Hello Friends,
I hope your experience welcoming Spring has managed to find moments of levity. Lightness is especially important anytime things may feel grave. I always take some time to consider the spirit of a season; Advancing growth, brilliant effort, lucid coordination are represented in great variety in the garden and times spent in the woods. I’ve felt largely on retreat from society for an extended winter, several years long, despite this - each Spring calls out that the time is now! I’ve felt all the metaphors of Spring sprout through the communities that have kept our roots intimately connected and thus exemplars of the ways a community fertilizes it’s soul and effects the ecology and economy of the communities that surround it. By taking the time to read this you do a thing that I find moving, personally motivating; A great source of vitality and inspiration to reflect Spring’s spirit. But! The monk hits me over the head: a wasp sting, a dead animal carcass. I am reminded of Spring’s displays of violence. Creation and destruction are in a reciprocal relationship.
Several wasps sentry an area of my outdoor training space, they frequently remind me that they consider this territory theirs. Sometimes I react and swat - this has rarely gone well, though sometimes it feels necessary and I am always able to find some reason to argue my position. Other times I calmly step away for a moment and we manage to cohabitate for a while. On particularly contentious days I forfeit my position. Solutions, settlements and struggle seem unavoidable at any scale. Spring comes in a diverse panoply of objects to perceive (and ways to see subjects). I am reminded of Spring’s more abundant spirit of communication and cooperation: Watching bees organize a hive and orient to a garden. Objects making offerings of exchange to foster continual growth in their distinct lines. Even the separate is connected if one looks. Analytical and most mythical approaches offer a solutions based way of engaging with a complicated system. Sacrifices, or for the economically literate: “trade-offs,” are made in hopes, or aim, of a gain. The nature of the beast is complex; Engaged in a process some call karma, together, we find ways to not get spun up as the wheel keeps turning.
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Personal collaborations - cross pollination:
I’ve been sustained and nourished by organizations such as BE Plumbing (now on instagram) these past several years and I have been honored to spread practices of Yoga, through breathing and movement, to their team each week for over a year. If you are in Philadelphia, you won’t find a more mindful and capable team to aid your plumbing needs.
Colleague Ari Halbert will be teaching an arm balance/inversion workshop at Yoga Garden in Narberth - a studio I was honored to call home for several years prior to 2020. I have been invited to assist but my schedule is looking tight so I can't guarantee I'll be there but I can assure you are in competent, compassionate and amazing hands.
I have been welcomed back for a second year of yoga at the Schuylkill Environmental Center. This sanctuary has served me well these past several years. A place to hang my hammock, to roam, to practice, and now repeated place to offer Katonah Yoga in the form of “Growing Roots.” This will be offered as a 6-week series particular focused on building a stable, stable and capable foundation. While you are welcome to drop into individual classes, this will be offered as a six week series allowing participants to have a progressive curriculum, designed with concepts building toward more difficult variations; eg., static lunges building to lunges on different planes of movement. Beginners will be given specific tools in the early weeks that if practiced semi regularly between sessions will set up a safe foundation to progress at their own pace. More seasoned movers may find benefit in return to foundational material that helps unlock a one leg squat. The Schuylkill Environmental Center will be handling payment and registration this season, please visit their website to sign up for Saturday’s class.
Root and Branch Bodywork continues to intertwine roots with my own work in the world. Seek Kaitlin Frady out for your bodywork needs, her thoughtful approach continues to evolve in inspiring ways that have influenced my work and the way I approach movement. I am also seeking committed practitioners who want to take a small movement class regularly Wednesday 7:30pm-8:45pm. Classes never exceed 5 people and are aimed at 4, this allows us to work intimately as a group, though on individually relevant material: eg., one student may be working against a wall, a second in a table top, a third in a plank, and a fourth in handstand; each practitioner building from a similar class concept of weight baring for the shoulders. Sign up on my site here… Other classes are currently full on registration (though they may show availability on site), partially for this reason…
…Root and Branch Bodywork along with myself have becoming interested in acquiring a slightly larger space in the Germantown area to allow an opportunity to expand our practices. A statement made into the aether can be a seed, even if it is planted a bit different than this gardener had supposed. I’m a bit more open to possibility than a hermit simply trying to survive winter. Perhaps I’ll look back and consider this Spring having lingered, One day I’ll tiredly bite into a piece of fruit and notice I’m living in an extend summer. Every time I think I’m out… The wheel keeps on turning.
🪷🙏❤️
Noah