Blog - J. Brown Yoga

It was a year ago that I wrote a blog post, entitled "Keeping the Dream Alive," and launched a fundraising campaign to see if it might still be possible to open a small community yoga center in my neighborhood.

I have never been very good at asking for help.

Up until recently, I had no need for God.

How many people do you know who have completed a 200, 300, 500, or 800 hour yoga teacher or yoga therapist training program?

spirit | noun 1 : an animating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms Another many months have gone by without me managing to set any words down here.

In the more than decade-long history of this blog, I have never experienced more blocks in my writing practice than I have in the last year.

There are moments when the maelstrom becomes transparent enough for me to see through the tragedy, hypocrisy, and injustice.

Up until a few days ago, I was one of the dreaded "hesitant."

Even before the pandemic, there was always a strained relationship between yoga teachers and yoga center owners over the loyalty of students and the distribution of profits.

Hello Yoga Land.

Despite the term generally being considered derogatory, all yoga practice and teaching is “performative.”

I have long touted a narrative of yoga going from underground to mainstream but, now that the pandemic has brought the industry to its knees, it’s clear that the legitimization of the profession was always in appearance only.

Despite our reliance on scientific data and reasoning to keep us safe, there is nothing naive or misguided about having a devotional practice of yoga.

Most of the important decisions I have made in my life were governed more by gut feeling than empirical data.

My ten year old daughter is becoming a better writer than I will ever be.

I could never have imagined a day when all the yoga centers would be closed.

Eastern traditions and lineages, transposed onto western cultures in the mainstreaming of yoga, have been romanticized and commodified to an extent that there no longer seems to be clear authoritative sources for yogic knowledge and education.

I remember when Christie first mentioned that Mark had asked her to work on a new book project with him.

The yoga industry is experiencing a diseconomy of scale.

Questions around consent and touch in yoga classes boiled over this month into a high profile feature article and video documentary by the NY Times.