Question Reality
I think the best lesson in yoga that a young person can do today is to call into question what is real. More important than getting into handstand, doing down dog or reciting a mantra. Because now, more than ever, the media landscape is full of contrivance and disinformation. With …
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The Other God
In the course of a daily shuffle it is easy to walk around in a trance. Our small, comfort-loving minds are happy to remain cocooned in the cozy-wozy of the familiar. That is, we all have a bit of Bilbo Baggins in us. We love our private Shire fully furnished …
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Going Against Gravity
Each day when you wake in the morning, devote time to rising up against gravity. Hatha yoga counters its downward drag, the quintessential anti-gravity pose being the cobra, where the spine and head are drawn upward from the horizontal. You are no doubt familiar with these types of instructions in …
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Within You Without You
I was four years old when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band came out in 1967. I remember being intrigued and somewhat spooked by the wild, cacophonous cover with all the face cutouts hovering above the Beatles in their decked out, dayglo, marching band attire. The carpet of flowers in …
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Love is a Free Fall
These days people say they love everything and anything. “I love my new toothbrush!,” “I love my coffee maker,” “I love this brand of kim-chi,” “I love this ad on t.v.” When love gets objectified, it gets put into a box. When love is made literal, we become identified and …
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Getting Out of Your Own Way
The best thing you can do is to get out of your own way. Simply step aside and, like opening the sluices of a dam, let the current of each day flow through you. Ha! but easier said than done. Truly getting out of your own way could be the …
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Being in the Eternal Moment
Practice is all about being in the moment. The breath, the pulse of nerve, the flicker of memory are opportunities to land smack dab in the middle of the now. Every moment is exquisitely unique and as the famous saying goes, “you can’t step in the same river twice.” The moment …
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The Elixir of Life
In yoga and ayurveda, the primary substance of life is called rasa. Rasa is a beautiful word that can mean juice, sap, relish, taste, an elixir, or a charm. It is the essential fluid of any living creature like the sap in a maple tree, the latex solution in a …
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Open Gate
Over the course of a life time, what if we see each experience as a kind of gate, a potential opening to move through? What if every memory, every conversation, every chance encounter is a gate that allows the possibility for change and growth? We can imagine that birth and …
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The Spirit of Play
We all need play to keep our heart vivacious and our spirits light. Yet all too often as we age, we get consumed by the drudgery of work, duty, and responsibility and abandon the spirit of play. While we don’t typically think of yoga practice as play, in the cosmology …
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