blog

According to Hatha Yoga there are six Shatkarmas, also known as cleansing techniques. The Shatkarmas activate, cleanse and purify the body’s system allowing prana to flow freely and ultimately help one achieve a deeper yogic state. The six shatkarmas involve a range of techniques that focus on different aspects of the body such as the […]

Wondering what the purpose of chanting is in yoga? We find out.

There is nothing like the world wide web to reduce complex-whole-of-life-change down to simplistic keyword-rich mantras. This is why the Dark Mistress has settled on weight-loss as the start-up objective in her move back to embodied life – the ads on FaceBook told her to. Give FaceBook enough demographic data to work out you’re a) […]

Last month an International Conference of Psychologists is considering the declaration of Internet Addiction as a mental illness. In my view this is a long shot – I mean second-life maybe. The internet though IS the cause of many sedentary hours – there is nothing like the www to give you the sense of doing […]

One might assume that if you’re in an ashram,  you’d be be getting the same bland, vegetarian dishes day in, day out. The ashram I stayed at however, offered a variety of different meals full of aromatic spices and fresh vegetables which I’ve since tried to replicate at home. As I’ve mentioned before, the ashram […]

It’s way early on a Saturday to be at the laptop and I’ve just watched the Pinot Guy’s presentation for TED.com – he’s telling us to write more, blog more, find time, take your laptop on the bus, do more than your competitors – it’s worked for him. So… if pushing the limits of what […]

I love the AA expression “trying is dying”… re-applied to weight-loss, it means, you’ve realized what you need to do but you’re lost without a start somewhere in between knowing and doing. This is why the Dark Mistress launched in and rode her bike 50Km last weekend… This is about natural weight-loss after all – […]

The Dark Mistress love/hates Google. It is a difficult relationship. I love it for the immediacy and I hate it for the user experience – in this case trawling through weight-loss pills, weight-loss Doctors in the middle of nowhere, American weight-loss ra ra, weight-loss teas, and the newest, latest Jason Clements “EXPLOSIVE approaches to weight-loss”. […]

Hope these make you smile. Even if it’s just a little smile.

A little visual inspiration to get you over the mid-week hump.

Human spreadsheet 7pm.. finally, as the cleaners arrive you finish… you haven’t peed for 8 hours, you’re parched, starving, and your back keeps that computer-curve for as you calmly pretend you aren’t dashing for the bathroom. Not that anyone would notice, because the sane people have gone home.

I’ve just returned from India where I stayed in ashram for a month living the yogic lifestyle. That means 5 a.m. starts, 4 hours of daily yoga practice, maintaining a strictly sattvic diet, undergoing cleansing techniques, chanting, meditation, karma yoga and so much more. It sounds so cliched, but in this short time I feel […]