To quote the insightful 20th Century philosopher, Rosanne Rosannadana, “It’s always something.” An axiom which is often misconstrued (even by Rosanne herself) to mean that since there’s always a problem, why do anything? “Never mind.”
However many argue that Rosannadana’s intended meaning was that life presents us with unlimited opportunity to observe, assess, take the bull […]
If you believe what you hear in yoga class, you might start to recognize that one good thing about time is that, like everything else, it’s an illusion. It happens like this: You drop into a pose, feeling the toes plugging into the floor, the coccyx heavy like gold. And then you notice that half […]
Here we are at the beginning of another new year. As a kid you hear adults droning on at the New Year about how quickly time passes, and not only is it boring, but it makes no sense. Number one, who’s paying attention to whether or not time is passing (get a life!). And number […]
It’s as if we’re in an unpleasant time warp at this time of year. The pace speeds up, it always seems to take more time to do everything, as the days indeed get shorter. People who look almost familiar, but who’s faces are a bit more
It’s a great day to be a dog in Boulder. Actually, Boulder is good in general if you’re a dog because there are at least three bakeries catering specifically to dogs (all right next to cafés so people tend to use picking up treats at the bakery as an excuse to be in the neighborhood […]
In a recent Sunday Talk Richard addressed the danger that philosophical extremes could become an obstacle to yoga. That was the cue for many of us to smugly re-settle on our cushions and kind of zone out, knowing we were out of danger from having that happen to us. First of all, how many of […]
While in Hong Kong back in September, Richard gave a talk to a group of yoga practitioners and teachers on the subject of “nada” or sacred sound. He discussed “doing dristi through our ears” and the art of absorption into the immediate senses as a means of waking up from a disembodied state. At this […]
If you’ve participated in a training with Richard, you know the drill. Before-hand there’s the anticipation and worry: maybe this time he’ll require us to hover in adho mukha padmasana or have us listen to lectures while sitting in yogadandasana. This leads to confusion after the first asana class: what was he was trying to […]
The lecture Richard gave a couple of Sundays back was entitled “The Supreme Ego” which had me, for one, worried. How could he do the talk without giving me a pre-lecture interview? And wouldn’t it be embarrassing to be the center of a public talk? Fortunately, I kept my egocentric fears to myself, and the […]
In Richard’s second talk in the series about obstacles, entitled “Loose Ends and Stinky Mats” he expanded on the idea of the five kleshas as obstacles and also explained the classic obstacles of mind described in the Yoga Sutra Samadhi Pada verse 30.