Explorer Yoga

02/08/2026

Ahimsa (non-violence) extends to the Earth and all its inhabitants 🙏🏻

02/07/2026

Fellow educators, this FREE online event is for you! ☺️🙏🏼

02/07/2026

SUPER EXCITED for these new offerings!

Greetings Dirty Hippie Yogis ✌🏼

Here is my upcoming schedule! Booking links below! *All classes besides one workshop will be at my home studio Explorer Yoga

Grounded Weekly 🌱
🔗 https://schedulebliss.com/ExplorerYoga/?gid=106679

Yogi Book Club 📚
🔗 https://schedulebliss.com/ExplorerYoga/?gid=106678

Incense Zen Garden 🪴
🔗 https://schedulebliss.com/admin/login?e=219

Dance Yoga CHOREO 🔥
🔗 https://schedulebliss.com/ExplorerYoga/?gid=106680

02/06/2026

Thought provoking piece. 🙏🏻

Sometimes, I don’t know what I am supposed to feel.

This isn’t about a right or wrong way to do anything.

It’s just honest.

We are seeing inequity at scale right now, both in the way people are being targeted and in the way public outrage and empathy is being allocated.

A prominent newscaster, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, has had her mother, Nancy Guthrie (84), abducted. Nancy is an elder with limited mobility and complex medical issues that are life-threatening without her medication. It seems to be a ransom situation.

The media response is profound.

And of course, it would be. That’s how empathy works.

That’s why empathy is both a blessing and the most virile force for maintaining inequity.

The response to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti was massive compared to the people who have been brutalized or killed who aren’t white.

And the response to the abduction of a well-connected upper class white elder is national viral news.

A lot of people have no idea what MMIW means.

It stands for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

Black children and women are 4x more likely to be abducted than white women and girls in the United States. That number is as much as 10x for Native women and girls.

I think West Virginians are so isolated and the coalfields are so rough, there’s no data that reflects how often our people go missing.

It’s a lot.

No one is really keeping up.

And I am deeply concerned about this rich elder who was abducted.

Truly.

That’s a mamaw, and I badly want her to be okay.

Mamaws are sacred.

I am profoundly impacted by the senseless executions of Good and Pretti.

As I should be.

And I recently made a post about Pretti. I meant every word.

But a part of me was wincing because of all the people I didn’t post about.

Now, immediately after any public-facing tragedy, I start running statistical models in my head about how social media is going to react and in what waves and layers.

Social media moves in stages like the waves of grief.

We have to wait for the initial outrage and emotional reaction.
We have to wait for the propaganda to counter the narrative.
We have to wait for the deep thinkers to process their thoughts.
We have to wait for the broader population to plagiarize the deep thinkers.
We have to wait for the algorithms to determine whose voice matters.
We have to wait while people from different groups weigh in and form consensus separate from the mainstream.
We have to wait for the cult of personality influencers to weigh in with hot takes.
We have to wait for the first wave of people who publicly reacted to bend to the second and third waves and apologize for what they omitted or whatever harms they caused.

And we have to weigh all of this because we are living on the record at global scale and being threatened with being accused of “domestic terrorism“ and put in a database of dissenters if we speak up.

What are we even doing?

What even is this convoluted reality?

It’s empathy that maintains inequity because “regular” people can relate to the “regular” and “standard” American narratives.

It’s empathy that means that to stay in the conversation at all, we have to jump on those stories people are noticing because those people are the ones who get to decide what matters.

It’s empathy that makes people think about posts like this one I’m writing right now as attention-seeking or race-baiting or selfish.

It’s easier to cry for a face that mirrors your own.

It’s easier when it hits home.

We can care about Savannah Guthrie’s mother. Unless you’re a person who needs to do profound shadow work, you already do care.

This is an objectively awful tragedy.

But I’m watching the System still responding in a way that reaffirms that some lives are worth saving at all costs like sacred relics while the rest of us are acceptable collateral damage.

The whole world knows how important Savannah Guthrie’s mom’s medications are to her life.

I recently met a Mamaw here in WV coal camps who had a huge sore on her foot. She showed it to me. I asked her how she could walk, and she laughed and said, “I reckon it’s the neuropathy makes so it don’t hurt so bad.”

She can’t afford healthcare, and there’s not many options for getting care in a place with almost no providers where a disproportionate number of people are chronically ill.

I know people who live every day with life-threatening illness who can’t get healthcare.

I’m probably one of those people.
I’ve definitely been that person before.
I just marvel every day that I keep being alive.

And to be honest, I’m more concerned tonight about Savannah Guthrie’s mom than I am about myself.

I’m a mom.

We Poors know our place, I guess, in the economy of worth.
We rail against it sometimes.

But we have also trauma bonded so much with the System that we blame ourselves for being selfish when we even mention our own struggles.

We don’t want to center ourselves in someone else’s narrative, but our narratives are written in our obituaries you’ll never see.

Nobody even does the autopsy because it’s expensive.

“Natural causes.”

Or, you can learn about us on those social media posts with the mugshots people love to laugh about.

We generationally-Poor people have Stockholm Syndrome at scale. People in the coal camps and the projects and the reservations have to see ourselves and our pain as overhead. A thing to be toughed out in silence.

Victims get rescue parties and memorials. Survivors get ignored until they die sight unseen.

The system functions like a abusive parents. There are Golden Children and Scapegoats.

All our problems are caused by the Scapegoats.

All our innocent, precious ones are the Golden Children.

This isn’t about Savannah Guthrie’s mother— who genuinely seems like a beautiful soul who genuinely deserves to be rescued.

This is about how caring about her and trying to save her validates the illusion that the System is Good and Just and Protective and Functioning.

It gives us all a reason to see the Good in the system and marvel at the teary-eyed police chief who can’t speak because he’s struggling to maintain his emotions while countless people are rotting in cells and in the community without their life-saving medications.

They live in life-threatening situations every day.

Immigrants and even citizens are being abducted daily by the federal government and denied life-saving care.

And mentioning it as a Scapegoat reinforces that we are the problem.

The Scapegoat is the truth teller trying to save and hold the family together even while the family is actively killing them and their chances at a better life.

Someone has to shed blood for sins in a system like this.

And isn't it fitting for a "Christian Nation"?

The Golden Children claim to follow an immigrant, homeless, Brown, state-executed prisoner who went into a place of worship and overturned the merchant tables (destruction of property) as an act of protest.

They sing songs about His sacrifice.

But if He showed up today—in a holler, or on a reservation, in a rent-controlled apartment complex, or in a border camp— He’d end up on a database as a “domestic terrorist.”

They’d execute Him all over again, wash their pure hands from culpability, then thank God for their safety while they did it.

Image of shelves from my trailer with little things I’ve managed to pick up along the way because I didn’t know what else to put here.

01/31/2026

Be mindful of these signs. You could save a life 🙏🏻

As we near the end of January, we wanted to take a moment to recognize National Human Trafficking Prevention Month and share this important reminder: human trafficking can happen in any community, and awareness is a key part of prevention. Sharing this information could help someone find support.

01/31/2026

Today’s agenda:

Yoga
Put the soup on
Fill up the tub
Soak
Meditate
Eat soup
Read or write
Watch birds and stretch
Nap
Meditate.
Practice lovingkindness
Practice ahimsa (nonviolence)
Stay warm
Help someone, even in a tiny way

Much love,
Denise

01/26/2026

SNOW DAY! Our Monday and Tuesday classes are CANCELED due to the weather. (Our Beginner Series will be extended by a week). Stay warm and safe! ❄️🙏🏻

Photo: Two people walking on the Paint Creek Recreational Trail, taken on December 25, 2019 by Denise Ruby.

01/26/2026

WOW! It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 YEARS since we opened the studio! Roberta Milliken is still teaching, and we plan on having a 10 year celebration soon (once the weather is a bit more favorable)! 🎉

See the photos: From Bridge Street construction to business openings, 2026 may actually be 2016. bit.ly/4riN9Jw

01/25/2026

If you’ve been feeling troubled about recent political events, you’re not alone. You might’ve wondered what to do about your feelings toward family, friends, neighbors, and others who are living in a different reality.

Here’s our #1 recommendation to help you deal with your negative feelings:
METTA (LOVINGKINDNESS) MEDITATION.

The practice of Metta meditation is a beautiful support to other awareness practices. One recites specific words and phrases evoking a "boundless warm-hearted feeling." The strength of this feeling is not limited to or by family, religion, or social class. We begin with our self and gradually extend the wish for well-being happiness to all beings.
There are different descriptions of the practice. The following is a basic set of instructions from the book "The Issue at Hand" by Gil Fronsdal written as a gift to the community. It is freely given.

*Brief Instructions for Loving-Kindness Meditation

To practice loving-kindness meditation, sit in a comfortable and relaxed manner. Take two or three deep breaths with slow, long and complete exhalations. Let go of any concerns or preoccupations. For a few minutes, feel or imagine the breath moving through the center of your chest - in the area of your heart.

Metta is first practiced toward oneself, since we often have difficulty loving others without first loving ourselves. Sitting quietly, mentally repeat, slowly and steadily, the following or similar phrases:
May I be happy. May I be well. May I be safe. May I be peaceful and at ease.

While you say these phrases, allow yourself to sink into the intentions they express. Loving-kindness meditation consists primarily of connecting to the intention of wishing ourselves or others happiness. However, if feelings of warmth, friendliness, or love arise in the body or mind, connect to them, allowing them to grow as you repeat the phrases.

As an aid to the meditation, you might hold an image of yourself in your mind's eye. This helps reinforce the intentions expressed in the phrases.

After a period of directing loving-kindness toward yourself, bring to mind a friend or someone in your life who has deeply cared for you. Then slowly repeat phrases of loving-kindness toward them:
May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease.
As you say these phrases, again sink into their intention or heartfelt meaning. And, if any feelings of loving-kindness arise, connect the feelings with the phrases so that the feelings may become stronger as you repeat the words.

As you continue the meditation, you can bring to mind other friends, neighbors, acquaintances, strangers, animals, and finally people with whom you have difficulty. You can either use the same phrases, repeating them again and again, or make up phrases that better represent the loving-kindness you feel toward these beings.

In addition to simple and perhaps personal and creative forms of metta practice, there is a classic and systematic approach to metta as an intensive meditation practice. Because the classic meditation is fairly elaborate, it is usually undertaken during periods of intensive metta practice on retreat.

Sometimes during loving-kindness meditation, seemingly opposite feelings such as anger, grief, or sadness may arise. Take these to be signs that your heart is softening, revealing what is held there. You can either shift to mindfulness practice or you can—with whatever patience, acceptance, and kindness you can muster for such feelings—direct loving-kindness toward them. Above all, remember that there is no need to judge yourself for having these feelings.

Source: mettainstitute.org

PEACE BEGINS WITHIN EACH OF US 🙏🏻