Gift from the Sea!!!

I am now officially back from our family holiday..doing work in the house, preparing for the Yogalife studio re-opening in the beginning of September. I am very excited to see my students again and get all the summer holiday info firsthand.

A week or two before leaving for our vacation, a facebook friend and yoga teacher mentioned the "Gift from the Sea"by Anne Morrow Lindbergh as a good read by the sea. So I ordered it (thinking it wsn't going to come on time) and guess what..it arrived the day before we were leaving and at the end of a hard day emotionally.

Gift from the Sea is about womens lives ..the issues we all face during the different phases of our lives. I got the twentieth anniversary editon and while I was reading it I kept having the feeling that it was written a year ago. Amasing how it is all the same after twenty years, so many changes, technology..but the core remains unchanged. I may be using my laptop to write this blog (my partners actualy..having laptop trouble again!!)..instead of a typewriter or a feather and ink but my essense remains unchanged because our Inner Self our True Self remains unchanged, no matter how much we change on the outside.

The writer is on retreat living on the beach for a while, getting rid of the things she doesn't need.. practicing the art of shedding.clothes, vanity, curtains, furniture, the mask of hypocricy in human relationships (what an unload that is!!)
I would like to share a few quotes with you ..

About a womans life .."it involves not only family demands, national demands, international demands on the good citizen through social and cultural pressures, through newspapers, magazines, ....What a circus act we women preform every day of our lives..This is not the life of simplicity but the life of  multiplicity that the wise men warn us of. It leads not to unification but to fragmentation. It does not bring grace; it destroys the soul."

"The problem is not merely one of a Woman and Career, Woman and Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centifugal forces tend to pull one off center.." "What is the answer?" " I have only clues from the shells from the sea." "The solution for me is neither total renunciation of the world, nor in total accpetance of it. I must find balance somewhere , or an alternating rhythm between these two extremes; a swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communication, betwen retreat and return. In my periods of retreat, perhaps I can learn something to carry back into my worldly life".

"To ask how little not how much can I get along with. To say - is it necessary?..simplification of the outward life is not enough. It is merely the outside. But the outside can give a clue can help one to find the inside answer"

"Ifone sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange.What a commentary on civilization, when being alone is considered suspect ; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it-like a secret vice!

This is a clear cut easy to read book, with deep meanings and truth. I invite you to read it and leave me a comment!
Does it apply to you? Did you get any insight about things you need to change in your everyday life? In the way you view permanance, marriage and aging? This is a book for all women of all ages because it gets us thinking about all the shells (phases) of our lives.

Enjoy Spring..with all its changes and colourful variations.

Be well and happy,

Nefeli Makri BSc, MSc, RYT
Yogalife Owner