Nico's Flows // Determination
& A flow to Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana B
Nico’s Flows is my regular newsletter designed to help yoga teachers plan meaningful, intentional classes. Each post includes readings and reflections, curated yoga music, and vinyasa yoga sequences for teachers or anyone who loves to move.
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Dharma Talk
I live in Montana, where the seasons are always dramatic and the weather has never been very predictable, but it has felt especially so this year. Every winter I tend to feel slightly disconnected from nature, but this year even more so. It hasn’t been snowing much, so my time outside has slowly been replaced with gym workouts and swimming at the pool.
I picked up Devotions almost as a pull back toward nature, even if it came through a book. I flipped it open and landed on a poem called Evidence. It’s a three-part poem, and the second part immediately drew me in.
The whole poem is below, but the last sentence stayed with me: “And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.”
I felt myself go still reading that. It was a remembering of something I have known before but tend to forget. The point of life is to live.
I notice how easily I lose sight of that. When I am moving through something hard. When I start questioning where my work is taking me. When I think about my relationships, or the state of the world, or death and destruction, or even something as simple and heavy as cows in a feed lot. Life can feel cruel, overwhelming, and uncertain.
And yet, everything around us keeps going. The grass keeps growing. The trees keep renewing. Life continues, not because it is easy, but because that is its nature.
So today I find myself asking: can simply living be enough? Can I take in the sun, nourish my body, keep breathing, and let that be a form of purpose? Can growth be quiet and steady rather than something I have to chase or prove?
