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Meet Albert Flynn DeSilver… Writer, speaker, retreat and workshop instructor.
EMAIL: email Albert.Where has yoga taken you?
What are the 4 most pivotal occasions in your career both in and outside of Yoga?
- Getting sober (long story).
- My first silent meditation retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center with the Thai master Ajahn Jumnian
- Reading Poetry in Paris with the great American poet Alice Notley
- Leading a mindfulness and writing retreat in Maui, Hawaii with Cheryl Strayed.
What do you never leave the house without?
a good book and a pen
Where are your favorite places to experience?
Freedom and flow on a mountain bike in Lake Tahoe in late July, lying in an Aspen grove above 10,000 feet in the Colorado Rockies in early October. Walking the streets of Paris in the rain.
What are the first three words that come to your mind when someone says: “grounded” or “connected?”
Mountain, being, love.
We want to know what your typical morning looks like! What does your daily practice look like?
Wake and drink tea, read 30 mins, write 30 mins to 4 hours, sit in meditation 30-60 minz, stretch (yoga), hike with Audrey-the-dog, get to work, eat, work some more, go for a mountain bike ride, eat, read, sleep, rinse repeat.
What is one mantra that is like a remedy for your soul?
“To see that I am nothing, that is wisdom. To see that I am everything, that is love. Between the two, my life flows.”
OR
Simply “I am”
How do you channel your inner 5 year old?
Breathe, go for a hike in the hills.
Tell us one fun fact about yourself.
I failed my year end review in graduate art school as a photographer, so I switched departments and eventually graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts degree in “New Genres,” which meant I could go out in the world and create anything. . .photographs, paintings, sculptures, videos, installations, even words. After graduation and flailing around from gallery to gallery, I switched again and became a poet and writer.
What is your favorite pose to teach in your classes? And why?
A standing meditation/skeleton scan because it guides you into experiencing your body in a primal, elemental way that breaks down perceived separation between self and earth, self and air, self and fire, self and water. You are left with just self as self, that which makes self possible!
If you’re not on a yoga mat, where can we find you?
Reading or writing under a Madrone Tree working on my next book. On a mountain bike cruising singletrack trails, perhaps on a SUP paddling along in Tomales Bay, or hiking the hills of West Marin with my scrappy little angelic rescue dog Audrey.
