Gregory Ormson

Writer, musician, yoga-loving motorcyclist.

Sunspot Literary Journal Volume 5, Issue 2 Motorcycling to Mexican Time and the Zen Sea Gregory Ormson Rigel 2023 Finalist

Biking toward Mexico, the jagged mountains framing both sides of Arizona’s Highway 85 are now in my mirror. Wind and heat push me forward to where it is not much of a leap for my Midwestern imagination to place me in a scene from an apocalyptic biker movie on a two-lane road headed into the heart of dust. At the border wall, problematic for drug mules and Americans with criminal records trying to cross, the guards peer at my shiny wheels.

 

I’m neither criminal nor mule, but I’m wary of the gun-wielding guards; the mind-meld of television news depicts Mexico as dangerous, and at this wrecking wall I’m heating up like one of Dante’s eighth-circle bolgers.

My motorcycle brothers and I cross the wall into Mexico, and our bikes are screaming to hell with America and our jobs, if we still got them, left behind us with our families—fathers, children without fathers, and desperate mothers trying to become younger in their old age. Will I ever cross the border back to America?

So this is Mexico?

There’s a lot of dust.

Dust eats away at my skin. The leather I wear makes every minute an inferno on the motorcycle. Heat explodes up my ass, creeping past crack and sack to pillage my spine and overburden my shoulders. But I am an adult, I am in Mexico, I have documents and a clean record; I can drink, buy drugs, or pay to make fantasies come true. I can also do none of that or get a ticket to take the pirate ship and sail into the mystic with tourists, eating as much shrimp and drinking as much Dos Equis XX lager as I can handle.… read more...

From the Riders Share Blog: Six Gears and a Mountain Ride, mechanical breakdown and communication rescue A Riders Share Owner’s Story By Gregory Ormson, Mesa, Arizona

Nobody wants a mechanical breakdown – ever! But think of your bike out with a renter and he is a thousand miles away. Worse, the nearest repair facility is over 100 miles away; your bike and renter are stranded on a remote mountain road. You absolutely don’t want a breakdown then, but that’s what happened to my Riders Share client.

Jose rented my bike for a nine-day trip and was joined for a Southwest U.S. tour by his group of longtime friends. They had created their own bikers club and had taken group trips before. As they took off from the Phoenix east valley on their trip, I watched their social media posts and they looked happy as they logged miles and smiles. Jose was posting maps on Instagram. In one, bikers in leather lay down on their backs and carved snow angels high in the Rockies – something people in Guadalajara, Mexico don’t do.

On the sixth day, my phone lit up with a call from Mexico. It was Jose, stranded in mid-Colorado, deep in a canyon. Through a crackling and intermittent connection, I understood Jose to say there was a problem with my shifter. He was going to call Rider’s Share as the bike was inoperable. An engineer by trade, he accepted that mechanical problems do happen, metal parts give out, and he was gracious about the situation. The most important thing is that he and his wife were okay. From then on, we kept in contact by text. And yes, it’s worrisome when something like this happens.

Not long after I spoke with Jose, Kendra from Rider’s Share called and we discussed my bike’s situation.… read more...

  Utah’s Old Skool Motorcycle Rally in Panguitch – Read this and you’ll know

Asked what brings people to the rally, Steve Garrett, organizer, and leader said, “The riding. There are five National Parks all around us. We are about the bikers, the town, and nothing else.”

Garrett, his wife Sue, and a dedicated team of staff and volunteers have worked hard to strengthen ties with the City of Panguitch. This year, the city helped prepare the fairgrounds and cleaned the main building for biker registration. They also erected large tents and helped Garrett hoist a new welcoming sign, sponsored by Russ Brown Motorcycle Attorneys, on Highway 89, the ingress to both north and south Panguitch. “The town appreciates this,” Garret said, “with its big welcome to Panguitch message.”

Started officially in 2008 by Rick Story, a long-time employee of Timpanogos (now Summit) Harley Davidson, with assistance from his wife Sweetie, the rally grew in four years but health concerns forced Rick and Sweetie to take a break this year. Garrett, who’d worked with Story in the previous rallies, took over leadership with assistance from his friend, Rabbit Downward. 

“Old school meant pride and brotherhood,” Story said. “It used to be that all bikers cared about one another, and it didn’t matter what kind of bike you had.” The rally is evidence that old school doesn’t mean old, and old school ideals aren’t dead. 

Bikers helping bikers, at no cost, still lives as one of the main benefits of connecting with the Russ Brown Motorcycle Lawyers organization. They were a major sponsor of the Panguitch Rally this year, along with Zion Harley Davidson, and Wasatch Indian Motorcycles.… read more...

My 103rd #yogainspirationals Yoga’s Symphony of Movement: the soulful urge to let love fall OM YOGA MAGAZINE

When you engage with yoga, you are fastened into a deep and wide health corps, one steered by the way of breath and meditation, shaped by the forces of Hatha and time.

Neither you nor I can remain in a yoga session or meditation session without breath and patience, but when we attend to our guru – the breath – we are renewed, inspired, and transformed.
When led by a good yoga teacher, we’ll find words of encouragement and encounter something that we will not hear in other places. This “something” is embedded deep in yoga’s reforming curriculum where we find asana a positive but not necessarily easy pursuit.

 

Yoga’s teaching of ethics contains many ingredients. One not often talked of, but present like the yeast in bread – a small ingredient that raises the dough – is love. Love is the dynamic force of yoga’s recipe for change, the ingredient which creates healing for mind, body, and spirit. One key aspect of this ingredient proclaims to us that we are worthy of self-care while simultaneously teaching us what it is and how to apply it in our lives.

In savasana, yogis dip into a deep pool of love as they sink into the mat and their full body weight rests heavy and still. That’s when we remind ourselves to replace thoughts of self-recrimination and judgment with thoughts of praise and even love for ourselves and others. Recently, as the class was released into a state of savasana, the teacher said, “Let love fall upon your spine.”

Think about the powerful impact of this idea; the kind of thing yogis regularly hear during the marvelous privilege of practicing yoga, during which we absorb yoga’s ministry of spirit and its medicine for body and mind.… read more...

Thank you India for International Yoga Day and sharing yoga with the world

On International Yoga Day last year, Rochak Press of India Published Yoga Song. For sale on Amazon India at 1,417.92 rupees it looks odd and sounds expensive for people in the Earth’s most populated country, but a rupee is 0.012 U.S. dollars (India’s population recently passed China at 1.42 billion).

Even with a robber baron-sounding price, Yoga Song has generated interest from publicity in The Taj Mahal Review, Cyberwit, and the powerhouse book sellers Shree Hanumanth of India. Om Yoga Magazine (UK) Asana International Yoga Journal (India), and American Rider Magazine have also alerted their reading audiences to this book and I thank them.

I’ve been grateful for reviews, comments, and exposure from individuals who’ve written on Amazon or directly to me. And I’m grateful for opportunities to offer Yoga Song for sale here in the U.S.

My thanks to all who helped me with these two big undertakings: editors and book-format people for the paper version, and audio executives and sound engineers at Lantern Audiobooks. My friend Charlie Harvin, living in Bulgaria, designed the cover. People have complimented its look.

This year I recorded Yoga Song through Lantern Audiobooks, and it is now available on Lantern and 30 other worldwide distribution networks. On some it’s free with a trial and on others, less than five bucks.

Listen in to Yoga Song, an instrument of mass inspiration in 21 vignettes and five original songs. let the songs fall upon your heart, register in your body, and spark new life in your mind and spirit. Breath is yoga’s song, and when you breathe doing yoga, you are singing your love song to yourself.… 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...

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)

… read more...

Yoga Song, just released in audiobook as a sound track to your journey of transformation and instrument of mass inspiration

NOW you can listen to 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 your ears in “Yoga, A Breathcentric Community,” and much more.

Yoga Song now available on LANTERN Audiobooks, Audible, Kindle, Apple Books, Bookbeat, audiobooks.com, audiobooksnow.com, downpour.com, Findaway, Google Play, Biblioteha LLC, Baker & Taylor, Follett Library Services, and 10 others, Hoopla, Kindle, Macklin Educational Resources, Overdrive, Kobo, Libro.FM, Nook Audio, Scribd, and Odilo.

Yoga Song is an instrument of mass inspiration in 21 vignettes and five original songs. While you listen, yoga’s song will fall upon your heart, register in your body, and spark new life in your mind and spirit. I narrate this book with my conviction that breath is yoga’s song, and when you breathe doing yoga, you are singing your yoga song and restoring your body’s equilibrium.

Hear Yoga Song on your way to yoga class, traveling this summer, or when resting in your comfortable place.

Thank you, and please tell your friends about Yoga Song as a LANTERN Audiobook available NOW at $8.99 through Lantern as your 2 hour and 32 minute inspirational yoga companion in music and narration.
… read more...

Yoga Song preface with music, “Sit Where You Are.”

This preface to Yoga Song narrates the vision Gregory Ormson had when he expressed yoga as a song. The song, “Sit Where You Are,” co-produced by Randy Anagnostis, underlies the narration of this book, available soon on Lantern Audiobooks and many other platforms worldwide. 2:28 listening time. Underlying this text is the gentle chant and music of “Sit Where You Are.” It centers on explication of The Yoga Sutras, and Patanjali’s counsel in the opening thread “aham yoganasanam.” Music begins at 2:47

 … read more...

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...

ANNOUNCEMENT: Yoga Song on LANTERN AUDIO AUDIOBOOKS coming this month

I’m happy to announce the impending release of YOGA SONG as an audiobook available on LANTERN Audio Audiobooks, Audible, and these distribution networks:  Kindle, Apple Books, Bookbeat, Audiobooks.com, Audiobooksnow.com, Downpour.com, Findaway, Google Play, Biblioteha LLC, Baker & Taylor, Follett Libray Services and 10 others, Hoopla, Kindle, Macklin Educational Resources, Overdrive, Kobo, Libro.FM, Nook Audio, Scribd, Odilo

Yoga Song is an instrument of mass inspiration in 21 vignettes and five original songs. While you listen, yoga’s song will fall upon your heart, register in your body, and spark new life in your mind and spirit. I narrate this book with my conviction that breath is yoga’s song, and when you breathe doing yoga, you are singing your yoga song.
   Hear Yoga Song on your way to yoga class, while traveling this summer, or when resting in your comfortable place. Listen to an integrative description of Humble Warrior Pose in “Yogi, Heal Thyself,” follow my excavation of Camel Pose in “Making Heroes,” or let the deeply affirming mystery of yoga’s therapy fall upon your ears in “Yoga, A Breathcentric Community.”
   Thank you, and please tell your friends about Yoga Song as a LANTERN Audio Audiobook available soon.
   The excerpt below is from Yoga Song Chapter 2, “Yoga, A Breathcentric Community.”
   “Yoga brings a heightened discernment when yogis are pressed into a crucible of equal but opposite force. This force (hatha) presents us with the task of being at ease while stressed. It is yoga’s therapeutic, and we get it every time we bend, stretch, and breathe.
   I glance around the outdoor space where I teach and see the outline of my community becoming new every day.
… read more...

500 A Milestone & Therapy for my Spine

My first 26+2 teacher Mark Hough December 2012 @ Bikram Yoga Kona Hawaii; and my 500th session of 26+2 with teacher David King @ The Foundry Yoga, Tempe, AZ March 28, 2023. In between there were many others, and classes in vinyasa, yin, javamukti, and other yogas, but for my spine I choose 26+2 which I address below. Please read on.

I’ve told a common yoga story when writing about what happened to me. I moved to Hawaii but couldn’t enjoy paradise because I had a bad back that limited me. Out of desperation, I tried yoga in Hawaii and my back healed. I believe that yoga can fix our backs, spines, and minds. It’s as simple as that.

From the first glimmer of life, our spines constantly evolve. At first (in utero), the human spine looks no different than any other animal as it’s one simple curve resembling a comma, called the primary curve. When we make our way through birth trauma, our cervical spine begins its evolutionary adjustment and shifting of its shape which allows us to stand upright. This adjustment continues throughout our lives.

After several months and into our early years, we develop a second curve in the thoracic spine trailing down to the lumbar spine. This secondary spinal curve serves us well until our later years, especially if we begin to stoop forward (and we stop bending backward). If the older adult continues to stoop forward, the spine begins to look more and more like it was when we were infants.

The spine is made to bend and flex; it is built with both firm and soft mass which allows it to extend and compress,  to rotate, support, adjust, and keep adjusting through life.… read more...

This Bike (magazine cover) is on FIRE. See it and rent it for a ride to the Grand Canyon

Featured in six magazines: Thunder Press, American Rider, OM Yoga Magazine, Yoga Magazine (cover), The Taj Mahal Review, AZ Rider News; Four newspaper stories: The Green Bay Press Gazette, The Wausau Daily Herald, The Mesa Tribune, The Mining Journal; 2 University Alumni Publications and 2 other online publications: Yahoo.com, Phoenix Indian Center, Northern Michigan University, The University of Wisconsin La Crosse, LANTERN. Rent this great bike from me through RIDERS SHARE platform (the airbnb of motorcycling).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And a cool video link from my friend Ram Hernandez as he’s riding this bike

AND the best part is, you can rent it from me through Riders Share. Here is my link through this great platform:

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

Pyramid Tomb Tour of Arizona: mysterious, memorable, and majestic

Hello Motorcycle friends. American Rider Magazine (journal of the International Big Twin community) will soon publish my story and many photos of an incredible mototour to Arizona’s three pyramid-tombs. They’re mysterious, memorable, and majestic – like the people buried inside – and they’re located in Quartzsite, Florence, and Papago Park in Phoenix. You can check out the digital version of American Rider soon, where you’ll get a bonus Youtube video of the “Naked Bookseller,” in Quartzsite, or better yet, get a subscription to the magazine to read about my tour and great stops along the way: Dateland, The River Bottom Grill, and the amazing Reader’s Oasis bookstore in Quartzsite.

Contact me if you have an interest in taking a tour of the three pyramid tombs of Arizona. I’ll arrange hotels and one evening meal for all riders and tell the story of these out-of-the-way magical tour sites.

Here is the pyramid tomb of Hi Jolly, the most visited site in the small town of Quartzsite, which swells with winter visitors. The pyramid’s four corners are 9 feet apart and the pyramidion is eight feet high from its four-foot base to the top. Perched there is a two-foot-high steel camel, making it 14 feet high.

At sunset, the camel (some say it’s a representative of Old Topsy, a favorite of Hi Jolly’s), appears to be walking toward the dying light, casting an eerie silhouette over the cemetery and reminding visitors of a time when camels roamed the unmapped territory of Arizona.

On the National Register of Historic Places (2011) with the notation that Hi Jolly was an explorer, miner, camel herder, and head of the “Jackass Mail.”… 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...

Excerpt, A Motorcycle Ride in Mexico

Dust eats away at my skin. The leather I wear makes every minute an inferno on the motorcycle. Heat explodes up my ass, creeping past crack and sack to pillage my spine and overburden my shoulders. But I am an adult, I am in Mexico, I have documents and a clean record; I can drink, buy drugs, or pay to make fantasies come true. I can also do none of that, or get a ticket to take the pirate ship and sail into the mystic with tourists, eating as much shrimp and drinking as much Dos Equis XX lager as I can handle while daydreaming in the Zen of a blue sea.

Deeper and deeper in a broken territory I’m riding a two-wheeled track called risk. It’s as if reality stalls and the motorcycle dances in time with the dazzling sun of Mexico. With eyes to see, anyone looking around would swear Salvador Dali painted the street where bar balconies, groaning under the weight of heavy bikers, bows like snow-covered branches. On the third floor of the Iguana Banana, above the balcony facing the Malecon, a band is kicking out a version of Bowie’s “Five Years.” Inside the Iguana, I sing along with them, “A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that.”

In tune or out of tune, nobody cared, as the thump-thump of Evolutions announced the schedules be damned ‘cause the party’s on, and ripe are the two-legged coyotes primed for this biker party happening everywhere. One, in fringed buckskin and patches, says he’s from the land of Geronimo.… 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...

Rocky Point Rally – Motorcycling in Mexico as reported in American Rider Magazine January, 2022

It’s almost as if reality stalls and the motorcycle dances in time with the dazzling sun of Mexico. With eyes to see, anyone looking around would swear Salvador Dali painted the street where bar balconies, groaning under the weight of heavy bikers, hang low like winter branches and the thump-thump of Big Twins announce ‘schedules be damned’ the party is on.

 

Get your issue of American Rider Magazine where you can learn: the technical aspects of motorcycles and motorcycling, racing and race events, homages to motorcycling and its history, insight on the bike-building profession, riding equipment, and a lot more. Reading any article over the last year, I’ve wanted to get out and do it. Isn’t that the purpose of writing about motorcycling? 

Click on these photos below for my article in American Rider on the November 2022 Rocky Point Rally in Mexico.

All photos by Oliver Touron. Big kudos to American Rider Ed. Kevin Duke

Rocky Point Rally next year anyone?… 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...

See you at The Foundry Yoga in Tempe, AZ, on Saturday morning. Copies of YOGA SONG are available.

Four reviewers from Canada, the UK, Ohio, and Wisconsin have published their review on Amazon.  Here’s a quick sampling: “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.” Sara Highfield, yoga teacher, International Yoga Model, and regular columnist for OM Yoga Magazine, UK.

“A beautiful book inside the journey of the soul. One of my favorite chapters is “Seeking Treasure.” It’s a must read, and I really enjoyed it. Probably in the top ten books I’ve read in my whole life.” Pamela WB, poet, yogi, and psychologist from Canada.

“Dr. Ormson’s languid language, sonorous sounds, and poetic prose invites us to sit on a yoga mat under the Bodhi trees of our lives. His brave brilliance and sage-like invitation to the initiation of yoga . . . will help you to find the yoga mats of your existence. Rev. Bob Ahern, Ph.D., Zen practitioner and professor of the year at the Ohio State University.

“Dr. Ormson explains how and why yoga can help us to heal emotionally, physically, and spiritually, which is very comforting in these troubling and broken times. Highly recommend!” Mary Pulvermacher, light worker and student in Wisconsin.

From YOGA SONG 

As we do yoga in motion with attention, or sit in stillness, we come to embody the counsel of its ethics. As we do yoga, we take its wisdom into our bodies and minds where sacred self and ordinary human meet in the depths of our nature . . .

This breath is yoga’s song, arising within a body electric that is both unique and universal.… 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.

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!
… read more...

AMERICAN RIDER MAGAZINE, covering the diverse motorcycling world with style and substance

American Rider Magazine, covering motorcycling with style and substance.  Two of my friends have really taken the motorcycle writing and photo game to a high level. Pictured on the cover is Oliver Touron, photomotojournalist extraordinaire, sitting on a Harley in front of the Eiffel Tower. Oliver wrote the lead story, “American Rider: Riding Harleys in France” It’s a fitting theme because his wife Shelly is the American in Paris. The photo shows her on the roundabout in front of the Arc de Triomphe on Champs-Elysees avenue. After reading Oliver’s story, I wanted to motorcycle through France.
Another friend, Gary Kos Mraz of Sedona, filled out the frame to Hollywood’s narrative of Route 66 as a mystical wonderland. His story, “The Folklore, The Forlorn, and the Future,” fleshes-out the Seligman to Kingman route on the Mother Road 66. It’s a great story with lots of unique detail that I recommend for any Arizona rider. Gary’s story makes me want to get on the bike to ride, write, and photograph.
In case you weren’t paying attention, this magazine underwent a name change from Thunder Press to American Rider back in May. Along with the change of handle, the format segued from newsprint to newstand quality magazine stock. Among other things, the photos suddenly popped, and if you ask me, the writing is solid.
But it’s not only a magazine of stories and tours for those who love that, it also covers technical aspects of motorcycles and motorcycling, racing and race events, homage to history and the bike building profession, equipment, and a lot more.
… read more...

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.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

… read more...

YOGA SONG review Amazon

The first review of YOGA SONG by Mary is now published on Amazon. Thank you, Mary! If you have read YOGA SONG, please go to Amazon and add your review.
From Chapter 7 “A Child Leads,” in YOGA SONG
A toddler’s openness and enthusiasm mean they don’t distinguish between yoga or weightlifting, and they don’t compartmentalize yoga as either fitness or enlightenment; they simply see it as something adults are doing and they join because it looks fun and natural. The example of children will benefit yogis to do what they do:
1. embody the song this is fun.’
2. practice when they want and quit when they want
3. receive a gift more profound than they can imagine
4. relieve self from the punishing drive for perfection or correctness
5. practice and let yoga flow, allowing it to bloom when the conditions are right
6. learn by copying what others do and enjoy, doing so to the best of our ability
7. forget about evaluation or comparison, rather be fully present to enjoy the moment
More where this came from by going to Amazon or Barnes and Noble to order YOGA songs.
… read more...

A Rider, a Monster Truck, and a Friends Last Ride

In May, before leaving Arizona on a 6000 mile summer trip, I bought a toy “monster truck.” I planned to use it in  commemoration for a deceased friend when a few of us would meet near Lake Superior.

Our friend loathed monster trucks and saw them as an American hyper-egoistic association with vehicles and a nutty obsession for more and more engine power and size. He thought of monster trucks as the perfect symbols of aggression, senseless destruction, and waste.

A lot of our travel this summer was on the Interstate system. I realize I didn’t enjoy it. The Interstate is no longer a gateway to the great American road adventure; it’s more like the great American road nightmare where games of bravado are played out by aggressive drivers with big rigs that come dangerously close to disaster on a regular basis.

In our commemoration for P.R., we talked about his love for travel and decided that I should take him for a final ride back to Arizona in the green toy monster truck. There were no hard and fast rules about what I was to do with P’s spirit riding along, but a loose suggestion that I might leave him (and the monster truck) in some public place where anyone could pick him up and take him on a continuing journey.

I thought I’d leave it (him) somewhere along Route 66, a road symbolizing the lost optimism of a wide-open American dream; a route marked by a faded joy in scenic adventure-travel, meals in friendly small-town highway café’s, and nostalgia for the history of an open road and open people.… 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...

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...

Yoga Song

Available Tuesday on International Yoga Day from Rochak Press

https://rochakpublishing.com/book-details.php?bid=574&isbn=9788182539594… read more...

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...

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...

YOGA SONG a story in 23 lyric vignettes

  Yoga Song is a story of transformation and redemption in 23 lyric vignettes from Gregory Ormson with a foreword written by Dr. Yogananth Andiappan of the Andiappan Yoga Colleges. Yoga Song’s author states there’s a song at the center of all time, being, and structure. There’s also a song in the center of yoga, and 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 yoga’s transforming and therapeutic power where ordinary moments stretch into extraordinary. Described in vignettes like “Transforming the Emotional Body,” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song,” and “Yoga: a Breathcentric Community,” Yoga Song proclaims to every yogi, with informative and inspirational content, that as they yoga they are a yoga song . . . a sacred song in mind, body, and spirit.

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

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

“This fantastic inspirational essay written by Gregory Ormson is . . . a must read.” Jennifer Taylor, Tulivesi Yoga, Marquette, Michigan

“Ormson has written some profound articles about his expansion through yoga. This piece was beautiful and I know all my friends who practice yoga will truly appreciate it just as much as I did.” Meagan Rasmussen, Kona, Hawaii

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.… read more...

From YOGA SONG coming in 30-days on International Yoga Day

Many 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. 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 where I build my satyagraha.

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.… read more...

YOGA SONG publication on June 21, 2022 International Yoga Day

Gregory Ormson’s forthcoming book, Yoga Song, will be published on International Yoga Day, one month from today, summer solstice – Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Comments from readers:
“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
“These are fantastic words of motorcycles and yoga writing. Reality bleeds into fiction.” Russell Thorburn, Marquette, Michigan
“I’ve had many yoga teachers over the years and when I read your writing, I always learn something new: A new way of thinking about life after I leave the class; and to combine this with motorcycling is brilliant.” Kerry Verrier, Calgary, Alberta
From Yoga Song, Chapter 17, “Transforming the Emotional Body.”
Like many newcomers, when I started yoga I also thought it was about what I saw. 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 injuries; and at the beginning, that’s all I expected.
My yoga education was gradual. At first I practiced to feel better, then to learn good alignment, and then to 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, my hands, and my gaze. I followed their instructions leading me through breathing techniques and transitions. At the end, I lay down with other yogis in stillness, like a motorcycle resting on its jiffy-stand.
But right away, I sensed there was something happening well beyond what was taking place in my physical experience on the mat.
… 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...

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...

Stepping to a New Parade led by an Old Song

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 its perilous stress, yoga moves us to meet a difficult world and greet it with equanimity. Yoga’s song teaches us to expand the being out of which we live and move as we practice, study, and seek to discover who we are as we lean into the fullness of Self.

In that center, lessons of motion and stillness teach us to extend our range of motion, deepen our breath and fill our lungs, lengthen the stretch of our spine, and grow the reach of our limbs in space.

To fully inherit yoga’s spiritual science we breathe deeply, only to release and enter the realm of OM. Yoga formed in the crucible of scholarship and exercise will empty and then fill the thinking reed that is the human-being. It redeems scapegoats and embraces the full panorama of humanity in all its races, colors, and identities.

Yogis then join a long line of grateful beings stepping into a parade made by kings and queens where many are yoked together as one in yuj (union), cleansed and restored into a new creation by the old song of an eternal melody.… 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...

Subscribe for Updates