Vienna, Bath and Brighton - are also hosting events.

Rachel Warren, Carpe Diem business manager, says: "Yoga is a fantastic way to get people together and ignite their passion for healthy living - what better way to seize the day than on the London Eye?"

For more information see www.carpediemurbanyoga.com

“Some of you have great focus during the class, but others are easily distracted - grabbing your water bottle, or fiddling. It would be really nice if everyone made an effort to remain focused on their practice. Otherwise you might as well be at the gym”. So said my yoga teacher the other day, and her words struck an immediate chord.

As the teacher was pointing out, being truly present during yoga practice is one of the fundamentals that sets yoga apart from other forms of exercise.

Think of the gym, with the constant background noise of the TV, or radio, or both. How many gym-goers are really present and aware of what they’re doing? How can that be possible when Pauline Fowler’s dulcet tones are ringing out from the latest episode of East Enders?

And yet I find that focusing on the moment – really focusing – is one of yoga’s biggest challenges. In this class on Saturday my mind, as usual, bounced from one thought to the next. There was no rhyme, reason, or pattern to these thoughts, and no sooner had I wrenched myself back to the present than off went My Mind again, busy, unruley, impossible to pin down.

It’s hardly surprising that many of us find living in the moment hugely difficult. We’re deluged with information for most of the working day, contactable virtually every working hour and constantly under pressure to be somewhere five minutes ago. There’s little space for enjoying the present when the immediate future bears down on us so heavily.

Yet it’s not difficult to see how being in the moment – focusing on this moment, right now – is the key to so much. Steve Hagen, a Zen priest, homes in on this subject in his extraordinarily lucid and helpful book, Buddhism Plain and Simple.

Hagen makes it clear that this elusive ability to live in the now is crucial for many reasons, one of them being the unpalatable truth that everything around us – including ourselves of course – is impermanent and will die.
 
He writes: “Everything in our experience – our bodies, our minds, our thoughts, our wants and needs, our relationships – is fleeting. Changing. Subject to death. We die in each moment and again, in each moment, we are born.

"The process of birth and death goes on endlessly moment after moment right before our eyes….. Vitality consists of this very birth and death. This impermanent, this constant arising and fading awash, are the very things that make our lives vibrant, wonderful, and alive.”

Would a perfect July day in the UK be quite as perfect if every single day was the same? Yet how easy is it for us to be too wrapped up in the pace and demands of our own lives to take note of how what’s staring us in the face; how perfect the day is.

And so it is that life passes us by as we live life in the future, anticipating our next meal, our next piece of work, our next holiday.  

Once we fully taken in the fact that nothing in this world stays the same, or alive, for ever; that it’s not possible to hold onto things or control them, then the value of living in the present, right here, right now, truly hits home.

I have a feeling there’s a long, hard road ahead, but being awake in the moment is an art I’d truly like to get a little closer to, and a journey that can perhaps begin on the yoga mat. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.

The UK's second National Downshifting Week, which ran until April 28, aimed to highlight the benefits of simple, environmentally-friendly living.

Spearheaded by columnist and broadcaster Tracey Smith, the awareness campaign was designed to inspire individuals, companies, children and schools by pulling together the threads of simpler living.

Part of this involves supporting the local community, organic, environmentally-friendly living and investing in the family. 

Smith describes herself as a “regular Mum on a limited budget”, who took the decision to downshift to rural France for a more balanced life. She has re-located back to England to concentrate on work surrounding the campaign.

She says: “I’m not a freaky eco head, but it’s wonderful to be able to talk about this. My aim is to break some barriers.”

Smith adds that strong interest from the US and Canada will lead her to take the campaign over the Atlantic for the first time in June (June 24-30) this year. 

Downshifting week – www.downshiftingweek.com – ran from April 21 to 28.

Top downshifting tips:

• Plant something in the garden to cultivate and eat.
• Donate and purchase at a local charity shop.
• Cut up a credit card.
• Take a day off work to spend exclusively with the one you love.
• Cook a simple meal using fresh, locally sourced ingredients, preferably organic.
• Get started recycling and composting.

A US group is calling for more children to be taught Transcendental Meditation (TM) in schools as a way to decrease stress and improve concentration levels.

The Arizona Committee for stress-free Schools is putting forward the argument over a two-day conference on April 20 and 21.

Already, schools across the US are finding that the stress-reducing, nonreligious TM programme is an effective guard against the stresses or everyday life, the group says.

It's claimed that children can benefit from regular TM practice in many ways – including decreased stress, reduced substance abuse, improved memory and academic performance and lower blood pressure.

Students sit in a room, crossed-legged, their eyes closed, their thoughts focused as they recite a mantra. Children under ten can walk slowly around the room or the playground and recite a word.

A spokesperson says: “The alarming rise of classroom stress fuels widespread problems in education, including poor academic achievement, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, school violence and teacher burnout.

“To overcome these problems, any successful educational reform effort must include the knowledge and methodologies to dissolve stress and awaken each student’s potential.”

www.arizonastressfreeschools.org