Greetings:

Sunim, my long lost friend, thinking of you once again 😊 on this special day; I do hope we’ll reconnect once again in the coming year and our satellites might be on collision route —perhaps in person
Much love as always, V.

Reply:

Thank you so much for the kind wishes, V.

I hope you are managing well the gloomy years of life during global pandemic, all the suspicion, distancing, and fear. I hope that you have found that strong keel inside you that comes with regular practice of Asana, some centering affinity in this end-of-times atmosphere, this bad sci-fi epic of years-long pandemic unfolding under the looming tsunami of climatery apocalypse… There is so much to give us mental turmoil. There is so much that might get loose in our brains, dizzying us. I know that the isolation of the first lockdown really hit you, hard.

I would be happy knowing that you are finding your keel most days of the week in your practice, in the work you did with Richard Freeman and his wife, Mary, and students. I’m saying I hope so much you are having the time and the enthusiasm to continue your Asana work. That really is the best technology we have for enduring and growing from this weirding of life. Weird times. In some of the messages we exchanged during the deepening of the pandemic experience, you expressed great frustration with the lockdown and the isolation from people. You were having a hard time, like a lot of people.

They’ve been weird times.
So, we return to practice.

Weird situations.

Return to practice.

Weird thoughts or feelings. Hard thoughts or feelings.

Return to practice. Return to practice. Samasthiti. Return to practice.

Have a great moment engaged with measured nasal breathing.

(If you do have some time to do some fascinating reading, a quiet study of one wonderful book which will benefit your practice, I recommend enthusiastically the best-selling book Breath: The Lost Science of an Ancient Art, by James Nestor. An excellent, revelatory and interesting read on how to better our awareness through natural breathing. This has really been one of the most impactful books I have read about the role of breath and its optimization for hacking the vagal system.)

🙏🏼

Share this on: