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The office team: "And then we'll give it to Angie, and she'll work her magic on it."

Thirty minutes at Honeyfest: A neighbor whose property faces the festival hung a giant banner that said THIS IS ULTRA MAGA COUNTRY," but las

<p>Complicated feelings ahead: Last month my Facebook timeline was full of pictures of bellydancers performing at Pride, all decked out in rainbow gear and using rainbow marketing. Most of these dancers were straight, to the best of my knowledge, and that&#8217;s fine. One, I believe in allyship, and two, no one is required to give [&hellip;]</p>

<p>I just did a hilarious yoga class where this skinny teacher and her skinny assistant laid down on their backs with straps under their lumbar curves and made a big fuss about how hard they had to work not to pull them out. &#8220;Can you feel how hard your abs have to work to hold [&hellip;]</p>

<p>How to survive a forty minute MRI 1) In your head, run through all your current accordion songs to the beat of the machine. It will be like a very weird accordion industrial party. Don’t accidentally squeeze the emergency alert ball, even if you get caught up thinking about bellows directions. 2) Then run through [&hellip;]</p>

<p>If you take a tour of my college, they show you two gyms. They describe one as the gym for “more chill workouts” and the other as the “serious free weight gym.” These descriptions annoy me whenever the tour comes through the chill gym and I’m standing there panting with my red face and calloused [&hellip;]</p>

<p>When I announced my intention to shut down the Yoga Enlarged program at the end of July 2017, lots of people figured it was all about money. &#8220;Too bad you were never able to make enough money off that one,&#8221; they said.&#8220;I just wish you had made more money,&#8221; they said.&#8220;Better luck next time,&#8221; they [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Replenish: the Spa Co-Op, which is the home to&nbsp;Yoga Enlarged, is Columbus’ only donation-based yoga studio. This unique model of support is a new-ish idea in the yoga community that hopes to destroy financial barriers that stop people from practicing yoga. In a traditional model, the studio tells you what to pay when you come [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Why Tribal Bellydance matters to me: Yesterday in class, a dancer was having trouble with her balance. Because of her health concerns, a fall could be very hazardous, so it&#8217;s really important for her to stay upright. At one point, in quartet formation, a turn we were practicing almost knocked her over, and the dancer [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Yoga teachers love to tell you about “the fullest expression of the pose.” I first started hearing this little phrase a few years ago when some Vinyasa teachers I know began to experiment with bringing inclusive language into their classrooms. Everybody was getting clear on the fact that saying “the real pose” was going to [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The mythology of transformation is the cornerstone of advertising.&nbsp; Offering to reduce the large and small discomforts inherent in being human, what we yogis might call&nbsp;dukkha, is the bread and butter of marketing.&nbsp; Our dissatisfaction with ourselves and the world around us is used as a lure to entice us to buy cars, soda, shampoo, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A friend asked me what words I prefer to address the concept of fat bodies, and this is my response after thinking about it overnight. 1) I don&#8217;t like to use the word &#8220;overweight&#8221; because it implies that there is an ideal weight for a body, an ideal usually determined by someone else, often a [&hellip;]</p>

<p>I spent the first twenty years of my life not loving myself much at all, and then somebody I loved stopped loving me.&nbsp; In retaliation, I took up bellydancing.&nbsp; This wasn’t an act of bravery or courageousness of any kind.&nbsp; I was grasping at straws.&nbsp; I went to dance class in oversized overalls covered by [&hellip;]</p>

<p>I have a picture of myself at age 18 flying a kite on the beach in Ocean City, Maryland.&nbsp; I am wearing one of my favorite shirts of all time, the same shirt I had my senior pictures taken in, a long sleeve black turtleneck sized 3XLT.&nbsp; I imagined that I had this kind of [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Sometimes paying the bills means you go teach meditation to teenage boys even when your head hurts, your stomach is in knots, and the possibility of panic lies within every breath. In the car, a 78-year-old Buddhist sings from the radio about saving a particle of light, and you cry until you are gasping, then [&hellip;]</p>