Current Entanglements

Will Johnson (embodiment.net) offers a radical path of somatic dharma. His book The Posture of Meditation is the text I most frequently carry on silent meditation retreats. I am a giddy new member of his Shimmering Seahorse and Sea Kelp Sangha.

Tias Little (prajnayoga.com) supported me through dark and disorienting free fall with his Somatic Awareness Training for Yoga Attunement and his general Zen- and Iyengar-infused approach to embodied mindfulness. His poetic sensibility and wry humor bring body and soul to life for me in vivid and effervescent ways. 

Early yoga teachers include (in approximate chronological order) Elena Brower (vinyasa), Tabby Biddle (Phoenix Rising), and Yogi Charu (yoga nidra). My life-course was altered when I stumbled on a first edition copy of B. K. S. Iyengar’s Light on Yoga. To the countless other yoginis and yogis that I have practiced with and learned from — namaste.

Ward Kerr gave me my first TM mantra and introduced me to Amma (Mata Amritanandamayi). Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein brought me to Elat Chayyim for the first time for my first Jewish silent retreat, led by Sylvia Boorstein. That place and those practices would become exceptionally important aspects of my life. There I would meet dozens of fellow soul-travelers, and several root teachers, first and foremost, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. 

My early childhood education was fostered by the literally-adjacent Abraham Joshua Heschel School and Congregation B’nai Jeshurun. My first Talmud teacher (torah she’be’al’peh a/k/a T.S.B.P. or) Rabbi Dov Lorea impressed my soul with deep kindness, commitment, and care. Rabbi J. Rolando (“Roly”) Matalon taught me that rebelliousness and revelation can coexist in a person, and that angels sound like when they chant Torah. Judith Tumin housed me when I was a teenage outlaw and handed me the badge “poet.” Shoshana Jedwab helped launch me as a songwriter and let me never forget that music is food. “Big Al” Rivers made me feel safe and loved and fun and funny.

Deepening in Jewish renewal and Kabbalah led me to the Everyday Kabbalah and Kabbalah Month-by-Month by Mindy Ribner, who not only guided me in my first formal meditation practice but was also the first person to ask me to lead the Kol Nidre service for Yom Kippur. His early books on reincarnation in Judaism and the mysticism of music led me to become a close student of Rabbi Dov Ber Pinson. At Dov Ber’s table, I met several teacher-friends, including the polymath Jay Michaelson, sacred storyteller Maggid Yitzchak Buxbaum, and personal trainer Ari Weller. (Recent forays into my strength-training special interest require at least hat-tips to Andrew Huberman, Brent Brookbush, and Kelly Starret.)

While I have not studied personally with any of these writers, their books have had a significant impact on my thinking and language: Arnold Mindel (process-oriented psychotherapy), Terry Real (gender and relationships), Neil Postman (media theory), Ken Wilber (integral theory), Nick Walker (neuroqueer theory), 

Sam Harris

Alan Watts

Barbara Wegmueller

Therapists!

Psychedelics