I normally let thoughts percolate for a while before I write about them, and this has been on my mind for some time. #yogaeverydamnday is a very popular hashtag, usually appearing in conjunction with a pretty yoga pic or some cheery affirmation. In the same vein, yogis are always talking about doing 30, 60, or… Continue reading #yogaeverydamnday: A Caveat
I don’t own a smartphone. I like to call, wryly, what I have a dumbphone. It does calls and texts and no internet things. I once owned a smartphone, but downgraded several years back, during a period of time when being a starving grad student temporarily got way too real. Now I could easily switch… Continue reading The Culture of Upgrades
“PLEASE BE RESPECTFUL OF THOSE AT PRAYER,” the signs read in Italian, English, and several other languages. “NO PHOTOGRAPHS WHILE SERVICES ARE IN SESSION.” Nonetheless, as a priest intoned Mass in one of the side chapels of the basilica, several tourists tried to pull out their phones discreetly and snap a picture as they passed… Continue reading Interlude: Idea for Historical Fiction on the Twentieth Century
For a while now, it’s been a trend to post pictures of oneself doing yoga poses, or “yoga selfies,” on social media. Some of these pictures show super-talented yogis doing some pretty crazy, bendy, acrobatic, and advanced stuff. There are many of these advanced poses I can’t do myself, even as a generally healthy and… Continue reading I Don’t Mind “Yoga Selfies,” and Here’s Why
VIEWER ALERT: I’m about to yammer on about the relationship between yoga and jiu jitsu, as I sometimes do. But hey, what did you expect? They’re two subjects I spend far too much time thinking about. One resemblance between yoga and jiu jitsu is that both involve exploring the outer limits of your body’s range… Continue reading When to “Tap” in Yoga
This month I’m arriving at a rather significant milestone in my life- I’m turning the big 3-0! It took a while for it to sink in, but I feel pretty good about it- in fact, once I thought about it, I realized that I feel better now, overall, than I did at age 20. I’m… Continue reading In Which I Resolve to Stop Taking My Good Health for Granted
I’m hardly the first to say this, but the “point” of yoga is not to become super bendy, to put your feet behind your head, or to master a bunch of flashy poses and then post photos on social media. I also think it’s a bit presumptuous to posit a single purpose to yoga, as… Continue reading Flexibility, Hypermobility, and Caution
When I was little, whenever I had a fever I would have recurring nightmares of giant waves. They would be cartoonishly huge tsunamis, big enough to swallow an entire city, and usually I would wake up just as they were towering over me, about to break. Sometimes I would actually get caught up in the… Continue reading Ride the Waves
A few weeks ago, some friends and I took a trip up to the Hasidic neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It was definitely a must for me, since I’m a student and teacher of American religious history. For a long time, I’ve been fascinated by the complicated, often tense interactions between religious traditionalism and the modern world,… Continue reading Tales of the Hasidim
The idea for this post was actually born during yoga teacher training. A group of us were discussing how we were agonizing over our playlists for the classes we’d teach as our final projects, at the end of the course. Of course, we wanted to get every song just so, pick music that complemented particular… Continue reading Songs That Are Perhaps Inappropriate for Yoga
Post-Postmodern Pish 