The Ghosts Are Full Here As The Hungry Half Moon Rises
And so am I, full with the imprints of time and memory. I am rich in soul, yet I’m hungry for more. It’s not a feast I want, I keep my appetite for all things in moderation, but I want what singer Sam Garrett wants, “More life, more blessings; more peace, more unity.” It’s easy to find in the solitude I am offered here at a cabin in the north, but peace and unity exist on flimsy ground, like whisps of smoke dispersing at the slightest wind.
Through the years, I’ve discovered ghosts here in the souls of people whose ashes have been spread on the lake shore. By here, I mean “The Old-Style Place,” a cabin that has been in the family for 50 years. Rustic, well-built, no running water, no bathroom, just an outhouse. Honoring the remnants of life’s past is part of my yearly visit here, just as it was for those who left their relatives on the shore.
In the Spring, one chore involves cleaning the outhouse; this means removing snake skins, sweeping away mounds of spider webs, and mopping up dust. Many people would not like this place. Tonight, I note the silence and half full Buck Moon, a cipher in the sky hiding behind branches of the large pines.
Imprints remain from those who sat on the dock while watching the western sun set over the lake. Many of them have passed on: my parents, a childhood friend, an uncle, a few aunts, grandparents, and other friends and family.
They’re all here.… read more...
Motorcycling to Mexican Time and the Zen Sea, a finalist in the Rigel 2023 Writing Contest
Biking toward Mexico, 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...
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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
by Leave a Comment
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?
My Portable Home
“My Portable Home: Finding Refuge on My Yoga Mat” Published by Yoga International
“Now it doesn’t matter if my yoga mat is on the bamboo floor of a polished studio in Hawaii, a beach in Mexico, or on a cedar dock over a Wisconsin inland lake. My place, where I find all that I need, is 23¾ inches wide by 96¾ inches long. Focusing on being fully in that place, I work to inhabit yoga’s dynamic point. It takes place on my mat at the confluence of yogi, guru, and the ancient healing practice. There, the soles of my bare feet make contact with the ground, in the same way my feet in heavy boots hit the ground while walking my home turf many years ago.”
Follow link below to the full article.
https://yogainternational.com/article/view/my-portable-home-finding-refuge-on-my-yoga-mat#:~:text=Share%3A-,in,-my%20twenties%2C%20I… 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 grander narrative, one animating 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.
Still HOT at 6600′ in July, The Panguitch Old Skool Motorcycle Rally
Not long ago, a guy from Alaska wanted to rent my Harley Davidson Road King, asking about my “famous” bike. That famous bike is Priscilla, and she is pictured in this month’s issue of American Rider accompanying the story I wrote for the Panguitch Old Skool Motorcycle Rally coming up in July.
BIKERS, all I can say is that you ought to go up to Panguitch, Utah and do the rally. You won’t regret it, cause it’s hot and it’s cool. . . . back to Priscilla.
She’s 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). Watch for the June issue of American Rider Magazine for this bike in a photo by the red rocks of the Grand Canyon’s North entrance
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
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...
Conclusion (part V). Yoga, an Act of Surrender, Faith, Spirit, Sacrament, Ecclesia, Missiology, and Anointment
IN THIS series, I’ve treated yoga as a spiritual life practice and drawn comparisons between Christian and yoga spirituality. But of course, it’s also an individual practice with wide interpretation. Some practice yoga with no spiritual intention or awareness and I also affirm that perspective.
In this series, I’ve maintained yoga is a spiritual practice and I see it as a series of steps: an act of surrender, an act of faith, an act of spirit, an act of sacrament, an act of ecclesia, a missiology, and an act of anointment.
SURRENDER can define yoga spirituality; most know it as a release. The yogi starts class with gentle release, surrendering into trust. This activates the heart’s core where a ritual process opens the yogi to enter a state of true presence.
It’s unnecessary to seek out yoga’s popularity, location, or direction because the answer to the question of yoga is the same today as it was for Patanjali. Yoga is in you and it moves within you as far as you let it. Yoga asana, most of what the majority of yogis know as yoga, is built on the principle of embodiment. Embodiment means putting it into your body, and when the yogi does this it often leads to transformation.
FAITH can define yoga spirituality; most know it as trust. The yogi comes home to their breath-centric core where they kiss the soul to receive their full inheritance.
In relinquishment, the yogi learns to open their heart and settle into the most important moment – – the one they live. This grounding in the present is conscious contact which opens one to engage the reality of their life.… read more...
Part IV. Shavasana (death) A Gateway to Yoga as Spiritual Practice
After high school at 17, rather than immediately going to the university, I decided to work for a year to prepare myself. I found a job at a furniture store in my hometown where I thought I would deliver furniture, sell furniture, and take care of stock in the warehouse. It did include all of that, but when I was asked to help lift corpses from a table and into a casket, the job turned out to be much more.
In the early days of this country, the furniture maker was the logical person to turn to when a loved one died and the family needed a well-constructed wooden box. In the 19th Century, caskets were wood and since furniture makers worked with wood they were called upon. It’s easy to see how furniture makers became trusted with handling specific requirements of the casket, and from there, not hard to imagine conversations about the deceased spilling over into a pastoral care-type situation. It’s also not difficult to imagine these furniture builders doubling up on their businesses and offering funeral services. This is why so many furniture stores doubled as funeral homes.
Seldom thinking about death as a teenager and with no preparation for handling dead bodies, I was thrust into a situation where I touched the hands and lifted the bodies of deceased people. It freaked me out a little bit. In time, I became comfortable around dead bodies, and one time before a funeral, even drove the Goodrich Funeral Home’s Hearst to the car wash with a casket and body in the back.… read more...
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...
Lessons from 30 Years of Teaching . . . It’s Not About You – Ever
10 Principles for Teachers Ready to Receive
Undergirding all communication is attitude to learners
Most of my teachng was in yoga, but much of it took place in three college settings with diverse subjects: speech, writing, employment skills, English, film study, best sellers, sociology, philosophy, and theology. In my career, I had students from pre-school age up into their 7th and 8th decade. Outside the classroom, I taught motorcycle rider certification for the State in Hawaii as a Motorcycle Safety Foundation rider/coach, and I’ve taught yoga, coached youth soccer, and taught guitar to several people, but my listing of this experience is only a way to say that it’s unimportant compared to the experience of the learner no matter the setting.
The key to being an effective teacher
I’ve been called both a good and bad teacher, but no matter what the review was, one fundamental concept carried me through all my years teaching, presenting, giving instructions, listening to speeches, teaching in classrooms or meetings, and leading my faculty union. It is the core from which I operated. It’s very simple: it was not about me . . . ever. I’d like to unpack what this means and why it’s important for teachers.
Teachers are usually responsible adults, and they often take upon themselves more responsibility than required. Yes, teachers are responsible for presenting content, for managing the classroom, and having a well-defined curriculum and effective pedagogy, but they are not responsible for learning, and neither are they central to student learning.
This is hard for teachers to hear because it requires putting ego aside.… read more...
An Arizona Motorcycle Ride on the Road Less Traveled in Flavor-Flaves of Dirty and Sweet
Motorcycle riders focus on the tangible elements or the things we can plan, see, and do. As creatures of habit, we take the main road, but any road will get us out the door where we may discover that all roads – even the pock-marked and dusty trails that we curse in between the splatter of bugs on our windshield and our face – lead to a rally, an event, a new road, or new discovery.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . .
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.”
The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost
The road less traveled is the one you don’t see at first; the path we discover through a missed turn or a mental stumble. It beckons, so we follow it and rub up against the intangible or unseen. I look for these roads, and when I find them, open the throat of my bike and the heart in my body to engage my Harley-Davidson’s six-geared drama. Its ups and downs are programable, but the stage is never predictable as I ride a highway drama unfolding like a multi-act show that includes millions – other riders – seen and unseen, leather-clad bodies of light and life.
They are wearing hats this November 11, both veterans and non-veterans, musicians and non-musicians, bikers and non-bikers, an inclusive and often disruptive congress of partiers riding a rumble seat that was built with muscle and sweat. Engineers did their work first, finding a way to harness the friction of rubber and metal and the best way to direct the explosive energy of gas and fire.… 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...
Can Yoga Spirituality and Christian Spirituality Co exist? a five-part series
Introduction
To be a well-informed yogi, it’s important to recognize how yoga grew from a spiritual environment that included scriptural components, ethics, a devotional aspect, and a governing religious goal. Anyone who has been to India, the seedbed of yoga, quickly notices its spirituality is deeply embedded in the cultural fabric, one could accurately call India’s spirituality its fascia holding everything together.
In my trips there, I noticed the country’s intense spiritual nature and I remembered something I had read from the American Author Flannery O’Connor when she wrote of the American South. “It’s not ghost-haunted,” she wrote, “but Christ-haunted.” India is spiritually haunted too, but it’s a spiritual haunting I’d identify as complex and inclusive, not bad or scary. Christ is there, and so are Krishna, Allah, and Buddha. It’s a pan-en-theist culture, which I will write of later. Christian Spirituality and Religion
I’m a former clergy of the Lutheran Church in America. I’ve been keenly aware of spirit, and it’s part of the reason my first trip to India happened when I was 22 years old. I went there as leader of a music and ministry team on a four-month tour sponsored by members of the Lutheran churches in the United States and Canada. For many years afterward, ministry was my career, and I was employed by the church as a clergy and worked in campus ministry.
Campus pastors are well-versed in the Christian faith and its theology, but also current events, and other religions. Campuses are highly diverse settings, populated by intelligent people from all corners of the Earth; therefore, if I as a campus chaplain and voice of social conscience were to engage this population meaningfully and with integrity I needed a thorough understanding of religions and world events, geopolitics, science, art, history, and its biases.
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, an ingredient creating 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...
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.
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:
- Trust
- Breath
- Embodiment
- Community
- Practice
- Healing
What do you think yoga is?
Yoga Song (sample available)
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
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
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...
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...
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...
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.
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!
Of Gardens and Graves, a story from Hawaii
Gathering with friends to celebrate my birthday in Hawaii, my good fortune tricked me into thinking I had earned such leisure. Ocean waves crashed up on the island and giant palm leaves swayed in the wind. Hawaiian music playing from a house next door accompanied the party as we talked our way through the euphoria that comes from the first sips of alcohol.
That afternoon I started playing, for probably the 300th time, “The Last Nail” a song by Dan Fogelberg. It’s not a love song or a song with a happy romantic arc, but a song I had turned to when I was a long way from home or in a time of introspection – like a birthday.
Its about the final nail which closed the coffin of a relationship. Realizing it had ended, he delivers a poignant and deep-diving lyric.
“I hear you’ve taken on a husband and child and live somewhere in Pennsylvania
I never thought you’d ever sever the string, but I can’t blame you none.”
I continued and played The Last Nail’s lyrical sarcophagus to the end.
“We walked together through the gardens and graves
I watched you grow to be a woman
living on promises that nobody gave to no one
they were given to no one.”
For years, the song was a catharsis and helped me accept the reality of a gradual goodbye. She wasn’t in Pennsylvania, but she lived close to Pennsylvania, and a long way from where I was.
On the beach, the sun moved from a bright white to a muted orange as my party day crawled toward dusk.… 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.
YOGA SONG review Amazon
Camel Pose from the Inside
If you view a photo of someone doing a pose called camel, you’ll notice it looks uncomfortable and it is. Along with it, you’ll frequently see a list of physical benefits that happen over time when doing the camel pose.
I’m certain that the combination of the backward-bending camel, alternating with forward bends healed my back. I’m aware, from my own experience, of how camel posture feels and how it works toward physical healing.
The benefits of doing a camel pose are improved breathing, fatigue relief, increased torso, and hip flexibility, strengthened back and glutes, toned thighs, and hips, stimulated endocrine glands, tensed organs in the abdomen, pelvis, and neck, correction of slouching posture, the opening of the respiratory system to better oxygen use.
In my book YOGA SONG (Rochak Press June 2022) I treat camel – and yoga- from the inside out. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 5 where I write what happened to me during a pivotal moment in my practice doing camel in Hawaii. You see, yoga is an inside job, and a lot is going on under the surface and it’s hard to describe. But that’s why I wrote a YOGA SONG. It’s yoga from the inside out in 23 lyric narratives.
Excerpt from YOGA SONG on camel pose from the inside in Chapter 5 “Making Heroes.”
The workshop leader said a deep backbend is a heart-opening pose and reminded us that an emotional reaction to a camel pose is normal because the posture can make us feel vulnerable. Pointing to his heart as the organ which should be at the highest position during camel, he may have even said, ‘lift up your hearts’ when stressing the importance of making one’s heart the highest point.… read more...
Thank you OM Yoga Magazine for Yoga Song book suggestion
Breath is yoga’s song and yoga is a breathed form of spirituality. Breath and yoga are threads connecting your soul to the world. It braids the yogi here and now to a light not bound by this world.
Your breath in yoga is your yoga song; it is rooted within the body electric in a primordial consciousness both unique and universal. This luminous, eternal OM, is the the well-trod song leading the way home.… read more...
Asana International Yoga Journal review of Yoga Song.
From The Mesa Tribune on Yoga Song
The Yoga-Bike Connection from the Wausau Daily Herald
Yoga Song
Available Tuesday on International Yoga Day from Rochak Press
https://rochakpublishing.com/book-details.php?bid=574&isbn=9788182539594… read more...
Yoga Song
From American Rider Magazine, thanks!
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...
TAPAS from YOGA SONG Coming June 21, International Yoga Day
New Year’s Eve resolutions are often made with an eye toward immediate results but without a long-term vision that includes commitment to a future that is different. Not even three full weeks into the New Year, New York University published a story stating that 90 percent of New Year’s Eve resolutions are abandoned.
It’s because changes happen by small degree and over time. It’s not by adding requirements or resolutions that our lives change; it’s by subtracting from our lives that which is unnecessary or unproductive.
This is one gift of yoga, we learn by the process of tapas to define more clearly what is necessary and leave the rest; it is yoga’s counter-intuitive mathematic, an equation suggesting that discovery and addition happens by negation and subtraction.
Yoga philosophy develops within the ebb and flow of culture, story, and time. It’s an ongoing journey of subtraction and addition. Civilizations grow, but they also burn to the ground. This is the key to yoga’s tapas, the burning away of that which is unnecessary.
More on Yoga Song, https://gregoryormson.com/writing/yoga-motorcyclingyogig/yoga-song-press-kit… read more...
YOGA SONG arriving in two weeks on International Yoga Day. Small sample from “Transforming the Emotional Body,” chapter 7
In yoga, we respond to the yoga song that our body is singing, and since we occupy the best position to define and transform our emotions, we use this knowledge – when getting in touch with our emotional bodies – to rewire our lives and release negatives.
Yoga teachers rightly say your yoga song might bring some emotions out of you that you were not yet ready to receive. But this is how the growth curve works, we may not be quite ready but are pushed by the emotion and physicality of yoga into the next bend on our journey.
Recently a friend went to a Carlos Santana concert. He wrote that it was “a spiritual experience.” I asked what he meant by that, and he responded: “Music always moves me, but his words were filled with grace and love; with a mixture of children’s photos throughout the world smiling and dancing. He issued a call to ‘rise up’ above the hatred. The music just echoed the experience. It went deep with me!” It’s no surprise to hear that music does this; it’s also what the yoga song of your body does in practice.
Yoga, like music, is a visual, emotional, acoustic, vibrational, and feeling based experience in the moment. It goes deep, and when the yogi listens to the yoga song of their own body, yoga takes them to work on transforming the emotional body and vice versa. It may lead to engaging a professional therapist because through yoga many emotions arise from the deep well of biological and cerebral memory.… read more...
PRESS KIT Yoga Song – audibook version Lantern Audio
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE –
Lantern Audiobooks presents Gregory Ormson’s Yoga Song, a print publication in 2022 by Rochak Press, now available on Lantern Audiobooks and other platforms. Ormson states the song of yoga is the breath that turns ordinary moments into the extraordinary. In 21 vignettes and five original songs, Ormson narrates a journey of self-discovery, sharing knowledge, understanding, and quotations to inspire listeners.
Every yoga song is composed by the yogi, an instrument made of mind, spirit, emotion, energy, and consciousness. In chapters like, “Transforming the Emotional Body,” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song,” and “Yogatecture: Blueprint of Transformation,” Yoga Song becomes an instrument of mass inspiration in a melody proclaiming to every yogi that their breath is their song, a sacred song and the soundtrack to their journey of transformation.
Bounced from a trampoline at 10, enduring a second back-injury weightlifting in school, and falling from a roof at 40, born-to-be-wild biker Gregory Ormson moved to Hawaii but was sidelined by debilitating back pain and couldn’t enjoy paradise. Dipping a toe into yoga, he discovered a healing road that reformed his mind and fixed his spine.
Yoga Song is an instrument of mass inspiration in the song of the body which includes mind, spirit, emotion, and energy. Its melodies are alive in the sound of Om or a vocalized heartfelt Namaste. In breath-centered yoga practice, yogis experience a therapeutic and healing power where ordinary moments stretch into extraordinary.
“The yoga mat became my turf of tears, washing, and regeneration . . . these essays deliver us to a place of beauty and grace in words lyrical and reverential.… read more...
A small sample from Ch. 14 on yoga for bikers from the forthcoming YOGA SONG
I glance around the outdoor deck and see the outline of my community. They are becoming new on a daily basis as they take up yoga. They acted on faith to get here, so I act on faith to teach as the practice of yoga meets them with its global and spiritual energy.
It takes courage to move beyond cultural stereotypes and do yoga. It also takes courage to teach this ancient, holistic discipline designed for everyone. As a teacher, I set the route; and when ready, they follow the road home to themselves.
Breath by breath, a universal yoga pilgrimage presses them to question their motives and boldly ask “why am I here?” When the question arises, yoga’s song takes over and the yogis remember their courage. They stretch into their containers of reform and travel back to the beginning once again.
The sun is setting on my biker-yogis, and I see them as hopeful; they tiptoe into newness, and sip nectar from an oxygen-rich moment. Western light, partially eclipsed by Earth, illumines their faces with golden rays as they play dead to integrate the last breathing moments of the best previous moments. Alone, quiet, and on the floor, they exhale. On their backs, they release into savasana . . .… read more...
YOGA SONG arriving on the 8th International Yoga Day, June 21, 2022
Yoga Song is a story of transformation and redemption in 23 lyric vignettes from Dr. Gregory Ormson. Yoga Song’s author states there’s a song at the center of all time, being, and structure, and there’s a song in the center of yoga.
The instrument of a yoga song is the yogi’s body which includes: mind, spirit, emotion, energy, and consciousness. In a breathcentric yoga practice, yogis experience its transforming and therapeutic power where ordinary moments stretch into extraordinary.
Rochak Publishing ISBN: 978-93-88125-90-1 INR 200 US $ 15 — 109 pages. Available International Yoga Day June 21, 2022 www.cyberwit.net and on Amazon
ENDORSEMENTS FOR YOGA SONG:
“I am planning on taking 200 hour teacher training, and seeing your article yesterday, I was inspired to keep following my heart. I need to buy the book!” Pamela WB, Edmonton, Alberta
“I have been thinking of branching out and writing about my yoga practice so this is a big inspiration.” Dr. Chad Faries, Savannah , Georgia
“I am very glad to see you doing yoga Gregory. It is so good for the body and mind.” Sam Paul Raj, Chennai, India
“Thank you for a wonderful story.” Tee Daly, Austin, Texas
From chapter 3
Yoga’s song doesn’t just make a song with us, it opens us and makes us ready to receive a new song. This is the way of yoga’s song composition in, of, and through every asana in motion and stillness.
In a melody of motion, balanced by stillness, I open to gravity’s shaping no matter how I fail. I do yoga linked to breath in the moment.… read more...
YOGA SONG publication on June 21, 2022 International Yoga Day
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...