Dear Sangha,
Thank the shining stars for YOU!
Community is one of the biggest gifts we have in times of crisis.
As we face this global challenge—the broad panic, the shifts to our lives as we know them, our individual confrontations with the unknown—it’s important to remember that we also have a global community…one as big as the challenge itself.
It’s a sangha spacious enough to hold the fears, the unease, the strange and unfamiliar territory we find ourselves in. It’s the place where we ground ourselves in the sense of something infinitely bigger than us—even if our sense of coming together is out of joint at this moment.
We will join together in anyway possible and remind each other of the fierce powers of surrender, determination and discernment. With the qualities of yoga present in this experience we can be practicing the yoga within the whole of our lives; as we cut through illusions, fear cycles, and sharpen our tools to be of greater service.
I’ve kept showing up for this sangha through fire storms, sh*% storms, political upheavals, personal crises (both mine and others’) for nearly two decades. But right now “showing up” has to take a different form.
So here we are, apart/together, in what’s been popularly coined as “social distancing,” though I’m rebranding it “social spaciousness.” This is an allowing of space to hold the vast context, that which is larger than this moment. It also honors that each of us has a spaciousness within us and around us.
This global sangha is no joke. And so I call on you all to keep connecting, sharing, breathing, creating, and asking the big and little questions.
I’m calling on you to think of this time as holding space—for yourself, for this community, for all beings.
For my part, “holding space” has always meant helping you give yourself permission to integrate this practice into all corners of your life; and my plan going forward is the same as ever: continue to offer practices, create and live-stream content, and add individual classes, class bundles, and online courses for you to be supported in this living, breathing yoga journey. And, for updates and random bhakti sessions, dharma talks, "meet ups," musings, stay tuned on Instagram (@janetstoneyoga).
We’ve had practices and courses in the works for the past few months and quite frankly haven’t had the bandwidth to release them. (It’s amazing what a little “social spaciousness” will prompt.) So dive in, remember the community that's moving alongside you and holding you up, and remain curious and open to the possibility that we're all being presented with an open space right now in which to deepen our practice.
