Dear Complex Beautiful Human,

I woke up this morning to an aching and throbbing wrist sucking my energy, bleak prospects about finding a new place, and snow on the ground in April coupled with a hopeless grey sky.  I wished I could just fall asleep again or hide under the blankets for a while, but my wishing was interrupted by my husband bringing me coffee before leaving for work and like a wave of sunshine parting the clouds I then also felt gratitude for my beautiful partner, coffee and the present moment lying in a warm bed in a beautiful place right here and now.  After this wave of warmth, another roll of harshness clawed its way back and I remembered a friend shared with me yesterday about the struggles her son is going through with aggression and eruptions, and another friend the day before who confided that her daughter is hopeless and depressed and she doesn’t know how to help her. While these two stories are about only two kids, unfortunately its far too common of a problem in all of us, but it also echos the stuff that is going on all over the world.  So many wars are still raging against innocent people all over the world, some with real bombs, some with bans and mandates, some purely economic, even some habitual and unnoticed by the perpetrator or victim alike, all of them equally deadly.  All wars divide, some drive wedges between nations and folk, some divide humans from their human rights, and some divide our thinking from our creativity or our spirit from our body. What can we do to heal, help and transform instead of despairing or fighting?  How do we create fertile ground for peace, freedom and love?     

As i sip my coffee I keep feeling this push and pull between anger and depression but also I notice gratitude hanging about at the edges and the desire to share and write a letter to you that gives light, inspires love or ignites action towards creating the world we all want to participate in! If I let my inner division drain me, immobilise or stop me, then I’m defeated truly.  Therefore I need to celebrate that we are not computers, we can be complex and hold paradoxical truths, we can be wonderful while still being a work in progress.   We can work on loving ourselves more while being a force of love in the world and loving others. I can feel anger and fear and also let gratitude in, I can be scared but act out of love or a deep wish for peace even if i don’t know what to do or how we’re going to get there.  I don’t know what to do to make boys feel loved and not want to hit things, I don’t know how to cure little girls from adult sized depressions and inspire life in them again, i don’t know how to stop bombs from falling or the greedy from scheming but i know that despite my fear and doubt i have to try anyways.   If we all try in our ways to heal divides and champion peace, then maybe collectively we have a chance of reaching the one place nobody can get to alone, peace. 

Well my coffee is now long cold, the snow has turned to rain and the sky is still relentlessly grey, but I feel more ready to keep going and creatively raging towards peace, love and collaboration even if we don’t know how were going to get there  because I know I am not alone in this deep wish for Peace. In the spirit of cosmic entrepreneurship we need to say yes to what we want, Peace, even if we don’t know how to do it!  We will discover the way together.  

Come join us on the mat, lets remind each other that we are truly in this together, help each other keep our hearts up and keeping our practice on. 

with lots of love, Rachel 

p.s. if you are not making it to your mat these days are you praying or meditating?  what are you doing to keep your light on and how are you actively working towards peace?  there are many ways, but if your searching  below is a thread that you could follow...

TĀRĀ YÜLLE GYALJEMA, 

protector against war and violence.  find out more about her and a mantra for piece by following this link:

https://www.taramandala.org/13th-tara

in the name of love: a yoga love letter

dear love, it's been a while, again..
when i started teaching on line more regularly in 2020 i also started writing every week to share the ever changing zoom schedule and the writing became more regular and sometimes interesting :)  the numbers on my zoom classes have dwindled again, but i keep meeting people or hearing from them 'I'm not practicing yoga right now but please keep me on the list' :)  so maybe its time to share again. 

 Yogis, Yoginis, and Readers of Blogs, 

Dear Yogis and Yoginis 

How many ways can I tell you I love you? Maybe screwing up in love is one of the best ways to get to know yourself and others, but oy vey it hurts.   Wether it’s family or friends, romantic or not, why it is so hard to express it sometimes and why is it so hard to hear it sometimes? Maybe because love lives beyond the bondage of physics and rationality.  There is no satisfying equation to master or guarantee love, so we all get to know it through each other in our life and our communities.  I imagine the variations and permutations of expressing love between two unique individuals are as many as stars in the sky.  One man I knew said I love you to his wife for the first time when she was giving birth to their daughter, another didn’t mean it till they had children.  A woman I knew only ever said ditto when others said it out loud to her. Still others tell everyone all the time, some never say it and one teacher described how much he liked telling strangers in the grocery store line ‘i love you’! Each one of us carry stories of love, some light, some dark, all revealing our tenderness and vulnerability globally in success or regret.  Each story offers another way that humans try to love each other.  How many times did we miss hearing it or recognising it as love? How many promises  have we broken and excused because there was love involved? Or how foolishly we have mistaken craving possession of something for love? Or just wanted it too be true despite knowing it wasn’t? Once I lied and echoed back ‘i love you too, even though i knew they meant it that way and i didn’t.  Even as I played dumb I knew I had lied and watched for years as that lie ricocheted through their tender places ripping and wounding again and again like a piece of invisible shrapnel.  My inner laziness and lie lived like as a wound in the other. Before this experience i believed i would suffer my own lazinesses or short comings, not other humans.  But we are in this together.  Do you play games of guessing or fantasy to make up little measures to see if someone really loves you?  Like if they forget this then that means they don’t love me or if they don’t show up like this at that time it means their love isn’t real? One of my deepest regrets was trying to withdraw my love from someone for their lack of integrity, but the joke was on me, the relationship disintegrated but my love remained, roaming my dreams and stalking my heart, and yes teaching my so much through my own suffering. 

In the world of love we have blundered most of all and still it’s where our salvation lives. Love is our practice, our collective earth co-creation. We’re born into, thrown into it, seduced into it and discover life giving vitality from love! Even when too much time is cloistered away from it, our whole being suffers.  Living is a commitment to keep practicing in the mystery school of love.   We fail all the time when we commit to a practice.  His holiness the Dali lama even talks about failing at meditation, and any musician knows that they only master a piece after hours and hours of practicing, in other words after hours and hours of failing.  Yoga is no different, it isn’t a performance of mastery, it is the practice of an amateur, even after years of practicing.  While we can’t successfully opt out of the mystery school of love, the things that help us through it are optional.  You don’t have to practice yoga, meditation or kindness, but you are free to. When you channel your will and return to your practice again and again you also strengthen your enthusiasm and perseverance for life and in love.  We can become more loving and kind through practice, through trying, through messing up and trying again, but it requires our participation, honesty, risk and courage.  may you find the things that help you love more generously, more wildly, more kindly! 

Keep your practice up and your heart on,

with lot o love, Rachel

The Swan, No. 24, 1915 by Hilma af Klint 

for the love of friends

The cat must of had my tongue..


I don't really know what stopped me from writing, was it after a good friend told me I did it well or was it when i fell in love or what the fuck?!

Life continues to be a mystery and a dance full of love and exploding burning brutal world.  I strive to be brave on the daily and as kind as possible.  When I remember the stars or that my life is but a cosmic day,  or that I am here to leave goodness behind me, my heart grows lighter.

Here is an invocation written by my friend Orland Bishop in his book The Seventh Shrine

Infinite stars, infinite space, source of the knowledge of the worlds, giver of thoughts that empower creation, transforming light into the elements of matter, radiate before me the seven keys that unlock the door of the Mystery Temple so I may enter and fulfill the purpose for which my birth initates

Reading his words always warms my heart and expands my context. hope its good for you.


This is one of the paintings that i am working  of my BFFs, Bjarne Edberg, such an inspiring man.

still some way to go! wip (work in progress).


And just down the road from my house in the same building I teach yoga in these beautiful women performed and my friend Rebekka Karijord wrote the music.

and for my fellow word nerds ..

the cat kinda still might have it. peace for now.

*iloveu*