Dear Community, The weather in Massachusetts is finally, finally beautiful. The sky is blue, the air doesn't hurt my face, and I can sleep with the windows open. For someone who travels between two places with intense weather (Arkansas summers and Massachusetts winters are extreme sports), pleasant temperatures are a reason to celebrate. So I'm offering another free class tonight: Free Online Class Yoga Nidra --guided meditation that induces deep relaxation-- Tuesday, June 16

Dear Community, In fifth grade, I became something of a child musical prodigy. I had picked up the saxophone a year earlier through the usual elementary school band process, but for whatever reason, I took to it like a duck to water. It came naturally, and my little heart was grateful to have found an outlet for all of my big emotions. As the years went on, though, performing started to feel stressful. So much of it seemed outside my control, and if there is one thing a perso

Dear Community, If you spend any time seriously thinking about happiness, you will eventually run into the same uncomfortable wall: life is genuinely, undeniably hard. Cancer exists. War exists. Poverty, grief, violence: all of it is relentlessly real. Talking cheerfully about happiness in the shadow of all that can feel not just naive, but almost offensive. So what do we do with that tension? There are many serious thinkers who wrestle with this question. My next guest on Ha

Dear Community, I primarily teach what some might call "nontraditional" yoga. But here's the thing: all modern yoga, especially in the United States, is nontraditional. Even the styles considered more classical, like power yoga, were only developed in the 1920s. So instead of asking how traditional a class is, I think the better question is: does it incorporate as many of the eight limbs of yoga as possible? That's where the real value lies. My approach to music-based yoga co

Dear Community, Recently, I had the chance to be a guest on Just Jared, a podcast produced by the college where I work and hosted by our dean, Jared Auclair. The conversation centered on a question I think about a whole lot: how do we build academic careers, pathways, and support systems that actually fit human lives, rather than asking people to shrink themselves to fit rigid institutional structures? I shared something personal in that conversation. My own life, I said, is

Dear Community, In every job interview I've had, I've been asked some form of the question, "What is your biggest weakness?" We all know the expected response is to mention a harmless, relatable flaw (like "I'm a perfectionist") and then share a story of overcoming it (such as "Now I'm a perfectionist who laughs more! Yay!"). But do we truly know our biggest weakness? Deep down, for real? For my last job interview (for the position I currently hold), I decided to answer that

Dear Community, I think most academic deans will tell you their jobs can be frustrating. We are in charge of a lot, but we are also pawns in other people's plans. We don't get to decide our budgets, but we get to deliver the news of other people's decisions. We can create programs that transform the future of higher education, but we also get to work for years on proposals that come to nothing. The other morning I was riding the train into Boston and feeling beat down about t

Dear Community, A few weeks ago, I took a red-eye flight from Boston to Memphis to meet my family and visit Graceland. Why Graceland? Well, a number of years ago, when I was just starting in academic administration, a colleague invited me to a conference at the hotel next to Graceland. I decided to take the tour of the house while I was there...and it has haunted me ever since. Y'all, I was not prepared for Graceland back then. I didn't know much about it, other than it was E

Dear Community, I am a yoga teacher, a meditation teacher, a researcher of happiness, an academic dean, a professor of English, and a respected member of my communities. I am also a human being with anxieties, worries, doubts, and insecurities. But because of all of the above, people become rather uncomfortable if I display any of these emotions in a noticeable way. When confronted with difficult situations, I need to remain the calmest in the room for the people who work fo

Dear Community, When discussing happiness with people, one of the misconceptions I come across the most is that happiness to elusive. People feel like it exists somewhere--as if happiness is Where's Waldo--and they just haven't had the good luck to find it yet. That's not how happiness works, though. Happiness is a set of practices that we choose to engage in. These practices are not always easy, though. In fact, they often feel difficult to do, especially when life is hard a

Dear Community, Whenever I teach any music-based yoga class, I listen to the playlist multiple times in the hours before class to mentally go over what I want to teach. This morning, in preparation to teach a Sunday reggae power yoga class (because it was going to be 57 degrees in Boston, which is basically Jamaica for New Englanders), I was jamming out in the shower to Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry." How could one not? I remember growing up my mom would sing that song at

Dear Community, Have you ever stopped to consider what a miracle it is you came to be? You are the product of generations and generations of human beings who loved, cried, laughed, and lived. What an incredible thing that you are here--right now--today. Not a single moment has ever better than now, no matter what your brain tries to tell you. I promise you this is so, and that it is within your hands to make today the best of your life. You don't even have to do anything spec