Jessica Girija Jewell

by Jessica Girija Jewell I’ve been reading a book I’ve owned for years — The Awakening Body  by Reginald A. Ray.   I’ve picked it up before. Underlined it. Put it down. Returned to what I thought was “real” spiritual work — refining the mind, disciplining attention, chanting mantra.   But this time, something landed differently.   Ray describes what he calls somatic spirituality  — a Vajrayana Buddhist approach in which the body itself becomes the field of awakening.   Not the mind...

by Jessica Girija Jewell There’s something most of us sense, even if we don’t often articulate it: time has a feeling to it. Morning feels different from night. January feels different from June. Halloween feels different from Valentine’s Day. 2010 feels different from 2026. Our lives unfold within the framework of time, and time has qualities — texture, density, pace, and tone. Astrology is a tool for attuning our attention to these qualities and for learning how to respond to them. Across...

by Jessica Girija Jewell A friend and fellow student of The Yoga Sutras  recently shared a story that was so perceptive—so insightful—that I’ve been thinking about it every day since.   This friend was talking with a yoga teacher about persistent neck pain and asked what stretches might make the pain go away. The teacher’s reply was both clear and compassionate:   “There are no stretches that will get rid of your neck pain.”   That’s a truth bomb.   Of course stretching can help relieve...