Why the out-breath is longer
The body has its own brake pedal, and it is pressed on the way out. A short, honest account of what slow breathing does — and what it doesn’t.
Notice3 min read
The library · 书房
Read slowly
Six topics, three depths. Every piece ends with something you can do in a minute — and nothing here asks you to come back.
Six topics
Breath4 One of the few things your body does on its own that you can also steer. How it works, and how to use it gently. Rest3 Deep rest, sleep, and the half-forgotten skill of lying down on purpose. Mind2 Attention, feeling, and watching thoughts come and go without chasing them. Body1 Gentle movement: supported shapes that let the body stop asking for attention. Nature2 Air, mountains and seasons — and the land an hour from Calgary. East & West4 Zhuangzi and the Stoics, qi and pneuma: East and West, saying the same thing in two languages.
Everything
Yoga’s inner four limbs
Breath, withdrawing the senses, gathering attention, steady watching: the inward half of yoga’s eight-limbed path, in plain words, with one small way to try each.
Notice3 min read
Resting through a Calgary winter
Short days, dry cold, and a chinook that can turn an afternoon around. Notes on resting with the season instead of against it.
Notice2 min read
Riding the six breaths: free and easy wandering
The first chapter of the Zhuangzi pictures someone who rides the changing weather of the world and wanders without a destination. What it might mean to be at ease anywhere.
Hold your own3 min read
Why we don’t score your breathing
No points, no streaks, no rankings. The reasoning behind a studio that keeps only two words about your practice: how you arrived and how you left.
Hold your own3 min read
What mountain air does, and doesn’t
Thinner air, cooler air, quieter air. A careful look at what time in nature is associated with, and at claims, such as negative ions, that the evidence does not settle.
Notice3 min read
What it means that the room breathes
Light and sound that rise and settle at the pace of a long out-breath. What we mean when we say the room breathes, and what we are careful not to mean.
Let go2 min read
Supported shapes: yin and restorative, plainly
Two slow styles of yoga where the floor and a few props do the holding. How they differ, one shape to try at home, and what the research can and cannot say.
Let go3 min read
Spirit, from breath: pneuma and spiritus
Greek pneuma, Latin spiritus and the English words they gave us all began as ‘breath’. A short walk through a word that never forgot where it came from.
Let go2 min read
A twenty-minute lie-down
How to take twenty minutes lying down, awake, with nothing to achieve: where, how, what to do with your mind, and when to get up.
Let go3 min read
Breathing in smoke season
General, non-medical advice for Alberta’s smoke days: check the AQHI, keep your practice gentle and indoors, and know when to get help.
Notice3 min read
Noticing without fixing
The fourth passage of a class asks for something unusual: watch what comes, and do nothing about it. Why that is harder, and kinder, than it sounds.
Notice2 min read
Deep rest is not sleep
Lying still and awake, with attention resting in the body. How deep rest differs from sleep, and what the small studies can and cannot say.
Notice3 min read
The double inhale: a sigh on purpose
Two short in-breaths through the nose, then one long out-breath. What a sigh is for, what one small study found, and what it cannot tell us.
Notice2 min read
Zhuangzi’s fasting of the heart
A short passage from a 2,300-year-old book about listening: first with the ears, then the heart, then the breath. What fasting empties, and what it leaves.
Notice3 min read
Breathing through the nose
A plain guide to breathing in and out through the nose: what the nose does with the air, how to try it, and when the mouth is the better door.
Let go3 min read