humble pie
my own piece of the collective (catastrophe) cake we share
There is so very much going down in the world that is so very much more urgent than this request. Yet I must make it, and so it is with a slice of humble pie that I write to you now. If you want to bypass the story and go straight to the options to support me paying my fees by 1 March for a Master of Environmental Management at the University of Queensland, here’s the gofundme campaign. The total amount listed is for the full year, but for this next term I’ve already managed to pay $2,333. So all that’s needed at the moment is about 2,000 Australian dollars more (and those of you in the US and Europe, remember your dollars convert to more here!).
Another great option for support that allows me to give back to you in gratitude is to subscribe here! Each week I share a subscriber-only MYOGA Seasons practice. Click that link for more info on how that unfolds, and/or click below to subscribe.
In 2021 I went through insolvency, a slightly less traumatic form of bankruptcy. It was my personal rendition of Pluto in the last degrees of Capricorn squaring my nearly anaretic Aries Sun (don’t fret if astrology is not your language—just let the few instances I speak it wash over you!). What I mean by that is that Pluto, or Hades, the god of razing things down to below-ground, to the chthonic level of source strength, has been in Capricorn, the sign of systematic and pragmatic building, since I first opened MYOGA’s home studio - Powa Centre - on Marion St, Wellington, New Zealand in 2008.
I opened the doors with just enough cash to cover the first couple months rent, so I applied for an overdraft on my business bank account to give me a bit of back-up security. The advisor at Kiwibank questioned whether yoga was really a business and denied my application. I kid you not. Just a few years prior in New Zealand I had been asked if yoga was a cult! Those were early days. There has since been a conversion of awareness and interest, as well as a boom and a bust, in what is now firmly The Wellness Industry, in NZ and worldwide.
However, I’ve yet to become a good surfer who gauges the waves accurately. I have tended to be too early, which is just as frustrating as being too late. Overall, I trust that my scouting tendencies serve us all, and I am learning, as I trust the longer journey more and more, to have more confidence in my hunches. Which, I tell ya, is often hard to do when almost no one else can see yet what you’re on about at the time. It’s only because I’ve lived long enough and have seen how those things I’ve championed in their early days have eventually become mainstream, that I can now put more volume and strength to my own voice and visions.
For years, but especially the past 10 years, I have felt a wee bit like Chicken Little calling, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” And not feeling heard or heeded.
Of course, others like Bill McKibben and Kathryn Hayhoe, among so many others famous, infamous, as well as largely unknown, have been calling out for far longer. I can only imagine the distress many scientists have felt for decades now. Not only have folks not been listening, they have been actively putting their foot down on the gas/petrol pedal. Literally.
This past term in Biogeography and Geomorphology class, I didn’t have to imagine the distress of the scientists trying to get the world to wake up to our dire straits. I felt it. I left one class where we compared the Pleistocene/Eocene era’s circumstances to our own. Initially it felt hopeful in a oh-the-world’s-been-here-before-and-survived way. So many factors were the same—the increase of temperature, the increase of CO2, the adjustments plants and animals made. What was different was the time scale. What took place over 100,000+ years then, we have caused in 100+ years of industrialization.
Plants are slow migrators, since they rely on seeds and birds and other means of movement, and trees are generally slow growers anyway. So they cannot keep up with the pace we’re setting. Animals try but they also do not generally go the speed of locomotives and all those motorways have either cut them off from their natural migratory and breeding pathways, or killed them on the roads when they tried to keep to their millenia-long routines that we mindlessly cut into.
What I felt when I came out of that class was physically sick to my stomach.
Plus panic.
Topped by floods of grief.
No matter how much we actively love a person, or a planet, we’ll still feel the loss of them. Any (largely unconscious) tactic to avoid heartbreak by not facing the death of our bodies, or the destruction we wreak on our beautiful planet, will not save us.
Through the years since I first worked as an environmental canvasser at age 16, I have done my tiny part by championing what we can do, but after walking for the water, ecological activism training at the Right Livelihood Centre in Sweden, 6 weeks at ecodharma in Catalunya supporting their Ulex training, a week in the wild, and an artivist’s journey down the Hudson River on a solar boat, I couldn’t go back to the privileged environment of the yoga studio and pretend I was making enough impact. At the NZ industry-level yoga conferences in 2018 and 2019, I presented on social enter-prize-ing yoga, which was a start. But I needed more.
So I went on to create The Amazon Academy (that’s the YouTube channel link and here’s the FB page with far more postings) with the catchline “Awaken the Heart to Action”. We were privileged to have 4 expeditions with our chief Amazon, Miriam Lancewood, that included ecological awareness of the lands that held us. We asked ourselves, “What issues do the waters, the trees, the animals face here and what can we bring to them?” Then 2020 put all of our fireside conversations about what we’d do if the apocalypse or a pandemic hit to the the test, and I left the city.
Though The Amazon Academy was a bridge, I still didn’t feel like I was making enough of a difference, or having direct impact, or even comprehending to any great degree the fullness of the problem. I found myself flummoxed by climate deniers. As a result, I pulled into myself more and more.
Since so much felt terrible and so little felt funny, I started inquiring into what, exactly, was funny. What made me laugh? Very little. Yet that awareness spurred me to investigate stand up comedy as a means of communicating what I care about in a way people could receive it - through humour. I’m still not a natural comedian, but I keep showing up and attempting to turn the grief into guffaws.
Another reason I found myself applying for grad school was that I couldn’t get work, at least not in any significant role that would be part of the solution. So after co-writing an astro book and the wake-up call of my brother’s death, I found myself in Brisbane and it occurred to me to get a degree in what I care about - the environment and how to manage our human relationship to all aspects of it. Not how to manage the environment which is what a Master of Environmental Management sounds like, but rather how to manage the human relationships to the environment. I might have gone for Conservation instead, but without an undergrad degree in science my only foot in the door was the 2 year MENV. And, lo and behold, I was accepted!
As a New Zealand citizen I am a domestic student in Australia so the fees are hugely reduced from the international rates, which makes it possible for me at all. As I establish myself in a new city and country, I am now teaching a bit more yoga (on top of the online astro work) and able to contribute more to my fees, however, the total is still more than I currently have.
Thus this campaign for your support.
It all adds up, so no amount is too small. The same goes for our individual efforts to come to terms with our relationship to Earth - any positive shift we make, no matter how seemingly small, is more than nothing and moves us closer.
What’s been amazing about this, once I got over myself and put a paw up for support, is that I feel a greater collective responsibility. When I am turning around and sharing what I’m learning with you, like I did here, here and here in my first term, my focus is sharper in the classroom. Because so many of you have my back financially and energetically, I literally feel like we’re all in this together.
I suspect some form of science communication is what I’m headed for, but we’ll see what sparks fly and what threads weave in. My second of 4 terms starts next week and I’m currently enrolled in:
Foundations in Environmental Studies
Climate Change & Environmental Management
Geographical Information Systems
At the moment I see myself doing research in both water and sound. From there I’m guessing that my thesis will incorporate the creative and healing arts I’ve been steeped in up til now, and apply them to wider ecosystems than just one human body or one community.
Thank you for your support and may you, and all beings in your realm, be well,
Mox
