Robin Bradford | Telling Stories

What I learned from a chameleon, or how to change without really trying

Recently I returned to Lotus Lake, a small retreat center near Houston, for a weeklong silent meditation retreat. Last year I spent hours walking by the small lake. Early in the morning, mist rose from the water and white lotus flowers dotted the water. At dusk, frogs clicked and bellowed. The lake teemed with life, [...]

Floating with effort

It’s nearly a month into the newest new year and I’m wondering how the intentions we set are going. How are you doing with your resolution or “word”? Did we already forget? Did we forgive ourselves for forgetting? Did we allow ourselves to renegotiate a perhaps too earnest goal? Did life get in the way? [...]

Being Naked

Jim likes to tell people the first time he saw me I was naked. I had just moved with my boyfriend into a row of shotgun shacks in the country. Lacking air conditioning, the house always had the front door open to the breeze. So as I stepped from the shower into the bedroom Jim [...]

Broken Gold Bought Here

That’s what a sign I passed recently said. And it made me think of my Buddhist practice. In college when I discovered Zen through Suzuki Roshi’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Buddhism’s wisdom rang true to me. “When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door,” he wrote. Having been born in Japan, I [...]

Highs and Lows

Over Labor Day weekend we visited my brother and his family. We packed a lot in with three busy nephews and seven adults converging from three states. One busy day included eating home-made crepes stuffed with salmon or Nutella, lighting left-over firecrackers, visiting an amusement park called Frontier City, and having a water balloon fight [...]

My Uncle Walter

For many years I have ended my yoga practice silently bowing to people I miss who have died. Forehead pressed to the floor, I reconnect with the lessons they taught me. Recently, I added another. The summer I was 12 I visited my aunt and uncle in Chicago. They lived in a high-rise overlooking Lake [...]

Practicing Non-Practicing

While traveling in England for two weeks with my family recently, I left my yoga and meditation practice behind. Lugging our suitcases through the London Underground, I was glad I didn’t have an unwieldy yoga mat. Staying up late and embarking together for a day of sight-seeing, I was grateful to sleep in instead of [...]

Giving without Cost

Sometimes when I go to teach, I’m the one who learns. This week one of my chair yoga students died. Regis was in his late 50s, black and gay. He told me he used to weigh 500 lbs and couldn’t walk. In the month or two I knew him he was still a large man but [...]

Changing House

This winter I spent a week at Kripalu, the famous yoga retreat center in Western Massachusetts. On a walk to the frozen lake I came across a little gray house on the barren shore. (The sign above the door reads plainly: CHANGING HOUSE.) I thought to myself, “Wow, if only changing were as easy as [...]

Showing Up

Tree stump rings at Bastrop State Park, November 2009 Nearly 20 years ago I was invited to Yaddo, the famous artists’ colony where writers like John Cheever and Katherine Anne Porter went to toil and drink. After much effort and expense, I arrived there in November. My first day I woke early, walked to the [...]