Sneaking out of the airport with just a carry-on

Airport and Ivy League — on writing for everyone

The first time I said it out loud, I was describing a podcast — Next Big Idea, the one where they take two recent books and have the authors on for twelve-minute snippets of takeaways — and I heard myself say: I appreciate the skillfulness of a communicator who can reach the kinds of audiences that are both at airports and at Ivy Leagues. That was my whole endorsement. That was what I meant. Then I sat with it, because it could sound like a compliment and it could also sound like a hedge. Like I was saying: readable by the masses, and also respectable. Smart enough to impress, simple enough to sell. Which is where I had to stop myself, because that’s not what…

Parents — a lot of Halls under one roof

Action Indicates Priority

I’m sending these out because I quit social media and I need attention. What I actually want is for you to reply and tell me you’re coming. I’ll drop one every night at midnight. You can register in the morning when you get up — something to read besides everything else. Karma yoga is the yoga of action. I say it a lot — usually when I notice a gap between what someone says they want and what they’re actually doing about it. All talkie-talkie, no walkie-walkie. Easy to spot in someone else. Quite another to see in yourself. That’s the whole puruṣa and prakṛti problem. But I digress. I’ve been helping support my parents — a lot of Halls under one roof. I’ve been…

A silhouetted figure stands at a studio doorway holding a yoga mat, morning light filtering through the entrance creating soft shadows and a sense of quiet anticipation.

Built to Collapse

She ran the shala for nineteen years. Three hundred students across two decades. She knew every body in the room, every injury, every limitation, every breakthrough. The curriculum lived inside her. The culture was her personality. The place was, in every meaningful sense, her. Then she retired. The studio closed within a year. Not because the practice was wrong. Not because the community didn’t care. Because the whole thing had been engineered around a single point of failure, and when that point walked out the door, there was nothing left to hold. This is the most common structural mistake in yoga, in wellness, in any field where expertise is embodied and transmitted person-to-person. You build a practice around yourself instead of building something that can…

A silhouetted figure mid-deadlift with a translucent glowing double whispering over their shoulder, their open eyes watching their own mind decide to override good judgment.

You Can’t Have a Bad Practice

Here’s what a bad practice actually requires. It requires you to show up with an idea of who’s practicing — how much energy they have, what their hips are doing, how steady their attention is — and then find out, somewhere around minute fifteen, that you were wrong. The gap between the person you expected and the person who arrived is where bad practices live. Most people don’t know they’re doing this. They schedule a session, walk to the mat, and start practicing the practice they planned for a version of themselves that may not have made it to Tuesday. The person who actually showed up — the one who slept badly, has something slow-burning in the lower back, is half-distracted by a conversation from…

Silhouettes practice together in a dim yoga studio beneath a faint musical staff, while a teacher holds a lantern and a practitioner steps into the shared rhythm.

Samadhi on a Tuesday

Samadhi lives in a particular part of the spiritual imagination — somewhere between mountaintop and miracle. You picture it arriving after years of austere practice, maybe in a cave, definitely in silence. When it finally comes, it announces itself with appropriate ceremony. This is wrong on every count. Here’s what actually happens: you’re in downward dog. You’ve been doing this sequence for months, or years. The breath is the right length, in the right place. The bandhas are engaged. You’re looking at the right spot. And at some point — between inhale and exhale, between one position and the next — the quality of attention changes. The practitioner having the experience and the experience being had briefly stop being separate things. There’s just the experience….

Silhouette gazing at a colorful galaxy filled with stars on a starry night.

The Name Creates the Gap

Jordan wanted a handstand for two years. Every class. He watched other people float up, watched himself not. Something grinding and grasping in his chest, increasingly desperate. He got the handstand. That’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is what happened six months before he got it. He stopped fighting the wanting. Not because he gave up. That’s different. He stopped adding energy to the craving by trying to suppress it. And something shifted. There’s a pattern in yoga philosophy called raga — attachment, craving, the reaching toward what we want in a way that creates its own suffering. Jordan had raga about a handstand. He’d have called it motivation. The texts call it a root cause of suffering. Both can be true at…