I was up late - okay, I didn't sleep - because I got on a roll scribbling notes for the upcoming workshop, revisiting old writing, reflecting. It is vitally important that we start asking why we are not as happy, as strong, as laughful, or as healthy as we might be. It is important that we start to wonder about what our lives mean. Important that we start to see yoga as yoga - not as a set of exercises or pretty choreography.

I was reading a raw foodie's insights yesterday and she spoke quite bluntly about ridding her body of toxins, pain, and cancerous cells. Then, in the same breath and with the same context, she started speaking not of antioxidants and greens but of gratitude, generosity, reflection, and letting go.

Yoga is not the practice of postures, but the practice of living an ordinary life extraordinarily well. To do this, you have to cut yourself free. From envy, from old habits, from legacies of manipulation, control, or dishonesty. You may need years of therapy to do this. You might need a big gulp of courage. You might need to procrastinate it for awhile. But eventually, to do yoga, this is what you have to do.

Start with forgiveness and acts of generosity. Forgiveness is not allowing another person's wrongs, but cutting yourself free from its track marks. And generosity does not - never has- meant giving away from your own wealth or security. It means sharing your most essential gifts with the world. And thereby making them stronger.

Clarity, hard and elegant clarity, starts with these.