Category Guest Blogger
Teaching the Forgotten
I play George Winston or Mozart in the background. One of the men told me the other day he likes the Mozart I play because it’s the same as the music in Bugs Bunny show. We punch the air. We breathe. And we end with savasana. I find that the more I get to know them, the more I am comfortable abandoning the plan and just going with what I feel they really need… Mostly heart-openers.
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Joyful Purpose: Reaching for the Moon with Ardha Chandrasana
Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon) was the first pose that showed me how to be a spiritual practitioner. Similar to how the warriors allow us to feel prepared and ready, Half Moon opened me up to my potential in a new way.
I remember the initial feeling of finding a shape that spoke to me, embodied me, and so I embodied and embraced it back. And it gave me what a good partner does: support and an abiding faith.
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The Guest Blog: What Would You Do If You Had Just 90 Minutes Left To Live? By Chelsea Parsons
Death struck close to my heart almost 4 years ago, when I lost my Mum to a vicious battle with cancer. Ever since that moment I’ve tried to live my life with the ‘life’s too short, live your dreams mentality’ in her honour and you could easily argue that I’ve done just that…
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The Guest Blog: Mat Play – On Writing and Yoga By Kathleen Kraft
Yoga is a great swing. Bound by gravity and rectangled off by the mat, we experience an amazing number of movements and flight, we flow between them. The mat is a poem of sorts…
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A Lantern for Mr. Iyengar
This year Illumination Night was held last Wednesday, August 20, on the eve of Mr. Iyengar’s passing. And how perfect a passing it was.As I walked through this beloved evening, I drew parallels across all spiritual practices. In most wisdom traditions, light is regarded as the Ultimate. Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims alike drape their centers of worship with flickering lights. Diwali, Tazaungdaing, Christmas, and Hanukkah are just four of the festivals to use lights as a gathering force. And flames are usually fanned for those passed to celebrate their lives and to acknowledge their influence.
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The Guest Blog: How Do I Look? By Shawna Emerick
Even as I start to write this, I am thinking, “this must be amazing, and it must bring hundreds to my yoga classes, and it must strike people right in the gut, or the heart!” And then, I relax, what’s all the stress for?
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The Guest Blog: Mindfully Dealing With An Apartment Leak By Ariane Hunter
About 1:45am Saturday night….drip…drip…DRIP…DRIIIP…DRIIIIIP…the sounds of water coming down woke me up out of my sleep.
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Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
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Sex Toys, Love, And Death: The Unexpected Joys of Yoga In A Senior Center
Once she arrived 20 minutes late to my half-hour chair yoga class. She loved the meditation part. When I rang my bell to end the quiet, she wanted to meditate again. “I’ve been to three funerals in one month,” she told me. “My friends are dying, and their funerals are all over me. Can you shake them off?” Not knowing what to do, I took a breath and brushed her coat sleeves. She grasped both of my hands in hers and held my gaze, which scared me and moved me to tears.
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There Are No Accidents
After being immobilized for so long the fourteen stairs to my apartment seemed like a Himalayan mountain. One slow, arduous step at a time I climbed. As word got out, friends would call me full of pity and concern. I spent a lot of time during my long convalescence reassuring the people who care for me that I am OK, that I am thankful for this ‘accident’ in a weird way.
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