I was in my twenties when I started dabbling with yoga and meditation. For a long while, it was like many things are with me: all or nothing, coming and going in fits and starts. Looking back through the lens of years of experience and the patterns of thousands of students, I can see it for what it was. In the beginning, I did just enough practice to make me feel better. I did what was needed to take the edge off the pain of being human. And once that sharp edge was smoothed a bit, I fell back into old habits.… Read the rest
commit to change
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Ben Franklin was quoted as saying “There are no gains without pains” but in my lifetime, it was Jane Fonda, circa 1982, who popularized the saying “no pain, no gain” in her exercise videos. It spread quickly from step aerobics and athletics to just about every endeavor, and became the silent credo of a generation. In short: if you want to get somewhere, do something, or be someone, discomfort is part of the deal. Plan for it. Expect it. Your progress is directly proportional to your suffering.
As with so many other things- from trends in fashion to politics- we eventually swing from one extreme to the other.… Read the rest
When I originally posted the January Hibernation retreat, it was early fall. At the time, I was in an extremely overwhelming work vortex and hibernation sounded like a fabulous idea. I didn’t put a whole lot of thought into it— the theme welled up from wherever ideas arise, it resonated, and that was that. Come January, when we actually gathered, I felt good in the knowing that yes, hibernation was necessary. Why? Resources for thriving had become scarce. A refuge from challenging conditions was needed. It was time to conserve energy, and figure out how to rebuild from within what we’d allowed to be depleted from without.… Read the rest
I can’t even begin to understand the times in which we find ourselves. With each passing day, instead of understanding more, I look into the world and I “get it” less and less. I’m baffled by power structures simultaneously restricting reproductive rights and a woman’s agency over her own body while (still) stalling on legislation for fundamental, common sense gun control measures that could save countless lives. My rising fury while listening to on-the-ground and near-term projected realities in abortion clinics, superimposed with photos of children murdered at school with a semi-automatic assault rifle, with a side bar outlining more atrocities in Ukraine, followed by images from the 1.5 million acres currently being ravaged by wildfires throughout west as freshwater lakes and reservoirs dip to all-time lows is incapacitating.… Read the rest
We have, most all of us, been in survival mode for a long time and this way of being has exacted tolls I’m not sure we will ever fully grasp. We have learned to live in new ways and work in new ways. We’ve made changes, course corrections and sacrifices. We’ve gotten creative even when our patience has been taxed to the max. We have figured out how to endure because there’s not much of an alternative. One of many questions that’s been growing and tumbling around inside me on multiple fronts over these past two years is what is sustainable?… Read the rest
As I sit down to write this month, I’m counting. We are 48 hours from Election Day. These few days hold the blue moon on All Hallows’ Eve, Samhain, All Saints Day, All Souls Day. It’s been 230 days since we closed the door after our last class at 401 N. West Street. It’s 25 days until Thanksgiving. It’s 61 days until we turn over the calendar to 2021— blessed be. It’s a time of remembrance, and hopefully a time for change. A movement toward kindness and truth.
Day to day reality has, for most of us, changed radically since last year at this time.… Read the rest
Tapas: austerity, discipline, fire, the heat necessary for birth or transformation. To practice tapas is to intentionally put ourselves into discomfort in the service of our own growth and transformation. Decidedly not the delicious Spanish snacks. Tapas is the intentional practice of getting out of our comfort zones to be stretched; to consciously step into the fire which creates change. This might sound crazy when the outside world already has us in a pressure cooker, but if it’s true “as within, so without,” the discord, unrest and anger we see at every turn must also have root within us. We need to put it in the fire.… Read the rest
’Tis the season of excess. In all the ways. Too much doing, rushing, eating, whirling, spending, running, shopping. Too much of too much. Seems to me it’s the perfect time to get back to basics and revisit the foundations of yoga, which set the stage for a shift of consciousness from chaos toward freedom.
The fifth yama listed in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is aparigraha. Breaking the word into its parts, you have: a- a prefix that changes the meaning of what it precedes to the opposite; pari- “on all sides”; graha- “to grab. To grab on all sides (or in every direction) would be parigraha, and that, in a word, sums up how we tend to move through the holidays.… Read the rest
Whether it came from my family of origin or was part of my soul’s original blueprint, I’ve spent most of my life grappling with being okay with not knowing. The fact that there is so much we don’t know, can’t possibly know, can’t plan or prepare for was just unacceptable to me for a long, long time. In my twenties, I really believed that I did, in fact, know. In my thirties, I found out that there was a whole lot missing from my field of view. By the time I got to my forties, I’d come to terms with the flow of life and her wise, yet unpredictable ways- or so I thought.… Read the rest
Necessary next steps
by Jill Sockman
Several years ago I wrote a post about feeling like I was in a waiting room. I could then and still can visualize it with amazing clarity. I was sitting in a long hallway — not scary or interesting or noteworthy in any way. In fact it was devoid of detail and without emotional content. But that sensation around the necessity of waiting is still palpable. It was not a time when I felt stuck, frozen, paralyzed or indecisive. There was nothing at all to be DONE. That was the point, and what was being asked of me was to wait.… Read the rest