Always falling into love

Love... to be in love... I don't know that I can speak about love with any sort of authority though I have been privileged to witness some masters, some great lovers, not only of the romantic variety, and teachers of love in my life.

I can write about love from my imagination, through the lens of my finite being, of this place and time and from my experience of love and of the absence of it.  Much of my current pursuit is to find myself experiencing love as much and as often as possible.  Simple but not easy!

I want my life to be an experiment, a laboratory for all sorts of flavors, textures and qualities of love. I want my experiences to be ones where I easily tap into the abundance of love that is possible in every moment.  We are conditioned to identify and operate from an assumed scarcity when it comes to love.  We are taught to believe that some love is superior to others, that love is hard to find and that once we've got it we have to hold on for dear life.  What I keep coming back to and what my greatest teachers keep driving home is that there is no scarcity of love.

But why does it feel so challenging to experience love sometimes?  Because there is love that is easy and love that is hard. There is a reason that most love stories end with the first kiss.  This is the love that is easy, intoxicating, exciting, new.  This is the love that we can most easily identify because of it's intensity. There is truly nothing like the feeling of being in love.  It is amazing but like all incredibly desirable experiences, it can become an obsession, a fixation and an addiction.  Part of love practice is to acknowledge that sometimes love is easy and sometimes love is hard.

Can we practice love even when it is hard? Love feels harder when things are stale, stagnant, when we are grouchy or hurt, when there is a breach of trust.  Love is also hard when we dislike or feel indifferent towards someone.  These are all our greatest opportunities to practice love.  These moments of challenging love are when we can make love something we do and not just something that happens to us once in a while.

Practicing love amidst hardship, loneliness, boredom is where the challenge lies.  It is a noble pursuit to be infusing love into all the parts of our lives that feel tricky or sticky or rough.

What does this look like?  I am certainly not advocating for a blind denial of negative experiences or feelings.  Spending our time wishing things were different is in many ways antithetical to love practice.  Love and honesty absolutely must go hand in hand.  Honesty about what is present is the first step.  Can we hold space for all that we experience and approach our experience with as much love as possible.  We first love ourselves enough for our experience to be okay and valid.  We create space for the experience and spend time responding with clarity and gentleness.

So we act with honesty in the moments where love feels hard and then when love feels easy?  "When Shakti strikes, surrender with a smile."  We have turned the soil, planted the seeds and done the work and all that remains is to enjoy watching what will grow, blossom and evolve.  The brilliance is that we really do have the great privilege to experience love all the time.  Notice the easy moments of love in each and every day, take these moments in fully, they are there...  Perhaps in the perfect cup of tea, in the music that makes your soul soar.  Dive deep in to the love of the lingering hug from a friend, the moon, the sun, a deep breath or the feeling your body moving.

When we make love our practice, both when it is easy and when it is hard, when we allow more space for what is present now, for the relationships that exist in our life, this inevitably helps us to see that love abounds. We always have the capacity to be in love.  It is a choice, a practice and a surrender.  Love is not a substance to be acquired and it doesn't have to look a certain way.  Love is abundant and our work is simple.  Keep remembering love.  Keep acting from love. Keep being in love.

Setting smart intentions differently

Resolutions! We've all been doing it for years and generally with varying degrees of success.  Unfortunately, many of us discontinue the practice as it feels that we are incapable of keeping resolutions for very long.  An understandable choice; how are we expected to succeed at keeping resolutions when we've never really been shown how to effectively set intentions in the first place?  Smart change is lasting change!  This is something I am slowly discovering.  My new way of approaching change was kick-started in Mexico this summer where I had the privilege of spending some time with my teachers Katie Silcox and Chrisandra Fox Walker.

A big part of what I experienced during the month immersion that I did in Mexico was a completely new way of setting intention and creating change in my life.  Through an integral and multi-faceted approach, lots of hard work and honesty, we absolutely have the possibility of fulfilling our intentions.  Don't be fooled, however, I'm not here to say it will be a walk in the park.  This work is not always necessarily easy and does involve a level of self-honesty which can be challenging.  A few ideas...

Start with something small and concrete:

We humans have a vivid imagination.  Our ability to imagine can be a gift and a curse.  When we set grandiose goals that are lofty and deeply rooted in the realm of our imagination, this may mean that our goals are quite separate from the reality of our lives.  If this is the case, we risk the disappointment of not realizing them.  On so many levels, we cannot underestimate the unfortunate result of telling ourselves we are going to do something without following through.  This sends the message that we can't be trusted to act with integrity, that we don't do what we say we are going to do.  The more this happens, the further away we get from what we want and the harder it becomes to set goals and to believe in ourselves enough to fulfill them.

The flip side of this is that we build on success, however small that success may be.  Even a small accomplishment sends ripples of confidence into many other realms of our life so that when we make small changes and stick with them, we continuously create confidence in our ability to stick with it and to get closer to a life of integrity.

Figure out a timeline that works:

Not too near and not too far but just right is the key!  Again, until the summer, I didn't realize quite how important timing is.  Especially when the intention or goal is one that is related to a habit, which is most often the case.  When I use the words 'forever' or 'never again' this feels really daunting and makes it an appealing option to give up and weasle out of what I have set out to do. I found that for myself, setting a goal that spans over the course of one year was realistic.

This means that I have space for the freak-out and that there is also space for the freak-out to end! Where before I felt a sense of failure as soon as something was hard, giving myself a specific time line really changed this.  Relaxing around the freak-out phase without just abandoning all together makes things so much easier.  With a year ahead of me, I know that with time, the changes I'm trying to make will become easier and easier!

When trying something new, let something go.  When letting something go, try something new:

We are finite creatures with finite amounts of energy, time and resources.  Let's not forget that as we work towards real and significant shifts.  One really cool technique is that of linking a positive form of change with something negative that we wish to let go of.

Our actions and habits have a certain amount of momentum and energy behind them and the practice here is to re-direct that energy and momentum towards that which we really want to be feeding!  As disparate as the two may seem, when I think about what I really want in a moment when I'm feeling likely to engage in a negative action, maybe I can see more clearly how my motivation is slanted and this is really helpful for a double dose of positive change.

Speak it out loud:

Once the leg work is done, the counter-point to a new goal is identified and a time-line put in place, see if you can cement your idea to make it more real. Write it down!  Send yourself a letter!  Tell your friends!  Hold a ritual or ceremony!  Allow your goals to exist somewhere outside of your head...

Be kind to yourself around this entire process:

Change is almost never easy and it takes hard work and time to integrate.  When we frame our behavior or action as either a failure or a success, this can leave us feeling terrible when we don't 'succeed'.  Rather than berating yourself when things don't work out, see if you can try to identify what hasn't worked and make the necessary changes to your plan to up the odds in your favor.  This could mean scaling down expectations, re-framing the timeline or coming back to your motivations for the change you're trying to make.

Get some expert help and advice:

My intention here was to offer a few tools which have really helped me to make significant changes.  Much of what I'm describing is a simplified explanation of a very cool system of discovery and intention setting outlined beautifully in The Four Desires by Rod Stryker.  If you're interested at all in delving deep in the process of leaning more about yourself and of setting goals with depth and meaning, I can very much recommend working with this book.

A few really cool tricks to help make changes that stick! So as we sit, here towards the end of January, don't believe what they say... January 1st need not be the only day of the year where we resolve.  Bust out a journal, cup of tea and look within.   Be kind to yourself, be real, think about your goals long and hard, visualize your resolutions in space and time, think big but scale back it it all becomes too much.  We can achieve our goals!  Especially when we set them with vision, imagination and intelligence.

Practice, practice, practice!

Having a practice is a beautiful thing… sometimes.

Granted, in a world of hyper-stimulation, instant gratification and rampant addiction to a perpetual state of comfort, it’s hard to imagine making time for a contemplative practice of any kind.  In a world where busyness, sleep deprivation, over-work and excesses of all kind are par for the course, it is tough to imagine having any kind of energy left over for practice at the end of the day, week or month.

So, let’s suspend disbelief for a moment and just imagine…

We all practice

First off, weather we think it or not, all of us practice and are practicing all the time.  We all live with varying degrees of sameness and newness as part of our lives.  Therefore, our practices are those of navigating routines and alternately, responding to new forms of stimulation.  We practice what we do for work, the way we transport ourselves, the way we interact with the homeless guy on the street corner, our boss, our mom, our lover.  We practice the way we shop, prepare and eat our food, the way we entertain ourselves, the things we chose to learn and how much sleep we get.

With this understanding, all of us can begin thinking about practice by asking some really simple questions:

What do I currently practice?

What am I practicing so much of that I’m becoming great at it?

Are these things increasing or decreasing the quality of my life and the life of those around me?

Do I want to practice something else?

Am I practicing what I want to be? what I want to become?

What we practice

I believe that we practice two things:

We practice actions: we act in the world. 

We practice qualities: the ways in which we act.

Now, there can be value attached to both, that much is clear. I want to choose my actions carefully but I also want to pay close attention to quality.  It is possible to practice yoga with force, violence and self-hatred.  If I practice these qualities as I act out yoga poses, as healthy as these poses may be, I’m becoming more proficient at force, violence and self hate.

Action is a bit more obvious but quality, while more subtle, is huge in informing what it is we practice.  Quality can also be a powerful bridge between a formal practice and the rest of life.  This is because when I infuse my yoga and meditation practice with the qualities of ease, compassion and openness, these qualities become easier to apply to any challenging situation I experience in any other aspect of my life.

Choosing what we practice

So, we all practice both actions and qualities.  What happens then, when we begin to chose? When we bring light to those things we do?  When we practice both action and qualities consciously?

Well, it isn’t always easy, that’s for sure and that is where it becomes useful to think carefully about weather or not a formal practice is for us and what we want that practice to look like. 

What do I look for in a practice?

For me, practice becomes really effective when I commit deeply and practice often. It is crucial to choose a practice that I love.  It is equally crucial, however, to gently return and practice on days when I don't really want to. 

I want my practice to help me become better at using intuition and logic.  From this perspective, I continually tweak things to find a balance between formal structure and space for play, fluidity and the possibility of the practice changing and evolving.

I want my practice to be keenly linked to my tendencies.  I work to learn how to ride tendencies when they’re helping me become great and to reverse them when they’re hurting me.

When I commit to my practice, I am committing to myself.  To this regard, I’ve chosen a solitary practice, one that I practice alone.  This has been a huge gift!  I’m offering myself the opportunity to spend time alone, each day and to garden the landscape of my body and my mind… to watch myself evolve.  Sometimes, spending time alone is hard and challenging.  Looking inside isn’t always easy and requires a great deal of self-honesty.  The rewards, however, are a deep sense of peace in knowing that  while I will make mistakes, I will screw up and go off on useless tangents, ultimately, I will continue to show up and practice.

Non attachment

Vairagya or the practice of non-attachment is terrifying to me. Perhaps because it feels extremely challenging, perhaps because it forces me to look at my own mortality and the fleeting nature of all that surrounds me and also perhaps because I truly love many of the things that I find myself being attached to and to face the possibility of losing these doesn’t seem like much fun!

Rationally, we know that attachment is useless. Everything is always changing and we are all going to die. Much of our life, however, is constructed around the presumption that this isn’t true.

So, how does this practice work? What does non-attachment look like in the context of a yoga practice? During meditation? As I navigate my life? What does this mean for my goals, my loved ones, my coffee addiction and my future?

After some time thinking about this, here are some thoughts:

When all gets boiled down, whether I’m clinging to an idea, an object, a person or a goal, I’m clinging to an outcome: I want this to happen next. Or: I really don’t want this to happen next! I’m placing some kind of value, either negative or positive, on something that I really can’t control: the future! This means that if my attachments are all related to what I want or don’t want to happen, the practice becomes that of not being attached to specific outcomes.

Simple enough, right? In theory, yes, but this practice certainly isn’t easy. Our attachments are strong. Sure, there are myriad small addictions that we all have. I, for one, really love coffee and it might be a tough to give up my attachment to the effect of caffeine on my body.

There are, however, many more complex and deep-rooted things that I cling to. For example, I daily make tons of assumptions about how the world works, what it means to do good, how to succeed and what are the components, which make up my personality. We also hold many different beliefs about what it means to be accepted and weather or not this is important. Quite often, self-harming behaviors such as substance abuse, addiction and obsession are tightly woven around these ideas. To let go of these types of attachments is much more of a process.

That is why it is a practice. The next question is of course, in the sea of attachments and assumptions that make up the stuff of our lives, where do we begin to untangle this knotted mess?

I think that where this practice begins is in the act of noticing. I begin by bringing my awareness to a few attachments and assumptions I hold. Maybe this leads to the discovery of a few more. I can take it as slowly or as quickly as I need in any moment. I also remember to take on the task of unraveling my attachments with a lot of love, care and as much as possible, without judgment. Maybe it is painful and challenging to let go of certain things and takes quite some time. Maybe this leads to a great sense of relief. Perhaps this means that I have permission to let go of ideas and things that no longer serve me. Maybe, this even leads me to imagine a life where my action isn’t driven by clinging to those things that I’m attached to. Maybe, I teach myself to move through the world without the goal of achieving specific outcomes.

Now, if I get to a point where even a small portion of my actions is not driven by attachment, this practice has the potential to yield staggering and incredible results.

First off, there is the possibility of vastly increased openness; openness to people, possibilities and ideas that likely weren’t on my radar before integrating the practice of non-attachment into my life.

When I practice non-attachment to specific outcomes, my goals can be fluid and open. Instead of having goals, in fact, I can create intentions, sort of mission statements related to the way in which I want to approach my life. My practice becomes one of showing up applying my intention by doing my best in each situation.

I can let go of a good dose of fear. By keeping the reality of being mortal very close in each moment, I can allow for experimentation, change and flexibility without being afraid of what I am going to lose.

The practice is one of love and the expression of love without any expectation of reciprocation in any specific way. I become very generous with my heart as it becomes clearer and clearer that I won’t run out of the stuff that love is made of.

The practice is one of feeling, of examining emotion without self-judgment or reaction. Of taking time with this and after some time, I act! I do exactly what is needed in the moment and remain un-phased by the nagging question which tends to stunt the ability to act selflessly: How is this affirming the ideas I love to believe about myself?

The practice of non-attachment is one of becoming intimate instead with a different question: What is going to happen next?

Can I ask that question without gripping or trying to control the answer?

I think that is the practice of non-attachment…

Happy questing!

Always a fool,

S

Choosing community

So here we are, months after my last post and this fool’s life has changed and shifted dramatically. While I still sip a cup of ritual coffee as I pen these words, most of the rest has changed. When I last wrote, I was a guest in a foreign city for a finite amount of time. Not only that, I was intentionally disconnected from any form of employment. I spent months in San Francisco doing little more than reading, drinking tea and practicing yoga (exaggeration included…)

A transition period ensued between that life and my settling in Montreal. During this time, I took full advantage of August’s bountiful warm and sunny demeanor to eat blueberries, reconnect with friends and family and ride my bike around big lakes and on small islands. I also did spend some time fretting and worrying to some degree about the future, one that didn’t seem to have much direction other than teaching yoga in Montreal. August was a truly amazing time for me. I got the chance to put all sorts of principles into practice and watch yoga come to life in a completely new circumstance. My situation had the potential to generate a lot of needless anxiety. My yoga homework was to be present to the anxiety and simultaneously find joy, steadiness and ease within this unknown and new territory, and it worked out pretty well! This felt like a clear affirmation of the potency and power of the tools I am being taught and beginning to use in my life. I was shown through direct experience that this process is sound and does indeed help me to accept my humanness in a diversity of circumstances.

How exciting!

Autumn has me settling in and working to find people and spaces in which to share all that I’ve learned about yoga on my epic pilgrimage to the northern California coast. What has been truly amazing about this transition, this return, has been to observe my reactions to sameness, to familiar places and people, watching myself going through a long and drawn out transition in which I didn’t know what was to come.

Now, the always-terrifying task of putting myself out there in the world is upon me. Oh the things I’m learning about myself and about yoga in the process of doing that…

About here…

Landing in a new community is a very exciting thing indeed. And I’ve been really fortunate to choose a community, which is rich, diverse, vibrant, dynamic and bountiful. Already, I’m being given the opportunity to practice with a diverse group of people, in many different settings and everywhere I turn, people want to practice yoga. It is strange to be faced with the reality of a place when I’ve been concocting a strange question mark filled fantasy about it in my mind for months.

About yoga and community…

A surprise that I hadn’t expected about teaching yoga is the incredible capacity it has to bring people together. If only for us to come together to share our practice, it is worth doing. There are incredible teachers in each and every one of my students. If there is a willing student, no matter where or who they are, it is absolutely exhilarating to share this practice with them. I am really actively relishing in this joy and newness and sincerely hope that this feeling never goes away! A piece of advice given me from a great teacher often comes to mind: Let yourself be transformed by your students.

About the fool…

Ah, the fool. Here the fool is finding her place, standing still, gardening and nurturing one place for a while. Should be scary really but it’s not. If feels stimulating and exciting and I don’t think that this fool has lost any of her foolishness from standing still. In fact, from being in one place, the foolish tendencies only become that much more obvious. The fear of complacency and boredom has dissolved as I watch myself in action in this new space. I am witnessing myself wedge into nooks and crannies in which to teach and learn, resisting too much comfort and actively engaging with the opportunities I’m being given to ask the question: is this what I’m here to do? I can trust in my foolish tendencies to always provide a cliff edge only a few paces away!

Giving it up

The dictionary defines sacrifice as the act of offering plant, animal or human life to a deity as an homage, to surrender or give up, to permit injury or disadvantage for the sake of something else. The etymology of the word translates in english from its latin roots as "to do or to make holy".

It is impossible to consider the idea of sacrifice without dancing with the light and goodness of humanity as well as it's shadow. When I thought of writing this piece about sacrifice, I had really not considered the negative historical connotations of the word. The idea of sacrifice in my imagination was light, beautiful and positive. I easily could have adapted my writing and used the word "offering" or "gift" in order to stay closer to the original vision I had of this piece, one in which I would try to soften the idea of giving things up and to make it more appealing and digestible. I was interested, however, in my reaction to what I found when I looked up the more general meaning of the word: "Whoa, sacrificing sometimes means to injure, to kill... that's not good at all!"

I think that the definition that I found really merits some careful consideration. There can be negative and positive repercussions to making a sacrifice. Where is the line? How do I minimize the damage? Finally, how can the shift take place where sacrifice means no one gets hurt?

On the surface, sacrifice is something which directly goes against the unspoken rules within our culture which dictate the following (and I generalize): Permanent comfort and personal gain are symbols of status and success. These are to be obtained at all cost.

The general trend of the individualized culture in which we live would have us believe that to give something up, especially when we don't have to do so is a silly idea. Also, that success comes from holding tight all that we have and guarding our assets and lifestyles with vigour.

If we define sacrifice as the act of giving something up in order to benefit something else, however, even within these parameters, we are unconsciously making sacrifices all the time. We give up our time and lives to create security and material wealth for ourselves and our children. We give up our health in order to satisfy immediate needs for stimulation, entertainment and general comfort. We give up our planet's health for the advancement of industry, production, more stuff and the ability to instantly satisfy any needs we may have.

This becomes very complicated when we begin to try to place an ethical value on these sacrifices. Are we creating more damage than good? Are these sacrifices worth it? Are they conscious? Who is being hurt or exploited? Where do the ethics of such sacrifices come into play and who is being held accountable? What is an acceptable amount of wealth for one person or group of people to accumulate before we can safely say that we are making sacrifices that are not ours to make? These are some questions that roll around in my head all the time as I observe myself interacting in the world and as I strive to live in harmony with the people, plants and animals around me.

By asking important questions, we can begin to shift and brighten our awareness around these choices and perhaps begin to make different ones, yes? What happens next? Do we begin to live unpleasant and austere lives which are boring and don't involve any entertainment, stimulation or stuff? Does positive and conscious sacrifice have to be hard, painful and difficult? Perhaps not necessarily, but let's look carefully at what is going on when we make choices deliberately with the goal of reducing suffering.

So, I'm trying to help, to heal, to brighten, to make holy. Sounds simple, yet this brings up a whole new set of challenging questions to be pondered. What is the direct and indirect impact of my action? Am I acting in a certain way for recognition? Am I trying to help someone else, myself or both? What happens in the case where I have to chose between one or the other? Is it always going to feel great to give something up that I know will help? If it feels challenging, should I still do it? If it feels great, does that mean that it's wrong? What are some thing that I know create harm that I find particularly challenging to give up? Can I honestly look at that shadowy part of myself and find peace with it or is there a tendency within me to justify not making those sacrifices I really don't want to make?

In essence, by looking at these questions, I can see that there are times where sacrifice is appealing and digestible and there are times when it's not. I believe that the idea of giving stuff up has gotten a really bad rep in our current culture. I believe that sacrifice has the potential to bring us joy, peace and knowledge about ourselves when enacted with intent. But truly, it is important that when we make a sacrifice, we wholeheartedly embrace the reality around what we give up, what we guard and what we make space for. I believe that the act of making sacred can happen everywhere and with all things. I believe that sacrifice can humble us and helps us appreciate the abundance in our life more fully. Lets make our gifts, offerings and sacrifices conscious and ethical. Let's challenge ourselves, maybe only once in a while or maybe every day, in small and in big ways to give something up. Let's be open to the possibility that it won't be all bad, that it might teach us something or shift a perspective. Maybe through sacrifice, we will discover an exciting and new possibility. Let's do it invisibly sometimes too, so that we're clear about our intent and it isn't just about others thinking we're great. Lets make our choices intelligently, consciously and with passion. Let's see where we can create more sacredness, more balance and more beauty in the world through our actions. What could possibly be a greater gift than that?

Tending to the fire

In this article, I would really like to talk about fire in how it applies to practice and reaches beyond me to shape communities and the globe. At it's very foundation, I think that the question of heat cannot be addressed without looking at the equally important question of how to cool things down. The question of quelling the fire is perhaps even more important, especially globally as we need to figure out ways of cooling things down if we want to continue to thrive on this planet.

I'm getting ahead of myself though. Let me first begin by explaining something very important that I continue to learn through the study of ecology and the philosophies of yoga. Our actions, while they may seem separate actually unravel outward from ourselves like spirals. They affect us on a personal level, extend to our close friends and family, reach beyond to our geographic and chosen communities and in an increasingly globalized world, our actions reach far and wide to other people and ecosystems that we may never see or encounter in our lives.

It is easy to recognize and understand the more direct impacts of what we do in our bodies, family and community but in order for us to thrive, we must hold space in our awareness for all the disparate and challenging effects of what we do that may not appear to be so obvious.

Here, I chose to approach the topic of fire in a very linear way but know that it is best to consider this idea of how our actions have heating or cooling effects more like a web. No place, person, breath, orchid, garbage truck, television set, siberian tigre, banana tree, jelly fish, wooden chair, pair of sunglasses, convertible sports car, child's laugh, machine gun, violin or Beatles song exists on its own... yep, we're all in this together and I, for one, love living on this planet and want to continue to do so for a long time.

The role of fire in yoga practice, as far as I understand it, is simple enough. I aim to burn through or to digest what is no longer needed. Fire is built through movement and breath. Digestion is often spoken about as a fire and I want to cultivate the ability to digest things quickly and efficiently so that my fire burns bright and clean. So that I'm not carrying around anything extra that could weigh me down, I cultivate a healthy dose of fire in practice to help keep me light.

Fire is important. It is also really empowering and exciting to feel the effects of creating my own fire. I love to move my body under my own steam and to recognize my own well of energy and the incredible things it allows me to do. Now, the flip side of this is that I need to learn to cool down, to be still, to reflect, to sit, to lay down, to close my eyes, to exhale, to release and to let go. This is an essential part of a balanced practice (or life!) It is in the reflective and cooling aspects of practice that I can begin to integrate the benefits of having created that fire and to increase the potency of those benefits.

If I keep the fire going non-stop, I may injure my body, I may fry my nervous system and will likely, both literally and figuratively, burn out. When the scale tips in the opposite direction, I might experience depression, weight gain, lethargy and likely some discomfort and anxiety around all those things. What I'm learning through my practice here is that both heat and cool are essential. Balance is key and also, a work in progress where constant tweaking is necessary to continue to work towards balancing the heat and the cool in life.

This brings me to a wider part of the spiral, that of community, friends and family. Working with friends and family is a bit more tricky than a personal practice because it involves other people. It also has the potential of bringing the greatest joys, lessons and healing. One way to consider and relax into healthy relationships and friendships, I've learned, is to know that we will likely experience fire (or sparks, coals or sweat) and ice ( or snow, hail or sleet). This dynamism keeps us alive, aware and can remind me of balance. I want to chose to interact with people in a way that will nurture and enhance everyone involved especially when I remember the web and the potential ripple effects of something as simple as smile versus a frown.

Finally, we come to global action. First, we remember that as part of the whole, actions that benefit us and our communities without harming others are one way we can start to create change. It becomes trickier when we recognize those things we do that very directly affect people and places we can't even see and may not in our lifetime.

On a global scale, the fire is burning out of control. We are burning fuel and other sources of non-renewable energy at a speedy pace while simultaneously destroying the earth's built-in energy regeneration systems such as forests, oceans and rivers. Gross imbalances can be seen in the form of addictions, disease, huge discrepancy between the rich and poor, eating disorders and the list can go on and on.

On a global scale, the action that is currently needed falls squarely in the category of cooling and burning less... With the exception of lighting a fire under our own bums and the ass of our politicians, we need to slow down, to consume less, to consume responsibly, to educate ourselves, to make our living in a way that is non-harming and to figure out how to work with all those things within our minds that make it challenging to do these things.

The practice of yoga has shown me yet another way to continue to think about fire, heat and energy. As I am practicing yoga, I'm choosing to spend my time in ways that don't require anything to be burned other than perhaps a fire in my belly lungs and heart. With each breath, we act. With the gifts and privilege we've been handed in the form of healthy bodies, food to eat, clothes to wear and a bed in which to sleep, we need to put out the fires we have created and restore balance to this planet, our home.