Diary of a Shielding Yogini is a record of an historic time, full of intimate details that illustrate the effect of the global pandemic on three generations of Josie Smith’s family. It is an uplifting account, which shows the sustaining power of a positive attitude and faith in the essential goodness of humanity.
The glory of nature and the changing seasons are evoked as the reader is taken on walks through the Welsh countryside, wild swimming in the river Teifi and the Irish Sea. Woven throughout is a stillness and inner strength derived from a lifetime of spiritual practices and the support and guidance of an enlightened spiritual teacher.
Everyone has been touched in some way by the Covid-19 pandemic, we all have a tale to tell, many tales will be told and amongst the pandemonium some will stand out. This one shines. Whatever you may believe, or not believe, there is a depth to Josie’s story that reaches beyond its subject to touch the nerve endings of humanity.
Biography Memoir, Cowry Publishing
Diary of a Shielding Yogini : A Covid Chronicle – February 2020 to January 2021
£8.99
by Smith, Josie | Biography & True Stories
Published 31/10/2021 by Cowry Publishing in the United Kingdom
Paperback | 174 pages
| Weight | 0.234 kg |
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2 reviews for Diary of a Shielding Yogini : A Covid Chronicle – February 2020 to January 2021
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llety.wennol –
One might have wondered when we’d get something like this: An account of the virus year not from someone who’s experienced it and, like the excellent Michael Rosen has detailed the horror of having and survived but someone tapping into the experience of millions who don’t want to get it and are afraid. Reading this puts me in mind of Defoe’s Journal of The Plague Year. For the worried writer, we are back there. She is in her 70s and says early on, starkly: I do not want to die of this virus.
She and her lifelong partner, her husband Smudger, have followed a spiritual path guided by their spiritual leader for over half their lives and that sublime and subliminal note informs the narrative here.
The writer is an intelligent life-embracing ordinary woman:
I am mother, I am daughter, I am wife, I am writer, I am student, I am grand-mother, I am shop-keeper, I am dancer, I am singer, I am the song and the music. I am. I am. I am….
shattered by fear but who is not so ordinary that she is unable to claim: It is the knowledge of the eternal that keeps me steady. The stillness and peace that I connect with each day, when I meditate, when I sing, when I watch the sunrise, or stand still for a moment and feel the caress of the wind, or honour the steadfast presence of a tree, or experience awe at the perfect, fleeting beauty of a flower. These flights of spiritual/philosophical expression rise above the quotidian information detailing the count of deaths and infection rates like great doves over the head of the fearful writer. And over ours. And, of course, the coup de étreinte is that we all share these experiences in lockdown.
The writing is controlled and purposeful. And trustworthy. It is a love story: Love in a Time of Covid to borrow and paraphrase a title from Marquez. A love that grows to counter the fear building before the advancing plague.
It’s a work you can hold onto as if it were something you yourself had written.
Dic Edwards, playwright, poet and teacher of creative writing.
janshepheard –
This book is set in a time when the world, as many of us expect it to be, changed. Billions of people were ‘locked down’ and unable to go about their usual daily lives or connect with loved ones. Diary of a Shielding Yogini tells the story of one family and what it was like behind closed doors across three generations. We hear of the heightened emotions that people had to manage, and the near constant fear of this often deadly virus. And we also hear of the love that connected them and times of joy when they were able to be together. What makes this book so uplifting is that throughout it we are told of how they are embraced by the strong and loving guidance of the meditation teacher whose teachings and practices they follow. It is a beautiful book.