Lyric narrative from the inside.
TRANSFORMING THE EMOTIONAL BODY
68th published yoga article, Issue 187 ASANA JOURNAL
Louie Netz, Director for Harley-Davidson’s Styling and Graphics Department once said, “Form and function both report to emotion.” It’s likely when observing a yoga pose, or the stylish symmetry of a Harley-Davidson taking a curve, to believe motorcycles are about speeding through curves and yoga is about perfectly aligned asanas.
A yogi on the mat or a Harley-Davidson on the highway both perform their function at a high degree and garner attention, but the brilliance of yoga – and a great motorcycle – is its move from form to function and ultimately to emotion.
Like many newcomers, when I started yoga, I thought it was about what I saw; and I noticed people bending into forms that were – at first – perplexing. I also thought it was about what I heard yoga could do for my injured back. I believed if yoga could heal my injuries I would feel better and that would be all I could expect.
My yoga evolution was gradual; I practiced to feel better, then to learn good alignment and accomplish more asanas. As a dedicated student, I paid attention to words from my teachers as they led me to correct placement of my feet and hands. I followed their instructions which led me through breathing techniques and transitions.
But right away, I sensed there was something happening well beyond what was taking place on my mat. I didn’t know, but I was on my way to connect, or yoke deeply to my full self, and at the same time, something much broader and deeper than just me.… read more...
Writer/Yogi/Teacher
Podcast from Mastering the Business of YOGA on Yoga for Bikers.
Niching Down: Gregory Ormson on Offering Yoga to Motorcycle Riders
In November, Amanda Kingsmith conducted an interview with me on YOGA AND LEATHER: Yoga for Bikers, the program we started in September at Superstition Harley Davidson in Apache Junction. Here is the link to that podcast where I speak about parallels between yoga and motorcycling and about how this started.… read more...
Can yoga ruin your life? This author writing for elephant journal thinks so.
So does yoga ruin lives?
Yes.
But there are many ways to interpret this. Read about it and follow the link at the end of the short article to the video.
https://www.elephantjournal.com/2017/10/how-yoga-ruins-our-lives/… read more...
Snippets from YOGATECTURE
A beautiful house is nothing if the furniture inside is draped in a gunnysack of negativity. If our inner house is awash in pride, jealousy, anger, and deep-seated prejudice, yoga offers and enables relinquishment of this toxic brew.
Where resentment is held in the body, yoga brings it to the surface and by asana pulls it out of the body. Then we observe, and decide if compassion will replace condemnation.
EASTER 2017, Apache Junction, AZ.
I had a house in Marquette, Michigan. Beautiful trees populated the five acre plot, and in time I named some of them. I found shade and solace near Ulysses, Chief, and Christmas. But my favorite was Easter.
Easter was a large maple, exploding with red leaves each fall. In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, that meant late August and September. Easter grew next to my driveway. I remember pounding a shovel through rocky ground when I buried my first dog next to Easter. Each time I passed Easter, I noticed a small mound of dirt that covered Buster’s grave.
In winter, like me, Easter was cold. Every February I thought the trees would die. On bitterly cold days and nights, Easter and the other hardwoods popped and cracked with sounds like gunshots.
In spring, with snow on the ground, I noticed tiny buds at the end of long branches.
Easter lived.… read more...
AMWRITING
The Bridge Within
This article (yogainspirational #46) from September is not yet online, but in the print version of Asana Journal, available at http://www.asanajournal.com. To read it, click on each photo. Articles in the magazine are excellent and informative for beginner or advanced practitioner. I took photos of these two bridges on my travels through Upper Michigan this summer. The first one made of concrete connects US 550 and crosses the Dead River as it flows into Lake Superior Marquette, Michigan. The second bridge is wood, and it allows a walker to get a nice view of Tioga Creek at the Tioga Creek Roadside Park off US 41 west of Nestoria, Michigan.
A Walk to Lake Superior
This summer of nostalgia and reunions has left me dizzy with memories. The two roads of which Frost wrote have never been relevant to me. I’ve always seen only one road, the one in which I was all in. I don’t care if the glass is half full or half empty; speculating on this is a waste of time. What are ya gonna show me today? What are ya gonna be now? What am I going to be? This is all that’s important; all the other stuff is exterior stuff and it’s not really stuff; to describe it, I often use another S word minus one letter
Recently, I walked a path dark and green; the pony trail in Michigan. When they were young, I held the reins and led my daughters on their ponies Billy and Midnight. It’s a trail that always led to the not trending and to the deep blue sea of Lake Superior. Sometimes on this trail, I’d see the passing of a shadow and remember the words of Chief Seattle, delivered 100 years before I was born:
“And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children’s children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone.”
At that place, on the shores of gitche gumee, today I prayed on the wall where for many years I sought the counsel of silence.… read more...
IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR
THE STORY OF HOW YOGA BROUGHT MY SOUL BACK
After a day moving to Hawaii and into a new apartment, I was on a hard wooden floor in pain. This led me to yoga in an attempt to fix my back. It was out of desperation, yet a few weeks later I found myself in a hot yogaroom. With no formal background — and very little knowledge of yoga — I went to a class searching for something to make me strong in my broken places. I hoped I wouldn’t collapse, but was also confident about the challenge before me. With no preparation or personal experience, I jumped in.
My plan was to try yoga for thirty days. Then, I would evaluate how my back felt and decide if I should continue. I made it through twenty-four classes that month and found my will galvanized. My conclusion was clear: Yoga is the way to go for healing back pain. “It’s so simple,” I wrote, “why don’t more people do it?” Yoga worked, but the transformation goes deeper.
Writing and Yoga
I decided to keep attending and keep writing about it because I thought my practice in a heated room would benefit me in other ways too, and I was eager to discover them. But notes about yoga were not my only subject. I started writing on everything that came to me during that beautiful hour: I numbered the sessions, made notes about the teachers, chronicled my thoughts about the class and penned other insights.
In the Shadow of the Angel: 23-years of men’s group
Twenty-three years after starting a Men’s Group in Marquette, Michigan with John MacDevitt and Jeff Gibbs, I found them still meeting. Here’s the story, published Aug. 29, 2016 in The Good Men Project.
Follow link below to story.
Thank you TGMP… read more...
Marquette, Michigan, August 2016
YogaInspirationals by Greg, numbers 42 and 43 in Asana Journal
42 By a Thread
The indigenous people of the American Southwest – the Dinhe’ – known to the English speaking world as Navajo, are famous for their high-quality and beautiful hand crafted wool rugs. People spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to own one.
But wisdom from this tradition has taught the Navajo to sew one small thread out of place into each rug’s pattern; thereby, working into the design a deliberate mistake. By including a flaw, Navajo acknowledge through the honesty of their art that even the most beautiful work is imperfect.
Life is an art, and the best artists know that every journey requires movement and motion. In yoga terms, our life could be viewed as an asana in which movement into time is beset with flaws and missteps. If yogis take this notion to heart, they will acknowledge, accept, and include their flaws as a necessary part of the beautiful mosaic their lives create.
Many come to yoga with their lives hanging on by a thread and their coping skills stretched to the max. Perhaps it’s the businessman or businesswoman burned out by economic demands and stresses. Maybe another person arrives in yoga with a broken heart, or someone else is tired of the fast pace of urban living, or fatigued with the demands of social media. In all these cases, yoga’s healing patterns in silence, in movement, or in stillness welcomes the flawed life into its creation.
This is why Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras (threads) have become must reading and study for the modern yogi.… read more...
YogaInspirationals #39
My Purpose? That’s simple.
To live, to love, to tell stories.
This fluid journey called yoga – four years in the making – continues its remaking over me.
My practice takes place in the heated mist of a hot yoga room. It’s a practice of eustress and relaxation which morphs into a luminous cloud, salty and damp.
I am connected to you through drops of sweat.
Your asana is my asana, your bending and shaping is my bending and shaping.
To return again and be in that dusty – but it’s not really dust – cloud becomes the road-map for traveling outward as breath moves to sweet release.
My longing is your longing, my travel is your travel.
I’m dragonfly, now rabbit, then camel, now fish – now myself.
Then I evolve once again, going back and yet forward at the same time to child in his innocent repose.
Your evolving is my evolving: we go back to child.
“The way in is the way out,” my guru said
Her wisdom, “the way in is the way out” comes to me from her bloodline far to the east, from a practice that bent and molded her matter-mind, from evidence etched into the soles of her feet. Tucked in like a child, she steps back and forth over the soles of my feet and east meets west.
Moved to low places like water, propelled by gravity, heating, bending, and shaping, I’m an ongoing story of learning. My teachers are ancient yoga reformers.
My reformation is your reformation, my learning is your learning.… read more...
Yoga 20th Installment Yoga Inspirationals
http://notesbygo.blogspot.com/2015/04/o-rings-20th-installment-yoga.html… read more...
Midwest Guns R U.S. who is the boy inside the man holding the gun
Article published today by The Good Men Project.
The good men project focuses on issues relevant to men and boys, helping them to be more aware of both their power for bad and good. It’s also a support site with advice for men, offering encouragement to boys and tips for everyone on the power of mentoring and mutual support. Check it out at The Good Men Project either on Facebook or on their Website.
My article might be called brief Social commentary on guns and the American fascination with them. Brief article includes reflections on hunting, guilt and fascination with guns, the mesmerizing power of a trigger, and the gun’s mystical draw, its polarizing reality. Link below and thanks for reading and passing along.
My son with the .16 guage Mossberg bold-action shotgun, the subject of this article.
