Archives for 2025

Dear Friends,

April is National Poetry Month.

I was inspired by another yoga teacher and good friend to find a poem to share.

I chose Mary Oliver’s Morning Poem because, well, who doesn’t love Mary Oliver, and because her words resonate.  We are in a time where it seems as though we wake up each day to forces that seem to be daring us to be happy.  And yet, the beauty of the earth is all around us and its’ gifts are lavishly offered, without any expectation of return.  Perhaps the beast within us did choose this place and time on earth because it was exactly what it needed now in order to grow in courage and dare to be happy.

Mary Oliver: Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches–
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead–
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging–

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

CLASS AND RETREAT OFFERINGS

Monday Gentle and Wednesday Mixed level Zoom classes will continue through May 14.  9:30-10:45 PST    Class information is HERE or email me to be added to the zoom class list to receive the links.  NO CLASS APRIL 21 and 23.

Mar de Jade Yoga Retreat in Mexico,  January 31-February 7, 2026 has some availability.  CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.

Love and namaste,

Lynne

Photo Credit: Rodrigo Erse

Happy Valentines week!  I hope that yours is filled with heart felt love and connections.

In yoga, the heart center is considered the seat of the Self.  Energetically, its central location gives it the unique quality of connecting the lower centers of the body with the upper centers of the body and brain.  Science now knows that there are more neural networks connecting the heart to the brain than the other way around.  In other words, the heart informs the brain!  That is, if we don’t block it and at least give it a chance.  

For thousands of years priority was given to the lower centers of survival so that we could simply maintain as a species.  Then logic and analysis took priority and we seemed to completely bypass the wisdom of the heart.  But now as matter is being questioned as the fundamental basis of reality, consciousness is being given a more serious look.  In his book, An End to Upside Down Thinking, Dispelling the Myth that the Brain produces Consciousness,  Mark Gober makes the case that, in study after peer reviewed study, science has never been able to prove that the brain produces consciousness.  I believe it was Swami Satchitanada who said that the brain does not produce consciousness, it is a reducing valve FOR consciousness.  In other words, matter is not fundamental, consciousness is!  I love it when science catches up with yoga philosophy ;-).  And consciousness is not localized in the brain, it is in fact the foundation of all that we experience.

Yoga has long espoused that the heart center has its’ own power and language.  It knows and sees how we are all connected and will guide us in that direction as we become established in this center of awareness.  When our attention/energy moves into the heart, the body (and ego) can let go.  We come into a state of present moment awareness and the heart informs the brain that past trauma is over.  It also helps us to be open to future possibilities not based on the trauma of the past. 

I recently read that “fright” is a temporary and necessary survival reaction.  “Fear” is holding onto, reliving, storing in the body and projecting that fright into the future.  When we live established in the heart, we can more readily make the distinction between fright and fear.  The voice of the heart becomes our inner guidance system.  It gives us courage, care, kindness and a deep abiding feeling of love and connection from within.  And it is always available to us.

I’ve begun starting and ending my day while still in bed, by placing a hand on my heart and taking 5 very slow deep breaths.  It shifts my energy away from thoughts of anxiety or worry to appreciation and gratitude for the day that has passed or the one yet to come.  

Many Heart-y returns,

Love,

Lynne