Issue #8: Tenderness
What quiet joys are calling your attention?
June flew by in a blink. In our classes, we celebrated Pride Month by centering authenticity, trying to honor the parts of ourselves that long to be seen, heard, and held. And though June slipped away from me, I want to invite you to pause here, even briefly, to witness Megan Falley’s beautiful poem, “Coming Out (And Being Pushed Back In)”.1 Pride is year-round, y’all. And as we move into July, I’m carrying with me a full heart. Feeling gratitude, joy, and a whole lot of tenderness.
One moment that lingers from this past month happened in a quiet café with a dear friend. We were mid-conversation, talking about health scares, family planning, new relationships, and of course, our favorite Pilates instructor, when I noticed a tiny inchworm clinging to her shirt. There was no clear reason it was there, probably carried in by a summer breeze. But instantly, a soft urgency passed between us: we wanted this little creature to be safe.
I grabbed a napkin while she gently guided the small critter onto it. We resumed our conversation, letting it inch along beside us. Occasionally, I turned the napkin to redirect its journey, watching it curl and squish forward with what looked like the greatest of effort to make the smallest amount of progress. Its movements felt silly but its determination was unmatched. Not fast, but always forward. Pinching and pressing with a gentle resilience.
When it came time to leave, we agreed we had to find it a hospitable home. Carrying it reverently through the café, outside we ushered our tiny companion onto a leaf in a nearby flower box. It probably looked ridiculous to passersby — two grown women coaxing a minuscule caterpillar toward a plant — but it felt oddly important. A small kindness, freely given. As we walked to her car, we both admitted we weren’t quite sure why the moment struck us so deeply. Maybe it was the stillness it created. Maybe it was the chance to notice. Or maybe it was that simple and sacred moment of being met by another human in shared tenderness. Whatever the reason, I’m still thinking of that inchworm. The calm, the compassion, and the unexpected delight.
Some days, the world feels impossibly heavy. The urge to harden, to pull away from feeling, is strong when headlines blare of war, injustice, and unraveling rights. It would be easy to turn inward, to go numb. And yet what softens me are the smallest movements forward. Just like that inchworm.
It’s the quiet gestures: a shared glance of understanding, a gentle check-in, an honest conversation unfolding slowly over tea. The comfortable rhythm of mutual aid and showing up for your community. Or the grace of simply sitting alone, awake to the world’s offerings. These are the moments that ground me.
These moments don’t shout. They don’t solve everything. But they hold me. They ask only that I stay — tender, attentive, willing to feel. It’s a practice to notice them. To resist the numbing, the rushing. To make space for soft delight even when the world feels jagged. Joy, I’m learning, isn’t always loud or dazzling; sometimes it arrives curled in the smallest spaces. It builds from care. From connection. From the quiet, steady insistence to keep choosing what’s loud in your heart.
Joy arrived with noisy insistence to care for an inchworm. Other times, it shows up with a kind of uncanny grace — like the speech I wrote this month for a friend’s wedding, shaped around Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”. I was unsure if the tone would land and yet upon arrival at the venue I was greeted by an actual flock of geese floating on the lake, as if summoned by poetry itself. Joy like that feels like a wink from the universe. Unscripted, but unmistakable. They remind me that tenderness and delight are still possible, and perhaps abundant. That life, even now, offers beauty to those soft enough to witness it. I’m grateful that my yoga practice offers me opportunities to exercise such softness daily.
Yoga, at its root, teaches us sthira sukham asanam: that our posture, our presence, should be both steady and easeful. The phrase “sthira sukham āsanam” comes from the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, specifically Sūtra 2.46 in the second chapter. This line is foundational in understanding the yogic approach to posture and presence. But beyond the literal physical posture, many teachers interpret this as guidance for how we move through life: with a balance of strength (sthira) and softness (sukham). Effort and ease, Grounding and openness. This balance is a practice. A remembering. That we can move forward, even inch by inch, with integrity, and also with wonder.
So this month, I invite you to return to your practice with tenderness. To move gently, not just in class, but throughout your day. Inviting the quieter parts of life to become part of your practice: noticing, feeling, softening. However and wherever you show up, may it be with the intention to stay present to the small joys that sustain us. May you find joy that insists on being felt. And may you meet the world and yourself, with quiet compassion, one small movement at a time. I leave you with a few questions to carry with you in those movements forward:
Where in your life are you feeling some small delights?
What helps you stay soft in a chaotic world?
Are there places you can offer a little more presence, a little more tenderness to yourself or to others?
How does joy, big or small, feel in your body? Where does it live?
I look forward to asking, and perhaps answering, some of these questions with you in class or conversation. You’ll find my schedule, playlists, and July’s featured poems, bits, and clips below.
With so much tenderness,
Tori
Class Offerings Note: I am now teaching a 5pm YS at the DuPont Circle CorePower on Tuesday’s!
Flow Playlist / Sculpt Playlist
Poems/Bits/Clips
“One of the essential elements in tenderness is that it’s a free act, a gratuitous act, it has an enormous amount to do with liberty, with freedom because one chooses to be tender. In the face of what is surrounding us, tenderness is almost a defiant act of freedom.” - John Berger, The Way of Seeing
“...This grasshopper, I mean —/ the one who has flung herself out of the grass,/ the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,/ who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away./ I don't know exactly what a prayer is./ I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down/ into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,/ how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,/ which is what I have been doing all day./ Tell me, what else should I have done?/ Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?/ Tell me, what is it you plan to do/ with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
“The last time I felt lucky was in fifth grade and my teacher was/ giving away a goldfish. She put all our names in a hat and/ miraculously drew mine. I was so excited, I cried. The fish only/ lived two weeks but, I loved him. It was years before I realized my/ teacher likely rigged the draw. Moments before, she had, in fact,/ whispered rather conspiratorially, that it just might be my lucky/day. I was such a lonely kid and having a hell of a time adapting/ to the U.S. after living abroad and I think Mrs. Edelstein figured I/ could use a win. Of course the universe is full of deep magic, but/ I think most miracles can be traced back to someone’s profound and quiet kindness.” Joy Sullivan, (Luck I)
“I am reading poems of accumulating affections with brilliant young writers who are about to leave a city we all love, and go to various elsewheres, and I am doing so because I want them to consider the responsibilities of the heart, responsibilities that the world will attempt to detach them from in the name of individualism, or the ever-growing realities of isolationist attitudes and power’s contempt for community. I am asking them, as I am continually asking myself, to imagine a heart that feels a connection to the hearts of others, even others you do not know.” - Hanif Abdurraqib, In Defense of Despair
“Whoever you are, and whatever helps, I hope today is a day you are finding the softest way through.” - Andrea Gibson, “Living Proof” excerpt from their last Substack ever written <3
Megan is an amazing poet in her own right, she was also the wife to the late Andrea Gibson who passed away yesterday. Andrea is a titan of a human and poet. I am so grateful for their work, which has been featured many places, including this newsletter.
your mamaloves you and your beautiful mind.