Maggie Norton Yoga

11/18/2025

“Perfectionism doesn’t make you feel perfect. It makes you feel inadequate.” Maria Shriver
There is an all-too-common tendency in the yoga world to encourage students to strive for excessively high standards. Additionally, in this culture, the notion that ‘anything worth doing is worth doing badly’ (see Lynn Ungar's poem) may sound like heresy!
Perfectionism isn’t about high standards. It’s about unrealistic standards. Perfectionism isn’t defined by working hard or setting high goals. It’s that critical inner voice. Perfectionistic tendencies have been linked to a laundry list of clinical issues including depression and anxiety (even in children), eating disorders, insomnia, hoarding, chronic headaches, and even early mortality and su***de. Sarah Egan, senior research fellow at the Curtin University in Perth, says studies suggest that the higher the perfectionism is, the more psychological disorders you’re going to suffer. “Perfectionism....will keep you insane your whole life.” (Anne Lamott)
Making and admitting ‘mistakes’ is a necessary part of growing and learning and being human. However many of us may have an underlying belief that if you can’t do something thoroughly, there’s no point in doing it at all. When I feel like that, it can feel impossible to even make a start! The opposite approach is in fact far more effective for yoga (and many other activities). It is much better to actually practice for five minutes than to plan an unrealistically long or complex session! I’m not suggesting that you don’t enjoy a deep practice when you can, but some days just one pose, attending to one breath out or meditating for a just a few moments is all we can manage.
May our yoga and meditation practices allow us to each pause, breathe, and give ourselves permission to be just how we are.I hope that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email with more inspiring quotes and yoga class details (links and passwords are also in my IG bio)

11/12/2025

As an immigrant to the USA I often reflect on my sense of belonging. Maya Angelou said "I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." Where, how or with whom to you feel that you belong? What does belonging feel like in your body and mind? Is it a sense of ease, confidence, connection? What does it mean for you emotionally, physically, and/or spiritually to have a strong sense of ‘belonging to your life’? (see this week’s poem)
Perhaps one of the most important things about being a human being is feeling like you belong. The Director of the ‘Othering & Belonging Institute’, john a. powell says, “The only viable solution to the problem of othering is one involving inclusion and belongingness. The most important good we distribute to each other in society is membership.” Can we also offer ourselves a deep sense of membership?
For the poet David Whyte ‘there is no house like the house of belonging’. His poem evokes the poignancy of this maybe being the joyful day we could meet our love, as well as the day that someone close might die. I see this as an invitation to be present and to treasure what’s here. This enables to land right here in this ‘bright home’, both as this house and this world, but also as landing right here in this life of mine, and fully inhabiting this body.
How do we find that 'easy rhythm to breathe ourselves to sleep', what prayers might be said to ‘the otherness of the night’? Yoga and meditation practices offer us a kind of ‘descent’ into the world of the body and a living awareness in the heart that seems to me to be connected with the radical acceptance required for letting myself land in ‘the temple of my adult aloneness’ and for sensing that I truly ‘belong to my life’.
May our yoga and meditation practices allow us to each pause, breathe, and to settle into our own sense of belonging. I hope that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email with more inspiring quotes and yoga class details (links and passwords are also in my IG bio)

11/04/2025

How do we take care of ourselves when times are tough? Perhaps you are stressed due to ill health, personal challenges and /or from witnessing the extremes of greed, injustice, violence and corruption in our world? Are you exhausted, worried, perhaps even distraught or angry some of the time? All and any of those responses are entirely natural yet not truly sustainable for a life that offers any ease, joy or emotional resilience.
In this week's poem James Crews asks us how often we actually pray for ourselves, send loving kindness to our own broken heart. He suggests that perhaps now is the time to remember that we are each holy too, especially in these times of collective and personal grief.
Do you recognise that, just like everyone else, you too deserve kindness? Studies in fact show that cultivating self-compassion can lead to greater feelings of well-being as well as enhancing our resilience, giving us more energy and clarity for what feels important to pursue. As Ralph Marston said, “Rest when you're weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work.”
Our yoga practice can be an excellent way to take some time to care for ourselves, helping us to reset, take a step back, relax, and reflect. I hope that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email with more inspiring quotes and yoga class details (links and passwords are also in my IG bio).
❤️

10/21/2025

It’s a bright October morning here after a clear and stunning starry night. I perhaps appreciate times like these more as we can often have coastal fog and clouds. This made me think of James Pearson’s poem One Good Wind that reminds us to be fully present to the sweetness that’s available right here, right now. To bring it into your body, into your heart and to be nourished by the ripeness of this moment before it passes. Winter always comes quicker than we think and it just takes ‘one good wind’ for our world to change. In the USA and many parts of the world, we are experiencing so many winds of unwelcome change these days! In our second October poem James Crews tells us how his hope can be restored each day by time spent in nature. “I don’t discount the hopelessness so many of us might feel right now, or suggest that it is easy or even simple to find again. Yet, a walk in the woods or hour of yard work reorganizes my anxious heart-mind, allowing certain worries to fall away like useless husks as soon as I can lay down my phone and shut off the news for an hour or two.”
My hope was certainly given a boost by Saturday’s No Kings crowds, both in person locally and by the reports of our numbers globally. What allows you to ‘let hope stay’? Are there times in your daily life when you feel most hopeful, when despair seems to fall away?
Can we cultivate more of those moments? May our yoga practice encourage us to ‘luxuriate fully’ in moments of beauty, joy, and meaningful connection. I hope that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email with more inspiring quotes and yoga class details (links and passwords are also in my IG bio).

10/14/2025

As you look back on your life, what is the thread that has given you a sense of meaning and purpose? Poet and pacifist William Stafford wrote, ‘There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change….. While you hold it you can’t get lost.” What may cause you to sometimes feel lost and that you have let go of that thread that guides your life? I’m not saying that holding on makes life any easier, but it can keep us from getting lost in the dark times. Knowing we can find our way home with that thread in hand, we’re perhaps less likely to succumb to our fears.
I’m not sure that I could say that there is just one such thread in my life. Yoga practice (and sharing that practice) is certainly one of the threads that I have followed throughout many decades. Exactly how I practice, as well as which teachers and teachings I find most helpful, has certainly shifted but not the ‘ritual if you will’. How about you? Perhaps for you there is a deep faith that guides you, certain values that run as a constant and strong current through your days, or even activities that nourish and ground you?
Our unique threads, the patchwork of our own stories add to each other’s woven pictures. I love the idea of the ‘quilt of humanity’ of this week’s poem. Let’s support and encourage each other, and embrace every thread. We all need to recycle, literally and metaphorically, to make our world a safer place to be. May our yoga practice be 'a mindful meditation', one path towards the ‘new quilt of humanity’ that we so desperately need in these divisive and troubling times. I hope that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email with more inspiring quotes and yoga class details (links and passwords are also in my IG bio).
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10/07/2025

I had the great privilege and delight of attending a Poetic Medicine retreat day this past weekend. One of the presenters (a doctor from the UCSF palliative care team whom I consider to be one of my life's angels), shared this week's poem and talked about how he returns to it again and again in times of challenge and self-doubt.
In these increasingly dark times in the US and some parts of the world, there is an inevitable sense of collective trauma and it is all too easy to feel inadequate to the tasks at hand. So perhaps it is even more likely that we may feel a sense of self-doubt, that we are not close enough to the bull’s-eye we may be aiming for (see this week's poem).
It is perhaps more important than ever to take care of ourselves, to pause and connect with our inner landscape in order that we can find our centre as well as appropriate action. In his book, ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are’, Jon Kabat-Zinn suggests that to allow ourselves to be truly in touch with where we already are, no matter where that is, we have got to pause in our experience long enough to let the present moment sink in. This follows on from last week’s focus on finding contentment, or at least a sense of 'centre’, just where you are.
May our yoga practice allow us to stop and pay attention to the moment and bring us to a deeper self-acceptance. I hope that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email with more inspiring quotes and yoga class details (links and passwords are also in my IG bio).

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09/30/2025

The autumnal equinox really did seem to mark the change of the seasons this year. Are you enjoying the shift to shorter days and cloudier skies (and our first major rain since spring where I live), leaves changing colour and falling, perhaps warmer clothes already?
I’m not so much thinking about the specifics of the season to be honest, but more how we each respond to change and even to challenge. This follows on from last week’s yoga focus on finding balance and perhaps even some equanimity in these challenging times. I’m sure that we all have our own list of the small and large events, some unexpected, that bring concern. Can we remain open and receptive even when confronted by life’s endless challenges? I imagine that most of us may relate more easily to Jack Kornfield’s more humorous perspective on equanimity than to having achieved this ‘supreme virtue’!
May our yoga practice help us to ‘step back from our own mind’ and find a sense of balance in the midst of it all, both on and off the mat. I hope that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email with more inspiring quotes and yoga class details (links and passwords are also in my IG bio).

09/23/2025

Yesterday was the Autumn Equinox, when day & night are of equal length. This equinox symbolizes balance of light & darkness, a time of abundant harvest & a shift in the seasons. Balance is a theme we often return to in our yoga and meditation practices. In these turbulent times our world seems so far from being ‘in balance’, if by that we mean harmonious and stable. Physically it takes an enormous amount of continuous feedback from your brain to the balance sensors in your ear, to the muscles in your legs simply to keep you from falling over so that you can even stand still. We may tend to think of stability as a static state, perfect harmony or absolute stillness, yet there is a constant adjustment, sometimes at almost imperceptible levels, for us to find a sense of balance.
It also takes practice & adjustment to connect with an inner sense of stability, especially if you are 'bravely working' in the face of unwelcome change and turmoil. Tara Stiles says “we need courage, reflection, attention, action, & a push-and-pull relationship between effort & relaxation.”.
So,I’ve returned (yes again!) to Rumi’s, ‘Birdwings’ as our poem this week, inspired partly by all the birds in the garden & on my walks to the ocean as well as the reminder that both contraction & expansion are natural actions of both body & mind. Perhaps finding & maintaining equilibrium arises from cultivating a settled state of mind, seeing & accepting how everything shifts moment to moment while our ‘deepest presence’ remains undisturbed.
“Sthira Sukham Asanam” (Postures should be stable & comfortable, a balance of effort & ease) is perhaps the most quoted verse from the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. I’m looking forward to sharing our practice, balancing stability & strength (sthira) with comfort, ease & openness (sukha). We will also continue our focus on breathing with Sama Vritti Pranayama or Equal Breathing. I hope that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email. Links & passwords are also in my IG bio.

09/16/2025

The most basic of all human needs is perhaps the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. Listening is an overt demonstration of respect and the best way to convey that we truly recognize that other person’s voice. It’s how we empathize.
Are you a good listener? (Apparently most of us think that we are!) Are you still a good listener when you feel stressed and when you strongly disagree with the other person/s?
How do we truly listen to opposing points of view in this time of such political division that keeps people from connecting? Winston Churchill said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” Finding common ground means having that courage and creating opportunities to listen to each other’s stories and points of view. I believe we have to find ways to talk and to listen each other. It’s also very hard right now.
Can our yoga practice help us to be better listeners? Meditation teacher Jack Kornfield says that when we speak with someone who doesn’t act as if they know everything, who is open-minded, and eager to listen, we sense their presence and receptiveness and are more willing to talk openly and to be receptive ourselves. Mindfulness practice helps us pay attention as well as to take a step back, a moment to pause and breathe before responding. Do we offer others (and ourselves) the time, attention and the respect of truly listening? Do we first ‘wash our ears’ and let go of our (self) judgement, our ‘ideas of right and wrong’? (see poem)
May our yoga and meditation practices encourage us to ‘make no comparisons and to simply listen’ I hope that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email with more inspiring quotes and yoga class details (links and passwords are also in my IG bio).

09/09/2025

“It is time to serve a cause with energy and compassion, to fall madly in love and dance into the night. Isn't it time to cry your tears; to shout your passion; to dance like Zorba; and to let your soul touch the soul of the world?” (from 'The Sage’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for the Second Half of Life' by William Martin)
There’s a well-known Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger. She comes to a cliff, sees a sturdy vine and climbs half way down. However there’s also a tiger below. Then two mice appear and begin to gnaw at the vine above her! At this point she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice. She looks up, down, at the mice. Then she eats the strawberry! Interestingly our poet this week, Ellen Bass, describes this story in another of her poems.
Perhaps all of this this symbolizes loving the life we have, finding beauty, living and acting with passion no matter what circumstances we find ourselves in? It is certainly not so easy to do so when it can seem that ‘everything you’ve held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands’ (see poem). Many of us feel like that as we witness so much of what we have worked to change and improve in the world being destroyed. ‘An obesity of grief’ indeed. We may also feel like that due to changes in an aging body or conflict in our family or community.
Can a yoga practice help ‘a body withstand this’, allowing us to take our life in both hands and say yes again, to reach for the strawberry? I hope it helps and that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email with more inspiring quotes and yoga class details (links and passwords are also in my IG bio).

09/04/2025

09/02/2025

"I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." Maya Angelou
Do you feel this longing that Maya Angelou expresses and that Mary Oliver describes as the spirit reaching in this prose poem 'I Have Decided'?
Do you feel fully at home wherever you are, bringing a sense of belonging within you into every circumstance? If not, what could encourage that deep knowing and true acceptance exactly as you are, as the world is?
I would say that I still have a lot to learn about living peacefully through the noise and storms of life (both internal and external) in order to reach the revelations Mary Oliver speaks of. And yes, no doubt, it will still take time….and focus.
Another poet, Jane Hooper, asks us to ‘please come home’ into our own body, our own vessel, our own earth, into every cell, as well as fully into the space that surrounds us. She invites us, once firmly there, to stay a while and come to a deep rest within.
That would seem to me to mirror the invitation that our yoga and meditation practice offers, finding moments of what John O’Donohue calls 'stillness, home of belonging’ exactly where we are, as if in the cool and quiet high in the mountains. I do hope that you can join us for this week's virtual live-stream yoga classes on Zoom,Tuesday 4:30pm pst and Wednesday 9:30am pst. Let me know if you wish to receive my weekly email with more inspiring quotes and yoga class details (links and passwords are also in my IG bio).