One of the most common reasons people come to a yoga class is to de-stress. Stress is at the center of our modern lifestyles, so engaging in the physical practice of yoga, as well as the meditation, mindfulness, and breathing that are built into the eight-limbed yoga practice, go a long way to helping us […]
Leadership
Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics: Guest Blog: Another Issue for Our Time, “White Privilege”
The Conductor as Yogi: Letting Go
“Letting go” is hardly a surprising topic for a yoga blog. But for the conductor? Now there’s an interesting exploration. Letting go is central to yoga and other wisdom practices. We sit on the mat and focus on our breathing, letting go with each exhale. We consider the words of poets and sages, of scripture […]
Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics: Stupid Questions
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” Thomas Szasz Like many of you, I’ve had a few teachers in my time who would announce—often–that there is no such thing as a “stupid question.” No one was asking questions and the teacher must have felt […]
The Conductor as Yogi: The Illusion of “Done”
We are list makers, task accomplishers, and detail managers. We juggle between our professional and personal lives, never really stopping for long because there is always one more item on the list, one more email to send, one more errand to run. When we finish that, we think, then we will be “done.” The only […]
Choral Potpourri/ Choral Ethics: Set in Our Ways
“The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.” John Keats To say the least, it’s been a challenging time for us all. As recently as three years ago, we could not have imagined wearing masks in rehearsals or […]