August Update - Online Sale! Freebie Practice, Reflections on Asawa, Bolsonaro, Parks and more….
Greetings!
As we move into that late summer transition time, I look forward to returning to regular online yoga. And also to local in person yoga. Our solstice retreat was at a new retreat center on the coast here which we loved! and plans are afoot for 2026, with more info coming in a mid August update and deposit registrations due in September.
It’s almost harvest here and no matter how crazy that world out there becomes, we will still gather with friends and families to bring the apples in - If you want to join us at this heart warming and hardworking time, email me pronto. This year is a little more bountiful and we need the help! We will feed you well in return, and you can sleep under the stars, and enjoy the wonderful company. See Rosemerry’s great “gathering” poem at the end of this update.
August Online Yoga - Special Sale! Only $30 for the whole month of classes (No recordings) - After 8/1 $40.
$15 refund if you auto subscribe for online program with recordings September onwards.
Stop Press:
Locals - Outdoor Yoga in Ukiah in August
- 9/21-26 Spa Yoga in Spain - Special discount for 2 or more folks registering together and also for Spanish residents
- September Onwards Online Program
- 11/7-9 Online Weekend "Nature as Guru”
- Twist Workshop (in person and online) with Richard Rosen =, Patricia Sullivan and MP at Nest Yoga, Oakland late Oct/Nov TBC
2026 - Save the Dates!
- 4/22-26 Outdoor Meditation and Yoga Retreat with Kirsten Rudestam and MP
- 5/1-8 Gray Bear Residential Retreat, TN - The Language of Animacy
- 7/2-7 Summer Retreat at Spirit Camp, Albion CA - More info in mid August Update
FREE MINI PRACTICE - 10 mins or 28mins
Available until 8/15
This is a simple late summer practice suitable for most practitioners - the 2nd part includes some of the standing poses and type of vinyasa sequence that we use in the online program. Note the '“deliberate” error - a missing parsvottanasana! - In truth, this class and the online program have all the delights and imperfections of live teaching and my ageing being.
Enjoy this little offering and join us if you can in August on Wed and Sat ams starting 8/6.
Rest, revitalize, and delight in the verdant tranquility, the healing thermal waters and the joy of yoga in good company at the
SPA RETREAT - Catalunya 9/21 - 26
Special discounts for friends or couples registering together, or for those resident in Spain. This will be the last of these retreats.
”Tranquil, blissful and regenerating”
REFLECTIONS ON Asawa, Bolsanoro and Parks
It’s summer time, time to read, visit parks, museums, family/friends and the beach and for many of us, take a little time off. And the world goes on in both magical and mysterious ways. So here are a kind hodge podge of inspirations that I am mulling, digesting and might be of interest to a few others. Please let me know - I always appreciate emails that tell me it’s worth sending these thoughts out there in a world where there is already so much, too much to digest….
"An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special"
If you live near San Francisco you may have had the chance to go the Ruth Asawa Exhibition at SFMOMA; if you haven’t you might consider a trip in the last month of this show. I was only vaguely familiar with Asawa’s wire sculptures and although they are extraordinary, especially the tree forms sprouting out of walls, I found some of her comments on art and life and mothering, and her life story triply extraordinary. Ruth was raised by immigrant farmers in Southern California and then interned during the war in her teenage years but somehow managed to put this challenging and unjust prison life to good use, studying art with some skilled artists who shared their skills and internment. Her life story has many twists and turns but what impressed me most was her dedication to her craft, her respect and cultivation of her amazing mentors which included her parents and family and artists like Josef Albers and Buckminster Fuller and Imogen Cunningham, and the way she saw her life as totally part of her art.
Much of her work was done in the kitchen sitting room area of her house so that, as she said, she could make sure if someone among her 6 (!) children needed a peanut butter sandwich, she was there. Besides keeping hearth and art alive, she also managed to develop an arts education program in the schools initially through a web of volunteers and served on boards, and agencies to promote art in all its variety. If you can’t go to the exhibition and you are interested in her life story, you might try Everything She Touched by Marilyn Chase and check out youtube videos of interviews and info on her website
"We do not always create 'works of art,' but rather experiments; it is not our ambition to fill museums: we are gathering experience"
"I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing from anyone"
So from the sublime of Asawa to the tragedy of Bolsonaro and the Amazon.
Perhaps some of you have been following the recent shenanigans of the previous Brazilian president who imitated the one who shall not be named with a coup attempt to overthrow democratically elected Lula. He is involved in corruption charges from the current Brazilian governmentt and man, is he corrupt! But although I do not fully understand all the back forth between 2 like minded autocrats and the threats of mega tariffs on Brazil, I have been listening to a powerful podcast series called Missing in the Amazon by the Guardian which gives you a very clear insight to the damage that still lingers after Bolsonaro took over, the threats to indigenous people and the piracy and corruption that his time heralded in this critical area of the world. 2 billion trees were destroyed during his “reign” and many of the corrupt actors trying to gold mine and to take fish and trees from this area illegally are still there. This particular story is about a journalist and an activist who were killed by these thugs.
Netflix released a documentary about the rise of Bolsonaro recently called Apocalypse in the Tropics which shows the not so gradual rise of evangelical christianity in Brazil and how the worse the world gets the more the evangelicals feel we are moving in the right direction. Mingled with weird notions of prosperity gospel and the “chosen ones”, this belief system has been exploited by pastor influencers that had an enormous role in bringing in a very reactionary and corrupt president.
Right now Lula is getting a boost in appreciation and there are anti Mr T demonstrations in Brazil but who knows where this is going and it feels like an important story for us all to be aware of. In the podcast there are several references to how divisive the culture has become with the arrival of the radical right and extreme evangelism awaiting the end fo the world with glee.
Finally closer to home, many of you have been in the glorious incredible parks in this country and at the same time that they are more popular and more appreciated than ever, they too are under threat. An article today in Washington Post may foreshadow changes to come. Time to occupy the parks (again)!
Ruth Asawa’s Bowl of Cherries
"When you put a seed in the ground, it doesn't stop growing after eight hours. It keeps going every minute that it's in the earth. We, too, need to keep growing every moment of every day that we are on this earth".
Let Us Gather in the Garden
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Let us gather in the garden in late July
when the snap peas are fat and sweet on the vines
and the tiny white cilantro flowers charge
the air with fragrant green. When the sunflowers
have not yet opened, but the cosmos are already
a riot of pinks and white and the nasturtiums
have erupted into spicy orange petals
and the heads of lettuce open and open
as if looking for the edges of the universe.
Let us gather when the onions are beginning
to swell and the kale leaves are big as elephant ears
and the basil is lush and vigorous and flourishing
and it’s so good to be here with our hunger,
not to consume but to be opened by goodness,
to know ourselves as part of this generous
plentiful land. It so good to be here
together amongst the ripening,
to share the living blessing, to welcome
each other into the garden of our hearts,
to nourish the seeds of all that is to come
forming even now inside our open hands.
Enjoy your gatherings this late summer and perhaps locals…….join us at 2025 apple harvest August 15-17
luv
M
Harvest 2024 - We really do feed folks well!…..
