Musings
Sept 1, 2025
‘What do you want to say at the end of it all?
How do you want to go out?
… Me, I am not sure what I want on my epitaph.
Probably something about love and whisky,
bliss and consciousness,
sex and the yoga of wordplay.
… But I know what I don’t want it to say:
“Here lies Mark Morford.
He sure got a lot done.”’
- Mark Morford, SF Chronicle
I turned 44 this summer, which apparently in spiritual terms represents stability, a strong foundation, and the importance of hard work in both personal and professional life. Duly noted, thank you Universe. It also means that I am starting my 45th revolution around the Sun, which (I also looked up) signifies a time of transformation, personal freedom, and divine support. Oooh, sign me up.
To be fair, 45 also apparently represents:
the number of the Devil
the duration of a football match half
a specific caliber of bullet
a Sapphire wedding anniversary, and
the sum of the first nine numbers (123456789 + 987654321)
… interesting, I’ll continue to ponder those for relevance.
In yoga, one of the foundational principles based on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is “Sthira Sukham Asanam” which roughly translates to, “within our structure, we find our freedom.” Other translations I have heard include finding balance between stability and ease, strength and flexibility, effort and surrender.
Indeed I spent the better part of summer of my 44th birthday cultivating balance in my life right now: hard work and stability as well as a receptivity to personal transformation and personal freedom that are just around the bend, and the felt sense that maybe, just maybe, someone up/out there in the Divine realms is looking out for me.
Does that mean I buckled down at work and taught twice as many classes and made oodles and oodles of money and ticked everything off my to-do lists and was always on top of my chores? Hell no. Quite the opposite.
Yes, I worked hard while I was home but I also felt that cultivating an inner stability and strong foundation was going to entail taking some time off. Rather than spreading myself thin and going wide with to-do lists, I chose to go deep with friends and family and spending time in places that made me feel both alive and at home. I commemorated my father’s life. I celebrated my mother’s 80th birthday. I basked in the delight of my 4 year old daughter learning to swim. I soaked up the sun. I hugged trees. I got my hands and feet dirty. I sang and played music. I slept. I felt free.
Summertime always provides a nice change in perspective around what’s important in the moment: taking advantage of the nice weather and time off from school, setting aside chores and to-do lists to spend quality time doing things that we love with people that we care about.
Not that this change in perspective comes without resistance, as we are so conditioned to fill every moment of our time with productivity. I was recently reminded of a column by my dear friend and longtime yoga teacher / writer Mark Morford entitled, “Hurry up, get more done, and die”.
He writes,
‘Your terrifying word of the day is “microtasking” and it comes by way of a relatively humble, ostensibly helpful article I read via one of those perky little DIY blogs that exist to tell you a million ways to tweak and hack your entire existence to gain maximum productivity, efficiency and improved overall time management, because, well, if that’s not the true meaning of this manic American life, what is?’
He continues,
‘“But wait!” I can hear you wail. “We’re American! We love nothing more than to conflate ‘work’ with ‘calling’, to confuse busyness with purpose. Stillness is suspicious! Work is all there is! Endless toil isn’t just a means to divinity, it is divinity! It says so in the Bible! So it must be true.’
What’s more:
‘Yes, we’re Americans. We are, by and large, utterly terrified of silence, stillness, spaciousness, the doing of nothing so as to feel the totality of everything. Meditation, for most, is disquieting and strange. Deep quiet feels weird and dangerous, a void aching to be filled. The internet has us convinced that the world is a roaring fire hose of urgent information and if you can’t swallow it all, well, something must be wrong with you.’
And then,
‘How easily we forget. Time expands, time contracts. Work will swell or diminish to fill a given space. You can do 10 things in an hour or one thing in 10. You can go to Spirit Rock meditation center for two solid weeks and do absolutely nothing but wander the grounds in silence for 12 hours a day, and time will look at you like you’re utterly insane as your breath and body thank you for all eternity.’
I distinctly remember sitting on a plane one fall, flying back to Vermont for a visit (circa 2009/2010 when I had just moved to San Francisco) and overhearing the conversation of the people in the row behind me. They said, “Aren’t the seasons so lovely in New England this time of year? It’s like a visual reminder that time slows down. That’s the thing about life in San Francisco; because they don’t really have seasons, they don’t know when it’s time to slow down.”
I have taken this wisdom to heart over the past 15+ years of living in San Francisco. Indeed, with our year-round temperate climate (exception: summer visited SF yesterday! 78 degrees and sunny with no wind, and every San Francisco resident was at the beach, claiming space in the sand like sardines, trying to soak up the sun while they could, and it was glorious!), we may not have seasons here in the same obvious way that New England does with drastic changes in the weather (it can go from the 70s/80s and sunny in early September to the first dusting of overnight frost during the same month), but life still has its ebbs and flows nonetheless.
It is not dissimilar to my experience of first learning to practice yoga in a studio surrounded by mirrors and relying on those mirrors for insight on proper alignment and form, and eventually with time (and a different studio) developing an inner sense of where a pose could use some tweaking to improve my stability, or adjust my balance, or release tension, or cultivate ease.
Because we don’t have the obvious changes in the seasons that bring things like fall foliage, winter snow, spring flowers and summer heat… living here requires us to pay more attention to the subtleties of the seasons of our own lives: discerning where and how we recharge, when it’s time to slow down, and ensure that when it’s time for us to buckle down again, we have both the strong foundation and freedom to apply our whole selves to the life we are living.
Mark concludes his column,
‘What do you want to say at the end of it all? How do you want to go out? … Me, I am not sure what I want on my epitaph. Probably something about love and whisky, bliss and consciousness, sex and the yoga of wordplay…. But I know what I don’t want it to say: “Here lies Mark Morford. He sure got a lot done.”’
Amen to that.
Aug 1, 2025
"I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.”
~ written by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Joanna Macy
I first heard this poem by Rilke, entitled "I live my life in widening circles", on Krista Tippett's "On Being" podcast in which she interviews one of my personal heroes, Joanna Macy. Coincidentally - or perhaps not - one of my favorite musical albums of the last decade is also named, "Wider Circles" by Rising Appalachia, which expresses a similar sentiment of waking up to our inter-beingness and to our inter-woven lives.
In the podcast, Joanna talks about spending her summers as a young girl in upstate New York, in which - not unlike summer weekends in the open fields, forests, mountains and rivers of Northern California - she describes her senses coming alive in nature and the distinct feeling that, "the world was very big and wise and intelligent and that I had an appetite to disappear into it."
I especially love this last line, "... that I had an appetite to disappear into it." Because I think that many of us share this hunger, a deep yearning, a longing to belong. Whether it be to nature itself, to a community of fellow humans, to ourselves, or to some greater spiritual path or Divine presence.
A recent survey found that more than 1 in 2 (52%) of people experience loneliness every week. Last year, that estimate was 1 in 3, so the numbers appear to be getting worse rather than better. Somehow, despite all of our technological advances, great wealth, and capability to connect, many of us feel more disconnected than ever before.
Additionally, through the news channels, the flow of communication is largely one-way (and we are receiving much more information than our nervous systems are wired to receive), and we're being flooded with images and information that leave us feeling anxious, heartbroken, helpless and voiceless.
I came across this podcast with Joanna Macy at a moment when my own heart was breaking: for the pain and suffering in the world, for the injustice in our own country, for the loss of my father this past year, for the 3,000 miles of distance from my mother and sister during a time of upheaval in our lives...
The full poem reads:
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not ever complete the last one,
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, that primordial tower.
I have been circling for thousands of years,
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
This poem reminded me that when the world feels big and our voice feels small, the truth is that we are all living our lives in widening circles that touch and impact one another, perhaps thousands of times over and over again, in various shapes and forms. And that in showing up each and every day for ourselves and for one another; we can re-claim our belonging.
As Rising Appalachia sings in the lyrics of their song, Wider Circles:
We’ll always keep our heads up
We’ll always sing along
We’ll walk the path of kindness
Know where we belong
...
Lets form a great salvation
Through harmony and sound
We’ll know the shape of progress
Like nature, is always round
Although we may not always be able to see the ripple effects or the widening circles of our actions from our current vantage point on any given day, the legacy of our lives is determined in the end by a series of moments strung together side by side.
We remember that the light and dark coexist simultaneously, and that the hour of greatest darkness always comes just before the next cycle of light; that we can hold all the joy and all the sorrow in our hearts, and not allow one to rob us of the other; that gratitude and grief, laughter and tears all flow from the same source which is a great everlasting and existential love for this life, our world, and each other.
Prompt: what act of kindness has someone else shown you lately? How can you show kindness in your life today?
April 23, 2025
"You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”
- Alan Watts
For much of my professional career, I have worked for environmental conservation organizations, aiming to protect and preserve Earth's most critical resources and ecosystems.
In a recent job, I used to organize and lead groups of people on trips deep into the Amazon Rainforest to immerse ourselves in a different way of life and cosmology - to attain a deeper understanding of who we are, why we are here, and how we fit into the larger web of life; the master plan of the universe, if you will, that we are all a part of.
During these trips, we would experience the natural world not as something that is separate from us, but rather as an extension of ourselves, and as a unique expression of the same life force that also runs through our human bodies, albeit in a different form.
Each day we would learn 100 different ways in which every organism - every single plant, insect or animal - served a purpose and co-existed in a living, breathing, flowing dance in perfect balance with everything else in its ecosystem. Even competition played a critical role in ensuring the harmony of the greater whole.
From deep inside the jungle, tapping ever so briefly but with such precise clarity into the wisdom of these pristine, untouched forests and learning from the indigenous tribespeople who continue to steward them in a way that could only be described as being more evolved than anything in the "civilized" world, it would be glaringly obvious just how out of balance our modern world has become, and that we have become disconnected from our larger sense of belonging to the Earth and our purpose as a human race (and by extension, our purpose as individuals).
I began leading these trips because I believed that we cannot save something that we do not love, and that people need to experience something firsthand in order to want to protect it. Furthermore, what I learned from these trips was that we cannot truly love something - and therefore effectively protect it - if we continue to see it as being separate from ourselves; if we do not see ourselves as intrinsically belonging to it.
Ultimately, I have come to believe that what human civilization suffers from most at this time is not a lack of science, knowledge or money, but rather a deep misunderstanding around our purpose and a disconnected sense of belonging - to the planet, to each other, and to ourselves.
I believe that it is our birthright - simply by the blessing of being born, by the fact that each of us are alive and posess unique gifts, passions, talents, interests, curiosities - to figure out in this lifetime what is our purpose and to reclaim and connect back into a felt sense of belonging to the greater whole.
Indeed, it may not be possible (or advisable, lest we destroy the very thing that could save us) for everybody on the planet to visit the Amazon rainforest in order to awaken and to remember their purpose and belonging in life. Yet, every time we start our yoga practice or take a moment of pause during our day, giving our attention and our actions a direction that is positive and beneficial and aligned with our purpose or Dharma, I do believe that we come one step closer to the people and the civilization that we need to become.
This, my friends, is what gives me peace in the present, and what gives me hope for the future.
Prompt: What are some of your unique passions, talents, and curiosities i.e. what lights you up and makes you come alive? How can you do one thing every day in your life that feels aligned with your unique purpose in life and reminds you of your intrinsic belonging to the larger whole?
March 31, 2025
"I asked the universe for flowers and it sent me rain."
- unknown
My mother was visiting last month, and in her honor I invited a small group of girlfriends over for a dinner party. I gave a prompt, as we sat around the table, to share where they were born and one thing about themselves that they were proud of at the moment.
At the very least, I had intended for this to be infomative, as not everyone knew each other. And at the most, I intended it to be uplifting i.e. to provide some insight into where we had started our lives and how far we each had come.
As it turned out, the conversation that ensued was incredibly vulnerable and heartfelt, both raw and inspiring. Because to be proud of something about yourself beyond an egoic level implies that perhaps you went through something challenging, difficult or scary to get there.
It was powerful to hear the stories each woman shared of overcoming obstacles, transcending limiting beliefs, and persevering against adversity over and over again, and how that process shaped them into the person they were proud to be today.
Prompt: what is something in your life that you are proud of right now?
March 18, 2025
"One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it."
- Clarissa Pinkola Estes
The world we live in - full of beauty, joy, awe, and wonder - can also feel chaotic, uncertain, and even painful at times. Whether you are experiencing this personally or collectively, I think that two practices that we can do right now for ourselves and each other are:
#1 be honest and authentic about what we are feeling, and
#2 show up "fully lit" in our lives and to be a lighthouse for each other.
There was a study involving people at the end of life who were asked about any regrets they had, and one answer was that they wished they had lived a more honest and authentic life.
Note that they didn't say they wished they had more fun, more pleasure, more money, a bigger house, more romantic partners, etc. Authenticity does require *more* or that we only experience things that feel good and avoid things that are uncomfortable; it implies embracing the fullness of life and all that this life has to offer. In fact, some of our most beautiful, multi-dimensional and intrinsically valuable qualities are shaped out of experiences that may have been difficult, uncomfortable or destabilizing.
... like a diamond that is created from a piece of coal that has been placed under intense heat and pressure, or the butterfly who emerges from the cocoon that was built by the caterpillar for the sole purpose of dissolving the creature it was in order to activate the imaginal cells of who it needed to become.
A desire to live from a place of honest truth also doesn’t necessarily mean that they were living dishonestly - as in, they were lying - or being untruthful. Sometimes we're just too damn busy to be authentic. At times, many of us can get swept up in the current of our day-to-day lives, and we are so busy trying to keep our head above water that we simply forget (or feel that we don't have time or bandwidth) to focus on the quality of our lives rather than the quantity of things that need to get done in a day.
In the end, an authentic life could be measured by how well, how often, and to the best of our ability in any given moment, we can align who we are or who we experience ourselves as on the inside with the life we are living and how we are showing up on the outside.
An important pre-cursor to authenticity is mindfulness: an openness to the continuous practice of observing with our full attention without judgement or attachment, of inhabiting and embodying presence in our lives, and cultivating a mindset of curiosity toward our inner experience and continuously getting to know our evolving self. To be authentic and live authentically, we must first be able to identify what feels authentic.
What do I notice?
How do I feel?
What feels most alive or is calling my attention right now?
What is my most honest and sincere desire in this moment?
Where am I getting caught in a story or an old pattern or belief?
When am I being reactive instead of responsive?
Who is the one thinking these thoughts right now?
Who is the one noticing these thoughts?
In sum, “living an authentic life" is the unique opportunity that we are each born with to explore and express the fullness of who we are, and that it is our birthright to experience ourselves as inherently whole: that we are simultaneously the shadow and the light, the strong and the soft, the expansion and the contraction, the teacher and the student. That we are here to make mistakes so that we may learn from them, to endure pain so that we may experience healing, to lose people and things that we love so that we might learn to carry that love with us in our hearts even when they are no longer there by our side.
May this practice support you, wherever you are on your journey of living an authentic life. May you know that you are held and supported in whatever feels most honest to you in this moment. May you be seen and celebrated in sharing your gifts, and may your light be a lighthouse for those around you.
February 20, 2025
I've seen memes going around online lately like, "Hey honey, you've been in child's pose for the last three days. Is everything okay?"
My recent favorite: "obsessed with the woman in my yoga class who paid for 60 minutes and laid motionless on the floor the entire time."
Also this: "A haiku poem about my life: I'm so tired. Why are people so annoying? My back is hurting."
And also this: "What if an advanced yoga practice wasn't measured in precise prefectly aligned movements and fancy poses but instead by the abiulity to have difficult or uncomfortable conversations and to endure change with more grace."
Lastly, "Things to remember: 1. You are a soul wearing a human disguise. 2. Nobody knows what's going on. 3. Everything is a miracle."
I'm curious if one made you laugh out loud, cringe inwardly, or nod your head knowingly in agreement... you don't have to share which one. And I wouldn't judge you, either way. I know it's not the whole picture of who you are.
There's a poem/song by Emory Hall, called, "I have been a thousand different women." She speaks of making peace with of the different iterations and versions of the person you have been/are, for "they are the bones of the temple you sit in now; for they are the rivers of wisdom leading you toward the sea."
Embracing our wholeness has been a recurring theme in my classes and in my life. In full transparency, by the way, these memes are all my favorites right now because I can relate to them all, both in my life as well as on my mat and in my teaching:
I have been that person in child's pose, stricken with grief and sorrow and needing to let the tears flow;
I have been the one laying motionless on the floor, exhausted and paralyzed from doomscrolling the news, worried about the state of our country, our world, and our future;
I have been the one giving the middle finger in traffic while on my way to/from yoga class and why do my hips and shoulders always hurt I should probably go back and do more yoga and maybe my hips and shoulders will feel better and maybe I'll be a nicer person in traffic, too;
I have been the aspirational yogi suddenly remembering herself on a spiritual path (and oopsie, also suddenly regretting giving that middle finger);
and I have looked in curious wonder at the distinct shade of blue in the sky and the shape of the clouds and the warmth of the sun and the chirping sounds that the birds make in the park near my house in the morning, and smelled my daughters hair while she was still sleeping, and thanked the Gods that we have a roof over our head and food on our table and how lucky we are to exist in this particular way at this particular time in this precious life...
Truly, what a miracle. A confusing, chaotic, messy, terrible, awful, wonderful, beautiful miracle. I can only hope to continue to deepen, grow and expand my capacity to hold... all of it, all of you, and all of me.
January 15, 2025
I started cold plunging in the Pacific this past summer, and it was life changing. In the 15 years I've lived in San Francisco, I've only ever dipped my toes into the ocean during the occasional heat wave, and rarely gone in past my knees.
To immerse myself fully, to surrender to the powerful waves crashing over my head time and again, and to stay in for 1 minute, 2 minutes, up to 20 minutes at a time... it was something I never thought I would do, let alone enjoy.
When it came down to it, I didn't believe that I was capable of withstanding the sheer discomfort of it, or that I could recover (let alone thrive, enjoy or grow as a result of it).
Doing these daily cold plunges ended up being much-needed medicine for my body and mind as far as what I believed I was capable of, and the person I believed I was capable of being in the face of discomfort.
As I walked into the water, I would tighten my fists and through a clenched jaw repeat over and over again, "I am a tough cookie!" After a few months of cold plunging, I started to believe the words myself.
Maybe I really am a tough cookie! Maybe I am stronger than I think I am. Maybe I can not only withstand moments of extreme discomfort in my life, but maybe I can actually thrive as a result of going through experiences that might be uncomfortable on some level, but that I know I can face head-on with an open mind and heart to receive the fullness of life.
Caveat: I didn't start cold plunging in the ocean directly. It was something I worked up to after repeated visits with a friend to my neighborhood sauna/cold plunge dayspa. Alternating between the infrared sauna and the tubs - the sauna provided the reassurance that I would be okay again after the cold plunge, and the tubs provided reasurrance that there would be relief from the heat - and that I would not be uncomfortable forever.
That no matter what discomfort I faced in my life, to know on a visceral somatic level that, This too shall pass.
December 30, 2024
Now is the season for tending to the soil of our lives. Contrary to all the hype and hullabaloo around New Years Resolutions, I propose to you instead that there are no big dramatic actions you need to take on this day; no proclamations you need to make of humble-brag accomplishments or lofty goals; and no seeds that need to be planted at this time (if we look to nature, that actually doesn't happen until much later, in the spring).
Lately, there have been days when I could not summon the motivation to scrape myself up off the couch for hours at a time. Times when I deferred responding to phone calls or texts from beloved friends for days or weeks, even, because I just didn't feel like talking. So many yoga classes where I spent half or more of the class in child's pose.
Silence. Stillness. Listening. Bearing witness. Slowing down.
I have started to realize that perhaps this time in my life is asking me to cultivate different skills, qualities and values than the ones that have served me in the past; that this is a season in which I'm being invited to expand and deepen my capacity to hold the fullness of what life has to offer. And that rather than meeting life as a warrior in the traditional sense with all of my armor and all of my weapons at the ready, that I am being asked to bend the knee with reverance and humility... and the courage required to do so is infinitely greater than my nervous system's response to spring forward into action.
In yoga, one of my favorite aha! asana moments was learning that Hero's Pose or Virasana (performed while seated, kneeling, hands folded on lap, eyes closed) had the same root word "Vira" as the warrior (Virabhadrasana) poses.
My whole life I had aspired to cultivate the kind of courage required to speak up and be heard, to take a stand and to fight for or to defend what I believed in and cared most about.
Could it be that there was another form of warrior's strength that entailed being brought to my knees, bowing before life's greatest trials and tribulations rather than confronting or fighting them head-on? Could it be that some words resonate louder when they are left unspoken? Could it be that some truths are more clearly seen and understood when our eyes are closed and our gaze turned inward?
Like all things in the natural world, there is a season and a time for everything. My invitation to you is to consider that perhaps in this season there is an opportunity for you to get quiet; to slow down and to reflect inward on what life is asking of you at this time; and to tend to the soil of your life by allowing yourself to rest and replenish, and to enter into stillness and silence with the reverence and humility of a true warrior.
December 19, 2024
Rumi said, "Heart is sea, language is shore. Whatever sea includes, will hit the shore."
I have a confession to make. The other week, I taught my classes and went about my day like any other. In fact, I had just taught a particularly heartfelt yoga class, waxing poetically about the principles of yoga philosophy and the importance of living our yoga out in the world and showing up as the highest version of ourselves in service to others.
As I got on my bike and headed home for the evening, traffic was moving slowly, congested at a traffic light. The car behind me kept inching closer and closer, and eventually started honking its horn impatiently, as though that would make the light change any faster. Instinctively, I whipped around and made eye contact with the driver, giving them a whithering look and the middle finger. Happy holidays to you, too, asshole.
The light changed and traffic started moving again. The car swerved around me and sped off into the night. The event passed and within a minute or so, I could feel my blood pressure dropping again, my heart rate slowing back down, and my breathing becoming more regulated. Then the thoughts came.
Anger. Judgement. Fear. Shame. Separation. Curiosity. Acceptance. Forgiveness.
I regretted my knee-jerk reaction, of course. Dammit, I wasn't practicing what I was preaching. What if that was one of my students or someone I loved? Maybe that person had just gotten some really bad news. OMG maybe they were on their way to the hospital. Or maybe they were just a jerk. But regardless, my response hadn't helped and it certainly wasn't going to have a positive impact on their outlook or behavior. It's okay. I felt vulnerable on my bike and my anger was trying to protect me from an aggressive driver. Long exhale. Let's begin again.
There is a powerful practice in mindfulness of naming whatever it is that draws our attention: whether it is a felt sense of the tightness in our hamstrings during Sun Salutations, a dull ache in our chest or thickening of our throat during Pigeon when our hearts are feeling tender, a noticing of the incessant chatter of our mind like a record stuck in a groove while in Savasana, or a flash of anger while sitting in traffic...
For many of us, we spend our days so utterly immersed in the ocean of our lived experiences (the sensations, the thoughts, the feelings, etc.), that it can feel as though we are floating at sea, getting tossed about by the waves and ever-changing weather conditions.
Brené Brown talks about how after struggling in the vast sea of our experiences, "wrapping words around our emotions can feel like finally being able to stand and catch our breath. The waves will certainly still toss us around, but we can touch the bottom, and we can see a way to that shore."
In other words, that moment becomes a bridge between our lived experiences and our ability to comprehend, integrate and eventually transcend it.
I share this story because we are all human. We all have nervous systems that have evolved to keep us alive. We all have minds that will do their best to protect us from feeling vulnerable or wrong. We all have bodies that store our lived experiences in our tissues until we are able to process them.
So whether there is a physical threat while in traffic or a fear about losing our job, our shelter, our loved ones, our sense of security in this ever changing world, or whether we have an existential fear of fulfilling our potential or finding true love, our entire lives are a lifelong journey of beginning again.
Also, if it was you that I gave the middle finger to in traffic the other day, please forgive me. I love you. Let's begin again.
November 11, 2024
Jack Kornfield says, "Being alive is finding ourselves in the midst of a great and mysterious paradox. There are ten thousand joys and sorrows in every life, and at one time or another we will be touched by all of them."
When I cry, my daughter asks me, “Mama why are you sad?”
This question has been such a beautiful teaching opportunity for us both, because the answer I usually give her is, “I cry because the LOVE in my heart is so big and so powerful that it is overflowing and coming out through my eyes.”
In the endless circle of life - just as the sun and the moon shine together at opposite ends of the same orbit, and just as the yin and the yang ebb and flow seamlessly into the other - loss and love are forever dancing together through life, one in the other’s footsteps, ad infinitum in perpetuity: birth and death, union and heartbreak, hope and disappointment.
In moments of despair, it can be helpful to remember - lest we forget momentarily that the moon, too, has the power to reflect the sun’s light, albeit in another form or from a different angle - that love and loss co-exist simultaneously and one cannot exist in the absence of the other. That the heart and soul, the core and the foundation of all that we experience in this life is love. Love for each other, love for ourselves, love for this life. Love always comes first.
In Bhakti yoga and other traditions, it is said that music is the yoga of the heart and the voice of the soul made manifest and expressed through sound. Music, healing sound and song can help us to connect, feel and breathe through the waves of life as they wash over us and move through us.
I have created a Playlist for Love & Loss of my favorite healing songs at this time. Perhaps it will bring solace to you as well or offer a salve to your heart during your own times of tenderness.
October 17, 2024
At 3am this morning, I lay awake in my bed. I could not get comfortable in my body, turning from one side then to the other, pulling the covers up, and then - overheating - throwing them off again. My mind was skipping endlessly from one thought to the next like a midnight train car hopper, resolute and silently determined to reach the end of the line where surely there were no thoughts left unresolved, all mysteries of the mind unraveled, and every potential future accounted for.
At 4am, I snuggled closer to the small body of my daughter sleeping beside me and buried my nose into her hair one last time in the dark, before getting up to make myself a cup of hot lemon water, and then my morning coffee.
Embracing (rather than resisting or resenting) my restless mind and body, in the words of Martha Graham who described this as the "blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive."
Or as Mark Nepo talks about The Practice Before the Practice: "From the moment we open our eyes, we are meaning-seeking creatures, looking for what matters though we carry what matters deep within us... The endless practice is keeping our heart open to the whole of it. And the journey of becoming who we were born to be never ends. It's limitless, eternal. We don't arrive - we grow."
He continues,
"Every single being has an amazing, unfathomable gift that only meeting life head-on and heart-on will reveal. And we can't fully know our gift alone. We need each other to disover the gift, to believe in the gift. And then, to learn how to use it.... There is always a practice before the practice; a sitting before the incomprehensible long enough to feel and sometimes understand the mystery each instrument and craft is designed to evoke."
I am re-integrating back at home now from my 'Whole Hearted You' retreat last weekend in the Coastal Redwoods, where the intention was to rediscover and reclaim all the parts of ourselves that have been lost, forgotten or neglected somewhere along the way. We had a daily meditation and yoga practice to be with and fully inhabit our own minds and bodies; we had each other as mirrors to reflect our gifts back to us; we had ample opportunities to release, replenish, integrate, express, celebrate, heal and nourish our whole selves.
To say it was "a good retreat" seems insufficient, as the time we spent together felt more meaningful, somehow. There is something truly magical and transformative that can happen when people come together to discover, to better understand, and to offer wholeheartedly their gifts.
The thing is, the impact of such an experience does not stop when the retreat ends, in the same way that the river is forever impacted by the water that passes through it and forges its banks. In some ways, the retreat is the practice before the real practice: the "sitting before the incomprehensible long enough to feel" before the real practice of coming home and integrating our understandings and new mindset into our day to day lives.
Sometimes we return home with more questions than answers, but the real gift of this "blessed unrest" is that the voice of our soul - our innermost self or our most whole self - continues to speak to us and to speak through us, propelling us forward toward a more honest - and hopefully more fulfilling - way of being, which is our gift and our Dharma.
October 2, 2024
Several years ago when Hannah Rose was still a baby (and I, a young mother stumbling into this new role and identity) and as a society we were in the early days of Covid and the ensuing epidemic of isolation and lonliness, a song came across my path that felt like a re-membering of my whole self, a healing of the parts of myself that had been lost or forgotten, an embrace of the parts of myself that were newly emerging, and a celebration of my soul's most sincere expression and honest desire to become whole.
I began singing this song at the end of class during Savasana while your eyes were still closed but your hearts wide open, often with tears silently gliding down my own cheeks and trying not to let my voice choke up, as I sang this song for you, for myself, and for our whole world.
The song begins with the lyrics, "Here and now, I call upon my soul to return home and become whole." As many of you know, we often close class by joining our voices together, singing 'Sita Ram' to the same tune as 'Become Whole', as we sing ourselves, each other, and our world back into wholeness, harmony, union and balance.
The original song is called Shante Ishta, which is a Cherokee phrase meaning "The Single Eye of the Heart" and signifies clarity and an opening of the heart in compassion and without judgement.
The times we are in are calling us up - both individually and collectively - and asking us to dig deep for compassion and to release judgement. Which, of course, is easier said than done.
When I am feeling angry, sad, lonely, hurt, scared or separate, the last thing that I feel capable of accessing is compassion or a willingness to relinquish my judgements toward the person or situation I feel wronged by. I've tried to chatarunga my way through my feelings, as well as journaling, jumping, shaking, hugging (or pummeling) a pillow, therapy, walking, dance ...
All of these modalities have their benefits, and each is a valued tool in my toolkit. But there is one thing that seems to holistically shift my inner environment, to bring harmony where I feel dissonance, to give volume to my rage or tenderness to my sadness, and to help me find my way back home to myself when it feels like I have lost sight of who I inherently am or have misplaced the roadmap within my own heart.
Music is such an incredibly profound and powerful tool for helping us to awaken, transform and alchemize the effects of our lived experiences that might otherwise get stuck in the body in the form of tension or illness or - worse - get stuck in our hearts or minds in the form of misplaced identity, a lost sense of self, or further contributing to division, separation, disharmony and pain in the world.
Music has a way of creating both an internal sense of harmony as well as an external ability to co-exist more harmoniousy with others. Did you know that singing in yoga classes (called mantra) is actually an ancient form of meditation that helps to focus and quiet the mind? Or that when we sing together with other people, a physiological shift happens in our brains in which our sense of "I" temporarily dissolves into the collective "we". And we receive the same burst of oxytocin and dopamine from singing in a group that we would otherwise get from hugging or cuddling with a loved one. Or that communities where people sing together experience a significant decline in rates of violent crime?
All of this to say, there is a reason that I sing in class, that I invite you to sing as well, and that my greatest joy and hope for the world emerges when we all sing together, for it is in that moment that we remember our wholeness.
August 29, 2024
It feels as though we are experiencing the transition of seasons almost from moment to moment right now. And to be honest, I'm having mixed feelings about it, wavering somewhere between nostalgic and excited.
The California sunshine is still warm when you're in it, but there is a damp chill in the air when you step into the shade or during the evenings, which seem to arrive a lot sooner than they did just a month or two ago.
Personally, I am also transitioning back to life in San Francisco after nearly a month of summer vacation on the East Coast with Hannah Rose visiting beloved family, friends and various bodies of water to swim in (from lakes and ponds, splash pads and swimming pools, to the Atlantic Ocean itself).
We had a blast.
And while it is a great practice of living in the present by savoring each moment, following where the wind takes you that day, and just saying yes to whatever adventure arises, I also think it's a sign of a really complete and fulfilling vacation when you feel ready to return home and to settle back in to the comfort of a routine and able to start planning and building toward the things ahead that you are looking forward to. Life happens somewhere in the ebbs and flows between gratitude for what has been, contentment with where you are, and excitement about what is to come, does it not?
A reading that has been resonating with me lately is called, "What we bring along" by Mark Nepo, in which he posits, "A river doesn’t hold all the water that passes through it. In our journey through time, we all struggle constantly with what to bring along and what to leave behind. It feels so hard to throw anything away, but if we don’t, we will drown underneath a weight of our own making."
Although change can be hard and it is natural to grieve or feel nostalgic about what once was, I find it is also important to be like the river, to let go and be in the flow of life, in order to make room for where I am and what is to come.
July 15, 2024
Yep, that's lil ole' me! July 1982, just a few weeks shy of my first birthday... And - despite the look of consternation and defiance on my face (I'm guessing someone just told me it was time to get out of the water, and I wasn't going to do so without a fight) - I was undoubtedly in my happy place, digging in/eating the sand and soaking in the shallow waters of our local lake where I grew up in central Vermont.
As I reflect and contemplate on my next r[evolution] around the sun this month, I notice with love and compassion the parts of me that are most honest and true and have remained constant throughout my life, and the parts that have, well, softened and evolved over time. That little girl with her face covered in sand, digging in the dirt? Ha. She's still in there, defiant as ever. Noticing where I am attached to pleasure and aversive to discomfort or change? I am still working on those...