Practice Notes & Schedule // Week of 6.15.26
more emptiness and a full schedule 🥁
My summer garden is scrawny this year. In the back of my mind and at bottom of my list: “I need to get to the nursery this week.”…every week since March started. Yikes. Alas the time has not come and may not. My efforts are elsewhere, so it goes. A month or so ago, I felt guilty enough about my laxity to fluff the backyard scene up using what I had on hand. Amended the soil, scattered some seeds gathered from past harvests. Moved a sad succulent from our shady home into the sunny yard. My neighbor bestowed me with some geranium clippings. A friend passed on some tomato seedlings , over-bought in the heady fugue of Tomatomania. A couple survivors: a withered stick of a Serrano pepper bush from last summer greenish enough to save and two anemic lavender bushes. Watered and waited on this motley assortment a while.
Today: Some arugula is growing, a couple of beans sprouted. I just harvested the first tiny tomatoes. Out of thin earth a sunflower has sprouted, starting its long reach. My fingers are crossed tightly. Of all the crew, the succulents and the lavender are thriving most; a testament to their hardiness rather than my gardening, which continues to be a low-effort, “use what you have”, oft-forgetful operation. Watching these scrubby plants sprawl and crawl out of innate, spare balance appeals deeply to one of my favored thought-loops: trying to know understand emptiness not as void but in form. Emptiness as potential, receptivity, the ground, space & stuff itself — the point of arising/becoming/creation. Observing my garden I see this in action: Where does the water run, the sun shine, the wind blow? What sprouts? What doesn’t? How do things want to go along? How can they be forced?
This week’s practice:
Monday, 7pm, Candlelight Flow // Highland Park Yoga
Tuesday, 9:30am, All Levels Yoga // Crescent Yoga *last week at this time! moving to 5:30pm next week :)
Tuesday, 5:15pm, Yoga & Meditation // Highland Park Yoga
Wednesday, 8am, Yoga Level 2 // Highland Park Yoga
Wednesday, 5:30pm, Community Restorative // Zoom, freely offered
Thursday, 12:30pm, All Levels Yoga Flow // Highland Park Yoga
Friday, 9am, Meditation Meet-Up // reach out for details, freely offered
Friday, 9:30am, All Levels Yoga Flow // Highland Park Yoga
Saturday, 8am, All Levels Yoga // Highland Park Yoga
Tuning in:
Practicing: Aum Chanting (5 min/day), Triangle Variations, Viparita karani.
Reading: Could not put Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin down. The title says it all. Recommended for fans of David Lynch, Clarice Lispector, Henry James, J.G. Ballard.
Listening: Resurrecting last summer’s jams in practice this week - “slippy swoony summer”
This week’s photo: Red-vein Flowering Maple in a neighbor’s garden.
Liberation for all beings!
Reach out to be my guest in-studio!
x Julia