Not that you would know it but here in Perth we are two weeks into spring. It is thirteen degrees outside, raining and windy. If it wasn’t for the leaves returning to the deciduous trees in our garden it would be easy to miss the recent turn of the seasons. I am trying not to whinge, summer and its hot dry days will be here soon enough. (I popped out at lunch to snap some shots of the garden, and was blessed with blue skies)

My aim for this month is organisation – I know, try not to laugh out loud. It feels like every year I run the gauntlet of trying this way and that to become more efficient, more productive, more, more, more… The truth is that I end every day exhausted and I never feel like I have done enough work. Then I remind myself, my family is safe, the house is clean, some work got done, and I can wake up and do more tomorrow. When did we become so hard on ourselves? Who ever told us that we have to get it all done, NOW! I am working on a balance of being gentle with myself without slacking off.

YOGA

This month has been cold and my arthritis has been flaring up and cramping down. So my yoga practice has been working on treating every joint in my body to some movement and attention. It helps, particularly around midday when I have been sitting at my desk typing for a couple of hours. A daily practice doesn’t have to be time consuming or even interrupt your day. Here are a few exercises that I try to do several times a day without leaving my desk:

Yoga Journalling

As a writer you probably already have a tonne of journals and balk at me attempting adding another one to the pile. I call this section yoga journalling but you can do it in your everyday notebook, journal, diary, scrap of paper, phone notes – where ever you choose to write. When I began training as a yoga teacher we were told to journal after every class to record the valuable insights and epiphanies we were sure to have, and I soon realised that all my writing belonged in the one place, I do not have the patience for chopping and changing journals according to the pants I am wearing. So I use my stock standard Molskine notebook for everything, including shopping lists – All writing it good writing? It doesn’t have to be fancy or form a starting point for my next novel, it just has to be put down on paper for me to review at sometime in the future.

That said try this small exercise –