Life philosophy
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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.
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Yoga teaches us to be still and live in a way formed by new dimensions from an old script. It levels our judgments and brings us to the healing ground of calm detachment while simultaneously counseling us through yamas and niyamas to say and do the right things. In the pressured spaces of post-Modernism and
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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,
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By any measure, a photo of this tree is unremarkable. It’s my yoga tree, an uncrowded place I go to move, breathe, and sit in stillness. This spot brings together my past and present; my past represented by the baseball field a few feet away and the present in my grounding movement above the roots
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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
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Everyone lives with failures and mistakes. It’s part of being human. But we also carry within us our wildest unarticulated imaginings and hopes. Perhaps sometime during 2021, we’ve experienced great happiness and joy. Maybe we’ve celebrated something in our lives or the lives of those in our circles. But life is a balance, and we
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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 –
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“I got dreams that are too big for mass.” #thisbeinghuman When dreams meet Self, descriptions abate and prophesies grow into fullness, while the wisdom of silence and balance of polarities root and branch in the 5 koshas. When dreams meet self, every yogi is shattered and burned. Forgetting everything they thought they knew, they are
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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
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September’s issue of Thunder Press includes a 2021 review of Sturgis Bike Week and my story below. Thanks Kevin Duke (ed)., and Oliver Touron for this photo of Debbie and I heading west on I-8 closing in on Yuma, AZ. Riding for #MMIWC on the way to San Diego’s #MedicineWheelRide. Link to full issue below
GREGORY ORMSON'S Notes, Articles, Blogs, Vlogs Gregory Ormson writes from the ecotone, the vibrant intersections of landscape, spirituality, and physical presence. His essays and poems have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, and print magazines. Author of *Yoga Song* and other works, Ormson blends lyrical observation with grounded reflection drawn from his Midwestern roots and global travels. He lives in Arizona and Wisconsin, seeking stillness where stories emerge like bears. 