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

Writer, musician, yoga-loving motorcyclist.
400 sessions of the 26+2 yoga series known as Bikram Yoga. Each class is 90 minutes in a hot room, a yoga style that builds mental and physical willpower. For ten years now, I’ve observed and experienced how this yoga changes people.
First, it will get harder
Then it will get easier
Then it will get different
Then it will get way different . . . but so will you.
I started yoga in Hawaii when I happened to walk into a Bikram Yoga Studio to fix my bad back. After starting, I kept track of each session because I knew it could become important. I completed 325 classes during the four years I practiced in Hawaii. Most of my Arizona practices – by contrast – have been 75 minutes with music and limited dialogue.
It’s been known for Centuries that applying heat in ritual transformations tends to create and accelerate change. Mircea Eliade, former chair of the Department of History of Religions at the University of Chicago, wrote in YOGA: Immortality and Freedom, that the Rg-Veda identified heat and ardor with ascetic effort as a tapas. It serves to “heighten the Physico-chemical processes (of making gold) and is the ‘vehicle’ for psychic and spiritual operations.”
North American Medicine Men shared this practice too in the sweat. Eliade wrote of this, and other transformational rituals in his 1951 book, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.
Yoga people find out that the practice of yoga in a hot room is hard. Writer Alyssa Dunn put it like this, “My yoga practice isn’t always stable.… read more...
When some friends gathered to celebrate my birthday at a Hawaiian beachside rental, my good fortune tricked me into thinking I had earned such leisure.
Ocean waves crashed against the black rocks and giant tree leaves bent in the Kona wind. Hawaiian music playing from a house next door accompanied us while we drank together and 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” 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.
Fogelberg’s song is 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...
In May, before leaving Arizona on a 6000 mile summer trip, I bought a toy “monster truck.” I planned to use it in commemoration for a deceased friend when a few of us would meet near Lake Superior.
Our friend loathed monster trucks and saw them as an American hyper-egoistic association with vehicles and a nutty obsession for more and more engine power and size. He thought of monster trucks as the perfect symbols of aggression, senseless destruction, and waste.
A lot of our travel this summer was on the Interstate system. I realize I didn’t enjoy it. The Interstate is no longer a gateway to the great American road adventure; it’s more like the great American road nightmare where games of bravado are played out by aggressive drivers with big rigs that come dangerously close to disaster on a regular basis.
In our commemoration for P.R., we talked about his love for travel and decided that I should take him for a final ride back to Arizona in the green toy monster truck. There were no hard and fast rules about what I was to do with P’s spirit riding along, but a loose suggestion that I might leave him (and the monster truck) in some public place where anyone could pick him up and take him on a continuing journey.
I thought I’d leave it (him) somewhere along Route 66, a road symbolizing the lost optimism of a wide-open American dream; a route marked by a faded joy in scenic adventure-travel, meals in friendly small-town highway café’s, and nostalgia for the history of an open road and open people.… read more...
Get your EVENTBRITE tickets here for Breath, Body and Brain (B3) workshop with Yoga Song author Dr. Gregory Ormson. Ume is pleased to welcome Dr. Gregory Ormson to our new studio space located at 407 Wisconsin St, Eau Claire, WI. The Wisconsin native, author, educator, musician and celebrated motorcycle yogi is visiting Eau Claire and will be offering a unique 90-minute breath centered practice.
This integative workshop/clinic will focus on the clear mind/body/spirit connection that draws many of us to yoga, meditation, music and other mindful activities. Yoga’s big idea is that everything is connected, and this four-part workshop will exercise mind/body/spirit activities by:
Part 1, Brief readings from Gregory’s book, Yoga Song
Part 2, Breath practice including techniques, breath holds, and benefits working with breath
Part 3, Movement with basic asana integrating part 2
Part 4, Music and mindfulness
Please bring your own yoga (mantra) mat (BYOM) and water bottle if you like. Additional blocks and props will be provided.
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...
Our world is in need. People are distracted, fractured, busy, angry and vulnerable to emotional hijacking. When this happens, its hard to experience the joy of being alive because we lose touch with ourselves and others.
Yoga meets this need by offering time for the busy to rest for a few moments, connect to our battered selves, and learn to breathe again which brings us into wholeness and gives us permission to focus in on the moment and the experience.
In yoga, we put-away the agenda for just a few minutes to remember who we are as people imbued with a divine spark that need not be named, claimed, or tamed.
Tune in at 7:05 pm tonight when I read sections from Yoga Song. Live Facebook feed from Salt Motion and Meditation in Wausau, Wisconsin. Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/events/1382068342295624/… read more...
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...
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...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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.
In 23 lyric vignettes the author writes yoga is a song of healing and restoration from the inside out. The instrument of yoga’s song is the body which includes mind, spirit, emotion, and energy. Its melodies are alive in the sound of Om or a vocalized, heartfelt Namaste; others sing a yoga song in asana through their bodies or in a group exhale.
In breath-centered yoga practice, yogis experience a therapeutic and healing power where ordinary moments stretch into extraordinary. Described in “Transforming the Emotional Body,” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song,” and “Yoga: A Breathcentric Community,” Yoga Song informs and inspires, proclaiming to every yogi that their yoga is a song.
“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. Inspiring piece, Greg.” Dr. Jonathan Johnson, Eastern Washington University
“The book has been beautifully written, and its words are well crafted. It will undoubtedly inspire students of yoga. Dr. Yogananth Andiappan, Andiappan Yoga College, Hong Kong
“This writing is really interesting and deserves to be in top 5 Google Search Results.” Sergio E (via Webpage email).
“This is the most incredible and amazing story.… read more...
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 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...
Years ago, and far from the waters of Hawaii where yoga first tumbled me, I set out on a solo three-day vision quest in a barren land that Wyoming residents call the Red Desert. Before my quest began, I spent two days training in the Lakota way. Once I walked into the desert I would not eat or see anyone for three days. My instructions were simple and focused: drink water and pay attention.
For yoga, I’d give the same instruction today, only adding an admonition to breathe. I expected my vision quest would challenge me but also help me connect to that which I had not yet connected.
I didn’t know it, but at the time I was doing the work of yoga. At dawn on the scheduled day, I walked into the desert to seek a new vision. My intention was to strip away all distraction in my experiment with truth and give it my full attention with all my being.
This is what yoga is to me now. It’s a stripping away of distraction, which takes preparation and intention. It is the time and place to build my satyagraha or force of truth.
But in the Red Desert I learned from the birds that if I had a song to sing I had to sing it. It was not about how well I sang, but that I did. This is why I’ve written Yoga Song; it is not about how well I write or sing my yoga song, but that I do.
Sale links available soon.… read more...
We seldom hear such grandiose and luminous words to describe our being, but when we yoga we are grand shining billion-year old carbon participating in a pattern that moves the stars and positions us to touch the 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 allowing us to take note of our deepest truth; that we are beings at one with a divinely animated critical mass of stardust and carbon waiting to greet, meet, and welcome us home.
Cultural voices bombard us with a cacophony of dismissal, a poisonous milieu designed to make us feel small and inadequate. News and current events can leave us thinking we’re an insignificant cog in a great drama that’s happening elsewhere.
Somewhere along the way, our freedom and joy took flight when we traded our truest selves — luminous stardust and sacred beings — for narratives that dim the light and joy of our being. But to trade our identity as golden children imbued with cosmic energy and force for anything else is a trade down.
Creating the sound of Om and meditating on its meaning invites us to experience this divine breath that the Hebrews called ruah, the Greeks pneuma, and the yogis call prana.… read more...
Yoga Song is a story of transformation and redemption in 23 lyric vignettes from Gregory Ormson with a foreword written by Dr. Yogananth Andiappan of the Andiappan Yoga Colleges. Yoga Song’s author states there’s a song at the center of all time, being, and structure. There’s also a song in the center of yoga, and the instrument of a yoga song is the yogi’s body which includes: mind, spirit, emotion, energy, and consciousness.
In a breathcentric yoga practice, yogis experience yoga’s transforming and therapeutic power where ordinary moments stretch into extraordinary. Described in vignettes like “Transforming the Emotional Body,” “Ritual Process and the Yogi’s New Song,” and “Yoga: a Breathcentric Community,” Yoga Song proclaims to every yogi, with informative and inspirational content, that as they yoga they are a yoga song . . . a sacred song in mind, body, and spirit.
“This writing deserves to be in top 5 Google Search Results.” Sergio E (via Webpage email).
“This fantastic inspirational essay written by Gregory Ormson is . . . a must read.” Jennifer Taylor, Tulivesi Yoga, Marquette, Michigan
“Ormson has written some profound articles about his expansion through yoga. This piece was beautiful and I know all my friends who practice yoga will truly appreciate it just as much as I did.” Meagan Rasmussen, Kona, Hawaii
Born-to-be-wild biker Gregory Ormson moved to Hawaii but was sidelined by debilitating back pain and couldn’t enjoy paradise. Dipping a toe into yoga, he discovered a healing road that reformed his mind and fixed his spine.… read more...
Many years ago, and far from the waters of Hawaii where yoga first tumbled me, I set out on a solo three-day vision quest in a barren land that Wyoming residents call the Red Desert. Before my quest began, I spent two days training in the Lakota way. Once I walked into the desert I would not eat or see anyone. My instructions were simple and focused: drink water and pay attention. For yoga, I’d give the same instruction today, only adding an admonition to breathe.
I expected my vision quest would challenge me but also help me connect to that which I had not yet connected. I didn’t know it, but at the time I was doing the work of yoga. At dawn on the scheduled day, I walked into the desert to seek a new vision. My intention was to strip away all distraction in my experiment with truth and give it my full attention with all my being. This is what yoga is to me now. It’s a stripping away of distraction, which takes preparation and intention. It is the time and place where I build my satyagraha.
In the Red Desert, I learned from the birds that if I had a song to sing I had to sing it. It was not about how well I sang, but that I did. This is why I’ve written Yoga Song; it is not about how well I write or sing my yoga song, but that I do.… read more...
When born-to-be-wild biker Gregory Ormson (#motorcyclingyogig) moved to Hawaii, he 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. Ormson’s yoga writing and publishing (#yogainspirationals) led to Yoga Song.
From YOGA SONG
Yoga equips us to meet a stressful world and greet it with equanimity; it’s why we practice, study, and seek to discover who we are as we fall back into the fullness of Self. We breathe deeply to inherit yoga’s spiritual science, and with that breath, release and enter the realm of Om, the universal vibration of creation animating all life.
Yoga sings a song of connection to the ground of our being that his holy at its core; and it offers a redemption song for our mistakes and failures. We meditate, practice asana, or follow yoga’s inner path to the eternal Om and experience how yoga expands the dimensions in which we live and move even as the cultural spaces we inhabit are pressured and restricted.
Yoga’s melodies come to us in soothing voice, chant, or in the spirited sound of a group together in deep exhale. It leads us to deepen our range of motion, expand our lungs with full breath, increase our stretch of spine, and extend our energy body into space.
Formed from the crucible of scholarship and exercise, yoga empties and then fills the thinking reed that is hu-man and teaches us to inherit new dimensions. In time, yoga levels our judgments and brings us to the healing ground of calm detachment while simultaneously counseling us through the yamas and niyamas to do the right things.… read more...