October 2026

Happy October!

September and October have been especially busy for me this year, with new online programs beginning, local classes starting up, out-of-town workshops, and my annual retreat at Mt. Princeton Hot Springs in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. I have one more trip this month. Expect a few class cancellations on October 16, 17, and 19 while I am in San Antonio. After that, I will be home for a while. In the meantime, all of the teaching and traveling has left me woefully behind on administrative tasks, so this newsletter lands in your inbox with October already well underway.

Speaking of new offerings, A Place to Land with Yogaversity begins Thursday, and there is still time to register. The last mentoring course became a clarifying and meaningful experience for me. I had expected the group to include mostly newer teachers looking for support as they took their first steps into teaching. To my surprise, about 75% of the participants had been teaching for more than twenty years and were navigating many of the same challenges: aging bodies that required different movement strategies, changing personal interests, questions about relevance within today’s influencer culture after a lifetime of study and experience, and a general sense of overwhelm in response to the pressures of modern life.

The overlap between their stories and my own questions helped me see that, as personal and specific as my challenges may feel at any given time, many long-time teachers in their forties, fifties, and sixties are moving through similar terrain. Together, we explored both the visible changes unfolding on the surface of life and the deeper archetypal patterns at work underneath. We discussed sacred space, the importance of understanding one’s own needs, and the sometimes tricky questions of recognition, status, and validation across different stages of life. I am looking forward to another round of those conversations and to seeing where the inquiry leads us.

One of my ongoing reflections about teaching over time is that, on any given day, the work itself can feel fairly ordinary. We practice poses, unpack anatomy terms and movement principles, consider small bites of yogic philosophy, and somehow beg, borrow, or steal enough time from a busy day to get to the mat. Most of the time, students feel better for having made the effort, and yoga class becomes one more nourishing part of an ordinary week. The extraordinary part emerges when we sustain those efforts over time. Friendships form. Bonds deepen. A durable matrix of support begins to take shape.

What I appreciate most is that these bonds do not depend on constant proximity or on participating in every class, workshop, or retreat. Community can continue to offer strength even across distance and time. As I see it, one of the best ways to nurture the relationships formed through yoga is to value them inwardly, to let them become a kind of internal reference point that reminds us of our connection to something larger than ourselves.

Indra’s Net offers a beautiful image for this kind of belonging. In the ancient metaphor, reality appears as an infinite net with a jewel at every intersection. Each jewel reflects every other jewel, suggesting that no part exists entirely on its own and that every part both affects and reflects the whole. As an image for community, Indra’s Net reminds us that our individual lives remain distinct while participating in a vast web of relationship, influence, and mutual belonging.

If you are reading this newsletter, you are part of the web of relationships I have been describing. Like one of the jewels in Indra’s Net, your life touches other lives, including people you may never meet or even know you have influenced. At a time when loneliness has reached epidemic proportions, divisions among friends and family have become increasingly common, and endless demands compete for our time, attention, and resources, tending our connections feels especially important to me. Every time any of us  show up for a class, call a friend, share a meal, practice alongside others, or simply remember that we belong to something larger than ourselves only, we strengthen the web. No one cannot participate in everything or stay connected to everyone, but each of us can value the relationships we have and make choices that help keep those bonds alive. In challenging times, that kind of participation can be a profound and enlivening act.

Let me know how its going for you out there in the wild. I always love hearing from you.

Love,

Christina