ANCHORS: For Kristen and Greg on their 25th anniversary

One good thing about Facebook is that every now and then someone reaches from the past and makes contact with us in the present. This is the case from someone that contacted me yesterday and I’m glad he did.

Today (Aug. 13) is Kristen and Greg’s 25th wedding anniversary. Back then, I was the officiant for their wedding when I was working as a clergy for the Lutheran church and my assignment was to Northern Michigan University. Marquette was my home for 12 years, and two of my children were born there. Except for the cold – which I can’t stand – it was the best place I ever lived.

Along with his Facebook note, Greg sent one photo from his and Kristen’s wedding ceremony. I had never seen it, and it brought back many good memories of my time as a YOOPER in Upper Michigan.

Greg reminded me that I played my ceremonial wood duck drum as part of their wedding. Playing a drum wasn’t that far out of bounds -since I started drumming with a set at 14 – but I made the drum I used in their wedding and have used it in many ceremonies. The oak body for the drum came from a large tree that had been struck by lightning. The deer skin on top was from the last deer my dad had shot in Indian-head Country of Northwest Wisconsin.

Text below is from “Anchors,” a piece about drumming.

ANCHORS

From early on, I heard text and sub-text in drums and memorized tom-strike patterns, rim hits on snare, and foot work for the high hat.… read more...

Yoga, Px for a Mean Cultural Zeitgeist

I ignore that which is trending and I despise the shallowness steering our culture to the banal and ugly even as I am caught within its mean cultural zeitgeist. It’s why I yoga: to take myself away from a greedy and ugly culture, awash in self-pity.

But I also yoga to take my selfish self away from my self – one session at a time – and there I meet my ego and engage in the soul’s martial art. I aim to breathe from the bones and continue yoga to open conversations of the yet unsaid, laced with elements of the unholy and blasphemous, the sacred and righteous.

Yoga takes me far from the realm of commodification. It cannot be rated on a scale of cuteness, its worth cannot be measured by production dollars, it does not yield to haste. Yoga wastes no time trying to harmonize with programmed music created in seconds on a computer keyboard. Yoga is not born of the formulaic for its process is unique and organic to each yogi.

Yoga empowers me with courage to cry out, to accept self, and be at ease. I do yoga, and I bring it. Yoga returns my investment through the beauty way of its physical, non-physical, and metaphysical medicine. It redeems my rough unfettered ego in a union where I am home at last.

Yoga resides deep in the sound of OM, and when listening, the yogi hears it in every breath, every move, every thought, and in the nervous firing of synapses. At the end, releasing into savasana in the hushed OM of the gathered, I brush against the deepest level of truth, and there, gather strength to get up and boldly face judgments that feed rigid walls within and without.… read more...

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YOGA MAGAZINE FEATURE STORY: Yoga and Leather: A New Road for Bikers (#yogainspirationals 79).

YOGA & LEATHER: A New Road for Bikers

Every yogi is the same. But every yogi has been injured in their own way. Debbie McGregor, passionate yogi and motorcyclist, was first injured at age 11. It happened in a rodeo mishap when she was locked in a cramped chute with a panicked horse. A broken back sustained in a motorcycle accident in her early 30’s became major injury number two, and she suffered a broken neck in a car accident during her early 50’s.

“When I read about YOGA AND LEATHER: Yoga for Bikers,” she said, “I couldn’t believe it; something combining my two passions, I had to come.”

After her car accident, Debbie was told she’d be paralyzed from the neck down, but she resolved to walk and was determined to ride her Harley Davidson motorcycle again. She invested in physical therapy and added yoga as a daily routine. Three years after the accident, Debbie is doing yoga and motorcycling around the country. “It’s unexplainable how much yoga does in the path of healing. The more I do, the more I want and the more I heal,” she said.

Paul, a 79 year old retired Chicago police officer, is another dedicated rider of Harley Davidson motorcycles but new to yoga. Like Debbie, he found his way to YOGA AND LEATHER, and considers it healing balm and an island of peace.

Recently, Paul’s 900 pound motorcycle tipped over and landed on his foot. He hobbled into class wearing big boots and blue jeans, but did what he could. “I need it, it’s good.… read more...

THE WAY TO SACRED BEING

Thank you BAD YOGI MAGAZINE for publishing #YogaInspirationals number 77.

The Way to Sacred Being

Jesus, Yoga, and the Pure Consciousness of Healing

Thank you BAD YOGI MAGAZINE for publishing yogainspirationals 75. Read and share.

Yoga, Jesus, and the Pure Consciousness of Healing

YOGA AS COMMENCEMENT RITUAL

Thank you #YOGANECT for publishing yogainspirationals number 74.

https://www.yoganect.com/story/show/yoga-as-commencement-ritual/

During my seventh year practicing yoga I started learning the sitar.

Immediately I realized it was a hard instrument to play and its technology is ancient: there’s a huge gap between frets and the strings which are painful on the fingers; the metal sitar pic winds tightly on the finger and pinches; the instrument’s lightweight strings go out of tune easily and there are 21 of them; but most of all, the traditional playing style requires sitting on the floor with the left leg crossed under the right while the sitar neck rests over the right thigh with the sound gourd perched on top of the left foot. This position is hard on the left knee, back, legs, hips, and both ankles.

At one point during my practice in the last few months, I started doing yoga before playing. I needed to set my legs, hips, and back at ease. When I did this first, I realized I could sit longer and concentrate better and my yoga practice tied directly to sitar practice became my daily ritual.

This two-step approach to sitar practice – beginning with yoga – became my entre into the world of classical Indian music. I now view yoga as my commencement ritual, and I won’t even try playing sitar without first doing yoga, or at the very least, until after breath work. Yoga and sitar, including savasana, tune me up for my day; now I hesitate to go out in public before this commencement.

A NEW TAKE ON AN OLD SKILL

I sang in a boys’ choir at age 10 and once performed with a small group at the World’s Fair in New York at age 11.… read more...

COMING UP, Stretch Ride for bikers!

Hello yoga and biking/cycling aficionados. I’m inviting you to one or both of the last two “stretch rides” at Superstition Harley Davidson as part of the yoga and leather program I conduct for SHD.

Details below:

The last Sunday of the month (March 31 and April 28) meet 10:30 am in the west parking lot at Superstition HD. On the 31st, we’ll ride about 20 minutes to a private spot close to the Superstition Mountains.

There we’ll spend 20 minutes in mindful presence and do a simple breathing exercise. Then we’ll walk to our parked bikes where I’ll demonstrate – and you practice – six ways to use your motorcycle as a prop for stretching.

The entire ride and stretch movements will only take about 75 minutes; afterwards, people can go their own way.

This is not an all-out yoga class, but a way to adapt yoga movements to parking lot stretching with the help of the bike. It’s something you can do on your tours and rides. No special clothing or props required.

The motorcycle is a steady prop, but also movable which means we can use it anywhere; and that’s the beauty of the stretch ride, where we focus on both conscious breath (with awareness) and easy stretch moves designed to keep us riding longer.

I hope to see you on March 31 and/or April 28 as we collect our place and presence in the midst of busy lives.

#MOTORCYCLINGYOGIG

ps The stretch ride will also include a few safety tips I’ve learned as a MSF rider/coach. It never hurts to have a reminder about safe riding so that we can stay in the saddle.

Conducting the Awesome: What I’ve Learned from 7 Years of Hot Yoga

“Conducting the Awesome: What I’ve Learned from 7 Years of Hot Yoga” is live on elephant journal.

https://www.elephantjournal.com/2019/02/conducting-the-awesome-what-ive-learned-from-7-years-of-hot-yoga/

This is my 11th article for elephant journal since September, 2014, and the latest installment (73) of what I call YogaInspirationals, a collection of my yoga writing published by elephant and 12 other national and international magazines, Websites, and public social media sites.

I write lyric nonfiction and hybrid, and right now I’m pitching my latest work – a hybrid nonfiction piece – on drumming, and things that happen when I go to a rustic cabin in northern Wisconsin I share with my brothers. I call that place Oz no matter what roads I take to get there. It’s Oz to me even without a wizard, a Toto, or a Dorothy.

Thank you for comments, support, resharing, etc., Let’s keep on conducting the awesome in yoga, in writing, and in life.
#motorcyclingyogiG.

#yogainspirationalsnumber73

THE WATERS OF BABYLON: A PARABLE

Once upon a time a mystical movement became water and moved from east to west. The gurus of this movement dreamed it would take root, grow, and change people in the new land. A bold vision drove their mission; they were certain and sure. The gurus taught students but were confused by them. They were tall, loud, and rich, but they listened to their gurus and absorbed the way of wisdom and ancient discipline.

The gurus were overwhelmed by bright neon lights and an infant culture. They misplaced prayer beads and lost their way. Their movement danced and shape-shifted. It wasn’t what the gurus expected but better than they could have hoped for. In a short time, the practice prospered.

Many in the new land feared it, but someone discovered it was good for prisoners, alcoholics, the sick, those suffering pain, and even angry youth. The rich and healthy began to think that perhaps the gurus offered good medicine.

Western teachers, overlooking spirituality of the way, taught their version. The culture moved fast, like a river’s rapids. Westerners, motivated by money, fed off the illusion of freedom. The west land had great diversity and creativity; and when coupled with entrepreneurial spirit, energy drinks, and ambition, yoga flowed across the land. This was, after all, the guru’s original vision.

The movement became a symbol of youth, change, and the culturally hip. Athletes and celebrities endorsed the practice and photographs of yogis posed in peacock asana were featured in glossy magazines, billboards, and Instagram glossies.

But the Eastern gurus’ mystical remnant became a vanishing dream, a memory from a place and time long past.… read more...

THE POWER OF OM: rediscovering the deep, abiding peace of coming home in a frantic world.

Thank you OM Yoga and Lifestyle magazine (UK) for publishing my 72nd YogaInspirational, “Traveling OM,” December, 2018

Traveling OM

By Dr. Gregory Ormson

THE POWER OF OM: rediscovering the deep, abiding peace of coming home in a frantic world.

“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion-year old carbon…” Lyrics from the song Woodstock suggest that we are made of cosmic energy and matter. We have a hard time believing it because there are very few places that affirm such a grandiose and luminous being. But when we yoga, we participate in a pattern that moves the stars, and positions us to touch an inner OM at the core of our being.

In a soft chant of OM, rooted and expressed from the core, our cares are set free. Then we note our deepest truth: we are beings at one with a divinely animated critical mass of stardust and carbon waiting to meet and welcome us home.

But cultural voices bombard us with an unending cacophony of negativity and dismissal. This poisonous milieu is designed to make us feel small and inadequate, serving us from a menu of strife and anxiety. News and current events can leave us feeling like we’re a nonsignificant cog in a great drama that’s happening elsewhere.

The world is effective at labeling and objectifying. It does so with convenient categories submitted for fast indexing and stereotyping: age, race, sex, job, income, and education level. But a mountain is more than a geode, a river more than an eddy, men and women more than insignificant pieces of something more important.… read more...

YOGA FOR BIKERS

Yoga for Bikers is restarting Nov. 14, at 4:30 in the Eagles’ Nest at Superstition Harley Davidson. One Wednesday a month, riders and anyone interested will gather for simple movement and breath work. This beginner level class is open to anyone. This is offered to riders because when sitting a long time on the bike, it helps to move and open up the areas where we feel tightness: hips, shoulders, and neck. The purpose is to keep riders in the saddle by working gently toward flexibility and balance.

The new aspect of Yoga for Bikers this year will be a one-time per month ride to a second location. There, yoga teacher and former Motorcycle Safety Foundation rider/coach, Gregory Ormson, will show how riders can use their bikes as props in what we are calling the “Stretch Ride.”

We’ll start with a few simple breathing exercises, and then use the bikes to help us stretch. The entire class will only be 30 minutes. We’ll keep it fun and practical so you can do these stretches on your own whenever you stop.

The first stretch ride will be on Nov. 25. Meet at Superstition HD at 10:30, ride out to the Butcher Jones Recreation Site where we’ll park the bikes and use them in simple movements. If you don’t have a bike, don’t worry; they are big enough for two. After that, riders are on their own to enjoy the rest of the day but armed with some new ideas on how to stay in the saddle.

SUPERSTITION HARLEY DAVIDSON FACEBOOK PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/events/2283158711912197/

We’ll see you on the 14^th at 4:30 in the Eagles’ Nest, and the 25^th at SHD at 10:30.… read more...

YogaInspirationals from #MotorcyclingYogiG

Asana is the body of yogic truth, and individual expression of yoga’s eight limbs reveals the efficacy of its healing medicine. Yogis breathe deeply in yoga and experience a perceptual shift. This new vision opens to the sacred horizon at which we gaze, and the shift – formed in concentration and attention – purifies our dysfunctional self by transmuting negative poison.

Asana and breath follow and yogis learn to re-route any short-sell of self. These elements move us from the core where a magnanimous grounding in the foundational principles (of yoga) proves yogis can handle the dreadful deceits and misapprehensions of our avidya (misperceptions and their consequences).

Asana, and the individual embodiment of asana, is made for flawed and taut souls; its work is to release the human beings caught in a play – sometimes not of their own making – as through asana yogis are welcomed into the practice of ease and steadiness . . . where they begin with the exhale.

Following the exhale, and its gentle massage of the nervous system, yogis take the deep inhale and their bendable habit grows to a lifetime practice. We keep on keepin’ on and stand in true presence where feet meet the ground.

Blossoming directly into self-care, yogis open like the petals of a lotus in a soft rain, and through the soul dialysis in yoga’s energy exchange, every samskara (action with intention) is transformed.… read more...

YogaInspirationals number 72 #motorcyclingyogiG

I remind myself that in spite of the surrounding maladies, I must manage to hope. I also counsel myself, and anyone who will listen, that the yoga we do is not just a hobby or something to fill up the time; rather, it is the door through which happiness and joy enter into an arena where we share a divinity that transforms stories from iatrogenic to generative.

Yoga-Script Into Health And Joy

EMBRACED BY JOY AND BLISS

Thanks to Sivana east for publishing my 70^th yoga piece (yogainspirationals).

Thanks also to: Yoga International, Yogi Times, elephant journal, Asana Journal, Do You Yoga, Hello Yoga, Tribe Grow, Seattle Yoga News, The Yoga Blog, The Health Orange, Medium, Boa Yoga, and AZ Rider Southwest.

#yogainspirationalsnumber70, #motorcyclingyogiG, https://gregoryormson.com, #amwriting, #arizonayogateacherandcoach, #mottoyoga #yogaandleather #superstitionharleydavidson

Embraced By Joy And Bliss

TRANSFORMING THE EMOTIONAL BODY

68th published yoga article, Issue 187 ASANA JOURNAL

Louie Netz, Director for Harley-Davidson’s Styling and Graphics Department once said, “Form and function both report to emotion.” It’s likely when observing a yoga pose, or the stylish symmetry of a Harley-Davidson taking a curve, to believe motorcycles are about speeding through curves and yoga is about perfectly aligned asanas.

A yogi on the mat or a Harley-Davidson on the highway both perform their function at a high degree and garner attention, but the brilliance of yoga – and a great motorcycle – is its move from form to function and ultimately to emotion.

Like many newcomers, when I started yoga, I thought it was about what I saw; and I noticed people bending into forms that were – at first – perplexing. I also thought it was about what I heard yoga could do for my injured back. I believed if yoga could heal my injuries I would feel better and that would be all I could expect.

My yoga evolution was gradual; I practiced to feel better, then to learn good alignment and accomplish more asanas. As a dedicated student, I paid attention to words from my teachers as they led me to correct placement of my feet and hands. I followed their instructions which led me through breathing techniques and transitions.

But right away, I sensed there was something happening well beyond what was taking place on my mat. I didn’t know, but I was on my way to connect, or yoke deeply to my full self, and at the same time, something much broader and deeper than just me.… read more...

YogaInspirationals number 66 in Sivana East

INTENTION: Your Golden Egg For Change

Yoga Inspirationals: The Western Diaspora

The movement became unpredictable, and while nobody took credit, yoga unveiled a curtain and people looked through the mirror to a radiance within. Westlanders were distracted; they didn’t listen to gurus and didn’t read books, but they took to their mats and became present with themselves. They remembered their joy and opened like the petals of a lotus in soft rain.

https://www.yogitimes.com/article/story-of-yoga-poem-parable

LOOK WHO IS “DOING IT” WRITING ABOUT YOGA!

Gregory Ormson

Yogi Times Profile:

https://www.yogitimes.com/profile.php?personid=1f088e40ede195abf93ba8668a60eb0f&secid=232389dc98a87dbb07e1099753b73ddb… read more...

Slow Down and Breathe

Yogis have been attempting to articulate the importance of pranayama for centuries, and the effort is still relevant because when a person starts yoga it doesn’t take long for them to realize its a breath centric practice which changes everything.

The practice of pranayama is an important observance by itself, but is often done in haste, as if a couple minutes at the beginning of class is sufficient warm-up for the real work of asana.

Patanjali wrote, by the right control of breath, we overcome ignorance. Breath work is a hallmark of the yogi’s intelligence, and control of breath is intimately linked to the yogi’s heightened awareness of biological and cosmic forces.

Approaches to Pranayama

It’s important to concentrate on breath or prana as a distinct activity with its own benefits and techniques as well as a guiding anchor for asana. Some yoga practices start with pranayama before asana while others pay attention to activating and sustaining ujaii breath throughout asana and pause occasionally to work on pranayama.

Another option is to end practice with a breathing set. But to fully activate the vital life force, central to building the foundation for yoga and life, attention to breath throughout must be paid.

Pranayama isn’t something to rush through in order to get to asana. One 80 year old man I know got the right idea after his first-ever yoga class at YOGA AND LEATHER: Yoga for Bikers. His replacement knees made it difficult for him to bend, and his large body ached, but he did the pranayama exercises – practicing inhale and exhale – while observing others do asana.… read more...

Yoga Inspirationals number 61.

Tradition Trumps Trendiness

Writer/Yogi/Teacher

LOOK WHO IS “DOING IT” WRITING ABOUT YOGA!

LOOK WHO IS “DOING IT” WRITING ABOUT YOGA.… read more...

Yoga Inspirationals number 50 1/26/2017 Asana Journal – click on title to see full article in Asana Journal

Enter the Master, Enter the Child

True Presence – Yoga Inspirational no. 57

True Presence

Deena Metzger on writing

” . . . a story is a grid, an archetypal narrative, a divine scaffolding that organizes experience into a complexity of meanings and forms. The life that may otherwise appear to be unbearably random or intolerably chaotic becomes whole when made known through the revelation of the intrinsic narrative.”

Imagine the stories . . .… read more...

Preview of Yoga Temple 3 at MOTTO YOGA: The Pure Consciousness of Healing (Sunday March 4, Noon to 1:30)

Today, spiritual notions of integrated unitary consciousness are popular but suspect. Some people require facts, and without verifiable facts proving esoteric dimensions, will dismiss such notions and think of consciousness and chakra activation as nothing but wild speculation.

But quantum studies in the subatomic realm more than suggest that everything is composed of vibrational energy even if we cannot prove it. Yogic philosophy treated this idea by suggesting that anything in matter has previously existed in the unmanifest cosmic womb. Indian philosophy even had a name for this place of pure potentiality, calling it hiranyagarbha, or the Golden Womb, the origin of all creation. Technically, ‘hiranya’ means ‘golden’ and ‘garbha’ means womb, and its symbol is a golden egg.

The science of physics has opened up big ideas like the notion of energy as vibration, or a not-yet manifest form of matter. It has helped Westerners accept that matter is not as concrete as we thought. Quantum thought maintains that the unmanifest is as real as each of us here and now, but is unrecognizable until energy and matter manifest or bring it into material form.

This is how healing consciousness moves too, for consciousness of a thing also changes the mode of being in that thing which is beheld. The Heisenberg Indeterminacy Principle, from the field of physics, affirms this insight and points out that it’s not possible to observe matter without influencing its actions. And while it’s true that the principle was developed while observing the velocity and speed of quantum particles, it applies to all matter.

The paralytic man’s friends (story from the Gospel of Mark), were determined to place him in close proximity to the pure consciousness of healing in Jesus.… read more...

Asana Journal Parable of Unmaking

A Parable of Unmaking

YOGA and LEATHER: Yoga for Bikers January 17, 2018 at Superstition Harley Davidson in Apache Junction, AZ.

The next class for YOGA AND LEATHER: Yoga for Bikers, is Wednesday, Jan. 17, 4:30 at Superstition Harley Davidson. See how these bikers are keeping themselves ready to Ride On!

A BIG THANK YOU to M.J. Britt for taking these photos at Superstition HD.

When motorcycling and yoga come together, good things happen. Practice yoga at Superstition Harley Davidson and feel the roar of motorcycles below the Eagles Nest. It’s different, but bikers and yogis have never been afraid of different.

Yogis come in all shapes and sizes and so do bikers. Yoga and motorcycling require many of the same skills:

ability to be calm in the midst of stress

sequential learning to master corners or poses

movement with awareness and presence of mind

flexibility and balance

This is just a start. Find out how yoga can keep you riding now and into the future.

I’ll meet you in the Eagles Nest !

YOGA BENEFITS FOR BIKERS

Increased strength and muscle tone through weight bearing and power postures / for large bikes and long tours, building strength for long days on the road.

Improved balance by practicing one-leg standing postures / better control in tight U turns and backing.

Increased mental focus and coordination, clarity of thought developed by balance and silence in yoga practice / life and death on the bike is directly related to mental focus and clarity.

Improved sleep after a hard yoga practice / no dozing while driving, deeper sleep leads to increased energy on the road.

Improved posture / improved back and neck comfort on rides.… read more...

Chop Wood, Haul Water, Go Below the Frostline

https://medium.com/@gregoryaormson/below-the-frost-line-39ec8786fd4

Snippets from YOGATECTURE

If you believe yoga is a physical discipline, I’ll play mystic from the East and counter, yoga is not matter, its mind. If you were to say, “Yoga is a confusing philosophy,” I’ll rebut, its focus is the empirical (diet and bodily health). If one maintains yoga is found in the experience of asana, I’ll point to the crown chakra and our intimate participation with the cosmic Self. If someone says, “Yoga is spirituality,” I’ll ask, what do you mean? If a yogi tells me, “Yoga is a path to heightened consciousness,” I’ll say, okay, but to what end?… read more...

Snippets from YOGATECTURE

Sandpaper reshapes and refines wood by friction and pressure; and when rubbing sandpaper over wood, one sees fine particles fall away and the sandpaper gets hot to the touch. This is how asana and pranayama work together to kindle an inner fire by movement and pressure.… read more...

Between the Wheels, on the Twin, Behind the Windshield

Recovered from Arizona Bike Week at Westworld last week where I co-led 25 DEMO tours in five days for Moto Guzzi. Was it hot? Hahahahaha.

Here is the Holy (or not so) Trinity of Harley-Davidson’s owned by yours truly in the forms of creator, motivator, and generator.

Wildfire, Feb. 4, 2000 – April 6, 2016.

Biggie, Jan. 1, 2017 – April 13, 2017.

Cleopatra, April 13, 2017 – ?

YOGATECTURE: The Elegant Arc of Change

YOGA-TEC-TURE: the elegant arc of change

YOGATECTURE

Thank you to Asana International Yoga Journal for publishing this 56th Yoga Inspirational.… read more...

Yoga and Leather: Yoga for Riders at Superstition Harley Davidson in Arizona

Kicking off their 18th year anniversary issue of Arizona Rider Southwest, delivering biker news to all of us, Betsy and Bruce have included the full story on yoga for motorcyclists. Thank you!

It seems fitting that the yoga classes at Superstition Harley Davidson in Apache Junction will be held outside on what they call “The Eagles Nest.” It’s their second floor deck on the west side of the building. A nest brings new life into the world, and it’s where I will introduce yoga for riders. I’m calling it Yoga and Leather.

See the full September schedule below:

9/24 {Sun} Yoga for Riders @ Superstition HD on the

eagles nest patio. Come & find out how Yoga helps bikers ‘ride on’.

Bring a yoga mat & wear comfortable clothing. This is not an

exercise class, but an introduction to yoga with basic poses

as part of the experience. Class time 10–10:55am. FMI:

Gregory Ormson, 808.640.4624, greg.ormson@gmail.com

9/27 {Wed} Yoga for Riders @ Superstition HD on the Eagles

Nest Patio. See description above. Class time 5-5:55pm.

FMI: Greg Ormson, 808.640.4624, greg.ormson@gmail.com

9/30 Yoga for Riders @ Superstition HD on the Eagles Nest

Patio. Come & find out how Yoga helps bikers ‘ride on’. Bring

a yoga mat & wear comfortable clothing. This is not an exercise

class, but an introduction to yoga with basic poses as

part of the experience. Class time 10-10:55am. FMI: Greg

Ormson, 808.640.4624, greg.ormson@gmail.com

To read the article and see the benefits of yoga and how they releate directly to riding, click on each page below.… read more...

Starting Yoga Teacher Training

I’m starting a yoga teacher training program this Saturday in Pine, Arizona. It’s been five years since I first walked into a yoga room in Hawaii, and during that time, I’ve learned from many teachers practicing at 12 studios in four states.

I’ve also been fortunate to attend three yoga workshops outside of regular classes, and while these were only a few hours or a half-day, I caught a glimpse of what a lifelong practice can look like. I was moved by what I learned and experienced with Kim Tang, Esak Garcia, and Lucas Miles. I’d like to borrow something from them and from all the teachers and yogis I’ve met. I hope to use it in my teaching and practice.

All these teachers are good at communicating and leading classes through basic asana. All of them speak of connection to breath and self and they all say breathe and stay present, everyone invites relaxation, and gives encouragement to do the work, and in this intentional engagement everyone discovers what they need to know.

Some use oils and music, some heated room, some chimes, bells and singing bowls, but not everyone. In some cases, they go beyond, as in the practice of Bhakti (devotional) and Naad Yoga -sound and healing – which opens self to greater Self (Cassandra Bright, Gilbert Yoga, Gilbert, AZ); speaking of how yoga restores hope and saves lives after horrible accidents, healing physical body which leads to spiritual restoration (Sheila Nelson, Motto Yoga, Queen Creek, AZ); energy healing and the way of chakras, sound, and the singing bowl (Suzette Johnston, Motto Yoga, Queen Creek, AZ); yoga after running and the pursuit of kundalini and continual learning to make intellectual connections (Leslie Pelke, Motto Yoga, Queen Creek, AZ); how to take joy and happiness from a disciplined practice (Kirsten Holmson and her team at Community Soul, Wausau, Wis); yoga as gift for all ages and peoples – especially kids – (Robyn Bretyl, Lightbody Yoga, Wausau, Wis); the willingness to take risks and reach beyond the normal (Lori Jokinen, Jennifer Taylor, and her team from Tulivesi Yoga in Marquette, Mi); the courageous heart – Croix Croga – of yoga (Katie Ziemann, Croix Croga, Wausau, Wis); yoga as the moving, transforming connection between heart and soul (Andrea Hutchens Tika Anandisari, Aaron, Melissa Katherine Lotus Heart, Brooke Meyers, Sarah Bloom, Jenna Rae, Dana Strang and Sai Fon Woozley from Yoga Hale in Hawaii); the affirmations and benefits of yoga, asana, and pranayama leading to a heightened breathcentric awarenss (a special shout out to Mark Hough, Shannon Matson, and Yolanda Bottomley from Bikram Yoga on the big island of Hawaii); the willingness to take yoga anywhere (Lorrie Blockhus, OM Sweet OM Yoga in the serene but tick infested northwoods of Wisconsin.… read more...

YogaInspirational number 54 in Yogi Times “9 Ways to Return Yoga’s Gift.”

April 2017

https://www.yogitimes.com/article/what-you-give-to-yoga-

Yoga gives each of us more than we can repay. It’s the reason we continue our practice and make it a long-term life discipline. Yoga creates new space and provides the impetus for us to search for our true self. It has our backs and has fixed our spines.

Yoga balances our perceptions and teaches us to look to the horizon even when we resist and find it would be easier to look down and fall flat upon the mark of our diminished vision.

Yoga levels our judgments to a place of calm detachment; but also fills us with courage to say and do the right thing (on and off the mat) as often as we can. Yoga moves us to meet, greet, and bow to worlds upon worlds, and that is why those of us practicing yearn to find our limits, breathe deep to fully inherit the spiritual science of health, and release everything into the realm of OHM.

What do you give to yoga?

Every yogi answers in their own way, but here’s one yogis answer:

I give my pain.

Perhaps it’s a surprising answer, and this is open to misinterpretation. But yes, I give yoga pain. I know the pain I need to release, and I know from experience that yoga will keep teaching me how to release it. It’s a pain I hold in my being, in my body, and it’s the pain I hold for the world.

I give my love for family and friends.

I see them aching not just from the slings and arrows of misfortune, and the lance of gossip and backbiting envy.… read more...

MIDWEST INTIMATIONS

Port Yonder Press / Eastern Iowa University will be publishing its third volume of lyric essays this summer. Work by two writers is now online, including my essay, “Midwest Intimations.” The other essay online, link included is, “You Will Have a Son,” by Cindy Lamothe, an expat living in Antigua. Thank you Port Yonder Press.

Eastern Iowa Review

MIDWEST INTIMATIONS

Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.

Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through the blue nights
into white stars.

–Carl Sandburg, 1918

The American Midwest is a great nail in my body. Its rusty gestalt formed me, and my heart pumps iron history through my arteries and veins. The Midwest broke me and made me strong. It formed my hard-edged will and chastised me with ice.
I’ve lived in Hawaii, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, and Washington. I’ve traveled to 43 of the Continental United States and motored through Spain, Korea, India, Argentina, Haiti, Germany, England, and Mexico. I’ve rubbed elbows with people in the sovereign nations. Their names drip from my tongue: Navajo, Potawatomi, Lakota, Menominee, and Ojibwa.
I’ve embraced Midwest geography; most of it is not beautiful, however, some sites rival the rugged, purple Andes of Northwest Argentina, the coast of Barcelona, and the tumbling waterfalls hidden deep in Molokai’s rainforests.
The friendliest people don’t live in the Midwest, except once in a while we are the friendliest.… read more...

A Picture of Nastiness

My daughters are nasty women. And I’m proud of them.

Nasty, as an attribute, is not the same as mean behavior. They’re not mean, but if you cross them, they will kick your ass and remove your name from their house of goodwill.

They’d prefer you not be a jackass or a gossiping pile of dung. These women, in their 20’s, are not weak. They’ll “tell-off” rude taxi drivers and they’re good with pepper spray. Nastiness does not preclude occasional vulnerability or weakness, but that’s not their normal state.

For the record, here’s what I know about nasty women: they’re intelligent and acute critics of life and society; they’re people of strength and tenderness, capable of simultaneously holding antitheses strongly marked. Both of them can run for miles, lift weights or sew the most delicate stitch into pattern or time. They easily identify bear scat in the woods and can haul and stack wood for hours. When they put their minds to a goal, they will work to the bone to achieve it

They’re kind and grounded, capable of measured judgment and unending forgiveness. These women are nasty – I guess.

Go for it if you want to label them.

I’m their pop and I admire and love them. I’m impressed as they stand on their own and exert their strong will day after day in the struggle. I praise their rejection of over-responsibility, saying no to taking care of more than necessary. They do not coddle or cotton to the patriarchal curse of holding their tongue, and though it’s hard, they refuse to let the economic meat grinder chew them up.… read more...

AMWRITING

IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR

THE STORY OF HOW YOGA BROUGHT MY SOUL BACK

The story of one man’s emotional healing and personal transformation through the power of yoga, meditation, writing, and faith.

After a day moving to Hawaii and into a new apartment, I was on a hard wooden floor in pain. This led me to yoga in an attempt to fix my back. It was out of desperation, yet a few weeks later I found myself in a hot yogaroom. With no formal background — and very little knowledge of yoga — I went to a class searching for something to make me strong in my broken places. I hoped I wouldn’t collapse, but was also confident about the challenge before me. With no preparation or personal experience, I jumped in.

My plan was to try yoga for thirty days. Then, I would evaluate how my back felt and decide if I should continue. I made it through twenty-four classes that month and found my will galvanized. My conclusion was clear: Yoga is the way to go for healing back pain. “It’s so simple,” I wrote, “why don’t more people do it?” Yoga worked, but the transformation goes deeper.

Writing and Yoga

I decided to keep attending and keep writing about it because I thought my practice in a heated room would benefit me in other ways too, and I was eager to discover them. But notes about yoga were not my only subject. I started writing on everything that came to me during that beautiful hour: I numbered the sessions, made notes about the teachers, chronicled my thoughts about the class and penned other insights.

September 18, Team Two Buck Out of the Darkness walk in Minneapolis sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Team Two Buck Twin Cities Walk

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My Story:

When I started working as a pastor in the Lutheran church in the early ’80’s, it didn’t take long for the subject of suicide to get my attention. In my first meeting with the church youth, called Luther League back then, one girl of 16 told me she wanted to end her life.

I decided right then I’d better find ways to speak to comments like that. It wasn’t long though, and two young people from that church in Racine, Wisconsin, did take their lives. One was 15, the other 16.

I’d had both of those young men in my confirmation classes. I knew their parents, and I’d been to their family events. One of the parents taught Sunday School. Suicide was real and it was final.

As I went into campus ministry at Northern Michigan University and The University of Cincinnati, there were more experiences like the ones from Racine. But when Jon, one of my cousins, took his life at 45, suicide touched someone in my family. Then its very close, its personal, its painful. In spite of all I’d learned, I was still left wondering if there was anything I or anyone else could have done.

I’ve studied, gone to seminars, been to and even conducted funerals for those who fell by their own hand. I can say there is no easy answer and certainly no cliche’ that will ever address survivor’s grief. Even as recent as last year, an acquaintance and friend of mine from Wausau, Wisconsin, took his own life.

YogaInspirationals by Greg, numbers 42 and 43 in Asana Journal

By a Thread

42 By a Thread

The indigenous people of the American Southwest – the Dinhe’ – known to the English speaking world as Navajo, are famous for their high-quality and beautiful hand crafted wool rugs. People spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to own one.

But wisdom from this tradition has taught the Navajo to sew one small thread out of place into each rug’s pattern; thereby, working into the design a deliberate mistake. By including a flaw, Navajo acknowledge through the honesty of their art that even the most beautiful work is imperfect.

Life is an art, and the best artists know that every journey requires movement and motion. In yoga terms, our life could be viewed as an asana in which movement into time is beset with flaws and missteps. If yogis take this notion to heart, they will acknowledge, accept, and include their flaws as a necessary part of the beautiful mosaic their lives create.

Many come to yoga with their lives hanging on by a thread and their coping skills stretched to the max. Perhaps it’s the businessman or businesswoman burned out by economic demands and stresses. Maybe another person arrives in yoga with a broken heart, or someone else is tired of the fast pace of urban living, or fatigued with the demands of social media. In all these cases, yoga’s healing patterns in silence, in movement, or in stillness welcomes the flawed life into its creation.

This is why Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras (threads) have become must reading and study for the modern yogi.… read more...

MOLOKAI: No Baggage Allowed

The Hawaiian island of Molokai is 31 miles long and 10 miles wide. Driving through the main street of Kaunakakai (the only town) at 8:00 pm, one might think they’d taken a turn to the wrong decade or century and were transported into an American western town. It’s deserted, old-looking, and silent. But its natural surroundings are spectacular.

Molokai is a place where transitions from modern to old ways happen instantaneously. Stepping off the plane, I saw wild goats grazing 100-yards away at the runway’s end. The airport consists of one building with two gates.

Count the stoplights if you’d like, the number is zero, and much of the island is an electronic dead zone but a vital natural-living zone. If anyone listens carefully walking through the rain forest, they could hear large groups of honey bees cooling their wings in a soft hum, or wild boars grinding their tusks. Forget about shopping mauls and your café latte. They do not exist. In Molokai, you’d grow old waiting for change.

Molokai is one of the rare Hawaiian Islands that has not been modernized or Californicated; but since 1996 -and maybe earlier – the National Parks have been exerting pressure to take away land and turn some historic sites into tourist traps. Sound familiar?

Top speed in Molokai is 45 MPH, and then for only a short stretch on its southern route 450 to the east end. I went in April, the slow time. During a 40 minute drive from my VRBO condo to the lush eastern valley where the road ends, I met 6 cars.… read more...

My Portable Home: Finding Refuge on My Yoga Mat

From Yoga International #YogaInspirationals

JANUARY 20, 2016 BY GREG ORMSON

In my twenties, I was the leader of an eight-member music group that toured through India for four months. Landing in Bombay, we took the rail south to Trivandrum, where the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, and Arabian Sea merge. Going north through Andhra, Madhya, and Uttar states, we passed through Agra and ended the tour in New Delhi. It was my first international trip and I felt challenged by new customs, food, language, and climate. To a student fresh out of college, India was a new and vibrant world I did not understand.

Walking out of church one Easter Sunday, I saw an elderly man sitting on the church lawn near a busy sidewalk. He was practicing garurasana, eagle pose. Most people filed right past him as if he were invisible. I stared, and I thought he looked uncomfortable. That experience was 35 years before I began practicing yoga. I had no idea what he was doing.

After leaving Delhi, my transition back to the U.S. was rapid, and I felt strangely affected by my travels. I seemed to be seeing things differently. When I went into stores, I found myself looking for things to which I’d grown accustomed in India, such as the blue-faced representation of Krishna adorning wall calendars.

The quiet streets, typical of small town country living, was odd after I’d grown used to the shrieking sound of bus horns. In my music room, I replicated that dissonant and jarring pitch by simultaneously plucking my guitar’s E string on the eighth fret and the G string on the eleventh fret.

COMMEMORATION

Allen Keith Ormson

Uncle Al (Allen) graduated from Barron High School in 1957, and then went to college at The University of Wisconsin, River Falls, where he earned a bachelor’s degree graduating in 1963.

Like many boys growing up with brothers, my father Dean, and his brothers Al and Duane engaged in sibling rivalry. At family gatherings, I heard stories about the time Uncle Al climbed up into the garage rafters, and by the use of secret sauce or brotherly incantation, lured my pops into the garage.

As my father walked underneath, Al dropped darts onto his head. Dad’s revenge was to put nasty stuff in Al’s chocolate milk. These are Wisconsin small-town stories that cement family bonds and create mythologies on whose reverberations family-members ride into the future. My pop and Al became close in later years, something that often happens when siblings grasp the depth of blood and jettison youthful rivalries.

In later years, inflated memories of Canadian fish stories and fantastic recitals of success in conquering Wisconsin buck fever took on Gaudian forms; and while uncle and pop were men of flesh, their noses grew longer at each telling.

Uncle began his career as a teacher, eventually earning his master’s degree from Winona State University and serving as superintendent of schools for 27 years in Rusk and Polk counties. But Al is memorable to me for his great success as a basketball coach. He took the small school Durand Panthers to the Wisconsin State (WIAA) basketball tournament finals twice during his coaching career, before the days when schools competed in separate divisions based on enrollment.… read more...

Making Contact, excerpt from #YogaInspirationals

Yoga improves brain and bodily intelligence though its attentive repetition. It’s the discipline of one asana at a time. In the midst of each asana, our brains search to interpret the intelligence of our bodies and picks up the yogi’s growing ability to learn from the soles of their feet, from the twists of their spines, from the mindful placement of their palms and fingers.

Focus on the contact figure opens the mind and allows for it to receive the body’s intelligence, and in doing so, the soles of our feet become like a microchip feeding information to the mother board. It’s stunning to think that this is a two-way communication and that our brains are enriched by feedback from the soles of our feet. Breathe deep the gathering wisdom and learn what your bodily contact is teaching

Think of standing on your mat in class holding tadasana, mountain pose, and that your mat is the entire focus of your attention. In your mind, shift your awareness to the place where the soles of your feet make contact with your mat and pretend as if that place is all that exists. Your entire world is made up of the space that forms two outlines on the bottom of your feet. This is what Gestalt calls the figure, and everything else – except that one patch where your two feet make contact – is the back ground/landscape of perception and awareness.

Now imagine standing in mountain pose, lifting one foot from your mat. With one foot lifted, only a small patch of earth/foot contact is directing your life and that one patch is the outline of your right foot.… read more...

New Ways to Cope – YogaInspirationals

In preparation for a piece I’m working on for the AARP Bulletin, and other magazines that focus on aging and health, I attended a senior yoga class today taught by Andrea Hutchens. Afterwards, I asked the students for a few comments about yoga and aging. In just a few minutes, I heard enough to affirm, once again, that this ancient discipline and practice can change lives.

It doesn’t happen in an instant, and the change isn’t easy or predictable. One student told me “I was 58 when I started, but I really wish I would have known about it and started when I was a kid. I think Kaiser should have a program. I think it should be in schools”

She went on to tell me why she started yoga and what it’s done for her. I’m saving that for my article. It’s never to late to start a practice that treats mind, body and soul sans medications and expectations. And when it comes to finding new ways to cope in a world that’s increasingly distressed and dangerous, yoga is a good place to start.

Photos from class at the West Hawaii Civic Center.