 "You're all geniuses, & you're all beautiful. You don't need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are." ~ John Lennon Amidst the onslaught of injustices parading across our screens, there has been a quiet revolution happening. A band of monks walked 2,300 miles for peace from Texas to Washington, DC. While politicians and pundits were duking it out, the monks kept their steady pace of about 21 miles per day. One of the monks was hit by a car and lost his leg, their dog needed surgery, the head monk got sick and needed IVs at night for a bit, but they didn’t stop. Not in the snow or in the bitter cold. And the crowds coming to see them grew larger every day. Their path took them through Texas / Louisiana / Mississippi / Alabama / Georgia / South Carolina / North Carolina / Virginia / Maryland and ended in the nation’s capital. In some areas they were yelled at: "You’re going to hell for not accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior!” In one of his evening talks broadcast over Facebook, the head monk − the astronomically energetically powerful presence that is the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara − acknowledged that there were people who cussed at them or spun their tires to throw road gravel and black smoke into their faces. The former IT engineer for Motorola, with his usual humor, said, "If we cussed back, that would be odd. We’re monks!” Every day, Venerable Pannakara delivered the same message: wake up each morning with a stated, written intention that “Today Will Be My Peaceful Day.” This not a Pollyannaish “I’m peaceful and I’m ignoring the world” New Age advice. This is the hard work of cultivating an internal presence of peace, regardless of our external circumstances. It also involves profound self- acceptance and self-love. The Venerable Pannakara asked us not to abandon our inner child but to love ourselves because “…when you love yourself, you do wholesome things.” The folks badgering the monks because they aren’t following “Christian” religious values aren’t big on self-love and compassion. I came home from our recent trip to find a card on my doorknob from a local “Bible Church” listing five key points for me to follow so I can “have assurance” that I’ll go to heaven when I die: #1. Realize you are a sinner; #2. Understand you deserve to go to a burning hell; #3. Jesus Christ died for your sins; #4. Confess Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior; #5. Rejoice knowing for sure you will go to Heaven when you die (emphases are mine). I heard a recent interview with one of my favorite teachers, Richard Rohr, who was asked to name the core of what he’s been teaching over the years. He said releasing our collective obsession with sin, which he says is not an individual event but a cultural, communal and intergenerational brokenness that’s transmitted from parent to child over and over throughout history. “It doesn’t deserve judgement,” he said, “it deserves sympathy and healing.” Healing is clearly what the masses of people coming every day to the Walk for Peace were seeking. Many in the videos are quietly crying as the monks walked by them; I cried every day watching their peaceful progression online. But if the monks had brought fire and brimstone down on these folks instead of their peaceful presence, would it improve their lives? Focusing on our inner sinfulness certainly isn’t supported by research, as negative self-talk undermines self-control and takes a toll on our mental health (read more here). And focusing only on ourselves has never been a recipe for our good or the common good. I believe we are on the cusp of a seismic change in awareness and consciousness. I believe there are prophets in our midst – like Venerable Pannakara – leading us towards a deeper, truer connection with ourselves so that we can create the beloved community that Dr. Martin Luther King and his teacher, Howard Thurman, envisioned. We have great momentum in this new lunar New Year that began February 17. We've entered the Year of the Fire Horse, which promises energy, passion and rapid change – so buckle up! The journey of the monks and its simple but profound message of internal peace leading to widespread unity and understanding gives me great hope – hope that, as Buddhist teacher Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams says, “The false divisions between personal and social awakening has come to an end.” We are all in this together. Every day we can choose peace in our hearts, noticing our breath and being “with” ourselves. From this steady place, we can radiate out care in concentric circles to our neighbors and around the world. Peace, Anne
 A statute of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay in Harbor Park, Camden, Maine, from my summer sojourns. Millay is the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She grew up in poverty and lived a brave and unconventional life. I was staring at a bumper sticker on the car in front of me the other day, saying “Jesus is Coming. Are you Ready?” It’s a common enough message in the Evangelical Church. Some in this community believe that Jesus will scoop up “believers” while the rest of humanity is subject to horrible tribulations. In the book Exvangelicals: Loving, Living and Leaving the White Evangelical Church, author Sarah McCammon describes how one day as a young girl, she came home to find no one there. Frantic, she ran around fearfully searching everywhere until finally, quite distressed, she found her mother hiding in a closet. Her mother then admonished her about whether or not she was ready for Jesus’ coming. If she wasn’t, her mother said, she’d be “left behind.”
These days, fear seems to be the emotion that’s driving the bus. When protestors recently packed Tel Aviv square demanding a cease fire, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, said those calling for an end to the war without the defeat of Hamas were ensuring that the atrocities of October 7, 2023, would recur again and again. To date, the war has ended 62,000 lives and wounded 160,000; Doctors Without Borders has described the conditions as among the worst they’ve ever witnessed, and they say the situation is “…a systematic total destruction of health care and disregard for civilian life.” Last week brought the death of Evangelical James Dobson, author of The Strong-willed Child, and with it, testimonies from adults who survived the trauma of their parents’ beatings at the behest of Dobson’s child-rearing advice. One woman described being spanked repeatedly as she passed out again and again; she said her parents would only stop when they felt she was truly contrite. This crushed her will and spirit, she said, as Dobson had convinced her parents that as a two-year old, she was desperately wicked and needed to be “broken.” These situations beg the question: Is fear the basis on which we want to live our lives? Or on the belief that a returning “Savior” will arrive to protect “the faithful” and brutally punish the rest? Or on the necessity of pounding our enemies and their children into dust? On the surety that physically beating our children into submission will somehow create peace? The most-stated phrase in the Bible in various forms is “Fear Not” or “Do Not Be Afraid.” We now know what fear does to our bodies: It hijacks our brain, putting us into sympathetic arousal (fight or flight), activating our amygdala and shutting down our cerebral cortex, which impairs our capacity to think clearly. Research now shows that even many hours of using smartphones creates anxiety in our bodies, releasing cortisol into our systems and activating our stress response. As we address our profound anguish, how do we have any meaningful impact in the present moment in this morass of fear and retribution? I did a meditation today (on the Insight Timer app, which I highly recommend) where the teacher said many of us are hoping that the calvary will arrive (soon, please!) and make everything alright. But the reality, he said, is that we are the calvary. Our actions, day in and day out, and our capacity to stay present, even when it’s difficult and uncomfortable, can build bridges of hope between us – instead of fear. As one of my favorite authors, Kristin Du Mez (author of Jesus and John Wayne), said in her recent Substack blog “Infiltrating the Kingdom of Fear”: Friend, you weren’t merely born, you were sent. You’re not just living a life; you’re on a mission. Your purpose is not so small as to avoid death or even to enjoy life, but to embody resurrection. To offer healing and peace. To seed the world with love. To be, in words and deeds, a proclamation – living proof – that the Reign of God is here. All the love you’ve received has prepared you for this. All the wisdom you’ve been given goes with you. You are surrounded, supported, cheered, aided by millions, unseen yet connected, and present. We are not-so-secret agents, infiltrating the Kingdom of Fear on behalf of the Realm of Grace. You are sent, guided and protected by the Spirit of Love. Be not afraid. I am with you. Go. For me, the daily practice of Yoga and Qi Gong release fear from my body and bring me the security and stability I need to be present. I believe it is in this presence that we can find our way home, not only to ourselves but to each other and to our beautiful planet. Peace, Anne  Photo by Thomas Ondrey The weird trajectory of a Covid illness has forced me to contemplate that progress is not linear. You may feel like you're getting better – and then you're not.
In our lives, we may feel like we've successfully dealt with a habit, a loss, a troubling memory – and then we haven't. It rolls back around, covered with a surprising new layer of muck for us to uncover and sit with. During these days in Northeast Ohio when seeing the sun seems like a moment of jubilation, it feels prudent and nurturing to give in to the season. In her beautiful book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May says: "…we are in the habit of imaging our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and season when the leaves fall from us, revealing our butt bones. Given time, they grow again." We have no recognition of this is our culture, this fallow time, and it is so crucial for our wellbeing. As a teacher of restorative yoga practices, I learn this lesson over and over again while my busy thinking mind has other plans. This change of a way of being from linear to meandering can only happen in the day-to-day moments of our lives. As Richard Rohr says: "We do not think ourselves into new ways of living; we live ourselves into new ways of thinking." And we live ourselves into new ways of thinking through the miracle that is our being: our body, our sensations, our breath. The waft of the cold the comes across our face when we venture out into the winter landscape; the softness of the quilt that covers us at night; the lushness of a warm soak in the tub. I am trying to notice and be with these everyday moments (even blowing my nose) that are real and true as well as making room for the awe of the amazing in our world. Consider the five-year reconstruction of Notre Dame in Paris, a smoldering building in 2019 that through many miracles has been restored and reopened to the public this past December. In the December 29th New York Times article “Making the Heart of Paris Beat Anew” by Michael Kimmelman, the author describes how this 12th century landmark drew together a community of repairers, reinvigorating artisan organizations: "Those artisans and conservators I met spoke so movingly about working in concert on something larger and longer lasting than themselves," the author explains. "I can’t recall ever visiting a building site that seemed calmer…or one filled with quite the same quiet air of joy and certitude. When I quizzed one worker about what the job meant to her, she struggled to find words, then started to weep." We are, each of us, not only meandering through our own sometimes wintering, sometimes summering, but also through our collective journey towards conscious awareness. Despite (and perhaps because of) the difficulties of our times, we are being nudged towards an expanded awareness via the vehicle of our day-to-day presence. Yoga helps us do this by focusing on grounding our bodies in the here and now and offering an almost endless array of tools to assist us into the present moment. Wishing each of you more meandering through your days with great awareness. Peace, Anne  I was volunteering on Labor Day at the League of Women Voter’s booth at the Geauga County Fair. The League is a non-partisan organization that promotes voter registration and democracy.
“Are you registered to vote?” I ask as the fair-goers stream by. Most say they are. Some aren’t and are willing to register, so we did sign up a few new voters today – yea! If the answer is no, I tell them, “We can register you here today.” The answer often is still “no.” For example, one young African American man told me he doesn’t vote. He was very polite and took the time to try and explain to me why he doesn't: he'd rather put his faith in God than the government. I am despondent when anyone neglects to vote, but I find it especially depressing when women or people of color don’t as our voting rights were denied for so long. Perhaps some people don’t vote because they feel their vote doesn’t count; perhaps it’s because their problems and the injustice they see in society are so overwhelming that they can’t imagine how their one vote will make any difference. But each vote does matter. In fact, as Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” In yoga, our individual vote is like our intention, or what we call a sankalpa in Sanskrit. When we practice yoga, we set our intention as our focal point. When we’re depressed or feeling down, it can feel useless to set an intention. But we know this is all the more reason to do so, because if we focus on being hopeless, well, we feel hopeless. Yoga teaches us that we can be with our feelings of hopelessness AND also set an intention for peace. We can sit with our feelings and sensations AND direct our actions, a little bit at a time, towards our intention. The message is that change happens incrementally and by choice. There are moments in our lives when change happens in a flash, but by and large, change happens one step at a time, with steps that go forward and back as well as side to side. If we fail to cast our vote or set an intention, we give up our capacity to bring forth our unique and irreplaceable imprint to the world. You matter. Your vote matters. Your intention matters. Namaste, Anne  The eclipse from Progressive Field, taken by Tom Ondrey Wow. Wow. Wow.
The birds got quiet. A wave of cool air washed by me as it got dark. At 3:16 pm in the afternoon. Five minutes later, life was back to normal. Our minds tend to anticipate how something will happen and is taken aback when that’s not how it goes. There’s been so much hype about the solar eclipse that, I’ll admit, I was a bit dismissive about it. But that wave of change outside that happened so fast – and so viscerally in my body – surprised me. Just like when my father passed at home in 1990 and my mother and siblings were quiet and contained and I – the social worker – was sobbing uncontrollably. Not what I expected at all. The part of us that predicts how we’ll feel is the same part of us that makes assumptions about other people: our ego. In yoga, our goal is, quite literally, to slay our ego. And an event like this month’s solar eclipse provides the felt experience that life, space, energy, is SO MUCH BIGGER than our small minds can fathom, i.e., we are not the center of the world. We are a part of this big, gorgeous, terrifying experience and, as Margaret Mead said: “Just remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” We are unique just like this moment is unique. And then it’s gone, just like the eclipse. It passed by so quickly, I almost thought that I’d imagined it. Our lives can be like that, too. One moment we’re here and then “poof” – the next minute we’re gone, or our loved ones are gone. Our minds swirl around anticipating, comparing, rationalizing, and often, in the case of loss, wondering how we could have changed the outcome of events. But we can’t. And if we lean into our practice, we can get present to the amazing experience of this moment. And then the next moment. Because that’s all we have. With the solar eclipse, we got a glimpse into that consciousness. Let’s keep it going. "Happy New Year" seems an inadequate phrase for what lays ahead in 2024. In our post-pandemic, war-torn world, “Happy” and “New” feel a bit unattainable. With the dramatic increase in rates of anxiety and depression ─ especially for women and young people ─ where do we find happiness? With old conflicts and ethnic hatreds erupting for homelands and resources, where do we look for new resolutions? In our singular experience of being, how do we contribute to bringing in the New Year with any kind of joy? Yoga’s practices provide us a map for doing exactly that. And like a treasure map, we need to study it and re-examine it regularly to see what we may have missed in our potentially overly cursory approach. In the second half of 2023, we rethought our posture and dove into embodiment, focusing on what Yoga TuneUp® founder Jill Miller calls “the feels.” Staying with and allowing sensations in our bodies can be both pleasant and disconcerting, but it provides us with real data so we can examine and explore our patterns of being. The week of January 8th, we’ll begin a series based on the breath – the foundation of not only our yoga practice, but of our life. We can exist for three days without water and three weeks without food, but just three minutes without air. Resources for this exploration include Jill Miller’s new book Body by Breath: The Science and Practice of Physical and Emotional Resilience and A Life Worth Breathing: A Yoga Master’s Handbook of Strength, Grace, and Healing by Max Strom. Watch Max Strom’s compelling TEDx Talk Breathe to Heal here: I hope you’ll join me on our collective, continued journey towards a truly happy New Year filled with the newness of deep healing.
Peace, Anne  My granddaughter watching the sunset across Little Assawoman Bay, Delaware. The beach is a great place to get a clearer look at human anatomy! While scanning the crowd on Bethany Beach in Delaware, I noticed a man, probably in his 40s, who looked strong, but his gait was discombobulated. His knees were bowed out, and he waddled side-to-side when he walked.
The surf this year was extremely powerful due to the beach being refurbished over the winter. In this process, the sand is pulled into the beach from the ocean to slow erosion, creating larger, faster waves. I was somehow not surprised when the man I’d noticed was fished out of the water by the lifeguards with a knee injury. Our capacity to bear load is always the issue, whether that load is a wave crashing over us on a beach or the loss of a loved one crushing our heart. Life is difficult, and there are no signs of the pressure letting up anytime soon. What are the tools we can use to interact with and manage these loads? This fall, we’ll begin working with a new book called Bodyfulness: Somatic Practices for Presence, Empowerment and Waking Up in This Life by Christine Caldwell. I’ve just returned from a week at Chautauqua Institution where I took daily classes from a yoga therapist who is also a psychiatrist. The class was called "Mobility and Meditation." Every class focused on joint mobility through oscillation, one of the most elemental movements in nature. “Everything that has mass oscillates, from subatomic particles to whole organisms. Oscillation involves going back and forth between two positions or states, back and forth across some point of equilibrium. Think waves on the shore or a pendulum swinging…the body oscillates constantly: our heart expands and contracts (heartbeats) and generates oscillatory waves of electromagnetic pulses, our breath goes in and out (breathing), our brain cells generate their own electromagnetic pulses (brain waves)…these oscillations repeat on the cellular level as well.” – Christine Caldwell, from Bodyfulness Our capacity to oscillate with life as opposed to getting stuck in the muck is the magic that leads our way on. Consider the Makhuwa people of northern Mozambique. Chautauqua speaker Dr. Devaka Premawardhana, a cultural anthropologist from Emory University, spends time with the Makhuwa for whom mobility matters more than stability. He says migration is essential to their culture and that the tortoise is their mascot because the animal wears its house on its back. “The Makhuwa put their faith in flux,” Dr. Premawardhana explained. “The point is to pursue life wherever it takes you.” Dr. Premawardhana said the concept of tribalism, traditionally ascribed to African people, doesn’t allow for this flowing sense of community on the move, which he feels more accurately represents pre-state Africa than the fixed, tribal notions with which most of us are familiar. Can we find our rhythm to root down while everything is on the move? Can we find our center even when we’re unsure where we’re heading? I hope you’ll join me this fall as we oscillate our way in and out of our center. Peace, Anne I’ve added a regular feature to most classes called “The Big Six,” a series of movements developed by Dr. Perry Nickleston, creator of Stop Chasing Pain (www.stopchasingpain.com), to increase lymph flow. Despite the critical functions performed by the lymphatic system of ridding our bodies of waste, it has received very little attention in medical and even movement modalities. Dr. Perry came to focus on lymphatics after becoming critically ill with an autoimmune disorder for which their appeared to be no cure until he met a colleague at a training who asked if he’d like to have his lymph system assessed? Having no idea what this meant, but desperate for help, Dr. Perry had the assessment and found that every spot assessed was frighteningly tender and that even after just the assessment, which stimulates the lymph nodes, he woke up feeling a bit better the next day. Dr. Perry uses the metaphor of a dirty aquarium to explain the lymphatic system. He says no fish survives in a dirty aquarium, no matter what medicine or food it receives, because there’s too much waste in the tank. We can change the water in the tank or put medicine and food in the water but the fish will stay ill and finally die. What we need to change is the filter on the aquarium and in our bodies, our lymphatic system is our filter. So try the Big Six every day for a month and see how you feel. The process will increase blood flow to and from your tissues and clear toxins from your body – all good things for our wellbeing.   We hear so much about core strength, but what does it mean? And why is it often so difficult for us to connect with our core?
When I work with people one-on-one, some part of their core almost always isn’t very well connected to their brain. Instead, our brains use muscles in our neck, jaw, shoulders, back, and even our toes for power instead of gathering it from our central source. Yoga is a practice about finding our center: physically in asana, energetically with our breath, mentally by drawing inwards and meeting ourselves, and spiritually by connecting with what is greater than ourselves. This all takes practice and consistent effort on our part. Often, we find ourselves drifting, slipping into distractions that pervade our days if we allow it. We get tangled up in our thoughts. We literally lose ourselves. How do we remember ourselves so we can find our way back to our core? The root of the word 'remember' comes from the 1500s meaning re (again) and memorari (to be mindful of). So again and again, we remember to be mindful and not distracted from what’s truly central to us. Another way to think of the word is that we re – member ourselves, as in we connect with our members: our cells, tissues, organs, and body systems. Sometimes when we re – member ourselves, it brings discomfort because we then have to feel ourselves. I often wonder if the vitriolic nature of our national debates could be caused by so many people not wanting to feel what’s going on inside their own bodies. Simply put, it’s easier to be mad at someone else or some group than to feel your own pain and discomfort. Yoga gives us tools to learn how to re-member ourselves and find our center, our core, so we can feel and therefore heal. Remember the well-known phrase, “ You can’t heal what you don’t feel.” Mindful movement, breathwork, meditation, chanting, and guided relaxation all direct our awareness back to the source that’s not somewhere out there. It’s right inside us, just as it always has been and always will be. This profound power, at all levels, is just waiting for us to notice that it is available in us. As Etty Hillesum said in her famous diary, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943: “…knowledge must seep into your blood, into your self, not just into your head, that you must live it.” Live it we must, re-membering ourselves in our core one breath at a time. View the full newsletter here.  Rejecting Hate & Fear and Choosing Active Hope
During vacation, I was outside enjoying the gentle breeze at dinner with my daughter’s family in South Fenwick Island, Delaware when I noticed a man’s t-shirt at the next table. I had seen the front when he’d gotten up. It said “Pistolville” and had pictures of various handguns on it. When he sat down, I saw the saying on the back of the shirt. It read: Love may turn out to be fake But the HATE is always real Hopefully, the t-shirt was a joke. Still, my stomach tightened as I read the inscription, as the truth of its relevance in our world today resonated throughout my body. Hate has always been a powerful force. It can energize us and focus us. Hate leads to violence, because if we really hate someone, we no longer see them as our fellow human being. As a result, we can belittle and humiliate and even injure or kill because we think the other person is less than we are. Whether it’s the Ugandan Tutsis vs. Hutus or the Nazis vs. the Jews, it’s a terribly common tale of pain and suffering. I’ve always made the assumption that as our societies became more advanced, we’d become wiser and more humane. But this doesn’t always happen. With the beginning of this new school year, for example, a Missouri school district is reviving the practice of corporal punishment for students (parents can opt out). Corporal punishment is legal in around 20 states in the U.S. and is based on the misguided concept that if children feel physical pain after misbehaving, they will change their behavior. Research has shown that corporal punishment is most frequently used on boys and especially on those who are black and have disabilities (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5766273/). Corporal punishment teaches children another key force that’s become very active in our society today: fear. If you fear your teacher, then you will obey. This is also the philosophy that drives a lot of Christian Nationalists today: If you fear God, you will obey and will be “saved.” And you need to be saved by a blood sacrifice that occurred over 2000 years ago because humanity is so vile that the only remedy was for God’s only son to be violently murdered on a cross. As Fr. Richard Rohr says, if this is what God is – a toxic, vengeful tyrant - then I don’t want any part of it (https://cac.org/daily-meditations/a-toxic-image-of-god-2016-01-28/). If hate and fear are the principles that come easily, then the guiding principle that is more difficult for us to offer consistently to ourselves and to others is love. Love may take time and require great patience as well as effort on our part, but it can do anything. In every good yarn and movie, it’s love that always wins in the end. Despite the chaos and conflict of our time, I believe we can choose love and, most especially, hope. Starting with classes in September, we’ll be diving into the concept of hope as an active state. I hope you’ll join me! View the full newsletter here. |
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