March 2025: Prana and The Waters of March

Happy March, Galaxy friends. You know those plants that curl up when you touch them? That’s me in winter. I go to bed a little earlier, I keep my social calendar a little more spare, I’m a little slower on the email responses and text replies. Also, I basically live in my bathtub. Are you picturing the vibe?

Also, do you want to start a band called “Sensitive Plant?” When I was doing an image search, this graphic came up and I felt the caption was appropriate.

But back to shriveled cold winter me: there’s always that one day in February where you just get a tiny little hit of spring. It’s too warm for your winter jacket, the snow is starting to melt, the air smells different, and, back to the metaphor of that plant, I feel like MAYBE I can unfurl my cold little fingers and toes and stretch out a little bit.

I can feel things moving in me. I don’t know what it is, but the pace of my thoughts, my habits, my interactions, it all gets a little more flowy, and the amplitude grows. You might not see a change on the outside, but it’s like the maple trees in my neighborhood that are tapped for sap: they don’t have discernible buds on their branches yet, but things are a-flowing. And for the purposes of this post, I’m going to call it prana, because that’s our studio theme for the month.

We’ve focused in on prana before at the studio, but if you need a refresher: prana is our life force, the vital energy that defines us as beings, rather than just bodies. It’s synonymous with the concept of breath, which is a trend we see in many languages (like anima in Latin is both breath and spirit). Prana can further be divided into what are called the Vayus, or winds - different ways that our vital energies move, and the different parts of the bodies that it inhabits and governs.

Contemplating this concept of fluid energy, breath energy, kinetic energy, and distilling it down, I like to think about it simply as life force. And after a few winter months where I’m charging my pranic battery, I can feel that March is saying to me: giddyup.

A yoga teacher friend of mine was trying to teach her mom how to use a phone’s touch screen, and her mom was having trouble getting the screen to respond to her touch. My friend said to her mom, “You’ve really got to send the energy out, past your fingers, to the screen.” And that’s how I think of directing my prana in these early spring days. Where I might have been conserving my energy like a cold little miser in deep winter, right now I know that I have to send that energy out: take deeper breaths, straighten my elbows when I reach my arms up over my head, sing a little louder, make a little more eye contact. I need to stop trying to dam up the energetic river.

Which means that sometimes things get messy, because it’s impossible to control that energetic flow forever - eventually it’ll spill over the edge and carry you in its current. That’s okay. That’s how life is: if you try to control it, you’re probably a little bit curled up like that plant that doesn’t want to be touched. If you’re ready to step into the current of prana, the flowing water, and the gusty air - it’s going to get muddy and your hair’s going to get messed up. 

I’m getting ready to actually perform in public in a few weeks (thank you to friends in my life who ask me to sing with them, and don’t take no for an answer), which feels like an appropriate and also scary stretching of my pranic life force. I was beginning to think that I was losing my singing voice, which made me feel very close to losing who I was, at my core. But I think what was actually happening was that I wasn’t singing often enough, and I wasn’t singing loudly enough, and I wasn’t singing through my entire range, and as a result, my singing voice got a little cobwebby. Prepping for this gig, and singing some of my old songs, I’m finding out that my voice is still there - I just had to un-dam the river, so to speak. Sometimes the sounds get a little wild, but the more I practice and the more I let go, and the deeper I breathe, the more I uncover my voice. It’s like my capital-S Self shouting from the bottom of a well: I’m still here. This is still you. You’re not lost. 

So, Galaxy friends, I just want to say: right now, I think it’s a really good time to sing a little louder, dance with a little less embarrassment when you hear some good music, speak up for yourself, and communicate some good things and loving words to the people that you want to say those things to. Reach out beyond what you think the edges of you are, and send that prana just a little further. Unfurl your leaves. Let go. Flow. 

Might I suggest a listen to Art Garfunkel singing about the Waters of March? Fun fact: the song and lyrics were originally written in Portuguese by Antonio Carlos Jobim, AND he provided the English translation. The vibe is a little different between the two languages, but the idea is the same: when things start to flow, there’s the potential for a lot of messy, muddy living. Interesting to note that, in Brazil, the waters of March mark the end of summer, while here they mark the beginning of spring! It’s that vital flow of life - you can curl up away from it, dam the river and attempt to avoid it, or you can jump in.

It’s the mud. It’s the mud,

Anna

What I’m Reading…

Speaking of letting things flow and going on wild journeys, when was the last time you read “Be Here Now,” by Ram Dass? For me, it was yesterday, sitting at my favorite new Harambee coffee spot, Kuumba Juice and Coffee, on Keefe and Richards (get the African Peanut stew when you go there, and if you haven’t gone there yet… go there).

I stopped in for a coffee with my daughter, who was given a sample of their butterfly pea flower kombucha, and we sat on the couch and discovered that there was a copy of Be Here Now sitting on the coffee table in front of us. The free-form journey of reading, looking at, and absorbing that book, going on Ram Dass’s journey of enlightenment, from LSD experiments with Timothy Leary, to meeting his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, all unexpectedly on a Saturday afternoon, was absolutely energizing. Do yourself a favor and hold a physical copy of the book in your hands: it’s a tactile and visual delight, as well as a narrative delight. I’ll have copies at the studio later this week, and you can always head to bookshop to order a copy in the meantime.