the beach, autumn and yoga

Good Morning from Sydney’s beaches, we are having beautiful Autumnal weather here and I’m popping in to say G’day with some lovely pictures from the beach from my iphone & a little bit about Well-being, Beach Cottage style…

At the start of 2014 I had decided I was going to grip the year by its balls and get myself together…I don’t know if you know what I mean but I know what I mean in that I had been ‘fumbling through’ for a few years…I am not the most badly organised person on the planet but neither am I super together plus I have this kinda in-built aversion to too much planning, it makes me feel tied down and hemmed in, I know exactly where it comes from and why too. This gives one serious problems in life when one has three children, a husband with a busy growing business, a lot of sport and little corner of the interwebs with a few visitors to run and I found myself often doing the fumble and often winging it to get by…

So I had decided that in 2014 there would be less fumbling through, more planning, less busy and interestingly rather than just zee planning of zee boring stuff, more planning of well-being…I bought myself a diary, I bought myself a couple of inspirational books I had had my eye on for ages and I was looking at a few retreats and workshops to go off to – nothing hocus pocus but I have been silently observing a very successful friend of mine with a very busy life and how she schedules everything right down to her left elbow softening – but along with business meetings, planning session and high-flying she includes scheduling well-being, fitness, health and calm into a jam packed lifestyle. She without knowing it said something to me and the penny dropped, 2014 I was going to schedule the life balance stuff into that new diary and all would be tickety-boo! Hello life balance.

So I had this ‘Well-being’ thing well and truly scheduled into my 2014, I’d decided I would blog little bits and pieces of it because whenever I talk about anything like life balance / healthy lifestyle etc I get lots of questions, I had started switching to less meat and gluten, I’d been bush-walking via the diary ;) and I started a ‘Well-Being’ category on the blog… and then, well, things didn’t turn out quite as I expected at the beginning of the year.

Since then I have been in a tailspin, the adrenaline gets you through the really sh*tty bits and then months down the line you realise what happened and Well-being has been about the last thing on my mind to be honest…but really there’s no-one else here who can do anything to make the aftermath of the last few months feel better apart from me..

So I am gently and I stress very gently wanting to discover and prioritise what is important in my life (top of that list are two white slip-covered sofas, a new vintage-y Hamptons kitchen and another beach cottage to get my teeth stuck into hahahahahha) plus I want to make changes for a more balanced life, making time for the people I love and recognising, celebrating and acknowledging steps forwards and achievements…

In view of that, this morning, I decided to suck up the sadness and have a go at yoga…I’ve dabbled in classes before, but to be totally honest I think that I was never ready for yoga in my younger days, I played a lot of sport then, had more energy and yoga just seemed too slow….nowadays that’s just what I want.

So I’ve been looking around for a good class – the main things I was looking for – location and class times. I’ve learnt before that unless exercise slips nicely into my routine in the morning I won’t stick at it, it’s as simple as that for me, which is one of the reasons walking works for me. So I found a general Hatha yoga class that meant I could do the school run, park the car and go straight to it (also don’t like having to wait around another reason why I wouldn’t keep it up).

And the result? It was great, much much better than the last time I tried yoga, I went on my own and found everyone to be friendly enough (I don’t have issues with going to classes alone I know some people do), everyone seemed ‘normal’ and I found bits of my body that I haven’t felt let alone seen for a very very long time…if ever. The studio was lovely, clean bright and felt right, it didn’t cost an arm and a leg and I came away feeling lighter and kinda buzzy, not sure what that was but it was ok.

I’ll be reporting back on here the Well-being journey…I’m really hoping yoga helps me get over the last few months, it’s not been co-incidence in the last few weeks that lots of people have told me it will help.

I’ve also read that the key to balance is rewarding your achievements so I thought that every time I make a yoga class I’ll buy a rug, sofa or quilt, whaddya reckon?? ;)

Please leave me a comment or email me anything you might think will be of interest if you know a lot about yoga or have been on a journey with it….

What about you, when you stop for a moment (God forbid you have anything like what happened to us to make you stop and re-assess) and take some time to think about your life what changes would you like to make? What could you indulge in that will make you happy and reduce the stress in your life?

Namaste

Sarah

You can find other Well-Being posts over here including the post I wrote here on 5 Things that Helped Me Get My Energy Back and here the post I wrote when life got all on top of me and I decided enough was enough and the green smoothie recipe that helped me out of it

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