Blog

  • EXTRA Ordinary (Deepest Insights)

    We have a habit of thinking that the deepest insights, the most mystical, and spiritual insights, are somehow less ordinary than most things – that they are extraordinary. This is only the shallow refuge of the person who does not yet know what he is doing. In fact, the opposite is true: the most mystical,…

  • Palpable Organic Tension

    When I witnessed patterns that I felt “could be improved” I used to go right at the pattern and try “to make it better”. That approach didn’t seem to work very well for me. I now try to look beyond the surface pattern that caught my attention. I have come to prefer a different approach.…

  • Yoga Practice – Prayer Withing Closing Ritual November 2019

    After translating the closing ritual to Hebrew I started using the Hebrew notation in practice (spoken silently in my heart). Doing so changed my sense of it. It transformed beyond a list and took on a narrative quality. The narrative quality invited a series of new transformations. Before the Hebrew translation came into being, the…

  • Wholehearted

    A man is alive when he is wholehearted, true to himself, true to his own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations he is in … … it is a state of being in which all forces which arise in a man can find expression; he lives in…

  • Space is Not Mute

    … Here right now was the space of my building, as plain and fresh as it would ever be. And what it helped me to understand is that space is not mute, that it does speak to us, and hat we respond to it more directly, more viscerally, than all the cerebral, left brained talk…

  • Happens to the Heart

    What is it that dies and what lives on?

  • Learning a Mantra

    A few weeks ago I decided to change the mantra I chant at the opening of my practice from its short-form version to its full version. Each verse in the full version is collapsed to a single line in the short version. Because I was already established in the short version I had a familiarity…

  • Richard Feynman on How Computers Work

    A beautiful explanation of how computers work for non-technical people that can be as useful today as it was almost 35 years ago. As the talk unfolded and approached the subject of intelligence in computers I began to wonder how his ideas have held up in light of AI … and (spoiler alert) damn did…

  • Daniel Schmachtenberger on Sensemaking

    How do you make sense in a messy, noisy and misleading information ecology? Watching this made me feel both: A sense of belonging that comes from experiencing a deep and thoughtful shared interest. A sense of lostness … this feels like (yet another) deep insight that doesn’t really matter … because … who is going…

  • Leonard Cohen – The Goal

    This morning as I stood at the end of my Yoga mat, hands on my heart, heading into practice … letting my mind roam where it will and eventually (hopefully) settle … it came to me again that I live in a world where there isn’t going to be another new Leonard Cohen album ……

  • Kumiko Unfolding – Part8: Jigs for Lamp Frames

    I was content with the overall design of the small lamp. However, I felt that making the frame took way too much time and delicate manual work. The lamp frames were supposed to be a canvas for Kumiko patterns. I didn’t want to spend 80% of my time producing them. I wondered if, given the…

  • Kumiko Unfolding – Part 7: Small Lamp

    After stumbling my way through a first lamp I realized that I wanted to continue exploring new patterns and that lamps can be a good canvas to hold the patterns as I make them while creating something beautiful and useful (I am not drawn to Kumiko patterns hanging on a wall as a decoration). I…

  • ברכה

    אני מברך על התלמיד שבקרביאני מברך על המורה שהופיע בקרבתי, שהלך כבר דרך לפניאני מברך על מורתי זיוה ועל מורי פולאני מברך על דסיקצ’ר ואביו קרישנמצ’ריהאני מברך על מוריהם ומורי מוריהםאני מברך על התובנות שצלחו את הדורות אני מברך על עולם החומראני מברך על אמי נורית ועל אבי יעקבאני מברך על אחותי רויטל ועל אחותי…

  • Sensitive & Rigorous

    During my recent month of back pain a massage therapist came over to help / torture me. I decided to give him a chance, to accept the pain and to express it … I was vocal. At one point he suggested (though I don’t remember his exact words) that I am very sensitive, that I…

  • It’s best not to name a relationship

  • Straining my back

    We had just completed the first two days of work of renovation of the summer kitchen. It was the morning after and the excavator arrived for a few tasks we bundled together. I had already done a few tasks to clear the way for the excavator and felt a bit of discomfort in my lower…

  • Yoga & Allergy 2019: Recovery … and crash

    From the time I published my previous update I was pleased to find stability. Though the symptoms of allergy persisted, I found myself feeling stable. I was held softly in practice every day and I was grateful for that. I used antihistamines over a period of only 2 or 3weeks. I had two types of…

  • Understanding in Hebrew

    For Dan and “The Understanding Group” 🙂 What follows is a flow of thoughts about “understanding” in the Hebrew language … my knowledge of language (both Hebrew and English) is more intuitive than formal … so some of this stuff may not be “exactly true”! Hebrew is built upon root words which typically have three…

  • Kumiko Unfolding – Part 6: Andon Lamp as a Canvas

    Satisfied with the experiment of the first asa-no-ha pattern I wanted to continue. I wanted to get more practice under my belt. But just making more asa-no-ha patterns didn’t feel appealing. I wanted to make something that would include the asa-no-ha pattern. Of all the Kumiko examples I’ve seen, Andon lamps were most appealing to…

  • Kumiko Unfolding – Part 5: Asa-no-ha

    Once I had workable kumiko strips I gladly turned to making an asa-no-ha pattern. I spoiled two sets of kumiko strips before I got the marking and cutting decently done. As I was doing this I felt that I had developed an attachment to the kumiko strips. They were difficult to create and felt like…