(originally sent 01/06/26)
My friend, I’d like to welcome you to my new newsletter – Yoga Obscura.
A weekly pick-me-up ritual for your Monday morning.
My goal is provide you with a little piece of yogic wisdom from the depths of obscurity, and give your week a varied perspective.
This week I am laughing at the fact that I certainly don’t need another project. I keep myself very busy with my teacher training Golden Yoga School, my weekly podcast Not Just Āsana, the events I’m running with Altered States, my regular classes (in-person and online), plus my family and home life.
But I am coming to accept that I cannot – and will not – resist a new creative project.
It fills me with such excitement. In fact, I’m writing this at 7am on a Saturday morning before a big day of teacher training, because I am feeling so inspired and cannot think of anything I’d rather do than put words on a page for you.
June’s focus of the month for Jivamukti Yoga is on Gopal, the infant energy of
Kṛṣṇa. There is an invitation to explore your childlike self, and tap into what brought you joy back then. Did you love nature? Did you love going to the library? Did you love running through a field with friends? Did you love crafting?
Why did you stop doing these things just because you became an adult?
One of the things I used to obsess over was creating home-made magazines, and mini instruction booklets. I still have some of my “fashion mags”, where I produced an impressive number of “issues” for a 7-year-old (albeit with ghastly clothes).
As a young adult I got into zines (homemade self-published magazines). And recently I started reading a collection of DIY booklets produced by a yoga school in London. I guess some habits/interests do die hard… or perhaps they keep coming back in different incarnations.
My hope is that Yoga Obscura can be a digital zine of sorts. A reason for you to be excited to open your inbox on a Monday morning.
And it’s an excuse for me to be committed to writing and connecting with you — something I love to do, but have been feeling increasingly reluctant to do via social media, and never with the soul-sucking filter of AI (which may mean there are spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in these emails, and I could not care less. Zines are supposed to be messy and I hate robots.)
So, returning to the teachings of Kṛṣṇa — my invitation for you this week is to not let capitalism steal your childlike joy. Rebel against the notion that you must spend every waking hour working for the man in order to feel whole and complete.
The Īśopaniṣad teaches:
oṃ pūrṇamadaḥ pūrṇamidam
pūrṇāt pūrṇamudacyate
pūrṇasya pūrṇamādāya
pūrṇamevāvaśiṣyate
“This is whole, that is whole, from the whole the whole becomes manifest, from the whole when the whole is negated what remains again is the whole.”
You are already whole. You have everything you need.
Now go run, skip, jump and laugh as your child-like self. Start writing that book, draw that outfit, kick that ball – like you did way back when you already knew this truth.
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