Calvert County is where I grew up and it’s where my family is from and this is where a lot of us all live. I live here now again, too, after living in Los Angeles for 15 years. LA is where I endeavored to be successful and make a positive mark in the world as…
Author: James
7 Tips for Nervous New Yoga Teachers
People are coming to yoga class to get to a better place somehow, and they’ve chosen your class because they think you might help do that. They want you to succeed.
Debate Prep
100 Days of Homeless: An Essay About Finding Ground
by AYS Founder James Brown 1. Finding Joe’s Grave When Joe Buck Shugart died in the spring of 1989, we’d only recently engaged in our first experiences of what anybody would call a conversation, although he’d been my stepfather for 17 years at that point, since I was 7. Until then, my relationship with him…
Beware the Guru
“I’ll tell you”, said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper “what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your heart and soul to the smiter”. ―Miss Havisham, from Charles Dickens “Great Expectations” When you believe against yourself, in…
The Colossal Failure of Modern Yoga
Most contemporary yoga teachers cannot answer one simple question that any teacher should be able to answer without hesitation. And that question is: What do you teach? Written by AYS Founder James Brown I. Every time I look at the screen to write this I feel nauseous. I taught successfully within the yoga studio system for…
It’s Your Funeral
Scary Yoga Teachers: A Halloween Rant
Yoga at Home: Building a Self-Practice
Yesterday, a new Yoga Journal book, Yoga at Home: Inspiration for Creating Yoga Home Practice, was published. Authored by Linda Sparrowe, who has also written The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health: A Lifelong Guide to Wellness and the Yoga Journal book: Yoga, it’s described as “The definitive guide to creating your own home yoga…