Though illness (and its remedies) is often treated as an individual experience, the pandemic's persistent interruption to our lives in 2021 is monumentally larger than any one person, and its shared collective burdens are significant.
Read moreSavoring the last bits of summer
Living in the mid-Atlantic region, we have the gift of defined seasons and their quarterly lessons in impermanence. A mainstay of this lesson is the reminder to appreciate what is, rather than wishing for what was or what's to come.
Read moreBreathing Through a Big Change
Like a chrysalis that quietly grows eyes, legs, and wings for its transformation, our vibrant Fairfax community is poised to make a graceful butterfly's landing in a new Fairfax City home in 2022. It is there that we will once again—safely and compassionately—come together in person to practice, celebrate, and honor the lessons of impermanence, non-attachment, and gratitude.
Read moreWe're Like Fireflies
The quiet space of contemplative ease is like a sturdy oak tree, standing in patient wait for us to land and soak in its magnificence.
Read moreLet Freedom Ring
Practicing non-attachment means remaining undefined by time, space, or external circumstance. It is a state of unconditional freedom that allows our deepest self to fly gracefully on the wings of impermanence as they take us to heights of sorrow and peaks of joy, sometimes in the same day.
Read moreBeyond the Binary
This week we noted the summer solstice, honoring the longest stretch of sunshine, while large swaths of the country across the south and the west wither under scorching heat, a flame lit and fanned by unbridled consumption and disregard for the decades-old warnings of climate science.
Read moreSmiling On the Outside
We are learning that pandemic life has no on/off switch, nor an instruction manual with delineated steps. But we will have small victories along the way, as each phase moves us forward into safer, sweeter times.
Read moreThe Chorus of Change
When we recognize yoga as an embodied practice, it becomes a projection of our deepest voices asking for peace to prevail, for justice to rule, for humanity to rally round itself.
Read moreLearning To Be Together Again
I wanted to hug everyone, but I knew we weren't ready for that yet.
Read moreRelentless Optimism
A toppled tree in the woods forms a backdrop for the encroaching emerald carpet of springtime. On a contemplative morning walk, nature provides a nurturing reminder of how to be relentlessly optimistic about new growth and the potential in what lies ahead of us, in spite of what has fallen around us.
Read moreBehold the Light
More often than not, staying with the rhythm of fully present inhales and exhales is more than enough to ground us in the moment, and buffer us with patience until we wait for more or better information. More often than not, there's no monster in the darkened hallway, but simply a reflection of light from a brazen moon.
Read moreMoonlight and Perception
Imagine you found yourself sleepless, wandering alongside a lake in the middle of a dark, windy night. Restless, your troubled mind might mimic the choppy water whose fluctuations fracture an otherwise steady beam of reflected moonlight.
Read moreProbables and Possibles
Few things are ever guaranteed beyond the daily sunrise—and even then, stormy skies can block our view. Last March is a bold reminder of how sharply the course of our lives can shift.
Read moreTelling Our Stories
British colonial rule had an undue influence on the way India's story got told to the Western world, and part of that story includes the sowing of the seed of yoga that grew into a fractured transnational phenomenon. There’s a great gulf between the yoga practiced hot and sweaty in a gym and the yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, but there certainly is some common ground.
Read moreMaking Snow Angels
I find profound beauty in plopping down, sweeping limbs in and out, and admiring the resulting shape our body makes on the snow-covered earth. There is power in proclaiming with our whole selves, I am here! I made my mark!
Read moreFinding clarity
We don't need fancy pants, flexible body parts, or showy moves. We simply need our breath, a consistency of awareness and attention, and the loving (virtual) presence of each other for support and encouragement along the way.
Read moreRemember to keep air in your tires. This is a metaphor.
Just like car tires, we fare better with the unexpected when we've done steady maintenance – such as regularly checking our own inner resources, noticing when we need to top off with self-care, and employing our tools skillfully to cushion the inevitable bumps in the road.
Read moreBreathing Through the Jitters
We are days away from the culmination of a presidential election that is likely the most historic of the century. Much like the uncertainty of our lives for the last seven months, we face the real possibility of going to sleep the evening of Nov. 3 with more questions than answers. It’s unsettling at best, and the emotional litany goes on from there.
Read moreThe Long View
Creating longer distances within the body includes the opportunity to examine how that distance became shortened in the first place, and how it may get filled once created. Is a perpetually contracted chest the result of years of depression or self-defense against a broken heart? Does the one who dares to open that vulnerable stretch from shoulder to shoulder, across heart and lungs, do so in the hopes of breathing new life into the long reach from loneliness to belonging?
Read moreReflections on Impermanence at Minnehaha Falls
The yoga sages believed that our inability to mitigate suffering stems from a narrow perspective of how things really are, as if walking up an escalator without noticing it’s actually going down, wondering why it's so hard to get to the top.
Read more