Just Because Two Things Happen Together Doesn’t Mean They’re Connected (Or: Why Sarah’s New Shoes Aren’t a Scientific Discovery) In systems thinking, causal independence means: if one thing doesn’t cause another, they’re not truly connected—no matter how often they happen together. Like Sarah. She grew taller and started school at the same time. That doesn’t mean school made her grow, or growing made school start. She still needed new shoes, but the growth and school weren’t connected. They just lined up. Same in yoga. Just because you feel peaceful after a deep backbend doesn’t mean the backbend caused the peace. Maybe it was the breath. Maybe it was breakfast. Maybe it was sleep. Don’t guess. Pay attention. Real progress comes from real causes: Big poses…

Many of you have asked about structuring your practice around trips to Mysore—or more importantly, how to create sustainable training cycles when annual trips to India aren’t part of your reality. Let me share how I’ve applied basic athletic training principles to organize my own practice year, and how you might think about doing the same. The Three-Phase Cycle Think of your practice year in three natural phases, whether or not you’re planning a trip to Mysore: Building Phase (Pre-Intensive Period) Before any intensive practice period—whether that’s a trip to Mysore, a retreat, or simply a few months when your schedule allows for deeper commitment—spend time reinforcing your foundation. Focus on the postures you can do well, build core stability, and work on flexibility in…

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and the glymphatic system are central to how the brain clears metabolic waste. Emerging research links efficient CSF circulation and glymphatic clearance to better cognitive health, and shows that sleep, cardiovascular rhythms, posture, movement and certain breathing patterns influence those flows. For teachers and experienced practitioners, understanding these mechanisms helps you design classes that support long‑term brain health while keeping explanations honest and evidence‑based. (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) The basics: what CSF and the glymphatic system do CSF bathes the brain and spinal cord, cushions neural tissue, distributes signaling molecules and supports waste clearance. The glymphatic system is a brain‑wide, perivascular pathway that moves CSF into brain tissue, mixes it with interstitial fluid, and helps clear soluble metabolites (including amyloid‑β) toward meningeal lymphatics and cervical…

The first sound I hear most mornings isn’t my breath or the hush of the Mysore room — it’s the wail of an ambulance racing down 14th Street. Living in Logan Circle places me at the center of a city that never fully quiets, and those sirens have a way of threading themselves into the nervous system. A few floors up, though, our yoga club practices something countercultural: the art of turning inward. That tension between external noise and internal quiet is the lived context for the systems-thinking axiom that independent variables are not correlated — and for pratyahara, the yogic practice of sense withdrawal. I talk about bizzark biases all the time because their statistical veracity teaches a blunt truth: absent a causal link,…

Donella Meadows would call deliberate practice a feedback-rich learning system. Naïve practice has weak feedback loops—you act but rarely reflect. Deliberate practice tightens those loops: every action informs the next, every mistake becomes data. Over time, this system evolves toward greater stability, efficiency, and insight. It’s yoga as adaptive intelligence. What It Looks Like Try This: For one week, make a micro-goal each day before you step on the mat. Something small and clear, like: “Maintain ujjayi through every vinyasa.” Or: “Keep the gaze soft in Trikonasana.” Or even: “Notice the moment my mind drifts.” At the end, reflect: what did I learn? That’s the feedback loop. That’s deliberate practice. Show up, yes—but also wake up while you’re there. That’s the shift from repetition to revelation.