Misako Matsuoka Yoga

02/13/2023

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

From: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
Copyright ©: Mary Oliver

09/12/2022

Dear students, I have been away from this site for a long time. Hope you are all well. Tomorrow (Monday 9/12) I will be teaching live from an Island off Honduras. Class is via zoom at 10:30am US Pacific time. Reg in adv at Breathe Together Yoga. Blessings.

02/10/2022

From today’s zoom class- Yoga to your place from my place every week Breathe Together Yoga

01/28/2022

From “Earth Prayers”

02/25/2021

We love the moment in a seeming stillness,
the breath in the body of the loved one sleeping,
the highest leaves in the silent wood,
a great migration in the sky above:
the waters of the earth, the blood in the body,
the first, soft, stir in the silence beneath a strident
voice, the internal hands of our mind,
always searching for touch, thoughts seeking other
thoughts, seeking other minds, the great arrival
of form through all our hidden themes.

And this breath, in this body, able,
just for a moment to give and to take,
to ask and be told, to find and be found,
to bless and be blessed, to hold and be held.

We are all a sun-lit moment come from
a long darkness, what moves us always
comes from what is hidden, what seems
to be said so suddenly has lived
in the body for a long, long time.

Our life like a breath, then, a give
and a take, a bridge, a central movement,
between singing a separate self
and learning to be selfless

- from DAVID WHYTE: ESSENTIALS

02/14/2021

Every two years or so I offer a yin yoga training/intensive for yoga teachers as well those students who want to immerse themselves in the what/why and how’s of this style of yoga. This one will be completely online but interactive. PM if you are curious.

01/27/2021

Hello Friends & Students: I’m back from my teaching hiatus and looking forward to sharing online group classes with you starting February! Monday’s 10:30am pst FLOW and Thursday’s noon PST YIN. Signup at Breathe Together Yoga

12/09/2020

RIP Harold Budd - your wonderful music was a part of my yoga practices for so many years,

Musician known for his minimalist works, collaborations with Brian Eno, Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie

11/21/2020

I Don’t Want to be Demure or Respectable - Mary Oliver

I don’t want to be demure or
respectable.
I was that way, asleep for years.
That way, you forget too many
Important things.
How the little stones, even if you can’t
hear them,
are singing.
How the river can’t wait to get to the
ocean and
the sky, it’s been there before.
What traveling is that!
It is a joy to imagine such distances.
I could skip sleep for the next hundred
years.
There is a fire in the lashes of my eyes.
It doesn’t mater where I am, it could
be a small room.
The glimmer of gold Bohme saw on the
kitchen pot
was missed by everyone else in the house.

Maybe the fire in my lashes is a
reflection of that.
Why do I have so many thoughts, they
are driving me
crazy.
Why am I always going anywhere instead of
somewhere?
Listen to me or not, it hardly matters.
I’m not trying to be wise , that would be
foolish.
I’m just chattering.

11/09/2020

Mandala Flow today at 10:30am Pacific zoom - we will move and groove together. Sign up at least 30min in advance here:

11/08/2020

‘’Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.”
― Seamus Heaney

11/04/2020

Gentle Adaptive yoga is now held 9am Thursdays PST.
Register in advance at:

Adaptive Yoga is a practice for anyone interested in a slow paced yoga class that adapts postures to meet the needs of individual students. Postures and movements which improve balance, strength and flexibility may be modified with yoga props so that those who need to adjust postures due to restrict...