Recent Posts
The Relationship with our Nervous System – the path to freedom
Reading Time: 4 minutes “I experienced the great disequilibrium of those months as violent changes imposed upon me from the outside, against my will.” – Ulrich Baer describing the months after Sept. 11, 2001 as a New Yorker Consider the Nervous system. It is the great integrator of information, internal and external, for our …
How Broken you must be to not see my Humanity
Reading Time: 3 minutes One writer who speaks right to my heart is James Baldwin. As white cis-gendered heterosexual woman, some might assume that relating to his work would be a challenge since he wrote passionately about his lived experiences as a Black man (and closeted gay man) in a time where his humanity …
Joy & Happiness
Reading Time: 2 minutes “Joy is unspeakably more than Happiness. Happiness washes over us; it is granted by the fates. Joy, on the other hand, blossoms from within. Joy is simply a good season of the heart; Joy is the most extraordinary gift we have in our power.” Rainer Maria Rilke – from a letter …
Restlessness and Revelation
Reading Time: 4 minutes Navtej Johar, an amazing dancer, poet, Yoga teacher, once reflected on the inherent conflict between experience and expression – a conflict that is worthy of contemplation during times of global crises like 2020 and 2021. What you experience is completely personal. It is a sensory/mind interaction that only you ‘witness.’ …
“We are One” ≠ “I am Special”
Reading Time: 4 minutes The foundational teaching of many spiritual/religious traditions begin with some version of “We are One.” This leads believers to the notion that compassion arises out of a deep awareness of our fundamental connection with other beings. However, a problematic misinterpretation of this concept can lead some to the delusion that …
Mind Like Footprints in the Sand
Reading Time: 2 minutes Many Yoga techniques are about placing the Mind, whether we are using the body to hold the attention or some inner image or sensation. Place your attention “Here”, place it “There”…. Hold it “Here”, hold it “There.” – the practice, initially, is in the placement. When I first began to …
The Problem with Identity
Reading Time: 10 minutes “I stand before my highest mountain, and before my longest journey, and ,therefore, must I descend deeper than I have ever before descended.” (Nietzsche) “The crucial element I wish to consider here is that element of a life which we consider to be an identity; the way in which one …
Where does the mind go when there is no more air left to breathe?
Reading Time: 3 minutes I would like to continue the notion from the previous post of “life has its own restraints.” As previously stated, when people are oppressed and denied freedom of will, then, for peace of mind, one attempts to sort out purusha from prakriti. Purusha as the existence of pure being becomes …
Life has its own restraints
Reading Time: 3 minutes It was not until I turned fifty did I begin to embrace my being African American in a white world.I have often wondered about the ability to survive tragic suffering such as slavery.Where can the mind go under such circumstances and not want to die right then and there? What …