Hiberno – from the Latin (hibernia) for ‘winter’. Also the name the Romans used for Ireland.
Pithecus – from the Greek (pithekos) meaning ‘ape’…Irish Ape.
I have been getting round to a blog for a while now…these are the first tentative steps to publishing ongoing thoughts and experiences regarding the allotment, yoga and ideas for better living (frequently involving New Scientist, evidence based practice – where appropriate – and pure, self-indulgent opinion).
The website (www.betterway2be.com) has come from a personal attempt to live a little differently: to challenge the things about myself that have held me back, contributed to my unhappiness, frustration and general mal-content. Not that I’ve had a hard life, you understand, but I got caught up in the detail of life, in the mechanics of working, paying bills, getting by, tolerating a job that offered no inspiration…you know the picture.
I’ve had a combination of experiences that have helped me challenge my complacency. In a couple of years in Australia (god’s country, mite) I discovered how to work to live, and that I had been living to work. A few years back I started an Iyengar yoga teacher training course (which took about 2 and a half years) in the hope that it would help me find a better way to live. I’m not sure where the bravery for such a big step came, but it really has been the bedrock of the changes that followed.
I was also very lucky to have mentors who helped me rediscover my own talents and potential. I didn’t realise that I’d become acclimatised to failure – my own failure was tacitly assumed in many ventures. I knew that (without some drastic change) I’d peaked – my best years were behind me. I was stagnating in a job I hated, feeling broken, and ground down and only just passed thirty.
Without these mentors, I would be there still. The people in question know who they are and I am forever in their debt. I think a lot of people settle for that kind of situation and cope the best they can. To be fair, eventually life and responsibility tie you into things: I was lucky to have the right people to inspire and support me. And also lucky to have few enough responsibilities to permit me to turn my situation on its head: to do voluntary work to help find a career that inspired me; do an A level; jack in the job eventually and return to university (and so far, do quite well at it).
So here I am in South Wales, teaching yoga, studying physiotherapy and running a business and hoping to encourage people to make positive changes in their own lives: find the joy as it were. Big changes, little changes. Whatever…not everyone can give up work and retrain for the job of their dreams, but little things (like eating dinner in the back garden on sunny spring days, getting up early to listen to the layers of dawn chorus from the woods behind our house, all those wee things) add value to life.
Conceited? Perhaps. But what the hell…I remember in Australia how easy it was when the day was busy and work was stressful, to stop, take a deep breath and look around, soak it all up and say ‘another day in paradise’ right from the heart: and just feel the joy of it flow right out. Straight away I’d be smiling again, re-energised and ready to get right back to being busy: busy but different. It’s not as intuitively easy in the climate in South Wales (and less so in Norn Irn), but I suppose I’m exploring ways of re-connecting with that joy every day.
Hwyl fawr,
hibernopithecus
