Sophie in full flow

“Stay with it……”

That’s the phrase that stays with me from Sophie Marsh’s Nia week.

Others too:  “Relax your jaw… and breathe!” or “[there are] no mistakes!” and “Feel the joy”. But that first was my favourite.

“Stay with it…..” she calls out….with the music, with the movement, with the moment, with the joy. She stays moving with it herself, swaying gently as the music changes to a new track, a new rhythm, a new pace. And then she’s off again, this time to a foot stomping beat accompanied by guttaral yells; or maybe to a melodic number with waving arm movements; and occasionally to a slooow drawwwwwn out curling on the floor with aaaaahs and great wide smiles of bliiiissss.

Feel the joy!

Nia is many and various in its musical numbers, and Sophie is a true master of them all. She is quite literally a master, in that she is the only Nia teacher in Australia who is qualified to teach other Nia teachers, one of only 50 in the world. But she’s also a master in her ability to lead and inspire her class. They follow her in sweat, in song, in soul; they love her. Of course they love her: she is leading them down a path to joy. That is what Nia is about: connecting with joy, grounding yourself in an energy that leads to casting off stress and finding happiness.

The women this week span an age range of some thirty years – there are three mother/daughter couples, and all ages in between.  Many of them have danced with her back in Australia, but some are entirely new to Nia. It’s a week that takes plenty of energy – but then there’s plenty of time to recoup between classes and the group go off  snorkeling, visiting a village, trawling the local shops in Savusavu, lie by the pool reading and enjoy a massage.

And plenty of little extras too. Michelle beats me soundly at Scrabble. Simone helps me redesign one of the villas. Stefanie plays tennis with JJ. Belinda gets me interested in the idea of a lifestyle week but I’m not yet sure what that means. Sally’s 5 – year old daughter Lola makes a good-bye speech that has us all cheering.  We all feel the joy one way or another.

Next year’s Nia week will run August 17 – 24 2013.

Everyone!

Tables and sewing machines set up in the yoga shala

It was a week of liquid focus and fascination, flowing easily from day to day. Each morning the quilters climbed the stairs to the yoga shala where their sewing machines and tables were set up, commanding the most beautiful view of any quilting workshop. There they stayed until George beat the lali for lunch – and sometimes they’d still stay on, piecing together their pictures, stitching a line, ironing a corner, whilst their skill and creativity flowed into their quilts.

The colours were the blues and greens of the ocean and the oranges and reds of sunsets which were laid out before us every evening.

The sounds of the day were muted: the amiable murmur of quiet chat, the occasional exclamation of irritation when a mistake was discovered, the calm instruction of Gloria putting it right or demonstrating a technique.

Gloria and Ann

These were not to be traditional quilts: Gloria teaches landscape art in which the quilter creates a wonderful fabric artwork. Gloria’s own quilts are masterpieces of the genre. The inspiration for the week lay outside right before their eyes.

The quilts on display

And at the end of the week there were some glorious quilts displayed: Glenyce’s dying sun sinking behind the stark trees, Petal’s fiery sunset lighting up the palm trees, Andy’s view across the bay to the distinctive peak of an extinct volcano, and Ann’s palm tree swaying over a fading sunset.

In between there was time for exploration and swimming and snorkeling. Most memorable of all was taking Ann snorkeling: this a woman who was taking swimming lessons for the first time in her life back in Australia, and had the courage to don a life jacket, strap on a mask and snorkel, and come out into the ocean to enjoy the underwater world. I gave her a guiding hand as we floated over the corals and at the end she sat on the beach and gasped: “Brilliant!” She had been just that.

Ann after snorkelling

Lessa and Jenny (left)

When doctors go on holiday, they are all too often beset by other people asking them for a quick opinion on whatever aches and pains they have that day. When quilters go on retreat, it’s a prime opportunity for the rest of us to sidle up to them with rips and tears in our favourite garments and ask if they couldn’t just…….well, I was shameless and thanks to Jenny, my husband now has a beautifully mended shirt.

Kay at her machine

Which is all slightly irrelevant to the quilting itself but it’s a nice little story about quilters, who are some of the jolliest, best natured and most obliging groups we ever get. The sheer volume of laughter they produce is wonderful. What’s so funny each day? I have no idea, but whenever I walked up to see them and admire their work, I approached on a rising wave of burst of gaiety.

They had a lot to be happy about, of course. A week with one of Australia’s best teachers of traditional quilting. A truly stunning location : we put them up in the yoga shala with its fabulous views of the sea over the tops of the swaying palm trees. Good weather: sunny days with enough breeze to stay cool. Cheerful company, augmented by the enchanting Angelique, the baby granddaughter of one of the quilters Cheryl, who was enjoying a 3 generation outing: herself, her daughter and her granddaughter. And some fun outings, including snorkelling on the reef which was a first for both Lessa and Jenny.

Lessa demonstrating a technique on the machine

And in between all this, they produced marvellous work, swirling swathes of colour in the Fractured Circles design, and intricate patterns in the Mariners Compass design. On the last evening we had a Show and Tell, and all the other guests at the resort gathered to admire and applaud the work on display. A very happy week and Lessa will be back next year in August.

Dancing to the music

Singing produces joy. It’s chemical and it’s indisputable. We’ve had lots of Rachel Hore’s singing groups at Daku, and they are always happy occasions. The wind may blow (it did this week, but not too hard), the rain may fall (which it did intermittently) but the sunshine produced by the choir is always breaking through (and the real thing did too). So, mixed weather outside but glorious choral magic inside.

Rachel ran daily morning workshops, and brought in Seke from Vivili village

Rachel leads a workshop

to some of them. Seke is a young Fijian singer and teacher; he travels around Fiji teaching groups and playing his guitar. His voice has become strained and gravelly with too many years of belting it out – Fijian villages don’t have the luxury of microphones for their teachers. But his verve and elation are electric. With Seke on his guitar and Rachel on her drum, and her beautiful voice soaring alongside the choir, there were sessions of pulsating song and even dance as both choir and the staff at the resort joined hands to move to the music.

Anneke conducts a farewell song

The week produced a new star: Anneke, the 10-year old daughter of one of the choristers, not only took part fully in all the singing but also taught the group a new song – and conducted it at the final performance.

At the final concert Seke’s own choir from Vivili village came to Daku to sing and perform a meke (the traditional Fijian dance accompanied by the acappella chanting and singing of the other villagers), and Rachel’s choir sang the songs they had learned during the week. Outside was blowing a gale and pouring with rain; everyone crushed into the shelter of the big bure and the result was one of the best concerts we’ve ever had – bursting with an urgent joy, embracing everyone in the magic  of music, transcending weather and uniting singers and audience alike.

Kids from Vivili at the final concert

Morning preparation

Jan Cornall has now lead three retreats at Daku; she’s just come back from the latest and has sent me a brief account of the week:

I love the moments on our Fiji  writer’s retreat when the breakthroughs start to happen.  You would hope for it on a course called Breakthrough Writing but it’s not going to happen straight away, unless simply getting off the plane in Savusavu Bay and slowing down to the pace of the locals, relaxes you so much you just can’t help yourself. Sometimes it’s when we get out the coloured pens and make our first story maps that things start to fall into place, or when you slip into a voice you know is so right for your story you want to shout – hallelujah! It could be that you discover your favorite three chapters have to get the chop (and you are ready to let them go) or you’ve worked out how to cut 10,000 words down to 1,000. It might be that giving yourself a week to concentrate just on your writing; no cooking, shopping, worrying about all the small details of life, turns on your creative tap and you wonder how on earth you will ever stop it. It certainly has something to do with devoting time to working on your craft, receiving positive encouragement and daily feedback and becoming involved in the development each others stories; as if through the daily activity of sharing our stories and the processes of writing we draw the strength and courage to finally inhabit the uniqueness of our own writers’ voice. The same voice that at the beginning of the week we were so unsure about. I can’t wait to do it all again next year.

And here’s a few words from a couple of the writers:

Reading out the day's work in the evening

BIFF WARD: Jan was everything that was promised and more. She really can work with people writing in any genre and at any stage of its development – even if they haven’t actually started! She had us all writing new stuff, re-working bits and, most importantly, reading to each other and giving useful feedback. It was a rich, rewarding, expanding, inspiring process. It seemed to me that everyone went away with clarity about where to go next with their project and the focus and energy required to keep going.  Even with people from very different backgrounds and experiences, Jan had us all working together productively and well.

Daku allowed me to have a deeply satisfying routine to my days – something I never seem to establish at home. Wake up to tropical paradise through the louvres; read a littler; walk up to the yoga platform and spend an hour stretching a centring looking out to sea; shower in outdoor funky bathroom; delicious breakfast; then writing time on my verandah followed by class from 10 till 1. And that’s only thew morning! everyday! All in the Daku resort atmosphere of informal comfort and friendliness subtly underpinned by fabulous service.

CHRIS RICHARDS : I have become a bit of a writers class “junkie” and this one had the most eclectic and skilled group of people thus far. All very imaginative, all very productive. Jan basically set the parameters, set us up and let us go. The old iron fist in a velvet glove method which I do well under. Of all the workshop leaders and facilitators I have worked under over the years, she is my favourite.

Picnic on the beach

A lovely start to 2012 – a dynamic yoga week with Michelle Jayne. We were up every morning to start the first workshop at 7.30 – and soon sweating hard.  Her practice is influenced by the Power Yoga approach, but her major mentor has been Ana Forrest. She first met Ana when she trained with her in 2008, and immediately found a deep sympathy with her verbal descriptions of body placement. It

A different sort of sun salutation

gave her a deeper understanding of how to create space in your body, and how to move from a sense of suffering (interpret this in the sense of finding an asana difficult / challenging / tiring) to finding curiosity and joy. So as we moved through the morning practice she encouraged us to hold certain poses and find the joy in them – often an attitude of mind, but sometimes a sense of discovery in what we could do.

Two-legged down dog

The afternoon workshops explored ideas of patterning of the mind and how to respond when you hit the edge in an asana, and then the late afternoon practice allowed us to find relaxation in extended stretches. This was the time when we had some others join us to explore and enjoy the benefits of working with long poses and the support of straps.

Stretching it out

And then there was time for the beach, for snorkelling on the reef, for shopping in Savusavu and for a cruise on a yacht. Altogether a great start to the year’s yoga programme.

Out on the yacht

An extraordinary week with Noah Maze: the experience of learning from him was a daily endorsement of his huge reputation. Noah leads a very strong practice, well beyond the normal comfort zone of at least half the class. But with his meticulous work on the preparation of each pose, and the Anusara based emphasis on correct alignment, every student found that they were able to grasp the requirements of each new asana. As each day went by, although not every pose was mastered, everyone was astonished (and gratified) at the leaps in confidence and achievement they experienced.
Every morning practice lasted for two and a half hours, with a focus on standing and balancing poses and a lot of work on the strength based postures of headstands and handstands. Noah worked through each pose in different ways, teaching his students how it could be approached from sitting, standing and lying down. And, delightfully, he laces his teaching with humour – mimicking the New Joisey ATTITUDE of “whass da big deal?” as he hooked his arms under his knees and spread his hands in mock challenge in order to show the class how to prepare for astavakrasana (Eight Angle Pose); the shrill cry of the peacock he let out in pincha mayurasana (Feathered Peacock Pose)……making everyone relax, laugh, pause, refresh their mind and absorb the confidence he exudes.

Noah helps with a back bend

If I were to single out the greatest gift he gave us during the week, I think it would be exactly that: confidence. He is uncompromising in his demands – but his unwavering belief that it can be done pushes each student into fulfilling intentions they had no idea they could achieve. The class was of very mixed ability: two teachers, several others who had a well established and confident practice and several more who had only practiced yoga for 2 or 3 years – and one man who was just one month in. Each and every one knew they had taken bounds in their practice and in their understanding of what was possible for them.
There was more: time for teaching the life-affirming philosophy behind the Anusara practice, for meditation and chanting, for friendship and laughter within the group, for good food and dancing, for Fijian music and kava drinking. And for falling into a deep, exhausted and happy sleep every night. Namaste, Noah.

Everyone

Noah demonstrates a pose

Noah teaching inversions

In September, Kerrie Lester was at Daku for her second workshop. One of her students, Christine Leaming, writes about the week and what she learnt.

It was a week was filled with painting, new experiences, laughter and relaxation. Each day began with a relaxing stroll along the waterfront, followed by breakfast around the pool. We then went up to the yoga shala, a lovely open sided platform above the resort, to paint the view and to complete the other paintings which we had begun in the market place or on the jetty.

Everywhere we were followed by the bubbly children and the curious townsfolk and I surprised myself at my ability to sit and paint with an audience!

And then each day ended sipping a wine as the sun set and sharing a meal at the poolside table with other guests. Our free time was filled with swimming, shopping, visiting the pearl farm and sightseeing.

Christine painting in the yoga shala, with Kerrie in the background.

Kerrie is passionate about painting and passionate about Fiji. She is an enthusiastic teacher constantly encouraging and pushing each of her students to observe and interpret what they see. She showed us how to achieve this through the use of surface preparation, using mediums with the paint and how to make the desired mark using brush or spatula.

As a result my painting is vastly improved and I am now confident to plan a good composition, tackle figures in the landscape, and to use colour and texture more freely.

So if you wish to be taught how to really use your paints and mediums, and unleash your artistic talents in an authentic Fijian environment, then join Kerrie in 2012 at Daku Resort … I know I shall!

Kerrie Lester’s 2012 art retreat runs from 8 – 15 September 2012. See the Paradise Courses page for more details.

The writers on the Manuscript Mentoring week with Rosie Scott had a great week – productive, friendly, stimulating, full of laughs and stories – and Rosie enjoyed it every bit as much as they did.

Rosie Scott:
MAGIC! I loved it. Small but fabulous group very committed, worked hard but also lots of fun, the staff were as usual wonderful – great food and kindness to us.  They put on a memorable farewell night with kava, a lovo and singing and dancing by Keni’s children (Keni and Mereone sang with them) and a rendition of Gilbert and Sullivan by one student – the extraordinary Kevin who is a professional singer among many other things. And loved the outdoor shower I had this time, not to mention the snorkelling. The group all went away in high spirits, inspired to write.

As I said in my last article on Daku, it’s a great place for people  to get to a deeper  level with their manuscripts. It really is the best teaching experience for me too- to see the way people’s work improves over the week is a joy. I believe this is partly because they become so relaxed and open in this lovely place.
I hope this is will become an annual event.

(Yes, Rosie – it will. The 2012 manuscript mentoring week is up on the website – 22- 29 September.)

Helen Grenfell
Writers can be very defensive about their work, treasuring it as one does a newborn baby and very reluctant to expose it to the discerning eye of others. But Rosie’s generous nature and the relaxed and friendly group members put an end to such fears. She is friendly, perceptive, a skilful mentor and, importantly, for this course, she is a successful novelist and teacher of creative writing, with a string of academic qualifications that bring added authority to her task of mentoring.

She made the week good fun, yet it was also rigorous, and both the workshops and exercises revealed skills in my writing that I didn’t know I possessed. I came home realising I really could write, but also with a clear understanding of the areas of the craft I need to develop. Amidst the humdrum silliness of daily life, I am still writing everyday, a sure sign that Rosie and the group members had a positive, lasting effect on me.

Rosie had a sensible timetable of activities. We had all previously read by email the work of each of us in the group. The mornings were spent in writing exercises and a thorough workshopping of a group member’s piece; in the afternoon that person had a private mentoring session with Rosie. Nobody felt unduly stressed, and happy conversations bubbled along about books, films, and life experiences. A sense of humour, a good yarn, a well-told joke are essential pieces of equipment to bring to Rosie’s classes.

It is hard to explain just how suitable Daku Resort is for such activities as writing. It is small, very beautiful, and authentically Fijian. Colours are powerful – the red and orange of flowers, the deep shiny green of foliage, the stark white of a ship out on the blue bay waters. Laughter from children on the beach or guests in the pool drift up to our verandah where we always worked, but nothing distracts us; we are far from the rush and bother of our daily lives. A guest at Daku, in a conversation about travel, reminded me that ‘there are diamonds in one’s own backyard.’ ; it’s the moral of a story of African origin. That’s very true, but I would like to have Daku Resort as my own backyard, and Rosie Scott can have a cabin for free to advise me on my writing.

Cooling off after a hard day's writing...

AnneMarie Bennett
Rosie Scott is a terrific teacher – probably the best I’ve encountered.  And I’ve studied a lot.  In fact I never felt like I was being ‘taught’, but instead, her methods helped to peel back layers.  Rosie has a wonderful personality and a knack at understanding exactly what each person in the group needs to take their writing to the next level.

Kevin McGrath
The outstanding feature of the course was its flexibility. Rosie Scott concentrated
on the individual writer, drawing out his or her talent and helping the ideas to flow freely. Simultaneously there was plenty of time to get on with personal writing. Rosie is not only an accomplished author but a professional counsellor as well – a great help in getting an author
to sort out aims and ambitions.

You would go a long way to find more good humoured and friendly staff then those at Daku. You are always greeted with big Fijian smiles. The travel arrangements worked extremely well, especially as Fiji is so easy to reach. It was a great pleasure to take the domestic flight from Nadi to Savusavu, to experience the beautiful views of  mountain and sea from the aircraft window.

Stephen Price
No, I’m not a published author, merely someone who loves to dabble in both writing and traveling.  And when I discovered the writing course at the Daku Resort, I knew that I had to be a part of it!  Our writing instructor, published author Rosie Scott, was absolutely fantastic, helpful and very inspiring.  And the group of other budding authors that I met also led to a fantastic writing holiday. Rosie, thank you for everything!  I look forward to working with you once more!

Details of the 2012 course can be found at Paradise Courses – Manuscript Mentoring.

Rosie’s webpage can be found here.

Almost a year ago I spent a week doing yoga with my son at Mark Whitwell’s course in December. I wasn’t the only mum – and so I had the idea of writing about it from the point of view of doing a retreat with your son or daughter. It was subsequently published in Issue 32 of Australian Yoga Life. Here it is.

Sons, daughters and yogis
It puts a different spin on things to be students alongside your offspring. No more of Mum being the one who is telling everyone what to do! Recently I attended an overseas retreat conducted by Mark Whitwell that included three mothers with their adult children in tow. There was me and my 19-year-old son Charlie; Catherine and her two twenty-something daughters Dorothy and Paddy; and Lisa with her (not yet adult) 11-year-old boy Joe. Young Joe was simple: he wanted something that was easy and fun.

After the first practice, Joe described it to Lisa as ‘awesome’. Catherine is a yoga teacher herself, and her daughters Dorothy and Paddy saw it as a great family holiday with yoga thrown in. It wasn’t necessarily the beginning of a new dedication to yoga – but then Mark emphasised that yoga is a different practice for different people – and even excused the girls turning up late for class with the remark: “Sleep can be yoga too.”

Since then, Paddy hasn’t stayed with the practice, but says: “ I am playing tennis – which for me, and at this point in my life, is my yoga.” And Dorothy describes a general opening of horizons – maybe thanks to yoga, maybe not. “I don’t know if the experience has changed anything directly, perhaps it just helped to open my eyes. I feel like I am a little bit more open to new ideas or experiences than I might have been before. It was definitely a combination the people, the place and the yoga, not just the classes.”

But for each and every one of the mums it `was a special time. Lisa does yoga regularly now with both Joe and her husband Tim: “I was delighted to have Joe involved and my heart felt like it would burst when I looked over and saw him so involved and clearly enjoying the process.  He loved the opportunity to get to know people, hear their stories and learn about some of the spiritual and emotional aspects of yoga.  When I asked Joe the other day if my leg massage was hurting him, he said, “pain is not the enemy” ….. a quote Mark used during the retreat.”

For Catherine, it was an act of love, offering her daughters something she wished she had found earlier: “I wanted my daughters to have that experience now, in their 20′s, rather than coming to that sort of personal and spiritual awareness through longer, more circuitous and perhaps more painful paths in their 30s, 40s, 50s – as many people do.  I wish my mother had shared a yoga retreat with me when I was in my 20′s!”

And for me, it was just time together. Sometimes Charlie fell asleep during the longer talks; I’d look over and see his eyes shut and notice that regular breathing and once – just once – a tiny little snore. But there were plenty of times he was taking it all in and on other occasions he and I would discuss what had been said. I enjoyed that, walking down the beach throwing his ideas back and forth, engaged in a conversation that was entirely neutral in that I wasn’t telling him to do anything or prising out information about his life.

Then there was the physical aspect to the retreat. He mastered the poses with ease – and more. Stuff that I’d been working on for the last year he did with the natural grace of a 19-year old. He was already athletically in excellent shape as a rock climber, so had the requisite strength and balance, and was soon doing an impeccable headstand – but I took a secret delight in being able to bend more deeply that he could. But what pleasure to be able to do these things together, with no real competition behind it. And there was playtime too – laughter when he pushed me over whilst attempting Warrior 3; shared winks as we peeked sideways from downward dog; gritted teeth as we held the star position; and laughter as he swayed in tree pose and gave up entirely.

And sometimes I just held his hand when we lay in shivasana. Now how many mums get to do that with their 19-year-old sons! And who knows what links we’ve built with our children during that time? They may not acknowledge it quite so openly, but it certainly nurtured our hearts.

Mark’s next retreat takes place from December 11 – 18. It’s priced at US$1250: see Yoga in Fiji for details.