Organic beetroot, cucumber, carrot, apple and daikon salad

..which I duly consumed with another Autumnally orange food.. a baked sweet potato - yum :)

On (yet another) music high!

Well I've just come back from the most amazing seven hour concert at the shiny new Royal Festival Hall, and despite the lateness (or earliness even..) of the hour, I feel as fresh as when the concert began! The concert was called "From Raj to the Republic" and featured several famous artists (including Ravi Shankar and his daughter, Anoushka Shankar) playing classical Indian music in celebration of the 60th anniversary of India's independence. Just fabulous :)


New sculpture outside the Royal Festival Hall


Sculpture with seasonal sniffles!


To go with tonight's Indian theme, here's the outfit I wore to A&G's wedding in Delhi a few years ago.

Memory Lane

I had an unexpected trip down memory lane this weekend, when during a visit to the Sivananda Yoga centre in Putney (where I hope to get teach yoga before long), I had the opportunity to go for a lovely walk along the Thames. Not only did it bring back memories of happy years spent living not far away on the other side of the river in 52QM, but also of the three years I spent rowing at high school. From a fitness point of view, they were surely the best years of my life so far (though if I keep the yoga practice up, I hope to reach those heady heights once more! :). They also afforded plenty of time out in the fresh air (OK yes, and the driving rain and the cold too.. not to mention at the mercy of the dreaded, blood-sucking flies known to us as "Blanny Bombers"!) connecting with nature, and although all our practice time was spent on the River Stour in Dorset, most of our races took place right here on the Thames. For some of them, I was actually the cox, rather than a rower, so I recall the care I would have to take navigating my charges under the many bridges of the Thames, including this one, Putney bridge.

When looking upon this scene though, I noticed one crucial difference between the rowing clubs dotted along this part of the Thames (I think I counted at least four) and our little boat house and dock in Dorset, and that is the sheer distance you have to cover to get the boat from the boat house into the water here in London. The photo shows barely a quarter of the slope these girls are about to have to trek up with a great, hulking boat slicing into their already exhausted shoulder muscles.. and we had no need for wearing wellies either, where I learned to row. We just lowered the boat gently into the water from the safety of a horizontal - and dry - dock! So, dear Reader, call me a wimp if you please, but in case you should ask yourself why I never took up rowing again back in London, this photo says it all! I was just too pampered back on our small but in many ways perfect River Stour :)


Young rowers on the Thames at Putney

Mel cooks (honestly - she does! Occasionally..)

Inspired by the delicious food pics on a friend's blog (you know who you are - I'm v. impressed!), I am going to start posting photos of my own culinary successes - as and when they arise! Constructive tips, recipes etc., most welcome.. but keep the rotten tomatoes to yourselves :) M xx


Baked butternut squash with stir-fried courgettes (zucchini) and asparagus tips

'Tis the season for wearing hats and scarves

It has turned decidedly Autumnal over here, with the mornings proving particularly chilly. I have already had (I use the past tense slightly prematurely perhaps, but with a view to being positive!) my first snuffles of the season and have been wearing my winter coat from day 1. Yesterday I started wearing a scarf and today my woolly hat will get its first outing of the year. That's not to say we are not enjoying gorgeous sunshine, but the sky is a crisp blue and there is "Winter on the breeze", as an old song by Melanie Safka goes. I got my first organic box in a long time yesterday and much to my delight, it contained a Butternut Squash! You can't get more Autumnal than that :) I plan to to cut it in half and bake it in the oven tonight. Anyone know any clever ways to season it, or stuff it even?

I realised after my last posting that I was still in 'catch up' mode after my prolonged period of Internet isolation in the Summer and that I had in fact not mentioned anything about what is going on here and now. Well, other than the snuffles (which by the way did not prevent me from trekking across to East London for choir practice last night - Vive le Verdi Requiem - oh joy! :), I had my first day of clinical training at the UEL Herbal Medicine clinic last Thursday. In fact, I was supposed to attend on Friday as well, but slept through my alarm clock (oops!) so didn't.. ho hum. Anyway, the 100 clinical training hours I have to put in over the next semester will form an essential part of my Clinical Practice 1 module and involve observing patient consultations, learning diagnostic methods (by practice palpation, percussion etc. on fellow students), finding my way around the dispensary etc. So on Thursday, luck would have it that the first patient I was able to observe was practically a textbook case for a rookie herbalist! A child with a skin condition who has been told by the orthodox medics that there is as yet no cure for the condition, comes to the Herbal clinic earlier this year. Having bravely taken the prescribed herbal medicine all summer (herbal tinctures don't tend to taste that great!), a distinct improvement can be seen - Not exactly magic, mystery or miracle, but a clear example of what will make my studies worthwhile going forward. Here's hoping for many more cases like this one :)

The week ahead looks fairly quiet so far, apart from a long awaited jam session on Friday :) Happy Autumn days M xx


Jam session at M's flat, 15th June '07

Back in leafy Surrey, and some photos to show at last

View at dusk from the Winter Garden, World Financial Centre, NYC


Auberge de Paris, which I mentioned earlier - my accommodation in Montreal prior to the yoga course


My abode for 4 weeks at the Sivananda Ashram,Val Morin, Quebec - amazingly, the flower garden was even more spectacular than last year, thanks to Ambika Chaitanya's efforts!


The view from my single room (ne'er was money so well spent as when I upgraded from the dorm to a single. I got precious little sleep as it was!)


Me in front of Samadhi Estates, where Swami Vishnu Devananda lived for many years.


Back in Montreal, I climbed Mont Royal to get this view of the city and the St. Lawrence river


I returned to one of my favourite sculptures in Montreal. Funny.. I hadn't spotted this chap last time!


Back in NYC for a few days, I took advantage of the free drop-in yoga classes at the Sivananda Centre on W24th St. A veritable haven of calm :)


L thoughtfully suggests we have dinner at an Indian restaurant where I can indulge in vegetarian food (in this case a scrumptious dosa with celantro chutney - yum!) as I am still not in the mood for meat or alcohol at this point

I'm back!!!

What? Who?! You may well ask... I've been incommunicado so long by today's instant messaging standards that you could be forgiven for asking if I still exist? In fact the whole question of existence and what is in fact 'real' is one I found myself addressing on a regular basis throughout the month of August, courtesy of the in-depth yoga course I took in a very leafy, idyllic - but a) out of cell phone range and b) too small a place to support anything approaching an internet cafe! - part of Quebec, Canada. For those of you who don't know, I took a Yoga teacher training course at the very same place in July of last year and (last year's schedule clearly not having been punishing enough!) I decided to come back for more and do the advanced teacher training course for 4 weeks this August.

This is how my daily schedule went:

4:30 am Wake-up
5 am Pranayama - Excercises to control the breath/vital energy. On the whole, I am pretty hopeless at this! The excercises involve controlling your breathing so that you can not only hold your breath for a considerable length of time, but also lengthen out the exhalation.. and then do this over and over again without getting distracted or panicking that you are not getting enough air. Needless to say I could not keep up with the group and decided to take things at my own pace and actually succeeded in making a little progress that way!

6 am Satsang - 20-30mins meditation, followed by chanting, followed by an address (something akin to a sermon). I was much more comfortable with Satsang this time around, having had the 4 week course last year to get used to a) sitting still in a cross-legged position for the meditation part and b) chanting stuff I don't understand in Sanskrit. Now I just see it a bit like going to church twice a day for a month - an unusual, but not unpleasant occurrence!

8 am Asana Practice - tying yourself in knots and standing on your head etc. while generally trying to maintain decorum and not look too silly :) I think for most of us, this was our favourite part of the course. It gave our poor philosophy-drenched brains a break!

9 am Anatomy and Physiology - nice bit of revision for my Herbal medicine course!

10 am Brunch - broccoli, broccoli and more broccoli? Oh joy..

11 am Karma Yoga - an unkind interpretation of this would be "unpaid work around the Ashram" ;) Seen in a positive light it is a way of making yourself a better person by learning to serve others selflessly. And then there's the whole grey area between.. As for me, this time around I was assigned the job of cleaning the bathrooms in my block and was amazingly zen about it, even when I arrived in the men's bathroom for the nth time to find it looking like a war zone.. I don't think this yogic calm will translate back into the real world, but we'll see!

12 noon Raja Yoga (we studied the Yoga Sutras as compiled by Patanjali Maharishi)/Sanskrit (we learned to write and read the Sanskrit characters - I loved this part of the course! The characters are actually very pleasing to draw and it was amazing to be able to look at the yoga sutras in the original and decipher some of them)

2 pm Vedanta (Essential philosophy behind yoga - VERY deep but very rewarding.. if and when you actually get it!)

4 pm Asanas and Pranayama
6 pm Dinner
8 pm Satsang

It's hard to describe the impact these four weeks have had but one of the stranger effects has been to dampen my appetite for meat/fish and alcohol. I wouldn't say I have developed an aversion to either of these (in fact I have by now had a little of both!), but it simply is not something I hanker after at the moment. Perhaps a few months back in London will retoxify me to the point where I start to crave them again, but in the mean time, I guess any of you looking for a friendly yoga teacher and/or designated driver may have a new resource at your disposal - watch this space :)

I have lots of photos from my time in Canada and in New York and Montreal (where I broke my journey on the way there and back), but at this point technology is not playing ball and I can only post a couple. When I am back at home I will post more pictures and fill in a few more details about my Summer.

In the mean time, I will wish you all well as I enjoy my last couple of days here at Dad's before I fly back to London and the start of my clinical training (starting Thursday and Friday). M xx


View at dusk from Battery Park, NYC


Sivananda Yoga Advanced Teacher Training Course, Val Morin (class of 2007). The teachers are mainly in the middle row (and top right) and I was struggling to keep my eyes open in the glare of the morning sun!