November 2020

Dear Friends,

I hope your mindful yoga practice keeps you grounded during these challenging times. 

I have been in written communication like this with you, dear yogis, since Budding Yogis (soon to become Circle Yoga) opened in 2003. By 2004, I had begun sending a monthly email to the community to share details about our upcoming workshops and classes. Soon I was including a little something personal in every email about what I was learning and how I was living out my mindfulness and yoga practice.

Eventually, we decided to call these notes Thoughts from Annie, and in 2010, I self-published all these early thoughts in a book. We used the minimal proceeds from that book to help support the Circle Yoga scholarship fund. (Guess what? You can still order Words to Be With: Thoughts from Annie March 2005-2010 from Amazon.)

In 2012, I decided (like many other people) to start blogging, and so I created my own website, Raw Mindfulness. I posted my monthly Thoughts from Annie there as well as other stories, ideas, and even poems. I have invited guest bloggers to Raw Mindfulness from time to time and I share lots of ideas and inspirations based on my study and practice of mindfulness. 

I have written these Thoughts from Annie as a monthly love letter to all of you. You were always out there mindfully reading, caring and growing with me. When I go back to old posts I am often amazed at my ability to communicate what was happening in me at that time. That was possible only because I knew you were there. 

Thank you for receiving my love letters every month for 15 years. And, while I have enjoyed the consistency of the monthly schedule, there’s something in me that aspires to slow down and allow my writing to be less driven by schedule. I am also making more space in my life for  extended family, reparations work (one piece of this is our family foundation The Pink House Foundation), working on my anti-racism and shifting cultures and systems of whiteness, co-leading our mindfulness sangha Opening Heart Mindfulness Community, and bringing light to issues of injustice through our Making-Visible project.

So, while I’ve decided to stop sending a monthly Thoughts from Annie, I find I am unable to stop writing about my life and my practice. I think that is how I learn best. So, it you want to read what I’m writing, you can subscribe to my writing on my blog, Elephant Journal, or by following me on Instagram or Facebook. Or join me in a class at Circle Yoga! 

I also hope and expect that Circle Yoga will continue to share my writing with you, as it manifests, through this email channel, just not every single month.

Please, please reach out to me anytime to ask a question, offer me your thoughts and feelings, or just say hello.

with love, 

Annie.