Why we write.
Mantra Post is made by one person. I’m Mike, an acupuncturist and a yogi.
My mom. This page is about what she gave me.
It started with a note in the mail.
My mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was a freshman in college. She used to send me handwritten notes, cards in the mail, sometimes in a pink envelope. However often they came, they were always special. I loved those notes more than any phone call. When I was craving her company, I could read them over and over.
It’s been over twenty-five years. I opened an old box looking for one of her notes and found two. They both made me cry. I can still hear her voice when I read them. Nothing compares. Not an email, not a phone call, not a photo. Seeing the handwriting of someone you love is unlike anything else. Those notes are treasures that will never get old.
Years later, an injury brought me to yoga. I tore my ACL on a soccer field, spent months in recovery, and walked into my first class at a studio in San Diego, where a teacher told me the practice was mine, that I could do whatever was right for me. That’s where I learned about setting intentions. Writing them down. Carrying them past the practice. And I realized what my mom gave me with those notes, that feeling of being held, remembered, connected, is what an intention can become when you write it down and share it.
An intention deserves to live longer than the moment you set it. That’s why we write.
Her note, June 20, 1994. A Mantra Post, today.
That’s a Mantra Post. An intention from your yoga practice, sent as a card to yourself or to someone you care about.
There’s a card waiting for you on the homepage.
OPEN YOUR CARDP.S. A question, a story, a note you’ve kept for twenty-five years: write to us. A person reads every letter that comes to this house. Usually me.