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In a class, one of my teachers spoke about taking his daughter to the New Jersey shore. During a certain time of year, there would be horseshoe crabs on the beach, and his daughter would get particularly upset when she saw the ones that were turned upside-down. A horseshoe crab in that state is indeed a particularly miserable thing to see—these creatures are very ill-equipped to turn themselves over. My teacher noted that our compassion is sparked by the horseshoe crab that

Think of the word “core” not in its sense of abs and lower back, but in its sense of a deep axis of the body, like an apple core. That axis will follow the line of your primary hip flexor muscle, the psoas, extending in both directions towards your feet and your head. You can trace the line of your core channel from your inner heels, through your inner thighs and your hip creases, coming together behind your navel and lengthening along the front of your spine towards your hea

One of the most amazing things about the human mind-body is the way it is able to negotiate so much of our daily lives for us without us having to be conscious of every minute detail. Can you imagine what it would be like to wake up every morning and to have to figure out how to get out of bed as if you have never moved before? What would it be like to have to rediscover every day how to lift your arms, how to turn over in your bed, how to support your weight and balance on y

I don’t know what triggered this, but as I walked by a small storefront café somewhere in midtown Manhattan, I thought to myself: We all have bad habits and patterns that we are struggling to emerge from. For one person, it might be alcoholism; for another, media addiction; for someone else, jealousy, fear of commitment, or an inconsistency in meditation practice. It’s sometimes very difficult to break out of these cycles—these samskaras of samsara—but I think it helps to th