The physical practice of yoga captured my attention in 1971 at U.C.S.F. during my final physical therapy year. A progressive instructor introduced it as an exercise modality and I fell in love with sun salutations at the same time I fell in love with anatomy. When I moved to Sacramento after graduation there were no yoga studios, so I started my regular living room practice with Lilias Folan on PBS.

I opened the leather console abutting my driver’s seat and spied a lime green pouch I’d forgotten. I knew what was in there. I zipped it open and somberly withdrew three keys, each haphazardly labeled with the door it opened. One for Centered---closed, another for Epic----closed, a third for Clara---?. Sigh. Evidence again. Everyday there is change. The new normal is that there is no normal.

This world’s rocking us. For a breath or two, feel that right here. Just shift your weight right. Feel the momentary relief of settling into “new normal” on one side. Then feel the rug pulled out as you move left. Don’t settle there. Now shift right. Back and forth. Back and forth. Until the rug pull itself is the “new normal.” Keep rocking. Keep rocking until maybe you just become the change itself.

I heard the term “collective effervescence” in a recent podcast and goose bumps rose on my skin. It resonated utterly familiar but ironically unnamed. We all know this: when the atmosphere magically crystallizes at a concert, a ballpark, a festival. Durkheim, a French sociologist, coined the term in reference to religious gatherings. He observed that song and rhythm connect people to create moments of unified transcendence. Any shared experience of collective emotion unifies a group.

Moving on my mat, the Tahoe earth held me last week. When I rested, stretched out looking at trees and sky, a thought dropped into the empty space. How does that happen? But there it was: I’m smack dab in the midst of one crazy initiation into the eighth decade of life. What a friggin’ absurd transition: decade change + pandemic. I’m a meaning-making animal. Maybe you are, too. What in the world could this juxtaposition signify?

Been thinking about resiliency. The way we desperately need it right now. What it takes to build it. This gratitude-filled surprise to feel the most resilient I’ve ever felt in my life. I kid you not. Curious musing here about why that might be, starting with the dictionary definition.

Resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness; the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape

On Mother’s Day this year, my astute and thoughtful daughter gifted me with StoryWorth, an ingenious writing program encouraging family elders to tell the stories that comprise a life. Each week I get a new prompt. After 52 weeks StoryWorth binds the responses into a book. Last week it was “How and when did you decide to have children?” A few weeks before it was “Are you more like your father or your mother? In what ways?”

This morning I woke in residual panic, breathlessness that remains when a call, desperate to place, at last goes through. My eyes wince softly in the spare morning light. Long seconds pass before I realize I’ve been dreaming. Funny how even strange dreams seem so banal at first glance. Not this one. I rose to capture the disappearing wisps.

Before I relate these two “called out” stories, I want to call you in. Wanna drop in to a communal ritual of embodied healing? Give your body the love and care and nourishment it needs in order to thrive? Essentials is there for you three Tuesdays in August: 4, 11, 18. I am totally ready to meet you on the mat. Bonus: recorded session available after each class. Check the link for info, Zoom enroll, payment.

The Delta breeze that swept into Sacramento last night comforted me post-dinner as I conversed with two friends, folks I’ve known more than thirty years. Good-hearted people. Progressive people. White-bodied people. With social justice passion simmering beneath my calm exterior, I posited a simple scenario. You can jump right into this moment with me. Imagine we’re sitting in my peaceful backyard. We hear the gate un-latch, a white man comes into view. How does your body respond? Notice. Breathe. Now, same scenario, except a black man comes into view. Question: was your bodily response the same in each scenario?

Wow…feeling the impact of taking time off in every part of me. And it did feel really good to show up last weekend and teach. But I’m headed back out for more time to be close to the earth, lean against trees, kneel in the grass, dangle in running water, sleep with the sweet smell of pollen wafting around me.

The study of epigenetics reveals that stresses felt in current time alter our genetic makeup. Which makes utter survival sense. Except for some ways we stress out are not very healthy adaptive. No matter. Our response to stress is visible in our behavior AND will be passed along to future generations. Trauma is inherited generation after generation.

Feels like a chapter, this chunk of time spanning pandemic initiation until now. I didn’t know it was a whole book. The first few pages found many teachers cobbling together a way to teach on line. I hopped right in, this early scramble motivated by need: a clear calling to support community and to personally remain creatively alive through the uncertainty.

History from the safety of arm’s length is lofty reflection. Last week I wrote “we are shaped by and dragging the bounty and burdens of 5000 years.” About the onset of patriarchy and how slavery emerged in its wake.

Through the miracle of current technology, while stretched on a Sacramento hammock, I watched the sun go down at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England this summer solstice. These stones, carefully aligned around 3000 BC, mark the turning of seasons and supported rituals tied to agrarian survival. See witchcraft 101 for more on that. Right now the sun is far north in its east/west trajectory, beaming abundant energy to nourish all living beings. Good to remember in the heat of these dog days.

I know exactly when my childhood reverence for the natural world galvanized around nature-based practices. On a high plateau in Death Valley, alone for three days, fasting, feeling everything. The sun just a month past spring equinox, low in the south, I tracked it through each day as guidance to any available shade. Sixty mph gales swept through me west to east one night as I traced the constellations in their revolution around the North Star. Which happens every night. But up until this moment I had been clueless. Over the course of ten days, the natural forces that guide indigenous cultures worldwide began their journey into my bones, my blood, my breath.

Through the lens of injustice, my life has been a long and steady haul. My grandparents fled eastern Europe to escape genocide, the specific eradication of their culture. They arrived on Ellis Island with a burning desire to blend in, grateful to quietly dissolve into the melting pot of early 20th century America. Like all immigrant groups they found assimilation a mixed bag. Much loss for every gain. But their white skin granted them privilege other groups did not receive.

Maybe you feel current events hitting you like a ton of bricks, the rage of injustice deeply stirred. Yet again. Maybe the news propels you into a morass of numbness. Sinking into safe folds of oblivion. Yet again. Maybe your belly contracts in anxiety, new fear heaped upon the old fear. Yet again. Some of us waft into confusion as chaos comes calling. Others put the brakes on wherever control is feasible. Yet again.

Just a few moments ago, instead of sitting down to write, I aimlessly wandered the internal cocoon of my home, putting things away. This belongs here. Throw this away. Change this to here. As if. My subconscious having a field day, putting the thousand things to right in my little controllable world. Spinning dreams out of my frustration and my longing and my agitation. Triggering my emotions in novel and unfamiliar ways. And I keep listening to you. I am not alone in this.

David Kessler quote, the man who collaborated with five stages of grief Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. This grief warrior continues to mine her classic stages and recently added stage six, with the permission of Kubler-Ross’ family. Moving in my studio yesterday, spinning round and round, I felt myself turning in a spiral of grief. Again. A movement experience I’ve had any number of times in the past and failed to remember. Just like the spiral of grief itself, I seem to return to this notion again and again. Perhaps the gift of a memory less linear than it used to be