Gregory Ormson

Page sharing events and writing on yoga, motorcycling, and music from Gregory Ormson (MotorCyclingYogiG)

Gregory Ormson writes, rides his Harley-Davidson, plays guitar, and teaches yoga for bikers at Superstition Harley Davidson. He lives in Arizona. In July, he was awarded the Eastern Iowa Review / Port Yonder Press Issue 3 long form lyric essay award for 2017.

What others say about Ormson’s nonfiction writing:

“These essays show us the soul of a father, a woodsman, and companionable philosopher shaped by beauty and grace . . . it is wise, lyrical, reverential, and above all wild.”
–Jonathon Johnson Ph.D., professor at the Inland Northwest Center for Writers, the MFA program at Eastern Washington University. Author of Mastodon, 80% Complete, Hannah and the Mountain: Notes toward a Wilderness Fatherhood, and others.

As a fellow midwesterner who has, like the author, lived in many places outside the region, Gregory Ormson’s essay, Midwest Intimations, rang true. From the typical Midwestern reticence to our love/hate relationship with winter, I found myself, as I read, loving even more, the place I chose to return to, the place I’ll always call home, no matter where I live. As Ormson said so eloquently, “I hang my hat on these anchors: a deer in the woods, the dragonfly hatch in May, and the startling retort of hardwoods in frigid February.” Ormson reminds readers what it’s like to be a Midwesterner and how region helps shape us into who we are and who we will become. (Kelly Garriott Waite, contributor to Eastern Iowa Review, Issue 3, summer 2017, Honoring the Lyric Essay.

“He’s working his best vital swirls when he’s taking risks or defining spirit quests: we follow his voice as naturally as ‘lizard, spider, dragonfly and sun.”
–Russell Thorburn M.F.A. Wayne State University, author of Approximate Desire, Father Tell me I Have Not Aged, and more.

“Like the tangled roots of trees, his words reveal visible and invisible sensory connections: the accommodating heartbeats of a drum circle, the thirsty tap of weasel claws which reverberate up to the moon, the archetypical pleasure of a warm fire on a cold night.”
–Kathleen Heidmann, M.A. Northern Michigan University, President, Save the Wild U.P.

“The common earthly elements of seasons and land and water present almost secular liturgies and litanies of heartbreak and loss . . . and tamed hope amidst a jaded world . . . they reveal a ‘dimension of depth’ and ‘ecstatic reason.’
–Bob Ahern, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Psychology and Social Work The Ohio State University.

Recent Posts

Inversion

Yoga’s inward move is the great inversion of energy and attention. This inversion of heart is fully accessible to every yogi from the first timer to the decades-long yoga practitioner. It appears as if nothing is going on and therefore not as impressive to the outside world as inversions like a hand stand; but the move from without to within is a highway to the heart, the compass for every decision, and the sacred center of every temple.

We’ve been on Earth for a while, both corporately and individually, and we know falling and rising. Aware of failure and success in life, in teaching, and in yoga, we listen when a guide addresses us with the courage to be.

Following my guide, I give myself to the moment and find my lifting gaze opens a new potential both fierce and divine. I lift my spine from behind my head and imagine never moving. The crown of my head rises up and into an unseen sacred net of prana. I stand rooted as if I am a monument. I follow for several near-transcendent seconds where I become a living, breathing stone. Then I exhale to feel my shoulders slump setting myself at ease.

I go back with heightened awareness to calm breath. I stop traveling and arrive where my teacher’s soft words land in my ear. Her question is not judgment. It teaches awareness, “Where is your breath?” She says, “Let it go, it’s in the past.” In that yoga moment, I’m a thirsty man who’s been given water. It was all I asked of the day.

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TRANSFORMNG THE EMOTIONAL BODY

Louie Netz, former director for Harley Davidson’s Styling and Graphics Department once said, “Form and function both report to emotion.”

It’s likely when observing a yoga pose, or the stylish symmetry of a Harley Davidson cutting a sharp curve, to believe motorcycles are about speeding through turns and yoga about perfectly aligned asanas, and it’s true that a yogi on the mat or Harley-Davidson on the highway both perform their function at a high degree and garner attention, but the brilliance of yoga – and a great motorcycle – is its move from form to function and ultimately to emotion.

Like many newcomers, when I started yoga, I thought it was about what I saw; and I noticed people bending into forms that were – at first – perplexing. I also thought it was about what I heard yoga could do for my injured back. I believed if yoga could heal my injuries I would feel better and that would be all I could expect.

My yoga evolution was gradual; I practiced to feel better, then to learn good alignment, and finally to accomplish more asanas. As a dedicated student, I paid attention to words from my teachers as they led me to correct placement of my feet and hands. I followed their instructions which led me through breathing techniques and transitions.

But right away, I sensed there was something happening well beyond what was taking place in my physical experience on the mat.

I didn’t know it, but I was on my way to connect, or yoke deeply to my full self, and at the same time, touch something much broader and deeper than just me.… read more...

ACOLYTE OF TRANSFORMATION: Fire and Medicine Deeply Interfused

“And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.”

   This sense of something “far more deeply interfused,” of which Wordsworth wrote, surrounds us; yet existing within the deep heart’s core there’s a divinity which shapes our minds and sets us to ponder with wonder a sinking sun or rising tide.
   When we are focused on ourselves, the mind can pick us apart. This self-criticism distracts us from experiencing the sublime sense Wordsworth knew and wrote of when describing sun, ocean, air, sky, mind, motion, spirit, and the Spirit which impels objects and subjects of thought.
   Yoga’s manifold program is designed to heal the human in all thought and motion. When the yogi steps onto their mat in true presence the fire of yoga is applied to their minds and bodies as medicine.
   And what is the goal of fire? Fire wants to burn. In the case of yoga, fire burns up the rubbish that is unnecessary and unhelpful.
   What is the goal of medicine? Medicine wants to cure. In the case of yoga, entering into true presence provides more than we can imagine.
   Aiming for a presence to know, we do our work and kindle the inner fire. We pay attention to our constant, deliberate movement, and pray for an endowment of constancy:
   • Let me be truly present in my asana
   • Let me be truly present in my decisions
   • Let me be truly present in my mediations
   • Let me be truly present in my service
   • Let me be truly present in my emotions
   “Crying out loud and weeping are great resources,” Rumi penned in a classic truth from the 13th Century.
… read more...

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