Your Guru is wearing Cortez
If we start debating over what makes the best snow day movie and why, we'd be here all day. So I am going to cut to the chase: we chose Forest Gump and it ignited a spiritual awakening.
I hadn't seen it a couple years. And watching it now, exhausted from the world, deep in study mode : the dude's a walking sutra.
Forrest's entire life is basically karma yoga: acting with zero attachment to outcomes, doing what's in front of him, being of service, over and over again - without ever asking what's in it for me?
Just total devotion. The pure kind.
And the way his so-called random life ends up rippling into all these historic moments? That's karma, too. Every small action shaping the bigger story. Not through control or striving but just by being fully present and doing the next thing.
To spend a day like that, quiet in the mind, open in the body, moving without second-guessing, would be a gift. It's on my 2026 moldboard.
Right next to “filling up my yoga retreat in France” and "becoming an Iyengar Teacher, officially”
The noise right now? Is a lot.
Our brains are wired to chase it: the headlines, the outrage, the never-ending scroll. Stillness is boring. Simplicity feels like irresponsibility.
That kind of presence isn't naive. It's practice. And it's political: in the truest sense. Not performative. Not reactive. But constant. Local. Motivated by a greater ideal. Forrest wasn't checking out, he was all in.
Just not in the way we're used to. This is the part I keep coming back to:
We treat yoga like a break from the world.
But it's training for the world.
This practice doesn't pull us away from hard things. It prepares us to meet them. Without flinching. Without armoring up.
Soft but not fragile.
Clear but not rigid.
Involved without being consumed.
Forrest didn't opt out. He kept showing up. For his mama. For Jenny. For Bubba. For a country that didn't always make sense. He just… stayed in motion. From love. From clarity. From stillness.
And that kind of showing up?
It's not loud. Not viral. But real. Local. Ongoing. The kind that builds something.
Patanjali wrote about it long before Forrest put on his Cortez:
Santosha anuttamah sukha labhah
From contentment, supreme joy arises.
Not because contentment is easy but because it's enough.
Because it lets us breathe and keep going when we'd rather shut down or run away.
Anyway. All this from a Tom Hanks movie on a snowed-in weekend in January 2026.
I hope we can all be a little bit more like Forrest this week and always. Stay in the room even when it's hard.
Ps: Now my friend is the time to comment bellow immediately with your favorite movie to watch when you are snowed in.
