Colonizers gonna colonize. Oppressors going to oppress. Its your body, its your choice. These aphorisms help push back against self-reinforcing loops of domination—social, cultural, political, even spiritual. It’s a systems insight dressed in streetwise wisdom. Could I be any more explicit? Hello! In Systems Thinking, Donella Meadows would call this a reinforcing feedback loop—where the…
Pain can wake us up. It means its time to adjust. But how? The Yoga of Synthesis is a holistic approach to spiritual practice that integrates the four major yogic paths—Karma Yoga (selfless service), Bhakti Yoga (devotion), Jnana Yoga (knowledge), and Raja Yoga (meditation and mind control)—to develop all aspects of the practitioner: body, heart,…
Yoga practice builds resilience— something i really encourage. I’m sort of known for my resilience, which is a nice way of saying I’ve seen some sh*t and seem fairly well adjusted. I even got to write about resilience during times of political unrest for @yogajournal . I’m also known as well as my transparent, explicit…
Yoga practice is like playing a musical instrument. We must practice for both skill and pleasure. At first its scales, and then its compositions. Soon, we create our own music. We iterate and iterate. We remix. Freedom comes through experience and discipline. At some point we burn the method. We destroy the reference. The joy…
Resistance Training for Ashtanga: I follow a push/pull/leg split, 3/on 1/off. I dont follow a neat m/w/f 7 day a week schedule— I rotate as best I can. I like to lift and then practice shortly after, or I try to practice early and lift later (8 hours later, in fact). When I’m short on…
fyi: what I teach
morgans so good
Resistance bands are great for end-range strength training, and this can be especially beneficial for Ashtanga Yoga asana practice—here’s the “why” in both anatomy and Ashtanga terms: 1. Why resistance bands work for end-range strength Resistance bands provide what’s called variable resistance: the further you stretch them, the more resistance they provide. This makes them…
hatha yoga heals ashtanga yoga liberates
Yoga is meant to create a greater awareness of the totality of human experience – – and that means all the joy and the sorrow along the way. But I know for sure, when I’m practicing Yoga, I feel better— it reminds me I’m alive. There was a time when I practiced Ashtanga yoga and…