Sometimes the Support is the Success

Sometimes the Support is the Success

I got to watch a long-time practitioner nail her first straight-leg jump-through this week. Liz has been practicing for years with my dear friend and colleague Jen Rene before joining me shortly after the pandemic. She’s a gem. Right after hearing the tell tale ‘swiff’ of a clean jump through, Liz and I locked eyes. “First one EVER,” she yelled. Liz had attended my bodyweight transitions workshop at the Yoga Club just a few days prior to all of this, and I told her that I was going to tell everyone that fact. I’m joking around, of course. All credit goes to Liz. She had a few skills that were *this* close to coordinating, and she was able to find her thresholds, push pass them,…

cumulative strength: how a casual approach to chanting helped me appreciate my practice more

cumulative strength: how a casual approach to chanting helped me appreciate my practice more

When my brother passed, I felt blindsided. It hadn’t occurred to me that such a thing would happen, even though looking back I can see that with that kind of drinking, it was inevitably going to happen. You can’t drink like that and not die of either health or fate. I was too young/new to this– I hadn’t actually seen anyone drink themselves to death at that point. Yikes. But, I mean, I didn’t realize what was going on and I get why: a sour combination of cognitive disonance and inexperience. I was heartbroken. So often in those moments, I turn to asana and meditation. These were not readily available at that particular time because of an overzealous deadlifting session gone awry. A very real…

Self Practice and Grief

Self Practice and Grief

When I got to Goa, I felt anonymous again. In Mysore, I felt like everyone had heard. I was the ashtangi who got hate crime’d in the face after his house burned down. I wanted to be the tall pretty one. Or the smart one. But for now, I was very much the tragic one. Luckily, Rolf wasn’t watching the news. I was just one more 6’3 drop back for him to do. And he was happy to oblige– quietly sharing lite bits here and there in my ear about his work. But not so happy with it that I didn’t get assigned sone extra. Great. After 27 years of shrinking myself for others, I got to just be the big one. You gotta gang…