Terese reports on Day 15 of the Yoga Challenge: Tamarind, Trees, Time & Tuatara
Today most of the challenge class tried Tamarind for the first time, courtesy of Andy whose penance for breaking some challenge rules was to bring fruit to class.
It was an inspired bag of penance, tamarinds, strawberries and purple flowers. I saved my tamarind to try and enjoy in a special place, Zealandia, where I went after Saturday’s challenge class to do my weekly 2 hours of meditative silence. I decided to do a combo deal and do a 2 hour bush walking meditation. I was compromised several times with several people passing by extending bush courtesy greetings. The first, a tourist, wanted to talk about the tuatara we were looking at, I smiled warmly nodded and moved on quickly, feeling a bit stink as engaging with people in nature is a big role in my life!, however, on a bush track I couldn’t not respond to those saying hello twice so I said x2 hello’s and self penanced by doing 20 extra minutes of silent bush walking!
One of my favourite plants is Rangiora (bushman friend/loo paper), its so versatile, I learnt this many years ago on Outward Bound when loo paper was scarce! Its also good to cover cuts, mop up blood, and if you have a pen you can write on it, and, today I had a slightly runny nose so used it as tissue. There is plenty on the ground so you don’t need to take any still alive! After two hours of silence and a ‘bush bath’, the main thing I noticed is that the benefits were like a vaccuming, dusting, cleaning of my mind. I’m off to buy some tamarinds now!
NZ Yoga Centre - AOTEAROA 