March Update - Fire Horse Energy - Gray Bear Retreat- Cuba in Crisis!
Thank You Pat and Basil Pao for this amazing image to inspire us for the year.
Spring is in the air….. Below info on Gray Bear, Animal Yoga Benefit!, Crisis in Cuba article + references, free meditation, poem + pic re horses
Enjoy!
In Person:
3/3, 3/10, 3/17, 3/24 1-2pm Welcoming Spring, Ukiah
4/8-12, Outdoor Meditation & Yoga Retreat - CA - Last call!
5/1-8, Gray Bear Presence + Advanced Retreat - TN - See below
7/2-7 Summer Retreat
Online:
3/4 - Regular weekly classes continue on Tues, Wed and Sat ams
3/15 - Let’s Play - a fun benefit class for all ages!
GRAY BEAR RETREAT, TN:
5/1-3 + 5/3-8 Info
Many of us are familiar with this driveway that leads us into the refuge of Gray Bear, with its gracious hosts, beautiful cabins, wood fired sauna, sparkling waterfalls, and exquisite yoga room. This is the place to go to for rest, for revitalization and in this retreat we are emphasizing loving the earth and letting earth love us back; in Robin Kimmerer’s words “The Language of Animacy”.
Join us for 3/5/8 days! Last chance to sign up.
LET’S PLAY-Animal Yoga for All Online yoga 9-9.45am, 3/15
Yoga is about play! Or it can be, and we all know the importance of play for at least the younger part of the population. This class is a benefit for our local school playground which is under-resourced. You are welcome to join us at whatever age and explore the fun aspects of yoga, the many animal poses and the ways that old and young alike can enjoy moving, breathing and being part of the natural world. All welcome.
For info and zoom link: here
To support with a tax deductible donation: here
Thank You for your support whether you join us or not! on 3/15.
CUBA IN CRISIS
We have an embargo not just on fuel, medicine and food getting to this island, but on information. There is currently very little well informed information about the imminent take over of a struggling multi-faceted beautiful community. Below, on our Yoga Va website and on my crisis web page - Crisis 26, I will be posting articles and info - Please send me anything that breaks this blockade of silence and it will be posted.
Also…..
You can help! If you don’t want to read the article or follow up on the links but you are also concerned about the humanitarian disaster occurring in Cuba, please consider contacting:
Your Representatives if in US
Jim MacGoverns office to support yet another attempt to end the embargo
Any press that you feel might listen to you to get more reporting on this situation wherever you live!
Your friends, family, colleagues who may not have reliable information about Cuba - share the links and this post on your social media.
From Claudia Oppitz, a resident of Spain and founder of humanitarian organisation Corazones Calidas that takes medical supplies to Cuba from Spain.
” “Power cuts have been becoming worse and worse and I could not stand it anymore. But the other day, when suddenly there were more hours of electricity than usual, instead of being happy, I felt scared“ Jorge Vidal, a sixty year old internist, who rides his bike to work and brings up water to his apartment every single day as lack of power also means no water being pumped up, queues for whatever little food is available and attends his patients with nothing more to offer then his knowledge and his experience, but most importantly his kindness hoping they will be able to find the meds on the black market somehow. Nonetheless, the fear is about losing something even more essential: their sovereignty.
Speaking to friends, they all describe how life gets day by day drained, as the no more oil gets into the country. The friend in Vinales, grandma of two babies, just has spent five days without electricity. The loyal driver who fetches and distributes the medical donations we send down apologising for the cost in dollars for the trip from the airport: “Nobody is moving cars around right now, 1 litre of gasoline is at 4000 pesos (8 dollars) if you are lucky enough to find some. It has been doubling price every few days“. Streets have gone silent, public and private transport has become non-existent. Fear of what might be coming is a dense, omnipresent topic, an unescapable nightmare. For the 25 years I have come to know and love this country and its people, my family of heart, I have never sensed a similar level of despair and anguish. Despite all, again and again, in the midst of all uncertainty and scarcity, I get moved, inspired by how they respond to hardship with dignity and keeping the needs and suffering of others in mind, with giving a hand, with creating community. When they ask for specific donations, they mostly do it not for themselves, but for somebody in need. They offer help, even if they cannot provide their own basics.
Jorge Avila (¡Yoga Va! Director) rides his electric bike to share his yoga as a means of life and a way to help, but also taking meds, donations from one place to the other. This is at the heart of their resilience, a web of mutual support and kind availability that is under huge pressure, cracking but still not giving in. I wonder today more than ever of what they might have been capable of creating as a society if there had not been imposed so many and ever bigger difficulties on them from outside.. " Thank you Claudia for your words and your work.
No matter how critical some Cubans might be of their own government, many like our Jorges above are just trying to do their job and actually are much more traumatized by the uncertainty and possible US takeover. There are issues with the government, accusations of corruption, opportunism, repression etc however these people do not generally want to go back to the pre revolution days of corruption on a vastly different scale and a government run with support from major US companies which created tremendous poverty for those who were not in the elite.
The illegal (according to the UN and the majority of the planet) embargo has been going on for over 60 years and each time the US government steps up their repression, the Cuban government responds unfortunately with protective rigidity. They have been forced into a corner and now with the US preventing fuel coming from other countries along with the embargo on food and medical supplies, things are really really bad there. Worse than in the 90s when the Russian support collapsed with the end of the USSR snd when I first started connecting to the yoga communities there. Trump talks about Cuba in the same vein as Venezuela as a “finished” country, a disaster without any accounting for the fact that we are creating the current disasters more than any other inner realities. Once again, creating a situation that might foster the best opportunity for Narco Marco** and the military to step in.
Read El Pais (Spain): The Sinking of Cuba: ‘We are a sacrificial altar”
The large garbage trucks do not have the fuel to clean up the city creating health problems everywhere
Our yoga friends in Cuba have an extraordinary resilience, admitting how hard things are becoming as they spend hours and hours looking for food, walking everywhere and in the middle of this, teaching classes! Here is a quote from yoga Jorge, mentioned above. Many of you have helped buy and support maintenance on his electric bike which is proving absolutely essential these days. Again Thank You!
[2/13/26, 10:44:31 AM] Jorge Avila: Hay poca luz, poca conexión, muchas veces.
No hay combustible (ni para cocinar)... y etcétera.
Mucha incertidumbre y, como siempre ocurre, la mayoría históricamente pobre termina perdiendo.
Me defiendo con la electrobici (cargando la batería entre alumbrones) para seguir andando, viendo y sintiendo.
No lo sé, creo que nadie sabe realmente hacia dónde vamos.
Tengo fe y un humor triste que quiere seguir sonriéndole a la vida.
”There is no fuel (not even for cooking)... and so on. A lot of uncertainty and, as always happens, the historically poor majority ends up losing. I defend myself with the electric bike (charging the battery between blackouts) to continue walking, seeing and feeling. I don't know, I think no one really knows where we're going. I have faith and a sad mood that wants to keep smiling at life.”
After these comments, Jorge sent me photos of a class he taught that day with some new students showing up.
PRESS: 2/21/26 El Pais: The End of a Movie….“There is hardly any information about what is happening. There is no official confirmation that negotiations are underway with the United States, and if they are, no one knows on what terms or how the energy siege will end. Cubans do not know if they face a humanitarian crisis if the oil does not arrive, a regime change, a gradual transition, or a foreign intervention”.
Guardian Article 2/13/26
The Daily 2/17-26 Podcast and my response to its inaccuracies
Cuba Analysis 2/12 Podcast - Interesting Perspectives on Venezuela and Cuba and the bias of the press
We (¡Yoga Va!) have been visiting and in cultural exchange with yoga communities for over 27 years in Habana and Holguin. We have worked with some extraordinary medical, cultural, educational people there along the way - and yes, some of them were government officials. Many of these people are still there hoping for internal change that is not forced upon them and an end to the embargo: some are drifting towards the right in desperation.
It feels so unbelievable that the world has given up! That in all the articles of mainstream and even and perhaps particularly the so-called liberal press (eg NYT!) there is an acceptance that this takeover is just what is going to happen and as with Venezuela, possibly it should happen. Have we all forgotten the Iraq war? and the decades of US interference in Central and South America and its consequences? It could have been “totherwise”, to quote Lewis Carroll who seems an appropriate author in this time duplicity and craziness. In Obama’s period of softening the embargo, we were there. We saw enormous changes that part of the Cuban government was supportive of, and a powerful blossoming of hope and creativity. It did not have to be “the end of a movie” or Cuba as “sacrificial lamb” (See El Pais references) We need to remind our representatives and press that they are allowing and even creating this unfolding disaster. It could be totherwise. It still could. Please read the articles and engage. It is the year of the Fire Horse after all.
Just a year ago we celebrated yoga together in a 4 day retreat organized by ¡Yoga Va! with participants from Habana and Holguin, an amazing group of teachers and keen practitioners. ¡Ojala! that this can happen again at a sunnier time in the future.
References:
** Narco Marco - is the name often used for Marco Rubio, by those in the know regarding Marco Rubio’s family connections with drug trafficking. He lived with his brother-in-law who was imprisonned for major drug trafficking. Listen to this podcast if you want to know more about the lies that are being promoted regarding drugs in central america and the US involvement.
* Quote from Claudia, a friend of Yoga Va! who lives in Spain and performs magic to get medical supplies to doctors like Jorge in Habana.
Support:
https://yogava.org/support
Global Health Partners, recommended by Malia Everette of Altruvistas, an alternative travel company with extensive contacts in Cuba.
Claudia’s organization website: https://corazonescalidos.org
FREE recent meditation (MP) focusing on the Energy Body - Audio File - 25mins
Franz Marc’s Blue Horses - We recently had an online class inspired by this painting and Mary Oliver’s wonderful poem…..
“….Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful
is the piece of God that is inside each of us.”
Abrazos,
M
