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 moreWe're full of welcomes and gratitude this fall
Welcome to the taste of a cool, crisp morning. Gratitude for sunshine and breathable air. Welcome to new beginnings and hope for brighter seasons ahead. Gratitude for vaccines and masks to keep ourselves and each other safe and healthy.
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 moreCome see us on Langston Boulevard!
Wellness doesn't stop at our private garden gate. The pain and suffering of one among us is the responsibility of all of us.
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 moreA common purpose
I spent last Saturday helping my dear friend Suzanne Morgan build a meditation labyrinth at her West Virginia yoga and healing center, Moon Meadows Farm. A group of us gathered on the hottest day of the year, hydrated and sunscreened, and set to work. We carted, lugged, lifted, placed, and blessed over 2,000 rocks in a 96-foot spiral path that sits in a meadow's clearing at the edge of a tree line in the Shenandoah Valley. The Blue Ridge mountains rose gloriously in the distance, reminding us where those rocks were born.
Read moreBeing Open
While many of us have continued posture and breathing yoga practices to help us feel open throughout the pandemic, the felt sense of "openness" seems even more accessible when the broader environment mirrors it.
Read morePreserving a Fragile Ecosystem
We’ve known for a long time that we live in a fragile social ecosystem, often confusing which gates to open wider and which ones to keep shut. The pandemic and social upheaval of 2020 pushed this fragile balance into sharp relief. As yoga practitioners, our call hinges on keen discernment of actions that will serve the cause of connection for the most while causing harm to the fewest.
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 moreZero Degrees of Separation
If you've benefited from the wisdom practice known as yoga, rooted in centuries of teachings originating from South Asia, then you are connected to India.
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 moreFinding the Spring You Need
The simplest practices of steady breath, accessible movement, and gentle tending to heart and mind allow our true spirit to shine anew, at once reliable and miraculous, like blossoms appearing on a warm spring afternoon.
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 moreHope Is In The Air
What does hope feel like in the spring of 2021? Damp ground revealed by snowmelt. Softer temperatures warming the skin. The rumbling engine of a school bus rounding the corner. And a barely-felt needle in the arm to unlock a less anxious, more free near future.
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