What is Yogue?
A confluence of the many worlds that inspire me and that I hope will touch something deep in you. It is a place where we revere the beauty of life, of spirituality, of movement, of showcasing ideas and material objects that wear the mark of their maker, of living with presence and simplicity and having the courage to dream big.
Yogue is about the small and large things that make our ordinary lives extraordinary.
It is about the ritual of laying the dinner table for your family or friends, of the scent of wild roses that hit you when you walk into a room as well as the grit of city pavement under your feet. Yogue is about that moment of joy when you suddenly begin to dance at a yoga class that you were ten minutes too late to and it’s also about the pause before you taste a soupy bowl of seasonal freshness that offers you sustenance and emotional sweetness.
It is about living with the awareness that to truly live, not just survive, we must be open to the bliss and sorrows of life.
I am a writer and a lover of beauty. My goal in this life is to live it in harmony, with grace and with clarity and I believe that the only way we can is with an awareness of our actions and how they impact the many layers that hug the onion of our existence.
I am a mother. I care about the legacy I (WE) will leave for our children. I go out of my way, sometimes to extraordinary lengths to make sustainable choices in the life of my family. Yogue is a place to share some of these stories.
I am a yogini, who grew up inspired by Yoga and the wisdom of Ayurveda in its birthplace, India.
Yet, it was only much much later, as an advertising executive following what I thought was my dream in Chicago, that I re-turned to Yoga and in that turning, on a mat where I sweated and twisted and re-found my way into and beyond my body, I found a path that at first seemed innocuous, only requiring my stepping onto my yoga mat, yet over the course of the last two decades, Yoga has taken me on a journey that is far from life I had thought I was supposed to have and in doing so I have taken the risks to leap and to create – to transform my life – and to impact the life of so many truth seekers across the world.
For this I am deeply grateful and through Yogue, I want to share some of my meanderings in the world of Yoga and Wellness as well as offer a critical inside voice to all the chatter in the spiritual marketplace.
I love to move. I have explored the worlds of dance, conscious movement, athletics and over the last decade, surfing. I am still getting to know my body and its potential to hold stories and release them. I want to move for the pure joy of it, because it makes me smile.
I love design. Design to me is the idea of creating and living with conscious alignment and presence. This to me is “sustainable design. I grew up at a time in Bombay, India, when we had one or two brands of processed foods, where shopping bags were home-sewn and the furniture we lived with was made in front of us by a skilled carpenter who was one of many generations of makers. I think my experience of the process of creating and seeing it first hand has given me this love for beautiful and functional objects of life, where you feel that hand of the maker, the energy of allowing something to be channeled and imbued with the uniqueness of the handmade.
At Yogue, I want to celebrate things I love and meet the makers and creators who care about the objects we touch in our every day lives.
I love the beauty of food and the ritual of sharing a meal. I am inspired equally by the wisdom of Ayurveda and its ability to truly make food your delicious medicine, and by the savouring of taste that you see in the cultures of France and Italy. I want to offer you recipes that I know will offer you fresh insights and nourishment and take you on a journey with me to places we will travel to together.
Ultimately, I am not a yogi living in a cave atop the Himalayas. I live in the real world, what the Vedas called the life of a “grihasta” a householder. I struggle with desire, the same wants that we all have, for inspiration, to be a conscious parent, ideally without “losing” it, to find balance and space in the worlds of yoga, mothering, teaching, writing and exploring. I want to talk about these worlds. I want to share what I LOVE with honesty and a smattering of beauty. I hope you are ready to travel with me.
I’m always looking for suggestions for stories to feature on Yogue, so please email me at info@yogue.ca
