Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald. All that's happening on this green jewel in space. This past week, my son, he's about 10 and a half months old, he's almost 11 months old, and he started standing up on his own.

And then actually in the last two days, he took like two steps,

and then he took like four steps. He's kind of, I won't quite call it walking yet, because it's like

the four step lurch, and then he like falls into our arms, you know. But he's finding his balance,

and he's finding the axis, the axis to which we all find balance, and we all find ourselves upright as human beings,

right? We find ourselves upright. And today I want to talk about the axis a little bit because

the axis is something that finds its way into story upon story and myth upon myth and is obviously

something that human beings have a very deep relationship,

having the vertical alignment that we do. And there's something that I talked with my yoga

students about that's very interesting if we really think of it. And it's something that,

you know, it can sound, I'd say, a little hippie-ish

when I start talking about it. But then we can start to reflect on the truth of it a little bit,

and it's actually quite profound. So I'm watching my son wobble, like a weble wobble. I don't

know if you remember those. They were like

70s, 80s toys. The weble wobbles. They weble and they wobble, but they don't fall down.

Anybody remember that? So I'm watching my son weebling and wobbling, like a weble wobble.

He's got this big head and his feet. I'm like, wow, that's pretty good job

standing with feet that size and the head that big. But he's weebling and he's wobbling and he's

...