Welcome to the Commian podcast. This is Jeff Krasno. How many of you may receive my weekly

Sunday commusing article where I address a breadth of issues from the spiritual to the sociopolitical.

And on occasion, I will also record an audio version of these articles and release

it here as a bonus episode. So this week's missive is written and delivered by my commune co-founder,

brother from another mother and partner, Jake Laub. Now when I use the word yoga, please don't misconstrue it for pretzling yourself

into a human knot. Yoga, Sanskrit for to yoke, is quite simply union. Ultimately, a sensation of

samadhi or integrated consciousness when the illusion that you are a separate self melts away.

Now, along the highway to this somatic saturi, the yogic path offers myriad roadside rest areas to experience unification, body and mind, nature and yourself,

light and shadow, and inevitably life and death. But the commodified yoga of the West is too often

redolent with the perfume of the ego. Its objectified lithe, lycra-clad forms,

its whimsical handstands, its bespoke accessories are designed for the gaze of others. Of course,

when we identify with the ego that tells us that we are what

other people think, or what we have, or our position in society, then we doom ourselves to

another form of exercise, running on a hedonic treadmill with no stop button. So in this week's missive, my dear friend Jake

recounts his journey out of the performative and into the reformative, a process of reforming the

self as something seen in one's own eye and not through those of others. This process is none other than the practice

of yoga itself. So feel free to send me a note anytime by Pigeon or at Jeff K at Onecommeant.com

and follow my daily exhortations on Instagram at Jeff Kresno. So without further delay, here's this

week's commusing by Jake Laub titled The Mosquito Bites and Iron Bull.

This is Jake Lab reading, The Mosquito Bites an Iron Bull, from ballet to yoga the hard way around.

I used to have four extra bones in my feet.

Now I have three, but I've decided the rest can stay where they are.

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