What Have You Been Learning Lately?

"Dis-ease enters the body when the space of now is unoccupied. The space of now is ease." -Guru Singh This is hard this is hard this is hard this is hard this is hard this is hard. THIS. IS. HARD. We've been in Virabhadrasana II for what feels like 108 long, sacred breaths. Prior to now, I've spent a lot of time shrinking away from committing when it really counts. A psychic named Miss Tina called me out on this years ago. She peered in to my palm and delivered all kinds of intimate details that made my blood boil with their truth. I've been thinking about her a lot lately. If Miss Tina could see me now! My thigh is parallel to the ground, making a perfect 90 degree angle with my knee. I want the deepest, fullest, realest experience of this pose that I can have today. I want the deepest, fullest, realest experience of this crazy beautiful life. So I keep that perfect bend in my knee even though my leg is shaking and burning, beads of sweat are rolling down my...

you gesticulate wildly, hands outstretched to the heavens praying, "Oh God, listen!" but there's an ambulance screaming hot headed siren to an emergency more bloody than ours how can anyone hear anything in this loud mouthed city? i've thought thousands of thoughts said thousands of words to you when i'm alone and i know somewhere over the sirens and space you still hear me we're connected like that like i'm thinking about peach pie and at a sunny diner counter somewhere you're ordering a slice there used to be a real, big wall between us but we tore it down to reveal people we hadn't ever met you clasp a faded photo of a pretty girl in your sweaty left fist and shake it like an etch-a-sketch you hope will rearrange into my face the me you remember is a late night TV fantasy the you i remember is a mirage in the mouth of the thirsty you'll pedal someplace greener and drier and warmer a springtime desert in bloom see...

The Goddess of Never Not Broken A couple of weeks ago I was explaining to a friend how my body has lost its formerly epic ability to process alcohol. I was volunteering to be the designated human for the night because I knew that I couldn't get drunk anyway: it just hurts too much anymore. He then asked a question that I couldn't articulately answer because I hadn't considered it: "How do you cultivate that?" I pinned it on my morning green smoothie habit (those damn dandelion greens, cleaning my liver up!) but this has been happening for awhile now, this loss of my ability to have fun. When I look at it honestly, I can see that this all started when my yoga practice got serious again five years ago. It's the yoga, man! That glorious sweating and stretching, bending and twisting, gleaming and beaming! That bitchin' vehicle of self-awareness that has made my body so sensitive and me so sensitive to my body that I can no longer live as I once did. Yoga...

With a love that's raw She will say, "Sabrina, your love must not depend on sad-eyed boys. You can be in love with sunflower dresses and vegan lasagna and Rice Krispie Treats and rain and skateboarding and Martha Graham and angel fountains. Then the sad-eyed boys will come. Eventually their fear will fade and they will come." -Francesca Lia Block in "Safe Love" In October 1999, I was 15 years old and a devout reader of Seventeen magazine. Most months delivered content that wasn't particularly enlightening for a young woman (HOT nail polish colors for summer!! Does he like you? How to get him to like you!!). However, in October 1999 Seventeen published a short story by Francesca Lia Block, lines of which are quoted above and still resonate with me. Every time I would get my feelings crushed, I would return to that quote like a salve for the wound, reminding myself of the importance of continuing to love even in the midst of the experience of great...

He lifted the tome out of my bag and asked what he was holding. I explained that it was my notebook, but that over the years it became a catchall for anything precious I wanted to keep- recipes, photographs, journal entries, lists of pros and cons, boarding passes and train tickets, poetry, letters I never sent and some I did. It was a beautiful handmade Christmas gift from a dear former love and has been a silent witness to the steady cycle of  destruction and recreation in my life over the last five years. Only five years? Is that really possible? Can it really only have been five years when so much has happened since? This time five years ago I was in love, living in San Francisco in the Tenderloin, working for the culinary school and attending my first Kundalini yoga classes. I had had my first Reiki atunement the previous fall and this introduction to alternative healing, plus taking sliding scale classes at Yoga to the People in Berkeley, planted the seed in my mind for a ...

My mind is like a colander with holes of various sizes and there's no way of knowing what will roll out and what will remain. That is to say, I forget a lot. I forget what I was doing last Saturday. I forget where I put the combo to the locked lock I have in my junk drawer. I forget when I last washed my hair. There are large periods of my life that are completely hazy but for flashes of memory that stand out clearly, some of which seem so inconsequential. Forgetting can be extremely useful...for healing, for forgiving, for grace, for innocence, for daily functioning. There is actually a chemical that our brain produces called Anadamide which helps memories to fade so that we don't recall everything we've ever seen and smelled and said and heard and done. Apparently the human brain doesn't have the capacity to contain so much memory, so it helps us to forget. In many ways this is a blessing. There are things we cannot afford to forget, though. We must remember to...

Amster-damn! There are a lot of bikes! He rested his head on my chest, ear positioned over my heartbeat slowing. I closed my eyes, wrapping my arms around his shoulders for a long, quiet embrace, drawing in a deep breath. "I remember this. I think I remember this. Do I remember this? What do I remember about this? How does this work, again? What happens now?" People talk with great flippancy about how picking some skills back up is "just like riding a bike." This simile doesn't work for me. When I was growing up, I had roller skates. At some point someone taught me how to ride a bike, but I only remember my skates. As a result of this, I reached adulthood being a less-than-adept bicyclist. It took an exhilarating, very late night, vodka-dampened ride through Vienna a few years ago to help me understand why anyone would want to ride a bike at all: it's incredibly fun. You also get places faster than walking and it's great cardio. Win win win! Ev...