05/15/2026
Last week we sent out notification to our membership that Jewel would be taking over the studio, beginning today. Since then, I’ve been fielding questions about how I feel about it. My teaching will remain, and I’ll keep offering retreats and adventures. I think what people are actually asking is: How does it feel for it to no longer be *yours*?
Here’s the thing - and it’s true of yoga studios as well as normal jobs, lovers, children and homes - it was never yours.
That’s my response. It was never mine to begin with.
If you’ve practiced with me, you’ve likely heard me teach it: the Hebrew language doesn’t have expression for personal possession. There is no “I have.” The more accurate translation is “there is unto me.” The sense of permanency is absent because what we are given will, ultimately, be returned. We’re on borrowed time and borrowed land because we are guests; visitors here. At best we get to rearrange a little, tend our surroundings (and hopefully make it better). We see a block of marble and we chisel away until beauty is revealed, but we do not make the stone.
The studio came into existence through me, not from me, to borrow Khalil Gilbran’s words. It would have stayed open exactly .42 days if it weren’t for the yogis who practiced the Hardest Pose (showing up). The fabric of the studio is made of those who unroll their mat. We are woven together, bringing shape to this community.
Fr. Richard Rohr writes that this is the great work of the second half of life: letting go. For nearly 7 years now, there has been unto me a space to oversee, teachers to direct, yogis to instruct. Now it is unto Jewel. My job is to open my palms. After all, the fifth and final Yama is Aparigraha: non-grasping.
The poem concludes:
“For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.”