The Promise of a Brighter Day

Last week we experienced the darkest and longest night of the year. Like I mentioned last week, this time of year reminds us that there's something about this journey toward understanding ourselves that requires that we embrace darkness. And while being in the dark is very harrowing, an encouraging thing begins the very next day—it starts to get light again. There is a new dawn and the days begin to get longer and longer, the promise of summer and warmth and brightness.

One thing I've discovered this year when I've hosted my special Glowga events, where we turn off the lights, black out the windows, paint each other in glow in the dark paint and have gobs and gobs of fun while doing yoga in the dark, is just how difficult it is to get it completely dark. That no matter how dark it seems to be, there's always some light shining through somewhere. That light, no matter how minute, seems to draw all of our attention. The most encouraging lesson with Glowga is the fact that in the moment of our greatest darkness, what shines the brightest and gives us encouragement and joy is each other. Surely you have been bright lights for me this year.

Unlike any other year, this has been a seminal year for me. I've experienced some wonderful growth and changes this year and have been overwhelmed by the incredible support and encouragement offered by so many friends. I guess what makes me the most emotional is how many friends have stood up next to me and have effectively said, "I'm pickin' up, what you're puttin' down." When I wrote This is Where I Stand, so many of you stood up next to me, took my hand, and bravely and honestly proclaimed likewise. When Celeste and I went to India at the beginning of this year, so many of you supported us when it was our moment to say "YES!" and go. I will never forget the moment when I came back from India to a yoga class filled to the brim and told them all two things I learned in India: first, you don't need to go to India to find what you're looking for, that it can only be found within; second, that the greatest treasure in the world is a true friend. Truly in that moment, I was standing in a room of treasure.

This year I made a very courageous move away from my comfortable and beloved Centered City Yoga to open Prana Yoga with Matt and Jennifer Ellen, something which has and will inevitably cause me exponential growth. And even though we are still in our temporary space at Banana Republic while Matt is over at our permanent space swinging hammers, you have shown up. You've come to classes and have supported me and us. I can't tell you how touching that is. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I love you all!

I want to celebrate this new year with you. I invite you come to Prana Yoga with me on New Year's Day at noon (sober up, then show up) and with ceremony and yoga and meditation, bury the old year and prepare for the brightness of what's to come. I invite you to come and sit and practice in the presence of like friends, some whom you've not met, friends who are like shining stars, and practice together as we shine our way toward a new day and a bright future. See you there!

Scott

Singing in the Dark

One thing I've learned from life and from sages is that on the journey toward self-understanding, we must inevitably experience darkness, grief, and loss to some degree or other. Part of our understanding is to see the whole picture, not only the parts which are peachy. We evolve from our naive understanding of God or the Universe as something which is only beneficent to the ability to hold the fact that to understand the whole picture means that we have to hold both of life's pleasures and life's losses. That to truly fall in love with this life we must somehow embrace the darkness. And I guess the true lesson, that lesson that ultimately will apprentice ourselves to experience the greatest joy, is the lesson of how to sing when you are in the midst of great loss and sorrow, when you feel the most abandoned. I guess we learn that it's not about that shallow definition of "success," but what "success" really means is defined by who can speak to whatever place they find themselves, who can stand at the end of the battle, when your house is burned down, your life feels like it's in ruins and stand with your integrity and honor and sing into the darkness. Or at least hum a little, even if it's interrupted by tears.



The universe has promised us a very dark night tonight. Tonight is the winter Solstice, when the sun is at its lowest point on the horizon, the days are the shortest and the nights are the longest. Solstice means "sun stands still." On this winter solstice, something very rare indeed is happening tonight: a lunar eclipse on the same date as the winter solstice, an occurrence which hasn't happened since December 21st 1638. And, weather permitting, those of us in North America will have prime seats to see this celestial show. At around 12:41 am, early Tuesday morning, we'll get to see what darkness really means. If you can see it, or can't bear to go outside in the cold, NASA will be streaming it online.


Yoga, of course, is a mirror for our life. Our practice of every-day living finds expression and offers us understanding through the ancient wisdom of yoga. So tonight, I'll be the crazy person outside singing to my darkness around 1 am practicing moon salutes to a vanishing moon as I learn and celebrate what it means to be utterly in the dark.


I'd like to leave you with a beautiful poem Celeste wrote about this deeper understanding of life and loss.


Poetry and Prayers


I speak poetry and prayers to myself.

These are my nursery rhymes,

sung soft and low,

as I wash with a fresh mango

and the gauzy morning sun in the bathtub.


Clean and feed myself,

(yes, that is what you can do)

and then

come to rest

change the shape of my body, and

begin to pray . . .


Let the sweetness and the harshness

wash over me.

(Both.)


I prop my warm, clean chest open,

arms and legs wide on the wood floor,

and move out,

here and there,

beyond my thoughts,

into here,

into what surely must be bliss.


I taste the tender, sweet morsels

so easily now,

heart open to breeze and birdsong,

the life moving outside my window,

reminding me

how to breathe.


Though my heart has not forgotten last night,

on rough hands and knees

drilling into the wood planks

beneath me,

wet with tears and anguish,

the wild animal of my heart

moaning its tenderness and loss.


Yes, my body is a canvas

of both fevers and flavors,

and does not forget.

The shadow of last night still

hugs me in deep places,

Echoing.


Yet in the rebirth of morning,

I've enticed myself

gently

into a quieter and softer shape,

releasing.


So that joy and hope

sift quickly and easily

in and through, and effortlessly

take me

home.

Dance with Destiny aka The Bare Knuckle Brawl

Almost exactly 10 years ago, I worked in a different town for a little loan company , processing loans. The man who owned this company (we'll call him "Jeff," mostly because that was his name) taught me many valuable things, many about people, others about myself. He taught me that even more important than processing people's loans, my real business was connecting to people. Among other things, he taught me how to focus under pressure and how to organize around priority. He taught me principles which I've used every day for a decade. He showed me parts of myself waiting to come out.

Everybody has their Kryptonite. Despite Jeff's shining attributes, he wasn't a very good business person. I grew very concerned the day that my paycheck bounced. When I approached him with this dilemma, he asserted that even though the company was in a little slump, everything would soon be ironed out.

It never was.

When I finally left the company, he owed me about $1,000 in wages--a lot of money for a starving student, right before Christmas, who needed to pay tuition for next semester's classes. Come to think of it, that's a lot of money, period.

I became bitter. I wasn't going to easily let this go. I called the Utah Labor Commission and filed a complaint. They began to subpoena Jeff to arrive in court. The process was unfruitful and painfully slow. I soon realized that I could easily gain my $1,000 back if I were only paid five cents every time I heard the Labor Commission say the phrase, "your file is under review and we'll notify you once we know anything different." This empty search continued for over two . . . (I pause for effect) YEARS. Each new attempt to resurrect my file brought more pain and frustration.

Then I had a dream. I dreamed that I met Jeff. I saw him not as the evil person I'd made him out to be but as just a simple dude with a five-O'clock shadow (that's the way he was in my dream) who fell on rough times. In my dream, I forgave him of the whole thing. Completely. In my dream, he didn't seem very thankful or changed, nor did he seem really to even care, but that didn't matter because I had changed. Instead of angry and dark, I was light and free. So, I woke up that next morning let it go. I let it all go. Immediately, I felt better. I even began to forget that the whole thing had happened.

It took me several years to understand that even though Jeff wasn't a good business person and I had suffered because of it, he still taught me some very valuable things. I began to think that my lost $1,000 was a tuition paid for some very valuable lessons. Unbeknownst to me, my lessons weren't over yet.

I hadn't thought of Jeff and that incident for several years until one day about 10 years later when something on the radio jolted my memory of Jeff. I didn't remember so much his faults but all the positive things he taught me. Not only did I harbor no ill will, but remembering Jeff, I felt like I'd even grown from the experience. Proud, I said to myself, "If I ever meet Jeff again, I promise that I will vocally forgive him and thank him for what he has taught me."

Something else I've learned: when you call Destiny out for a bare-knuckle brawl, know that she'll come. She'll test you just like you asked her to. She'll give you what you wanted but expect a little more blood--your blood.

Almost exactly an hour later after I'd promised Destiny to make amends with Jeff, I was relaxing at The Beehive Tea Room, nursing a cup of Raspberry Mint tea when over my shoulder I heard a disturbingly familiar voice. I didn't have to turn my head to know that it was Jeff. It was 10 years later, a different town, in an entirely different context and I already promised Destiny that I'd forgive him.

I sat there in a cold sweat. Now that it came to it, I didn't know that I go through with it. I hadn't seen him in several years. It felt like I'd just noticed an old girlfriend who didn't leave on very good terms. I'd had even subpoenaed Jeff in court. There surely wasn't a good vibe between us. He started to get up to leave. If I was going to act, it had to be now.

I took a deep breath, stood up, and turned to face Jeff. As I stood there, I reintroduced myself. It took him a minute to remember me but when he did, he sort of stepped back as if I were about to throw punches. As I explained who I was, I reminded him of how he had hurt me and with a genuine smile, told him, "but you know what? I forgive you." I also explained all the things that I learned from him and how valuable that information was in everything that I do. He stood there for a silent second, stunned. He didn't know what to say. He made no apologies. He didn't try to explain. He simply told me that I made his day. I made mine, too. At the end of the day he gave me his business card, I don't know why. Maybe it was a token of remembrance.

And no, he didn't write me out a check for $1,000.

I learned that intentions are powerful. Our yoga practice is one way to act upon the privilege of dancing with Destiny. With clarity and self-awareness, we can see through the muddy waters toward the lotus.

Sitting Around the Fire

Celeste and I spent the last several days in Central Utah enjoying Thanksgiving with a few friends. What I love most about that part of the world is the mind-blowing landscapes and the gobs and gobs of peace and quiet. One day we went on a day-trip over Boulder Mountain and among other things, stopped at the Anasazi State Park in Boulder, Utah. The relentless wind, ever-present in that part of the world, blew right through us making our teeth chatter as we explored with wonder the remains of an ancient people who used to inhabit these lands. We saw their homes they made of rock and mud and imagined what it would look like to live at that time in this harsh environment during the wintertime.
As I looked into their homes, it was clear to see that the interior designer of these small abodes made a striking thematic presence of the small fire in the center of the living quarters. The winter time is the time to go inside, to hibernate, to sit around the fire and hear listen to stories. These stories were not simply to pass the time on long winter days but to help the storyteller as well as the listener to remember their identity, where they came from and what their purpose is.

So, as you’re bundled up on this winter day, here’s a story about another people from a cold part of the world.

The Story of Skeleton Woman

The story of Skeleton Woman is a hunting story told by those who live in the far north. It is a story that outlines the life-death-life cycle of relationship. I heard the story as told by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. She heard the story from an Inuit woman who was a cook on a expedition she attended.

Those who tell the story cannot remember why, but one day a man who was very angry with his daughter drug her from the house, brought her to a cliff at the edge of the sea, and threw her in. As she sank deep, deep, deep, into the water, the fish in the sea ate her flesh and eyes so that eventually, all that was left of her were her bones which were churned by the currents of the water as they lay on the floor of the sea.

Most people stayed away from those waters because they felt they were haunted. But one day, a lonely hunter, a man who had never married, strayed off course and ended up in these waters, fishing. He threw his bone-hook connected to his line and fishing-stick into the water and let it sink deep, deep, deep. The hook caught the ribcage of Skeleton Woman and as the fisherman gave his line a jerk, he thought, “Oh! I’ve caught a big one.” The hunter dreamed of the many people he would feed with this big fish and the leisure he would enjoy, freed for a while from the task of hunting. As he began to pull up his catch, Skeleton Woman began to thrash against the line which only made her more tangled. The closer that Skeleton came to the surface of the water, the more the water turned to a turbulent froth. Finally, the fisherman gave a big pull and up from the surface of the water arose Skeleton Woman’s bald, skull with crustaceans on her cheeks and teeth. The fisherman screamed with fright, dropped his fishing stick in his kayak, and immediately began to paddle toward the shore. Not realizing that Skeleton Woman was tangled in his line, she thrashed and kicked as she was pulled directly behind the fisherman. The faster the fisherman paddled toward the shore, the faster Skeleton Woman seemed to be chasing him.

Finally, the fisherman came to the shore, grabbed his fishing stick, leapt out of his kayak, and ran for his snow house. Directly behind him, he could hear the clatter of bones against the rocks as Skeleton Woman followed, still tangled in his line. Eventually, he dove into his snow house and lay on the floor panting, “Oh, thank the gods, Raven and Sedna, for keeping me safe from harm. I am safe now in my house.” Slowly as the fisherman gained strength, he lit his wale-oil lamp and to his amazement saw Skeleton Woman in a heap of bones on the floor.
It may have been the soft lamplight, it may have been how tangled and sorry she looked, but the fisherman began to have compassion on Skeleton Woman. He very carefully crept over to her and began to untangle his line from her bones. Then, bone by bone, he cleaned her and placed each bone in the order that a persons should be. Finally, he wrapped her in skins to keep her warm. Skeleton Woman lay completely quiet, lest the fisherman become scared and drag her out of his warm house and break her bones on the rocks. The fisherman rewound his fishing line, became very drowsy, and fell asleep. Skeleton Woman lay completely still, listening to the fisherman breathe.

And as dreamers sometimes do, a tear formed in the corner of the fisherman’s eye. Skeleton Woman was very thirsty and she saw this tear in the corner of the fisherman’s eye glimmer in the lamp light. So, very quietly, she crept over and put her mouth on the fisherman’s cheek, close to his eye and drank the tear which quenched her thirst. She looked at the fisherman and longed to have flesh. Very carefully, she reached into the fisherman’s body and pulled out his heart. And beating his heart as drum, she began to sing for flesh and hair and fingernails to form again on her bones. Bit by bit, Skeleton Woman gained flesh, and hair, and fingernails, everything that a normal woman would have. Once Skeleton Woman had flesh, she carefully placed the fisherman’s heart back into his body. She looked at him and longed for the feeling of flesh on flesh, so she climbed very carefully into the fisherman’s skins with him.
In the morning, the fisherman and Skeleton Woman woke, tangled from a night of love making. While no one knows exactly what happened to the fisherman and Skeleton Woman, it is said that they left that area and lived the rest of their lives together, very happy. For the rest of their lives, the fisherman and Skeleton Woman lived on the bounty of fish, the very fish that ate the flesh of Skeleton Woman and who now offered themselves as food for the fisherman and Skeleton Woman.

As so we see that both the fisherman and Skeleton Woman needed each other to become complete. The fisherman thought he had hooked into a “good catch” and would live an easy life. He was tangled together with Skeleton Woman, and though at first it was scary and messy, eventually it was this entanglement that drove them together and eventually made them both whole. It was compassion that began the conversation of give and take between the couple that ended in the happy entanglement of lovemaking. When all was said and done, were it not for the life-death-life cycle as shown by the fisherman and Skeleton Woman, neither would have been made whole. In relationship, we hope for one thing, maybe an easy life or relationship, but by the necessary entanglement of this cycle, we receive something much more valuable and lasting. Do not be afraid of the life-death-life cycle of relationship, it is the necessary step that will lead you to your greatest fulfillment.

Remembering with Food: A Mindful Approach to Thanksgiving

Several years ago, my wife, Celeste, and I studied meditation in Korea. Nearly every day we performed the same ritual: Around mid-morning, we’d walk the mile or so to the meditation center, don our blue martial-arts-style uniform tied with the lofty white belt (the first level), and take our seats on the padded floor with the other practitioners. We were the only Americans. We’d slowly move through martial-arts sequences, and then meditate while standing, sitting, and lying down. Often, at the end of practice, the master would pull out a small table, place a few tea cups, procure a thermos of hot water, and begin making tea without a word. With the tea now steeped, the master would ceremoniously pour a rivulet of tea into cups whose small veined cracks were stained by a thousand previous pours and a thousand previous conversations. We’d sit quietly and drink tea. I understand now the tea was part of the meditation.

After our very first meditation class, our Korean friend and fellow meditation student, Jin-soon, led us down the street to the most unsuspecting little concrete building containing a church on the top floor, a karaoke lounge on the bottom, and something called Purin Nuri (“green-blue world”) in the middle. We climbed the stairs, slipped off our shoes, and entered through the door into a different world, leaving the garish and abrasive city behind. Inside, we were embraced by the comforting smell of freshly baked bread, aromatic rice porridge, and steaming soup. Soft Korean music floated through the air as we followed Jin-soon to pick up a simple wooden bowl, spoon, and chopsticks, and began to sift contentedly through the Buddhist buffet, containing fresh lettuce leaves, glass noodles with mushrooms, tofu and veggie dishes, and a traditional cinnamon drink made with jujube berries and new pine needles. This style of food is called monk’s cuisine in Korea and attempts to be as close to the earth as possible. In fact, much of the food would be harvested from the wild that day by the owner, Moon-kyung, and her friend and helper, Sun-hee: bitter wild dandelion leaves, sharp-tasting new pine needles, and fragrant and edible flowers. These two were the only people running this intimate culinary temple. Once we filled our bowls, we sat on the floor on a cushion, our legs crossed under a low wooden table. We paused for a moment of gratitude for this feast and for our lives, and then began the long, happy process of mindfully eating. Like tea, our meditation extended through lunch. This, too, became part of our daily ritual.

Meditation is, in part, a method designed to help us understand better who and what we are through the process of mindfulness. Most of us eat three times a day, every day. No wonder it’s so easy to allow something as wonderful, sensual, and delicious as eating to become mundane or a chore. With the ease of consuming on the fly what I call edible non-food substances (read: energy bars), it’s easy to forget that eating is a sacred connection. Eating is a natural break in the day where we stop to eat the roses. We stop our work and our intellectual spinning, and fortify ourselves with something as simple and immediate as physical sensation that brings life to our bodies.

Eating is the sacred ritual of cycling life through our bodies as we ask the life of other beings, plants and animals, to become a sacred part of our own life. We re-member ourselves—as in to make ourselves whole from a dismembered state, by consuming other life and making it a part of us. Eating is like many of the old stories and myths from ancient cultures (stories like Isis and Osiris, Rama and Sita, Tristan and Isolde, even the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ) where gods, creatures, and people are re-membered, are brought back together and made whole again, after the refining and learning process of death and dismemberment. And like these ancient stories, so are we re-membered, or placed back into a greater wholeness (the whole of creation), as we stop the process of hunger and death, and assimilate other life by eating. We are gathered and re-membered into an even greater whole during the sacred sacrament of sitting at supper with friends and family, laughing, sharing, eating, drinking. This reverential ritual deserves mindfulness.

The mindful approach to food invites us to pay close attention to what we eat, where our food comes from, and what impact this food has not only on us but on our environment and our economy and peoples. When considering food in this way, we may be tantalized by the panoply of flavors, colors, cultures, temperatures, textures, stories, and histories of the food we consume. With mindfulness, even a humble meal of rice and beans becomes a banquet. With mindfulness, we may sense the love that went into preparing the meal or envision the farm where the food was raised or grown. We may also sense the financial benefit to our community when we choose to support local sources. This heart and soul of eating can be gone in a flash: a fine nine-course French meal may as well be fast food if it’s mindlessly gulped down and barely chewed between commercial breaks, newspaper headlines, or text messages.

Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, a way of practicing mindfulness is to pause for a moment of gratitude before your meal. If you don’t pray, you may be creative in your expression of thankfulness by reading a poem about food or gratitude, offering thanks to the elements that are sustaining your life, or telling your dining partner(s) what you appreciate about them or the meal. I’ll never forget the Thanksgiving I spent in Zion National Park, under the afternoon shadows of the red cliffs of Angels Landing, where Celeste and I shared a meal with a wonderful friend and her daughters. For their gratitude for the meal, these friends sang a simple song together, smiling and giggling. After, we all clapped, laughed, expressed how we appreciated one another as well as the meal, and then dug into our cold turkey, green beans, and potatoes, lovingly hauled down to Southern Utah in a couple of giant coolers.

With the right mindfulness, there is no guilt in food. We may choose to eat what we feel is nourishing for us, body and heart. And we get to decide what that means on any given day. For my birthday this year, I went to the Beehive Tea Room (300 S. Main Street) and enjoyed my favorite pot of raspberry mint tea and the biggest piece of chocolate cake in the history of chocolate cake. I ate it without a shred of remorse, knowing that this is a way I celebrate my life, and chose to enjoy every decadent bite. It nourished something deeper than body. With mindful eating, we’ll know when to treat ourselves, when to nourish ourselves, and when those two happily intersect.

At the end of the day, ordinary or extravagant food becomes exquisite with mindfulness. Without mindfulness, anything can become as bland as a chalky protein bar. But with the right mindfulness, even a naked bowl of oatmeal could prove to be very provocative!

Here is a quote from one of my favorite poets, Wendell Berry. Post it next to your dinner table, perhaps, as we have:

Eating with the fullest pleasure—pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance—is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.
(from his essay “What Are People For?”)

That's How the Light Gets In

Last week's message was about standing where you are, unafraid to be with what is most real for you. I was extremely touched by your responses to my letter. Many of you responded to my email with real and honest stories about where you stand, many of you came to class and practiced standing tall despite our challenges, and I'm sure many of you read the message and perhaps forwarded it on to a friend or simply walked silently into another week with increased courage to be exactly where you are. One lesson that writing these newsletters has taught me is when I am the most genuine to my own heart, when I am real, it invites others to be likewise. Not just back to me, but I hear the stories of how people are moved to be genuine to their spouses, families, friends, and strangers. This is the real message of yoga for me. Yoga literally means union. I'm honored to be connected with you in this way.

I feel honored to practice this union not only through the healthy benefits of moving through our bodies, reducing stress in our lives, yes, but in the important work of the nit and grit of every-day life, the practice of every-day living. It's apologetically showing up on the yoga mat and/or in life and simply speaking to where we are. Doesn't have to be pretty.

So I've been thinking of another cool way for us to practice this union. It's with song lyrics. Yep. I did an experiment on Facebook recently and I want to try this out on a bigger scale. I'm interested in the words, set to a groove or a melody, that have spoken wisdom to you, given you courage, or simply made you think. I feel that some of the most powerful poets of our time, those so able to speak to place, have been standing behind a guitar with three chords in their heads and a mic in front of their mouths.

Here's what you do, one of two things: You can click on the "B" at the bottom of this message that says Blogger next to it. This takes you to the comment section of my blog. Write a line or a few lines of lyrics that have moved you, include the artist and the song (you can sign your name as the one submitting the lyrics if you want), then click on "anonymous" and the big orange bar that says "publish your comment." The second way is through Facebook. If you Facebook, click on the "F" at the bottom of this message and on my page you'll see other people's posts with their favorite song lyrics. Add your favorite by commenting on the post. That way everyone who comes by these list of comments, either through my blog or Facebook, can read everyone else's words. This will be a fun way to connect with each other.

I'll start . . .

"Ring the bells that still can ring.

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything,

That's how the light gets in."


Leonard Cohen in Anthem.

See you in class.

This Is Where I Stand

You know that pose firefly or titibasana? Can't do it. Splits or Hanumanasana? Nope. Not me. And you know what's even more real for me? It's not embracing the challenge of whether or not I can do the splits, 'cuz who really cares, right?

The hardest things I'm faced with is having someone I dearly love battle pain and fatigue every day because of an autoimmune disease she's got. What's real is the fact that I've put my career on the line for a business that I hope will go well but is still concrete and I-beams, while I sit back and hope that people still read this stuff that I send out each week. At this place in my life, I come to the mat and practice working through my own insecurities on a daily basis. Truthfully, I flirt between confidence and insecurity. I hope. I hope, I hope, I hope that one day my love will find her strength again and end this long night of illness (8 years). No pity. I don't need understanding. This is simply the most honest picture of where I am. This is where I stand.

I don't care if you can touch your toes, or if you have perfected a backbend or can hold a handstand. I don't care if you've practiced every day for a decade or haven't looked at your mat in a year. I don't care. I'm more interested in whether or not you are willing to come to your yoga mat today and meet yourself exactly where you are physically, emotionally, and mentally, to practice engaging life from that radical frontier. It's not about who has won or achieved some shallow level of success. For me, it's more about being willing to stand where you are, where life has put you, and with dignity and integrity, look the world straight in the eyes saying, "This is where I stand." In this embrace with the world, there is no wallowing, only an honesty of being. For me there is nothing more powerful.

The word Asana means "your seat" or "where you stand." In Yoga practice, we place ourselves in postures, in asana, to practice standing assertively like the warrior, virabhadrasana, and firmly like the mountain, tadasana, or in submission like the child, balasana. More importantly, we place ourselves in these asanas to explore and expose the place we stand in life. Maybe you stand in a place of deep loss or insecurity. Maybe you stand in a place of strength and security. I've invented a pose called "weeping hovel" asana that speaks to where I get sometimes. I should likewise invent "Toyota Jump" asana for when things are awesome. It really doesn't matter as along as you are willing to engage. And once you do, once you speak to that place through your breath and your body, you open up to the real conversation of the practice which is really the practice of every-day living.

Join me this week. come to practice and take your seat. Stand on your mat and say, "This is where I stand."

Scott