Gregory Ormson

Writer, musician, yoga-loving motorcyclist.

A Short Clip of Fantuzzi’s UNIVERSAL LOVER

At BhaktiFest in Joshua Tree, I watched Fantuzzi play his song, Universal Lover and thought I’d try it. Played here in DADGAD guitar tuning on my Taylor 414ce. I have to be careful with this instrument; it spent four years with me in Hawaii where it was soaked in humidity. The last eight years its been drying in the Arizona desert. Not good for an instrument. But this guitar has a deep resonance I love.… read more...

Who Moved the Yoga Mat Thank you OM YOGA Magazine (UK)

https://www.ommagazine.com/who-moved-the-yoga-mat/

Who Moved the Yoga Mat

Who Moved the Yoga Mat

Along the way, yoga takes over and changes people. We bend, stretch, breathe deeply, and pose moves our bodies to more flexibility and efficiency, increased balance, bodily awareness, and a host of other well-documented physical benefits. Along the way, the mind improves too as we enter the land of enhanced concentration, improved relaxation, ease in letting go, and a heightened awareness of what’s important. A result of these differences is what yogis think of as medicine.

I’ve directly experienced yoga’s positive changes and improved flexibility and balance. They are specific and objective measures that bode well for my aging that I can easily demonstrate to anyone. The other aspects are subjective; I cannot qualitatively demonstrate the ability to remain calm in stressful situations, a willingness to let go, better awareness, or better decision making and discernment.

I’ve learned that yoga is not about ability or athleticism; it’s about an altered perspective to deeper awareness. Greater awareness is not something I’ve achieved and is not something I can put on a resume as a past job accomplishment. Greater awareness is not a marketable skill as it will not convince an employer that I’d be a good candidate for a managerial position; but when I hold up the mirror of self-awareness, it tells me that I am fluid and open to learn, to change, and therefore poised for personal and professional growth. That’s the kind of person I want for my manager.

But my practice, 13 years in the making, has directly impacted me. If yoga could speak, it would tell me that since I started yoga, my mindset is more agile, my way of looking at life has shifted, and my adaptation to change is fluid, including a move to a new state, new work, a new community, and new goals.

… read more...

Hawaii, Yoga, and the Afterword

Ω  Thirteen years ago my yoga song began on the island of Hawaii, the newest and southernmost rock in the Hawaiian archipelago. I watched Pele pour her passion in hand-to-hand combat with ocean waves in a torrent that rocked my reach and stretched my learning. My heated engagement with truth force took place in a salty mist on a luminous cloud where a sea rose & circled back in three steps: breath in purach-ah, breath hold kumbach-ah, and breath out rechakh-ah.

Midwest born & raised; I saw the ocean but didn’t recognize it. The ocean’s blue tabla rasa didn’t reflect my gaze or provide a visible boundry. Sans boundaries or witnesses to corroborate my existence, I wondered if I lived or passed and I found myself gazing to the ocean in steadfast longing, the way everyone sits on a Hawaiian beach. Day and night in Hawaii, tide after tide, a rising moon and setting sun animated dormant memories of the deep & charged life with a persistent, wavy exchange. If wolves lived in Hawaii, they would howl at each tide & sing songs while clawing black rocks to raise a fire and flow.

The Hawaiian Islands were born when elemental opposites met in a forceful, earthly dance: fire and water, soft and hard, sand and foam. Yogis call this a dance of sthira and sukha, steadiness balanced in ease. This balance in the energy of opposites meets in practice & steadfastly holds every yogi through serenity or tsunami. Hatha (competing force) speaks an open sesame to the divine comedy of life prompting an exploration of how we are at once stones and flesh, sphinx, cobra, a warrior, then evolving back to a child in repose.… read more...

PORTLAND REVIEW Thank you.

Ghosts Are Full Here as the Hungry Half Moon Rises

PORTLAND REVIEW MARCH 2025 Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956

And so am I, full with the imprints of time and memory. I am rich in soul, yet I’m hungry for more. It’s not a feast I want: I want what singer Sam Garrett wants, “More life, more blessings; more peace, more unity.” Through the years, I’ve discovered ghosts here in the ashes of people spread on the lake shore. By here, I mean “The Old-Style Place,” a cabin that has been in the family for fifty years. Rustic, well-built, no running water, no bathroom, just an outhouse.

In the spring, one chore involves cleaning the outhouse; this means removing snake skins, sweeping away mounds of spider webs, and mopping up dust. Many people would not like this place. Tonight, I note the silence and half-full Buck Moon, a cipher in the sky hiding behind branches of the large pines.

Honoring the remnants of life’s past is part of my yearly visit here, just as it was for those who left their relatives on the shore. Imprints remain from those who sat on the dock watching the western sun set over the lake. Many of them have passed on: my parents, a childhood friend, an uncle, a few aunts, grandparents, and the many others.

They’re all here. Tonight.

The evening moves at a slow summer pace, transitioning from dusk to dark when loons begin wailing and yodeling. The loon call has a mystical, otherworldly quality; I hear its echo all around this quiet lake and am convinced there is nothing else like it.

… read more...

WE CANNOT FIND LOVE, IT IS NOT LOST

I hear the deep discordant murmurs, and they drive me back to source to recall oracles of love. I hear that love is the only attribute that yearns to, or can be, the fixative to our desert wandering. The proof, you ask? I have it.

A friend and scholar bringing me food when I was starving; admiration with a single word from poet and philosopher, shared space and love of another, smile from a friend, word from a daughter, touch from a son, steady hand cradling the child, guidance of mentor, embrace by heroes, invites from others, and true confessions held and honored by me from all of you. It’s never a me or we, but only love listening to the deep murmurs drowning the joy of our human catholic.

But I’m not done with the list of love, even when it was formed long before me: as in wins, losses, and sacrifices; simple advancements of care through votes for National Parks and roadways, science, medicine, education, well-engineered machines, and well-managed humanities.

I am accepting of this world, and its attendant vale of tears, as it’s all I have. But if love draws me to work, I will aim for truthfulness and audacity. Compelled by this double force for courage, I’ll treat this difficult and harrowing world as THOU, not as IT. That will define my acts not as searching for, but as being in the world and doing the right thing.

This is its own reward, and in my brief and grave traverse in this world, I will willfully participate (I would like to joyfully participate but that’s not always possible) and contribute my voice, along with my hands and feet, to confirm the rumor that love is still alive.

… read more...

A Lightening Strike into Evermore Renewal

IT’S THE CHINESE YEAR OF THE WOOD SNAKE AND I HAVE A SNAKE TALE TO TELL  #690 on the way to 700

While studying at the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi, I took a day trip to see The Red Fort, a 265-acre complex built in 1546 for the fifth Mughal Emperor of India. Afterward, I stopped at a roadside market to buy fresh mangoes or pineapples. Suddenly, a man with a wicker basket was in front of me. He lifted it to my face, removed the cover, and said, “You want?” as a cobra slowly rose and flexed its hood eight inches from my face.

I bent backward so fast that I thought I’d broken my back as the cobra rose slowly and subtly from the basket as if seeking opportunity, but it was also ready to strike at lightning speed had I posed a threat. A snake is vigilant and alert to opportunity or danger. Since then, I’ve thought about how that cobra moved to position itself right in front of my face.

A snake is a profound example of graceful subtlety as it converts the friction from sideways-to-sideways movement into energy that pushes their body forward, or upward. When the time is right, and after the snake grows, a wrinkled skin peels away making room for new growth.

There are frictions in all our lives, but the snake teaches how to convert friction into movement. Yoga tells us much the same, reminding us to move not in disease or stress or fast herky-jerky movements – like I did bending away from the snake – but with ease while remaining alert.

… read more...

The Slow Burn of a Yogi’s Becoming: milestones to 700 Bikram yoga classes

Moved to a new center, fired by a disciplined pattern moment by heated moment, yoga fastens you into a deep curriculum of transformation where your spine moves as it was meant to move and your breath deepens your experience of life. When you step across a liminal threshold into a ritual container – like a yoga studio – and follow the guru (your breath) you drop into a deep well of wisdom.

 

Yoga invites you to dig deep; when you do, you’ll catch a glimpse of the periphery turned central. You’ll learn to inhabit contentment and put on garments of integrity and your life will feel like slow-motion shapeshifting in space. Bodily shape shifts happen in yoga, but meditation and movement also shift perspectives.

 

These psychosomatic shifts are yoga’s therapeutic, opening a gate between conscious and unconscious, laying bare a pathway for a return to the depth of self. In the self that is you – the same through all time – a bodily physiology meets a mental/spiritual soul where all space and time is negotiable. This meeting alters the nervous system by pausing the strategic and analytic mind while feeding the meditative mind. Yoga calls this a state of yogacittavrittiniroda.

 

Yoga’s activation of mind, body, and spirit doesn’t happen on the same timeline for everyone, but yoga’s journey will take each yogi to the ground of their being in a breathcentric and healing therapeutic, setting them on the way to their good things comin’ . . .

 

 

 

 

… read more...

Yoga Song, the audiobook for your yogi

AUDIO BOOK FOR YOUR YOGI:

Yoga Song is a melody of mass inspiration proclaiming to every yogi that their breath is their sacred song and the soundtrack to their journey of transformation. The 21 vignettes in Yoga Song speak to both the skeptic and the true believer. To those who believe yoga’s therapeutic power, they confirm what they already know, that yoga is an augury of transformation and change. To the skeptic, these vignettes hold out a vision of what could happen to you when yoga turns ordinary moments into extraordinary and aligns each yogi with their breathcentric home.
Ormson narrates his story from insights born in the depths of self-discovery, sharing knowledge, understanding, and experience to inspire listeners. Every yoga song unfolds in the yogi as they become instruments of mind, spirit, emotion, energy, and consciousness. In chapters like, “Transforming the Emotional Body,” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song,” “Armor On, Armor Off: The Psychology of Yin Yoga,” and “Yogatecture: Blueprint of Transformation,” Ormson's Yoga Song meets you in grace and opens the way for more grace.



Available in 30 platforms worldwide. Listen to your Audible copy by going here: https://www.audible.com/pd/Yoga-Song-Audiobook/B0C3JB7JK1...



What others say about Yoga Song:



“I just read much of your book and I appreciate the connections you make and the questions you ask and there is much wisdom there. I appreciate all that you are bringing to your reader’s awareness, and I wish you all the very best with the book and with your continued yoga practice.” Renee Schettler, Editor in Chief, Yoga Journal.
“Your writing is very good and would be ideal if you ever fancy contributing on any regular basis, especially in our OM spirit section.”
… read more...

The Ghosts Are Full Here As The Hungry Half Moon Rises

 

And so am I, full with the imprints of time and memory. I am rich in soul, yet I’m hungry for more. It’s not a feast I want, I keep my appetite for all things in moderation, but I want what singer Sam Garrett wants, “More life, more blessings; more peace, more unity.” It’s easy to find in the solitude I am offered here at a cabin in the north, but peace and unity exist on flimsy ground, like whisps of smoke dispersing at the slightest wind.

 

Through the years, I’ve discovered ghosts here in the souls of people whose ashes have been spread on the lake shore. By here, I mean “The Old-Style Place,” a cabin that has been in the family for 50 years. Rustic, well-built, no running water, no bathroom, just an outhouse. Honoring the remnants of life’s past is part of my yearly visit here, just as it was for those who left their relatives on the shore.

 

In the Spring, one chore involves cleaning the outhouse; this means removing snake skins, sweeping away mounds of spider webs, and mopping up dust. Many people would not like this place. Tonight, I note the silence and half full Buck Moon, a cipher in the sky hiding behind branches of the large pines.

 

Imprints remain from those who sat on the dock while watching the western sun set over the lake. Many of them have passed on: my parents, a childhood friend, an uncle, a few aunts, grandparents, and other friends and family.
They’re all here.… read more...

OM Let it find a way to you

 

 

“Wowing”

It’s what a listener in Vermont wrote.  Yoga Song, the audiobook, is not just speech, not just chant, not just song, but an integrated presentation of yoga as a healing force-factor multiplier for body, mind, and spirit. Click below to hear Yoga Song, an instrument of mass inspiration.

Skip ahead to 4:37 for the words quoted below and my original music piece: “Ruah, Pneuma, Prana.”

From Chapter 3 OM “We do yoga with attention. We live yoga by the counsel of its ethics, and we embody yoga in the depths of our nature.

We follow its counsel to move in firmness and ease while remaining present in each moment’s experience. There, in the great quieting and stilling of mind and body, we come face to face with a golden child.

In the chant of OM, we step away from distractions to find a livable balance between the business of the world in which we engage and the song of yoga and its compelling melody taking us home to contentment.”  The directions are clear . . .

Finally, at the end of each practice, our body chants the sonorous Om of creation’s note, the unstruck sound of the heart, the meditative point of deep consciousness, a luminous internal state.

This is yoga’s song arising and trembling from the body electric. It’s a song lodged in primordial consciousness signifying that we are part of the universal Om of creation. OM, the well-trod path providing yogis with something the broken world cannot. The deep abiding peace of coming home.”… read more...

Part IV. Shavasana (death) A Gateway to Yoga as Spiritual Practice

       

After high school at 17, rather than immediately going to the university, I decided to work for a year to prepare myself. I found a job at a furniture store in my hometown where I thought I would deliver furniture, sell furniture, and take care of stock in the warehouse. It did include all of that, but when I was asked to help lift corpses from a table and into a casket, the job turned out to be much more.

In the early days of this country, the furniture maker was the logical person to turn to when a loved one died and the family needed a well-constructed wooden box. In the 19th Century, caskets were wood and since furniture makers worked with wood they were called upon. It’s easy to see how furniture makers became trusted with handling specific requirements of the casket, and from there, not hard to imagine conversations about the deceased spilling over into a pastoral care-type situation. It’s also not difficult to imagine these furniture builders doubling up on their businesses and offering funeral services. This is why so many furniture stores doubled as funeral homes.

Seldom thinking about death as a teenager and with no preparation for handling dead bodies, I was thrust into a situation where I touched the hands and lifted the bodies of deceased people. It freaked me out a little bit. In time, I became comfortable around dead bodies, and one time before a funeral, even drove the Goodrich Funeral Home’s Hearst to the car wash with a casket and body in the back.… read more...

BLOOMSDAY musical triptych to John Lennon

Russell Thorburn (Marquette, Michigan) and I have collaborated for years to create songs and audio stories. One ongoing subject has been John Lennon. Russell writes the poems and I massage the words and arrange them into songs.

Our music triptych to Lennon was completed recently. Listen in on these Lennon stories:

John Lennon Rows to Dorinish

Silver Beatle Come Back

Photographs Are All We Have

These songs, along with Thorburn’s one act play, “An Extra Bowl of Chili,” are ready for production. There’s no better day than “BLOOMSDAY” June 16, to note Thorburn’s brilliant work in An Extra Bowl of Chili. It’s deliciously Joycian.

“Sound breathed out from his lungs, his boyhood as Winston, that boy Mimi looked after with her scalpel voice. His fingers grasped mine now. Dorinish waited for Lennon in the mizzle, cold, unforgettable waves washing over the dock where he had moored his rowboat.”

Photographs Are All We Have

 

Silver Beatle Come Back

 

John Lennon Rows to Doirnish… read more...

Yoga Song – listen in for free

With your Barnes and Noble trial subscription you can now get Yoga Song as an audiobook for free. Driving this summer, listen in to this high quality Lantern audiobook in five songs and 21 chapters for an integrative description of the Humble Warrior Pose in “Yogi, Heal Thyself,” an excavation of emotions rising up during the heart-lifting arc of a camel pose in “Making Heroes,” and the affirming mystery of yoga’s therapy falling upon you in “Yoga, A Breathcentric Community,” and much more.

… read more...

“Playing in Space: a yogic way of being,” the 102nd of my #yogainspirationals in March, 2023 Om Yoga Magazine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Her comment had me think about yoga as play in space. Playing doesn’t eliminate effort and the physical work of asana, but I think it can lighten the mental aspect and open a sense of joy in us that may be a timely renewal point.

In the book, Work, Play, and Worship in a Leisure-Oriented Society, Author Gordon Dahl issued a stern critique of American culture when he wrote, “We work at our play, worship our work, and play at our worship.” Dahl maintained that we miss the point of all three if our intentions are misaligned with our actions.

From the age of 16, and through college, I had to work part-time at my father’s grocery store, and since I had to spend a lot of time there, I never liked going into the grocery store as an adult. We are required to work for our living, and work is satisfying when it’s something aligned with who and what we are, but at 16 I was just doing it from necessity, and it wasn’t my intended career.

In time, I started thinking about my avoidance of grocery stores and realized the problem was me, so I set out to change my perception (an important aspect of yoga life according to Patanjali). I tried to make grocery store visits fun by putting a smile on my face and offering random comments to people. Occasionally, I stopped to juggle oranges or avocados. Now when I go to a grocery market, I tend to frame it as play.… read more...

ON JOINING the 400 CLUB 10/27/22

400 sessions of the 26+2 yoga series known as Bikram Yoga. Each class is 90 minutes in a hot room, a yoga style that builds mental and physical willpower. For ten years now, I’ve observed and experienced how this yoga changes people.

The Tapas (fire) of Yoga

First, it will get harder

Then it will get easier

Then it will get different

Then it will get way different . . . but so will you.

I started yoga in Hawaii when I happened to walk into a Bikram Yoga Studio to fix my bad back. After starting, I kept track of each session because I knew it could become important. I completed 325 classes during the four years I practiced in Hawaii. Most of my Arizona practices – by contrast – have been 75 minutes with music and limited dialogue.

It’s been known for Centuries that applying heat in ritual transformations tends to create and accelerate change. Mircea Eliade, former chair of the Department of History of Religions at the University of Chicago, wrote in YOGA: Immortality and Freedom, that the Rg-Veda identified heat and ardor with ascetic effort as a tapas. It serves to “heighten the Physico-chemical processes (of making gold) and is the ‘vehicle’ for psychic and spiritual operations.”

North American Medicine Men shared this practice too in the sweat. Eliade wrote of this, and other transformational rituals in his 1951 book, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.

Yoga people find out that the practice of yoga in a hot room is hard. Writer Alyssa Dunn put it like this, “My yoga practice isn’t always stable.… read more...

Taj Mahal review notes YOGA SONG in PR

Taj Mahal Review, Vol. 22, 1 notes YOGA SONG.

I’ve visited the Taj Mahal and published a story once in Cutbank online, which I wrote while riding the train to Agra, but never thought to be in TMR.

 … read more...

UME Studio and Gallery hosting breath-brain-body workshop Sept. 8 in Eau Claire, Wis.

Get your EVENTBRITE tickets here for Breath, Body and Brain (B3) workshop with Yoga Song author Dr. Gregory Ormson.  Ume is pleased to welcome Dr. Gregory Ormson to our new studio space located at 407 Wisconsin St, Eau Claire, WI. The Wisconsin native, author, educator, musician and celebrated motorcycle yogi is visiting Eau Claire and will be offering a unique 90-minute breath centered practice.

link here:    https://www.eventbrite.com/e/b3-workshop-with-dr-gregory-ormson-tickets-408824835087?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

This integative workshop/clinic will focus on the clear mind/body/spirit connection that draws many of us to yoga, meditation, music and other mindful activities. Yoga’s big idea is that everything is connected, and this four-part workshop will exercise mind/body/spirit activities by:

Part 1, Brief readings from Gregory’s book, Yoga Song

Part 2, Breath practice including techniques, breath holds, and benefits working with breath

Part 3, Movement with basic asana integrating part 2

Part 4, Music and mindfulness

Please bring your own yoga (mantra) mat (BYOM) and water bottle if you like. Additional blocks and props will be provided.

… read more...

Thank you OM Yoga Magazine for Yoga Song book suggestion

Breath is yoga’s song and yoga is a breathed form of spirituality. Breath and yoga are threads connecting your soul to the world. It braids the yogi here and now to a light not bound by this world.

Your breath in yoga is your yoga song; it is rooted within the body electric in a primordial consciousness both unique and universal. This luminous, eternal OM, is the the well-trod song leading the way home.… read more...

Peter White Library’s “Author’s Reading Virtually Series.” Theme: health and wellness

I’m delighted to be included in this series of Authors Reading Virtually from Marquette’s Peter White Public Library. Professor Jonathan Johnson is a friend of mine and teaches in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University. He’s published widely to high accolades for over two decades with books in multiple genres. I will join him and read from my book Yoga Song, a story of transformation and redemption in 23 lyric vignettes. Jonathan will read from Bali in Indonesia, an island with a rich cultural heritage of spiritual and physical wellness. I will read from Marquette, a place occupying a large chunk of my soul.
Meeting link, ID, and code.
Meeting ID: 826 6398 7132
Passcode: 103409
… read more...

Our world is in need . . . people are distracted, fractured, and busy.

Our world is in need. People are distracted, fractured, busy, angry and vulnerable to emotional hijacking. When this happens, its hard to experience the joy of being alive because we lose touch with ourselves and others.

Yoga meets this need by offering time for the busy to rest for a few moments, connect to our battered selves, and learn to breathe again which brings us into wholeness and gives us permission to focus in on the moment and the experience.

In yoga, we put-away the agenda for just a few minutes to remember who we are as people imbued with a divine spark that need not be named, claimed, or tamed.

Tune in at 7:05 pm tonight when I read sections from Yoga Song. Live Facebook feed from Salt Motion and Meditation in Wausau, Wisconsin.  Here’s the link:  https://www.facebook.com/events/1382068342295624/… read more...

TAPAS from YOGA SONG Coming June 21, International Yoga Day

Chapter 11, Tapas

New Year’s Eve resolutions are often made with an eye toward immediate results but without a long-term vision that includes commitment to a future that is different. Not even three full weeks into the New Year, New York University published a story stating that 90 percent of New Year’s Eve resolutions are abandoned.

It’s because changes happen by small degree and over time. It’s not by adding requirements or resolutions that our lives change; it’s by subtracting from our lives that which is unnecessary or unproductive.

This is one gift of yoga, we learn by the process of tapas to define more clearly what is necessary and leave the rest; it is yoga’s counter-intuitive mathematic, an equation suggesting that discovery and addition happens by negation and subtraction.

Yoga philosophy develops within the ebb and flow of culture, story, and time. It’s an ongoing journey of subtraction and addition. Civilizations grow, but they also burn to the ground. This is the key to yoga’s tapas, the burning away of that which is unnecessary.

More on Yoga Song, https://gregoryormson.com/writing/yoga-motorcyclingyogig/yoga-song-press-kit… read more...

PRESS KIT Yoga Song – audibook version Lantern Audio

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE –
Lantern Audiobooks presents Gregory Ormson’s Yoga Song, a print publication in 2022 by Rochak Press, now available on Lantern Audiobooks and other platforms. Ormson states the song of yoga is the breath that turns ordinary moments into the extraordinary. In 21 vignettes and five original songs, Ormson narrates a journey of self-discovery, sharing knowledge, understanding, and quotations to inspire listeners.

Every yoga song is composed by the yogi, an instrument made of mind, spirit, emotion, energy, and consciousness. In chapters like, “Transforming the Emotional Body,” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song,” and “Yogatecture: Blueprint of Transformation,” Yoga Song becomes an instrument of mass inspiration in a melody proclaiming to every yogi that their breath is their song, a sacred song and the soundtrack to their journey of transformation.

Bounced from a trampoline at 10, enduring a second back-injury weightlifting in school, and falling from a roof at 40, born-to-be-wild biker Gregory Ormson moved to Hawaii but was sidelined by debilitating back pain and couldn’t enjoy paradise. Dipping a toe into yoga, he discovered a healing road that reformed his mind and fixed his spine.

Yoga Song is an instrument of mass inspiration in the song of the body which includes mind, spirit, emotion, and energy. Its melodies are alive in the sound of Om or a vocalized heartfelt Namaste. In breath-centered yoga practice, yogis experience a therapeutic and healing power where ordinary moments stretch into extraordinary.

“The yoga mat became my turf of tears, washing, and regeneration . . . these essays deliver us to a place of beauty and grace in words lyrical and reverential.… read more...

A small sample from Ch. 14 on yoga for bikers from the forthcoming YOGA SONG

 I glance around the outdoor deck and see the outline of my community. They are becoming new on a daily basis as they take up yoga. They acted on faith to get here, so I act on faith to teach as the practice of yoga meets them with its global and spiritual energy.

It takes courage to move beyond cultural stereotypes and do yoga. It also takes courage to teach this ancient, holistic discipline designed for everyone. As a teacher, I set the route; and when ready, they follow the road home to themselves.

Breath by breath, a universal yoga pilgrimage presses them to question their motives and boldly ask “why am I here?” When the question arises, yoga’s song takes over and the yogis remember their courage. They stretch into their containers of reform and travel back to the beginning once again.

The sun is setting on my biker-yogis, and I see them as hopeful; they tiptoe into newness, and sip nectar from an oxygen-rich moment. Western light, partially eclipsed by Earth, illumines their faces with golden rays as they play dead to integrate the last breathing moments of the best previous moments. Alone, quiet, and on the floor, they exhale. On their backs, they release into savasana . . .… read more...

YOGA SONG arriving on the 8th International Yoga Day, June 21, 2022

Yoga Song is a story of transformation and redemption in 23 lyric vignettes from Dr. Gregory Ormson. Yoga Song’s author states there’s a song at the center of all time, being, and structure, and there’s a song in the center of yoga. 

The instrument of a yoga song is the yogi’s body which includes: mind, spirit, emotion, energy, and consciousness. In a breathcentric yoga practice, yogis experience its transforming and therapeutic power where ordinary moments stretch into extraordinary.

Rochak Publishing ISBN: 978-93-88125-90-1 INR 200 US $ 15 — 109 pages. Available International Yoga Day June 21, 2022 www.cyberwit.net and on Amazon

ENDORSEMENTS FOR YOGA SONG:

“I am planning on taking 200 hour teacher training, and seeing your article yesterday, I was inspired to keep following my heart. I need to buy the book!” Pamela WB, Edmonton, Alberta

“I have been thinking of branching out and writing about my yoga practice so this is a big inspiration.” Dr. Chad Faries, Savannah , Georgia

“I am very glad to see you doing yoga Gregory. It is so good for the body and mind.” Sam Paul Raj, Chennai, India

“Thank you for a wonderful story.” Tee Daly, Austin, Texas

From chapter 3

Yoga’s song doesn’t just make a song with us, it opens us and makes us ready to receive a new song. This is the way of yoga’s song composition in, of, and through every asana in motion and stillness.

In a melody of motion, balanced by stillness, I open to gravity’s shaping no matter how I fail. I do yoga linked to breath in the moment.… read more...

From the Epilogue to YOGA SONG

Years ago, and far from the waters of Hawaii where yoga first tumbled me, I set out on a solo three-day vision quest in a barren land that Wyoming residents call the Red Desert. Before my quest began, I spent two days training in the Lakota way. Once I walked into the desert I would not eat or see anyone for three days. My instructions were simple and focused: drink water and pay attention.

For yoga, I’d give the same instruction today, only adding an admonition to breathe. I expected my vision quest would challenge me but also help me connect to that which I had not yet connected.

I didn’t know it, but at the time I was doing the work of yoga. At dawn on the scheduled day, I walked into the desert to seek a new vision. My intention was to strip away all distraction in my experiment with truth and give it my full attention with all my being.

This is what yoga is to me now. It’s a stripping away of distraction, which takes preparation and intention. It is the time and place to build my satyagraha or force of truth.

But in the Red Desert I learned from the birds that if I had a song to sing I had to sing it. It was not about how well I sang, but that I did. This is why I’ve written Yoga Song; it is not about how well I write or sing my yoga song, but that I do.

Sale links available soon.… read more...

OM YOGA MAGAZINE, Yoga, the Sailing Forth

A day after moving into my apartment in Hawaii, I was on the floor with back pain. I had endured many injuries: at 10, I bounced off a trampoline and landed on the ground, a second back injury I endured while weightlifting, and yet again in my 40’s when I fell from a high roof.

In Hawaii, I noticed signs for yoga studios everywhere and I started thinking about claims I had heard regarding yoga and healing for back pain. One day, in a desperate attempt to fix my damaged back and with no background or knowledge of yoga, I decided to try it and hoped to find something to make me strong in my broken places. I feared collapsing in the hot yoga room, but was also confident that if my back held up I would too.

I planned to try yoga for 30 days and then decide if I would continue. I made it through 24 classes that month. My resolve was galvanized and my hope for healing ignited. In my journal entry I wrote, Yoga is the way to go for healing back pain. It’s so simple, why don’t more people do it?  But my transformation from injury to healing went beyond my back as yoga steered me into deep waters.

“Sail forth – steer for the deep waters only

Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee and thou with me”

American poet Walt Whitman in, “Passage to India,” from Leaves of Grass

I continued with yoga and wrote about my experience because I thought my practice in a heated room would also benefit me in other ways.… read more...

Out-of-Body Yoga: get in on the last two sessions at Superstition Harley Davidson in April (at the most beautiful setting for yoga in Arizona)

It’s no longer surprising when a first-timer says “This is the best thing ever. I feel like I had an out-of-body experience.”

It’s not surprising because yoga fully anchors the physical body in the moment. If someone has not really been present in their body, but focused on what they are doing while forgetting about themselves, yoga and grounding in the present moment through breath and movement will feel foreign . . . . almost like an out of body experience. But in fact it’s just the opposite.

The yogis have told us for centuries that the body is not just the physical self: they believed what we see is a layer over four other layers which they called koshas. Koshas consist of the biological body — the one we see — but unseen layers are breath or the ethereal (which gives life); consciousness; spirituality, and the mental body.

When we get into the physical body, we also get into the spiritual body, the mental body, the ethereal body, and the consciousness body. This may be what some people feel for the first time doing yoga.

Spirituality is in our body even if most spirituality doesn’t honor this fact. Humans are spiritual by nature. This (spirituality) is not the same as holding a particular religion or belief system; rather, spirituality and the nature of being is not based on creed or belief for it is truly beyond definition.

Can anyone sufficiently package a multifaceted human being into into a summary or belief system? I’d say no, because mystery is at the center of human experience and being.… read more...

A Western Yogi’s Evolving Precis

My yoga starts when I acknowledge the Western inheritance of the yoga tradition or some blended combination of traditions. Western yoga shares widely in the thread known as hatha, a tradition of opposing forces coming into balance and working together for the yogi’s mental, spiritual, and physical development.

A scholarly treatment of ancient texts or a detailed study of yoga’s historical variations – each with schools, histories, practices, religiosities, and gurus requires intense, academic study in linguistics, theology, sociology, history, medicine, and mythology. This would be the work of a lifetime.

Knowing this opens me to become an incomplete scribe articulating a perspective behind a yoga encounter in matter and consciousness. Yoga is a force which puts an encounter front and center for every yogi. Faced with this, each one responds in their own way. And while I think it’s good to know about tradition – so that we do not claim something as ours that is not ours – like most Western yogis, my practice and study draws from the deep well of yoga’s healing waters.

Yoga and its variations were formed in a complex, multifaceted cultural context that very few Westerners understand. This culture created yoga from its particular situation and in its evolving timeline.

The truth is that yoga has always been and is always changing and the proof is that yoga today in India looks different and is vastly more inclusive than it was just one hundred years ago. And just as yoga has morphed and changed through the Centuries in India, it will also change and evolve in the West.… read more...

January BREATH & MOVEMENT FOR BIKERS OUTDOORS (formerly yoga for bikers)

Yoga outdoors happening for year 5 at Superstition Harley Davidson. Short read below about yoga for bikers (breath and movement) the how and why. Two January classes on the outdoor deck – facing north to the Goldfield Mountains in the east valley – open for anyone. January 11 at 5:00 pm, and January 25 at 5:00 pm. Each session is approximately 50 minutes. Donations welcome.

Motorcycling and life are improved when we learn how to breathe with ease in the midst of stress. This calms the nervous system and makes it easier to concentrate on what’s important.

When we’re riding motorcycles, being at ease and focused are not just good ideas, they are life-saving skills. To that end, a deliberate and conscious linking of breath with movement.

Two times this month you can take advantage of breath and movement for bikers (formerly yoga for bikers) at Superstition Harley Davidson.

WHAT IS IT?

  • A 50-minute session of breath and movement with yoga like moves focusing on breath, flexibility, and motorcycle performance improvement.
  • The purpose is to provide an experience of movement and conscious breath connection for stress management leading to life and health benefits.
  • I’ll provide encouragement and integrity of movement and breath to both motorcycling and yoga.
  • The sessions become a positive event – offered with a voice of reassurance, sincerity, and encouragement – to motorcyclists and non-motorcyclists.
  • DATES:  Tuesday Jan. 11, 5:00 pm at Superstition Harley Davidson, outdoor deck; and Tuesday, Jan. 25, 5:00 pm at Superstition Harley Davidson, outdoor deck.
… read more...

Desert Bent Angles: thoughts on playing sitar

My sitar flows in 19 bands of light called baaj, chikari, and tarab. Its journey to my hand is a mystery, but its music-medicine landed on my doorstep from an old land, gripped me from the eons, and pulled my soul into a note-bending journey unlike any other.

On sitar and its emotional gravity – something beyond definition – a musician friend and professor said, “It’s all angles.”

I first heard the sitar’s otherworldly drone years ago and felt it in my chest. Now when my sitar strings bend to raise a siren-song from the fathoms, Saraswati dances to an ascent and descent on every note. This sacred dance is a never-ending river shepherding me to a place close and yet far away.

My teacher speaks in common tones and offers up clusters of daring: “Consistency, consistency, consistency,” she says.

Her words, the wisdom of learning and teaching, and the kernel in every guru’s curriculum. I’ve walked the rivers of India, but today can’t put myself and my sitar on their banks. But once at dusk, on a hot July night in Arizona, I made my way with this gourd, rosewood, string & steel riddle to the banks of the Salt River in east Phoenix. Sitar did not accompany me alone. Looking to the Salt, I could see a funeral pyre, a desert-inspired mirage bobbing with the current like a lazy raft ablaze in flames, scented smoke, grief trailing behind.

At river’s edge, my sitar smelled like burning incense and the hymnody it raised came from an earlier time. I followed the current but can not understand.… read more...

Breath and Movement for Longevity in the Saddle (Nov. 10 and 24) @ SUPERSTITION HARLEY-DAVIDSON

Come on up to the eagle’s nest (outdoor patio) at Superstition Harley-Davidson (2910 W. Apache Trail), for breath and movement for bikers a week from today (November 10 at 5:00 pm). It’s the fourth year of breath and movement designed to keep bikers at ease and in the saddle long term.

Teaching riders for the state of Hawaii as a MSF rider/coach, I watched how new motorcycle riders held their breath when making difficult figure 8 moves on the riding range. Holding one’s breath tightens the entire system. When holding our breath, it’s nearly impossible to be relaxed and at ease. If we are not relaxed and at ease when riding a motorcycle our riding ability is diminished. To be at ease in the midst of stress is a critical factor in athletic performance.

In a 1977 book titled, The Centered Skier, author Denise McCluggage presents 12 chapters of Zen goodness on the mental aspects of skiing. She quoted Jean-Claude Killy, the world and Olympic alpine ski champion at the time. Killy said, “You cannot win if you are not relaxed.”

Maybe you say to yourself, so what, I’m not competing. No you may not be competing and maybe the stakes aren’t at the level of an Olympic medal, but in reality the stakes are higher. You are on two-wheels, or three-wheels, and the stakes are about your life. Breath and movement in ease is for bikers because being relaxed in the saddle happens when we learn to be at ease in stress.

This is the therapy of yoga and it is the design of breath and movement.… read more...

Peace: Just a Pause Away

peace: just a pause a – YOGI TIMES

"Peace, Just a Pause Away," originally published July, 2015 by YOGI TIMES; republished August, 2021 by YOGI TIMES. #yogainspirationals number 24

be here, now

When my yoga class begins, one of my teachers will often remind me to “let go” of what happened during the day. This first step is part of an overall readiness for yogi’s, helping us to clear our minds and become present and focused before class. I thought also of how it’s important to let go of what didn’t happen during the day.

Recently, I was holding on to expectations and waiting to hear news about writing, news about how my daughter was doing after her dog was run over by a car, waiting to hear about plans with friends, hoping for news about my work. Responding to anxious feelings, I checked my email and social media accounts too many times. Nothing happened.

By early evening, I went to class wishing that I’d had a better day. That’s when I realized that I needed to let go of those things that didn’t happen – what I might call my wishes.

I was in the right place, for I’ve learned that yoga teaches me how come to terms with what happens and also what doesn’t happen. It does so by grounding me on the mat with intentionality and presence. I’ve also come to believe that the harder those moments are on my mat, the more present I am by necessity.

Maybe that’s why I love yoga so much, it takes me away from the un-happening and stretches out my emotional maturity so that at least for a while, I’m taken away from my selfish self and am at peace.… read more...

SOUND HEALING EVENT SUNDAY, OCT, 3rd

Lunar Sound Healing 2021: Intention & Manifestation. Utilize Breathwork, Meditation, & Sound Therapy to connect Mind, Body & Spirit. Learn about Lunar and Solar cycles, Eclipses and Astrology in a commUnity setting!

See you this coming Sunday (October 3) 4:30 pm for a 90 minute session @ Spirit of Yoga, Tempe, AZ. I’ll be joining Crystal as guest musician. She’s an E-RYT 500, and a Yoga Alliance Continuing Education Program Provider. She’s been leading sound healing events for over six years, frequently combined with yoga classes, reiki, yoga nidra, acupressure, meditation techniques and workshops. Find her at https://crystalvalentina.com

I first met her during one of her sound and yoga events in June at Buddha’s Brew Coffee Cafe in Mesa, AZ. The combination of her teaching and sound event was excellent; both yoga and sound were imbued with a sense of invitation rather than direction. Her sessions at Buddha’s Brew continue on October 10, November 14, and December 12.

Details below for Sunday’s Lunar Sound Healing event. From eventbrite, Lunar Sound Healing 2021: Intention & Manifestation. Utilize Breathwork, Meditation, & Sound Therapy to connect Mind, Body & Spirit. Learn about Lunar and Solar cycles, Eclipses and Astrology in a commUnity setting!

Register here:  https://www.facebook.com/events/206409277791797/?ref=newsfeed

You can find Crystal’s Lunar Sound Healing schedule on her Website: Dates scheduled are October 3 & 17; November 7 & 21; December 5 and 19.… read more...

#Yogainspirationals number 99, OM Yoga Magazine, May 2021

Yoga as a life-altering gift

OM YOGA MAGAZINE

Yoga as a life-altering gift: From freediving to chess: how a yoga practice can enhance every aspect of your life. By Gregory Ormson

Shortly after starting yoga I realised its life enhancements could be applied to any activity of mind or body. Nobody was teaching yoga specifically for motorcyclists and as a rider and former motorcycle rider coach for the State of Hawaii, I realised I could serve bikers in a direct way.

While teaching motorcycle riding, I saw how people tightened up and held their breath when the riding range was wet, when they were evaluated, and when they were asked to do ‘figure eight’ moves in a tight space. If yoga classes could help people with stress and challenges during yoga, I thought asana poses targeted specifically to bikers’ needs could help bikers in many ways.

Yoga for bikers targets poses for: hips, back, neck, shoulders, arms, wrists and hands. Preparing to teach an unusual yoga group, I searched and discovered many stories of yoga’s effects on performance in unusual places; the most unexpected were the worlds of freediving and competitive chess.

Freediving and yoga
In Hawaii, one of the first things my freediving instructor asked me was: “Do you practice yoga?” He said yoga people do better in freediving because they’ve learned how to breathe and relax when in stress.

For most people, there is nothing more stressful on both body and mind than holding their breath while swimming underwater and it’s even more true in a deep-water underwater situation. To deal with the stress of water pressure and low oxygen, free divers focus on deliberate breath training and meditation before going in the water.

… read more...

YOGA 4 BIKERS at Bull Falls HD

https://www.wausaudailyherald.com/story/news/2021/08/18/motorcycling-yogi-teach-yoga-moves-bull-falls-harley-davidson/5416236001/?fbclid=IwAR07msLeXONfmeVRqaIXKbJZACQNn1V6WN9erv05pc5SS-xCWbP-itnf1vk

The ‘Motorcycling Yogi’ brings his calming yoga methods to Bull Falls Harley-Davidson

Keith Uhlig

https://twitter.com/gaormson/status/1428311933388787712?s=21

Wausau Daily Herald

14278f8d-b827-4fe2-a5aa-91bbd5d9f48d-Tree.jpg.webp

https://www.wausaudailyherald.com/story/news/2021/08/18/motorcycling-yogi-teach-yoga-moves-bull-falls-harley-davidson/5416236001/?fbclid=IwAR07msLeXONfmeVRqaIXKbJZACQNn1V6WN9erv05pc5SS-xCWbP-itnf1vk… read more...

Thank you OM Yoga Magazine (UK) for publishing “Yoga as a life-altering gift.”

Inspired by the breath training and yoga practice of Magnus Carlsen, eight time world Grand Chessmaster (a story from The Best American Sports writing of 2020), I found connections between Carlsen’s practices training for chess matches – that can take up to a week – and my experiences with freediving, motorcycling, and yoga.

  From freediving to chess: how a yoga practice can enhance every aspect of your life,  By Gregory Ormson

Shortly after starting yoga I realised its life enhancements could be applied to any activity of mind or body. Nobody was teaching yoga specifically for motorcyclists and as a rider and former motorcycle rider coach for the State of Hawaii, I realised I could serve bikers in a direct way.

While teaching motorcycle riding, I saw how people tightened up and held their breath when the riding range was wet, when they were evaluated, and when they were asked to do ‘figure eight’ moves in a tight space. If yoga classes could help people with stress and challenges during yoga, I thought asana poses targeted specifically to bikers’ needs could help bikers in many ways.

Yoga for bikers targets poses for: hips, back, neck, shoulders, arms, wrists and hands. Preparing to teach an unusual yoga group, I searched and discovered many stories of yoga’s effects on performance in unusual places; the most unexpected were the worlds of freediving and competitive chess.

Freediving and yoga

In Hawaii, one of the first things my freediving instructor asked me was: “Do you practice yoga?” He said yoga people do better in freediving because they’ve learned how to breathe and relax when in stress.… read more...

2020 We Can’t Go On. 2021 We Must Go On

Artists’ respond, aiming to align wonder, word, and music. They lean into imagining what the tree sees in relationships, in children, and in backyard dreams. Thorburn’s tree is a witness to life in the yard, the house, in the sky above, and the buckling sidewalk below; the whole tree-is-us in our tangled roots and bent branches, our rancors and revelries, and our brittle bark tattooed by the scars of our days.

We are like every tree and its intangible roots beneath the sidewalk, reaching from yard and house to neighborhood and back again. Enmeshed below ground, trees know things and their hidden network chronicles the backyard’s rich saga: kids climbing and laughing in the branches, people in houses looking back at the tree from behind windows, and the green sky of aurora borealis above.

In our winter of pandemic and discontent, the tree is abandoned by yellowing leaves born away by freezing winds, shivering branches, and dropped to their winter-burial grounds “Everything I know I’ve learned from trees,” a friend from Michigan wrote to me the week before Christmas. I love trees too, but not everyone does; and his note reminded me of the politician who said, “When you’ve seen one redwood you’ve seen ’em all.”

I pity those who see every tree the same. It’s a different kind of poverty from the ‘poverty of spirit,’ which the Gospels praise. Bereft of wonder, one is left with a forlorn poverty of being. Such a fool, unable to appreciate music, art, poetry, or trees, may have a heart pumping lifeblood through his/her veins and arteries, but they are dull in their feeling function, incapable of beholding a Christmas tree or any tree in wonder and awe.… read more...

Babba, Gaia, Prana

Recorded with Audacity, Gregory Ormson lyrics and Washburn D-Series DADGAD guitar, played through Boss Acoustic Singer Pro Amp; keyboard by Randy Anagnostis on Yamaha PB125 with Focus Scarlet Gen 3 Audio Interface. One of several Anagnostis/Ormson original song collaborative pieces.

VIDEO link                      https://youtu.be/NfClYOCX3xA… read more...

YOGA, a Melody in Motion

Yogis embody asana and rejoice in the periphery turned central. Their melody in motion forms a new identity through the habit of engagement with particularity and universality. In every moment, yogis come to know they are a beautiful grey, a crush of salt and pepper.

Surrendering to moments that bend and shape, yogis open as flowers to spring and seek to follow an inward compass. When we insert our egos and rough-hew the curriculum’s established gravity, a shining divinity is dimmed.

In steady motion to yoga’s entry point, yogis release and listen to yoga’s song and follow their breath to an inner melody. That melody is a score to a beautiful transformation. Near the end, we sink into a liminal space where a guru points the way in rechaka, kumbhaka, and puracha, breath in, steady hold, and release.

Yoga class ends and we hear, “May this practice give strength to your body, kindness and compassion to your heart, calm and clarity to your mind.”

We take it in and learn to embrace yoga’s alchemy. It connects us to all and we remember to not dig up in doubt what we planted in faith.

AUDIO, Yoga Song, the afterword: 

https://soundcloud.com/greg-ormson/024_afterword-1… read more...

How bikers and yogis can get their zen (and their maintenance) in yoga and on the bike.

Thank you to Om Yoga Magazine for covering Yoga & Leather (May 2020 issue) on how bikers and yogis can get their zen (and their maintenance) in yoga and on the bike. Teaching yoga in a Harley Davidson Motorcycle dealership in the American South is not common but OM published this story of an uncommon yoga outreach. Read all about it here, or see the video link at the end of this post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opNRRVg8O_M&t=185s&fbclid=IwAR0BYkPKzvvUTjSkTdlzDK_3pQ0tzv4eD6QBznvIa6m9o5IipiDuoz4tWP4

See the May issue by going to pocketmags.com., where a free digital issue can be yours, or by ordering a subscription for the hard copy magazine. Yogainspirationals number 97 by Gregory Ormson,… read more...

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: a poetry/song series the last 8 days of April. Poem/song number, 1 “Whale Song.”

Russell Thorburn and Gregory Ormson have worked together for over a decade writing original poems, prose, and music. Much of it happens in spite of distance and isolation. The eight songs/poems posted over the next 8 days of April will close out NATIONAL POETRY MONTH for 2020.

Russell Thorburn plays “Chelsea Hotel,” a composition he wrote to celebrate Dylan Thomas. The hotel is similar to a whale swimming through the Atlantic humpbacked Ocean of New York City, and lives are certainly made of vibrations, artists and poets who swam through the hallways and never reached shore. In the song Dylan opens the door to Death wearing a Fifth Avenue gown and black gloves; he is there at his typewriter to finish the last pages of Under Milk Wood.

Substitute Thomas for Ormson’s memoir and corners of eternity, and don’t answer the door. “Chelsea Hotel” was performed at the Beaumier Folk Series Concert in 2014, Northern Michigan University. I was on piano and mumbling the lyrics. Here is the basic piano track in another gummersound recording. R. Thorburn

Free diving in Hawaii opened me to a whale song’s sonic jangling my synapses and brain cells. It came to me from deep down and far out. Sounds swam through the water and past my cochlea until my inner ear caught humpback aria as it rearranged maps in my head.

Under the waves, I heard the ecstatic; it was accompanied by sweeter-still unheard melodies of which John Keats wrote. Years later, I’m still trying to make sense of it all, like the yellow-robed priests: Mayan, Incan, or Egyptian, who crumbled into the dust at such otherworldly ditties. … read more...

EXCERPT – tapas

We’re all flat on our backs in a liminal place, fired by tapas and its heat of transformation. I’m listening as a guru points the way, and slowly my doubt is burned by fire and sent to the trash bin of insecurity.Heat and gravity are my honest teachers, and they’re worthy companions delivering an exacting curriculum of change. When I insert my ego into the moment and rough-hew its curriculum, I mute the shining fire of tapas branding me in this container.

The tapas of yoga is not of my making. It doesn’t heed my objections, or accept my charges to change or comfort me in the twinkling of an eye. In fire, I am only left to breathe and positioned to trust; by my simple presence and trust I participate in the yoga economy of rebirth out of the flame.

This economy doesn’t just subtract or burn away, it also adds, multiplies, and divides certainty into millions of shades. Yoga’s economy is Gandhian in its disciplined core, negative in its spiritual logic, countercultural in its teleology, and hotly shamanistic in its strategy.

In this season of our discontent, our wiser revelry may be composed of welcoming close the sublime inside a spoonful of shaman, holding forth with a pinch of subtraction for division and discontent, riding with attention on the coattails of science, and supping together with a cup of cheer for our endings not yet defined.

#Kilauea, #breathnotes, #satsong, #gregoryormson, #amwrititing, #yogainspirationals

Writing on yoga, music, and motorcycling @ https://gregoryormson.com Tweet@ GAOrmson… read more...

BIKERS: If you are going stir-crazy, here’s a recipe for shifting gears and moods.

Restaurants and bars – common biker stops – are closed. Large scale events, including bike events, are cancelled.

If you want to ride, Yoga & Leather Stretch Ride is on for March 29. But . . . only show up at the Superstition Harley Davidson west side parking lot at 10:30 am if you can observe six (6) feet of distance between you and all others.

On the bike, keeping safe distance it’s easy, but I’m saying, when we meet in the west side parking lot, greet one another with voice but no physical contact. It’s always a good idea, but especially now, do not touch another person’s bike.

The recipe for shifting from discontent to contentment is simple:

  1. Ride to Prospector Park in A.J., a 12 minute ride from Superstition HD.
  2. Walk to a corner of the park and pause in quiet space.
  3. Breathe deliberately for 10 minutes.
  4. Walk back to bikes and stretch.
  5. Go home.

 

Link to info on the ride:  https://www.facebook.com/SuperstitionHD/videos/1034031243636948/… read more...

“Clearing Space” or social distancing. YogaInspirationals from #motorcyclingyogiG

Thank you @omyogamagazine April issue, for publishing “Clearing Space,” #yogainspirationals number 96. It’s appropriate to our situation as the virus is doing its best to make us do the work of the niyamas. In “Clearing Space,” I cite the writing of San Francisco based yoga teacher, musician, and leader @janetstoneyoga, who spoke of this work as being an inside job in her newsletter from December, 2019, “Unwrapping Your Gifts, Healing Family Wounds.” “Buckle up, it’s not for the faint of heart,” she wrote. In the US, we have lots of buckling up to do. Friends . . . Clear Space, and do it now before its too late.

… read more...

Social Distancing and Sacred Space

And here’s an example of how we use this space for renewal. Dave Swenson, brother of my long-time friend Lee Swenson, couldn’t gig tonight for St. Patrick’s Day, so he did a 40 something minute concert from the porch of his home in Iowa and streamed it to people in the US and afar. This is something to like about people: developing ways to renew self and others in the social distance space we’ve suddenly fallen into. Way to go Dave Swenson.

Here’s a link to Irish and Scottish music from fiddler Dave in Iowa. .https://www.facebook.com/dave.swenson.33/videos/10221681855654385/UzpfSTExOTQ1NjA2NzQ6MzA2MDYxMTI5NDk5NDE0OjEwOjA6MTU4NTcyNDM5OToyOTUyNTUyMzcwNDg4ODU5MDk3/

 

… read more...

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