“We are tethered to those before us, to their questions and their quiet daring, to their belief that dreaming together could shift the stars themselves.”
There is a strange, bent convergence in my mind lately—threads of past and present folding in on each other like an origami crane I didn’t know I was shaping. I’ve been diving deeper than ever into the archives of the Feathered Pipe Foundation and my eyes are trailing across the dreams and musings of those who, in the early 1970s, sought to elevate human consciousness. Their articles and brochures and photos buzz with the spirit of a time teetering between upheaval and hope. Reading and looking at them evokes a world that took a collective breath and whispered, “What if we tried something different?”
While poring over it all, it’s hard to not look back to where I was in that very moment. I graduated high school in the late 1970s, coming of age at a betwixt-and-between moment—when the countercultural wave of the 1960s had crested, but its reverberations lingered in the air. I was a shade too young to ride the height of late ’60s counterculture, but I sensed echoes of it shaping some of the questions and possibilities of my coming-of-age time. I remember the small-town Midwestern worries that invaded my own preoccupations back then: Would I get asked to prom? How would I figure out money for college and rent? Could I figure out what it meant to step into the vast, uncharted territory of adulthood?
The world was shifting in ways that I could not comprehend at the time. The civil rights movement was still fresh in the collective memory, its gains hard-won but far from complete. The nascent environmental movement was pulling back the curtain on humanity’s reckless plundering of the planet. Women were demanding equity in ways that rattled the old order. The Vietnam War had ended, but the scars it left behind hovered in living rooms, in hearts, in the fabric of a country struggling to reconcile its ideals with its actions. It was a time of disillusionment but also one of possibility. When people dared to believe that a better way was not only necessary, but possible.
Now, in early 2025, the world feels precarious. Vulnerable populations are crying out, their voices echoing across borders and screens. The planet’s ecosystems groan under the weight of neglect. Fear creeps into the corners of our lives, threatening to paralyze us. In the middle of all this, we can reflect on whether the same questions those ‘then kids’ of the 1970s asked as they gathered at places like the Feathered Pipe Ranch are the same as our own: How do we find peace in our hearts when the world seems to conspire against it? How do we balance right action with the need to rest, to breathe, to simply be? How do we keep from being gobbled up by despair?
How do any of us hold both courage and compassion in hands that feel too small?
Those dreamers of the early ‘70s didn’t have all the answers any more than we do now, but they dared to ask the questions. They came together in circles, in fields, in homes filled with little altars and songs, and they tried. They tried yoga and meditation, drum circles and sweat lodges, ceremonies and long talks under star-drenched skies. They wanted not only to escape the chaos of their times but to meet it with open eyes and open hearts. They had the courage to look within, knowing that any transformation of the world had to begin there.
Sifting through their echoes, there are words tucked in the archives of a place that held space for hope to unfold. We can wonder whether their compasses steadied when they turned to the rhythm of breath, to the grounding pulse of shared song, or when they looked out on those same mountain ranges that we all see now when we’re on the dock at the lake.
Do you ever find yourself at this same, peculiar intersection of memory and now? When the threads of your own life weave through the larger tapestry of your history? The Feathered Pipe’s 50th anniversary year weaves many of us into a time warp that stretches from those hazy days of the 1970s to this moment, where the stakes feel impossibly high. So many of us were unaware of how much the world was asking of all of us in the 1970s. Personally, when I think of those idealistic dreamers in their bell-bottoms and beads, I feel a new kinship with them, as if the questions they asked have never really left us.
How do we wake up? How do we heal? How do we build a world worth living in?
Maybe the answers inhabit the small, steady acts of presence and compassion we can offer each day. Maybe they are tucked in the spaces we create to dream together, to listen to one another, to imagine what might be possible if we dared to try. I suspect they also lie in the willingness to keep asking the questions, even when the answers feel out of reach.
Those dreamers of the past were not so different from us. They faced a world in flux, one that often seemed too big and too broken to fix. And still they showed up. They dared to hope. It’s not the certainty of answers that will save us, but the courage to keep seeking them—together.
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Our ninth running of the homegrown Feathered Pipe Mindful Unplug is about deepening our exploration of life affirming rhythms. The alchemy of mindful movement, all-levels yoga, meditation, community sound and rhythm practices, dance, song, and poetry offers more than a transitory antidote to stress, July 26 – August 2, 2025, “The Mindful Unplug: Movement, Rhythm, And Nature.”
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About Anne Jablonski
For more than two decades, Anne Jablonski has danced in the rhythms of the Feathered Pipe Ranch, where she serves as President of the Feathered Pipe Foundation. To Anne, this sacred ground is a refuge, where the whispers of nature beckon us to awaken from the clamor of modern screens. With this belief, she co-created The Mindful Unplug retreat, a space to breathe freely and reconnect. Rooted in the spirit of “freedom yoga,” as taught by her mentor Erich Schiffmann, Anne’s teachings are a journey inward, where yoga’s true gift lies not in form but in the art of listening to the pulse of life in each moment. A rat race survivor-in-training and a registered Yoga Alliance teacher, Anne offers her wisdom at Sun and Moon Yoga Studio in Northern Virginia, guiding her students to trust the quiet wisdom of their hearts, on the mat and beyond.
Anne is also a fully trained teacher in a movement modality called “Movingness,” a groundbreaking new somatic method for body and mind integration (embodiment).
Learn more about Anne: yogasetfree.com