Yoga The World

01/07/2025

This morning as I rummage for my warm socks and shuffle through the living room to close the cracked windows, I already know something is off. I check the messages that have piled up overnight on my phone, and sure enough: cancelled plans, closings paths, tasks I postponed now getting urgent.

The island is completely isolated today. The wind has built overnight. No ferries arriving or leaving. The drawbridges are up, the rain pounding on my windows, the trees je**ed and pulled in all directions. It is weirdly light, though, not the dark grey purple that usually comes with a storm. This gives me hope.

I think of my early twenties, when my response to bad news usually was to continue as if nothing had changed. Drawbridges up, feelings ignored. I can’t do that anymore. Perhaps more to the point, I won’t. Nothing is gained by pretending all is well when it isn’t. And also: feeling into frustration and disappointment allows me to feel all the rest too. Quiet. Certainty. Purpose. This is not all or nothing. It rarely is. My life flows towards wherever it needs to go. Sometimes it hits a rock and must flow around it. Sometimes it takes an unplanned route to the sea. Either way, I am present. Either way, I am alive.

The storm is raging. Still, I make coffee. Still, my mother helps me build the fire for warmth. This is where we are right now. A favorite poem by Galway Kinnell says it well. “Distrust everything if you have to. But trust the hours. Haven't they carried you everywhere, up to now?”

This afternoon, tomorrow, next week, things will have shifted. I don’t even have to move, and they shift. We are all flow, all the time.

Distrust everything if you have to. But trust the hours.

01/06/2025

This morning, I woke up to a snow-covered yard. The stack of firewood was blanketed in white, and I had to pry the frozen pieces off, one by one. It always takes me a bit to start a fire on the best of days: the stove has to warm up, the wood is not always completely dry, and, let’s face it, I’m far from fire-starting proficient. This morning I had just two pieces of dry wood. I stacked up several other snowy, wet, pieces on top of the stove to dry off at least a little bit before adding them to the growing embers. It took the better part of an hour to get it truly going.

The process of making a fire with less-than-dry wood makes me think of the ways in which we expect ourselves (and each other) to go from 0 to a 100 in a heartbeat. As I come out of 10 days of relative quiet, jumping straight into work feels jarring and almost impossible. I need time to dust off the snow, dry off the wet, warm up the wood and stones and metal. I need time to make my way from the immediate to the conceptual and, most importantly, to make the connection between the two.

When I was younger, my solution was never really to take time off. If I didn’t slow down, I’d never have to accelerate in this unhealthy fashion. Not that I was conscious about what I was doing: I just had this irrational, mostly unarticulated, fear that if I ever came to a complete stop, I might never get going again. When my daughter was a newborn, I read Kant and Nietzsche while breastfeeding and watched BBC News around the clock to prevent my brain from turning to baby-mush. I honestly think I would have done better to just chill. The brain adapts. I didn’t need to hear about those particular wars and that particular categorical imperative.

There is a balance, of course. We are of the world and in the world. This means being both in the snow and in the knowledge of wars. There is no one way to do that, let alone do it well.

But for me, at least, part of the process is learning to build an on-ramp to action: the time to dry off and breathe before firing up again. Knowing that it is OK to be slow, even as everything feels urgent. Building the awareness that slow now may be what we need to accelerate later.

My fire is roaring now. With several more soggy pieces of wood drying off on top. Everything is a process.

There is a balance. We are of the world and in the world. This means being both in the snow and in the knowledge of wars.

12/30/2024

If you get lost, don’t panic. Retrace your steps back to the beginning and start over.

This was the advice my mother gave us as kids. It was the 80s in Copenhagen. My brother and I were not yet 10 years old but spent a lot of time out in the world alone: walking to school, picking up groceries, taking public transportation to visit family, playing in the nearby parks.

It is solid advice too. I remember feeling inklings of panic whenever I had made a wrong turn, then quickly realizing I wasn’t lost if I knew how to get back to the beginning. Retrace your steps and start over, I’d tell myself. That’s not really being lost, it’s ultimately just being late.

I think about this as I move through the various poses of my daily asana practice, feeling into each variation. Every day, my body feels different, every day there is some part of my practice that is unknown. I explore the outside of what I can do, today, then retreat to the familiar flow: tadasana (mountain), uttanasana (forward fold), ardha uttanasana (halfway lift), chaturanga, urdhva mukha svanasana (updog). It feels safe and known, a rhythm that holds me even when my body aches and my thoughts race.

I also think about it as I brace myself for the news in the morning paper. It is hard not to panic. We are lost, I say to myself. Every decision along the way compounding the first wrong turn. The privatization of housing, of water, of care. The investment in weaponry. The criminalization of empathy and love. We have doubled down on these paths since we started recording human history. Maybe we are not so much lost as deliberate in our dehumanization. Maybe we believe the stories we tell ourselves.

What is the equivalent of a familiar asana flow here? When it comes to war, discrimination, and poverty, what does it mean to go back to the beginning and start again? I try to think my way to the answer, but it is in my body, not my head. We have the ability to return to what has always worked: love, community, care. We have the ability to be present with each other and the pain and joy we each feel. That is where we came from. Now, we start over.

When it comes to war, discrimination, and poverty, what does it mean to go back to the beginning and start again?

12/28/2024

Goodbye to Vinkapellet, hello to .dk. So excited to have been part of this journey and looking forward to the next chapter. And for those who don’t know: !

12/23/2024

Marriage is complicated.

This is not a new revelation, nor am I the first to say it. But it is a thought that feels especially resonant on my 10-year wedding anniversary.

I’ve been married three times, which I am neither proud nor ashamed of: it is a data point that somehow just is. If I am honest, I probably don’t so much believe in marriage as in the act of making a public declaration of intent and effort to be in deep relationship with another human being. There’s something powerful in committing to seeing, holding, and truly being with someone, for whatever length of time that continues to make sense.

Sometimes I wonder: if there had been another way to mark that commitment, would I have chosen it instead? Perhaps. The cultural weight of marriage, its traditions and expectations, sometimes feels like an inheritance I accepted without question. Once you’ve been married, it’s hard not to do it again with each significant relationship. It feels, somehow, as if not doing so would diminish the current relationship’s value, as if it is somehow lesser than what came before.

I also know that the rise of the nuclear family, based on a heteros*xual marriage, as the ultimate or most valid family structure is directly linked to the rise of individualism, capitalism, and modern societies. It’s a model that has, frankly, led to more work for women and a pervasive sense of isolation for many. We’re expected to do it all, alone, within these tidy, self-contained units.

But relationships and families don’t thrive in isolation. We all need community, connection, and collective care, all of which can co-exist with marriage but aren’t what marriage — as we usually understand it — is about.

So, as I reflect on a decade with my spouse, I ask myself: Is marriage worth it? I don’t know. But I do know this: my committed relationship with my spouse certainly is. It is worth the work, the messiness, and the effort. For us, it means moving towards each other with care and compassion, even when we’re in conflict. It means that we are both equally invested in helping “us” survive, also when it is hard. That commitment, that intentionality, feels like the most important part.

Maybe that’s what I’ve learned: the institution of marriage is not inherently good or bad. It’s the relationship we forge, the choices we make to show up for each other, that matter. Marriage licenses or not, what really counts is how we navigate the journey together with the people we love.

12/22/2024

The birds have been disappearing, my mother tells me as soon as I arrive on the island.

It is true that it is eerily quiet in the morning, more quiet than it has ever been. No blackbirds, no sparrows greet the sun or clamor for seeds at the feeder.

The internet informs me that sparrows have less shelter now that fewer people keep barns. The blackbirds all over Northern Europe have been affected by a virus.

This feels almost like non-news to me, as if it’s just the next step in this process of massive change we are in. As if I had always expected the birds to go next. I tell my daughter at breakfast: “And here’s another lovely legacy we leave you, a world without sparrows and blackbirds.” The irony is so obviously misplaced and she is not amused.

And still, as I sit this morning in silence, as I search my soul for despair, I find none.

Yes, I see us suffering, creating suffering, almost celebrating it as something worth living in and for. I see us descending into greed, upholding structures that isolate us, justifying as moral our separation from each other and ourselves. The wars, the genocides, the hatred that is required for us to accept the disparities that can only end in premature death.

I see us so clearly in that moment.

And because I do, I also see the rest. The love that flows like water, always finding a way. The community we seek almost despite ourselves. The compassion, the empathy, the art and beauty we create from nothing with our hands. The hope that lives in our bones.

Today, the day after the winter solstice, we have one more minute of sunlight. In 6 months, the days will get shorter again. This is the ebb and flow of centuries too. Species coming and going. Trees reaching towards the skies or dying and turning into firewood or mulch. We are water, we are hope. We cannot help ourselves. We too are love.

The birds have disappeared. And I am not surprised.

12/19/2024

A couple of years ago, I started spending more time in Denmark in the winter, specifically on Samsø, a small island with a wildly fluctuating population: bustling in the summer months, remote and slightly reclusive once the weather turns.

At the time, it was family health related, not really a decision to be there as the days got shorter. But I learned that I truly love the slower pace that time of year: the deep quiet, the cinema run by volunteers, the way the stars provide the perfect lighting for an evening walk to the defunct flour mill.

And the sun. That weird slightly anemic Danish winter sun.

There is something about the low shy gently warming hazy ball of light that feels miraculous and intimate, in a way the full blast of the summer sun never does. Almost like a whisper or buried knowledge we tacitly share with those around us: don’t look now, but she loves us. Don’t look now, but we might be OK after all.

Part of this is the fact that we never quite know if we are going to see the sun at all. I joke that if you live in Denmark, you are going to have to assume you won’t see the sun between late October and mid March. And some years, it really is like that: a permanent slightly milky grey light passes for daytime for 4 and a half months, non-stop. Another knowledge tacitly shared: the sun is up there, we just can’t really see her. That too is OK.

I am flying back again next week. I can’t wait. Being closer to this obvious turn of the earth makes me feel closer to our shared humanity, somehow. Like I can hear us, see us, feel us try to be better together. Like I can imagine the world as it should be: a clean slate, a place to see everything we know from the outside in. A way to place it in order again.

Here comes the sun, I silently sing to myself. It’s alright.

Blog post about living on a small island in Denmark in the winter.

12/17/2024

I haven’t sat properly for a week or two.

By sitting, I obviously don’t mean just sitting. I have sat plenty: at multiple all-day events, in public transportation, on a trans-Atlantic flight. Plenty of time to sit in ill-designed seats that make my back want to scream.

When I say sitting I mean meditating: I haven’t taken the time to sit for my usual 20 minutes in the morning for a couple of weeks. I tell myself it is because I have been busy, which is objectively true. But it is not the whole truth. I have definitely had 20 minutes of downtime here and there, and at those times I have prioritized doing a crossword puzzle or making more coffee or knitting or reading the news. When it comes right down to it, at first I didn’t sit because I felt too agitated, and then I didn’t sit because I got out of the habit and it just seemed too hard to start again.

And so this morning, as I dropped the pillows on the floor and arranged my feet just so, it was with a certain degree of apprehension: what will I find when my mind returns to my body? What arises when all else is still? At the most basic level: am I still here?

Spoiler-alert: yes, I am still here. But if you expect a paragraph now describing magical insights and instant enlightenment, I am about to disappoint you. Nothing happens when I sit. That is sort of the point.

Today I was struck with the instant expansiveness of my mind when I close my eyes, and the almost immediate closing in when I open them again. The depth of my breathing as I sat in meditation, and its shallowness as I moved to the couch to write. Almost as if I am only able to truly dream, truly innovate, when I am simultaneously hyper present and not really there at all. And maybe these are general truths: we need stillness to move and quiet to hear. We need to know where we are before we can decide whether to stay or to go.

But there is something underneath this that I am only slowly grasping. Something about the ephemeral nature of concreteness, the push-and-pull between the mind-body complex as dreamer and implementer, all at once, all mixed together. A call to embrace indeterminacy, ambiguity, and change. An urgent need to sit in it, literally and figuratively at the same time.

The sun is awake now. And so am I.

What will I find when my mind returns to my body? What arises when all else is still? At the most basic level: am I still here?

12/12/2024

It is hard to watch what’s going on in the world right now, full stop.

And it is particularly hard to watch it and not think some kind of way about who we choose to put in charge, and why. What expertise we recognize as relevant. Whose experiences are seen as valid. What types of knowledge we hold as “good.”

A glaring example: political leaders are elected because of their ability to convince a large amount of people that they are smart or aggressive or somehow real. That they can do the job we elect them for. But the skillset required for convincing voters is manifestly different from the one it takes to actually lead. This same duality happens at smaller scales too: we hire folks in management positions who have substantive knowledge about the topic at hand but can’t relate to people (or vice versa). Or we elevate the business skills of someone who started out with resources and hoarded for themselves, over folks who build sustainable livelihoods for whole communities from nothing. (And of course, those routinely seen to have more “expertise” generally have a certain s*x, race, caste, gender expression, religion, be able-bodied, etc.). We seem to not really know when to uplift minute skillsets, whether to prioritize salesmanship, and what values to evaluate either against.

I am not knocking specialized knowledge needed to solve complicated problems. Mechanics fixing cars, doctors opining on physical bodies, child psychologists explaining the effects of war and trauma on kids.

What I take issue with are hero worship and kneejerk adulation of skills that just don’t apply. The world is a mess, but no one person can “fix” it or even know what the right thing to do is. No amount of money, education, or social profile automatically equips anyone with better ethical standards than everyone else. That’s the thing with complex situations: there is no right answer, there are just values and principles and trying our best, together, to align. Decision-making in these cases require process and intuition, not top-down rule.

And there is the crux.

Intuition is about trusting the information of our bodies. If something doesn’t feel right, there is deep expertise in that: the expertise of generations settled in our bones. We all have different intuitions because our ancestors, and the knowledge they passed down, were different.

When it comes to solving our joint problems, we, all of us, are the experts we need.

I take issue with hero worship and kneejerk adulation of skills that just don’t apply. The world is a mess, but no one person can “fix” it or even know what the right thing to do is.

12/04/2024

Sometimes I wonder how we got here. As I write this, I am watching the sun rise on the water of the lake across the street, hearing geese take off to continue south.

Geese have been around for millions of years. Humans, only about 200,000. How did we get from not knowing how to make fire, not having tools to save water, to this? It has not only been a massive journey of physical inventions and adaptations, but also of adaptation of the mind.

This is what I think of when people complain of changing societies and how things aren’t how they used to be. What are they even talking about? Change is a constant. Change brought us clean water, heat, and the ability to store food for the winter. Change brought us medicine and clothes. We humans are truly endlessly inventive. The geese also adapted, of course, but to a much lesser degree.

As I look out my window, I also see the unhoused man sleeping on the bench in the cold. I see cars zipping by in the morning rush. People walking fast to get to their work or appointments, dogs on leashes, children crying or subdued. Is all of this really necessary? The inequality, the manufactured urgency of work, of school, the tying down of other species? It all feels too literal this morning.

Change is a constant. Every second we make micro-decisions that affect our lives and those of others. We cannot know what all the consequences are, hundreds of thousands years out in the future. But we can feel into what they mean now: is this how we can best practice non-attachment, non-violence, non-excess? Is this how we construct the community we want?

From where I’m sitting, we have never been in a place of harmony with the earth and each other. The changes I seek are not to go back but to move forward, towards a place where our inventiveness is used for love.

The changes I seek are not to go back but to move forward, towards a place where our inventiveness is used for love.

12/02/2024

Just because something is worth doing, it doesn’t mean that you have to do it.

I was 24 years old when someone said this to me the first time. The person who said it was a mentor and friend, who also happened to be my agent (and a pastor in the Anglican Church). I couldn’t find my way, with so many options and possibilities. He was gentle, but clear. “This will not be the last time,” he said. “Throughout your life, people will recognize that you are a capable person and ask you to do things with them and for them. You need to find a way to distinguish between your path and that of others.”

So far, this has been correct. And it’s not just other people. I have myself often perceived that something needed doing, known that I would be capable of doing it, and felt a compulsion to carry it through. Lifeguarding. Parent-representative. Employee liaison. Not necessarily things I would have wanted to do, had I sat down and felt into it.

Distinguishing between my path and that of others has gotten slightly easier over time, by virtue of living in this liminal period between young and old that we call middle age. There are things I definitely will not do now: running another marathon (because, knees); becoming a medical doctor (because, 10-12 years of training); sailing singlehanded around the globe (because, ultimately I am actually sane).

But the waters are muddied by the fact that I can’t really contain impossibility. I am lucky and grateful to have been raised to believe I can do anything, to be predisposed to keep learning, to want to do it all. My lived experience is that whatever I want to do, I could probably find a way to make happen. I am speaking of attitude here, more than reality: this is knowledge that lives in my bones, born of privilege and support.

And so, just like my mentor said when I was 24, it is a question of knowing what I want to do, of distinguishing between my path and that of others. It’s still hard. I still need to sit with questions, sometimes for days. But as opposed to when I was younger, I know the wisdom to discern also lives in me.

“Throughout your life, people will recognize that you are a capable person and ask you to do things with them and for them. You need to find a way to distinguish between your path and that of others.”

11/28/2024

There is a strange finality to the world these days. Species going extinct. Democracy - never a perfect proposition - getting wobblier. Snow melting upon impact. Rain elusive, and then too heavy to hold. It is as if we all collectively forgot to do those things: to live, to share, to be with each other and the earth, and survive as we are.

Or maybe I am projecting.

My child is coming home from college for Thanksgiving for the last time this week. I just booked tickets for her last college show. It is the end of an era, and I feel sad.

I know that everything changes all the time, in big and small ways, and so the sadness is misplaced somehow, attaching itself only to those shifts I can actually see. I almost talk myself out of it. Almost. But I also know I will not be able to move on, unless I allow myself to mourn. This is the true benefit of being more than halfway through life: knowing that I must allow my feelings to exist, and moreover that they are a better weathervane for the seas ahead than my conscious thoughts ever were.

A friend of mine casually defined me the other day as “a person who clearly enjoys the journey more than the destination.” I felt sheepish and transparent, in that moment, but also impossibly seen.

I do enjoy the journey, so very much. I have a tendency to want to explore every little path that crosses mine, and I have gone down a fair number of them, enjoying pretty much all of those side-trips too. What is finality, but another path crossing where this one ends?

I love the journey. Even the parts where I mourn. We have things to do, to make sure there even is another path. No destination could have a better view than that.

I have a tendency to want to explore every little path that crosses mine, and I have gone down a fair number of them.