Daughter Hollie

Hollie has just had an amazing 3 page article published in the Que Magazine. She is working on a new series of paintings inspired by ocean and native bush and they are stunning. I love her clear, clean colours and lines with precise yet stylised form. Take a look at her facebook page
hollie oneill artist

Yoga Retreat at Ohui

Yesterday a group of 9 from Waihi and Waihi Beach visited Ohui Yoga Retreat at Opoutere. We started out at 7am. What a wonderful day. The drive along Opoutere's estuary and through the native bush to get to the retreat was beautiful in itself. When we got there we enjoyed a cup of herbal tea and I felt relaxed at once.It was lovely to see Atma and her darling boy Lazlo who has an enchanted life at the ashram. Shantimurti led a 2 hour yoga session for us and I felt in the zone right through. A delicious lunch and then yoga nidra. During the 2 hour break following some went for a walk, some swam in the warm surf, some slept, some read and others just chatted. The next session was yoga nada - all about using sound to purify one's emotions and mind. Another tasty vegetarian meal and then goodbyes and we were home by 8pm. If anyone thinks they need time out from their hectic life I can recommend a fantastic day, place and people.
www.ashramyoga.com

change of seasons

Now that the temperature has dropped and autumn seems to be here, it is important to protect your immune system, which will be under pressure. Colds and flus will start appearing and it is so much easier to prevent them than to deal with them once they are with you.
Get lots of sleep, watch your stress levels, keep your exercise up - these are all about keeping balance in your life. It is also important to keep warm and eat warm, sweet nourishing foods, for example, pumpkin, kumara and carrot soups. Vitamin C is good for immunity also, as are some yoga sequences.

putting drops in eyes

A handy tip given by my wonderful optometrist to save 50% of the contents from being wasted each time we put drops in our eyes...

When you put a drop in - close your eye gently and press against the tear duct at the corner of the inside edge of your eye. Count to 30. Then do the same for the other eye.

If you don't you will lose 50% of the contents of the eye drops into the tear duct and through blinking.

Christchurch Earthquake

This morning in the Herald there was a very cool, positive letter to the editor saying that instead of John Keys asking for money from overseas, maybe it would be a better idea to ask for the top architects, engineers etc. coming over for a think tank to look ahead to redesign Christchurch city.

Taking this thought further - in NZ we have the Lockwood system of building which is supposed to withstand earthquakes really well that is built with pine. We have the biggest pine forests in the southern hemisphere and a huge supply of logs that can be seen ready to leave NZ in ports around the country without having been processed. We have a struggling building industry with many builders not able to get work because of the recession.

Imagine a city, designed by a global team, that would lead the world in state of the art design in an earthquake prone area, all built with NZ resources and manpower.