Sacred Space School of Yoga and Yoga with Carol Ann

09/30/2026

09/29/2026

Have you felt called to deepen your practice—or to share yoga with others?

Our 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Sacred Space School of Yoga begins October 30, and we have two spots left.

You don’t have to know yet whether you want to teach. You can begin with a desire to learn, grow, and make more room for yoga in your life.

Message me for more information. I’d love to talk with you. 🤍

09/23/2026

09/21/2026

Shanti Mantra (Om Dyauh Shanti peace prayer from the Yajur Veda):

Om

May we hear only what is good for all.
May we see only what is good for all.
May we serve you, Lord of Love, all our life.
May we be used to spread your peace on earth.

Om shanti shanti shanti (peace, peace, peace)

09/20/2026

Every morning I read sacred texts. I have several books from different religious and sacred traditions that I read and contemplate.

This morning I came across this verse from 1 Corinthians 16:14:

“Let all your deeds be done in love.” (Aramaic translation)

It grabbed my attention immediately.

How can such a simple statement be so difficult to put into practice?

If the whole world—all religions, all nations, all people—truly lived by this one simple principle, what would our world look like?

Would we have wars? Would people go hungry while others had more than enough? Would we allow people to suffer when we had the ability to help them?

So why is this so hard?

We filter our thoughts and actions through the experiences of our lives. Much of the time, we do this without even realizing it.

We develop our likes and dislikes, our preferences, our beliefs, our fears, and our chosen comforts. And when something—or someone—falls outside those familiar boundaries, conflict can arise.

So what is the answer?

Here is where it becomes especially interesting to me within Christianity.

Jesus repeatedly called people to repent.

In our modern understanding, we sometimes hear the word repent primarily as feeling sorry, ashamed, or remorseful. But the Greek word used in the New Testament, metanoeō, carries the idea of a change of mind or purpose—a reorientation that leads to a different way of living.

In other words: change your mind, and then allow that change to transform the way you live.

Examine what we are thinking. Examine the beliefs through which we see another person. And if what we find is inconsistent with the nature of the God we claim to follow—Love, mercy, compassion—be willing to change it.

Because when our minds change, our actions change.

And perhaps that is where Paul’s simple instruction becomes much more challenging:

“Let all your deeds be done in love.”

Not just what we do for the people we like.

Not just what we do for people who believe as we do.

Not just what we do when love is easy.

All that we do.

If we are going to filter everything through Love, perhaps we must first be willing to change our minds about what Love actually requires of us.

And then allow our actions to flow from that understanding.

Blessing and peace,
Carol Ann

09/17/2026

From one of my readings this morning.
We must stop seeing God as out there and seeing God in here, in me, in yourself, in every living creature, and the entire universe. It is the only hope.

1 May the Lord of Love, who projects himself Into this universe of myriad forms,
From whom all beings come and to whom all Return - may he grant us the grace of wisdom.

2 He is fire and the sun, and the moon And the stars. He is the air and the sea, And the Creator.

3 He is this boy, he is that girl, he is This man, he is that woman, and he is This old man, too, tottering on his staff.
His face is everywhere.

4 He is the blue bird; he is the green bird With red eyes; he is the thundercloud, And he is the seasons and the seas.
He has no beginning; he has no end.
He is the source from whom the worlds evolve.

5 From his divine power comes forth all this Magical show of name and form, of you And me, which casts the spell of pain and pleasure.
Only when we pierce through this magic veil
Do we see the One who appears as many.

6 Two birds of beautiful plumage, comrades Inseparable, live on the selfsame tree.
One bird eats the fruit of pleasure and pain;
The other looks on without eating.

7 Forgetting our divine origin,
We become ensnared in the world of change And bewail our helplessness. But when We see the Lord of Love in all his glory,
Adored by all, we go beyond sorrow.

8 What use are the scriptures to anyone
Who knows not the one source from whom they all come?
Only those who realize him as ever present
Within the heart attain abiding joy.

- The Shvetashvatara Upanishad IV. 1-8
(2200-2400 Years Old)

09/13/2026

I took this picture at a park that I walk almost daily. As I sat down on the bench and looked out, there was only one word that came to my mind: Om

To Yogis, Om is more than a word. It is a sacred sound and one of the oldest spiritual symbols of the Indian traditions.

The Māṇḍūkya Upanishad begins with an extraordinary declaration: “Om—this syllable is this whole world.”

It then connects AUM with the states of human consciousness:

A — the waking state, our experience of the physical world.
U — the dreaming state, the inner world of mind.
M — deep, dreamless sleep.
The Silence — turīya, “the fourth”: the consciousness underlying and transcending the other three.

Om therefore points not simply toward a sound, but toward the wholeness of existence and consciousness.

Across spiritual traditions, we also find fascinating images connecting creation with sound, word, or breath.

In Genesis, creation unfolds through divine speech:

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
— Genesis 1:3

The Psalms echo the same imagery:

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.”
— Psalm 33:6

And the Gospel of John begins:

“In the beginning was the Word.”
— John 1:1

The Greek word translated as Word is Logos—a rich concept associated with divine reason, ordering principle, and expression.

These traditions are not saying exactly the same thing, and I don’t believe we need to make them the same to appreciate the beautiful resonance between them.

The Vedic traditions contemplate sacred sound through Om. Christianity and Judaism speak of divine word and breath. The Rig Veda’s ancient Creation Hymn goes even further into mystery, asking whether anyone can ultimately know how creation itself arose.

Perhaps that mystery is part of what makes Om so powerful.

When we chant Om, we move from sound into silence, from waking awareness through the subtler dimensions of consciousness, and finally toward that which cannot easily be named.

We also receive physical benefits. Chanting Om can encourage relaxation and help calm the nervous system. 

Maybe we aren’t returning literally to the first vibration of the universe.

Maybe we are remembering something equally profound: beneath all our differences, we participate in one mysterious reality.

Blessings and Om,
Carol Ann

09/12/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about how easily fear can change the way we see one another.

We hear something often enough, especially about a group of people we may not personally know, and eventually we can begin to believe that they are all the same.

All Muslims.
All Christians.
All immigrants.
All Democrats.
All Republicans.
All Black people.
All white people.

But people are not “all.”

They are individuals.

September 11 was horrific. The lives lost that day should never be minimized, and neither should the reality of terrorism or religious extremism.

But the people who committed those acts do not represent every Muslim any more than someone committing violence in the name of Christianity represents every Christian.

I have Muslim friends. They love their families. They love this country. They want to live their lives in peace, just as I do.

And one of the beautiful things about America is that our Constitution protects their right to worship according to their conscience just as surely as it protects mine. It even specifically says that there can be no religious test for public office.

That matters.

Because religious freedom isn’t really religious freedom if it only belongs to people who believe what I believe.

But there is something deeper here that has been weighing on my heart.

For those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus, what do we do when fear of people who are different from us begins to turn into suspicion, anger or even contempt?

Jesus said some incredibly difficult things about this.

He didn’t simply tell us to love the people who love us.

He told us to love our enemies.

He told us to pray for those who persecute us.

He taught forgiveness.

And again and again, we see him moving toward people whom society and religion had pushed to the margins.

That doesn’t mean we pretend evil doesn’t exist.

It doesn’t mean we ignore violence or refuse to protect innocent people.

It doesn’t mean we have to agree with another person’s religion, politics or worldview.

But surely it means we cannot allow hatred to take up residence in our hearts.

I learned something when I was very young that has stayed with me throughout my life: when I recognize prejudice or bias within myself, I have a responsibility to examine it.

Not justify it.
Not feed it.
Not find people who will reinforce it.

Examine it.

Where did it come from?
Is it true?
Is it fair?
Am I judging an individual for something another person has done?
Am I seeing the human being in front of me, or only the label I have placed upon them?

That kind of inner work can be uncomfortable. But I believe it is necessary.

Perhaps one of the simplest questions we can ask ourselves is:

Would I want to be judged by the worst person who shares one of my labels?

I wouldn’t.

I wouldn’t want someone to decide who I am because of the worst thing ever done by a Christian, an American, a woman—or any other category someone could place me in.

So how could I fairly do that to another human being?

I don’t think the healing our country needs is going to come from deciding which group of people we should fear next.

I think it begins much closer to home.

In our conversations.

In the things we choose to repeat.

In whether we are willing to question something before accepting it as truth.

In whether we are willing to know people rather than simply know things about people.

And in our willingness to examine our own hearts.

We don’t have to share a religion to respect one another.

We don’t have to share a political opinion to recognize one another’s humanity.

And we don’t have to pretend that evil doesn’t exist in order to refuse to condemn innocent people for the evil committed by someone else.

For me, this is not about being politically correct.

It is about something much older and much deeper.

Love your neighbor.

And when Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” the answer he gave made it very difficult to draw the circle as small as we sometimes would like it to be.

Maybe our world doesn’t need smaller circles right now.

Maybe it needs us to make them a little bigger.