Yoga Song was built slowly over the years by breath, movement, roads, rituals, tears, silence, motorcycles, and practice. That practice continues, and with it, my writing at the intersections of motorcycles and yoga, spirituality and secularism, embodiment and intellect, labor and art, contemplative life and burning asphalt.
What began as a personal practice slowly became a body of work that over the years has appeared in more than 20 national and international publications including OM Yoga Magazine, Asana International Yoga Journal, Yoga International, elephant journal, Yogi Times, and many others, reaching more than five million readers worldwide.
Writing about yoga and other subjects, I’ve incorporated insights from my doctorate study on the healing dimensions of ritual and human touch. I received literary honors from Eastern Iowa Review and Indiana Review, and am signed by Cornerstone Press for my lyric memoir; and next week I will receive a contract for my book on public speaking.
My yoga writing has been center stage for 12 years, and I published more than 100 yoga essays exploring transformation through breath, movement, grief, silence, compassion, and presence. During that time, my life changed and so did my literary handle as I became known internationally by “Motorcycling Yogi G.” By that name, I pioneered one of the most unusual intersections in American yoga culture: yoga for motorcycle riders, what I called Yoga and Leather.
I started teaching at Superstition Harley-Davidson in Arizona in 2017, where riders, veterans, laborers, healers, wanderers, and seekers gathered on yoga mats between chrome, leather, engines, and breath.
Practice is the slow work
of becoming more fully human
GAO
Through all of it, I’ve continued writing and called it all “practice.” This practice has not changed; it is still my work to understand what it means to be a true human being in a fractured age. Yoga Song emerged out of that journey.
To me it is not merely a yoga book, but a contemplative body of work about embodiment, healing, grief, rhythm, spirit, community, movement, and the sacred possibilities hidden inside ordinary life.
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The essays in Yoga Song ask:
What does the body remember?
What does breath teach?
How do we heal?
What happens when yoga becomes more than what is understood?
What happens when yoga becomes a practiced song?
This work is about and for readers and practitioners, for all those reading, practicing, breathing, riding, listening, and continuing the journey into the unknown but fully trusting.
What did you notice here? I welcome your thoughts.