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Prana

In yoga philosophy, the Sanskrit word prana means “life force.” It’s the spirit that drives you. Energy moving through. 

Sometimes it’s just not there, right? Last week Switzerland roasted under a massive heat wave. We all felt drained and sweaty and blah after endless days of 95° heat and humidity.

When cooling rain finally set in Friday night, it was like the whole country went “Ahhhhhh!!” And now, as the mist continues, our garden looks lush and green and renewed — and my body feels the same way.

PRANA.

We all do things, consciously and not, in our daily lives to feel more awake (or, in yogic terms, to increase our prana). We sing, or eat nourishing food, or dance, or play drums in an 80s band, or hang out with babies, or garden, or paint. And that’s great, because ultimately, we all want to feel more alive. 

Especially if you are currently spending 8 or 10 or 12 hours in front of a computer in a cubicle in some measly office building off a concrete highway.

For me, a regular yoga asana practice makes all the difference — even if that’s just five minutes a day. Paired with walks in the forest near our home, I feel rejuvenated and connected and alive. That time is nature is essential. 

What can you do today to increase your prana? It doesn’t have to be fancy. A quick puddle walk just might do the trick. 

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You Are Your Own Best Teacher

I’ve been re-reading Tricia Hersey’s recent book Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, and loving her emphasis on Womanist and Black liberation theologies.

This line jumped out at me today. ✨

It’s a version of something I often say in yoga class: Remember that you are your own best teacher, and you know your body better than anyone else. So take what I say with a grain of salt, and trust your own deep knowing as you move through your practice.

Did you grow up learning this sense of embodied trust in your own faith tradition? 🥴 Reclaiming it can be super hard for those of us who didn’t. (Ahem, Christianity.)

But that’s why I love the yogic (and Black Womanist, and ecofeminist) traditions. They cultivate that sense of inherent bodily goodness; of radical wholeness; of the fact that our bodies are wise and holy and strong, just as they are.

Grateful for theologians like Hersey who are spreading this powerful wisdom on a global scale. 🪷

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Ruhezeit

In Switzerland, you can’t vacuum on a Sunday. You can’t mow your lawn or wash your car. (Unless you want to risk a hefty fine, or a cranky neighbor.)

The grocery stores are all closed, so you’d better stock up on Saturday, because you won’t be picking up any last-minute burger buns or an extra six-pack for your barbecue.

It’s Ruhezeit.

That’s German for rest period. Off-season. Quiet time.

The same rules apply from 10pm-6am. (Don’t shower or flush your toilet overnight.)

And from 12-1pm on weekdays. Craftspeople stop working. Children nap. Shops close. Put your brass instruments away and chill out for an hour over lunch.

We are loud Americans, and so of course we often forget this. Especially when we first moved here. We felt so. damn. loud.

After nearly five years, though, Ruhezeit feels pretty damn good. It’s like a collective cultural savasana.

On Sundays, instead of shopping or working, Swiss folks go hiking — in stark contrast to Americans’ Costco runs. They ramble along village streets for family walks, toddlers wheeling by on balance bikes. They sit on their terraces and watch the neighbors stroll past.

Something about this all feels so healthy, and balanced, and SANE. Simple. Conscious. (Especially the part about not shopping.) Being together, in their bodies, out in nature.

This Sabbath practice originated in Jewish and Christian traditions, but it continues, even as Swiss culture grows ever more agnostic.

There’s a lot of buzz lately about the idea that in white supremacist capitalist culture, rest is resistance. This is so true. (Thanks, @thenapministry.)

Ruhezeit reminds me that, quite simply, rest is also just HUMAN. And I’m grateful for this enforced weekly quiet, even as we still sometimes blow it using the blender for smoothies at 7am or hollering too loudly over a FIFA23 victory goal.

Find your off-season. Your Ruhezeit.

Take your savasana. Whatever that looks like. 🪷

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Belly

I use this word a lot in my yoga classes — purposely.

BELLY. 🪷

Because it’s a great one to make friends with. Normalize. Welcome.

“Soften your belly like a nice loose Buddha belly.”

“Bend your knees so much you can press your belly into your thighs.”

“Hug your belly toward your spine to stabilize.”

“I like to move my foot to the right a few centimeters in this pose to make room for my belly.”

And so on.

BELLY. 🪷

Say it. Love it. Embrace it.

Twice a week I teach yoga to my kid’s soccer team. The other night I had them lie back on the turf in Supta Baddha Konasana and place both hands on their bellies, and say “Thank you, belly.”

They giggled. A lot.

It was so sweet and silly. And gentle.

Can you be a little more sweet, and silly, and gentle with yours? ✨

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Queer theory meets yoga philosophy

June #pridemonth always has me marveling at the incredible overlaps between queer theory and yoga philosophy. 🏳️‍🌈✨🏳️‍⚧️

Take these, for starters:

🌈 An emphasis on fluidity and non-essentialism

🌈 The sense that our identities are always and ever unfolding

🌈 A deep valuing of embodied experience as a source of wisdom

🌈 The notion that your body and your desires are inherently GOOD

🌈 A spirit of playfulness and camp. In Sanskrit, this looks like the word “leela”, meaning “divine play”

🌈 A history of folks who’ve consciously lived on the margins, outside of heteronormative nuclear family models

🌈 A countercultural spirit

🌈 A celebration of individuality

🌈 The value of relaxing into authenticity; dropping all masks

🌈 A rejection of dualistic binaries (though yoga still has much to unpack in this regard: the tired sun/moon, ida/pingala categories we use in hatha yoga desperately need to be queered)

If you want to check out some examples of queer theorists’ work, dig into:

✨ Judith Butler

✨ Adrienne Rich

✨ E. Patrick Johnson

✨ Angela Davis

✨ David Halperin

✨ Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

✨ Audre Lorde

✨ and so many more I haven’t mentioned here

Who are your latest favorites? Love to hear.

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Let’s weave it together, breath by breath, pose by pose

I hope my yoga and meditation classes might bring you back home to the truth that your childhood religious experiences may have taken from you: that, at heart,

🪷 You are whole.

🪷 Your body is good.

🪷 You can trust it.

🪷 Your spirit is wise.

🪷 Your heart is vast and spacious, far beyond any particular tradition.

🪷 Our lives are impermanent and fleeting, and we’re all gonna die, so we might as well cut the crap and learn how to really do this thing well while we’re here.

🪷 You and I and all of us are caught up in an interconnected interfaith web of being that no toxic patriarchal theology can take away.

Let’s weave it together, breath by breath, pose by pose.

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Chop wood, carry water

Wash the dishes, fold the laundry, clean the toilets, make the bed: all of those unsexy, stereotypically “women’s work” kinds of household chores. Ugh, right?

Well, Zen Buddhism says: f*ck yeah!! Scrub the toilets! That’s what it’s all about!! Enlightenment is never anywhere but right here, in our breathing, heaving, sweating, scrubbing bodies.

These menial tasks can be a pain in the ass, or they can be moving meditations. You decide.

Most importantly: our bodies are central to the whole deal. White patriarchal Christianity encourages us to leave them by the wayside. Don’t.

Let these Zen perspectives remind you that embodiment resides at the heart of everything holy — where everything sacred begins.

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Gentle

And I don’t mean gentle yoga. (Love me an athletic, ass-kicking vinyasa class.) Gentle with your body. Gentle with your heart. Gentle every time you blow it or run into that meeting sweaty and late or fall out of the pose or say that super awkward thing that makes you cringe every time you think of it for the next ten years.

Gentle with your whole self. Gentle with the world around you. Gentle with not knowing what comes next.

Buddhism gave me this word. As an early twentysomething, I was very good at being hard on myself; most of us are. Especially when you grow up in a religion that proclaims you destined to fall short of the glory of God, sinful and unworthy, broken, “a wretch like me” (thanks, Amazing Grace. You kinda suck.)

In such stark contrast — compassion lies at the heart of meditation and yoga practices. Compassion for self; compassion for your suffering, very human body; compassion for all beings; compassion for the world.

And when your heart begins to spin on the axis of compassion instead of confession, gentleness instead of guilt, everything softens; everything opens.

Try it. Just try being gentle with yourself. Nobody ever got where they wanted to by beating themself up. I promise.

Maybe, just maybe, compassion will get you there instead. 

(PS — if you want to dive further into this, check out the wonderful work on self-compassion being done by Kristin Neff. She’s setting the standard in so many graceful, life-giving ways.)

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Spare

I just finished reading Prince Harry’s autobiography.  (This is the German version in a bookstore downtown — note the Deutsch name.)

It was fascinating, and heartbreaking, and overwhelmingly human, and full of death. In spite of all the very-real spoils of wealth and empire and colonialism and blue-blood privilege, the guy has suffered massively.

Reading his story reminded me of the Buddhist teaching of the First Noble Truth, that quiet, frank reality that life is full of suffering, and our response to that pervasive suffering (or our resistance to it) is what determines the quality of our days.

I remember playing with Princess Di Barbie dolls as a little girl, and watching the news of her tragic death on TV in late August 1997, as I moved into my first college dorm. I remember reading People Magazine stories as a teen, gossipy profiles characterizing Harry as the wild one, the naughty one, the one who couldn’t seem to get his shit together. So it was fascinating to see him debunk so many of the supposed truths of his childhood — “truths” that the media had literally created out of thin air. The poor guy has been chased his whole life; treated like an animal in the zoo, a cash cow for paparazzi and shady journalists alike. 

These days, our house is blessedly-free of princess culture; I’m grateful to have a son who doesn’t give a shit about royalty or princess stories or any of that fairy tale hoo-ha. The way American culture saturates children (girls, in particular) with cringeworthy princess mythology makes me nauseous. It’s no wonder everyone assumes “royalty” live a perfect, pain-free existence. It’s aspirational bullshit. This guy certainly hasn’t.

Since Harry’s book release, I’ve so enjoyed seeing this embodied, grounded, warm adult version of himself moving through the world. His The Late Show with Stephen Colbert interview was especially poignant; knowing that Colbert also lost a parent young in a tragic plane crash gave their easy conversation a bittersweet undertone.

Cheers to this dude.  It hasn’t been all roses — but he seems to have really done the work. I hope he and his little family find room to breathe in the years to come.

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What if there’s actually nothing wrong with you?

Since it’s a Sunday morning, and many of us who grew up Christian spent countless Sunday mornings confessing our sin, brokenness, and inadequacy — over and over, week after week…

How do you think repeating creeds and prayers about your inherent sinfulness affected your sense of self as a tiny, growing human?

Whose power did it preserve for you to grow up convinced that you were broken, fundamentally sinful, and inadequate without a “Savior”?

And whom might it benefit for you to grovel about your worthlessness and powerlessness from the pews every week?

Time to rewrite the story, in our bones.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s actually nothing deeply wrong with you.

What if you were whole, and wise, and powerful to begin with?

Let’s recite a new creed, and weave it into our bodies, with every awakened breath.

You are good.

You are wise.

You are whole.