Lately, I’ve been basking in the first yoga sutra, 1.1: atha yoga anuśāsanam, which approximately translates to: “Now we begin the practice – or the study – of yoga.”

We’ve been working our way through the body in this year’s yoga therapy series – from the back, to the hips, and now to the shoulder girdle and neck. This is an area where so many of us carry tension, stiffness, and the effects of long hours spent sitting, working, driving, scrolling, and generally holding the weight of this world on our shoulders.

I’ve been reflecting on accumulated stress lately. The way life keeps piling things on, one at a time – sometimes small, sometimes not so small – until you’re stooped over, barely able to carry the load. You didn’t even realize it had become so heavy.

Make no mistake: anything done with intention can be yoga.

In the Western world, when we hear the word yoga, we often think about movements and poses performed on a mat. It makes sense that, for many of us, āsana – the physical postures – has been the entry point to the practice. Indeed, this was my own introduction to yoga once upon a time.

The seasonal transition is upon us. The temperatures are fluctuating in a downward trend. Rain has started to reappear in the forecast. School is starting across the country, and I’ve seen not only my first apricot-colored turning leaves, but also the first Halloween decorations for sale in stores. (Too soon? 🎃 Not if it’s one of your favorite times of year.)

I know you just heard from me yesterday, and it’s extremely rare that I send out more than one email in a week. But today is Global Yoga Therapy Day! That’s a big deal for the roughly 5,500 of us worldwide who are certified yoga therapists – as we continue to work toward spreading the word about this beautiful work. So, I’m sharing some resources for those of you who are interested.

There are a couple of things I hear (a lot) when people talk about meditation:

“I'm not good at it.”
Or, “I think I'm doing it wrong. My thoughts are all over the place.”
Or, “Whenever I sit down to do it, my mind gets really busy.”

Here’s the thing: your thinking mind is a busy place – all the time.

“Accept the seasonality of all things, including yourself.”

Lately, I’ve noticed a familiar pattern in myself. I am on fire creatively. And yet I have all these pages of half-baked writing ideas and outlines. I’m in the middle of drafting a brochure for my small business. I’m waiting for photos from my June photoshoot so I can update my website. Conversations with clients are sparking new ideas. Future events are percolating. Even this newsletter has been floating in my mind for some days.

There’s something special about picking your own food. And this is the season when the fruit harvests start to get serious. As in seriously fun! Thanks to a dear San Francisco Bay Area friend who drives up to the Pacific Northwest every summer with her family in tow, blueberry picking at Bybee Farms in North Bend has become an annual tradition.

Summer in Seattle has big yang energy, almost excessive with options. There are festivals, concerts, neighborhood events, farmers markets, hikes, paddles, outdoor movies, and endless invitations to be out doing something. June kicks us off with Pride festivities, and this year the city was absolutely bursting with World Cup mania. I recently read a Seattle Times article about something called “sunshine guilt” – the pressure to make the most of our idyllic but fleeting PNW weather + everything happening this time of year.

One of the things that makes yoga therapy distinct from studio yoga classes, psychotherapy, physical therapy, or massage is the intentional way we work with the kosha model. The koshas are described as layers or sheaths of our being. This model reminds us that we are more than just a physical body, and more than just a mind. We are complex, layered beings.

Restorative yoga may look like we’re simply lying around in some sort of decadent way. But let me assure you: it is not indulgence. This is a way we reclaim our power.

When we are exhausted, distracted, overwhelmed, or dysregulated, we lose access to clarity, discernment, and our ability to respond skillfully.

I've spent most of the past week sick. And despite all of my mindfulness and yoga practices… I’m here to tell you that I am not a very good sick person. Ha! I'm impatient. Irritated. Unhappy about the biological requirement to stop, heal, and recover. My mind wants to skip ahead to the part where I'm better (and get to rest of my own volition). My mind gets frustrated by poor sleep and a very chapped nose. It worries about disappointing clients when I have to cancel sessions. It starts researching every possible remedy – herbal, natural, pharmacological – hoping something will speed things along.

This past month or so in my Sunday evening Candlelight Restorative classes, we’ve been exploring the idea of grounding.

Of course, Restorative yoga itself is inherently grounding – inviting the nervous system toward parasympathetic (settling, steadiness, and rest). Alongside that, we’ve also been exploring what it means to embody “earth energy”: to feel connected not only to the physical foundation beneath us, but also to a deeper sense of being anchored within.

We live in an attention economy. But it’s not just our attention, is it? It’s our consumption, too.

It’s invasive and ubiquitous – the music in grocery stores designed to make us want to shop, ads blaring at you from the gas pump, end-aisle product placement in big box stores for those impulse buys, billboards while you are stuck in traffic, the endless rabbit hole of social media, streaming platforms galore, algorithms feeding you sidebar ads while you read the NYTimes, “suggested” content, and the constant din of a 24-hour news cycle. On most airplanes, there are screens maybe 12 inches from your face, offering more things to consume. It’s all competing to keep us focused on whatever they are selling. And the cacophony continues to grow louder every year.

When I ask in class, “Any requests?” one of the most common answers is simply: “hips.” Which always makes me smile a little. Because “the hips” is such a broad, catch-all phrase for something incredibly complex.

The hips are, of course, where the legs attach to the pelvis. And the pelvis – as one of my teachers (Judith Hanson Lasater) says – is “the center of everything.” Its orientation influences how the spine and legs are positioned as well as how the body organizes itself.

This past weekend I spent some time with a four-year-old – the daughter of friends – and was reminded, again, of something we seem to forget along the way: how to play.

Young children live in a kind of effortless presence. There’s spontaneity. Creativity. Delight. Anything becomes a toy. Everything is interesting. They ask direct questions – simple, honest, without overthinking. Their expression isn’t yet filtered or constrained in the ways ours becomes over time.

And it made me wonder: Where does that go?

Lately, I’ve been sitting with this idea: a teacher’s role is not to hand you answers, but to slow you down enough so you can find your own. The teacher lights the path. That’s it. What you discover on that path is yours alone.

This is something I return to often when people ask what I do. Sometimes I just say: I teach people to slow down.

There’s a visual I find myself coming back to again and again with clients: a ship changing course by just one degree. It doesn’t look like much in the moment. But over time, across open water, that single degree sends the ship somewhere completely different.

That’s what I’m after in my work.

Spring has a sneaky way of disrupting our sleep. The daylight saving time shift alone is more disruptive to our nervous systems and circadian rhythms than we may realize – and that’s before we factor in the increasingly longer evenings, extra light, and general energy shift that comes with the body adjusting from winter into a new season.