the best writing about yoga in a long time

I've been writing this blog since 2005 and I've come across many yoga blogs over the years -- some great, some not so much, some to which I am indifferent, i.e., those I read once and never return. We all have our tastes and I know that this blog is too snarky for some, maybe not foo-foo-peace-love-dove enough about yoga for others, and that's fine. I've been criticized for not sugar-coating my words, for not being "yogic" enough, for being too bold and brash, and frankly, for being too me. That's fine because I know that neither my yoga (not hard enough) nor I (not gentle enough) are everyone's cup of chai in the blogosphere or in real life. At my age, ask me if I care.

But today I found The Magazine of Yoga and I am hooked.  Maybe some of you know it already, but I can't stop reading the articles.  I especially loved this post about teaching: Tired, Uninspired, and Teaching Yoga. Some pithy remarks from the post:

"In teacher’s everyone life there are times the problem is more intractable or more existential, sometimes both at the same time.

My personal prejudice about this is that if you are serious at all about teaching, it’s going to happen to you. I have never had a bad teacher ask me what do about boredom, exhaustion, or doubt....

....If we are ever going to develop the emotional maturity to rise to our full potential as human beings we’re going to have to go through feeling abandoned, mistaken, dubious, and afraid."

Holy Shiva, did that sentence resonate with me...the times I have felt abandoned and mistaken on this path are more than I care to count. I have felt so alien in my local yoga world you can call me ET. So reading these last two lines...

"'Get up and go out in the world,' she [Eve Ensler] said, 'and do what you came here to do.'

Because there’s more to the practice than asana, there’s life."

...recharged me.

As did a new private student today...because there’s more to the practice than asana, there’s real life, yoga warts and all.