Freedom Yoga at Jim's House in Windsor: Vero Beach, FL: February 18, 2019

Being with friends is the best part of touring. Here with our old friend JIm and our new friend Ian.

Edward Barnard’s book ”New York City Trees” says a full quarter of the city is shaded by 5.2 million trees. One of the most densely populated, frantically active places on the planet is also home to an abundance of oxygen generating, life giving living plants. I wonder if they feel like me…striving to thrive in a world of raging contradictions.

Tour life is hectic, there are people and places and systems and schedules to negotiate all day, every day, in service to Music. It’s easy to get lost in the low grade hum, to miss the rhythm, the life affirming magic we are continually bathed in.

The chemistry of this new incarnation of “Dave” is undeniable. The addition of Steve Cropper and Gretchen Rhodes to our already amazing band family has everybody lighter, moods are good, and the shows are extra juicy. Even so….

We had a day off yesterday, after a working cruise and three shows in a row, I was ready to turn inward and get quiet for a day. No time passes faster than one day off in the middle of a run. Freedom, by its nature, seems to come to us in quick bouts, and perhaps the whole of the yoga sutras sets us up to this deep truth in the very first sutra. Atha Yoga Anushasana (PYS 1.1 , ), translates ‘here and now let the practice of yoga begin’. This isn’t an introductory sutra, it’s the point itself by which the rest of the sutras support. Here, Now, this is where yoga lives. Awareness and presence are hard to do, hence why the whole of the text dedicates itself to helping us see, hear, feel, and know the here and now.

On this very fine day off it happens our good friend Jim lives only a few hours away. Of course we have to see him even though in my little, albeit tired mind struggled with the idea of having to basically just show up. Our short day off, now booked with a social engagement also involved an evening cello concert. People and music. Just what I was hoping to avoid.

Like trees in New York City, the friendship and the music was oxygen, pure life affirming, soul nourishing, mood elevating mana. The moment I saw Jim’s eyes, the first draw of the bow on the cello, these had as much relief as pigeon pose for road weary hips. I know this because early the morning afterwards, still in residence at our friend Jim’s house I woke up just after sunrise and got a practice in, poolside, among the towering palm trees and in the dawn’s quiet while a house full of friends, new and old, still slept.

Poolside at Jim’s made for a spectacular Freedom Yoga site . Thank you JIm! xoxoxo

I haven’t been able to attend a yoga class for over 5 days. Self guided practice, which Eric Shiffman calls Freedom Yoga, felt nourishing on my tour body in a way that classroom yoga can’t fulfill. My whole day off was essentially “Freedom yoga”. Not that I was able to find freedom from the tour, but I was able to find freedom from the myself, my ever planning, over scheduled, always spinning mind that without a lot of practice, can never see the forest for the trees and never find the here and now.