Tag: freedom

• April 16, 2023

  Who-man?

  Welcome to Sutra A Day. Lately, I’ve been contemplating a couple of ideas. One is what does it mean to be human? Artificial intelligence, for example, more and more has the ability to create that which seems human-like. So is it this divine spark within? Humans aren’t always loving or kind, in fact, they can…
• April 2, 2023

  Running to Stand Still

  Welcome to Sutra A Day. No matter where you are, there you are. I learned this lesson at a young age – 16 to be precise. I was suffering the small town midwestern adolescent experience as a misfit with too much acne and relatively absent parents, generally wallowing in misery, fantasy and Taco Bell when…
• February 27, 2023

  The Child Mind

  Welcome to Sutra a Day. As I settle in to write this Monday, I recognize that I’m already thinking negative thoughts about some people, about work, about life. That there are a million things I want to do that I don’t know how to fit into my day, the day of the things I have…
• February 23, 2023

  Grandma’s Basement

  Introduction Although yoga teacher training has come to an end, my learning and seeking certainly have not.  Recently, I found myself returning to Sri Swami Satchidananda’s book, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. I kept jumping around seeking wisdom with a mind like a grasshopper. Which sutra was it? What had seemed so deep and impactful…
• February 12, 2023

  Intentions

  They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I take issue with that.  The idea that intentions don’t matter dismisses our humanity – and our divinity. In fact, I might state that the road to the divine is paved with good intentions.  Where is this coming from? Well, I finished yoga…
• December 31, 2022

  Interlude

  The past three days, I’ve been in a cabin in the northwoods of Wisconsin. Outside the windows the snow shrouds the earth, the lakes, the trees with their boughs reaching to the heavens in mostly gray sky. There is a peace and stillness to the surroundings, if you can hear it. If your mind will…
• December 3, 2022

  Isvara Pranidhana

  I have to talk to my yoga teacher training class about what this means to me. So I thought I’d post my notes for all of you (all three :-)). Here we go. Isvara Pranidhana comes from a climate about as different from Wisconsin as you can get. But the theme of surrender applies universally.…
• December 1, 2022

  Holding On

  Last weekend, we had a break from yoga school. It was Thanksgiving weekend, or, as I call it – Gratitude Day. Thanksgiving is so historically problematic and being from a sort of imploded and disconnected family, the traditions haven’t felt meaningful to me in a long time, if they ever did. So, I’m okay with…
• November 12, 2022

  A Seeker

  Halloween was on a Sunday this year, 2022. Sunday is the traditional day of worship in the Christian tradition, anyhow. A lot of people are afraid of Christians. And why wouldn’t they be? Many of them are pretty scary people, what with the rules and the angry god and the exclusion and the hell and…