This past year has been a doozie. Which is putting it nicely. As we move into 2021 in contrast to what any of us imagined a year ago when the virus was first discovered, much of the world is still in lockdown and things in some ways seem to be getting more tenuous. Yet, there is more to the story than that. The pandemic emerged in a splintered world, surfacing amid some of history’s worst social and political turmoil that reflected longstanding, widespread inequality and disregard for others which fueled anger, deceit, mistrust, and fear. The pace of life and work for many had become so imbalanced that there seemed to be not enough time to do more than feverishly tread water to keep afloat. So when the pandemic hit, it became vividly clear that though we might have had the impulse to just get back to “normal” as fast as possible, going back to the way things were was neither possible nor desirable.
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This past year has been a doozie. Which is putting it nicely. As we move into 2021 in contrast to what any of us imagined a year ago when the virus was first discovered, much of the world is still in lockdown and things in some ways seem to be getting more tenuous. Yet, there is more to the story than that. The pandemic emerged in a splintered world, surfacing amid some of history’s worst social and political turmoil that reflected longstanding, widespread inequality and disregard for others which fueled anger, deceit, mistrust, and fear. The pace of life and work for many had become so imbalanced that there seemed to be not enough time to do more than feverishly tread water to keep afloat. So when the pandemic hit, it became vividly clear that though we might have had the impulse to just get back to “normal” as fast as possible, going back to the way things were was neither possible nor desirable.
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If you think you’ve been in lockdown for an inordinately long time, it’s not your citta vṛttis gone wild, it’s pramāna; correct perception. On-again-off-again, the world has been ordered to stay in place for almost a year! Like good yogis, we’ve watched waves of changing emotion and mind states come and go. There’s been relief for the stillness, gratitude for the space and time to reflect, empathy for those suffering, all punctuated by our individual brand—sometimes neurotic, always sacred—of dealing with the endless unknown; agitation, anxiety, numbness, fear, confusion, boredom, depression and so on. Our freedom of movement has been tampered with for so long that sometimes it feels like a tangle of reluctant roots are sprouting out of our feet to penetrate the earth in a scheme to keep us immobilized forever. When will the subjugation from this lockdown ever end? But it could be worse.
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An unprecedented series of global calamities—the year 2020—has sounded the alarm alerting us to the fact that the world as we’ve known it is broken on so many levels and it must be repaired. Like it or not, it’s time to wake up. Wake up to the challenge of facing seismic shifts in the ground beneath us that are causing the crumbling of old ways. How can we ease out of our long-standing sleep and meet these times fully, with grace and compassion, rather than flailing about with resistance like a disoriented child in search of their mother’s embrace?
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“You’ve got to start a community,” was the advice I got from an eager student in the early 90’s. It hit me like a ton of bricks! Over the years Richard had gradually moved from teaching in living rooms and basements with three or four students, to renting a space at the massage school, until eventually we got our own studio space and naming it the Yoga Workshop. The best part of our own space was that Richard finally had the luxury of not having to squeeze into a car packed with bolsters, blocks and straps as he drove around town. We also had a dedicated sign-in notebook to keep track of who came to class, if they had a phone for emergency calls and whether or not they could afford to pay. We’d press typed a master for the schedule and would hang posters around town in places we’d frequent like Hannah’s Restaurant or Crystal Market. We felt pretty organized, but then my heart sank, how could we have been so careless as to forget to start a community?
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