Okay, here we are. This is Jay Brown Yoga Talks podcast. My name is Jay Brown. Welcome to new people, and thanks to everyone else for being here. How's it going?

You doing all right? Me? I'm okay. Honestly, I'm having a bit of a battle within myself right now.

I had a plan to come in today with some counter energy. I didn't want to once again

give in to the dismay as much as I did last week if you were here. And I really wanted to see if I could

bring with me in this intro some inspiration,

some, I don't know, sense of camaraderie.

And I think that I'm only going to be able to partially fulfill that plan.

Like the latter part, the camaraderie I am able to summon,

but only in the dismay because the last 48 hours has unfolded in a way that just,

it makes it impossible for me to just try to look

past the immediate, psychosocial, physical realities that I'm facing. Of course, there's always a metaphysical reality in which I'm totally fine. But there's all

other kinds of experiences that I am having that are fundamentally connected to that and have to be sorted through.

And just now, before I hit record, I was looking for a little inspiration,

so I decided to read some emails that I got this week from podcast listeners. And this is the first email I came

across. It says, Hi, Jay. This is Masha from Berlin, Germany. I've been listening to your podcast

for over two years now, and it's become a weekly ritual for me. I have written many emails to you in my head,

but never sent them. Somehow today seems like the right day to do it. We're in week four of the

second lockdown over here, and things are starting to feel difficult. There's a lack of hope

settling in, and a growing pain over the separation and loss of community.

I do online yoga every morning to get out of bed,

and this morning the teacher started with a meditation on coming into power by meditating on abundance in your life,

trying to make the point that we already have everything we need

...