Just Because Two Things Happen Together Doesn’t Mean They’re Connected (Or: Why Sarah’s New Shoes Aren’t a Scientific Discovery) In systems thinking, causal independence means: if one thing doesn’t cause another, they’re not truly connected—no matter how often they happen together. Like Sarah. She grew taller and started school at the same time. That doesn’t…
Many of you have asked about structuring your practice around trips to Mysore—or more importantly, how to create sustainable training cycles when annual trips to India aren’t part of your reality. Let me share how I’ve applied basic athletic training principles to organize my own practice year, and how you might think about doing the…
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and the glymphatic system are central to how the brain clears metabolic waste. Emerging research links efficient CSF circulation and glymphatic clearance to better cognitive health, and shows that sleep, cardiovascular rhythms, posture, movement and certain breathing patterns influence those flows. For teachers and experienced practitioners, understanding these mechanisms helps you design…
Below is a focused, safe, evidence-informed 25‑minute session you can do twice a week to build the mobility, end‑range control, and tissue resilience needed for Padmāsana (Lotus). Before you start: check for any knee or hip pain (especially inside the knee). If you have prior knee/hip surgery or current pain, get clearance from a clinician…
The first sound I hear most mornings isn’t my breath or the hush of the Mysore room — it’s the wail of an ambulance racing down 14th Street. Living in Logan Circle places me at the center of a city that never fully quiets, and those sirens have a way of threading themselves into the…
There’s a moment in every yoga practitioner’s life—usually somewhere between your third attempt at Marichyasana D and your first truly calm Savasana—when something clicks. It’s not a stretch, not a pose, not even a breath. It’s a flash of understanding that doesn’t come from reading or reasoning but from seeing. That’s what we call insight.
Metaphor Meets Mechanism Kundalini imagery—an ascending current of life force rising the length of the spine—has long been a central motif in classical yoga. For teachers and senior practitioners who work with breath, bandhas, and spinal mobilization, a compelling modern question arises: can some aspects of the kundalini narrative be read as a metaphor for…
Donella Meadows would call deliberate practice a feedback-rich learning system. Naïve practice has weak feedback loops—you act but rarely reflect. Deliberate practice tightens those loops: every action informs the next, every mistake becomes data. Over time, this system evolves toward greater stability, efficiency, and insight. It’s yoga as adaptive intelligence. What It Looks Like Try This: For…
In Philadelphia, a profound experiment is unfolding that speaks directly to the heart of yoga philosophy: the transformation of neglected spaces into places of beauty, connection, and safety. Environmental design interventions—warmer streetlights, community gardens, remediated vacant lots, and neighborhood beautification—have contributed to significant reductions in gun violence across some of the city’s most troubled areas….
The question isn’t “pure vs. enhanced.” The question is: What is my relationship to these tools? Am I using them skillfully, with discernment? Or am I caught in a cycle of optimization that has its own compulsive quality? As we close out this year—what are we not saying about our practice?