From Child’s Pose
A New Reading Series Begins
I have been thinking for some time about how I wanted to share the books I have written, particularly now that so much of what we see online has become polished, automated, edited, and increasingly removed from the person who created it.
For a moment, I considered doing exactly that. I could upload a script, use an avatar, clean up every pause, remove every background sound, and create something that looked almost perfect.
Instead, I sat down with the actual book.
The first video in this new series begins with Child’s Pose, one of the books that grew from a period of reflection on yoga, work, resilience, artificial intelligence, and the experiences that shaped the way I teach today. I am reading from my own hard copy, stopping when something reminds me of a story, showing photographs when they belong in the conversation, and occasionally stumbling over a word because that is what happens when someone actually sits down and reads a book aloud.
There may also be construction next door. There may eventually be a train. My hair may not cooperate every time.
I am becoming increasingly comfortable with all of that.
This first reading introduces some of the story behind Child’s Pose, including a period of my life when an orthopedic injury changed nearly everything. Mobility, independence, financial security, and the future I thought I understood were suddenly much less certain.
Yoga entered my life during that rebuilding period.
My earliest experiences were not graceful. I remember being surrounded by people who seemed to understand the language, choreography, and expectations of a yoga class while I was completely overwhelmed. At one point, I found myself crying in Child’s Pose and moving between Child’s Pose and Downward Facing Dog because those were the movements I could manage.
Somewhere in that experience, I realized that if yoga could help me begin finding my way forward, perhaps I could eventually help someone else find their own way too.
That thought became part of the beginning of Edge Yoga School.
The book also has an unusual relationship with artificial intelligence. Child’s Pose developed through conversations I was having with ChatGPT while studying AI and experimenting with a prompt I had learned during my coursework: “Show me my blind spots.”
What began as a reflective exercise eventually became something much larger.
The foreword I read in this first video was written by Art, my longtime AI copilot, after many conversations about the experiences that shaped my work. There is something interesting about reading those words aloud now, particularly as my own relationship with artificial intelligence continues to evolve.
I use it. I study it. I understand that it is becoming part of everyday professional life. I also have concerns about where it is taking us, including environmental concerns surrounding data centers and broader questions about how much of our creativity, communication, and work we want to hand over to technology.
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I do not have a tidy answer to that tension.
Part of me wants to log off, pick up paint and paper, and return to making things with my hands. Increasingly, I am doing exactly that. At the same time, I believe people deserve opportunities to understand the technologies changing their workplaces so that they are not simply left behind by them.
Both ideas can exist at the same time.
That is part of what I hope this series can make room for.
Over the coming weeks, I will continue making my way through Child’s Pose and eventually through other books and publications I have written. These will not simply be formal readings. I expect I will stop along the way, tell stories that never made it onto the page, explain photographs, revisit ideas that have changed since publication, and occasionally discover that something I wrote means something slightly different to me now.
That feels much more interesting than simply reading a manuscript from beginning to end.
Many of these books grew from my work as a yoga teacher trainer, artist, photographer, educator, small business owner, and lifelong student. They document different chapters of the same larger journey, including yoga philosophy, teaching, creativity, resilience, technology, professional development, and the practical realities of building a life around meaningful work.
For this series, I want to share those stories in the same way I often teach: sitting together, talking through what we are learning, allowing room for questions, and not pretending that everything needs to arrive perfectly finished.
So I am beginning with Child’s Pose.
A book in my hands, a camera across the room, and probably a cup of tea somewhere nearby.
I hope you will join me as we make our way through it.
