Your Custom Text Here
It was like the trees were raining. Not a constant drizzle, and certainly not a steady downpour from gray clouds. The sky was pure blue and the air was crisp. But the previous night had scattered a few showers, and the trees were slow to release their newly caught raindrops, gently set free from sporadic rustles of a gentle breeze or a squirrel's chase.
What do we do when rain falls out of a clear blue sky? We get a little wet and walk on, marveling at nature’s insistence on paradox.
Read moreLast night in our Fall Sits Meditation Series, we explored how the Buddhist practice of lovingkindness meditation (metta in Pali) can serve as a powerful remedy for our troubled hearts and minds. It may feel natural to send lovingkindness toward those who are easy to love, who have served as your benefactors, and who bring you peace and comfort. But when turning attention to those who spark in us feelings of anger, ill will, fear, or aggression, it can seem counterintuitive or risky to wish them well. This meditation invites a different perspective.
Read more
A pivotal moment in the history of yoga unfolded during first-millennium BCE India, when countless seekers took charge of their own spiritual life, free from the ruling class and its ritualistic controls. These mystical wanderers gave up economic and civic security in favor of direct experience – of truth, self, and ultimate reality. They asserted an innate right to seek wisdom and share it freely.
Read more
It is easy to spot the conventionally beautiful: a stunning sunset, the film star on the red carpet, a grand and snow-capped mountain peak. More challenging, and possibly far more rewarding, is to be awakened and awed by wherever we cast our gaze: a scattering of pebbles catching the morning light on the driveway, the way the grocery employee carefully stacked the red peppers, the homemade protest poster proclaiming the dignity of all human beings, or the bright bold yellow dandelion in a field mix of grass and clover.
Read more
These mindful practices are like taking a soft cloth and wiping the smudges off the window of our busy brains. In this way, we polish our perspective, making room for extra wisdom, patience, and compassion.
Read more
Join us for this six-week series of myth-busting, story-telling, meditation-inspiring, and sacred-text-decoding with Annie Moyer, Master of Divinity student and longtime fan of Patanjali’s 196 aphorisms on Yoga and all it means.
Read more
All we can do is recognize the precious opportunities we have right in front of us to celebrate joys and to hold space for pain, whether that pain is in our own hearts, in the hearts of friends and family, or halfway across the world among human hearts enduring devastating violence.
Read more
From the Buddhist viewpoint, as goes a stack of paper, so go I.
Read more
Consider joy as an active state of loving friendliness, compassionate presence, and generous spirit – envision it as the energy that you radiate, and not an energy you consume.
Read more
A great benefit of yoga asana practice is the demand it poses to the mind-body system to counteract the habitual ways we use our bodies. Often, habit comes without heed, and mindless movement is a certain gateway to stress, strain, or injury.
Read more
Human beings are not that different from trees and water when it comes to being at the mercy of a fragile ecosystem. As the only element of nature with the gift of consciousness, however, we have a unique opportunity.
Read more
Relative to the universe, we are infinitely small; relative to our loved ones, we are greatly treasured; and relative to the earth and its cycles, we are in constant flux.
Read more
The perennial New Year's Resolution is getting a makeover, and I'm glad for it. The old look was hard to keep up with, swathed in an attitude that we weren't good enough last year, so we better kick it up this year; we all know how that turned out. By February, we were exhausted and demoralized, and whatever habits we were seeking to change tended to creep back in, leaving many with the feeling that the new year got off to a false start.
Read moreThis phenomenon of sharply focused attention yielding a surplus of energy is the opposite of our social programming, which tells us to divide attention in multi-tasked directions, to push beyond our comfort zones, to go big or go home, but all this external focus can leave us frustrated, anxious, and depleted, much like the state of Earth itself.
Read moreIt's hard to know how history will view our current times without a couple thousand years of hindsight, but it's not hard to feel and see the numerous data points currently shaping our own sort of axial moment.
Read more
What happens when we rest/breathe/contemplate is the grand and invisible work of a nervous system recalibrating our frail humanness, leaving us better in balance: strong enough to meet big moments of activity, soft enough to enjoy our own quiet company, compassionate and patient enough to tend relationships with full hearts.
Read more
If something hurts, feel the pain. If something confuses, ask questions. If something angers, trace the anger’s source. If something is untenable, reach out to what you can reliably touch: a friend to give a comforting hug, a donation button to give material support, or the earth where you’ve planted – with eternal optimism – your summer tomatoes.
Read more
Observations collected with unflinching wisdom over several hundred millennia evokes a nascent yogic awareness: the horseshoe crab as an original yogi – calm and composed, reminding our troubled parts that time marches to a beat and at a depth we can't begin to fathom.
Read more
Integrated mind-body practices are uniquely suited to help us reckon with the injustices we see, the indignities we experience, and the incredulousness we feel. Here are four demonstrable ways.
Read more
I now recognize the experience as awareness waking up to its full potential for expansive wonder, a lesson in how paying full attention is fundamental to mindfulness. It anchors us in the moment, it helps our nervous system distinguish between real and imagined threat, and it orients us to the realm where the breath is most available.
Read moreArlington: 3811 Langston Boulevard, Arlington VA 22207. 703-525-YOGA (9642)
Fairfax: 3975 University Dr. #130, Fairfax, VA 22030. 703-890-1550
© Sun & Moon Yoga Studio, 2015 - 2030
All Rights Reserved
Privacy Policy
We respectfully acknowledge that our studios sit on the ancestral homeland of the Manahoac and Nacotchtank (Anacostan) tribes, and that this land is sacred, historical, and significant, as are the lands of all First Nations People.