As products of our highly competitive and specialized society, with all its ladders and ceilings, neat compartments, titles, and categories, to remain in an expanded state can feel like swimming upstream.

The time to recognize the power of community is here again. Not as some romanticized renaissance from times past, but as a necessarily new and innovative response to "life as it is offering itself to us."

Compassion is the litmus test.

I believe myself capable of great things. Some days it feels as if I can't do it alone. It is nice to know I don't have to.

You can't make yourself be compassionate, you can only keep stepping back and becoming a larger container in which compassion wants to live. The practice should open us up, and crack open our hearts again and again.

Taking time out each day to relax and renew is essential to living well.

What you want to get as a teacher is not an email or a Facebook post that says, 'I learned so much about headstands in your class'. What you want to get is 'I learned so much about myself and my life in your class'.