Similar Posts
What My New Smart Phone Is Teaching Me About Yoga
I spent nearly three hours talking with tech support just to get the phone authorized. And once that was accomplished, the guy helping me also was unable to figure out how to transfer my contacts from the old phone to the new. Last night, on the second full day, I opened every item in settings just to learn about this piece of technology and found another way to transfer contacts than tech support had tried. Hooray! I didn’t have to enter them manually one by one.
So it’s like this: no matter how brilliant a system, if I didnt learn how to use it, I wasn’t going to get any benefits. The more I studied and practiced, the more I would be able to use it in a way that enhanced my daily life. Although a teacher is necessary, it takes our own thorough, steady, and attentive practice to empower ourselves and expand our limits.
I had thoroughly resigned myself to typing. Now I will have more time to figure out how to resize photos. That may feel less urgent. It’s busy at work, and the garden, yoga mat, meditation cushion, library, and beautiful weather call me to them.
Yoga Is Skill In Action
I’m spending the weekend via Zoom with Michelle Johnson, for a “Skill in Action” retreat, where she is creating and holding the space for exploring how we individually and collectively can act to bring more communal justice, through anti-racist action, in our own lives, in the yoga community, and in society. She has been doing anti-racism work for 20 years, and has been practicing yoga and teaching since 2009. She published “Skill in Action,” in 2018. I read it several months ago. She said that she was flooded with orders the weekend after George Floyd was murdered.
What changed? Was it the confluence with the pandemic? Will we engage enough to make this an opportunity for lasting change or will those who are least impacted get weary or bored? What can would be allies do to help make it the former and not the latter?
I’m up late writing this after having spent a couple of hours dancing around and getting ready for tomorrow and contemplating and, of course, playing with Maitri.

- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Body | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Gardening
Another Storm Passes Without Any Rain Falling Inside the Beltway
What’s a gardener and concerned for the trees and the health of the planet citizen to do? I’ve got enough water in the rain barrel to water the vegetables and herbs once or twice, but what impact does that really have? At work, people were grumbling because it was cloudy. They seemed shocked when I advised them that we are an inch under normal rainfall for August and have a fairly significant deficit for the summer despite the July rains.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could move some of the flood waters that have fallen only a couple hundred miles away to irrigate our fields without disrupting our eco-system? Part of me just wants not to know about the consequences of global climate change, but it is hard not to notice that all the weather patterns I used to know and understand do not seem to apply quite the same way anymore. What do we do when the systems and practices we have in place for our ease, comfort, well-being, and understood day-to-day peace of mind are disrupted?
Yoga will not fix the big outer problems, but it can provide us with the steadiness and ease needed to stay present and be flexible in the face of crisis, upheaval, or disease. It can also provide insight into how we can live in better alignment. In the meantime, I am practicing gratitude. I know how blessed I am that, so far, the wild upheavals I read about in the news have not kept me from all the food and comfort that a person could possibly want. And I pay attention, because to be ignorant ultimately never serves ourselves or others.











