Cincinnati Yoga class at DANCEFIX! with hometown friends!
Welcome to your 2024 leap year week! This year is already feeling full with ongoing intensity in world news and busy weeks around the studio. My Cincinnati trip was a good one, but traveling on the Mondays threw my writing time off just enough that I didn’t get to fully edit and email recent writings. I couldn’t quite capture and relay the perspectives that I wanted to and so it was, and so it is that I’ve created a hefty Off the Mat Blog this week. I shared in a class the other day about the different ways we can view life and I’ve been thinking about this more. Do we have an idealist’s view, humanitarian view, political view, entrepreneurial view, artist’s view, antiracist’s view, non-dualist view, Yogic view, etc.? What is our life perspective and how does that guide the way we live our life?
Yoga practice and philosophy have deeply influenced the way I perceive and experience everyday life. I view life from a place of deep curiosity and insight gained from reflection on human nature through the lens of Yoga. The fact that ahimsa (non-harming) has been a sustained approach to spiritual growth over thousands of years, I’m drawn to investigate this for all of my days. Growing up with a life in the arts, the creative soul and quest for self-expression have always illuminated aspects of life while in this temple-body, on this sacred Mother Earth. At one point in life, I took this body for granted and didn’t want to be here. But then, I recognized the pain and suffering were temporary, especially when I was able to create a new perspective on being here, on becoming a proud gay man. Without a sudden and drastic change of scenery and viewpoint, I couldn’t process within a fixed mind-set of doom. I wasn’t capable of holding a multifaceted perspective where life was more than the limitations of my own mind. February 1987 – 37 years ago.
Ever since that tough age of 16, my time on this planet has taught me that I’m here for some reason and it will be me that comes up with that reason and it will shift and change over time. With the current news of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary 16-year old youth who died a day after being bullied and jumped in their Oklahoma school with cause of death still TBD, I recognize how fragile life is for all of us on this planet. There is clear evidence of misidentifying our pain and suffering as being solvable by bringing harm to someone different than us or to wish to eradicate a group of people who collectively trigger a misaligned fear response.
Saturday’s street cleanup team! Volunteers always welcome! |
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What problem do we think we’re solving when we “other” one another? Will we choose to see through the eyes of someone else? I’m clear that if we imagine a world where we can solve every problem, we’ll become exhausted, jaded or simply distracted before we even leave our own neighborhood, let alone imagine tackling a few of the world’s problems. But doing something that does tackle a small problem in our vicinity can create a useful impact on our nervous system that registers as, “yes, I can do something!” It’s why I’m so ridiculously committed to the weekly street cleanups in my studio neighborhood and have joined the board of the SOMA West CBD (Community Business District). We had our first meeting last week and it felt good to be getting involved in helping make change in my neighborhood through a dedicated team. We certainly focus on more than clean streets, but steady, simple attention on something energizes the muscle of good change. Often, our overwhelm comes as a ripple from the constant efforts of a greedy system that’s working away to distract and exhaust its members into submission. Their aim is to drive a narrative that will support the oppressive system’s hidden agenda. But if the members can sort through the filthy trash of their mission, they’ll soon realize the misperceptions and verbal delusions for what they are. I’m certain we’ll need to strengthen our trash-picking skills for all to come in 2024. May the force be with us. |
Post-Hatha class aerial experiments on BDSM equipment at Folsom Events! |
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I would have never imagined how connected I would feel to the SOMA West hood! It’s by a journey of fate (having worked in the same building from 2004-2010 for Fan Asylum) that Mukunda Studio is located right in the heart of the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District – the country’s first official cultural district of the kind. I’ve enjoyed getting to learn more about the leather and kink community since I knew little and filled in the rest with judgement and assumption. It has been so refreshing to have a complete shift in perspective and to see the commonality of integrity, discipline, playfulness and dedication above any differences. I’m loving the community and feeling inspired by ways we can collaborate around Yoga and well-being. Emails are already going back and forth in preparation for creating another wellness relief hub in Mukunda Studio during the 2024 Folsom Street Fair. |
90-minute presentation on Mindfulness & Meditation for MFT students at USF |
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Can well-being only be shared in one setting? Is attention to wellness services and personal well-being only for some and not others? I gave a presentation tonight on “Mindfulness & Meditation” at USF, an annual presentation that I share thanks to longtime friend Estella, who I used to work with at Fan Asylum with the event travel. It’s a joy to move through the different places where the topic of well-being can be shared. It’s an important topic, so much so that with TendWell Collective, we offer a Well-being Fair 4 times a year at Mukunda Studio! Started in 2022, we are excited to keep the fairs going and announce the first one of the year: March 16th!!! View our Eventbrite for more details and registration. We can all attend to our well-being by becoming more conscious of what supports that feeling within us to feel whole, nurtured and seen. In our world where there is so much misunderstanding, manipulation and misalignment, it’s painfully obvious we are operating from fear more than love. We are functioning from a stressed out, traumatized nervous system more than from a settled, rested one. We have found ways to spin a genocide as justifiable. We see murder as a pathway to peace. We come to see truth as a flimsy stolen object we can play hide and seek with. Thankfully, the one thing that we can learn from history aside from the fact that we don’t learn from history, is that more is revealed in time. While some things have taken 400 years (slavery), 75 years (The Nakba), 30+ years (Global warming), and 2 weeks (The news of Nex Benedict’s death), there is some progress. Things not talked about enough are being talked about. Light is pouring into areas that others have tried to keep dark. With so much available at our fingertips to learn and discover, we are each most certainly choosing our perspectives on life or having them taken over by the soothing trance of survivalism. We either think we can own the planet or we respect that we are temporary inhabitants of this planet. May we each find some resource that inspires us to seek the greatest truth we can find. May we accept that some stories that are being neatly designed are done so as a test of our natural instinct to care for one another. May I continue to find a way to share words that offer one perspective on how to create a more just and sane world we each create by our own words, thoughts and actions. Our well-being is truly attended to when we consider the well-being of every being on this planet. And when that feels exhausting or too idealistic, time to pick up whatever trash you can clear. Let’s stay connected, Marc |
