Courage, Failure, Revolutionary Love: Come rest, honey, it’s a big time.

This piece was published in my newsletter Feb 17, 2026, and so many folks wrote back appreciating its message. I want to make it available to everyone, so here it is. These themes are still relevant for our current times. Enjoy! And thanks for reading. – Avery

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Come to yoga? Restorative Yoga with me on Tuesday evenings on zoom is a deeply relaxing way to resource your body, mind, and heart. It’s possibly one of the best weeks ever to come to class with me. Why? It’s a biiiig time. Maybe this is a week where some extra grounding, energy, mindfulness and embodied care might be just the thing.

The holy days are stacked, amongst them today’s Lunar New Year: we’ve shed our snakeskin and now a new path forward is revealed, awaiting our galloping hoofbeats and heartbeats! Today’s also an eclipse, not to mention this week’s other major astrology. Neptune and Saturn are changing signs, their forces are joining at 0° Aries. This has been called a ‘karmic reset.’

But you don’t have to tune in to the esoteric to know we are in a wild time of systemic disintegration, collapse, and change. It’s a time to take courageous aligned action; it’s also a time to rest. A time to prioritize the things that help you feel nourished and clear headed. These things are not a binary.

There’s an energy of coming together to meet what is arising, finding new ways to be in the movement of life. Humans are captivated by people who rise to do incredible things.

But we are also captivated by failure.

I have been moved, observing Olympic skater Ilia Malinin, and am curious why. Maybe we like to see others rise to greatness, but also are drawn to witness people’s failures because we long to see that we can strive to do something radically courageous, “fail,” and still be loved, still belong. Our wounds around exile and belonging run deep. To see someone take a big risk, and even when things don’t go the way they wished, that they can still be celebrated, loved, as all of it is taken into a bigger context of growth and exploration. I want that celebration and safety for you and me. And Ilia, of course.

This connects to the sacred risk of fighting the good fight for a more just, liberated world. The risk of believing it’s possible enough to live into it day by day, breath by breath.

Shoutout Jesse Jackson, rest in powerful peace. To witness such endurance of loving action, work, and the ripple effects of that willingness to continue to show up, stokes the fire in my heart. Tapas, to use the Sanskrit term.

 I’ve been inspired by the courageous loving action of communities coming together to resist ICE in Minneapolis. I’ve been inspired by my students in class, making beautiful connections in their asana practice and how it’s empowering the good work in their lives.

I just returned home from co-teaching the Queer Couples Yoga Retreat in Taos, and my god, such a deeply gorgeous, inspiring time that was. Queer love is truly medicine for our world. The tender, brave, healing that unfolded – and the joy that this allowed – was something powerful to witness, something strong and real! (Insert your fave Heated Rivalry fan art here.)

Years ago Jack Halberstam‘s book The Queer Art of Failure illuminated new space for me. Maybe it’s worth failing, if it means we get to build new forms of success. Maybe this moment we’re in, and how our yoga practice can help us meet it, is like that. We can transcend the old limitations by orienting towards a possibility of love and liberation beyond what we could have previously imagined.

Maybe we can be OK with ‘failing’ at yoga – of what we think it should look and feel like – even as we continue to practice. And through that practice, new possibilities are revealed that wash away the old ideas of success, and reveal something so much better.

Maybe in being willing to fail, we become free to glimpse the bigger horizon. Perhaps that willingness to have courage, to continue to tend the garden of possibility in the world, our lives, our nervous systems – IS the true victory.

I am always working towards that capacity in my own work and life. With the creation of anything heartfelt, there’s always risk. It’s vulnerable and messy to create. And it’s so important.

Every time you get on your yoga mat to practice, you are investing in – and building in real time – the possibility that you can feel better, clear out of the old patterns, pain, and exhaustion, and gently shift the scattered mind towards clarity and calm.

Through this, you resource not only your own life, but your activism, art, generosity, your ability to stand for truth.

To practice yoga strengthens the muscle of faith, faith in ourselves, and in our ability to create positive change.

All of it – the beauty and challenges, the profound and the mundane – all are mediums for our liberation… if we choose to engage with it that way.

Maybe the practice is the re-membering…

In Sadhana Support Collective this month we’re working with sutra 2.1, kriya yoga, the yoga of action. Maybe all that presents itself…

• is fuel for our tapas, our fiery devoted willingness …
• is the material for insight, svadhyaya…
• is an opportunity to strengthen our faith and practice surrender, Ishvara pranidhana.

If you’ve been meaning to make more space in you life for yoga, come. Come to class this week. Drop in, or join Sadhana Support Collective. We’re exploring heart opening! We’ve also started a new Yoga Accountability Club in SSC. Come connect…

It’s never too late to explore being more embodied. It’s never too late to regain mobility, support your ability to breathe freely, and have a more open chest, more stable joints, a more compassionate relationship with yourself.

It’s never too late to build a better posture, through alignment and functional strength, which not only helps reduce pain and injury, but also directly helps you feel more confident and emotionally resilient.

Yoga alignment will help you stand tall, be more broad shouldered, and have more energy, since the breath and vital organs will have more internal space, ease, circulation, and nourishment.

If you’ve felt for yourself how your body, mind and emotions are connected, it will make sense why this in turn helps diminish heavy emotions, depression, exhaustion, and low self worth.

The source of courage and love is within you.

Sometimes a storm needs to sweep the river bed clear, so some new energy can flow. Your body is such a powerful entry point to decompression, and a fresh start.