Solstice Greetings! Serious Summer Reading and Yoga News - Free classes+

Welcome to the Solstice!

This newsletter is being completed at our new Solstice retreat site in Albion, CA before the start of our program. Light touching water, and circles of redwoods seems like an optimum spot to experience the Summer Solstice.
I hope that your summer brings time to rest by the sea or in natural surroundings and actually read some of the interesting books emerging currently. The lightweight stuff is always welcome in these crazy times but if you want to dive deeper, see article below.
Also, this newsletter includes a free asana and meditation practice along with interesting updates for the future. I’m looking forward to returning to our regular online schedule in August where we will have our 3 Wednesdays a month - 7.30 am Vinyasa preceded by a meditation and followed by a more Basic Asana option at 8.30am, along with our 4 Saturdays More Advanced Practice 9-10.15am. In August to get us back into community, there will be no recordings offered and a ridiculous price of $30 for the month!! This is the…
Late Summer Special

If you decide to continue into September as an auto siubscriber with our usual online offerings of live classes plus recordings, you will get a $15 refund from this Summer Special fee. Registration for September onwards opens in August.

Our GIT program moves into its last month, focusing on Oceans. If you are a regular and intending on joining us in September, AND you want to practice a fair amount of yoga in July, I am looking for a few more volunteers to practice 12 previous zoom classes within 7/1 - 7/31 time frame, and let me know (v briefly!) if any of them are worthy of going into my audio library. Let me know by June 26 if this sounds like a supportive idea for your yoga.

A Day of Yoga! 8/2 Online - A Fun Day to celebrate practice in all its glorious Summery aspects. Early Bird ends July 15.

Recordings for Purchase - Classes from Basics to Vinyasa to More Advanced, + workshops

Nature as Guru 11/7-9 - Online weekend sponsored by the Drala Mountain Center - includes yoga, breathwork, eco-reflection, meditation and mandala. TBC - Info soon on web.

IN PERSON

Yoga in the Garden, Ukiah CA Mondays 5.30-6.45pm Registration through City of Ukiah. Early Bird ends 7/15

Spa Retreat in Spain - 9/21-26 IS HAPPENING - Hotel discount for those registered. See June Update or web link for more details.

FREE SOLSTICE PRACTICES with MP:

Meditation Audio File - 23mins*

Solstice Vinyasa for Light and Love - Zoom Recording - 55mins

* Forgive the wood peckers in the background!

ALSO
Dharma Talk with Martin Aylward “Beneath the Trees - The Body of Life”

Teacher Training Anyone?

There is such a potency and beauty in a strong group of practitioners working together to evolve and share this miraculous practice. This photo is from a recent visit to Cuba where we have worked in trainings and retreats with a passionate group of practitioners who share their yoga generously. I miss this! and am considering an online or hybrid 300 hour training with a colleague for teachers/yoga nutz with a 200 hour certification. Let me know if you might be interested.

Serious Summer Reading….

Not to dismiss lightweight amusement but here are a few books that might interest some of you. You may want to check out the links for interviews/reviews before diving all the way in!

First off - How to Be Well - Navigating Our Self-Care Epidemic, One Dubious Cure At a Time” by Amy Larocca - This is a whistlestop tour of the more egregious parts of our wellness worlds written by a fashion journalist, who sees wellness as the new “luxury product” and has found after testing the waters by exploring colonics, soul cycle,cleansing in all its forms, bio-hacking and dear old yoga which does not escape her critique: “Yoga opened the gates, but still there persisted the idea that it adhered to ancient traditions and rituals, that yoga itself - however varied and diverse its itersations - is a valid and long standing tradition. What the legacy of yoga has allowed is something new, communities rooted in not much at all, byeond the idea that being well has become a religion in and of itself…” Ow! Not sure if this sweeping statement lives up to the diverse realities of yoga today; however, her conclusion that our obsession with self improvement, inevitably touches an age old nerve. In an interview with Fresh Air, she comments on how we (particularly women) are often being told how we are not enough as we are and that we need to do……..to get back to some ideal fixed version of ourselves in the past, instead of rolling with the inevitable changing nature of our lives and bodies.
And if you haven’t seen the series Apple Cider Vinegar on Netflix about social media influencers warping truths regarding alternative wellness and cancer treatments, give it a whirl Based on a true story. Note: I still believe in apple cider vinegar whatever its detractors say!

In terms of yoga books, my friend Richard Rosen, mentioned this book “Yoga and The Body” by Edward Clark and Laura Greene, UK yoga teachers of my dinosaur dynasty. At first I found this book super dense and a little arrogant but on further reflection Edward and Laura are not just decrying the younger non dinosaur generation of yogis and teachers, but are sharing some interesting perspectives, some of which I agree with. One part of the book discusses the lack of longer classes in modern day studio yoga. “In the Olde Days” it’s true to say that most classes were at least 1.5 hours long, 2-2.5 hours was not unusual with a master teacher. They also - without necessarily denying the call to community that is ubiquitous in most yoga scenes - call for a deeper connection to individual practice. That we are essentially alone on our mats as much as we love the company. If academic density and quotes are not your thing, you might consider looking at their interview with Keen on Yoga for an overview.

Ta-Nehesi Coates’s The Message is both poignant and personal, and has a great deal of commentary on Palestine and the connections to his own experience of racism and colonialism. It was critiqued in the New Yorker as being too much about Ta-Nehesi, the person. Probably true, but I always find his writing stirs profound and sometimes challenging reflections on the state of our world today. This interview with Novara Media journalist Ash Sarkar might be a good starting point if you are unfamiliar with his work.

OK so now some Books of Delight!

Literally…. The Book of Delight by Ross Gay - My grandson, Max who is 6 and whose protest sign is below, gets up every day and first thing he does is a drawing, Kind of like William Stafford and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Ross Gay decided on his birthday to write a reflection in a similar vein, and in a very human way he didnt exactly make one every day! but the results form this little book of authentic moments of delight in his observations of the world, his garden and his life. Wonderful interview about his gardening and perspectives here

A perfect celebration of summer and gardens, is this poetry anthology: “leaning toward light - Poems for Gardens and the Hands that tend them” Editor Tess Taylor. Wow! this is a sumptuous selection which embraces the lovely, the sad, the difficult and the varied textures of our every day lives through the imagery of the garden and growth.

Worlds Within Us - Wisdom and Resilience of Indigenous Women Elders Editor Katsi Cook. I have just started diving into this book after listening to an On Being Interview called “Women are the First Environment” As a greying elder myself, I seek out the wisdom of now my peers! and of those who have such a strong tradition of embodiment and connections to the natural world, our relations. We surely need these wise beings in the troubled waters of today. Robin Kimmerer points out that the word for these elder women in her language means “they hold everything together” It is inspiring to be in the company of people who as Gail Sall, Head Chief Woman from Northern Cheyenne says “It is truly a miracle that we are here in this place and time, sharing the lives of these brave hearted Indigenous women leaders. They know where they are going.”

Finally, an appreciation of NO KINGS Day. 5 million people out and about in peaceful demonstration. This is the sign designed by Max as mentioned above. In our little town of Cloverdale 560 people came out to express their disgust and to be sure most of the population were in their elder years, there were plenty of younger folks there also, including the little people who of course we are all routing for with our actions and words these days.

Wherever you are, whatever you are up to, as Misty Copeland says in her recent interview, the work continues unabated even if those on high do not appreciate it.

Happy Juneteenth, Happy Solstice, Happy Summer Days

The Sun

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed–
or have you too
turned from this world–

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
– Mary Oliver