Think about it–when were you ever taught how (or even why it’s important) to be fully engaged with yourself? No wonder most people aren’t very good at it. And yet, if you’re not engaged with yourself, it’s impossible to be fully engaged with anyone or anything else. This is why it’s so important to begin [...]
In class I’ve been talking for the last few months about how yoga is a practice of intimacy with yourself. As with any relationship, the natural progression is to go from intimacy to engagement. So here we are at engagement. In light of the last post, I want to take a moment to look at [...]
Inspired by the physical, physiological and mental benefits of the practice, first-time and veteran yogis alike, resolved to make a change, are filling yoga classes in the first few weeks of the new year. Though I, too, practice in part for these blessings and am a huge proponent of the scientific research that continues to [...]
In this, the first week of the new year, I’ve been reflecting on the journey of self-discovery that has led me to who I am today. The joke that hit me the other morning as I was practicing was this: the problem with self-awareness is that the selves we become aware of aren’t necessarily what [...]
“When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have. When you make a difference with what you have, it expands.” A friend loaned me the book, The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist, from which [...]
And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~Anais Nin I’m sure you’ve seen the above quote before, but it’s always worth reading it again. I love this quote not just because of the message, but because it’s [...]
Perhaps you heard the story in the news this week about how the mistresses of Catholic priests wrote an open letter to the pope saying how priests need to love and be loved. This reopened the debate about clerical celibacy–and it brought to my mind the fourth yama in yogic philosophy, brahmacharya. The yamas are [...]
David Whyte has a poem that I love that begins with the line: I want to write about faith In the poem, Whyte confesses that he “has no faith,” but ends by stating, with hope: Let this then, my small poem, like a new moon, slender and barely open, be the first prayer that opens [...]
Well if you’ve been in my yoga classes this week you’ve been privy to some great gems about shoulder alignment that I learned from my friend and extraordinary yoga teacher Ada Lusardi at a workshop she held here in Portland this past weekend. Ada’s precise and competent instructions for how to come in to anatomical [...]
I’ve always loved the story of how the great sculptor Michelangelo, when asked how he created his magnificent sculpture of David replied, “I just chipped away everything that didn’t look like David.” This story appeals to me so because it is the story of how to look intently at the form of our lives and [...]