Here we go! 2010!! What a year it’s going to be in every area I know and can imagine and those I can’t comprehend. I may even become a yoga teacher. I mean start teaching classes, having got my qualification in November.

This morning marks a new start after a week of living by the pleasures – eating whatever and slobbing about. Four activities each day, simple and without ‘shoulds’. Instead, the motive comes from 15 years of trial and error, feeling and knowing what works and what’s important to me, what allows new possibility. These daily activities are: yoga (asana, some pranayama), sitting quietly once or twice, a walk, some exercise. This combined with eating only what does me well long term, rather than satisfying the desire to fill or to taste.

To start 2010 I’m doing Richard Hittleman’s Yoga 28 Days Exercise Plan. I’ve done it a few times before and never managed to do in 28 days. I started this morning at 0645, having let the eager chickens out of the coop at the school. I like the pausing, the variety of asana, the holding and the sequential flow at the end of each practice. A bonus is the amazingly attractive model, Cheryl Fischer. The book is from 1969, with rather a strong emphasis on health and beauty, but the yoga is sound.

From today’s Thoughts of the Day:

Young people whose spines have grown rigid will appear to be much older than their actual years. Conversely, people who have retained the elasticity of their spines and limbs appear youthful and ‘alive’ in middle age and beyond.

I am also going to see Krishnamurti’s Book of Life through a whole year. From today, January 1st:

If you can listen with ease, without strain, you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you, a change that comes without volition, without your asking.

And that is the theme for the year, a continued exploration to living with ease, living without effort within and without.

Happy New Year! Go easy. On yourself, on others.