Plans and Planning
Today I want to tell you about a presentation I heard several years ago. The speaker was Dr. Jeremi Suri. He holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor in the University’s Department of History and the Lyndon B. Johnson School…
Read MoreHard Questions, Difficult Answers
A friend of mine who came to the University of Texas at Austin from a small Texas town told me that her most common stress dream was being lost on the UT campus. Which is a perfectly reasonable stress dream. My most common stress dream is my teeth falling out, which apparently is not that…
Read More“Yearning to breathe free”
My plan for March and April was to get started on a book based on the Leadership Yoga workshop I’ve taught for many years. And then, we got to mid-March and all sorts of plans changed. I believe, hope, the ideas in the Leadership Workshop are worthwhile and particularly helpful in stressful times. However, writing…
Read MoreWhen there are no words
Over the last few days, I’ve struggled, as many have, with the effort to find words to say. Nothing I’ve come up with has seemed helpful, meaningful, or even close to expressing all that I feel right now. And so instead today’s newsletter is my effort to amplify the work of many of my friends and…
Read MoreLeadership Yoga
On March 23rd, ten weeks ago, we began this journey through the ideas of Leadership Yoga. I started this series with the idea of trying to support each reader through the challenges we were only beginning to experience. I had the idea of writing a book on this, but that would take too long, so…
Read MoreNiyamas – Internal Disciplines
Today, we’ll focus on the five Niyamas. B.K.S. Iyengar describes them as the “rules of conduct” that apply to individual behavior while the Idiot’s Complete Guide to Yoga puts it more simply – “what to do, as opposed to what not to do.” Here are the five Niyamas and my thoughts on their application to…
Read MoreInto the Unknown
About six weeks into my tenure as Vice President for Student Affairs at UTSA, a Trinity colleague asked me what had been the biggest surprise. One was the vast increase in the number of emails I was receiving, but my real answer was, “the number of decisions I’ve made since I got here, with basically…
Read MoreYamas – Ethical Principles
In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali laid out the Yamas, ethical disciplines, and Niyamas, personal disciplines or practices. Today we’ll cover, very briefly, the five yamas and consider their relevance to our leadership practice. (We’ll cover the niyamas on Thursday.) I would paraphrase today’s quote to reiterate, without ethical principles to govern our behavior, there is no…
Read MoreTeaching Yoga
After ten or fifteen minutes in the deep relaxation of Savasana, the teacher begins to recall students back to themselves, from Corpse Pose back to life. Little bits of movement, stretches, maybe even a yawn. Roll on to the side and slowly sit back up. There’s a reason why this is often a favorite pose. The peace…
Read MoreEquanimity
In thinking about essays on the practice of Savasana this week, I had written the words, “equanimity in difficult times”. Nothing more than that, just the phrase. As I was thinking about this topic I googled the phrase and found a wonderful article. (The link is at the bottom of the essay and I recommend reading…
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