Let me tell you, I’m very good at this.

After years of creating environmental restoration programs, then hustling and rushing from yoga studio to yoga studio, scheduling is in my blood. Though things have changed somewhat, I still love an organized calendar. And if I were to be completely truthful, I do love a full month.

And when I find myself with two or three unscheduled hours? I’ll somehow invent a cleaning project, reorganize a closet or convince myself there’s something that urgently needs doing. It’s rarely because anyone needs it. It’s because stillness can still feel unsettling.

So I’ve been wondering:

Does a full calendar actually make us feel fulfilled, or simply productive? Are we responding to genuinely busy seasons or have we become so accustomed to constant doing that we create them ourselves?

And perhaps the bigger question:

Can we build a full life without keeping our nervous systems constantly full, too?

Because somehow we’re expected to hold it all at once—the work, the parenting, the domestic tasks, exercise, friendships, learning, caregiving and the invisible emotional labor that rarely makes it onto the calendar. If finding ten quiet minutes causes stress, something feels out of alignment.

The irony of teaching rest

This question arrived for me during the final days of August.

Within a few days, much of my September filled with corporate workshops and wellness events. Many of the teams I’ll be working with are navigating mergers, restructuring, uncertainty, longer hours and change. I’m genuinely grateful that these organizations are investing in breathwork, mindfulness and nervous system education. I know those short workshops can offer something meaningful.

But I’ve also been asking myself harder questions.

Can one monthly yoga class meaningfully support someone who’s edging toward burnout? Or would ten minutes of slow walking outdoors every day create a deeper shift? Is another “lunch and learn” always the answer - or are there moments when the greatest act of wellness would simply be protecting someone’s time?

Perhaps it’s not either/or. Perhaps it’s both.

The practices matter. And so does the culture surrounding them.

And, increasingly, so does how honestly I’m living these practices myself - with the groups I lead and at home with my family.

And then I cancelled my workout

As the corporate bookings increase, I find myself wanting to champion these tools of presence and mindfulness, alongside bigger conversations about slowing down as a boundary of care for our nervous systems, feeling our emotions as a way of making room for more life rather than continually overriding them, and giving ourselves grace as we face the discomfort of change.

It’s a language that feels so needed in some sectors. And one that might require a pretty significant shift in how we currently operate.

I’m not sure exactly how it’ll all look in a corporate setting, but tonight it looked like cancelling my workout at the last minute and living the practice myself.

I had planned to exercise. I had the time. Technically, I could have done it. But when I actually paid attention, I realized I didn’t need another thing to accomplish. I needed some space.

Because if I’m not finding balance in the spaces between the busy times, I’ll sure have a tough time accessing it when things get fuller. So I changed my mind. I let myself be where I really needed to - at home.

Maybe that’s the practice right now: not waiting until I desperately need the pause to start making room for one.

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So, a few things I’m experimenting with as September begins:

• Leaving some space unclaimed. An hour, an evening, whatever is realistic, and resisting the urge to immediately fill it.

• Creating tiny transitions between things. Three minutes outside, a few slower breaths in the car, a walk around the block before moving into the next part of the day.

• Letting rest replace the plan sometimes. Even when the plan was technically a “healthy” one.

• Getting outside without making it exercise. Ten minutes of slow walking counts. Sitting somewhere with a coffee counts.

• Letting some discomfort be okay. Doing things differently can feel uncomfortable, especially when productivity is deeply ingrained. I want to practise tolerating that discomfort — and model for my daughter that rest, space and changing your mind are part of taking care of yourself.

• Asking before I add something: Do I actually want or need this, or am I uncomfortable with the empty space?

None of these are particularly revolutionary. Maybe that’s part of the point.

We don’t necessarily need another elaborate practice to help us manage our full lives. Sometimes we need to examine why they’re so full in the first place.

Are we actually faced with busy times, or do we sometimes make them so?

My hope is not that asking these questions creates more shame or guilt, but that it inspires us to return to the basics. I believe it’s the simple things that create a little more space, every day that eventually lead to bigger, longer-lasting changes.

And I’m also aware that we live within systems and cultures that reward busyness, productivity and pushing through. Sometimes our nervous systems are taxed not because we haven’t learned how to regulate them, but because our boundaries, schedules and environments are asking too much of us.

So I’m staying curious about where I can create space for rest and regulation, but also where I can expand my capacity. Because these tools are for more than staying calm. They help us rest when rest is needed, but they also help us stay with stress, change, full lives and, yes, spicy schedules.

September will still be full for me. There’s work I’m excited about, people I want to see, things I want to learn and do and make.

I just don’t want fullness to automatically mean depletion.

A full calendar doesn’t require a full nervous system.

And maybe September is a good time to practice that.

Our first afternoon and evening were a gentle arrival into the environment: the sitting space, the sounds of the farm and forest, and the companions alongside us. We arrived with care and reverence, entering into silence together.

Francis Weller writes:

Silence is hard to come by, but mind and spirit need its sustenance. Silence invites us into a space of deep listening, a place of humility and not knowing. Silence is a practice of emptying, of letting go. It is a process of hollowing ourselves out so we can open to what is emerging. Our work is to make ourselves receptive.

He captures so beautifully why we need these pauses into quiet.

And yet, the body takes time to adapt to a new environment. Silence can be beautiful for the spirit - and challenging for a body accustomed to moving at a pace that rarely allows for it. That’s the thing: at first, it requires effort to receive a pause. To receive silence. To receive anything.

So, on the second day of the retreat, we turned towards the body.

Because when we begin to lower the volume of the mind and slow the speed of our thoughts, the body can get louder. Things are often felt in the body long before they are understood by the mind. They may be processed through the body long before they are resolved within the mind.

I invite you now to turn with me towards the body. Not to fix the body or force it to feel a certain way. Not to push the mind into a quieter place. But simply to listen. Through this listening, you may begin to create a home inside yourself: a safer space, a more loving anchor.

This is part of the work of silence: becoming a better listener—to the body, the mind and the world around us.

The body as a gateway

A silent retreat does not necessarily quiet the mind. It does not magically clear it. Instead, it often reveals the ways in which you relate to your body. The body is one of the simplest gateways to presence. However, it seems we forget about her until we pause. Even then, we may resist what the body has to say.

I’ve noticed how quickly I reach for a mantra or try to pray away the physical discomfort that arises when I become still. I fight as I feel my body twitch and itch. But my body is not a villain. Nor is it a stepping stone to overcome in a silent meditation. The body is a great support in the practice. It is the conduit into a retreat like this. It leads us, always inviting us to tune in and honour what it holds.

It holds answers. It holds quiet. It holds us as we listen.

But tuning into its wisdom is not always easy.

What the body carries

How is your body wise?

It carries the imprint of what you have lived through—stressors, threats and experiences the mind may no longer be actively thinking about. This is not wrong or bad. When sensations, emotions or memories arise during stillness and silence, this is a glimmer of wisdom showing up. This is how your body asks to be noticed. This is how the body requests care.

The nervous system is continually taking in information from within us and from the world around us, interpreting what it encounters and responding in ways intended to offer protection. Signs of potential danger tend to capture our attention more readily than signs of safety, allowing patterns of problem-seeking and problem-solving to become deeply ingrained. This is part of our natural negativity bias.

Things are felt in the body long before they’re understood by the mind.

The body is slow to catch up to the reality of this moment, even when the present moment is safe. It may brace, grip, go numb or shut down - even after the original threat has passed. A sound, scent or touch can awaken an old fear before the mind understands what is happening. The body can learn new patterns of safety, trust and connection, but it needs repeated experiences of presence, slowness and listening.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes:

The body is a multilingual being. It speaks through its colour and its temperature, the flush of recognition, the glow of love, the ash of pain, the heat of arousal, the coldness of non-conviction. It speaks through its constant tiny dance, sometimes swaying, sometimes a-jitter, sometimes trembling. It speaks through the leaping of the heart, the falling of the spirit, the pit at the centre, and rising hope. The body remembers, the bones remember, the joints remember, even the little finger remembers. Memory is lodged in pictures and feelings in the cells themselves. Like a sponge filled with water, anywhere the flesh is pressed, wrung, even touched lightly, a memory may flow out in a stream.

We are the ones we have been waiting for

As a seeker on this journey, have you ever found yourself believing that the answers lie in someone or something outside of you?

We become convinced that we need to find the right teacher, follow another person or continue studying. And suddenly, without realizing it, we have given away some of our own authority and forgotten the wisdom we already carry. While mentors and teachers are important, there must also be times when we set aside the books, the studies and the search for external validation.

Ultimately, you are the only person who can do this work - who can tend to your body and your breath from the inside. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

The poem Please Come Home, by Jane Hooper, speaks to this so beautifully:

Please Come Home

by Jane Hooper

Please come home. Please come home.
Find the place where your feet know to walk
And follow your own trail home.
Please come home. Please come into your own body,
Your own vessel, your own earth.
Please come home into each and every cell
And fully into the space that surrounds you.
Please come home. Please come home to trusting yourself,
and your instincts and your ways and your knowings,
And even the particular quirks of your personality.

Please come home and once you are firmly there,
please stay home awhile and come to deep rest within.
Please treasure your home. Please love and embrace your home.
Please get a deep, deep sense of what it’s like to be truly home.
Please come home. Please come home,
you and you and you and me.
Thank you Earth for welcoming us,
and thank you touch of eyes and ears and skin,
touch of love for welcoming us.
May we wake up and remember who we truly are.
Please come home. Please come home. Please come home.

This, too

Of course, coming home to the body isn’t easy.

Why is it hard to be here, right now?

The mind-body system prefers the easiest and most familiar path. Your body is good at the programs it knows so well. Becoming more present with the body can feel uncomfortable, even unpleasant. We may suddenly begin to notice how hard the body has been working to protect us, or how long we have been disconnected from it.

Movement can support our homecoming in many ways. On retreat, however, we worked with more subtle inner tools. We began by paying attention to physical sensations, gradually introducing words that could help us stay with what the body was holding. The words this, too, often used in Tara Brach’s teachings, came to mind.

When the body aches: This, too.
When the body fidgets: This, too.
When a memory seems to come flooding through our tissues: This, too.
When the body wants to flee or escape the discomfort: This, too.

Not faking or feigning enthusiasm about it. Not forcing ourselves to adore the body or the information it presents. Just noticing. Allowing.

This, too.
And again: This, too.

We don’t have to love it. We don’t have to forgive it. We don’t have to force it. We can gently create the conditions in which safety may become more possible. And we can keep coming home, for as long as it takes.

Things are often felt in the body long before they are understood by the mind.
This, too.

Letting the body know that you are here. Giving it permission.
No rush.
Nothing to solve.
Nothing to hide or protect from.

This, too.

Feeling that acknowledgement in your body. Letting it slowly become a kind of safety.

Please come home.

Continue the practice with me

If you feel called to explore these ideas in community, here are three opportunities to gather this fall and winter:

September 13 · Breathwork + Sound at Jaybird
Join me from 3:00–4:30 p.m. at Jaybird’s beautiful womb-like Kingsway space for an afternoon of breathwork, sound and supported release.
[Learn more and register →]

September 20 · The Seasonal Pause in Whistler
A spacious equinox afternoon retreat devoted to reconnecting and welcoming the new season through movement, reflection and community, surrounded by mountains and trees.
[Learn more and register →]

December 2–4 · Meditation Retreat on Bowen Island
Step away from the noise for a few quiet days of meditation and mindfulness—a beautiful way to turn inward and enter the winter season.
[Learn more and register →]

The Signs of Burnout . Ways to Rebuild from Burnout . When Rest Doesn’t Feel Safe

June is finally in the rearview mirror, and I’m taking stock.

Honouring the time required to gain perspective has become quite a skill as I age. As we approach the halfway point of summer, I’m settling into three full weeks without any events or retreats and looking back with more understanding about the humanness of life’s highs and lows—and how to better greet them. How to welcome both the exhaustion and the unexpected joys of stopping.

In my last post, I wrote about the terror that can arise when we finally get the break we’ve been craving. About how rest and slowness don’t always feel safe. And now that I’m immersed in the rhythm of summer, my family and nourishing myself, I don’t want to go back.

I won’t go back.

Because we all need more restoration than we realize. A reset doesn’t happen overnight.

Without fail, every August, exhaustion and depletion used to throw me to the ground. But with motherhood, and perhaps pathological levels of planning, June has become the new December (or my new August).

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June marks the end of retreat season, the end of the school year, the end of extracurricular activities, gifts for teachers and leaders, performances, the Summer Solstice and somehow it seems like everyone was born in June.

It’s as though the urgency to wrap up the past few months, celebrate every milestone and anticipate the weeks of summer creates an entirely new layer of tiredness.

I can name it, see it, fight it, love it, hate it and push through it. But I don’t truly feel it until I stop.

In July, I have stopped. Unapologetically. Fervently. Ritualistically.

For my body. My soul. For all the weeks, months and years without a true day off. For my family. For the desperation of where I thought I was and for the joy of what is actually here, now.

Initially, this slowing down was met with inner resistance and fear. But oh, how beautifully my body and mind have adapted to this new pace.

No alarm clock.

Evening strolls and skateboards.

Extra ice cream.

Ocean paddleboarding.

Bathing suits perpetually drying on the line.

Allowing new ideas and creations for work to quietly simmer in the background. Because we can adapt.

Our nervous systems learn and adapt through repetition. The more often I choose rest instead of urgency, the easier it becomes to remember the version of myself that is kinder, steadier and more collaborative. She has always been there. She simply needs enough space to emerge.

If we don’t take rest, eventually rest will take us.

Stopping doesn’t mean the world stops with me. Forest fires continue to burn in our backyard. War continues in my husband’s motherland. The headlines keep arriving. Suffering remains part of being human.

But I’ve learned that adding my own exhaustion to the world’s suffering doesn’t serve anyone. Rest isn’t turning away from reality. It’s how I return to it with greater presence.

Hindsight has become less about asking, “Why did this happen?” and more about asking different questions.

What was this season trying to teach me?

What still needs integration?

What joy have I uncovered now, on the other side?

On a recent Slow Yoga Retreat on Bowen Island, a woman shared something during our closing circle that has stayed with me.

She said she felt the same sense of reflection and restoration she usually experiences in autumn, except this time, it was summer. By slowing down, she had created the space to pause, reflect and truly be present for the season she was already in.

I loved that. Maybe we don’t have to wait for a season to change before we allow ourselves to slow down.

We are all carrying more than we can feel. But when we stop long enough to feel, we remember our capacity for calm. We release what has accumulated beneath the surface. We discover that adaptation isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about returning to ourselves with a little more wisdom and compassion.

I sometimes wonder when I’ll tire of writing about this topic, when I’ll master balance, or build thicker skin. Until then, I’m choosing to rest more. Recharge more. Rebuild more. Practice a new pace.

I’m remembering nervous system care before burnout instead of after it. I’m learning that not everything that looks fine actually feels fine. And even when we think we’re doing okay, exhaustion has a remarkable ability to hide beneath productivity.

The encouraging part is that we can try again next time. There will almost certainly be a next time. Because improvement doesn’t happen overnight.

Each season gives us another opportunity to notice our patterns a little earlier. To meet our inner critic a little more gently. To offer ourselves a little more compassion than we did before.

What’s helping me is normalizing:

• Taking four business days to respond to an email

• Asking for an hour alone

• Not always knowing how to slow down, but trying anyway

• Removing myself from the chaos, even if I miss something fun

• Reminding myself, This is happening for me, not to me

• Practicing Yoga Nidra in the middle of the afternoon

• Remembering recovery isn’t a destination - but something we practice

• Considering, How good can things get?

Burnout rarely arrives all at once. It gathers gradually through the rhythms we repeat. The hopeful part is that recovery works the same way.

One quieter morning.
One slower breath.
One honest conversation.
One afternoon without proving anything.
One percent better every day.

I’m not going back. I’m not trying to get back to some version of myself who is always calm, nor am I willing to return to the version who was constantly activated.

I’m travelling right through it all - present to my own process, with no finish line to reach, allowing for many more moments of unearned rest along the way.

If you’d like to practise together, I’ve created a few free resources that may support you.

Live on Insight Timer! Burnout Reset: A 30-Minute Nervous System Recharge

Every Wednesday at 12:00 pm PT

For anyone feeling mentally drained, emotionally stretched or stuck in constant doing. This free weekly practice is designed to help interrupt the cycle of burnout through gentle breathwork, mindfulness meditation and simple body-based practices that support nervous system regulation. Info and sign in links here.

Also new:

I’ve recently released two free video talks exploring burnout, mindfulness and nervous system health:

• Burnout: Signs Your Nervous System Needs Support (Part 1)

• Rebuilding After Burnout (Part 2): Learning How to Rest

It’s summer. There is finally nowhere to rush to, nothing to check off, nothing to plan for. I get to lie here and listen. For this moment, I get to be. These are the days we yearned for as children. I’ve felt her excitement leading up to this day. Nothing but fun and freedom ahead. Or so I want to believe.

But as a parent, my joy is mixed with weariness at the long, stretched-out weeks ahead.

We’re only a couple of hours in, and part of me is already longing for the routines of September. As much as I crave slowness and rest, they also unearth fear: the fear of parenting all day long for months on end, and the fear that rises in my body whenever I stop. So I waver between desperation for breaks and terror when they actually arrive.

Of course, I know that in a blink this summer break will be over. I think of those aggravating reminders parents are given to “enjoy every moment.” I know that the smells of sunscreen, barbeques and saltwater will suddenly be a memory - and that we only get about eighteen summers with our kids.

I know, too, that the inner turmoil a season of rest brings does not need to be so confronting. Luckily, my mind holds years of techniques and tools to help me meet these emotions and return to the present moment. But my body is slow to change. My nervous system is slow to trust.

This slower pace - and the goodness of right now - do not yet feel safe.

Toolbox check. When things do not feel safe, I try to name what is true in the moment:

I’m at home.
The window is open and I hear birds outside.
I’ve slept well.
Hana is here.
My husband is making coffee downstairs.
After five full weeks of retreats, trainings, family events, medical stress and big inner shifts, I am resting.

These are all true.

A full summer lies ahead, with long spacious days. Also true.
And my body does not feel safe. Also true.

I know this melody. It came up last year at this exact time. 👇🏼

Last summer, the fear had more to do with family. Old dynamics. Old protective responses. Nothing problematic had even arisen, but my body didn’t know it. It was still replaying an older song - jaw tension, vigilance, a racing heart, that familiar internal bracing that arrives before I even have time to name it.

This year, though, the fear has widened. It isn’t only showing up around family, summer parenting or the loss of routine. It’s rising around work, too.

What’s surprising about this fear is that work has been good - really good. The last couple of months have been rich and powerful. The work has asked a lot of me, yes, but it has also felt meaningful, aligned and deeply alive. I have created things I’m proud of, held spaces that felt honest and impactful and watched my work mature into something that feels more and more like me.

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And yet, instead of simply celebrating that - or resting in the beauty of what has been created - I noticed my mind obsessing over financial fears. I kept fixating on the story of taking three weeks off during summer break. I compared myself to others. I became cynical about my own achievements, as if minimizing them might somehow protect me.

Everything was safe. Everything was okay. And still the old story kept rising: I’m not safe. The work was going well. The fear was old.

It is humbling to watch the body brace against the very things it longs for: rest, space, success, enoughness. The nervous system can grow so accustomed to vigilance that even goodness feels suspicious when it arrives.

Safety doesn’t always feel safe, because sometimes it is unfamiliar.

And so I lie here listening to Hana strum her ukulele, and I begin to understand that this first day of summer break is not just inviting me to slow down. It is inviting me to tell the truth. The truth that many things can exist at once.

I can be grateful and dysregulated. Proud and afraid. I can be deeply in love with my life and still startled by the space inside it. I can crave rest and also feel afraid when rest arrives. I can know that I am safe, while my body takes longer to believe it. This too is part of the practice.

So lately, I’ve been trying to support myself in very simple ways.

Not right now, I whisper, when the urgency rises.
Not right now to the email.
Not right now to the idea that suddenly feels like it must be acted on immediately.
Not right now to the compulsion to fix, plan, compare or produce.

I can get to it later and still be safe. Often, what makes a response clearer and truer is waiting until it is less rushed, less fear-driven.

I look back at all that I’ve accomplished, not because I need a justification to rest, but because I need to remember what is actually true. I need to remember the spaces I’ve held, the ways I’ve supported people, the beauty that has moved through my work. I spend so much time teaching about rest, presence, regulation and care. This is my chance to offer the same mercy to myself.

When I notice myself looking outside myself - at who seems more productive, more poised, more successful, more secure - I try to return inward. My teacher reminds me to imagine myself at the top of a mountain - alone, quiet, listening.

When I do, I remember what I am—and am not—committed to.

I am not committed to becoming a louder version of myself as a teacher. I am not committed to the spectacle of performing. I am not committed to selling to the masses from the mountaintop.

I am committed to softening, listening and connecting. To feeling a little more like myself with each passing day. To discovering how to care more. And to trusting that the quiet has something to teach me.

As I listen to her strumming, as I write this down, as I keep returning to the moment instead of the story, something softer begins to emerge.

Maybe the practice is not to force my body into trust.
Maybe the practice is to keep meeting it there.
To keep whispering, without urgency: you’re safe, you’re safe.

This morning, that practice sounds like a ukulele in the next room.

And for now, that is enough.

A few ways I’m supporting myself into rest right now:

꩜ Not right now.
A gentle pattern interruption I’m currently working with is this phrase: not right now. Not right now to the email. Not right now to the idea that suddenly feels urgent. Not right now to the compulsion to fix, prove, plan or prepare. I can return when I’m steadier. I can answer from clarity instead of adrenaline. I can let a thought ripen before I mistake it for an emergency.

꩜ Remember what is already true.
I look back at what I’ve created - not because I need to earn my rest, but because I need to remember what is already true. The spaces I’ve held. The support I’ve offered. The beauty that has moved through my work. I spend so much time teaching rest, regulation and presence. This is my chance to offer the same mercy to myself.

꩜ Turn inward instead of sideways.
When I notice myself looking sideways - at who seems more productive, more poised, more successful - I try to turn inward instead. Not toward a brand, a persona or an idea of the teacher I should be, but toward the person I actually want to become: softer, truer, more connected, more able to care. I am less interested in appearing impressive than in becoming more honest.

It’s taken a long time (and my fair share of mistakes) to understand, to really know, how trust is built. Early in my teaching journey, I experienced - and also participated in - spaces that weren’t always sensitive, inclusive or responsive to the needs of everyone in the room. Those moments shaped me as much as the supportive ones did.

Through these experiences, I’ve come to understand that it’s impossible to be the perfect teacher. No facilitator will say exactly the right thing for every person, nervous system, history or circumstance.

But what we can do is become more curious. We can listen more deeply. We can loosen our attachment to what we think should happen, make room for different experiences to exist and respond to what is actually unfolding in the room. This is where the teacher becomes a student again. Where openness becomes more valuable than expertise.

My commitment as a facilitator continues to be one of studentship and personal practice, of coming back to tending to my own nervous system first. When I’m grounded, I’m more comfortable not knowing, not controlling, more able to adapt and more able to trust each person’s innate capacity to reconnect with themselves. And when trust is present between us, people often become more able to trust themselves, too.

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Over the years, I’ve moved away from trying to deliver the perfect practice or create a specific outcome. Breathwork, meditation and mindful movement aren’t transmitted through force or expectation. They’re felt when people are supported in listening more closely.

Where trust can grow. Where wisdom is remembered. Where everything belongs. Where we are all holding and being held.

This is the kind of space I care about creating. And the kind I’ll keep refining.

A Note on Safety & Trust

One of the biggest shifts in my facilitation journey has been understanding the difference between safety and trust.

For me, the goal is not to promise safety. The goal is to create thoughtful conditions where trust has a chance to grow.

How to Build Trust in Facilitation

So what helps trust grow in a room? Here are a few principles I return to again and again:

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We chatter excitedly, feverishly, about previous road trips, road trips gone wrong, road trip music and road trips still to come. In this moment, years and other lifetimes flash before me.

She’s almost 10, and this transformative time - undulating between child and young adult - is nearing its end. Less hand holding, fewer silly nicknames, less certainty about who she is.

Loaded up with a pillow and blanket in the passenger seat, she opens the curtains to scenes from her memory bank, and I’m startled to learn how her limbic brain recalls moments of struggle. I’m surprised by how fear lives inside her, trying to make sense of pain that never really made sense. We gently explore the truth together.

She’s not quite 10 and already able to read between the lines, cognizant that a power move can be painful when it disrupts the norms and standards previously created within a relationship. Stubborn as a bull, bursting with conviction. Fragile with insecurities that make me want to shake her (but really, shake myself) because I know their origin.

The waning light in the sky becomes our timekeeper. It will surely defeat us, but for now it delights us with glorious pinks and silly cloud animals. We drive on.

Ten years old. A decade. My soul. My existence. My heart outside my body. Elation and ecstasy beyond language. Words never needed. Hugs never too much.

Will there truly only be a couple dozen more of these trips? Who decides these things? Am I going to follow those rules? Can we be different and stay this way forever? Will the hormones make it harder, or will we keep growing closer?

I am constantly asking, What is true? I’m 45 and, insistently, only now wanting the truth. Not my truth, but the truth.

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I look around the car, at the stretch of highway, at this pivotal moment, and consider what is true: we are here, finally together again, walking this lifetime arm in arm as we’re meant to - a little afraid and already a little nostalgic.

“Are we really only 12 minutes away? Oh, this is a dream come true. I can’t believe it!”

Her plain joy amuses me. Approaching our destination. In love with one another, with the future and the moment. It’s so simple. I vow to keep it simple.

She’s only 9 years old, but she chooses to play the Fugees next, and suddenly the snow is behind us. The skies have cleared. We’re moving through - no map, no agenda.

My heart still holds a weight, or a soft grievance, but my breath returns in that moment, and I trust that this dull ache means my love is real.

Few places feel like coming home. I wonder what this feeling is, for I touch it as infrequently as I do deep stillness in my daily meditation. What does it mean when words escape describing a homecoming? A feeling of connection to place that I have seen others associate with ancestral ties, cultural upbringing or stewardship of the land. I dig deep into my memory banks and DNA pools and come up empty - with this understanding, or version, of home.

Where is my homeland? I don’t know how to find it. There is no clear path. Perhaps because I’m not searching, not striving, not missing anything. I just wait. For me, home is an experience that visits - the map finds me, and I know in my bones when it arrives.

Currently, I’m in line at the BC Ferries terminal, eager to get back home to my family. I know that home is not in this lineup, nor where our family home sits in North Vancouver. Home was a feeling that marked me deeply this past weekend in Tofino, where I am travelling from. Home is whenever I’m with my family. Home is also a moment alone in the forest.

My body is a home, though this home feels brand new most days, adapting to shifting hormones, changing neurochemistry, and (to be honest) menopause. A kind of new becoming. I believe that the feeling of homecoming within my own body is possible and will arrive when I stop forcing and start accepting.

Home is when I feel most like me: held, validated, confident, authentic, seen and equally listened to - by me. And I don’t need a place to experience it, although my body is how I do. My body helps me understand this steadiness and anchor through eyes, language, heart and voice. Home is a place that smells delicious, layered with shades of green, soft paths, hushed voices and wide skies. It can exist on earth. It must exist in me, too.

Whether or not we have an ancestral homeland or a place that offers great solace, there is still a search for more. And we gather in groups to help with this search back home. Something so simple is mirrored in spaces with others: whether friends, or even more so, strangers, we get to remember our similarities. We get to take off the armour. We get to awaken together. And remember the home within. Together.

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Growing up, and growing down.

My first “real” job was in a restaurant at the ripe young age of fifteen, food running - plates of pasta and refilling waters. I had also gotten my fingers black, literally, with my paper route a couple years prior, thanks to my mom driving me house to house on many dark days with stacks of newspapers in the trunk.

In hindsight, having a restaurant job and a regular paycheque from fifteen years old onwards was both a blessing and a curse. Some of my natural inclinations were nurtured - the desire for independence, responsibility and engagement with adults. Yet at the same time, I wasn’t doing what most fifteen-year-olds were doing. I always wanted to be older. I found myself working with and looking up to people in their early twenties, and I wanted to be them - old and, most of all, free. But I wasn’t at all ready for what “older” meant.

I’m starting to see this in my nine-year-old daughter Hana. She thinks being older is cool - didn’t we all at that age? The desire to grow faster than we’re made seems natural, almost primal. I see it in her glances at others, in the mirror and in whispers with her bestie. Age matters so much when we’re young, so of course Hana finds it absurd that, on most days, I can barely remember how old I am myself.

How things change. How priorities change.

Nonetheless, back then I did everything I could to be older. Before sixteen I had already: bought a car. Smoked cigarettes. Went to raves. Found myself alone with men in unfamiliar homes, facing situations I wasn’t ready for. Lied to my parents often. Cut school even more. Stopped taking photos, writing, skateboarding, communicating in most ways and disconnected from who I truly was - all to be older.

But was I?

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I thought being older equated to freedom, that doing whatever I wanted at all costs was maturity. I believed I was free to give myself to situations, but in reality, I was giving myself away. I had no idea how to unfold into the young woman that awaited me. I drifted from crowd to crowd, trying on jobs, trends, friendships, styles, personalities, substances that never quite fit. My late twenties included some drifting as well - but there was more purpose to that phase of discovery. At 18 years old, I distinctly remember one dark rainy evening in Vancouver where I was a passenger in a car trying to evade a couple of drug dealers with guns. I was high and in shock and also quite lucid in realizing - I’m not old enough to be in a situation like this, nor do I want to be.

I’m not old enough to be here. I’m just a child.

Even then, somehow, it was all unfolding right on time.

I was getting older by the day, but the little girl inside me hadn’t been invited along for the ride. I hid from her through substances but she persisted. She kicked and stomped her feet - restless and righteous - wanting control, wanting to fix, wanting to perfect, wanting to grow up. And I needed to be there, right there beside her, to guide her.

The little girl in me was longing to be invited along for the ride.

I have always been enamoured with children - their unapologetically tender, real, raw presence. They give it to you straight, mirroring a situation, a personality, a nervous system with uncanny precision. Perhaps what I adore about them are parts of me that needed to be seen and loved. The more I witness little Carolyn with patience and kindness, the more I feel my own heart growing up alongside her.

What I love in children is what has always needed love within me.

I undoubtedly attribute my ‘growing down’ to the birth of my daughter Hana. Welcoming her into my life was a fast track to healing my younger self. Her reactions to things seemingly small and milestones at each phase of growth still unearth emotions within me from the same age that need a good, long look. Her entry into school at Kindergarten comes to mind. The insecurities that arose most definitely had nothing to do with being apart from her for a few hours every day. I fully trusted our strong attachment and the teacher she was blessed with that year. What surfaced though was something tender and real - something in my own five-year-old self, that didn’t trust leaving behind my brother and parents to fend for themselves.

A few years after Hana’s birth came the sudden death of my father. I connect to this moment often. I write and speak of its impact frequently. The grief and gratitude that followed have been incredibly insightful. I’ve, of course, grieved the loss of his friendship, but also the complexities of our relationship, the places where his parenting fell short and the mistakes I had made as a teen. At the same time, his death showed me the places where I needed to offer my younger self the forgiveness and abiding love she had always sought.

So that’s it.
Is that it?
Life and death as the greatest teachers?

Awareness and understanding as great teachers?

What I know is that aging is not only a privilege, it is a gift. I’m committed to doing it with grace. I’m committed to growing up - growing up my younger self as the days pass, as the wrinkles deepen, as the hormones fluctuate. Yet I’m also committed to growing down, bringing that younger self along for the ride, showing her that we grew up in perfect timing, right on time. There was never any need to rush, and nothing was lost as it happened.

I overheard Hana giggling with her best friend last week.
“Can you believe we’re almost ten?” she whispered.

It inspires me to speak to my younger self, deepening the friendship I share with her.
Can you believe we’re almost forty-six? Or is it forty-five? I always forget. But the number doesn’t matter.

Because I’m right where I need to be. We are right where we need to be.
Right on time.

This spring, I’m offering a virtual series from April 7th - May 12th via zoom that offers ways and practices to connect to more nurturing:

6 Weeks of Nurturing:
A Mindfulness Series for Turning Toward Care

Together we’ll explore:

• grounding and nervous system regulation practices
• breath and body exercises for awareness
• reflective, expressive journaling
• gentle mindfulness practices
• ways to bring more nurturing into everyday life

Rather than force ourselves to change, we will focus on creating a rhythm of care - on returning to yourself again and again with curiosity and compassion.

If you’ve been craving more support, structure and community around these practices, I would love to have you join us.

The six week virtual program begins Tuesday April 7 at 6:30pm PDT.

More info and registration can be found here →.

You can read last week’s exploration of the breakdown here. Below is the continuation of the quieter and more drawn out experience of a breakthrough.

Where are we now?

I hear others say, “I think a breakthrough is coming.”
I respond: the breakthrough is happening. Already.

Not as a moment we can point to. Certainly not as a before-and-after. It isn’t fast. It won’t necessarily be uplifting. And it can’t be fully known or defined. The breakthrough is quieter than that. Subtler. Often concurrent with the breakdown itself.

It’s something we recognize only in retrospect, by listening closely to our language, to the way words begin to sound new in our mouths.

Would it help if I listed my breaks? A list and descriptions of my uprisings after tumultuous descents?

There was the break of carrying another in my womb. She grew within and a new iteration of ‘mother’ formed on my tongue. A transformation of my native language - that of shame, diminishing, victimhood - so that I could be the mother I needed and that my daughter required. So that I could speak differently with my own mother. Slower. Softer.

The break of touching the space between two worlds - the living and not. My father had to die. I had to die alongside him. And on the other side is a steady guidance, a resounding grace - of belonging. Just belonging.

The break of disappointing another, as a wife, as an instructor, as a parent. Feeling the ache, the hurt. And letting it inform the space that I want to inhabit. Bigger, gentler, kinder.

These were all breaks -> down and through.

Going down is loud and hard, yet also potent. This break rebuilds. Any descent involves a pressure that builds bravery. Down is where narratives and beliefs transform in the heat of the fire. And it’s lonely, for a time. Few will descend with us, with arms open, grieving and releasing the old self. In my lowest times, I lost friends, I lost jobs, and I lost the certainty of who the world told me to be.

Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure. (Rumi)

And yet, the pain is required for awakening, for the light. There’s a Buddhist word for this pressure: dukkha. Often translated as suffering, but more accurately - the friction that wakes us up.

Dukkha isn’t wrong. Pain isn’t a mistake in the system. It’s the signal that something is asking to be felt more fully. As Tara Brach says, “Pain, anger, fear, shame — these don’t block awareness; they invite it.”

I believe that awareness is the real breakthrough. Awareness leaves room for our thoughts and feelings, so that we are no longer swallowed by them. Awareness leaves room for us to inhabit a larger space - one that can hold discomfort without collapse.

Do you remember the caterpillar in the cocoon metaphor? I couldn’t, during times of breakdown. I couldn’t see with open eyes that a metamorphosis comes through pressure, through bursting out of small and familiar spaces and that it’s a natural part of development. The Dukkha, the suffering, the breakthrough, says to us: it’s time.

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The breakthrough is a quiet loosening of our grip, an opening to something we can’t yet name.

If you, me, or the world is in the breakdown, desperate for feeling the release of a breakthrough, may we stay, stay aware, stay open, stay a beginner, just stay, and see what unfolds.

I think that right now, the breakthrough is just staying. Surrendering. Going the wrong way. And coming back. A crack. A pause. A breath between all the compiling and becoming. The breakthrough isn’t always forward movement. It’s being with. Being with what remains when the striving falls away. Being with the unknowns. Being with whoever is calling from within - quietly, insistently.

There are moments when the path vanishes altogether. No map. No markers. Everything you leaned on for identity dissolves.

And how do you know you’re on your path? Because, as David Whyte says, you can’t see where you’re going. Because you are no longer performing certainty.

My breakthrough is incremental. A series of undoings, grievings, releasings. There are no trumpets. No ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card. No guru crowning me enlightened. Possibly no outward change at all.

And yet, here I am. Aware. Shedding. Chipping away. Listening. Following my own lead - through trees, wind, water - back to my own rhythm.

Here. I. Am.

You’ll discover this with me in each section of this three-parter. We start today at the beginning, with the breakdown. In the weeks that follow, we’ll build on each stage of the journey.

I invite you to join along, and to share any reflections of your own in the comments.

Is the planet breaking down?
Sounds right.
Are we at the precipice of a breakthrough?
Can we please be near the breakthrough?

What I want to say first: the felt sense of breakthrough is not what we think it will be. The breakdown is more tangible. Felt. Vivid. Cracking open old patterns, old ways of seeking. Fear, grief, anger, anxiety.

Break. Down.
Break. Through.

As an adult, I am slow with my words. I notice how they land. I take time to feel where they tighten my chest, soften my belly or quietly ring true.

As a child, I was easily programmed. I grabbed hold of new ideas, flashy opinions. I believed what I was told. When nothing felt safe, I was desperate to be shown right from wrong, power from weakness, justice from dissonance. I listened to decisive words around me, and made them mine.

Words are programming. Breakdowns are deprogramming.

But chasing loud words or beliefs pulled me outward, and inevitably down. Religion. Substances. A guru promising enlightenment. Down. Down.

No breaks allowed. Don’t let them see you break. Down is evil. Outsiders go down.

This outward path was short-lived. Yoga offered a pause, a landing pad on my descent. Yet even there, I was still looking outside myself. Albeit in more informative and discerning ways. I began to resist authority figures who screamed stories of shame or promised healing. I remember a teacher standing on a student’s low back, another grabbing her inner thighs for a ‘better’ stretch, another pushing toes toward heads as onlookers “oooed” and “ahhed,” and yet another sleeping with disciples. These stories showed me that the part of me looking outside had to crumble. Yoga taught me the ethical value of being an outsider, of refusing to blindly follow, of breaking from the crowd in order to honour my own integrity. These breakdowns would teach me to break away and run. Straight into myself, toward the true voice of authority.

I had always been running toward myself. I had to break down (freely, inwardly) to find my programming, my voice, new ways to use words, to truly hear the plan. Some of my biggest breakdowns happened far beyond my plan.

And of course, breakdown isn’t easy. It never is. It never goes according to plan. But it isn’t as terrifying as the world insists. The word itself, and what it reveals, are natural. Necessary.

A friend once illuminated breakdown for me with a metaphor: I was sharing my recent upheavals before being led through a breathing session with her, explaining how my body and mind were showing me, yet again, that holding on was no longer an option. It was unstable. Too heavy to rise. The parts I no longer needed were dragging, waiting to fall away. She said something along these lines:

The breakdown is like a rocket ship at liftoff. The first moments are wild and violent, everything shaking, rattling, threatening collapse. It can feel like something is going terribly wrong, as though a crash is imminent. And then, right at the edge of the unbearable, the unnecessary pieces fall away. What remains keeps going - lighter, steadier, soaring. This is the breakdown. This is the breakthrough.

The crack, the edge of destruction, is the only way to illuminate our hearts and higher selves, the only way to see what remains when all definitions and conditions fall away.

Stories must crack.
Beliefs must break.
Systems must split.
Let the program you were fed fail. Let it blast off. The crack is crucial.

Just let go. Let go of how you thought your life should be, and embrace the life that is trying to work its way into your consciousness. (Caroline Myss)

Yet the balance of it all is that, on many days, with the clarity of hindsight, I delight in the unknowns. I relish life’s beautiful mysteries. I’ve come to understand that softening my grip is the way, that vying for control only limits possibilities. The way things might have turned out if they’d gone according to my plan usually seems like a ridiculous oversight.

On days where perspective returns, my plan appears dim and narrow. It falls flat. The Plan has been far more interesting than anything I could have concocted.

As The Plan unfolds, I find what I never could have imagined.

The Plan shocked me when my dad died several years back. Not because it was a torturous night of the soul, or because I wished things had turned out differently - but because it wasn’t the way things were supposed to be. He was healthy. Wrestled monstrous demons in his life and came through the other side. He made mistakes. Learned. Valued the outdoors. Devoted to his grandkids. Created community. Ate well. Far from perfect, but he had come far.

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However, when he left his body, I wasn’t mad. I didn’t bargain. I was mostly surprised. Stunned. In awe of how quickly things changed. Humbled by the sudden twist of The Plan. And, surprisingly, I felt ready when my father’s death arrived. On more than one occasion, I quietly giggled at its sense of humour. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me; my person wasn’t supposed to die so soon - but I let it be. My hands were open to what The Plan was teaching me.

The heart of skillful meditation is the ability to let go and begin again, over and over again. Even if you have to do that thousands of times during a session, it does not matter. There is no distance to traverse in recollecting our attention; as soon as we realize we have been lost in discursive thought, or have lost touch with our chosen contemplation, right in that very moment we can begin again. Nothing has been ruined, and there is no such thing as failing. There is nowhere the attention can wander to, and no duration of distraction, from which we cannot completely let go, in a moment, and begin again. (Sharon Salzberg)

Looking back at other pivotal moments, none of it went according to my plan: a crystal meth habit, leaving home at 17, dropping out of university, finishing a bachelor’s degree only to become a yoga teacher (to my parents’ dismay), taking long breaks from communicating with family, numerous miscarriages. All these painful plot twists were part of The Plan. They prepared me for more. They taught me how to let go and trust. They showed me that supposed to is an illusion and that all experiences are perfectly temporary.

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Before 2020, I was adamantly against ever teaching online. It felt like an abyss into the unknown - completely out of reach. I couldn’t imagine how anyone would discover virtual events with me, nor why someone would choose an online space over being together in real life.

And isn’t it humbling how life keeps gently undoing what we were so certain of - and opening us to what we couldn’t yet imagine?

Over the past six years, thousands of people have come through my Zoom room for all kinds of study and practice. It’s been accessible to people from many walks of life, and the connections have been undeniable. Where I once imagined something vapid, I’ve found that connection online is not only possible - it’s real, unique and deep.

It goes to show that it doesn’t really matter where we find ourselves. It’s always possible to get intentional, to slow down and to be authentically you.

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As another year begins, I want to gently caution against falling into old traps of resolutions and self-improvement. Instead, I’d love to offer us permission - to be messy, to not know, to set aside frantic deadlines. I’ve elaborated on why I prefer gentle intentions and surrendering to the process of the journey (as opposed to rigid goals) in a previous New Year’s post here:

As 2026 begins and others are performing, starting over, trying harder, what if you slowed down and listened for the authentic voice within? If you don’t know how to listen yet, or what it’s saying, that’s okay. With virtual teaching, I certainly didn’t know where it was leading - and it surprised me in the best way.

This is what online connections with a slow and curious momentum feel like: a quiet reprieve in the safe space of my home.
No rush-hour driving. No performative bling.
No forcing ourselves to act like it’s summer when it’s still winter.
Nothing to gain or lose. No shame.
Just a few breaths.
Just the present moment.

Simplicity is surprisingly what our strung out systems need.

And because this way of simplifying and getting authentically intentional has mattered so much to me, I continue to create space for it - one that others can step into with me.

What would it be like to begin the year this way: gently, expectation-free and in rhythm with this quiet season?

The Reset: 7 Weeks to Return to Centre is a live online series I created to support exactly this kind of beginning. Over seven Tuesday evenings, we’ll gently look back, clear what feels heavy and settle into the year ahead with a grounded pace.

Through mindfulness, somatic tools, breathwork and guided reflection, you’ll be supported in tending to your nervous system and building simple, bite-sized habits you can actually sustain. You’ll also receive a downloadable booklet that we’ll work through together. More details can be found here ->.

• Starts: This Tuesday! Jan 6 – Feb 17, 2026

• When: Tuesdays • 6:30–7:45pm PST

• Where: Live on Zoom (recordings included)

Sign up for the series here ✨

If this kind of beginning speaks to you, you’re warmly invited.

The two-week countdown to Christmas stirs an odd cocktail: inherited gloom mixed with a childlike flicker of joy. I feel pangs of sadness about the stress and expectation I grew up knowing Christmas to be, matched by tender gratitude for the crafting, singing, baking, and generosity my younger self loved. This year, I’ve been drawn to write cards early, volunteer at a soup kitchen and hang extra lights around the house. I’m also seeing my mentor more regularly - meeting my past and present with more love. Decades of slowing down, understanding and compassion have permanently shifted what this season means.

And still, something is stirred.

We don’t need the darkness of winter or family gatherings to look at where healing might occur, but they certainly set the stage. The holidays bring it all up, whether we feel equipped to be with our emotions or not. What feels especially challenging is that while nature models slowness, quiet and introspection, the world around us does not.

This time of year magnifies everything — the feelings we’ve learned to hold and the ones we still outrun.

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And if we want to heal it, we need to feel it — but that requires slowness. It asks us to move against the grain of what’s happening all around us. The outer world is loud right now: flashy distractions, endless stimulation, long cozy nights of numbing out and triggers from every direction.

Growth doesn’t happen by bypassing this or outrunning it. We cannot grow unless we’re willing to turn inward, meet our shadow and learn to befriend it. As Carl Jung wrote, “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

Joseph Campbell described this inward turning as the essential task of the hero — not conquering the world, but crossing the threshold into oneself. “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” Looking within at what feels hurt, scared, or unfinished is what heals. This may be the most wonderful time of the year — full of joy, generosity and connection — and it is also a potent time to feel, discern and grow.

Our feelings are intelligent guides. They signal when something is off — in the stories we’re telling ourselves or in the energy around us. But staying attuned to them is difficult when we’re rushing to finish work, buy gifts, plan meals, and navigate old memories rising all at once. Where does rest come in? And how can we hear the wise inner voice? How do we feel and heal while still living our stressful lives?

When I work with my teacher, I often want a breakthrough — a clear answer, a next step, a perfectly articulated value. She gently brings me back to the present moment, again and again, reminding me that wisdom already lives here. Listening to the wisdom our feelings point us toward, right now, is powerful.

Last month, she asked a simple question:
“What do you create in your sessions? What occurs around you?”

So many feelings for such a simple question.

The answer was slow to arrive, but my feelings rushed in. They often do with her directness — my mentor, steady and attuned, intent on helping me see my own light. Still, old myths of inadequacy flooded my intuitive senses. I was used to being overtaken by feeling.

That day, I showed up to our online meeting sick — foggy, exhausted — yet something in me knew to keep the appointment. She has walked with me through many quiet deaths: of who I thought I was as a teacher, as a protector, as a daughter. Recently, I noticed a shift — she was no longer speaking to my inner child, but to the self I am becoming. The one who trusts what’s next.

I was getting better at remembering what was true. I exhaled and let the answer come, without editing.

I value creating a space for transformation — where people feel held, free and able to share.

She added, “And first, they slow down and soften in your presence. That softening creates space for awareness.”

Slowness has always been my guide. A decade ago, I slowed movement way down in my classes — long before I understood the nervous system science behind it. I just felt it. I even shaped my entirely shifted ethos around a line from Daniel Odier’s The Tantric Quest: “Slowness is a divine thing.” When we slow down, we can begin to look inside and awaken. We can feel and begin to heal.

Years earlier, a friend handed me a sticker that read Feel it to heal it. He put the stickers everywhere around town. I loved the sentiment as a concept. But it would be a long time (and a lot of support from mentors) until I let myself slow down enough to feel safe in my own feelings.

Slowness allows us to feel, remember, unearth, grieve and release. Feeling alone doesn’t heal, but it softens the armour. Feeling everything, all the time, is unsustainable — it leads to burnout and compassion fatigue. Avoiding feeling even numbs us to joy. Wisdom lives in between.

Feeling with wisdom means slowing down enough to listen without collapsing — sensing what wants attention, and what needs rest. It means responding, not reacting. This is a hero’s path: one that requires courage, discernment and care for the nervous system.

The holidays, and the quiet cloak of winter, show us what we need to feel.

The outer world is loud. Winter invites us to turn inward.

In this season, we can yet again learn: when to soften — and when to let the body speak.

Pause.
Soften.
Sense.
Respond.

This is the time of year we need it most. Feeling with wisdom takes time — because our patterns run deep, because triggers are sharp right now, because we’re moving against the current, because our attention is pulled in many directions. It takes time. And yet… slow down anyway, and take it.

Consider subscribing to receive next week’s “Practices for Feeling With Wisdom (and for surviving the holidays)” - a guide to help you get through with inner steadiness.

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It can determine the unfolding. People and situations will certainly change and evolve, but we rarely forget that initial encounter. The moment just before an introduction has an impact.

As a younger teacher, I was unaware of how to welcome each student equally (with soft eyes and heart, and a strong back) into the yoga space. To me, crafting our journey’s peak together was more crucial. You know, the meat of the flow. I didn’t have the time, curiosity, or care to think about the space just before the gathering began and right after it ended. Honestly, I focused on the part of class I believed I was being paid for.

Don’t get me wrong, I gave my all to what I was getting paid for. And I loved it. A yoga class had the potential to be the most soul-stirring story, and I loved giving hours to crafting every word. Intention was the guiding force: the physical theme or peak pose, the spiritual thread (my classes were often coined ‘a bit of stretching plus a bit of therapy’), and of course the playlist.

But over time, something shifted.

I began to notice that the moment of arrival - that liminal pause before anything began - shaped the whole room. When I treated it as part of the tale we were weaving, we grounded and grew together more easily.

To feel welcome as you are is the beginning of homecoming.
This welcoming inspires, connects, frees. A true leader understands this.

A turning point arrived a decade ago.

Ten years ago, a portal opened for me to uplevel my leadership in this community. I started shifting away from vigorous sequences (due to chronic pain and injury) and from Sanskrit and chanting (because I’m not a Hindu scholar — Buddhism is my jam). Cheerleading classes through pushups and hamstring stretches were falling flat. Promising solutions to physical conditions wasn’t where I needed to lead.

Why the change of heart? Life had thrown me into a masterclass of motherhood and explosive SI joint problems, and there was no turning back.

The journey into the heart was waiting.

Was it my changing situation, or was it the students showing up who taught me? Either way, my new intention was becoming clear: to welcome with love and maintain strong boundaries. My embrace was opening wider.

Life became my teacher.

Those same injuries and the demands of motherhood became my greatest teachers in befriending myself — because the feedback is instant, emotionally and physically. Growth cannot be unlearned — and as the veil of my own shame and unworthiness lifted, I began to see more clearly what was needed for anyone on this path.

Instead of looking to other leaders for inspiration on how to — or not to — guide, I turned toward what was out of alignment in me. I had previously tried to appear welcoming, but I still had work to do: patience to build, compassion to cultivate — especially off the mat.

So I stopped trying to be a “better” teacher and started to love myself more.

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We tend to think of love as a feeling of which we are passive recipients. When love ebbs and flows, as surely it will, we think we are helpless to do anything about it. Love is a verb. Love is a feeling, yes, but a feeling that is created out of action. Love is a daily, even hourly, conscious commitment to behave in a loving and caring fashion toward ourselves and others. When the feeling fades, it is our responsibility to find ways to create new love. Like a garden that is carefully tended, the rewards are well worth the effort. - Anodea Judith

This is not a float-away kind of love.
It’s not the kind that washes bland affirmations over each student. This love that has made me a better teacher is not the kind that leaves you floating on cloud nine after a session.

This love is grounding. It pulls you into your depths, shining a light on the unloved parts and planting a curious ‘why?’. This love is patient and persistent — a verb, a conscious commitment to myself, first.

It’s a love that has helped me understand how to forgive and appreciate myself by simply beginning with: hello, welcome. The healing quickened when I followed that ‘welcome’ with witnessing — quietly sensing what my parts truly needed, rather than fighting, forcing or convincing.

This love is a welcoming one.

And that welcome naturally carried into my work — because there is no separation. I don’t rush in to my work with love guns blazing. I don’t force hugs. But I do want my impact to be felt where it counts, where we need it most. I want my time here to be loving. Welcoming. A steady: hey, you belong. We’re all just stumbling through this too.

I hope that you feel the love I’ve worked so hard (but really, softly) on remembering for myself. The journey is just that — every moment in between.

Welcoming ourselves — in the beginning, the middle and the end — is the thread that pulls us home.

A gentle hello.
Arms open.
A homecoming.

Upcoming

🫁 Breathwork for Awakening - Thursday Nov 27th 6-8pm - at Ma Wellness & Yoga in Victoria, BC

🌲 One Day Mindfulness Retreat - Dec 7th 12:30-5:30pm - at Nectar Yoga on Bowen Island

✨ A Quiet Turning, New Year’s Even Workshop - Dec 31st 10am-11:30am - at Stretch Studio in Vancouver, BC

This weekend I’m back in Whistler, guiding others through breathwork, meditation, and the same kind of inner freedom I once came here searching for. At eighteen, I arrived with a few bags, cookies from my mom, and a heart that just wanted to be free. Two decades later, these mountains still whisper the same truth: freedom isn’t found. It’s made, again and again, on our own terms.

I’ve come back again to a place that was indescribably transformative in my growth as a human. It’s easy for me to get here - a 90-minute drive up a well-lit highway into the mountains. But it’s not just a getaway or a trip down memory lane. There’s freedom in every kilometre I traverse to return. Returning on my own terms. To my own community. In the way I want to be. An intentional choice to come back.

The freedom I found here 26 years ago is the enduring kind. It speaks to me in memories the instant I’m on that familiar highway home.

It was one of my first days of training in Whistler. I’d gotten the job - I’d inserted a tiny photograph of myself in the top right corner of my resume and was pretty chuffed when it worked. I sold my Toyota and moved into staff housing a week later with a couple of bags and some cookies from Mom. Eighteen years old. Seeking freedom. As a lifty - lift operations specialist / operator / stoner (so it became).

The start of this era was once blanketed in shame for running away from home and my troubles, but I’ve since transmuted this trek into a hunt for freedom. Freedom from the patterns I had inherited, willingly taken on by my naïve ego, and wrestled with by my wise soul. I sought freedom, and Whistler held the key to a promise.

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We’d spent a day getting to know the mountain, the lifts, and each other — our new community, our new roles. At the end of our training shift, I found myself atop the mountain hearing that we were about to be the first ones of the season to take the runs. I was on the precipice of a way of being I had always craved — unknown and entirely mine. A bolt surged through my body. The shock of finally arriving. There was no turning back.

The lifts and ski runs weren’t quite open yet, but the taste of a fun ski season ahead was in the air. The thrill of adrenaline and new life — new possibilities, a new me — was within reach, just down that run. There wasn’t much snow, nor much coverage on those beloved slopes — lots of exposed rocks, creeks, branches. I didn’t even own snowboarding boots. I had only been told to purchase snow boots for the job, and that’s what I’d brought for the day of training — gargantuan Sorel snow boots.

Half embarrassed, half amused, I locked them into the bindings. I had snowboarded fewer than ten times in my life, before breaking my wrist at fifteen, then getting lost in the party scene and hard drugs. But I was starting to find myself again. Didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t have a compass, the gear or the wisdom. But I was arriving. I could feel it. And moving to the mountains — to Whistler — was a leap in the perfect direction for the life I somehow knew I was meant to live.

Shaky and wobbly, I stood up and peered down the run, watching my new colleagues take off giggling and “woohoo!”-ing into the future. I took a breath and angled myself toward what awaited me. Down the hill. New. Alive. Free, on my own terms.

When I think of freedom now, it’s about inner space. The space to choose my pace, my work, my way of being. We all find it in different forms, but maybe that’s the point: freedom isn’t one thing we find once. It’s something we keep creating, one conscious return at a time.

“The very fact of you being ready for change means you’ve surrendered your ego more than you think. The very fact of you being willing to try means you believe in yourself more than you realize. The very fact of you being willing to feel lost means you’ve let go of the predetermined way of life you’d previously felt compelled to. The very fact of you not knowing means you are open to discovering. The very fact of you reading up until this point means you’re probably on the precipice of something greater than you realize.

The life that’s waiting for you is already there.

Keep going.”

(Brianna Wiest)

The balance of making things happen while going with the flow is tricky. This transition from summer to fall has been more of the latter — befriending the flow of the mundane. Recently, I’ve been focused on the day to day: supporting my mother’s recovery, editing documents and manuals, commuting, parenting, baking (without much success), and all the little things that make life move. September was for the basic tools that keep me present. It was a time for tasks. Finding moments for creating seemed impossible.

A part of me longs to hold it all — a big new project, an exciting adventure to look forward to, alongside the beautifully mundane moments of life. But this in-between season has been repetitive: to-do lists, last year’s plans unfolding, parenting and caregiving, time in the forest each day, and not enough space for inspiration. It’s not quite restful, yet not manic. It’s just life. This phase hasn’t been for actively creating.

As a small business owner, the pressure to constantly make things happen is always bubbling beneath the surface. When one retreat, workshop, or training ends, the next is already up and selling. Every few months, I’m researching new locations, projects, and ways to grow my business. I love it entirely. And I’m learning to love the lulls too.

Because my creative juices thrive when I’m rested. I’m better as an entrepreneur, guide, mother, and human when I surrender to the mundane. Hustling through quieter times can block aligned action and creativity — and lead to burnout.

Last month, I continued what I set out to do in October of 2024 (because change takes time) — I succumbed yet again to a slow, liminal and boring phase instead of pushing and burning out. Rather than creating outwardly, I was inwardly creating a new mindset — trusting that the “in between” is part of balance. I’ve been quietly manifesting ease in my body and mind. I’m still allowing myself to be in this phase. I’m learning to let ideas and future plans come to light organically. I’m imagining an upcoming period of creation that is playful and aligned with my learnings right now. But this stage comes first.

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An interesting lightbulb moment sparked when boredom and fear came online last month — a practice I often teach others to divert from the doom of an unknown future. The light started to flicker one dark September morning during breathwork and mantras to soothe my inner planner. It dawned on me — why aren’t I looking back? Research shows we are wired with a negativity bias, always on the lookout for problems and ways to ensure safety. But what if I looked back, with a mindfulness lens, to celebrate how far I’ve come?

When manifesting the next step feels like gazing into a void with no direction or timeline — why not look back and honour how past manifestations and creations have brought me here? When my inner manager berates me during idle times, why not give her the task of loving every past success?

My intuition already knows that ‘being’ is a powerful place to rebuild and recalibrate. Letting fears about the future take over doesn’t make innovation magically appear. Lessons about letting go and allowing creation to take the time it needs are all around us, if we only open our eyes. Nature models this beautifully as seasons come and go. In the Northern Hemisphere, the output of summer has slowed, but we’re not yet in winter’s darkness.

We’re at a tipping point — on the threshold of something new that doesn’t yet need to be known. In fact, it can’t be, if we ignore processing the past and resting into the present. In truth, none of this can be perfectly balanced.

I’m sure that right when I start to feel settled in this season of tending to small tasks and appreciating bigger feats, a new inner ping will guide me toward what’s next. Honouring the in-between and the unknowns isn’t something to learn from a TikTok video. It’s a conscious, moment-by-moment choice to tell my brain she’s safe without a plan, that the little things at home need attention, and that what I choose now informs the next season.

Not creating is not what I was taught about success — but I’m doing it anyway.

Tools for the in between (how to flow without forcing):

• Check in with your body. Notice tension, ease or restlessness — your body often knows what your mind hasn’t caught yet. Hand on heart, take a breath, shake it off, drop into child’s pose.

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I’d like to take a moment for this week’s favourite question: “How can I gain more flexibility in my hips?”

It’s an excellent question, to which I have a list of layered, evolving answers and a sincere question in return: “Why do you want this? What do you hope it will bring you?”

While unfurling the body from stress helps, I’m not totally convinced the world needs more people with open hips. What we need more are strong bodies and open hearts. I’m taking a big bite into the nuanced topic of wellness and wellbeing - which I’ve also explore here - but I believe stretching is just one slice of the wellness puzzle. It’s the same with other embodied tools.

Looking ahead, I sense the futility of flexibility - or any one practice - alone. One thing I know is that prioritizing my strength will go far as I age, in getting me across the street pain-free or up off the toilet. Strength will also make me more loving in the right ways.

Yesterday, I got to explore this stretchy question with a student. I answered with a few reclined stretches, explained how hip anatomy differs for everyone (making “open hips” a relative term), silently repeated my emphatic breath cues from class, and though I didn’t know her fitness routine, I still gently ranted about the importance of strength training for women our age.

And beyond the physical, I’m here for the inner revolution. I love questions about releasing tension, and also about building strength and boundaries so that love and kindness can move freely through us.

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Because I’ve met lotus masters who weren’t all that kind. I’ve seen power misused by people who were bendy. And I myself used to slip easily into deep hip openers while still struggling with low self-esteem. I did learn good lessons on the mat. And that wasn’t the end. It was barely the beginning.

Trust me when I say I’ll always love threading the needle. But even more, I love asking: what really matters most for lifelong mental and physical health? Flexibility, strength… or perhaps something deeper?

Whatever answers I find, it’s the questions that keep guiding me forward.

The voiceover (for paid subscribers) brings the full-length version of this writing to life. Each pause and inflection is a taste of the liminal moments, the thresholds and the quiet initiations that unfold when we slow down and listen. The writing below is a slightly adapted, shorter version - for an easier read - but maintains the essence and learnings of the story. I hope you take in whichever version speaks to you, and that it helps you feel just how powerful the inner and outer unknowns can be as gateways for transformation and love.

It was the last weekend of August and my daughter Hana was over the moon for her best day of summer - a trip to the water slides. Plans were set. My two weeks of retreat facilitation had come to an end and rest was finally ahead (plus one day of sliding with my sidekick). I had nothing on the calendar for weeks. I was eager for the time, knowing that seasons were changing, school was returning, and my inner processing could finally unfold at home.

But something was strange. I brushed it off as the state of the world, the palpable fear, the outrage, the climate. I sensed myself walking on eggshells. Because the entire summer had been... good. Family trips, community connections, deeper explorations of my awareness - all good.

The final retreat of August included my mother as a guest - her first yoga class ever and first time with me on retreat. She and I both had pivotal awakenings as she witnessed me beyond the role of her child. During one moment, I was struck by the sight of my mom lying in savasana during my class - it felt surreal. I had assumed she’d cancel, or that I’d sabotage it somehow, but instead I waited and let things unfold. I waited, and was surprised, again and again: her silent thumbs-up during savasana, her sprint into the ocean during my cold plunge talk, our easy laughter—possibly the first time ever. Surprised when she expressed sincere respect for my work.

It was all good, more than good - and maybe that’s what unsettled me. Joy can feel precarious when you know everything is temporary, when you live closely with death. In that shadow, I felt a strangeness creeping in.

I moved carefully through the weeks following that retreat, half-expecting the ball to drop. It’s been like this since my dad died so suddenly. Never a worrier before, I now brace myself for another life-changing call.

And sure enough, the night before our trip to the water slides, the text arrived: Mom had taken a nasty (but not life-threatening) fall and was in the ER. “Aha!” I thought. “Here’s the smack from the universe. Things were too good!”

But stepping back, I see this story isn’t about one accident or one season. It’s not about blame. It’s about learning to rest in a threshold space … and noticing the initiations that open when we do.

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What I noticed, before and after my mom’s fall, was the groundlessness of it all—a reminder of what Pema Chödrön calls the heart of mindfulness. She emphasizes that uncertainty and instability aren’t obstacles, but that a certain ‘groundlessness’ is the essential and unavoidable terrain of being human.

It felt like floating. Observing. Untethered to drama or the need to know. Unsure of what was coming next—unsure in the most calming way. Some part of me knew that embracing the unsettling strangeness was necessary for the initiation ahead.

I was in a threshold space—the kind Francis Weller calls liminal, where the familiar falls away and the unknown waits. “Liminality is a realm of pure potential,” he writes, “where transformation becomes possible because everything is in flux.”

I’ve taught myself to slow dance with grief and love, to curiously contemplate death. There’s richness in these in-between spaces - a place to question, to discover. And yet, I still get pulled back into old insecurities when life feels groundless. I wasn’t raised in a relaxed home. I was taught to blame, to point the finger, to plaster on happiness. Learning to linger with uncertainty is my quiet rebellion against those patterns.

Because the truth is - life isn’t keeping score. I didn’t deserve a setback with my mom. Life simply contains multitudes of causes and effects. A strange, liminal time isn’t punishment. Things simply happen. And whether we race through the unknowns or slow down and soften, life keeps moving.

So the question becomes: do we ride the storms begrudgingly, or do we step into each initiation as a sacred portal to a fuller way of living?

The real initiation is learning to trust that life is not about balancing scales, but about unfolding. In the pauses—in the waiting, the grieving, the laughing—we remember that we are already at home wherever we happen to be and with whomever we are becoming.

I didn’t get to take Hana to the water slides. I didn’t get the gentle routine I was planning for. I didn’t get to rest. But the initiation called, and I answered—with a soft yes. The reminder arose: love is always accessible, no matter how strange, sorrowful, grateful, or surprised we feel.

Choosing to stay soft was one of the strangest parts. Choosing to look at where I felt unloved, whenever I wanted to snap or run. I had nothing to hold on to. I released old coping mechanisms and kept choosing to watch my own responses. Again and again, I chose to try something new, to find a steadier way of handling it. Loving, without holding tightly.

So let this be a reminder at the start of a new season or when the unexpected shows up: don’t blame the universe. Don’t wait for the other shoe to drop. Meet what’s here—with breath, with tenderness, with a steadier gaze. Choose to let go. Choose to care for your inner voices. Choose to keep unfolding into each moment. Choose to make a kinder home within yourself.

That’s how I want to keep walking into whatever initiation comes next.

And - I did have a few small rituals that anchored me, though I was not holding any of them tightly. I kept myself as present and as caring as possible with the people and the challenges before me. However, a few things that helped (and still help) are:

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But sometimes, the scrolling becomes its own trap.

In those moments, the old imposter stories return: comparisons, doubt, the temptation to imitate polished “5 Steps to Healing” lists that promise quick fixes and easy answers. The truth is, I don’t want to write like that. I want to tell stories. I want to connect through lived experience and open-ended questions, not through promises I can’t keep.

Still, when I’m stuck or feeling unworthy, I wonder: is this writer’s block or imposter syndrome? Are they two sides of the same coin? And maybe the bigger question: does imposter syndrome ever really go away?

After my dad died, I joined a book writing program. Six months of classes and I’d have the entire product, dialled and delivered - or so I believed. Instead, the program became a humbling lesson in trust and flow. Every class began with a guided meditation to get us out of our heads and ended with a deepening understanding: that a book (or the three different drafts I concocted during the program) was not a product to force but a full-body, lifelong process.

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The forest became my truest classroom, where inspired writings took shape. The trails and trees perpetually taught me to trust. The river whispered that flow cannot be forced. During the program, I had a steady sunrise date with my computer, but nature became my sanctuary. It reminded me that each messy draft will unravel or return in its own time.

Nature also taught me the power of no deadlines. Stories written under pressure feel lackluster. Resentment builds when I treat art like a checklist. I scroll aimlessly through calendar reminders and unfinished drafts, losing trust in the timing of stories. I start running, chasing control. The forest shows me instead that surrendering creates the space for flow.

I know the flow state. We all probably do. It’s healing - a perfect high. Out of body, yet completely embodied. When inspiration to write or edit a draft strikes, everything flows: confidence, joy, complete immersion. Anyone who has touched this kind of flow or oneness knows that the moment we start to chase it, it becomes elusive.

And for me, without fail, when I stress and force words, the imposter comes to visit. She used to appear when I taught public yoga classes. Now she visits when I write.

The forest offers undying wisdom. The imposter offers her own lessons in self-love and honesty.

My teacher used to say: “things never truly go away; they just get quieter and more subtle”.

So I pay close attention and notice when the imposter lurks in the shadows, eager to distract me and keep me safe from discomfort. It’s a great teaching, listening for her voice vying to dampen my own wisdom. But the old pattern softens. It changes.

Writing slows her rhythm. I see her, the imposter within. I honour her. I let her be. Naming her, witnessing her stories, her hooks, her claws—that is my practice. Speaking of her is how I heal. It’s how I remember she was never lacking anything. Nor am I. There is already enough love for us both. And more than enough words.

Catching her doesn’t stop her altogether. Sometimes I scroll, sometimes I wrestle, sometimes I shut it all down and run to the forest. It’s about trial and error. It’s about maintaining perspective. I’m okay with a dozen story tabs open on my laptop. Growth doesn’t happen overnight. Living into our potential takes time. I’m not hustling anymore. I’m telling myself I’m right on time.

If I try and fail, I still win. It’s still a step forward. A learning. It’s not about being the most perfect or telling the most illuminating story, but about remaining steady with love.

So I’m celebrating the frustrating moments – the breaks, the breath, the quiet seasons. I want to honour my seasons of breaking down and breaking open. I honour my quiet stories of slow transformation too. An afternoon of scrolling, an unfinished essay, a loud inner critic - none of these take away the truth of who I am or what I carry. This I logically understand. But when understanding is combined with love and trust - the imposter lays down to sleep. Writer’s block, imposter syndrome - they don’t disappear, but they do change. They soften. They remind me I’m still here, still writing, still learning to trust the timing of my own stories.

So rest now, dear one. I’ve got a new healing tale to tell.

Ways to Cope with Imposter Syndrome

(a list of tools for writers and for all humans)

1. Name it
Recognize the feeling as a story, not the truth. Saying, “This is imposter syndrome,” creates just enough space to pause and breathe.

2. Normalize it
You are not alone. Research shows that up to 70% of people experience imposter feelings at some point in their lives—including those who appear confident and accomplished.

3. Track the facts
Keep a list of your wins. Revisit positive feedback, small milestones or moments of integrity when doubt creeps in. Evidence doesn’t erase feelings, but it gives your brain a counterweight. Neuroscience shows that even tiny, consistent reminders help rewire patterns of self-doubt over time.

4. Notice the small shifts
Pay attention when something feels just 1% more manageable or when you stay present a few seconds longer before shutting down. These micro-moments signal nervous system regulation and build resilience.

5. Get into your body
Movement interrupts spiraling thoughts by shifting blood flow and brain chemistry. Exercise reduces cortisol (the stress hormone), boosts dopamine and serotonin (mood and motivation) and helps the prefrontal cortex regulate anxious thinking. Even a walk, a stretch or shaking out your arms can create the room for new perspectives.

6. Honour the path from imitation to authenticity
In any creative or healing practice—writing, teaching, or otherwise—imitating others is part of learning. We all begin by echoing what inspires us. The key is to stay curious and keep going. Over time, what begins in mimicry evolves into something wholly your own. Imitation isn’t inauthentic; it’s the bridge to finding your voice.

7. Let humility and confidence coexist
You don’t need certainty to be of value. Confidence means being rooted in what you do know and open to learning the rest. In this way, humility and confidence are partners.

8. Talk to someone
The most powerful antidote might be as simple as saying: “Me too.” Letting someone else reflect back the truth of who you are can dissolve the illusion of isolation.

9. Release perfectionism
Perfectionism keeps us stuck, and it’s an impossible standard anyway. Messiness is where the truth shows up. Progress and authenticity live in the imperfect drafts, not the flawless performance.

10. Go at your own pace
Imposter syndrome often flares up when we feel rushed to “arrive.” But there’s no deadline on authenticity. Build slowly. Take rest seriously. Let your voice grow roots.

11. Ask better questions

• What practices or rituals bring me back to trust?

• What needs my love and attention during times of doubt?

• What beliefs am I ready to release?

• What do I really love to write about? (or - what do I really love?)

Today begins 13 days of three retreats on two of my favourite islands. The very first time I led a retreat was 14 years ago. Sometimes I’ll hear someone say “I love how much you’re branching out and travelling internationally now!”. A sweet observation and verbal high five. And I’ll also pause and ponder - is this a new direction for me? No, retreats (both local and international) have been part of my repertoire the whole while — but there are the beforetimes and the aftertimes. I forget that different folks exist in each category. Some in both, but not many.

In the beforetimes, there was far less social media coverage sharing my ‘story’. There was a different community — mainly those interested in my sweaty, flowy public yoga classes. In the aftertimes (aka post 2020), people are watching in a different way. Everything I do is on blast and I love social media for the connection and easy avenue for promotion. In these aftertimes, people are also interested in a different kind of growth. New people ready for more than yoga. And I have a greater intention to only spend longer periods of time with said beings - ideally on retreats.

A retreat is a sacred pause where an ‘uplevel’ in awareness can occur. We need to step out of our lives to remember, to dive deep, to relearn care, to make new commitments and feel at home within ourselves. This has been 14 years in the making. Extended days with groups. Trial, error and success at many centres, in many countries. Holding a strong vision. Watching the immense growth from those who join and the new souls showing up. We create this together. The events you’ve attended, the outpourings of heart we have felt, the essence of what we’ve nurtured in group - each has been quietly taking root for a long while. Grateful to still be here with you.

Below, I hope you enjoy some writings I created in the quiet after past events. I got a kick out of perusing old pics and meandering down memory lane. I promise to dig out even older retreat and training photos from ancient folders another time. xo

Being in a group is incredible for growth. In simple and profound ways.

Last weekend, I Ied another training about all things meditation and breath. Meaning, I spent the weekend immersed in study myself, with some wise leaders. I’m pretty excited about the direction this industry is headed. Over the last four years, I’ve noticed a gradual shift when this community comes together. My lens has been shifting, and it seems it has been for many others too. These days when we meet, all I see in the viewfinder is tender love and care.

In group settings, we face mirrors and the law of attraction. What is reflected always hits deep. I pay attention to who shows up around me. I've learned that everyone is a mirror to support my growth. Of course, it’s not all fuzzy feelings and ecstatic dancing. Being in groups has tested me. What I've noticed is that when I’m with others, my connection to myself and to my own heart must be even stronger. At the root of it, being in groups has taught me to care more.

Although I've always been honest and worn my heart on my sleeve, guiding with care has taken time. Leading from a space of care has arrived out of patience, fine tuning communication skills, reparenting myself and letting others be themselves. Letting myself be a student as well as the facilitator has been a journey of humility and forgiveness. Fundamentally, teaching groups shows me again and again to get out of my head and into my heart. And now I see reflected around me, only those who want to care more too.

My intentions are simple. I simply keep learning from others about the heart.

More care is possible. I send it out and know it comes back through you all, growing outwards in all directions. It’s never too much. When in doubt, care more. When your care feels unreachable, connect with us and fill yourself up. We are here.

Our stories.

Loud.

Dormant.

Unravelling.

Who we have been.

What we choose to share.

What we are rewriting.

We can express our stories in a multitude of ways.

This weekend in Tofino was filled with storytelling. Hearts poured out and over. Stories leaving us freer. Wide open.

And so we began, on Day 1, right into the ocean with a clean slate. The ensuing excavation included harrowing and hilarious tales from some of my retreats past. I exhaled.

Much individual sharing within our group's wild transformations and resurrections followed. We inhaled.

I drew from it all and we threw it all into the fire. These stories. This outpouring of heart-centred wisdom. Our younger selves healed.

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I always find some piece of me is broken wide open on retreats.

I return home a little more sensitive to everything and a little more in love with everyone. It's not because I've made or fulfilled any promises to heal students. It's not because all has gone according to plan. It's not because we spend every second practicing sacred, spiritual rituals. On retreat, I am open and in the process with the group. Just open. I listen, learn and open to whatever needs to show up or be released. I trust that we each receive what we need.

I always find that putting it into words devalues the experience. The written word sometimes deepens the inquiry but recently, words have been so limiting. Recently, it's the face to face practice I've relished. Practicing in all types of settings around BC (and soon internationally again...) has been teaching me in beautiful ways. Laughing together, lighting fires, slowing down, sighing with shadows, whispering our truth.

I'd rather see you whenever you're ready than write for the algorithm. I'd rather breathe for me than convince you to show up for your healing. I want to be quiet with these trees and open to whatever comes next. The hustle has lost its lure. The hype of words too. Simply: Open, Together. Into a whole new landscape. Of cleansing, retreating and healing. Quite a luxury and necessity all at once. I'll meet you here.

Accepting appreciation from those who join a retreat or training is difficult for me.

I'm weary of how far the ego can fly with praise. I'm mindful of the problems in assuming total responsibility for 'holding the space'. I'm uneasy around pedestals, certainty and pressure; healing doesn't live here.

More often than not, admiration towards a guide is actually in the eye of the beholder. The teacher is not solely responsible, one way or another, for the seeker's experience. Sometimes what a student sees is a reflection of themselves and of the growth they themselves have accomplished. Everyone has the ability to awaken their own inner healer.

I stay away from labelling myself or others as 'healers', for this capacity exists in all of us. I shine any thanks you offer right back into your own bright heart, because we create this space together. A wise healer already lies within. You're likely catching up to who you truly are and I merely remind you that you are on your way.

"We do not become healers.
We came as healers. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not become storytellers.
We came as carriers of the stories
we and our ancestors actually lived. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not become artists. We came as artists. We are.
Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not become writers.. dancers.. musicians.. helpers.. peacemakers. We came as such. We are.

Some of us are still catching up to what we are.
We do not learn to love in this sense.
We came as Love. We are Love.
Some of us are still catching up to who we truly are."

(A Simple Prayer for Remembering the Motherlode by Clarissa Pinkola Estes)

Can the experience of a silent meditation retreat be adequately explained? Should it be?

Should I try to grapple the task of bringing a spectator into the meditation dome with mere words and imagery?

Could you possibly hear the sound of: The snow sliding from the yurt's roof? The propane heaters warming our bones? Glimpses of quiet rain serenading our sits? The kitchen kettle boiling over and over? Our pens scribbling madly to capture the unravelings of our minds?

Could you fathom the sight of: The lights along the path, directing us into the forest.. the yurt.. The stillness? The dancing trees honouring winter's stormy winds? These beautiful souls wrapped in blankets and scarves, unmoving to spite ego's inner fury.

And there was so much more. But truly, there was a letting go into such a safe and grounding space.

The winter held us and we held on.. then we released it, and so much more.