Beloved friend, a blessed and gentle new year to you. It is with awe and gratitude that I share with you today my offerings for the new year at an incredible point: I have now been teaching for 30 years.
Goodness gracious!
What adventures!
I have served at ashrams, schools, offices, parks, Burning Man, studios, and churches. As UCSF Medical Center's clinician yoga therapist I worked with people living with and beyond cancer in public programs and medical research. I've trained doctors, nurses, bodyworkers, yoga teachers, and reiki practitioners. The book I wrote for The Body Shop was translated and published worldwide. Oh, the retreats! The weddings! How I love to minister for you. I have held the hands of the people giving birth and people in their dying. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the honor of the living we have shared. May we weave onward.
Kristie Dahlia Home
2025 opens with rechristening! The events I have called meditation courses for the past 10 years have become a place of refuge, growth, and community. Meditation is the beating heart, but these events hold so much more now: group conversation and support, individual counsel, and peer support in small touchstone pods. We build enduring bonds here. Our primary consideration is: How do we go about living these human lives? Now I simply call these Workshops for Living, and registration for the winter-spring Energetic Integrity workshop opens now. We will explore the Field of Being meditation which I last taught 8 years ago, cultivating our ability to center, ground, clear, vitalize, and boundary. Internal resilience and true connection for a wild season in the world. Come, gather, turn inward, explore. This is a practice to carry all your days.
Kristie Dahlia Home
I'm rechristening our Reading Circles to Community Readings with a bow to Jessie Raeder, who shared my form and then let me share her name for it in delicious mutuality. We'll be reading Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. The Guardian calls it, "One of the Best Books of the 21st Century." Jessie led a Community Reading right after the election, which you may have seen me share here. It was magnificent. It didn't just give me hope — it showed me a new meaning of hope. I'm quite looking forward to reading it again with you. This is event is freely given, donations welcome. Six Tuesday evenings, January to March.
Later in the year I will holding the first retreats in my home in the Pacific Northwest! In the meanwhile, ongoing online events (all times Pacific):
- The Soft Animal, gentle, donation-based drop-in yoga, self-massage, and deep relaxation, Saturday mornings 9:15-10:45am
- The Morning Series, strength-building subscription-based yoga, Monday and Wednesdays 7-8:15am
- The Meditation Gathering, does what it says on the tin, Tuesdays 8-8:55am
- And you can always schedule time with me 1:1 online for personal and spiritual counsel, private yoga, guided self-massage, meditation instruction, or whatever your heart desires. Calendly makes it easy.
I turn my face to the strong winds of this season of the world by your side, friend.
May we know peace and wholeness
freedom and belonging.
May what we cultivate together grow within us
and spread beyond us
to serve the good of all beings.
May all beings everyone know peace and wholeness
freedom and belonging.
May it be so.
May it be so.
May it be so.
Resources
In the Sky
Venus and Saturn are dancing this month and will be closest this Friday, January 17. This BBC Sky at Night article has great diagrams of what's afoot, but it's a little ad-heavy, so remember that 12ft.io will strip pop-ups, banners, and ads from websites for more cognitive ease and a little eff-you to capitalism.
In Song
In a recent newsletter I mentioned my love for Olivia Fern's sweet modern folk tune "The Moon's Song". Spotify, YouTube. Thanks to Leah for pointing out that Olivia has a charmingly unfussy guitar tutorial available for it.
In Joy
A windchime so large you can walk inside it? Yum! Its name is Walks in the Fictional Woods and it was created by Turkist artist Merve Tiryaka at Bernheim Forest and Arboretum in Clermont, Kentucky. A little article about it. A little video tour inside of it.
Musing
Machine learning is helping us understand the languages of other animals, identify risk of disease before symptoms arise, spot wildfires in remote areas, and many other wondrous things. It is also replacing creative human labor in places we might take care with. It is always wise to consider how and why we use our tools. My years on the water taught me that convenience does not necessarily make a better life. This poem by Joseph Fasano moved me.
For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper
Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.
Giving
I just made my seasonal tithe of 5% of my income for autumn, and I-and-we-if-you-have-paid-me gave to the California Fire Foundation, who provide support to firefighters, the families of firefighters killed in the service of all of us, and fire-ravaged communities. There is so much loss right now, and so much need. If you'd like me to hang a prayer flag for you or your loved ones at any time, reach out, friends; I shall be glad to sing to all-that-is of my caring, and yours.