Mauna Notes
Writing is how I listen to what practice is asking.
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The Eight Limbs of Yoga: One Practice, Growing Together
Think of a rope braided from eight strands. Each strand alone is thin, and together they hold. The eight limbs of yoga can be understood in this way: not as…
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The Yoga I Practice, the Yoga I Teach
My journey with Dona Holleman and Centered Yoga: where my teaching comes from, and why the yoga I practice is not always the yoga I teach.
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Why Your Hips Don’t Open in Pigeon Pose (And What Actually Does)
Pigeon Pose has a reputation. It’s the posture most often described as “emotional,” the one students approach with a mixture of anticipation and dread, the one teachers reach for when…
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Mula Bandha and Uddiyana Bandha: Anatomy, Myth, and How to Actually Find Them
Few instructions in yoga generate more confusion than “engage your bandhas.” Students nod, tense something in the general vicinity of the pelvis, and move on. Many teachers, if pressed, would…
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Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras: What “Yoga Citta Vritti Nirodha” Actually Means
Most yoga teachers can recite it. Fewer can explain it. “Yoga citta vritti nirodha”, the second sutra in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and arguably the most quoted line in the entire…
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The Alignment of Downward Dog: What’s Really Happening in the Shoulders
Downward-Facing Dog is often the first posture a new student learns, and one of the last a teacher ever stops refining. Most of us were taught to cue it early…
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Before the World Wakes
On practicing in the quiet hour before the day begins. A reflection on early morning yoga, breath and stillness.
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Green Mountains
A reflection on impermanence, perception and change, and on observing what changes without resisting it.
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On Illusion and Seeing Clearly
What the moving sun teaches us about perception, maya and illusion in yoga.
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Make things easier
On the difference between effort and unnecessary tension, in yoga practice and in everyday life.
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By Nature there is no difference between us
On what we share before the name and the story: a yoga reflection on oneness.
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Naming what arises
A softer way to meet thoughts, emotions and sensations in meditation, inspired by Jack Kornfield.