...Machig Labdron was an 11th CE Tibetan yogini whose teachings and practices of Chod have profoundly influenced all schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
...In the morning of time, in the golden age of Satya Yuga, when the mountains and plains and forests of the world were newborn, there was a lake – the most beautiful lake the world would ever know. It sparkled like liquid gold. Into it poured the clearest streams from the glaciers of the Himalayas.
...Drukpa Kunley is also known as the 'fertility saint', and Chimi Lhakhang is visited not only by the Bhutanese but by couples from all over the world hoping to conceive.
....Any Yoga Teacher Training, if they’re doing the job properly, are life changing. People who come are usually ready to experience transformation in their lives. For sure, after a month of living in a monastery in Nepal your view/perception of the world shifts.
Fear manifests in many forms, whether it's an insect phobia, things simply not being the way someone thinks they should be, self-loathing issues, or the fear of death – all these have occurred on my yoga retreats have inspired me to look deeper into the psychology of fear.
....People can arrive on a yoga retreat depressed, taking medication; have high levels of anxiety or stress, and difficult lives. Very few people ever admit to having mental health issues. And how are we to know how serious it really is?
....Many people think that it’s easy to just go on a ‘yoga holiday,’ for the student and teacher alike, and usually it is. So, what can go wrong on these ‘blissful’ yoga holidays? Plenty.
....Sikkim is known as the 'Hidden Land' and it's protected by both mountainous terrain as well as its legendary mystical powers. Sikkim is an impenetrable secret kingdom locked for eons behind the hidden gates of its highest mountain, Kanchendzonga.
The road is dramatic and winds around precarious edges of bottomless chasms and up endless steep hairpin turns to higher alpine forests of pine, fir, oak, flowering rhododendrons and magnolias, past tea plantations and pretty hillside towns with wooden houses built on stilts, painted turquoise and blue, perched on the side of mountains.
....Pelling (2,058 m) is fast becoming a popular tourist destination, but is still a quiet town perched on the edge of a mountain, with some of the best views of the Kanchendzonga range in Sikkim. I’m staying in Upper Pelling at the Garuda Hotel, a shabby Tibetan place run by Buddhists with great decor and atmosphere.
