 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.  Moving Past the Dualism of Red vs. Blue "When you're down on the lower levels of the pyramid you will be on either one side or the other. But when you get to the top, the points all come together, and there the eye of God opens." - Joseph Campbell, author of “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” How happy was this Independence Day for you? It’s complicated for me as I worry about our country. Daily I work to find ways out of the “Us vs. Them” mentality currently gripping our great Democracy. Every time we look at the frequently posted diagram of “Red States” and “Blue States” as a representation of our United States, we deepen this powerful division between us because images have great meaning. Many of you may remember my teacher, Brother John Martin Sahajananda Kuvarapu from Saccidananda Ashram, when he visited from India and spoke to my classes. Brother Martin taught us that the lowest level of consciousness is being a victim, which has become a mainstay mentality in America today. The second level of consciousness, he said, is realizing that you can act and that you can effect change in your life. While a step forward from victimhood, this state can be toxic if the actions taken aren’t healthy for us or for our larger community. The third stage, he said, is an awareness that we’re acting and moving in a larger sphere that’s about more than just us. This is where it gets hard for us humans with our relentless “what’s in it for me?” mindset. This stage is about moving from dualism to a nondual state that’s beyond “Us vs. Them.” For a quick primer on dualism and non-dualism, see this video (embedded here): It feels to me that America is painfully stuck in the first two phases of dualistic consciousness. Entitlement emanating from victimhood is rampant, as is taking actions to promote a certain worldview, propping up one specific group, excluding and belittling others − and worse. How do we get beyond this? Think of the image of a triangle. It’s a non-dualistic shape with three corners, not two, and many points of convergence (circumcenter, orthocenter, etc.). This opens up the possibility of a third force, as Cynthia Bourgeault teaches, that arises with new energy beyond the first two entrenched viewpoints. We truly need this emergent fresh force if we are to move with and not be overwhelmed by the compounding challenges facing us all. This image and concept of the triangle is recurrent in myth, religion, and life. There are the three Fates, the three Furies, and Poseidon’s trident from Greek mythology; the Holy Trinity from Christianity; the three primary colors in art; body, mind, spirit or animal, mineral, vegetable in natural science; in our daily life there are slices of pie and pizza, and the list goes on. The idea of three was personified by the Celtic Shaman who was believed to be able to see the past, the present, and the future. Standing in three different worlds at the same time, the Shaman’s viewpoint was inclusive. I try to encourage myself into this third space, and I follow organizations that do the same. One is Braver Angels, which brings together Americans of different political viewpoints. Time and again, research shows that if we can increase our proximity to those we oppose, we move toward that third force viewpoint that expands our awareness and gives us new solutions. If we truly want to make this country great, it will take more than “winning” political battles. Whoever wins those battles, I suspect, will find themselves at the top of a bloodied, wounded, and dysfunctional heap of a nation. We need to find a way to embrace all parts of ourselves and each other, together.  It is a reality that we need each other and that no one is expendable. Consider the tree and the mushroom. The mushroom conducts moisture and minerals to the tree’s roots. The tree transmits nutrients to the mushroom that it can’t absorb by itself. Like the tree and the mushroom, whatever our differences, we can benefit from each other.
If you just can’t imagine this happening, consider the story of Shirley Chisholm and George Wallace. Chisholm, from Brooklyn, NY, was the first black woman ever elected to Congress in 1968. George Wallace was the Governor of Alabama and was the most famous avowed segregationist in modern history. Wallace was making a run as an independent candidate for President on a platform of segregation when he was shot and paralyzed. Much to the surprise of Wallace’s family, Chisholm visited Wallace in the hospital. She said she would never want what happened to him to happen to anyone. Wallace reportedly cried. Due to Chisholm’s equanimity, they came into relationship with each other. Wallace ended up marshalling the support from southern states that Chisholm needed for her bill, giving domestic workers the right to the minimum wage. This is third force. This is how we move forward. We get brave and open our hearts and follow the leadership of people like Shirley Chisholm and other marginalized people who have been struggling for a voice and for equity through their entire individual and collective lives. Namaste, ~ Anne View the full newsletter here.  On the Passing of Thich Nhat Hanh 1.22.22 As we mourn the loss of the remarkable Vietnamese Buddhist monk, teacher, peace activist, and ecologist Thich Nhat Hanh (1926-2022), we remember his famous quote as we are certainly in the mud at the moment. We’ve lived through two years of the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in five-and-a-half million deaths worldwide, political divisions in the US beyond what any of us have seen in our lifetimes, skyrocketing rates of wealth disparity, and increasing extreme weather events as climate change creates chaos. We should be growing some great lotuses because these plants bloom their best flowers when they live in the muckiest of muds. Thich Nhat Hanh, affectionately known as Thay (which means “teacher” in Vietnamese), made the truths of Buddhism accessible to Westerners. The first noble truth of Buddhism is the concept of “Duhkha,” which refers to the inevitable mud of life: suffering, pain, unhappiness, and stress. I imagine if you thought your life was stressful before March 2020, your stress-o-meter has moved up a few notches since then. To manage the mud, Thay encouraged awareness of and gratitude for the present moment, his “peace in every step” and “peace in every breath” teaching. I read a tribute by an author who remembered Thay coming to speak to her class when she was a seminary student: “Anything he said was crowded out by the sheer magnitude of his presence. He was so tiny, and so magnificent. His truest teaching was how fully present he was with us as he taught,” explained Meggan Watterson. To manage the mud, I think Thay would remind us to relax as a way to create. “It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing,” Thay said. “Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.” I can testify that I have done more restorative yoga in the past two years than in all of my past years of yoga to help me manage the mud. I know Thay would invite us to embrace Mother Earth. “She is not outside of you,” Thay said. “Mother Earth is not just your environment…it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.” Hasn’t going outside taken on a new meaning during the last two years? Haven’t we realized the gifts right outside our doors in a more expansive way because of this crisis? Thay’s life was full of mud and lotus. Thay worked around the world for peace during the Vietnam War but was banned by Vietnam in 1966 from returning. So in 1967, he created a monastery in Southern France called Plum Village, which has evolved into a thriving community of teachers and seekers. Plum Village has three affiliate monasteries in the US. Thay was also a prolific author who penned close to 50 books. Thay was able to return to Vietnam and passed in the monastery where he took his first vows at age 16. Like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, also recently lost to us, Thay fully experienced both the great suffering of the mud but embodied the enlightenment and rebirth of the lotus in the regular moments of every day. May we follow his example, step by step. Peace to each of you, ~ Anne View the full newsletter here.   How to Center in an Age of Turmoil
Our world today is a lot to take in. My husband calls much of what we see in the news “The Anger Movement” because so many people seem so violently upset. How do we maintain our center and participate productively in this environment? Last weekend, I attended an online meditation retreat with Zen Priest Angel Kyodo Williams, author of Radical Dharma and Being Black. She told us the single capacity that will never do us wrong is coming back to ourselves through sitting meditation. So much of the constant rush of our lives keeps us from feeling into our bodies. We’re habituated to take off and run away from ourselves. But by quietly abiding when we sit in meditation, we come home to ourselves. This is the antidote to a society and culture that wants us to forget our true selves, she says. Through mindfulness, through showing up for ourselves in meditation over and over again, we find the world that has always been waiting for us, that invites our truths and our complexities. When we know who we are, when we can stay settled in our own bodies, then we can go forward in our world. During my recent week at Chautauqua, one speaker told of the remarkable and resolute African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama, during the 382-day bus boycott who kept on keeping on. This is what I try and keep in my awareness – not outrage but inspiration and gratitude for the giants on whose shoulders we stand. I try and remember that how we are on the inside ripples out into the world and has an effect. When our lives get difficult, as the Dalai Lama says, we need to meditate more. We also need to help others more and speak our truth more. Every little bit makes a difference. Everything you do makes a difference. Let’s encourage each other to keep promoting peace within and without because while it’s a solo journey, Rev. Angel says, the paradox is that we do it together. Peace to Each of You, ~ Anne View the full newsletter here. |
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