Gita Brown

Overcoming a Fear of Flying: How Mantras Carry Me on Their Wings

The small commuter airplane swayed as it began its descent toward rural Virginia. I gripped the armrest. The seatbelt chime dinged and the engines droned. I closed my eyes and felt the twenty-thousand feet below me open like a chasm. I put my earbuds in and raised the...

Frozen Meltdown: Showing Up On the Path of Yoga

Huddled inside my heaviest winter coat at the edge of a pond, I watched as my coffee steam merged with misty clouds of my breath. At dawn the cranberry bog in coastal Massachusetts was an expanse of frozen sand and wiry tangles of russet vines; old snow scudded across...

The Broken Christmas Tree: How Love Saved Its Light

My dad ascended the rickety ladder, thus launching our family’s annual quest to decorate our Christmas tree. Ours was no snowy trek to an idyllic woodland. Instead it was an ascension up the world’s oldest wooden ladder to a high and bafflingly small closet where our...

Thanks, Little Buddy: How My Dog Taught Me Yoga

My dog Ranger’s rear leg kicked then he exhaled his final breath. I smoothed his tan and black muzzle for the last time. Bone cancer had arrived with terrifying swiftness. A sudden lameness had revealed the insidious way the cancer had secretly been eating his bones....

The Yoga of No Escape

There were times during this winter when I went deep into the woods to escape my problems. Sometimes I would escape, or think I did, but usually what I found is that the only real conflict is inside myself. When December arrived the days squeezed short until even the...