I woke this morning to a shock — Sharath, the man who has brought so many of us together in practice and community, is suddenly gone. Oof. It aches. Words feel sparse.

The below was written before I heard the above news, and yet it is interconnected: That this precious life is dear and wildly impermanent, a lesson we learn again and again. We’re not actually born with the physical ability to let go. We develop this motor skill with patience and determination, making space for the emotional ability to strengthen alongside it. My son is teaching me to notice and practice both. Although he is now physically able to release objects from his tiny, Herculean clutch, he still struggles to let go of my hand, the basket, or the table that he’s cleverly using to help him toddle along. I can see the simultaneous faith and fear in his body as he prepares to let go and take his first steps, but instead slides down the nearest surface, messily and clumsily like a thwarted cartoon character.

And still he persists. He is learning each day to put one foot in front of the other, to stand on his own two feet, to keep practicing, trying, stretching his limbs and capacities despite the enormity of the task ahead. He is holding out hope, and learning to let go. Holding, letting go, holding and letting go.

Pema Chödrön shares that:

The word in Tibetan for hope is rewa; the word for fear is dokpa. More commonly, the word re-dok is used, which combines the two. Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other.

I feel this deeply these last days as I move through the layers of losses. I am hoping and fearing; holding and letting go. Rebecca Solnit, too, is keeping me in good heart company:

Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love…There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep walking whether it's sunny or raining.

Let’s keep walking, okay? Even if it’s tentatively toddling, slipping and sliding. Remember, we have each other, the breath in our bodies, and the ground beneath our feet. We can (we will) collectively effervesce despite the heartache and despair.

Below, an invitation to join me at a dreamy house concert with fellow yogi Sara Melson; letting go of practice shoulds; and a simple soup to keep your hands busy and bellies full.

Yours in community,

Erica

My gal Lauren in the UK writes that Ashtanga can feel rigid or intimidating — but it doesn’t have to. Here are five myths to release so you can practice freely.

Remember to eat your roots, and hydrate to stay grounded and present. I recommend lowering the turmeric in this recipe a scoach, and adding oregano, thyme and rosemary for extra flavor. Delish topped with sour cream and Maldon sea salt.

After giving birth and awkwardly learning how to balance a baby, a diaper bag, and a yoga mat, I trudged to a postnatal class with Jane Austin.1 My tiny human was mewling and I wasn’t yet able to tell his hungry cries from his tired cries, much less my own happy tears from sad tears.

Jane offered to hold my infant so I could squeak out a few postures. But more than anything, more than a down dog or a trikonāsana, I needed to pee. “Do you mind?” I asked her. “Not at all, she said. Take your time. In fact, take a lot of time. Have a spa pee.”

If I remember correctly I keeled over on the spot. I had been peeing with a quickness and a fierceness so that I could return to my baby NOW, that I hadn’t even considered I might be able to take my time; to let the stream come naturally; to pull up and zip my pants fully before rushing out the door; to wash my hands thoroughly; to take a breath. In that moment, Jane became my personal patron saint of sacred slowing.

Slowing seems to be the antidote we’re all desperate for, but actually slowing can feel Herculean. In my ethnographic study on śavāsana, Ashtangis almost unilaterally confessed to taking very cursory rest after practice, even though they suspected it to be highly important. Life is calling! We’re movers, and doers, and it is time to GO! But rest is vital; slow is where we find the juice.

And so I offer a few practical suggestions on how to have yourself the equivalent of a spa pee:

• Do one thing at a time. As a totally outlandish, I’ve-definitely-never-done-this example, only pee. Don’t also brush your teeth while you pee. It’s so obvious, and stupidly simple, but really easy to forget. Be here now, wherever here may be.

• Walk in silence. No music, no pods, just a slow, steady, mindful walk.

• Ritualize your day. Ritual practice can be as small as a 1-minute daily meditation, or as infrequent as a biannual solstice ceremony. What matters is that a ritual punctures the monotony, breaking up the rhythm of a day, a season, or a year, and infuses each demarcation with meaning…time stops and spins around that centrifugal moment.

• Write. To yourself, to your ancestors, to your children, to your community, to your dreams, to nonsense. Let it be an unspooling, allowing your thoughts, your feelings, yourself to come undone. Writing stretches time.

• Space out.

• Hang out.

• Read a book. Like, a paper book. Visit your local library. Join a book club. Start one. Gather ‘round the long form.

• Ponder art. Or make it.

• Lay down. As a focal point you might notice how your belly feels when you rest in śavāsana. Really let your whole person drop, relax, and settle. Allow gravity to press its heft on you.2

• Make a meal. Chop vegetables, soak beans, sprinkle herbs or press waffles. Share with a friend or tiny tot, and pair with tea, sunshine, maybe both.

Share Your Own Slowing Tricks

Til next time,

Erica

P.S. San Francisco-based offerings are percolating, keep your eyes peeled here for updates. And if you’re in the Bay, let me know you’re interested.

2

If you have a very stable headstand practice, you might notice how your belly falls and softens when you go upside down and find that perfect balance point. Stay with that sense of equilibrium and steadiness as long as you’re able.

Headings and illustrations for Yogafolk are by Leah Tumerman and Chelsey Dyer.

I’m writing to you from the Republic of Motherhood1 — a shocking and absolutely wild nation. Being “mom” is marked by the highest of highs and the absolute hardest of hards. It is a miraculously meditative, manic experience in presence, devotion,2 and practice. Below are (very) brief illuminations3 from my first messy months in mamaland.4 Send sleep fairies, your own stories from parenthood and practice, or just say hi. I’ve missed you.

Rest when you need to rest. Likewise when you have to eat, poop, move, or be held. These are real needs. Expressing them, and getting them met is important. Vital.

Nine months earthside and my babe is only just starting to recognize his own name. I try to put myself in his super small shoes: what would it be like to live in pure perception? To forget your name, your favorite ice cream, your phone number, your unanswered emails, your overdue bills and settle into your unself?

Without a “fat, relentless ego”5 getting in the way, my son appears totally filled up with awe and wonder. I do my best to live there alongside him.

Every moment is an opportunity for focused attention, and this is a political, moral, and intimate approach to life. Unselfing and humble noticing are intertwined: when we offer our attention fully we “clear our minds of selfish care.”6

Babies are beginners in this world, and one of the first practices they learn is the power of self regulation. My tiny man uses his voice in ways that are so organic, natural and inspiring: he hums himself to sleep, trills his little lips when he’s forced into a situation he’d rather not be in (like the car seat, or the changing table), and finds a way to extend his exhale. This kind of slow, rhythmic breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, and can shift our physiological state from panic to relaxation, our mental state from chaos to calm.7

“Every minute can be a holy, sacred minute…sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness is there.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

It is in the mundane interactions of everyday life, Erving Goffman thought, that “most of the world's work get done.”8 His “microsociology” shows that our seemingly incidental relational experiences are profoundly and philosophically important. There is value in the tiny moments between one another, repeatedly and constantly waking, changing, feeding, gazing, and embracing. And I think this interrelatedness, this cyclical meditation on the monotonous mundane, is a true and complete practice.

Play is life giving: anything and everything is potentially funny, a possible game, and that makes the world a very joyful place.

I love you is one of our most potent collective spells, belonging to all of us and none of us, an “old-hat three-beat intonation,” an “everyday repetition.”9 It is the nearest and most recognizable expression of adoration, of worship, of savagery — and yet it is not enough.

I have never felt more like an interdependent being, entirely reliant on our mutuality. My babe needs me, and I need you: my partner and stepson, our community, alloparents,10 grocers, delivery folks, friends, family, and kin.

The carrot cake came at the perfect moment. I didn’t even know I needed those silver nip cups! The tie-dye romper is everything. That hug was medicine. Our walk saved me. Thank you for sharing your breastmilk. That midnight talk was life-giving. THANK YOU for taking care of me and my family in some of our tenderest of moments. In turn I look forward to caring for you in your moments of need and joy.

The good. The bad. The blowouts. The first giggles. The sleepless nights. The little paws squeezing you tight. The high highs and the hard hards. Everything is impermanent, it all passes away and shape shifts. Stay with it.

Yours in tired body and full heart,

Erica

10

Stephen Porges, The Polyvagal Theory, 2011.

Headings and illustrations for Yogafolk are by Leah Tumerman and Chelsey Dyer.

“It often seems easier to stay in winter, burrowed down into our hibernation nests, away from the glare of the sun. But we are brave, and the new world awaits us, gleaming and green, alive with the beat of wings.”

— Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

Hello Yogafolk —

After a very long, wet, blustery winter, spring made herself heard in Northern California, screaming out excitement in poppies, wisteria, asters, birdsong, and crisp breezes. It’s now, and quite suddenly summer, and I feel like I should be jumping for joy, hopping up and down with my new, expanding self and belly, beaming with the internal light I’m growing, and the external light of our shared sun. But I’m not easily un-creaking, not waking up to the vigor of the warmer, brighter months after both a personal and cyclical winter.

Winter is heavy, and inert; it is all rot and quiescence; it is slowness and heft. Like śavāsana, it comes at the end of a cycle, and it can be hard to pull out of the molasses-like feeling.

But śavāsana isn’t a real death. It is a metaphorical embodiment of an inanimate corpse. In śavāsana, as in winter, we are not biologically dead. Instead, both corpse pose and winter introduce the opposite metaphor of death: living fully, widely awake. Stretching this metaphor a tad — rising from rest is to begin again, with eyes wide open.

Iyengar calls śavāsana “the most difficult of yoga āsanas to perfect.” It feels worth it though, since he adds that afterwards “the sādhaka is then born anew or emancipated” (2013: 233).

To rise from the feigned death of śavāsana, then, is not only to be reborn, but also freed. Death and birth are intertwined, winter inevitably connected to spring and summer.

Embodying the death of winter, completely, allows for a slow re-emergence into the fire seasons. Practicing sleepiness makes the transition into wakefulness a little smoother, rounder, gentler, feasible.

Below, a guided śavāsana practice. I recommend getting into your coziest lying-down pose (a few suggestions here and here), and let yourself rest, restore, relax. As you’re ready, rise rested, renewed, replenished, eager. Or. Just keep resting.

Wishing you the brightest of early summer days,

Erica

“I am going to make an effort to be lazier…I have no duty to dance.”

— Puerto Rican choreographer Nibia Pastrana Santiago

Scarlet the corpse flower (Amorphophallus Titanum) is expected to bloom within the week at San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers.

Corpse flowers only bloom for up to 48 hours once every few years, and when they do, they emit a pungent aroma meant to lure pollinators that are typically attracted to decaying carcasses. Follow along on i/g, or visit and smell Scarlet if you’re in town.

Firstly, a quick update on my last post: THANK YOU. Together we raised enough money to purchase a dozen new mats and an equal set of blocks for the kiddoes in juvenile hall! As an added bonus, we acquired a handful of yoga blankets and eye pillows for them, too 🥳 These extra relaxation tools feel particularly special, because this group is SO into śavāsana…they ask for it by name! The final moments of rest are remarkably quiet, still, and everyone reports feeling calmer afterwards. So thank you from me and the gents. We’re so thankful for you, our yogafolk. Read on for thoughts on the mother, the sea, and the shit.

“It is woman's work, to make life in the midst of possible death, to provide safety in the middle of dangerous waters, spinning something golden from the dullness of the world, like magic, to give up your own life to the sea.”

— Charlotte Runcie, Salt On Your Tongue: Women and the Sea

I am 6 months pregnant, trudging my way through a joyful, messy, and transformative gestational portal. The metamorphosis of body and spirit has me mentally and physically dancing with the archetype of the mother, a template with infinite expressions and possibilities; an archetype that introduces the possibility of mothering as a cultural model, not merely a biological role.

Whether we’ve grown humans in our wombs or not, no matter our gender or biology, we are each, in unique, and important ways, mothers. We all care for, tend to and grow the things that matter to us — communities, practices, careers, gardens, songs, sculptures, and friendships. Mothering as a societal model is a way of living by “maternal values, and motherly work,” Heide Goettner-Abendroth writes.

Angela Garbes elaborates on this idea when she says that “the terrain of mothering is not limited to the people who give birth to children.” Raising kids is “not a private hobby, not an individual duty…it is a social responsibility, one that requires robust community support…mothering is some of the only truly essential work humans do.”

The task of mothering may be essential, but it is also oceanic: deep, vast, mysterious, rhythmic, and filled with salt — tears, amniotic fluid, sweat, and the promise of both purification and preservation. Mothers hold oceans inside of their bodies, even as their seas spill into neighboring reservoirs, rivers, and lakes. Like the water’s edge, the boundaries of motherhood are invisibly drawn, always changing. There is no distinct and singular spot where the sea meets land, where a mother is once again her own. As mothers, we are all intimately and inextricably interconnected to one another, and it is our duty to uphold, celebrate, and commend one another as we go about our work.

“Music, water, magic and the divine are all one, and we have to hope that faith will stop us sinking.”

— Charlotte Runcie, Salt On Your Tongue: Women and the Sea

The Divine Mother is envisioned as Kali or Parvathi, Mary, or Shekhinah. These expressions of the Mother teach us about the ebbs and flows of life — the griefs, and sorrows, as well as the joys. As mothers, we can be fierce; hopeful; chaotic; saintly; murderous; soft; grounded; and sublime all at once. We ride the tides, sit with and nurse boo-boos, hold and set boundaries, aim to meet everyone’s needs with balance and equanimity, and pass along a deep love and appreciation for the world.

Maybe mothering is the collective antidote we need. Below, a few offerings to tend to our individual and collective mothering capacities, innate mother wisdom, and the challenges therein, too.

Humbly yours,

Erica

P.S. I’m turning off paid subscriptions to Yogafolk for now. Posts will be a bit more sporadic for the foreseeable future, as I tend to the tiny merman splish splashing in my womb. Thanks for sticking around.

Sonic pioneer Laurie Anderson leads, in her unique and poignant style, a short interpretation of the Buddhist Mother Meditation.

“The sea is a gradual process of becoming, of widening and ageing and growing into more.”

— Charlotte Runcie, Salt On Your Tongue: Women and the Sea

The sea, like the womb, is saline, fluid, creative, and life-giving. Both are ever-changing spaces, full of transformative potential. They nurture life, and make room for all that it allows to enter. As a symbol of the womb, yoni mudra aids us in tapping into our own power, and that of the ocean’s, too. Pair with a moment or several of quiet meditation and even, steady breathing.

Mothering is both, and. It is joy and it is grief. It is generosity, and it is firm boundaries. It is love, and it is depletion. We are all mothers, and we are all, therefore, worshipped, and subject to being treated like absolute merde.

And so we must mother ourselves lest we find ourselves buried beneath the ever-mounting pile of shit. What does it mean to mother ourselves in this time of chronic catastrophe? To treat ourselves with reassuring, unbridled, generous, unconditional love? My friend Sherene says that consistency is good self-mothering. The key is to continue to show up for yourself, to tend to your daily rituals and micro-practices.

“I am learning how to mother. . . . I am distilling entire moral universes into single lines.” 

― Kate Braverman, Squandering the Blue: Stories

So I ask you, dear mother, in what tiny ways will you mother yourself today, and again tomorrow? How can you tend to your sweet heart, your trustworthy body, and your brilliant mind? Can you lie down? Leave the mess for another time? Cry, rage, commune, howl, laugh, or sing? Take a walk? Stretch your limbs? Go do it. Even for just a moment. And repeat again tomorrow.

Our Mothers Ourselves: Legacies That Shape Us asks ten artists to explore motherhood, and matrilineage through photos, constructed objects, and audio narratives. The exhibit wonders: What does it mean to come from a maternal legacy? What is important to continue passing along? What do we choose to shed?

I have worked in the juvenile justice system for much of my adult life, bringing trauma-informed yoga, meditation, crafting, and writing to incarcerated teenagers. I’m humbled to currently practice beside a group of detained male-identified folks that are consistently eager to explore their bodies, minds and spirits for an hour each week.

I’d love to bring this special group of yogis fresh mats (there are only a few communal mats on the unit), and ideally some very light foam blocks as well. Do you have any (unused, clean) extras lying around your studio or home? I can pick up supplies if you’re local or adjacent to San Francisco. Or perhaps you’re not local, but you’re able to donate some dollars to the gents’ supplies? You can do so via PayPal or Venmo with the note “Mats & Blocks.”

I truly believe that we live in a broken system — the United States locks up more children than any other country in the world! And I wholeheartedly trust that justice begins with each one of us. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr: None are free til all are free. As a liberatory practice, yoga cracks open that possibility. Below, a few resources to get a glimpse of prison life, reform, and alternatives.

Yours,

Erica

If you’ve asked me for a podcast rec, you’ve heard me preach the gospel of Ear Hustle. It’s an incredible pod about the daily realities of life inside prison — shared and produced by those living it. There are also potent stories from the outside, as told by folks post-incarceration.

Robert Sturman photographs yogis behind bars, and the impact yoga has on incarcerated folks’ lives. He has focused in particular in documenting the work of The Prison Yoga Project. Sturman says: “We live in a world where the photograph is a tremendous influential communicator of ideas. The Prison Yoga Project was such a deep, profound body of work I knew that if I did this, if I told their stories through photography then the program would grow through social media. Photographs are power, they’re ideas. When you present an idea at first it can be abstract and sometimes shocking. It can be confusing to people but when they see photographs, they get it because if you see it enough the idea can be heard.” | via Yoga Digest

It’s one thing to educate ourselves about the realities of life, and practice inside prison. It’s another to question the system entirely — a large, and necessary task in this one citizen’s opinion.

Vera is comprised of activists, advocates and researchers who work to transform the criminal legal and immigration systems. They develop just, antiracist solutions so that money doesn’t determine freedom; fewer people are in jails, prisons, and immigration detention; and everyone in the system is treated with dignity.

The website is vast, so if you’re looking for a good place to start, check out Vera’s publication exploring prison practices in Germany and the Netherlands, and in what ways the United States might benefit from similar approaches. The Guardian also shares a less dense read on the subject. Relatedly, there is a possible change in tides at San Quentin, thanks to inspiration from Norway’s approach to incarceration that focuses on preparing people to return to society.

How’s your spirit?

The general vibe I’m sensing is that everyone, myself included, has got the morbs. I’ve found myself in a trance, slipping into goblin mode, and eagerly looking for something solid to grasp to orient myself to the Here. To the Now.

As we yogafolk flow into the March thaw, may we, like Sylvia Plath, be rested, caught up, and human. And in lieu of that, perhaps we can find joy in the mess of it all.

Yours,

Erica

Did Rihanna quiet quit the halftime show? One (male) writer argues yes. And if she did? I am here.for.it. I nominate “mediocrity” as the collective mantra, particularly for all the pregnant people performing on international stages.

“We ecstatically miss her even when she’s there. Even towering high above the literal Super Bowl field, she is holding back; she is chill; she is quite at her leisure.”

— Rob Harvilla, The Ringer

Slime molds are a kind of magic, “entangled in their fluid, nonbinary way of being.” Mysterious creatures, not quite plant, not quite animal, they refuse to conform to our human rules. I’m listening.

“That which seemed dead … had metamorphosed into something unimaginably beautiful.”

— Lucy Jones in Emergence Magazine

MOON LISTS

Prompts for a soupy Q1

Water’s been feeling a bit choppy out there. Taking the start of a new month to reconcile, to come back to something, to touch home base, and all other proverbial cliches. Below are a few prompts for easing into the glimmers of a fresh season. .. And before we begin, we found a bit more linen to print some extra copies of our limited edition Workbook III…

Read more

3 years ago · 7 likes · The Moon Lists

So many of you wrote to me following last week’s post that you resonated with the sentiment — that you too are shedding, unbecoming, and letting go of rugged perfectionism and no holds barred, action-oriented discipline. Which makes all the sense in the world. I believe yoga is simply a microcosm of larger collective happenings. That is, whatever is happening on a grand scale in the world — memes, movements, art, films, scientific discoveries, medical advances, and rhetoric shifts — is reflected and visible in our practices, on the mat, and in our spiritual communities. And vice versa. So that if you were to look at a yoga practice or sangha, you would find the patterns occurring there happening elsewhere in society, too.

“As above, so below,” say the occultists.

Quiet quitting isn’t unique to the Gen Z labor force. Lying flat isn’t special to Chinese rebels. Unbecoming isn’t strictly for philosophers. The need to take śavāsana isn’t confined to yogis.

Below, three cultural artifacts that reflect the current zeitgeist — this simultaneously micro and macro quiet quitting, unbecoming, and transformational urge we’re all feeling into.

I’d love to know where in the world you’ve seen this movement alive, nudging us to embody un-doing?

Leave a comment

Mellowly yours,

Erica

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are also ready to leave the heat, the tapas, the burning for less restrictive, more flowing worlds:

“What you gonna do when you get to the water?

Well, I'll release her

From the bindings of her teachers

What they're hiding there is broke, broke, broke

Like the River Styx, I flow, flow, flow

…

Into the sea, out of fire

All that burning

Into the sea, out of fire

All that burning

Into the sea, out of fire

All that burning

Into the sea, out of fire”

Noah Baumbach’s latest flick is an adaptation from a book with a cult-like following. White Noise is heady, totally absurd, and narratively convoluted, loosely revolving around an “airborne toxic event.” And I can’t stop thinking about it. Particularly: 1) The colors. Oh, the colors. Rich, buzzing, alive, and saturated. 2) The conversations between Don Cheadle (Murray) and Adam Driver (Jack):

“It's comforting to know the supermarket hasn't changed since the toxic event," Murray tells Jack. “In fact, the supermarket has only gotten better. Between the unpackaged meat and the fresh bread, it's like a Persian bazaar. Everything is fine and will continue to be fine as long as the supermarket doesn't slip…It recharges us spiritually. It's a gateway. Look how bright. Look how full of psychic data, waves, and radiation. All the letters and numbers are here, all the colors of the spectrum, all the voices and sounds, all the code words and ceremonial phrases. You just have to know how to decipher it.”

3) The characters’ subtle avoidance. The adults all, in their own ways, want to get off of life’s trajectory, numb out, and bypass the biggest, most difficult questions, while simultaneously leaning right into them — life, death, god, catastrophe, and purpose.

If you’re thinking, “E, this sounds bonkers, and not worth sacrificing two hours of my life,” then you might align with 70% of Rotten Tomatoes’ audience reviewers who ardently disliked this film. In that case, feel free to quiet quit before you even begin. However, I recommend at the very least watching the end-credit dance scene which is a bizarre, whimsical, and captivating grocery-store romp to the tune of LCD Sound System’s New Body Rhumba. And maybe have a lie-down in the produce section.

Sheila Heti’s 2022 novel, Pure Colour, is a lush exploration of what it means to be human in this apocalyptic moment. Throughout the poetic novel we follow the inner world of Mira, who eventually comes to deeply grieve her father’s death. And in some ways, Mira gives up, gently and without fanfare leaving the world to be with her father, which also happens to mean transforming into a leaf. It is a gorgeous, and cosmic read:

“As a leaf, she finally found her right dimensions, and soon enough she adapted to them, as she had never adapted to her dimensions in life…If she had known that she was the size of a leaf, she would not have bothered with those aspirations. She would have done her best to remain small.”

In 2023 I’m aspiring to un-do. To un-become. To release the harmful ways I’ve been socialized and trained to obey and abdicate, and then replicated those patterns. In many ways this has been happening society-wide for a few years now — in work places, yoga and spiritual communities, Hollywood, and in the home folks are recognizing that we can’t keep going as we were.

Philosopher Báyó Akómoláfé defines unbecoming as “a political invitation to unlearn ‘mastery,’ to fall to the Earth, to learn how to commune with soil.” Or in Restorative Yoga teacher Octavia Raheem’s words: “You are learning what is yours and what is not yours. You are shedding.”

How might we embody this shedding?

During the research phase of my dissertation, an interviewee led me to “tang ping,” a sociopolitical slogan and movement in China that translates to “lying flat.” Tang ping represents exhaustion with the status quo, and a refusal to conform to societal pressures. It is somatically expressed by assuming a simple horizontal posture.

“We need to dismantle all our unnecessary…vertical structures…our hierarchies, competitions, skyscrapers, thrones, missiles…we are exhausted from maintaining that [upright] stance. It is time that we lie down.”

— Marco Vassi, Lying Down: The Horizontal Worldview

Philosopher Michel Foucault envisions the body as culturally constructed, a prime player in the power dynamics and social relations of the world. It follows that posture is a bodily technique that conveys socially significant messages.

So while “lying flat” is cheeky, as a metaphor and bodily posture it is powerful. It is related to the term “quiet quitting,” which recently exploded on social media, and sent shockwaves through the labor world. But it isn’t a terribly new concept. It’s a philosophy of doing less than absolutely perfect. Zaid Khan says of quiet quitting: “You're still performing your duties, but you're no longer subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that work has to be your life. The reality is it's not — and your worth as a person is not defined by your labor."

Similarly, your spiritual worth is not defined by your āsana hustle.

The underlying ethos behind the āsana struggle is tapas — heat and discipline. Tapas is said to be purificatory, and alchemizing, transforming our bodies, minds, and spirits. As I understand it, tapas is one of the principal links tying our contemporary practices to ancient ones.

And yet, I think that there is the possibility of being burnt up with too much tapas. Absolutely, and totally dried out. Cooked. As Lea Perfetti notes in a heart-filled Ashtanga Dispatch pod, burnout doesn’t lead to ecstasy or enlightenment. It just leads to burnout.

“Spreading yourself too thin, both physically, mentally and emotionally will catch you…Women, please rest, eat, bask, sing, make love, laugh and play. Save some of you for later. Cherish the women around you, don’t rush your pregnancies, let your body grow, honor your breasts, talk to your womb, rest when you bleed, rest when you can, don’t push your body until it’s dry and brittle. Hold your self each day for a little bit. Tell your daughters, your granddaughters, tell your friends. Love, love, and love your self, because then all those around you will be well too.”

— Lea Perfetti

So instead of pushing, sweating, starving, striving, rushing, breaking, molding, and, shape-shifting, I advocate for “lying flat.” I argue that śavāsana, as the yogic practice of lying flat or quiet quitting, is a critical tactic of dismantling power structures, and of caring for oneself and community. So, friends, lay down. Bring the ethos of śavāsana into every pose. Or…allow the whole of practice to be śavāsana.

Whether we approach practice with more tenderness, and ease, or just push a little less, the fact that we do choose (to show up, to practice, to remain devoted and in reciprocity) is tapas enough. Balancing āsana with life rather than forcing it to be the entirety of life is, I think, part of the spiritual work.

Pranidhi Varshney writes:

“Perhaps the most radical and effective path forward is to be engaged in the process of yoga in real life. To  come to our practice in a way that honors its roots and allows us to evolve…To cultivate a life that is full and to bring yoga into its appropriate place within that life. In this way, the practice of yoga becomes not our primary focus but our support system.”

In case you needed permission: you can quiet quit yoga. You can lie flat. You can integrate practice into your life in ways that are rich and fulfilling. And you can still be good enough. Maybe even enlightened.

Til next time,

Erica

Each week the Rubin museum produces a meditation session inspired by a work of art from their collection. In a session inspired by the Tibetan Wheel of Life, Sharon Salzberg guides us to renew, which she says is “absolutely essential.” The meditation itself begins around 12:30 if you’d like to skip straight to the juice. You can also see upcoming meditations here.

YearCompass is a free booklet that guides you to uncover patterns, and design a future year that you can embody and walk with ease. I loved completing it. Both reflecting back and looking forward brought insights, and tenderness.

Download

“Practice is an essential reset button that we must push many times before we can experience any genuine newness. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we are practicing all the time. When we operate by our habituated patterns, we strengthen certain neural pathways, which makes us, as the saying goes, “set in our ways.” But when we stop using old neural grooves, these pathways actually die off! Practice can literally create new responses and allow rigid ones to show themselves.”

— Father Richard Rohr, The Importance of Practice

Even if this time of year is emotionally care-free for you (please send your therapist’s name and number if so), there is a sense of compacted-ness, and intensity that surrounds the holidays and year’s end. Like we’re trying to squish and squeeze a year’s worth of work and joy into the droplet of time that’s left, and honestly? I just want to share a good meal with friends and lay the eff down.

In that spirit, I’ve collaborated with Sarah Campbell, another Substack yogi, to bring you two recipes from across the globe - one for spring that I crafted for her in Australia, and one for fall (edging winter), that she devised for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere.

Sarah focuses her yoga teaching on the practices of rest and nurturing, and is a calming, reassuring guide in both her recipes, and in her teachings. Below you’ll find her Feed the Yogi Autumn Toast, as well as a link to my Herbaceous Spring Salad.

Yours in nourishment and rest,

Erica

“After our morning yoga sessions, my lovely guests make their way to the veranda of our old family beach house - it's been in my family for generations - for a shared brunch. 

I like to serve wholesome, seasonal food that nourishes body and mind. A lot of the time, my guests are mothers, busy career women or care for their own elderly parents, so to spend a weekend away moving slowly and mindfully, resting and being served nourishing food is just what they desire. This is one of the brunches I served one Autumn yoga weekend. It is another recipe to treat ‘intuitively’. Use another fruit if you don’t have grapes. Peaches and nectarines or pears work well. Use different herbs too - parsley and mint are great options.”

— Sarah Campbell

Feed The Yogi Toast

2.33MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Ingredients:

• A fruit and sourdough, or simple rye bread

• Fresh grapes

• Goats cheese

• Rosemary sprigs

• Chives

• Olive oil to drizzle

• Honey to drizzle

• Lemon to squeeze over

• Sea salt to taste

Process:

1. Slice bread into 1cm thick slices and toast.

2. Spread each slice with goat cheese.

3. Top with a handful of fresh grapes, chopped rosemary and chives.

4. Drizzle with olive oil, honey, a squeeze of lemon juice and a sprinkle of sea salt.

Sarah Campbell yoga

Different ways to rest, and a herbaceous Spring Salad, thanks to Erica from Yogafolk

Artwork by Pamela Jaccarino via Pinterest Hello there, I hope you’re well. I’m sorry it’s been a little in between emails lately, although I’m sure you can relate to the busy feeling this time of year often brings. On that note, I wanted to share the idea of resting in different ways. The festive season can be really fun and joyful, but it’s no secret tha…

Read more

3 years ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Sarah

Herbaceous Spring Salad

35.4KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

My inbox is full. Like, bursting at the goddamn seams full. Overwhelmingly, unbecomingly, lustily full. 

I sit down to write, to journal, to be still, to admire art, to hear my breath, and then another email comes in. With every notification I feel less connected to myself, to my feet on the ground, to spirit. And I realize time and again none of it is very important after all. Not the sales, the newsletters, or the holiday well-wishes from giant corporations. What is important is the pause. The spaces between. The silence.

So I offer you a moment mirroring the one when you step into the studio. (Not your home nook where the dog wanders in looking for snuggles, and the kids tug at you for snacks, or you suddenly you realize the windows need cleaning). But the studio that is your sanctuary. You leave your shoes and phone in the hallway before you enter into a few blessed moments in which you’re neither producing nor consuming. You’re not scrolling, you’re not serving others. You simply are.

If it helps, slip off your shoes now. Put the screens aside. Even if only for 30 seconds.

Breathe. All else can wait. Stay like this for as long as you’re able.

Til next time,

E.

If you missed last week’s note, I recommend having a read-through before carrying on. If you’ve been waiting with bated breath for the practice I promised therein, you’ll find it above.

This is a practice designed for nourishing the body during menstruation, but would also make a wonderful moon day (or aftermath-of-election-day) flow. If…

Read more

• Tonight! 4 November at 16.30 PDT | Rocket 3

• Monday 7 November at 16.30 PST | Rocket 1

• Thursday 10 November at 16.30 PST | Rocket Mixed

In this most witchy of seasons, blood is on my brain.

Blood, much like breath, connects us to past, present, and future generations across time and space. Blood is vivacity, veracity, ancestry, and mortality. And it is, of course, fertility.

As a yogi that bleeds monthly, I’ve been told a lot about what to do with my body in all of its beautiful, bleeding messiness. Above all, I have been taught that when I am menstruating, I must not practice for the first three days of my period. Mostly (but not entirely) I’ve been told this by folks that don’t bleed.

I sense this mandate has quite a bit to do with menstruation taboos in India and around the globe, as well as the cauldron within which yoga was formed — by men, for men.

Sharanya Deepak writes that her aunt recalls being told to avoid menstruating women as if they were ‘untouchable’: “Avalakka dooram….Stay away from her.” Deepak notes that period taboos are commonly associated with Brahmanism, Hinduism’s upper caste, which has strong rituals, beliefs, and ideas about purity and sterility.

These beliefs sometimes translate to restrictions for menstruating people: they must not cook or eat with others, attend puja or visit temple, have sex or eat particular foods, and in some instances, they’re banished to seclusion huts.

Excluding menstruating folk from social life is based in history, tradition, and cultural precedent. And while this may have been relevant and appropriate for the context in which the practices were conceived, are they still relevant? Is there scientific data to support exclusion? Do we bleeding yogafolk need to take a full three days away from āsana or yoga practice?

I’ve been chatting a lot in recent years with friends, colleagues, students, mentors and peers about the seismic shifts happening in yoga culture, practice, and teaching. One of our principal thought practices has been to question authority and authenticity, while still honoring yoga’s roots. A quote my friends Peg and Meg shared recently speaks to the evolutionary nature of practice, whether that’s a yoga practice, or a knitting routine:

“Tradition is fluid. It has a point of origin, but often this point is unknown and we can only trace it back to one of the bends in the stream where it can be so different from where it first began.”

— Knit British

With these bends in the stream of knowledge in mind, we can keep our limbs and spirits attuned to tradition, acknowledge the patriarchal history of menstruation taboo, and arm ourselves with the agency within our own bodies to listen, learn, and adapt. Knowing that we have the capacity to forge new pathways, what might a period practice look like?

If you bleed: Remember that you are your own laboratory. Experiment with what works and what doesn’t.

For me, there is no doubt an energetically exhausting component to bleeding. But, studies have shown that physical activity can alleviate cramping, as well as symptoms associated with PMS like bloating. And of course, exercise causes a release of the happy-hormone, serotonin.

So instead of a full-force Ashtanga practice when I’m bleeding, I find that gentle āsana sequences, meditations, and breathwork soothe and ground me. Walks, long śavāsana practices, and legs-up-the-wall pose are great, too.

I also deeply appreciate my kinship with other bleeding folks. I learn so much from shared experiences and perspectives, or as Dori Midnight says, when I recognize the “invisible cloak of interdependence.” I’d love to know, what is your period practice?

Leave a comment

If you don’t bleed: Listen. Listen to your students, friends, lovers, parents, siblings, and companions who do, or have bled, and learn from them.

Perhaps notice the rhythms and cycles within your body. What shifts occur throughout the month and the year? How does your own body change with moon phases, seasonal changes, or other rhythmic cycles? How does your experience of practice shift during these times?

As always, thanks for being here. Below, a few related links.

Until next time,

   Erica

My friend and fellow bleeding yogi Ashley turned me on to Shadow Yoga teacher Emma Balnaves’ work. Emma advises that supported, seated and supine poses should be taken during menstruation. I appreciate, recommend and personally follow some (but not all) of her guidelines on yoga for women at various phases of life.

There are a LOT of opinions on female-bodied folk, but not a lot of data. Deborah Copaken is an author, photographer, and TV producer who shares “the unvarnished, naked truth about living, working, loving, moving, and surviving in a woman’s body, primarily, but also frequently a human body, too, whether male or nonbinary.” She publishes stories (like this one about preventing UTIs) that are shirked by major news publications. Deborah again: “FFS women exist. And our specific physiology, needs, and psychology deserve proper study and reporting, with a frequent dash of humor to keep us all sane.”

Ladyparts

No One is Studying our Ladyparts

This is just a short and rage-filled rant alerting you to a recent study about the gaping and shameful knowledge gap in women’s health: “Early Discontinuation, Results Reporting, and Publication of Gynecology Clinical Trials From 2007 to 2020,” which was published in the April, 2022 issue of…

Read more

4 years ago · 9 likes · 10 comments · Deborah Copaken

Was your period, um, off, after taking the Covid shot? I am in full support of vaccines, science, and public health policy. Which is why I think it’s important that we understand the implications of what we put in our bodies. Dr. Jen Gunter reports that the European Medicines Agency just recommended that heavy menstrual bleeding be listed as a side effect of two COVID-19 vaccines, Comirnaty (Pfizer-BioNTech) and Spikevax (Moderna).

The Vajenda

Heavy menstrual bleeding and COVID-19 vaccines

Getty Images The Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) of the European Medicines Agency just recommended that heavy menstrual bleeding be listed as a side effect of two the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, Comirnaty (Pfizer-BioNTech) and Spikevax (Moderna). The PRAC said this is based on review of the “available data, including cases reported during …

Read more

3 years ago · 8 likes · Dr. Jen Gunter

I transcribed a LOT of interviews this summer as I worked steadily toward completing my Master’s degree. I employed the help of AI for the first pass, which decently sketched the gist of the conversation. But if the app encountered Sanskrit, or if there was even a skosh of background noise, the machine glitched and couldn’t quite make sense of the dialogue. So after the first mechanic pass, I would sit and listen to the interview in its entirety, manually adjusting the bot’s errors as I plodded along.

One of the consistent words the transcription tool tripped on was, “Namaste.” Without fail, “Namaste” became “No Mistake.” I had to readjust this so-called error time and time again.

Namaste is a typical greeting amongst Hindi-speakers, typically translated in yogi parlance as: “the light in me bows to the light in you,” or, “I honor the divinity in you.”

“Namaste” has been targeted in recent years (here, here, here, and here) for being appropriated and misused by white folks in the commodified yoga scene. Rightfully so. I aim to use it with care and sanctity, as a contextually appropriate greeting, or if it’s said to me, I volley back, like a call-and-response. Because words are everything. They’re how we shape worlds, understand each other, make meaning and create purpose. They’re like spells when uttered with reverence.

The linguistic AI error vibrates something in my heart and gut when I say it out loud: “No Mistake, No Mistake.” I see the way the words rewire people’s neurons and reroute their blood flow when I share the story. So I take pause and honor the intelligence within the glitch, even if it’s artificial.

I realize that when we greet each other, we’re saying “heyo” to the tenderest parts of one another. To the parts that are flawed, messy, inconsistent, hurt, anxious, wounded, scared, and angry. We’re also whispering “hi-ho” to the most joyful, celebratory, hopeful, idealistic, loving, empathic, compassionate bits, too.

To honor someone in all their light and their dark is to give ourselves that same grace. It is to acknowledge human imperfection. And human imperfection permeates life. This was felt heavily during my time in Turkey, where I journeyed with an inspiring group of practitioners these last weeks. It was my first experience leading an international retreat, and suffice to say there were some, err, bumps along the road. The learnings were numerous and mistakes were made. Well, not mistakes, because, “No mistake.” In the end, the journey served as excellent training ground for our yoga: for learning to listen to our needs, to each other, and to the environment of which we’re a part, and here’s the important bit — learning to adapt accordingly.

We practiced in the largest city in Europe where the five-times-daily call to Muslim prayer reminded us to sit in awe and reverence; we traveled to the seaside where we took shelter on a pomegranate farm and bathed in the (nearly full) moonlight; and we explored million-year-old rock caves in the mountains. We learned to trust ourselves and each other: our adaptability, and strength, but also our softness and our grace. In the end, perceived mistakes were really inflection points. Moments to listen, learn, and grow.

There are no mistakes in life, in yoga, in practice, in rhythm, in settling into relationship and in becoming. It’s all curiosity, trying, failing, and trying again. Or, “fail, fail again, fail better” as Pema says.

Below, a few thoughts on leaving room for imperfection.

No Mistake, No Mistake,

Erica

In technological terms, a “glitch,” is thought to be a mistake — a bug in the system. Legacy Russell argues that the glitch is actually liberating, the fissure creating a glimpse into alternative pathways. She believes the glitch defies binaries, and breaks down limitations in our understanding of gender, race and sexuality:

“As glitch feminists…we are putting a wrench into the machinic gears of gender, striking against its economy, immersing ourselves inside of brokenness, inside of the break.”

— Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism

Perhaps we need to acknowledge our brokenness in order to heal ourselves and our planet:

“When the teacup breaks, we see how that particular tea was never for us, leaving us the holy lessons of mindfulness, intention, deeper presence. Our temporary and cyclical work is to notice what is broken, clean up the dangerous fragments of the past, and let them go—or remake them into something beautiful, and then begin again.”

— adrienne maree brown, Breaking is Part of Healing

Obsessed with perfection, a copy editor tangoes with the pros and cons of rooting out errors everywhere he goes. He aspires to embrace flaws the way Navajo do, but can’t quite come to terms with flaws:

“I’m occasionally asked whether I can make my way through the world without shivering under the constant bombardment of typos. When I’m not on the clock, the answer is: mostly. A restaurant sign advertising a “pre-fix” menu will stop me in my tracks (I won’t eat there) … ‘I think it must hurt sometimes to live in your brain,’ my husband has said on occasion, not unkindly. But, as he also notes, in a kind of nursery rhyme mantra, ‘Your strengths are your weaknesses, your weaknesses are your strengths.’”

— Benjamin Dreyer, My Life in Error

And, like all endings, the changing of a season precipitates transformation. Time moves differently, and light changes its wavelength, too. As we move from summer to fall, from fire energy to air, we practice both a letting go of what was, and an opening to what is. Below, a few micro-rituals for honoring the transition.

In balance and change,

Erica

Next week marks the Jewish New Year, and I love the tradition of eating apples dipped in honey as spellwork for a sweet new year.

I also like to brew a cuppa cinnamon apple tea, and drink in the protection and wisdom of fall’s winds —

Grate 1/2 inch piece of ginger (more if you like extra kick). Place the ginger and 1 cinnamon stick in a pot. Cover with 3 cups of water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, simmer for 7 minutes. Meanwhile, chop or grate 1 sweet apple. Add the apple to the brew, and simmer for another 2 minutes. Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and wait 5 minutes. Strain, sweeten to your liking, add lemon juice if it suits you, put on some cozy socks, and sip away.

Ginger Snaps

1.24MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

These cookies are super simple to make, I pinky promise (I’m a terribly impatient baker and wouldn’t do you dirty). Plus they’re vegan, gluten-free and frikkin’ delicious. I don’t give amounts for the spices - a sprinkle will do, as will a full teaspoon. You know your taste buds best. Pair with chai or apple tea.

We begin every practice with sun salutations. And we close the cycle of practice with śavāsana, or rest. What if we (gasp) skipped right to rest? Teachers wiser than me have proposed that embodying śavāsana fully prepares us to better face endings off the mat: we wake up rested, present, and fully alive.

The best part? It’s so simple. Set a timer - 3 minutes is great. 20 minutes is super. Lie down on the mat (or take a comfortable seat), close your eyes if it feels safe, cover up to stay warm, and lay (or sit) quiet and still-ish until the timer dings. Add music, props and candles as desired and needed.

Barbara Ehrenreich is one of my intellectual heroes known for deconstructing and reframing age-old cultural myths. She passed away at the beginning of the month, and I keep coming back to her wisdom about the ultimate ending:

“You can think of death bitterly or with resignation, as a tragic interruption of your life, and take every possible measure to postpone it. Or, more realistically, you can think of life as an interruption of an eternity of personal nonexistence, and seize it as a brief opportunity to observe and interact with the living, ever-surprising world around us.”

In Buddhism, contemplating one’s own death (maraṇsati) is a key tool for awakening. If that feels morose and out of reach, I find that even a few moments honoring deceased loved ones, inspirations, and idols resources me to navigate transitions with more ease and tenderness.

Join the Journey

Hi Yogafolk,

When you’ve grown up in the Bay Area like I (mostly) have, the fog forms your cellular structure, slowly and softly molding your consciousness, mood, attitude, and creative capacities.

San Franciscans have a nickname for the fog, affectionately calling it Karl. But we say it with the same intonation and smirk with which we call our siblings adoring and annoying names like ah-DUMB, or Lansi-poo. Oh, Karl.

One summer when I was an undergrad at UC Berkeley, I went on a 6-week dig to fulfill the archaeology requirement of my Anthropology degree. My classmates and I journeyed south to Pinnacles National Monument which lies inland near Gilroy, California. Pinnacles doesn’t have the protective marine layer like the Bay. Instead, it’s known for boulders, rattlesnakes, and 108° F days. That summer was the first time I realized the fog had seeped into my bones and being.

I craved the fog. Dreamt about it. Back home I was accustomed to waking up slowly in the cool, crisp mist. You see, Karl allows for a slowness. An easy, dreamy start. In the arid landscape of Pinnacles, the laser-beam sun-rays demanded that I exit my sweltering tent early lest I roast. And as I tumbled out of my polyester grotto at dawn I could already smell the ground burning. There was no mellow roll, no steady start. Just up and at ‘em. Time to put on snake chaps, boots, and a very wide brimmed hat. Without the fog to accompany me, I was a bit disoriented.

In an article about the fate of the Bay Area fog in a changing climate, John Branch writes:

"Fog is a companion, part of the rhythm of summertime, flitting in and out of lives like a family member.”

The fog really does feel like part of the family, synonymous with home. It appears each morning, before (usually) disappearing for a few brief hours, only to reappear again in the evening. Karl’s presence is as certain as the passage of time. It’s so notably chilly and foggy in San Francisco that the city is considering a new motto to attract tourists in this warming world: Come Cool Down.

I giggle when I see trail reviews like this one for a local hike: “It’s windy and foggy.” Well, yes! Welcome to San Francisco! Do I bitch and moan about it when I’m here? I sure do. But to complain of the weather feels resonant of Subpar Park Reviews: The Grand Canyon? “A hole. A very, very large hole.” Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore? “All the points of interest are rocks.”

Keith Basso’s 1996 book, Wisdom Sits in Places, asserts that there as an inseparability between people’s lives and the places in which they live them. That there is an inter-animation between the two. The inter-animation between people and the fog is palpable in the Bay. The fog impacts our desires, attire, imaginations, senses of self, other, and possibility. I imagine that it inflects the ways in which we practice, and the excuses we make for staying in bed a few moments longer. Karl’s tendrils bind us human folk, but it also connects us to the sea, the redwoods, the vineyards, and the critters that depend on the mist for survival.

The more we notice what shapes us, influencing how we think, feel and act, the more we come to see that others are also shaped by outside forces, often outside of their control. I am inseparable from a fog consciousness. Perhaps you and your consciousness are shaped by kangaroos, or coriander, or cork trees or Kilimanjaro. Our environments make us. And we in turn make meaning, and form cultures. Knowing this might make for a more empathetic world. Below, a few links to the ways in which rituals, recreation, and cinema are transformed by the specific place in which they play out. What are the places and forces that shape you?

Leave a comment

Karl on my mind,

Erica

To live in England is to live in a monarchy. Technically speaking. And so when the Queen passed there were protocols to be followed. Rituals to be carried out. And bees that needed to be told.

“Telling the Bees” is a medieval custom of notifying the winged insects of a death in the family, so that they too can share in the filial mourning. Each hive is told individually by a friend, keeper, or loved one who knocks, and then whispers the sad news, before draping the hive in black. In some cultures, bees are meant to be informed of happy occasions too, and in the instance of a wedding, are offered a piece of nuptial cake.

There’s something lovely about being able to share our sorrows & joys with non-human kin, and to feel that they empathize. Bees are crucial to our ecosystem: if they were to go, we would all go. So perhaps keeping them abreast of human goings-on is a ritualistic practice of keeping our own spirits and hopes afloat. I romantically imagine that it brings us closer to ourselves and our fragile world.

Illustrator and graphic novelist Leanne Shapton spent a day at Sunset Park Pool, a public swimming spot in Brooklyn. I love her quirky field notes, and the portrait they paint of the life aquatic:

12:45 p.m. Sixty-one swimmers, three in bikinis and four in burkinis. A sign states what is allowed: Towels. Books/magazines. Not allowed: Street clothes. Flotation devices. Newspapers. Food. Electronics. Glass.

5:00 p.m. Clouds roll in and the sky is dark mauve behind the treetops. Eighty-nine people in the pool. A teen-ager does a handstand. Two friends link elbows and fall backward into the water.

Every four years, in a small clearing in the Greek Peloponnese, there is an experimental film festival that seeks to cure our contemporary woes. Avant-garde filmmaker Gregory Markopoulos envisioned the gathering as a sort of cinematic Bayreuth in his ancestral backyard, and he spent his life preparing the magnum opus he would show at Temenos: an 80-hour piece called Eniaios. Though he never saw it projected, Markopoulos perceived the film as a balm, the combination of cinema and space a salve for our media-saturated world. | Spike Art Magazine

Have I told you lately how happy I am that you’re here? Well I am.

There are only a handful of days before I submit my Master’s dissertation on śavāsana and I’m beginning to look a lot like a stray cat trapped in Nathan Fielder’s computer harness. My hair is unwashed and unkempt, my manners are feral at best, and I’m awful quick to agitate. The only effective balm is exactly what I’m writing about so feverishly — lying down. Even for just a few minutes. It’s like a whole-being reboot. But I’m not reinventing the wheel, am I?

In 1891 Annie Payson Call penned Power Through Repose, a short manual on relaxation. She includes what could easily be a present-day meditation script:

“We must lie flat on our backs, and try to give our whole weight to the floor…use your imagination to the full extent of its power, and think the whole machine heavy; wonder how the floor can hold such a weight. Begin then to take a deep breath. Inhale through the nose quietly and easily…As the air leaves your  lungs, try to let your body rest back  on the floor more heavily, as a  rubber bag would if the air were allowed to escape from it. Repeat this breathing exercise several  times; then inhale and exhale rhythmically, with breaths long enough to give about six to a minute, for ten times, increasing the number  every day until you reach fifty.”

The title of Annie’s book was repurposed by Genevieve Stebbins who writes in 1892 that:

“Relaxation means recuperating dynamic power through repose.”

Annie and Genevieve lived and taught in a sociocultural landscape that envisioned women as fragile. This was, of course, owing to the stormy and easily overwhelmed female reproductive system. The 19th century woman was encouraged to avoid any activity that might threaten her sensitive constitution.

Women’s wellness then, although it championed liberation, still required an appropriate femininity and grace. This desperation for freedom wefts and weaves through Annie’s writing, but so too does her desire to stay within neatly defined prim and proper lanes. Annie also strives for a relaxation that doesn’t question larger, systemic and institutional stresses. She encourages the women she treats to find personal contentedness and relaxation, even in the face of abhorrent factory conditions. In other words, she’s advocating for more efficient workers, rather than seeking external change.

It’s a flawed text, and yet it’s absolutely relevant. In fact I think we still struggle with the same paradoxes. Below you’ll find more restful inspiration, as well as a piece by my friend Pranidhi Varshney on cultural appropriation in yoga.

Fatigued, but (em)powered through repose,

Erica

In four short vignettes, Lizzie Lasater and I chat about the social life of śavāsana. We talk about the textual history of the pose, its subversive nature, and practical ways to find more stillness in the day. You can watch them all on Lizzie’s well-resourced YouTube channel. And if you have a burning question on rest, please send it along. For every question you ask that I use in a Q+A, I’ll upgrade your subscription to paid for 3 months. Deal?

Artist Raquel Meseguer Zafe turns the simple act of lying down into a performance piece, challenging etiquette and refashioning shame as an adventure. She says:

“I experience chronic pain all day every day and that means I need to lie down. A lot…I lie down in trains, in galleries, on benches…it was a lightbulb moment to realize that I am able, but I am also disabled by a built environment and vertical culture that is simply not designed for me.”

Her call to lie down in public spaces is “an invitation to pause. To rest. To listen.” | BBC

Adapted from Key Points on How to Rest Well by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang:

1. Make space for rest. Set aside time for rest and build it into your schedule.

2. Set boundaries. It might be helpful to create a container for checking email or social, like limiting your “office hours” to specific chunks; remember that not every text needs an immediate response; take regular breaks from the screen.

3. Rest is a skill. Like anything, it takes practice.

4. Practice play. We tend to think of rest as separate from activity. But there’s a great deal of joy and restfulness to be found in extracurriculars. Swimming, hiking, climbing, music-making, knitting, cooking…make it playful.

5. Rest in community. Whether it’s collective rest, public rest, or yogic rest. We need support as we build better habits, rituals, and gatherings around rest.

And lastly, as Annie Payson Call wrote in 1891: “It is quite possible to make so desperate an effort to relax, that more harm than good is done.” Instead of seeing rest as yet another task, another yardstick by which to measure failure, be gentle with yourself. Go slow. Keep a light heart.

“In our quest to practice or teach yoga ‘the right way,’ many of us turn the yogic arts into a commodity that must be consumed and perfected through books, training, retreats, and endless online discussion.

As an alternative, I wonder if it would be more beneficial for those of us who are leaders in the yoga space to encourage practitioners to simply practice the way Indians do—as a lighthearted part of everyday life.”

— Pranidhi Varshney on reframing cultural appropriation in the yoga space

Join Me

See You There

Listening is actually really, really hard.

Even when we’re supposedly listening to others, we’re usually still thinking about ourselves — we’re wondering what we’ll say in response, if our hair is out of place, or if we remembered to call our mother (call her just in case). And though we might be shabby listeners in conversation with others, we’re often worse at listening to ourselves. Our bodies tell us they’re tired, and we insist on watching another episode of Black Bird. We sense we’re tired, but we slurp coffee instead of lying down. We override hunger cues as we strive for impossible beauty ideals. We have gut instincts that sound woo, and so we neglect our intuition.

How do we learn to listen, not only to others, but to ourselves? Anne Lamott writes:

“You get your confidence and intuition back by trusting yourself, by being militantly on your own side…when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind…So try to calm down, get quiet, breathe, and listen…Train yourself to hear that small inner voice.”

— Bird by Bird

As I type this note, I am considering the ways in which I fail to listen. To be wholeheartedly and whole-beingly open to input. So I pause. I look inward and ask: what is one thing I feel in my own body and heart right now? Slowly slowly, I’m training myself to hear with more acuity and compassion. I think the most crucial bit in listening is that we must be willing to change based on what we hear, to redirect and act differently than we would have, based on the new information. Otherwise we’re just spinning our wheels. Didier Fassin says of ethnography that it both “illuminates the unknown,” and “interrogates the obvious.” I think that listening is a bit like this too. Below, a few practices for cultivating inner knowing.

Ears to the ground,

Erica

In a treatise on “the revolutionary potential of taking back our attention,” Jenny Odell argues for a politics of refusal. Her book, How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, is a blueprint for a more intentional life that rejects the capitalist definition of productivity. It’s activism masquerading as self-help. “I am less interested in a mass exodus from Facebook and Twitter,” Odell writes, “than I am in a mass movement of attention: what happens when people regain control over their attention and begin to direct it again, together?” | California Magazine

What if laughter is the key to listening? “There is hard science behind this. Laughter causes the release of oxytocin—and a decrease in stress hormones. It sparks trust. (Even the expectation of laughter can decrease adrenaline by 70%, researchers have found.) Humor literally is a drug, boosting trust, creativity and flexibility (all of which characterize ‘good conflict’ as opposed to ‘high conflict’).” | Unraveled

Sleep has a lot to teach us about ourselves and others. Rubin Naiman writes: “Mythic perspectives suggest that there is something in the deep waters of sleep worth accessing, and invite us to personally investigate it. Metaphorically, they encourage us to practice our descent into the waters of sleep with our third eye open.”

Mary Richard’s guided Yoga Nidra is just such an invitation into the depths (it’s embedded in Lizzie Lasater’s newsletter which is worth subscribing to and exploring the archives for all things rest). In this session Mary guides us toward a regenerative, all-knowing kind of stillness.

Poetry requires a different kind of listening. In my experience, it requires dropping pre-conceived notions of grammar and language, of temporal reality, and of linear progress. It requires shedding a little bit of me, so as to better live inside the contours, textures, and resonance of the words. My friends Pam Lozoff and Zara Drapkin, both therapists, just released a multimedia zine that expresses the different ways we inhabit a body in pain. It’s lush, scintillating, and makes my whole being want to listen closer. | EARTH/bodies

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

"Words woven into stories
passed on through generations
generating new threads — 
braided here, frayed there 
spoken through lines in your hands
when they meet mine, 
and laugh lines when a word lands
at just the right moment that it stirs 
from deep in the belly
a laugh that rubs balm on the aching
Soul, that has born each story
passed on, each thread woven
into the next, each frayed edge..."

Sign Me Up

Dear Yogafolk —

This week’s edition is a q+a — two questions asked by a fellow practice person, followed by my thoughts and responses. These questions feel particularly resonant because each of us, in our own way, is grappling with the swarm of changes the pandemic wrought. From the loss of physical practice spaces and sangha, to changes in our individual body shapes, to shifts in the contours of family and work life, to a heartache that weighs on us each time we ambitiously hope to raise our arms overhead. All of us are renegotiating our worlds, and therefore, practice. Remember to go slow, and breathe.

Thanks for being here,

Erica

P.S. Most of what I share is free, but there are occasional perks for upping your subscription. If a paid subscription is out of reach just send me an email and I’ll set it up, no questions asked.

Q1: What is the purpose and goal of Prasārita Pādottānāsana physically? I’ve always scooted my feet super far away from each other so that my head could reach the ground, but I’m wondering if the ideal physical shape is to be bent far enough forward that my head touches the ground without having my feet so far apart? And if my body can’t do it, if it’s best to keep my feet closer and my head off the ground with super strong, engaged legs? 

Read more

I’m nearing the close of two years of graduate study, the culmination of which will be 11,000 words on śavāsana, the practice of yogic rest. As I hone in on a single posture’s history, evolution, role and goal in practice, I feel my own consciousness necessarily narrowing to a pinhole focus. But it is said that for every pose there is a counter pose; for every exhale there is an inhale. And even as my vision contracts, I simultaneously feel it widening: the more I zoom in to a single fractal, the more I see fractals replicating to create a larger, magnificent whole.

The below readings and attitudes are keeping me sane and steady as I hold both the micro and the macro in my palms. I hope you find them reassuring, too.

From the research depths,

Erica

In their perpetual brilliance, adrienne maree brown reflects: “For me, working with an embodiment framework through a somatic lens has most helped me feel healing, rather than just think about healing. I feel the presence of my healing work when what I feel within is totally aligned with what I am expressing and practicing externally, socially. I know I am in healing dynamics with others when I can fully be myself, without feeling pressure to wound myself with contortion, dishonesty, or overextension. How do you know when you feel healing in yourself, and in your relationships?” | Yes Magazine

This past winter I was agonizing over yet another term paper. I was striving for a perfect, articulate, meaningful, and original piece while straddling two continents, and staring down the Omicron wave. I was complaining to a colleague that I couldn’t seem to get the words quite right, and she responded: “What if it isn’t perfect? What if it’s good enough?” Mind blown, I turned in my paper and I haven’t stopped asking: “but is it good enough?”

Perfectionism “makes for a thin life, lived for what it isn’t rather than what it is.”

— Moya Sarner in The Perfectionism Trap

“Seasons and the natural rhythms of bees determine much of Ava Roth’s practice, which hinges on collaborating with the fuzzy pollinators. The Ontario-based artist stitches elaborate embroideries with beads and intricate thread-based motifs that, once her contribution is complete, she turns over to her insect counterparts. The critters then finish the mixed-media pieces by embedding them in golden, hexagonal honeycomb.” | Colossal

“Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places.”

— Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

Learn More + Register