I am sitting at my desk watching snow fall from the sky in huge, wet flakes. While a September snowstorm brings a premature end to our bountiful garden, I am hopeful the moisture will ease the forest fires that are burning through Colorado and have filled the Arkansas Valley with smoke the last few days. Between social unrest, the state of American politics, the pandemic, hurricanes, and fires, 2020 continues to deliver challenges of all kinds. Of course, I am not saying anything new here, just reflecting a bit on current times.

On the whole, I am getting my feet underneath me again with the new format— I upgraded my filming set-up with a huge TV screen so I can see everyone in the gallery and offer suggestions, which makes the experience more interactive and fun. At least, I think it makes class more fun. I am sure some people really like the new approach while others would prefer to be left alone! Of course, I do not think I am giving heavy-handed “help” but, well, as we all know, sometimes help feels helpful and sometimes, well— not so much.

I, however, have often needed four, five, or ten-thousand additional thoughts before I could intervene on the machinations of my mind with any success. The point of the teaching, I think, is that as soon as those thoughts can get into consciousness and, subsequently into choice, that is the point at which I can become responsible for them. And, as many of you know, the road between awareness-of and choice-over can be long, thus the need for humor and self-compassion.

One thing that time on my mat during sheltering-in-place has reminded me is that big energetic shifts do not always require big poses or long hours of instruction, although I have explored plenty of both during these last few months. Asana Junkies was developed as a way to approach bigger poses intelligently and unapologetically. However, for the record, the basis of my practice has always been regular deposits in the bank of the Level 1 syllabus with less-frequent forays to more advanced postures. Any given day on my mat involves mostly standing poses, supta padangusthasana, inversions, fundamental seated poses and basic back bends like cobra and camel. Once a week, I usually look beyond that in some way. Nothing fancy.

Not to be confused with new-age notions of silver linings, everything happening for a reason, or never being given more than we can handle, prayer, as I see it, is part of building my capacity to live meaningfully when my imagination inevitably falters. Living meaningfully is not about having a mission statement or an intellectual construct that gives me a stated purpose, plan, or guarantee of salvation. Living meaningfully is simply the way I feel when I am connected to— or even longing to connect to— what lives in my Heart and in the depths of who I am.

I grew up in the Methodist church singing Amazing Grace regularly. I have always been moved by the message, even though at times, I cringed at words like “wretch” and wasn’t really sure how Grace might teach my heart to fear. Of course, my issues with the Christianity of my childhood is another entry for another day. Last week, as I listened to Hope sing these familiar words I heard them through the lens of systemic racism. Instead of feeling like “wretch” was a shame-based accusation, I saw the wretchedness of the ugly truths that live at the core of America’s institutions and therefore, my own conditioning. I felt the blessing it is to claim wretchedness—to acknowledge shame, remorse, and the degradation of spirit that comes with white supremacy.

As our country grapples with the reckoning of inequalities and injustice that have far too long been at its foundation, I too, have been grappling with my own reflections, insights, and actions. Like many of you, I hope, I have read a lot, donated some money, signed petitions and shared as many resources as possible online. I’ve also spoken a little and written a few words. You can find those offerings on the Live the Light of Yoga podcast and here on last week’s blog entry. I am particularly pleased with our latest podcast episode The Tears are Part of the Song in which Holistic Resistance shared a bit of their experience, passion, love, and music with us.

Education comes from the root word educare, which means to lead from within, or to draw out from within. To educate oneself in the insidious, pervasive, and systemic evil of racism is to draw out a history of oppression, violence, subjugation, and horrors against humanity that is woven into our country, culture, society, and therefore, one’s own personal conditioning. To educate oneself in how to help dismantle those systems externally — you know, like to make the world a better place— without engaging the work of dismantling the ways I have internalized these imperatives and benefitted from them with and without knowing, is likely to create a circumstance where my good intentions contribute to more harm, rather than alleviate the suffering I so want to end.

figure the muse comes. Not a muse like some fantasy fairy-tale figure clad in billowy robes and singing words of poetry from the heavens full of wit, wisdom, and pithy tales of transcendent glory. Perhaps this muse might best be described as interest and then, curiosity. Perhaps this muse is a clarity of awareness with a dose of absorption that allows for time to warp, deep knowing to emerge, and creativity to arise within the structured form of the practice itself. I figure at some point his practice must have stopped being about the ten thousand things to do to improve the poses and became about meeting the muse.

My days at home have settled into a predictable rhythm of morning meditation and self-care rituals, a dog walk in nature or the neighborhood, office hours with unprecedented amounts of screen time, a daily asana practice, evening meditation, and then dinner and time with Kelly. Of course, predictability during a pandemic is a bit of a moving target. I contemplate groundlessness quite a bit in my sadhana, so I am no stranger to the idea that life is never as certain as it seems, but, as my 12-stepping friend told me the other day, “Christina, this shit is a next-level lesson in powerlessness.”

Truth be told, the term “mental health” doesn’t quite capture the essence of what I have come to experience as recovery or health. In fact, while I am telling the truth, I might also add that the term “mental health” gets my hackles up a bit, triggering a sense that I am somehow flawed or mentally deficient for struggling to live authentically in a world that rewards falsity, for needing help to manage pain in a world that values numbing out, and for not being able to “think myself into a new perspective.”

Each week, we use a topic from one of the chapters in my latest book, A Deeper Yoga as a springboard for discussion and commentary. Shortly after we released our first few episodes, the realities of Covid-19 hit and we recorded additional Covid-19-centered bonus episodes. Our conversations range from studentship to community, from self-compassion to white fragility, from suffering, addictions, and cultural imperatives to faith, wholeness and dogs as perfect beings.