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A Dust Bath for Five Chickens: satisfaction in small things
I’m in Wisconsin, helping my daughter with a small chicken project. Her five chickens needed a bin in the coop to take their dust baths. So we gathered a couple of old vegetable beds and transferred the soil into sheltered boxes where they could scratch, roll, and clean their feathers. Building a dust bath for…
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YOGATECTURE: The Elegant Arc of Change
Originally published in Asana International Yoga Journal on October 2, 2017 Yoga empowers and brings seeds to fruition. From the mat up, yoga-tec-ture is the process of yoga. And the process of yoga is the work of personal transformation formed by the elegance and heritage of an ancient blueprint that molds bodies, minds, and spirits.…
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Team Flame Takes the Field for The Twin Bill
Today is publication day, and I am delighted to share that my essay, “Team Flame,” appears in Issue 24 of The Twin Bill. The Twin Bill is a literary quarterly devoted to baseball writing and art. Each year, the journal releases a special issue on the day of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, bringing together…
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Savasana and the Open Hand: A Practice of Release
When the instructions stop and the body grows still, the restless mind often comes rushing back. In this essay for Asana International Yoga Journal, Gregory Ormson considers Savasana as a practice of release, non-grasping, and the difficult work of opening the hand. My essay, “Savasana and the Open Hand: A Practice of Release,” was published…
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The Immigrant Asana
Originally published in Asana Yoga Magazine, May 2016. From the Archives I wrote this essay for Asana Yoga Magazine ten years ago. Reading it again, I’m reminded that some ideas continue to ask for our attention. The language surrounding immigration has changed, the politics have shifted, but gratitude remains in the same place: one conscious…
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Baseball and Cuisine Share One Necessary Ingredient: NOSTALGIA
Baseball and Nostalgia In 2020, I came across a brand-new literary baseball publication started in New York, The Twin Bill. It was started by Scott Bolohan. Immediately, I was enthralled by an online magazine focused on writing and baseball, two of my favorite subjects. So I submitted a piece, “The Diamond Speaks in Runes,” and…
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Nothing Is Forced into Action Except the Old Boat Motor
At the cabin, stories rise the way ghosts do. Nobody can produce them on demand. They are, like the Dylan lyric about sons and daughters, “beyond our command.” They flash across consciousness, drift back into the trees, return when they are ready. This is why I come again to Big Casey Lake, to the Old-Style…
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He Sang His Ass Off and Pounded Chords on that Big Taylor
Russell Thorburn writes on “Send Dylan to the Country” Ormson rips snow-driven chords hard on his Taylor acoustic, in Gummersound’s Marquette garage where the wood stove is heating up like his vocals. A Dylan Thomas baritone jumps into the fray to describe a dog with a cigarette . . . humor for the pub. A…
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Lightning Bolts and Scars
Lightning Bolts and Stars, a word and music piece by Gregory Ormson, Russell Thorburn, and Darrell Syria, guest on electric guitar. Listen in to this spoken word piece, a precursor to the lyric memoir, Stories Emerge Like Bears, Gregory Ormson’s forthcoming book by Cornerstone Press, UW Stevens Point. Lightning Bolts and Scars, originally published online…
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Yoga’s Curriculum for Self Integration
When I started yoga, I thought it was about people bending into forms that were, at first, perplexing. But yoga moves in its own way, and I had much to learn. Yoga’s curriculum for self integration in OM Yoga Magazine At first, I practiced to feel better. Then I practiced to learn alignment. Then I…
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