(via https://open.spotify.com/track/7H4PgSmLqJfAar7PEyWGwi?si=3nIdt7c4TWWQdO0SZQgR0A) Relevant to today. Also: You should read this post I wrote last week about dreams, dreaminess, thunder, rain, etc.

shark vs the universe
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izzy's playlists!
Xuebing Du
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Peter Solarz
Three Goblin Art
Mike Driver
wallacepolsom
h
Keni

tannertan36
styofa doing anything
DEAR READER

oozey mess
NASA
Monterey Bay Aquarium
sheepfilms
Cosimo Galluzzi
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@nomnomnamaste
(via https://open.spotify.com/track/7H4PgSmLqJfAar7PEyWGwi?si=3nIdt7c4TWWQdO0SZQgR0A) Relevant to today. Also: You should read this post I wrote last week about dreams, dreaminess, thunder, rain, etc.
#Relatable
Look, @nomnomnamaste, it’s you!!
just back on tumblr to reblog this for a minute.
are you there tumblr? it’s me kelly.
(via https://open.spotify.com/user/kellyalysia/playlist/2ENgqljEAFXwWDu4K4wn68)
WHY IS THIS SONG SO GOOD? {T-MINUS NOW TIL THE WEEKEND}
trying our best
Can I ask a personal question? OK, assuming you said yes: Do you think, in general, that people are doing the best they can? It's a question posed by Brené Brown in her book, Rising Strong, and I think it's a good one for us all to ask ourselves. For me, I was drawn to the answer of 'yes' fairly immediately, albeit sheepishly. Which irked the Masshole in me. What kind of softie with no regard for high performance would leap to 'yes' so quickly? What kind of rose-colored sunglasses did I have on that I conjured up all the people I could so readily imagine trying their best? It even occurred to me that if we lived in a world of 'yes' people, nothing would ever get done; we'd all just sit around congratulating each other on being average but oh-so-well-intentioned. So, ironically, as I made my way through Brené's book, I sort of hated the idea of being a 'yes' person.
But here's my thing: I think that believing everyone is trying their best feels like a more productive way to do life. Yeah, selfishly I want to believe that no matter how many things I f*ck up or get wrong, whether it's a project at work or hurting a friend or giving up on a creative endeavor or any range of big or small failures that I slog through on a daily basis, at the heart of it I was trying my best. It seems the minimal threshold we can at least set for ourselves, so why not let it be so for our fellow humans--to hold them accountable for good intentions. I think some see 'yes' as a cop-out, like it removes accountability for us all. But rather than being a permission slip to give everyone a pass, for me it actually raises the bar and lightens the load in any given situation. If we can move through life knowing people are doing their best, we can also feel bolstered in the decision to confront someone who crosses a certain boundary. We can feel emboldened to confront a teammate who isn't pulling their weight. We can relieve ourselves of the anger we stir up internally when a stranger is rude or condescending. This all helps us to distribute and utilize our energy more efficiently. Of course we could scientific-method this question to death, we could pick apart every scenario and instance that breaks the rule. But if we could selectively turn on or off this belief, we might start to think, "Why bother? People aren't even trying anyway." I'm not sure about that life. I like the life of keeping the faith, because I think it can help me to be better to other people. In that sense, assuming people are doing their best is probably one of our most effective daily practices to help un-forget about our shared humanity. (And we all have to do it, even the 'yes' people.) This is not to say it's easy, though. But we'll have to try our best.
[Subscribe for more Om Weekly here!]
When we simply recount a situation over and again, we relive and attach ourselves to those tiny traumas without processing them fully, and it can become a burden. See what happens when you watch your emotions internally, even if those emotions are negatives ones. If your mind is busy, try grounding with simple words, like 'strong' on your inhale, 'safe' on your exhale. Try it for about 20 deep breaths.
Om Weekly
I took photos last week. ICYMI.
Today I am stepping through some prickly feelings that aren’t sure how or where to arrange themselves. The lyrics from that Modest Mouse song, “The World at Large” are rolling around in my head right now which makes feel silly nostalgic and a little sad too.
Why does writing on the Tumblr always bring out the emo teen in me?
The good news (for people who like bad news?) is that the weather is warm and the colors outside are more vibrant than I’ve seen in a while and it’s all too pretty to feel bad about it. I’m turning 28 on Saturday, and I just want it to feel simple and uncomplicated and get that spring air on my body.
Like Charlotte said today:
“It can be good without being easy. Even I, so bad at happiness, will smile in the right kind of weather.”
Today’s Om Weekly:
Shrooms, transcranial direct-current stimulation and meditation.
And some trippy-ass GIFs, too.
Hi happy spring!!!
Are you subscribed to the Om Weekly? I don’t tumbl as much anymore but I DO thoroughly enjoy writing a newsletter focused on yoga and meditation and mindfulness. It’s not just about the poses and movement (although sometimes), I also look at things going on in the world and how we can approach it all in a more balanced, kind and connected way. It comes every Tuesday morning to hopefully brighten up your day.
Subscribe here!!
much love,
Kelly
just a tumbl to say: today i paid off all my student loan debt.
the bad news: this coffee shop doesn’t serve beer.
Later that morning I went to the dentist and handed them my night mouth-guard, and they told me I needed to get a new one, because I'd ground my teeth through it. "Are you stressed?" asked the dental hygienist. "No? Well, no more than the average person?" I responded more as a question than as an answer, as if the kind of stress that physically wears away your body in a matter of months is fine so long as everyone's doing it. On top of that, one of the only other treatments for teeth grinding is relaxation/meditation. I knew if I told her I was actually a yoga teacher, she probably would've known I wasn't a very good one. Molars don't lie.
Et tu, stress? - in today’s Om Weekly
I am quite pleased with my newest flow yoga playlist, featuring a genre I did not know existed but clearly love: electro-blues. In other music-related news, I now own a guitar. Hi tumblr.
Links
Things are about to get a little gun control-y here for a while.
On guns, we’re not even trying
The other gun lobby. It’s called Everytown, and it has 3 million members, 800 of whom have been devastated by gun violence.
Gun control: what we can learn from other advanced countries
What no politician wants to admit about gun control
Common sense gun laws: because there are no drive-by knifings
America’s unique problem with gun violence, in one chart
Gun laws in the US, by state
The money powering the NRA
You can also sign Everytown’s petition to tell President Obama you support him taking executive action to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people here.
A truck unloads prohibited firearms at a scrapmetal yard in Sydney, July 29, 1997, where they were taken to be destroyed as part of an Australian government buy-back scheme. [Source]
This photo is my single greatest dream for america. Melt every last one down, in the world I want to live in.
Friends, yesterday’s mass shooting in San Bernadino took more human lives than any of the far too many single mass shootings since Sandy Hook in 2012. I cannot believe that we live in a world where we can experience what it is like to be in the midst of a mass shooting via the Snapchat app, but seemingly are powerless to prevent these horrific events from occurring through these same vehicles of technology and organizing power. I refuse to accept that that's the case. I refuse to accept that all we can do is write and post and complain about how prayers are not enough. So go support the people who have lost their loved ones to gun violence, who are trying to overpower the beast that is the NRA, the beast that is very much standing in the way of making progress that could prevent these events. Don't *just* complain about people who *just* pray. Do something. Go to this link and follow Every Town's steps for taking action. I did this last night, and will continue to do it.
Stay safe, spread love, more peace, more action.
TAKE ACTION HERE.
Pie charts for Planned Parenthood
Want me to send you one of my pie charts? Drawn by my very hand—not a copy? Do you also support access to quality health care, especially for women? You’re in luck today!
1. Make a donation of $200 or more to Planned Parenthood or one of PPFA’s local affiliates. Feels good, doesn’t it?
2. Decide which pie chart you’d like me to reproduce for you! You’ll find my pie archive here. You’ll need a link to the chart you want. So just click on the one you want to enlarge it, then right-click and “copy image URL.”
3. Now find your donation email receipt in your inbox. It should have the subject line “Thank you for your gift!” Change that subject line to “Pie chart!” and forward it to me—[email protected]. Also—this is important—paste the image link to the pie chart you’d like to receive. [Don’t worry, I won’t be able to see your credit card info, just your billing address. This is good, because I am going to snail-mail you a pie chart. If your mailing address is different from your billing address, let me know!]
3. Watch your mailbox. I’ll send you the hand-drawn pie chart. No fancy packaging or anything– just a pie chart drawn by me, in ink, on a 5x7 card. I’ll send these by December 17.
4. I’m doing this TODAY & TOMORROW ONLY. That’s December 1 & 2, 2015. As of midnight on Wednesday, December 2, I won’t be accepting any more pie requests. But of course you can—and should—donate to Planned Parenthood on any old day.
UPDATE: I’m making these ~FREE~ for Planned Parenthood employees. Please send me an email from your work account with your pie chart selection and mailing address.
as a very delighted/proud recipient of an original Ann Friedman pie chart (now framed, of course) I highly recommend everyone take advantage of this!
http://annfriedman.tumblr.com/post/134337788918/pie-charts-for-planned-parenthood
I was feeling a little stuck, so last weekend I went to the library and picked up a stack of poetry books. I was looking for poems to read during savasana, and some were good but kept feeling like I couldn’t find just what I was looking for. So I got really quiet and something broke open yesterday and I wrote a poem--my first poem in probably--five years? And it felt good. I might read it during savasana next Yin class I teach. That way if it’s actually terrible, no one will be able to laugh because they’ll all be corpses.
=)
everywhere everywhere everywhere
what they did yesterday afternoon. by Warsan Shire they set my aunts house on fire i cried the way women on tv do folding at the middle like a five pound note. i called the boy who use to love me tried to 'okay' my voice i said hello he said, warsan, what's wrong, what's happened? i've been praying and these are what my prayers look like; dear god i come from two countries one is thirsty the other is on fire both need water. later that night i held an atlas in my lap ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt? it answered everywhere everywhere everywhere.
The poem above by London-based Kenyan-born Somali writer, Warsan Shire, came into my awareness this weekend while I tried to make sense of the violence that unfolded on Friday evening. It felt odd, wrong, to say the absolute least, to be witnessing these acts in live time while sitting with a friend at a bar downtown, eating popcorn, the world buzzing on around us, the news on TV next to the other TV playing hockey and the other TV playing soccer. It didn't feel real. It never feels real when the world falls apart like that and about all you can do is watch and hope it stops.
My stomach twisted a little further with each upped death count, with the awareness that comes in every moment we're reminded how interconnected we all are. That we are all each other have and we have to take care of each other. I remembered hearing and knowing how the entire world watched and mourned with the United States when the 9-11 attacks happened, and I thought, did their stomachs twist like this while they watched? Did the rest of the world buzz on? Did it grow quiet? My thirteen-year-old self's journal entry from that day has always struck me as oddly matter-of-fact in my adulthood looking back. I can only wonder if it may have been influenced by the 24-hour news cycle--sharpened in the wrong places, and smoothed over in important ones. They say this, they say that. Fear is a dominant theme. In loopy, large handwriting foreign to my own today I wrote: "I never thought I would live to see this sort of violence. I was wrong." Fourteen days later I returned to that notebook and you can read that the internalization of it all was evolving. My tone is uncomfortably lofty, like a teenager trying to write a presidential speech or a philosophical dissertation or something. Like I'm trying to take on more than I have the wisdom to process. But the writing doesn't make me wince so much as the fact that I had to write it. I debate the morality of war. I wrestle with the unfortunate nature of the news headlines. I say: "We can only hope that man will rise above its animal instincts and learn to love each other." I was 13 when I wrote this. Naive in all the best ways. I'm 27 now, still turning these same thoughts over in my mind, that it's all we can do to only hope and keep on doing that over and over every day. Hope isn't just there. It takes our effort to make it.
When I woke up Saturday I wrote in my current journal, a gratitude journal. It prompts me each day by asking for three things I'm grateful for. I write: that I am alive; that I am safe; that I am not fearing for my life. I walk out of a store and pass a homeless person on the street, their sign says they lost everything in a fire. And in that moment like thousands of similar moments, there's a stinging, fleeting flash of their pain, followed by a silent hope that it gets better for them. I picked up this habit through ahimsa journaling in my teacher training; I may not always leave a dollar but I try each time to put a silent prayer out there. I get in an Uber later on and ask the driver how his day is going, he says good, he's just grateful for every day. And in a moment you'd otherwise pass over and forget, there's a spark of hope and connection.
On Sunday I practice yoga with good and kind people and afterward, we sing. Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu. We chant the mantras for world peace, for truth seeking, for healing. For a moment, it feels real, more than just possible but actually happening. Peace, that is. And healing, too. I think of the first-hand account I read that morning that brought me to tears from a survivor of the attacks in Paris: "As i lay down in the blood of strangers and waiting for my bullet to end my mere 22 years, I envisioned every face that I have ever loved and whispered I love you. over and over again." Gunshots and explosions ending human life drowned out in a crowd of silent whispers of love. Where does it hurt? everywhere everywhere everywhere Where can you find love? Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.