I met Rita Ortiz Contreras at Green Tree Yoga Meditation, a non-profit yoga and meditation studio in South LA that I helped to open in 2013. I was taken by her presence, fun personality and sense of self. She started as a new yoga student and soon found herself enrolling in the Yoga Teacher Training…
Alternative facts to what I thought I knew…I wanted the Women’s March on Washington to be instead called “March for Change” or a “March for Human Rights.” I did not want anyone to feel excluded, especially women and men of color, in a rally for peace, justice and civil disobedience. So many have been marginalized…
My father died tomorrow on a day just like today. I gave him CPR with my compadre. She ventilated and I did the compressions. 1993. It felt invasive, weirdly intimate. I never got that close to him. This was unfamiliar territory in every way. Touching him? Pressing on his heart with all my might? Calling…
“The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path I walk in peace. With each step, a gentle wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.” Thich Nhat Hanh “Get Thee to a nunnery”, I heard the voice say. I answered, ok. Where is the nearest nunnery following the Thich…
Jelani Thomas is his own live experiment ~~how to be more self~sufficient in an urban setting. Deep in South Los Angeles, butting up against the 10 Freeway, he is living a radical gardeners dream, bucking the belief that food comes from stores and that our individual impact does not affect the whole. In his small…
