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Gregory Ormson

Writer, musician, yoga-loving motorcyclist.

 WHY I RIDE IN THE DGR = the backstory

I’ve paid attention to stylish clothing since my first job at K-Bliss Men’s Store in Menomonie when I was 16 and took a job arranged by my high school’s distributive education class. I learned from three experienced associates how to match a tie to a dress shirt, how to measure pant legs for tailoring, how to choose the correct size for suits and sport coats, and how to casually suggest accessories like cufflinks, cologne, a second tie, a new belt, or a pocket square.

I enjoyed the job and discovered the sales tactics they taught worked, and I became a good men’s clothing salesman. From the time of that job in high school, I paid some attention to my clothing style and occasionally read men’s fashion magazines at the library.

Many years later, my stylistic sensibilities were piqued when a friend commented about my motorcycle. “Greg, I’ve noticed that bikes are a lot like their owners,” I asked what she meant. “Your bike is sharp, clean, smart like you.” Her compliment charged my ego, and I began studying motorcycle and rider combinations. I realized her observation was accurate.

With an enthusiasm for motorcycling and voguish dress, it’s no surprise that I felt drawn to The Distinguished Gentlemen’s Ride (DGR), a motorcycle charity and awareness event with an eye on riding dapper. The DGR was founded in 2012 by Mark Hawwa in Sydney, Australia and has taken place around the world every year since then. Hawwa prefers not to take credit for the ride’s success but turns the focus back to its mission.… read more...

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...

Riding Worldwide in ‘The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride’

https://gfolk.me/GregoryOrmson288222
2024 video wrap-up from DGR here:
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DmDCBDfgG/
This is my reminder to everyone to ask the men you know to get a simple blood test to check their PSA. That blood draw can be a lifesaving event.
The Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride DGR is a worldwide fund raising and fun event with participation by people in over 100 countries riding motorcycles on the same day for the same cause. I’ve participated four times because its focus on men’s health issues is important.

Statistically, 75% of suicides are by men, and one in every 8 men will get prostate cancer, making it the number one cancer-causing death among men worldwide.

This charitable motorcycle event for owners of classic and vintage styled bikes will take place around the world on May 18. It will happen here in Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona.
The DGR Ride, now in its 13th year, brings together over 500,000 classic and vintage motorcycles and well-dressed riders and has raised more than 54 million since its inception in 2012.

REASONS to ride are increased awareness – meaning to ask the men in your life to get their damn PSA checked now – and/or offer a donation to research and support for men’s health.

*MENTAL HEALTH* *SUICIDE PREVENTION*

*PROSTATE CANCER* *TESTICULAR CANCER*
The ride is sponsored in part by the following: MOVEMBER FOUNDATION, TRIUMPH MOTORCYCLES, ELF, HEDON, QUAD LOCK, CMSNL, BRETT.

p.s., I don’t make a big deal out of the fundraising as is evident. Three hundred dollars in four rides isn’t much in the big scale of things, but it means that people are reading, are thinking about it, are donating in small amounts.
… read more...

CREATIVE Collaboration: A Fox Sparks a 20-Year Collaboration in Drums, Poems, and the Music of Thorburn/Ormson

Here, writing has turned acoustic and the instruments include a Vox keyboard, sitar, clarinet electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and voice. I’m open to hearing from you on this no matter what you have to say.

In a poetry recital at The Peter White Public Library in Marquettee, Michigan Russ Thorburn read his poem, “The Fox.” My part was to keep a beat with drum(s) to his words, so I put several small squares of wax paper under the wire bridge on the bottom of the snare drum to separate the snare-​wires from the batter-​head. This allowed for a snare sound, but not an overpowering blast, more like raindrops on a tin roof. I played the snare with chopsticks to the rhythm of Thorburn’s reading.

The sound from those chopsticks – stepping lightly – clicked to the rhythm of Thorburn’s stealthy fox. It never left me, and our collaboration continued over the years with lots of crazy things. Some of them failed, some of them failed worse. But through it all we developed lives marked by craft and grace, meeting all the moments with acceptance. Sometimes, we’d share a dram of whiskey in Marquette too, and even if we drank it from a cup, it was always: crafty, graceful, randomly graceful, and even glorious.

Both Russ Thorburn and Jesus show up in this first song, along with a shadowy wolf-​psychology, and a blues-​singing bus driver. We see all of them in our reflection, I think. Sometimes, we all have the blues, and Edward Hopper’s lyrics are stamped on our souls. All those yellow lines we cross over in our sleep.… 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...

Melody of Mass Inspiration in Audiobook form, Yoga Song

AUDIO BOOK FOR YOUR YOGI: read what others are saying about Yoga Song

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.
… 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 Black Box of America

First published in Oddball Magazine, November 20, 2024

No one missed that country
Men were soft, angry, and violent
Life was brutal and unforgiving
Pretentious and vacuous

Decisions and mutations were cut
in candle-lit back rooms, women were victims
They grabbed what they wanted
Fooled by the same illusion driving men, CONTROL

In apocalyptic bunkers
Dark physicians sang Odes to depression
Men were sheep and folded quickly
Not crying, but telling

Terrifying stories of bad things
Children were frightened and dogs were wild
No one cared about their neighbor
Everyone pretended at everything

The winner’s faces were tan, they lifted weights
Arenas were filled with men and women
Fighting women and men
Everything broke except the glass ceiling

Yuppies kept on building, kept sailing
Went on painting their ceilings
White, of course,
Ignorantly marched toward the future

They cheered the New Year
Hell, everyone cheered the New Year
And drove ATV’s and big boats
Rednecks toasted Monster Trucks as they mashed tiny Japanese cars

Christians decorated Christmas trees in suburban homes
To shots of Irish Crème or Asti
They drank while listening to strains of Bing Crosby’s
White Christmas on their stereo

They made yellow popcorn strings and dutifully attached them to the Green branches.
A ritual ‘round a tree,’ but nobody knew why
There were no ritual elders, there was no ritual wisdom
There was no embodiment of grace

After New Year’s celebrations and narcissistic resolutions
And the dark, wasted days of another empty year,
They awoke bored, helpless, angry at mothers and fathers
Sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, children and in-laws

The population chugged bourbon in the afternoon
And on vacation, they counted numbers in their bankbooks
Children were confused, scared, frozen
Occasionally they trusted a teacher

Once they trusted a priest, just once
But in time, their trust was betrayed
Their faces, tight and alarmed
They suffered daily with headaches and stomachaches

Kids starved for attention
But they got dollar bills
Parents screamed at them
Hurt and eating hot dogs

A 21st Century Recipe For Disaster:
Take a young man and put him in a high-powered car.… read more...

The Black Box of America, a poem by Gregory Ormson

This poem and image was originally published November 20, 2024 by Oddball Magazine. Editors calling it “a monster piece.”

The Black Box of America

Few people called a spade a spade
before the country went up in flames.
-Anon

No one missed that country
Men were soft, angry, and violent
Life was brutal and unforgiving
Pretentious and vacuous

Decisions and mutations were cut
in candle-lit back rooms, women were victims
They grabbed what they wanted
Fooled by the same illusion driving men, CONTROL

In apocalyptic bunkers
Dark physicians sang Odes to depression
Men were sheep and folded quickly
Not crying, but telling

Terrifying stories of bad things
Children were frightened and dogs were wild
No one cared about their neighbor
Everyone pretended at everything

The winner’s faces were tan, they lifted weights
Arenas were filled with men and women
Fighting women and men
Everything broke except the glass ceiling

Yuppies kept on building, kept sailing
Went on painting their ceilings
White, of course,
Ignorantly marched toward the future

They cheered the New Year
Hell, everyone cheered the New Year
And drove ATV’s and big boats
Rednecks toasted Monster Trucks as they mashed tiny Japanese cars

Christians decorated Christmas trees in suburban homes
To shots of Irish Crème or Asti
They drank while listening to strains of Bing Crosby’s
White Christmas on their stereo

They made yellow popcorn strings and dutifully attached them to the Green branches.
A ritual ‘round a tree,’ but nobody knew why
There were no ritual elders, there was no ritual wisdom
There was no embodiment of grace

After New Year’s celebrations and narcissistic resolutions
And the dark, wasted days of another empty year,
They awoke bored, helpless, angry at mothers and fathers
Sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, children and in-laws

The population chugged bourbon in the afternoon
And on vacation, they counted numbers in their bankbooks
Children were confused, scared, frozen
Occasionally they trusted a teacher

Once they trusted a priest, just once
But in time, their trust was betrayed
Their faces, tight and alarmed
They suffered daily with headaches and stomachaches

Kids starved for attention
But they got dollar bills
Parents screamed at them
Hurt and eating hot dogs

A 21st Century Recipe For Disaster:
Take a young man and put him in a high-powered car.… read more...

The Black Box of America

Poem by Gregory Ormson

… read more...

America’s Most Famous Bike: shown in 5 magazines, 4 newspapers, 2 alumni publications and several blogs. You can rent it through Riders Share . . . read on

American Classic

Here is America’s Most Famous Bike – Priscilla –  in the November 2024 issue of American Rider Magazine. She is also in stories written for Thunder Press, OM Yoga Magazine, The Taj Mahal Review, and AZ Rider News; find Priscilla in newspaper stories for: The Green Bay Press Gazette, The Wausau Daily Herald, The Mesa Tribune, and The Mining Journal; stories for University Alumni Publications (University of Wisconsin La Crosse, and Northern Michigan University), and three online publications: Yahoo.com, The Phoenix Indian Center, and the Riders’ Share Blog.

 

Photo in Thunder Press (now American Rider)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video link from my friend Ram Hernandez.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ram Hernandez (@ram7861)

QR DISCOUNT Code to rent Priscilla through Riders Share.

HARLEY-DAVIDSON TOURING ROAD KING (TWO TONE) for rent near Mesa, AZ – Riders Share (riders-share.com

You can rent Priscilla too but be good to her.

… read more...

What’s In A Name? Run to the Rez 21

 

Run to the Rez is coming up this weekend. I’ll be there listening and hoping to find words to describe this rally and Veterans honor ride.

More than just a gathering, the four-day motorcycle rally, ‘Run to the Rez’ is also a mystery. Albert Einstein wrote of mystery, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He [sic] to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to consider and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”

 

Absent an openness to awe, our lives inhabit a worn-out structure, we become dry bones baked in desert dust. And bereft of awe, especially now when we need it more than ever, our vision is compromised, and we cannot see or sense the remnants of an ancient past shivering down the branches and over the highways.

 

Energy drives that mystery and powers a seed to burst through the desert crust or volcanic rock in search of light. This energy steers the way at Run to the Rez.

 

Motorcycling among the Apache’s seven sacred mountains, it’s easy to recognize our finitude and smallness in the face of rugged geography. At the same time, when purple mountains majesty moves us, we sense our connectedness to something beyond singularity and smallness. It is material, it is mystical; it is breathtaking and breath-giving to the fire, to the ghost dancers, and to the riders  Aho

 

 

 

 

… read more...

Culture Wars, Walt Whitman, Yoga and You

Walt Whitman remains America’s greatest poet of healing. His close-up witness to the tragedy of the Civil War, coupled with his robust faith in the American creed led to his majestic and compassionate poetry. I believe it was his — and is my preference — to always err on the side of compassion vs anything less.

 

In his poem, America, Whitman wasn’t describing what America was during the Civil War, but was envisioning what it could be and what the American experiment aimed to be. America, he wrote, you are the “Center of equal daughters, equal sons, / All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old.”

 

Whitman knew that the American Union could remain intact through the Civil War only by the inclusion of all, especially one’s enemies. It’s how we became one United States of America versus a Northern or Southern United States. Enemies were included!

 

Today, the healing prescription for cultural bitterness must adopt this vision. Today, we hear a lot of nice words and slogans that remain distant but never get bloody. But change requires hard work, like the work of a man tending to the wounded and dying in a Civil War battlefield hospital – legs and arms piled in the tent corner – shoes caked in blood-stained ground.

 

In Leaves of Grass, Whitman wrote, “For every atom belongs to me as good belongs to you.” Quantum thought posits this as true. My atoms are yours and yours are mine. Your breath is mine and mine is yours. We are not separate from, or different from one another; your wounds are mine and mine are yours.… read more...

Two-part Video and Written Review of KEMIMOTO’S Windshield Extender on a Honda Rebel and a Harley-Davidson Road King

(Discount code included) at the end of this post as KEMIMOTO is celebrating their 13th anniversary. Use AFF17 for 17% off no threshold discount on this $79 product.

KEMIMOTO’S Windshield Extender is a fantastic buy to reduce the wind blast to their forehead, stop the rain before it gets to your neck and chest, and keep the desert heat off your forehead. In these two videos, I show this product mounted on a narrow and small windshield for a Honda Rebel. Part II, completed in Arizona, shows the same extender on my Harley Davidson Road King.

Good things about this product – and a recommendation for improvement:

  1. It absolutely cuts down on wind blast. This was important for my daughter who sits above the current windshield and the blast landed in her face. Even better, in Arizona where we ride in over 100 degrees nearly every day, it diminishes hot air to the face.
  2. The hardware on this extender is very solid, I do not see it wearing out for a long time. This includes the connection to the windshield itself which is key. I will show you in the second video, and photos here, how the rubber pieces protect the windshield and hold the extender in place. I was traveling at 70mph, and they held solidly; the extender attached to the bike windshield without scratching it, and without shifting around when riding.
  3. I love the ease and speed of installation and removal.  Right out of the box I set it up in about 10 minutes with the two small hex wrenches included in the shipping package.
… read more...

Sunburst Amber Fractions and A Hat Full of Rain

A magnetic north of the heart draws me back again. It’s all rain and wind in my beloved Midwest where dusk is augmented by a beautiful amber-orange sunset. It means fires are raging in the west and people are getting hurt.


I’m reading, Let It Be Told In A Single Breath, by Michigan poet Russell Thorburn. He prods me to take a slow, big breath before speaking. My yoga training opened the wisdom of this act, and now, I'll tell it in a single breath and in my northern tongue where the Ojibwe have influenced my wild outlook.


But my telling will be, as Emily Dickinson counseled, slant or in burnished red angle.


This slant tells of coffee and root beer, motorcycles, music, and slow-motion videos of grandchildren appearing ever so resilient in ligament and laughter. We’re all on a journey, delicate and mysterious, held in place perhaps by rubbery ligaments only.

This trip north has placed me back on sidewalks I traversed in my youth when a long-haired, three-piece rock band from Flint, Michigan sang of the Grand Funky Railroad Closer to Home. Aging in slow motion, I grow closer to home and deeply grateful as the years go by.

For a long time now, I’ve used music and prose to navigate my life: guitars, drums, banjos, fiddles, mandolins, and lyrics, like this favorite by Tom Waits, an important anthem to someone like me who sucks at Capitalism.

“Money’s just something you throw off the back of a train. Got a head full of lightning. A hat full of rain.
… read more...

Do We Love Women? Let Us Speak of the Ways, O Man (Published originally on July 25 by The Good Men Project)

A consciousness raising exercise for men. Grounding your reasons for loving women

July 25, 2024 by Gregory Ormson Leave a Comment

In her 43rd Sonnett, Elizabeth Barret Browning counted the ways she loved her lover. Her love, she wrote, was beyond the reach of the soul and yet inclusive of breath, smiles, and all of life. Her sonnets penned a far-reaching love that promised to do more than we can imagine and that was to love her lover even better after death. In many ways, all women are Elizabeth Barret Browning, and it is one reason I love women. And can we speak of the ways we love women?

I’m just a man trying to do the best he can, and I want to know if it’s ok to count the ways too. I will speak of and count the ways because women never quit on love. Women remember every act of love and they are determined to bring, bear, and carry it to the grave and beyond. How can I (we men) not love women? How can we not count the ways – death will not stop them or their love – if we are still able to count our breaths? Let me count the ways and speak of something in the way women move me to love them.

How do I love women that I adore, admire, hold dear, and treat tender like the night? Can I speak of the human women I know, the women I dream of and think of? And can I count the ways I love in these beings I see and hear and touch?

… read more...

Check out my Royal Enfield with this day travel bag for motorcycle or bicycle

I’m convinced of a product’s worthiness when I see comparisons between two or more with similar features. I’ve been in the market for a day bag to mount on my Royal Enfield Bullet 500. There are lots of bags out there, but they never appealed to me.

I hadn’t found one that met my needs for convenience and ease of installation and removal. I hadn’t found one that was not overpriced. I hadn’t found one that looked as if it fit my bike until this one.

“MotorcyclingYogiG” is my handle, and I ride a motorcycle to yoga class which means I need to carry a mat, towels, and clothes. The right bag has to be sleek in appearance and yet roomy enough. It needs to attach and detach easily so that I can remove them when needed. The bags also must not sag in (like the leather bags on my Softail) which I previously owned. This one fits all categories; it attached easily with four small zip ties, and I set it on top of a rolled-up yoga mat over the back fender. This protects the paint, and when I sit on the spring seat, it holds the yoga mat in place.

This KEMIMOTO day bag fits my needs. It’s designed smartly with protected zippers and Oxford fabric (a sturdy form of polyester and nylon) the single white reflective stripe on the side, the angled front panel to lessen wind resistance, the zippered inner pockets for cell phones and other valuables that must be protected, the orange semi-hard panel to keep the bags from sinking inward, the hooks placed smartly on the panel facing the wheel for convenient attachment to the frame, and the fabric loops on the bag’s outside for quick access to tools or other accessories.… read more...

RESPLENDENT PASSAGES: Motorcycling to a Yoga Festival, Diaries in Soul Craft

The grand American narrative of the open road is more compelling on a motorcycle. It captures the imagination of wanders and seekers because it looks like a story of independence and freedom. It’s not always true, but there is a universal search playing out in every riders quest for the open road, and that is the reality of change.

That grand narrative animates dreamers everywhere, is change, and the will to leave a better world for our children and children’s children. I’ll embody that mantle anytime and do my part to create that story. I choose to bear this weight even if my shoulders are heavy and draped with an old story of Stoll and yoke.

On my bike, handlebars into the wind, riding above the suck, bang, and blow of explosions under me, I’ve searched out places of vision and intent.

Riding to Wyoming’s Red Desert — from Upper Michigan — for a three-day vision quest, my guide explained how and why I had to cleanse myself for unseen encounters. He did not say it, but I learned that if I were not truly prepared and if my ego was not set aside and my aggression diminished, the crows would pick me apart and drive me far away from their land. Wyoming’s Red Desert is like Hawaii that way. “If you are a prick,” a guy in Hawaii told me, “The island will kick you off.”

Without preparation and a willingness to listen and learn from a guide; without training and preparation to lay down an honest oath and true intention, I would not have heard an ancient ocean singing its song beneath the hardened desert sand in Wyoming; I would not have learned how I was to hold the bowl; I would not have learned that in Hawaii, gardens and graves grow up through lava and bend toward the ocean; I would not have learned from a geologist in Upper Michigan — based on gouges in the dark rock — which way the glacier went; I would not have learned where, in the far north, dragon and damselflies emerge, crawl, hatch and take flight for their brief, acrobatic life.

… read more...

Get Your Irish On With The Good Rascal

Irish music relays powerful stories of love and loss, patriotism and sacrifice, and a thirst for the dram or grog. It comes to you with a strong beat and lyric verse. Sing along or pound your fist on the table to “Whiskey in the Jar,” “All for Me Grog,” and “Wild Rover.” Get lost in tales of love and loss “Star of the County Down,” “Galway Girl,” and “Molly Malone.” Find your inner rebel in songs of patriotism and sacrifice “Roddy McCorley,” “The Foggy Dew,” “Bold Fenian Men,” and “Follow Me Up to Carlow.”
BANE BITHIUNACH The Good Rascal

Slogan: “Cead MileFailte” One hundred thousand welcomes!

IRISH MUSIC — is there such a thing?

Yes, and Irish music takes you into its culture hook, line, and sinker. It’s more than just music, with courageous stories of resistance and sacrifice, land and liberty, love and loss; it cants of a thirst for the grog and flare for the poetic. Irish music is memorable for its strong rhythm and structure linked to true stories of gumption and love.

Here on St. Patrick’s Day, Gregory Ormson, BANE BITHIUNACH, “The Good Rascal” formerly of The MAGEES in Wisconsin and BIG IRISH in Hawaii  

Artist Introduction

International performer Gregory Ormson (The Good Rascal) first sang with a small group at The World’s Fair when he was 10. After college, he led a touring music group through India, the U.S., and Canada; and he’s performed in Spain, Korea, Mexico, and Haiti.

Leading with a strong drumbeat, playing four instruments at once, the rascal adds a convincing vocality to Ireland’s powerful stories and invites audiences to sing along on Irish folk favorites.

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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...

Can Yoga Spirituality and Christian Spirituality Co exist?  Part II

  — a five-part series by Gregory Ormson

Part I ONTOLOGY explored the place of divinity and humanity in yogic and Christian philosophy. 
Part II BREATH Yoga and Christian Spirituality Within Their Creation Narratives

In both Christian and yogic traditions, a divinity emerges from primordial dark and emptiness – or a watery void – and gets to work creating light and dark, establishing time, and creating living beings. Most creation stories start with God creating the human, but others do not. Following the establishment of beings, good and evil are introduced, animals are created, and the world is set in order. The sociological questions that arise in any group of people: questions of where I am, who is in charge, and who else is here, are answered in creation stories.  

Similarities abound between the Christian narrative in Genesis from the Old Testament (what some call the prime covenant) and the stories of Judaism and Islam. But when Indigenous North American creation myths are included, like the Salina Creation Story, an (Eagle) makes a man and from that a woman. In a modern poetic and literary contribution, Joy Harjo from the Muskoke Nation tells the story of a lonely rabbit who created a man, and then blew air into its mouth, upon which the created man stood up. Breath as the genesis of creation across many creation narratives is one reason why I call yoga a “breathcentric” practice. 

But the Divine-human connection in yogic and Christian spiritualities is an elusive subject because the “hidden God” (Deus absconditus) is not physically manifested. This is not the same as false, but divine essence remains elusive.… read more...

Can Yoga Spirituality and Christian Spirituality Co exist?  Part III

 

             –a five-part series by Gregory Ormson 

Part I ONTOLOGY explored the place of divinity and humanity in yogic and Christian philosophy.  

Part II BREATH explored yoga and Christian spirituality within their creation narratives, including a brief look at breath or prana.  

Part III LOVE turns attention to “what if” this is true. Traditionally, this has been the spark in creating an organization’s mission.  

There is a close similarity between Christian and yoga spirituality in their most important spiritual aspect; it transforms everything, and this is love (see the July print issue of OM Yoga Magazine, “Yoga’s symphony of movement: The soulful urge to let love fall”). This is not part of a typical yoga class, but love is the dynamic ingredient to spiritual life in both yogic and Christian manifestations. 

At a yoga festival this summer, following a session by world-renowned musician Krishna Das, I bought Flow of Grace. I asked him to autograph my copy, and he signed in all capital letters, “ALL LOVE” KD. Love is what yoga, chant, meditation, community, self-care, and spiritual encounters repeatedly put in our laps. The power of yoga is that it simultaneously teaches and offers a path to discover self-love and divine love. 

Das’ two-word inscription left me thinking of an experience 44 years ago in India when a philosopher asked me, “Does love love the lover of love, or does love bow to the lover of love?”   

The question is parabolic and instructive, but the answer, like a riddle, is elusive. Love is an ever-changing river; one we all navigate.… read more...

 Utah’s Old Skool Motorcycle Rally in Panguitch, UT. See my preview in June’s American Rider Magazine

Not long ago, a guy from Alaska called and said he wanted to rent my Harley Davidson Road King, asking about my “famous” bike “Priscilla.” I said it was available and he was in. She is pictured in this month’s issue of American Rider accompanying the rally preview

BIKERS, all I can say is that you ought to go up to Panguitch, Utah to do the rally. You won’t regret it, cause it’s hot and it’s cool. . . .   back to Priscilla.

Priscilla has been pictured in magazine stories I’ve written for Thunder Press, American Rider, OM Yoga Magazine, The Taj Mahal Review, and AZ Rider News; Priscilla has also been in newspaper stories for: The Green Bay Press Gazette, The Wausau Daily Herald, The Mesa Tribune, and The Mining Journal; two University Alumni Publications (University of Wisconsin La Crosse, and Northern Michigan University), three online publications: Yahoo.com, The Phoenix Indian Center, and the Riders’ Share Blog.

Check out her latest pose here in June’s American Rider from a photo I took by the red rocks of the Grand Canyon’s North entrance.

See link below to rent this bike on the RIDERS SHARE platform (the Airbnb of motorcycling).

AND keep

scrolling for photos from the 2023 rally

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yoga Magazine, UK

Thunder Press (at the time) now American Rider

The Mining Journal, Marquette, Michigan

OM Yoga Magazine, UK

 

The Taj Mahal Review, Allahabad, India

Northern Michigan University Alumni Magazine

Yoga Magazine, UK

 

 

 

 

 

 

UW La Crosse, Alumni Magazine The Lantern

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Rider Magazine

The MESA Tribune, Mesa, AZ

 

 

 

 

 

 

And a cool video link from my friend Ram Hernandez riding this bike

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ram Hernandez (@ram7861)

Here is my link to rent this bike through Riders Share

HARLEY-DAVIDSON TOURING ROAD KING (TWO TONE) for rent near Mesa, AZ – Riders Share (riders-share.com)… 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.

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NOW on Chirp, Kindle, Google Play, Story Tell, Audible, Apple Books, Lantern, and more

Chirp got it right with the summary:

“Yoga doesn’t just make a song within us, it opens us and makes us ready to receive a new song . . . there is no one track method or surefire formula by which the yogi receives yoga’s song because the lived experience of yoga is composed from threads of gray that become the seedbeds for change.  . . .

The economics of yoga are simple; we give, and yoga performs the necessary soul-dialysis: it purifies toxicity, reroutes negativity, renews the body, trims ego, patches flaws, melts worry, takes on pain, renews our hearts, and recasts our breath. When I go to yoga (paraphrasing Rumi), I am like a man in a tavern with many wines but without a glass. I keep going back to yoga where I become a reed dipping into a well of fine wine. I absorb from the well and drink its fermented wisdom.”

 

FUN FACTS: the word “yoga” appears 631 times in Yoga Song. It is a 2-hour 32-minute audiobook. Kevin Stillwell, a professional actor employed by Lantern Audio, narrates the Foreword written by Dr. Yoaananth Andiappan. Yoga Song (print version) contains my six-point philosophical precis and a glossary where I define yoga.

The six points:

  1. Trust
  2. Breath
  3. Embodiment
  4. Community
  5. Practice
  6. Healing

What do you think yoga is?

Yoga Song (sample available)

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Coming soon, Yoga Song in a two-hour audiobook by LANTERN audiobooks

Audio version contains one new chapter and five original songs in a  recording of 21 chapters
Ch. 1 The Sailing Forth
Ch. 2 Yoga: A Breathcentric Community
Ch. 3 OM
Ch. 4 Yoga: A Melody of Motion
Ch. 5 Yoga: Work, Play, Worship
Ch. 6 Making Heroes
Ch. 7 A Yoga Parable
Ch. 8 Finding Depth, Discovering Bliss
Ch. 9 A Child Leads
Ch. 10 Yoga and the Pure Consciousness of Healing
Ch. 11 Yogi, Heal Thyself
Ch. 12 The Power of Hot Yoga
Ch. 13 Endowed With a Longing for Connection
Ch. 14 Yogatecture: Blueprint of Transformation
Ch. 15 Transforming the Emotional Body
Ch. 16 Truth Force in Your Yoga
Ch. 17 Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song
Ch. 18 Release Into Savasana
Ch. 19 Armor On, Armor Off, the Psychology of Yin Yoga
Ch. 20 A Yoga Song for All Beings
Ch. 21 First and Last Breath

Ormson narrates a story of the yogi as an instrument made of mind, spirit, emotion, energy, and consciousness. In “Transforming the Emotional Body,” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song,” and “Yogatecture: Blueprint of Transformation,” Yoga Song advances an inspirational melody of motion, proclaiming to every yogi that their breath is their yoga song, a sacred song.

Review: INSPIRING AND ENRICHING

“Yoga song is the sound track to your journey of transformation.” This beautifully written book, expressing yoga in its most authentic way, is unique in its kind. This book takes the reader on a journey to self-discovery, providing helpful tools that encourage curiosity and introspection.

Gregory Ormson is an internationally recognised author also known as a motorcycling yogi.… read more...

New Reviews from England and Michigan for YOGA SONG

BREATH IS YOGA’S SONG, IT’S ALSO YOURS.

“I have never associated yoga with song, but I’ve practiced yoga with music for the past 25 of my 85 years. What a beautiful union that really gets you in the flow. I wish all the world leaders would read Gregory’s Yoga Song which could result in an ever so peaceful world.” John M. Manistee, Michigan

“Gregory Ormson’s Yoga Song is beautifully written from the heart and an absolute joy to read. This is a must-read for anyone who loves yoga or is simply interested in what it feels like to be completely present and fully connected.” – 5 stars, Amazon U.K – Sara Highfield, International Yoga teacher, retreat leader, model, and columnist for Om Yoga Magazine and others. Thank you John and Sarah for reading Yoga Song.

I have a message to share with you: Yoga song is the soundtrack to your journey of transformation. It will take you to self-care and open your body, mind, and spirit to wider circles with deeper draws of inclusion. In yoga, you are the embodiment of a mind/body/spirit therapeutic where ordinary moments stretch into extraordinary.

Yoga Song weaves a tapestry of meaning from the inside-out in 23 lyric vignettes: “Transforming the Emotional Body;” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song;” and “Yoga: a Breathcentric Community.” Yoga Song is informative and inspirational, proclaiming to every yogi that their yoga is their song . . . a sacred song.

I invite you to listen in on this yoga song; more importantly, to tune into your electric body and sing your yoga song.… 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...

Another Kind of Boundary: the Hallways of Menomonie High School   

Drumming, an Uncivilizing Reverberation

At 17, when Colt 4 broke up, I immediately joined a second band. We were disorganized and unpopular, but our singer had a teenage superpower – access to his grandmother’s remote cabin in the woods – and after high school basketball games, classmates drove into the country and trudged through the snowy woods to the cabin with party plans.

They grabbed beers from cases half-buried in the snow and stepped inside a small cabin. As the freezing cabin warmed and ice melted from boots and beers, our crappy band played loud while classmates danced in stocking hats and sweaters.

Pounding drums, I heated up and removed layers down to my T-shirt. Steam rose from my sweaty back, but I kept an eye on my Buckhorn Beer, perched on top of the wood-burning stove; I watched golden liquid thaw and bubble up from the brown bottle and then drip down the side of the glowing, red, hot stove. The loud hiiiisssssss of steaming beer meant the party was on.

And when the cabin started rocking on its pine log foundations, I worried that we’d tip it over and slide downhill like a wayward toboggan into the river. I imagined the headline on Saturday morning’s Eau Claire Leader-Telegram front page “20 Menomonie High School Seniors Drown in the Red Cedar River.”

At 17, I was a living volcano and existed to smash cymbals and snare. The loud retorts distracted me from self-recrimination and unhappiness. Everything was a drum, including my brothers, and I hit all of it with force.… read more...

Collective Yearning and the Tenacious Rumor of Peace

“If we merge mercy with might, and might

with right,

Then love becomes our legacy,

And change, our children’s birthright.”

Amanda Gorman

I’ve witnessed miracles, and seen shapeshifters take new forms to escape by feather and foot. One sprinted into the desert, disappearing into a swirling, amber-colored dust. The other was lifted by wind to go up beyond the turbulent flow of alley and calle.

I asked a street cobbler in India if he’d repair my broken sandal. Five-hundred-rupee sir,” he said. I shook my head. No, too much.

Looking at me with a toothless smile he started laughing, then exploded in a loud, unsettling cackle, a fused wail, and a jeer, unlike anything I’d ever heard. He didn’t seem to put forth any effort, yet his thin-bodied yodel was louder than a garbage truck.

He stood to walk away but looked back over his shoulder and laughed. His threadbare pants, worn down to nothing, completely exposed his butt cheeks. I was right behind him when he turned a corner into a narrow side alley. Seconds later, I looked to see where he went. I saw buildings but no windows or doors. The alley was empty yet filled with echoes. A crow cawed and lifted to fly, going up like a funeral in feathers.

Two decades later in Northeast Arizona, I arrived at a remote location for an appointment with someone known to the Navajo community as a ‘medicine man.’ His granddaughter met several of us and said, “You’re here to see grandfather? He was right here.”

She led us around a small Hogan from the east to the west where I saw a roadrunner making time to get away.… read more...

The Song of the Harley and Yoga’s Song. Listen in to Amanda Kingsmith’s podcast episode this week on Mastering the Business of Yoga as we discuss motorcycling, yoga, stress, and more

Mastering the Business of Yoga #mbom is an entrepreneurial podcast created by Amanda Kingsmith, a yogi-businesswoman who’s conducted interviews with yoga practitioners and business owners for over five years now. Great tips from yogi business owners big and small are curated by Amanda and broadcast on M. B. OM, her podcast. This week, I am Amanda’s guest, so tune in to hear about teaching at the interlap between motorcycling and yoga. At the end, I read a few paragraphs from my book, YOGA SONG.

FROM AMANDA: This week on the podcast, I am joined by Gregory Ormson. Gregory is a yoga teacher, an author, and a passionate biker. His yoga writing is published in 23 national and international magazines, journals, and online sites with over 5 million dedicated readers. Some of his articles have logged nearly 400,000 views and have been shared over 7000 times.

https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/mbomyoga/Gregory_Ormson_Auphonic.mp3

Known as #motorcyclingyogig, Gregory has taught yoga for bikers since 2017 at Superstition Harley Davidson, the only dealership in the country to hold yoga classes in its facility. Gregory first came on the podcast back in 2017 to share his business and unique niche with listeners, and he is back today to share how things have been going, what he’s learned through his career, as well as a little bit about his new book, Yoga Song. Enjoy!

Discussed in this episode:

  • Offering yoga for bikers in a Harley Davidson store for over five years
  • How Gregory markets his classes to other people
  • Aiming for an inspirational teaching strategy in yoga
  • Learning to relax in the midst of stressful situations
  • Important business lessons Gregory has learned over the years
  • Having a genuine desire to get to know people and understand them
  • Learning more about Gregory’s book, Yoga Song
  • And much more… Here is the episode!
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Tavelpictalogue May 17 – Sept 23

Going: Arizona, New Mexico, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan. Returning: Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, NM, and AZ.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Asana International Yoga Journal review of Yoga Song.

Thank you Asana Journal

 

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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.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82663987132…
Meeting ID: 826 6398 7132
Passcode: 103409
… read more...

Yoga Song

http://Yoga Song: Dr. Gregory Ormson: 9788182539594: Amazon.com: Books… read more...

From American Rider Magazine, thanks!

Biker Yoga Book: Yoga Song

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Read what others say about Gregory Ormson’s songs of redemption and transformation in Yoga Song.    

“Your writing is very good and would be ideal if you ever fancy contributing on any regular basis, especially in our OM spirit section.” Martin Clark, ed., Om Yoga Magazine UK

“Gregory eloquently expresses from a place of depth and authenticity, inviting his readers to fully partake in the journeys he shares.” Cassandra Bright, Gilbert, Arizona

“Greg, you are a remarkable writer!  I found it really interesting because so often we think about what yoga gives to us or what we get but very rarely do we think about what we give to the practice.  I think what you wrote was thought provoking and absolutely beautiful expression. Leley Pelkey, Phoenix, Arizona

The book has been beautifully written and its words are well crafted. It will undoubtedly inspire students of yoga.  Dr. Yogananth Andiappan, Hong Kong, Asana Journal, ed.,

“Your description of yoga as martial art of the soul, I love it, awesome.” Christen Tanner, Mesa, Arizona

“You are a very talented writer and storyteller, Greg. Congratulations on being published in Om Yoga Magazine and for sharing your path to self-discovery. You are an inspiration.” Bobbie Schmidt, Marana, Arizona

“This writing is really interesting and deserves to be in top 5 Google Search Results.”  Sergio E (via Webpage email).

“Your articles interest our readers and that’s why we allocate pages every month in our magazine. Your view – and writing – of yoga practice is amazing.” Joe (sub-editor) Asana Journal

Yogi G! I feel so honored to have met Gregory while leading music and yoga . . . we have collaborated several times for Sound Meditations and Kirtan Cacao Ceremonies .… read more...

YOGA SONG: a lyric narrative of transformation and redemption, coming this summer from Rochak Publishing

When born-to-be-wild biker Gregory Ormson (#motorcyclingyogig) moved to Hawaii, he 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. Ormson’s yoga writing and publishing (#yogainspirationals) led to Yoga Song.

From YOGA SONG

Yoga equips us to meet a stressful world and greet it with equanimity; it’s why we practice, study, and seek to discover who we are as we fall back into the fullness of Self. We breathe deeply to inherit yoga’s spiritual science, and with that breath, release and enter the realm of Om, the universal vibration of creation animating all life.

Yoga sings a song of connection to the ground of our being that his holy at its core; and it offers a redemption song for our mistakes and failures. We meditate, practice asana, or follow yoga’s inner path to the eternal Om and experience how yoga expands the dimensions in which we live and move even as the cultural spaces we inhabit are pressured and restricted.

Yoga’s melodies come to us in soothing voice, chant, or in the spirited sound of a group together in deep exhale. It leads us to deepen our range of motion, expand our lungs with full breath, increase our stretch of spine, and extend our energy body into space.

Formed from the crucible of scholarship and exercise, yoga empties and then fills the thinking reed that is hu-man and teaches us to inherit new dimensions. In time, yoga levels our judgments and brings us to the healing ground of calm detachment while simultaneously counseling us through the yamas and niyamas to do the right things.… read more...

Visitor to Yoga Class at SHD

During the last class of spring/summer we were happy to welcome “Chuck-A-Dog.”
Good energy in yoga, good energy wind in the face, good energy in yoga.

 … 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...

Thanks OM Yoga Magazine (UK) March issue, for publishing the 101st of my YogaInspirationals

A couple paragrphs from the full text (below) written originally as: “Endowed With Longing for Connection.”

Perfection in yoga may have been an ancient goal, and to achieve that goal many yogis spent time alone and in isolation; but I don’t know anyone with perfection on their bucket list. I’ve not heard anyone say, “Yea, I want to become the perfect yogi, to levitate, reach santosha, and become one with God.

. . . The myth of rugged individualism, a notion that’s driven the ethic of individualism and ambition in my country really is a myth. We all need connections with others; and that need is so powerful that people will change their identities, alter their most treasured beliefs, or explore far and wide to find a niche or group from which to draw comfort.

Yoga communities around the world continue to be deeply affected by an invisible virus called COVID-19. Starting in 2020, our community in-person gatherings have been stunted and its intensified the challenge to make important new social connections.

Now for the third time, I’ve scaled back my regular yoga attendance at a studio and I’m bummed about it. But with a worldwide pandemic still happening, and my aversion to sickness, I’m on pause.

All of us in the yoga community have responded the best we can, and we’ve learned to use social media tools to stay in contact with others. But we also noticed that while communities established through the World Wide Web were important, they were different.

I taught online for six years, but it never felt natural to me.… read more...

ROYAL ENFIELD: a brief history of the bullet

When I was a kid my parents bought me a stingray style bicycle that we called a muscle bike. With a can of cheap green spray paint, a leopard patterned banana seat, and high handlebars, I went to work updating. Attaching handlebar streamers to the hand grips and playing cards with clothe-pins to the frame, the streamers flapped and playing cards blade slapped the spokes as the wheel moved. In my imagination, my muscle bike sound a bit like a motor.

After graduation from the university, I toured through India with a music group. Before going there, my mentor had given me the name and address of a good friend from the time he lived in Long Island, NY, and asked if I’d stop by in New Delhi to say hello if I had a chance.

One night in Delhi, I borrowed a Royal Enfield Motorcycle and drove to where she lived. I didn’t have a motorcycle license and hadn’t ridden a motorcycle. It’s dangerous to ride without training, and crazy to ride a motorcycle in India, but at 22 I felt invincible; I mounted the bike and took off through the streets of New Delhi dodging animals and people.

I found where she lived, knocked on the door, and told her why I was there. She invited me in for tea and we talked.

After that day, I didn’t ride a motorcycle again until I was 46 years old; but from that night in India until the time I bought my first Harley Davidson motorcycle, I have cherished that memory and the thrilling experience of riding the bike dodging goats, cows, and people.… read more...

Love me two Times: coyote and The Doors in a dark desert valley

I’m camping, and the desert divot nearby is a scar of prickly pear, cacti, and sharp-edged boulders. Tonight it’s dark, stars are twinkling, and its filled with coyotes singing, rapping, and yipping a song of their own. I think it could be their version of “Party and Bullshit” by the Notorious BIG.

(Photo: desert-bleached coyote jaw) 

Indigenous people revered and feared coyote. Like its design, coyote is mixed bag. On one hand the mighty trickster stood for folly, comedy, or good luck. But coyote could also bring humiliating failure, misfortune, or disaster. American Indian lore bubbles with tales of coyote’s mystique and lessons of its big appetite, small vision, and aimlessness.

If you’ve been to the American Southwest you’ve seen coyote trotting, trotting . . . always trotting. Coyote is the scruffy, desert-worn, slinky one; the raggle-taggle gypsy of the plains and scarred, scrubby deserts.

Coyote is the product of compromise or committee; no single artist would fashion such a sad, unmatched composite of fur and bone: snout too long, ears too big, legs too skinny, fur too matted and messy, eyes and face the bemused markings of vexation and confusion . . . perhaps its coyote smiling.

Even so, some creation stories sing high praises of coyote for he tricked monster, the world-destroyer, to save himself and all of us. Lobos disparatado (absurd, goofy, wild, coyote) is the back-room ally of the two-legged ones able to disembody and send its spirit to carry out pranks or offer gifts.

Some creation stories tell of coyote bringing the gift of fire for two-legged ones, or coyote who out schemed his enemies, and how the wily coyote detached his penis and sent it upriver to have a party only to return and reattach to his body.… 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...

Lunar Sound Journey: an event for you on January 2, 2022

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A post shared by Gregory Ormson (@motorcyclingyogig)

… read more...

INVITATION: Music and Cacao Ceremony Event – FRIDAY DEC. 3

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/kirtan-cacao-ceremony-sound-healing-tickets-150131119219

I’m inviting you to a Cacao Ceremony this coming Friday from 5:30-8:00 pm, December 3 at RADICILE SANA, 22 N. Bellview, Mesa, AZ.  Space is limited to 15 people with payment in advance through eventbrite (on the link above). Click it to register & for details on what cacao actually is, what to expect during the ceremony, and some items you may need.

A sound healing musician, friend, and yoga teacher Crystal Valentina, has led Cacao Ceremonies and sound healing for over five years. Such a ceremony meets in a community setting around the elements of chant, sound healing, and cacao.

If you’ve never participated in a one, why not try something new? Expand your comfort zone and learn what you may need and want even if you are not aware of it. Think of the possibility to experience heightened sensations, focused intentions, and active empathy.

By invitation, I’ll be a guest musician and participant with everyone on Friday night. It will be fun to make voice with you and play sitar and guitar.  NOTE: The kirtan style chant, a common part of cacao ceremony, is not a singing contest. The purpose of chanting in mindfulness is discovered when the gathered community sound as one voice (the vocal instrument) accompanied by other instruments.

… 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...

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