This is the wild knowing part of my Substack, where I share glimpses of my journal as I move through the ups and downs of life. Here, you’ll find raw journal-style entries: daily musings, stories, my random theories about the universe, simple joys, notes, adventures, travels, photos, stream of consciousness, processing my life, and more.

stepping out into the unknown (again)

a glimpse of my journal from fri aug 7, 2026 | written somewhere up in the air: JFK —> DEN

I have a bad habit. I don’t want to admit it, but here it goes.

I often (read: almost always), flip to the end of a book to see what happens. I take a peak ahead during the part of the book where I become the characters and get stressed out in the thick of the plot.

I know, I know. It’s terrible. I’m a writer’s worst nightmare.

I started writing about this years ago, and I even drafted a Substack post about it, but then I got nervous and locked it back up in my deep vault of secrets with no plan to share it.

That’s until the other day, when I was on a call with two close friends of mine, who admitted that they do this too! (I won’t expose their names here, their secret is safe with me).

My husband is the opposite of me. The dream reader, film-watcher, etc. He won’t even read the back of a book and he leaves the room if I dare put on a movie trailer, so I don’t ruin it for him.

I wish I was like that, but I’m not.

To go further, (I might as well come clean at this point), sometimes I even wikipedia the plot of a movie I’m going to watch, to soften the blow of the suspense & anxiety provoking middle for me, so I can enjoy the experience without squirming in my seat (as much).

Why am I like this? Well, I was born an anxious worry-wort, always concerned about everything and everyone. The most sensitive child who has ever lived, my mom likes to say. I guess it’s what I know. I have had my fair share of anxiety in my real life, so I don’t need it in my entertainment too.

But the more interesting question is: why are humans like this? (I can say this now that I know I’m not alone in this, that there are others who skip ahead, too)
Why do we need (AKA want) to know how it all unfolds?

Because sitting with uncertainty is unbearable. The unknown, the liminal space, the in-between — it’s so uncomfortable.

The practice of sitting with discomfort, learning to withstand uncertainty, to delight in the surprises and possibilities of the unknown (and even find peace here), has been one of the longest, most important practice of my life so far.

And it is clearly still on-going (since I still can’t even make it through a book without peaking to see how its going to end)

One of those friends on that call (who is fellow novel-end-ruin-er like myself), is currently in a long slow burn of a potential romantic situation. My other friend [name redacted] and I were joking about how we are trying to flip ahead in her life novel to see what happens with this romance, but her book is stuck shut. Our usual flipping-ahead-to-the-end strategy doesn’t work in real life, not with the anxiety of how our current situation will unfold.

I want to do that in my own life right now, too, take a little peak ahead.

But my life novel is stuck too. Glued shut and I can’t see what happens next, it’s annoying.

I know (intellectually) by now, that all I ever know is the next step, and I only know that when it is time.

I keep learning that more is often revealed. That I have to be patient enough to sit through the discomfort of the unknown and do my best to resist the urge to grab onto whatever next thing or quick fix appears just to move myself out of the excruciating liminal space of not knowing what’s next, not knowing how something is going to turn out. And that sometimes (only sometimes) it pans out even better than I could have dreamed up.

That is where I am right now, after finishing two years of school for yoga therapy, I’m officially a certified Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT.) Being in school gave me a knowable container of what was next, and there was some comfort in that because I didn’t have to worry about how to move forward in my business.

But I’m back, stepping out into the unknown again.

So, what is next for me? (so many people in my life have asked me this question, and I don’t blame them, they are curious)

I know I want to stay committed to following joy and aliveness and wherever my intuition leads. But what does that mean? What’s next exactly? I’m uncertain.

All I can say is that when I step back from the nonstop noise of the fear — the one that loves to guide my inner worry-wort to just grab onto something comfortable to ease that discomfort, even if temporarily— and when I have moments where I can sink down into the depths of my inner ocean of myself, below the wild waves and currents of anxiety on the surface, my best self says this:

“Not yet. Rest darling. Breathe, soften, celebrate, play. Enjoy right here right now, receive your life. Acknowledge how far you’ve come and just take a pause for a moment. Soak up the peace and the beauty right here right now, exactly as you are, exactly as it is. Your unknowing, messy, imperfect self who has come so far.”

“Nourish yourself”, she says, “You’re gonna need it when the next step appears.”

I practice this in my life, I’ve been practicing this for so long.

Yet, I still cannot commit to practicing this when I read. It’s just too easy to flip ahead. The stories I read aren’t glued shut, not like the coming chapters of my life.

Share

One of my favorite ways to connect with my intuition is to visit my future self.

Many years ago I created a visualization to visit my future self during my panic attacks as a way of assuring myself that I was going to be okay, that I would make it through. I wrote a whole Substack post on this a few years ago: my future self: a meditation that saved my life. I won’t retell the whole story, but it helped me (alongside daily unfiltered journaling) during one of the most challenging periods of my life, and is something I return to frequently, whenever I need to hear from the wise inner part of me that knows what to do.

The version I’m sharing today is a guided meditation that guides you to connect with your future self.

Your Future Self

When you practice this visualization below, you can go to your future self with a specific question or a decision you’ve been stressing about. You can go for comfort when you feel scared, anxious, or uncertain. Or you ask a general question that you might ask a tarot or oracle deck, such as: what is the message I need to receive? or what would you (highest self/best self/future self/intuition/etc) have me know right now?

We all have a wise inner part of us inside that we can connect to, and often the message we receive from them is simple. I shared examples some of my own examples of this in my past Substack post: “Sometimes she tells me to wait, to rest, to soften, or just to breathe in and out. “Not yet”, she’ll say, as she reminds me to be patient when uncertainty or overexcitement gets the best of me. She often gives me the courage to take the scary next step into the unknown.” No matter what answer I receive from my future self, I always leave feeling comforted.

Visiting Your Future Self: A Guided Meditation:

Read more

This week I’m sharing a conversation I had with , a Relationship and Couples Coach. Lindsey shares a couple of her Real Life Magic stories, one from a solo backpacking trip she took to the Ansel Adams Wilderness and one about a stranger she met in a bar, and then we get into why synchronicity seems to find people who stay open to it.

We talk about the energetic patterns and cycles that show up in every relationship (not just the romantic ones), and about what it means to loosen your grip on manifestation if it accidentally turns into another way of trying to control the outcome. Lindsey also shares about her unique integrative approach to relationship and couples coaching.

🎧 Have a listen above.

A little bit about Lindsey:

Lindsey Bourne is a Relationship and Couples Coach who helps people understand what’s actually happening beneath the surface of conflict, disconnection, and dysregulation in relationships. Her work blends attachment theory, nervous system healing, subconscious rewiring, and parts work to help individuals and couples transform relationship patterns at the very root. She is especially known for her work on the power struggle phase of relationships, helping people move from cycles of conflict, activation, and disconnection to deeper intimacy, trust, and connection.

You can follow along with Lindsey’s work on Substack, Instagram, her Podcast: Relational Alchemy, and her Website.

Share

You can listen here on Substack or find the Real Life Magic conversations on Spotify. (Apple Podcasts and more coming soon.)

This is the Real Life Magic podcast, where people share their stories of times they feel they’ve experienced magic in their lives. They could be stories of miracles, synchronicity, meaningful coincidences, serendipity, signs, following intuition, unexplainable events, connections with loved ones who have passed, and more.

If you have a story of your own, I’d love to hear it. You can share it ⁠here⁠.

Today, I’m sharing a guided somatic visualization that I call, ‘your body is a compass’.

It was inspired by Martha Beck’s Body Compass exercise, which she uses to teach her clients/students how to recognize what a “yes” or a “no” feels like in the body, and to move toward the yeses and joy, one degree at a time. In this blog post, she shares that, “almost always, a wrong decision causes tightening and constriction, while a good choice feels like loosening, freedom, or weightlessness.”

Over years of paying attention to the somatic experiences that accompany my feelings, I’ve recognized that I have different physical sensations for each feeling. These sensations are unique to each of us and students and clients of mine have reported different sensations for the same feeling. So, I took the seed of Martha Beck’s Body Compass and created a guided somatic visualization that guides you through several different feelings to begin to intuit the difference and the unique language of your body.

I’ve led this in group yoga therapy classes and one-on-one sessions, and find that it is an excellent tool to strengthen embodied intuition and self-trust over time.

Your Body is a Compass

The visualization below will guide you through a series of memories, scenarios, and imagined moments, (from unconditional love to your least favorite food to a time you followed your intuition), so you can start to recognize the subtle energy and physical sensations occurring in your body underneath each one. Not the feeling itself (such as joy, love, peace, anger, sadness), but the embodied somatic experience (such as tingling, tightness, warmth, openness, heaviness, ease).

It won’t always be obvious right away, and that’s normal. Most of us are carrying years of conditioning, and sometimes trauma, that taught us to override our body’s signals. Learning your body’s language takes time and practice, and often is supported by community, and professionals along the way.

🎧 Your Body is a Compass: A Visualization

Read more

Today I’m sharing a conversation with Sarah Espinosa about what it looks like to come back to yourself after years of ignoring the signals that something isn’t working.

Sarah shares her journey of spending over a decade in tech sales, climbing the corporate ladder, building an identity around achievement and external validation, and creating a life that looked exactly like it was “supposed to” look like, until it didn’t, and she couldn’t pretend otherwise anymore. Her story will feel familiar to anyone who has ever held it together on the outside while falling apart internally. We talk about building self-trust through the smallest possible promises, her path to yoga and spirituality, learning to recognize signs from loved ones you've lost, and practices she has to take care of herself and her mental health.

🎧 Have a listen above.

A little bit about Sarah:

Sarah Espinosa is a wellness founder and professional coach dedicated to helping ambitious, overwhelmed millennial women reclaim their lives from burnout. She worked for over a dozen years in tech sales at giants like Google and Adobe before burning out and stepping back from the 9-5 life to heal. Sarah is a 3x corporate burnout survivor, turned fierce advocate for mental health in a capitalist world, and she wants to help women identify, prevent, and recover from burnout so they can live happier, healthier lives.

Today, she blends her 200HR YTT yoga and mobility training with strategic burnout and workplace boundaries coaching. Her next group program for corporate women wanting to detangle their self-worth from their jobs, Identity Shift Intensive, starts the week of July 6th and is accepting applications now!

When she isn’t coaching clients 1:1 or teaching yoga in NYC, Sarah is writing her cultural digest blog, prettybusy, a weekly newsletter and place for deep dive essays on tech, pop culture, current events, any anything else affecting millennial women in America.

• Connect with Sarah: sarah-espinosa.com or @sarahespinosa__ on socials.

• Sign up for the Identity Shift Intensive: https://www.sarah-espinosa.com/identityshiftintensive

• Read her essays: prettybusy.beehiiv.com

Share

This is the Real Life Magic podcast, where people share their stories of times they feel they’ve experienced magic in their lives — miracles, synchronicities, meaningful coincidences, serendipity, signs, moments of following intuition, unexplainable events, and the experiences that make you wonder if something more might be going on. You can listen here on Substack or find the conversations on Spotify.

If you have a story of your own, I’d love to hear it — you can share it here.

Today I’m sharing a conversation with where she shares how a series of devastating losses cracked something open in her family and set off a chain of events she never could have engineered on her own. What followed is a visceral example of what it looks like to trust life, not only as a concept, but as a practice you build through repeated, very real experience with loss and what comes after it.

🎧 Have a listen above.

A little bit about Lesley:

Lesley Christine is an emotional clearing expert and the publisher of a 100th Anniversary Edition of Florence Scovel Shinn’s classic The Game of Life and How to Play It: Expanded with Commentary and Guided Practices. She is the creator of Living the Game of Life, a community built around Shinn’s timeless principles, and the developer of The Source Method™ — a precise, systematic process for finding and releasing the emotional and energetic patterns that keep self-aware women stuck, including patterns inherited from family lines generations back. Her work helps women who have done the inner work finally experience it landing in their actual lives.

You can find her and her work at lesleychristine.com.

Share

This is the Real Life Magic podcast, where people share their stories of times they feel they’ve experienced magic in their lives — miracles, synchronicities, meaningful coincidences, serendipity, signs, moments of following intuition, unexplainable events, and the experiences that make you wonder if something more might be going on. You can listen here on Substack or find the conversations on Spotify.

If you have a story of your own, I’d love to hear it — you can share it here.

Life started to feel like a quest, a grand adventure, with twists and turns, and different paths— some leading to dead ends, others full of surprises, but all with important lessons in hindsight. I made the choice to treat everything I came across like it was a clue to a larger mystery, every synchronicity or intuitive pull like it was guiding me towards something one step at a time, and every person I met like they might have a message or lesson for me. I decided to follow my curiosities, intuitive feelings, and joys, however random or weird they seemed, and this made everything more fun.

It started to feel like I was living in conversation with life. As if there was a mysterious energy, a current beneath the surface, orchestrating it all. I naturally became more present and started to feel more alive because I was experiencing more awe, wonder, beauty, and joy in small moments even through life’s challenges and tragedies.

This idea became the foundation for Real Life Magic.

Synchronicities are meaningful coincidences (a term Carl Jung coined, though the phenomenon goes much further back, across several cultures, wisdom traditions, spiritual philosophies, and religions).

Whether or not the synchronicities are “real” or statistical occurrences is less important to me, because choosing to embrace them has given me a deeper sense of meaning in my life—meaning that I intentionally created.

I now teach synchronicity as a mindfulness practice. A playful way to be present and find beauty and awe within the mundane and hardships of daily life. Tracking them can be a fun, low-stakes way to start noticing what’s occurring around you, an anchor in the present moment.

They tend to arrive not when you’re grasping for them, but when you’re simply present. I like to set the intention to notice more, and then move on. When I stop thinking about them is usually when they show up.

Some common examples of synchronicity:

• The person you are thinking about suddenly calls or texts you

• A book, show, or movie where the characters are dealing with the exact thing you’re working through

• The same theme, situation, animal, symbol, number, name, etc— keeps repeating.

• You overhear a conversation or randomly discover something that feels like a response to your inner monologue

• A random old song you've had stuck in your head comes on somewhere unexpected

Two of my favorite practices to increase synchronicity are:

• Track them: When you notice one, write it down: what happened, when, how you felt, whether it meant something.

• Storytelling: Read and listen to synchronicity stories, share your own, and look backward in your own life — write down moments that felt like more than coincidence and see if they connect to something larger.

Here is a fun one from my life:

In 2018, I had quit my job to commit to a 200-hour yoga teacher training in Costa Rica. Since I'd already quit, I decided to visit my sister in China for a couple of weeks before training began.

As I boarded my flight back to NY, the reality of what I was doing sank in, and I started to spiral. I began to beat myself up for making a reckless decision (even though the decision had been well thought-out and planned). By the time I found my seat at the back of the plane, I had talked myself into calling my old boss to ask for my job back, and canceling the yoga training.

In the middle of the spiral, I had a sudden, inexplicable urge to look in the seat-back pocket in front of me. Behind the in-flight magazine was a Chinese edition of Yoga Journal Magazine — seemingly left behind by whoever had sat there before me. I quickly checked the nearby seat-back pockets to see if anyone else had this magazine. Nobody else had it.

It made me laugh and pulled me out of my spiral. Finding a yoga magazine in that exact moment was enough to make me feel like I was on the right track. Something in me settled, and I didn’t question the decision again after that.

If you have any short synchronicity stories of your own, share them in the comments below. Or if you want to share one with me to feature on this Substack, please let me know.

Share

When times are tough, I return to a soothing place I created within my mind & body. I call it my inner sanctuary, and I wanted to share it here since it is one of my go-to tools (alongside my favorite sitting with the feeling visualization).

I shared this practice in the 3-month group yoga therapy class I hosted from February through April. Throughout the 3 months, we practiced developing deep self-trust and self-confidence internally, so that no matter what happens externally, we know we can take care of ourselves and have tools that work for us amid life’s unpredictability.

My friend Jess, a therapist and astrologer who was a guest teacher for one of our sessions, put it well: "Self-trust is having confidence in your own capacity to handle life's ups and downs." This practice is one of the ways I've lived that out.

Creating Your Inner Sanctuary

What you’re about to create with this visualization is a place that belongs entirely to you. A sanctuary inside of your mind and body — a healing, nourishing, or revitalizing space that you can return to.

Once you build it out, you can come back to it whenever. Sometimes I drop into it for just a few seconds. Other times I’ll lie on my couch in the middle of a hard day and stay there as long as I need. You can visit it before you go to sleep, daily while you’re going through a challenging season in your life, or if you need to feel restored.

There is no right way to create it. It can be as simple or as elaborate as comes naturally. Some people see it clearly, and others feel it more than they see it. Get comfortable, and allow your imagination to be free without limitations as you listen to it below:

Read more

Today I am sharing a conversation with my friend and my former holistic career coach, Lynn Mull. In this conversation, we talk about how the path to our goals and dreams isn’t linear. Lynn shares how she views the dips, detours, and side explorations as part of the path that add new depth and layers, not as mistakes (which is such a relief!). And that you are never too late to begin, or to begin again.

At the beginning, Lynn shares a couple of her recent Real Life Magic moments and synchronicities, how she uses pattern reading and noticing what is showing up in her life and business, and toward the end of our conversation, we experience a fun surprise synchronicity between the two of us.

Lynn Mull is a Holistic Career Coach who effortlessly blends the practical with the holistic and the woo. She transitioned from working on Wall Street to working in wellness, and she is now a writer, healer, coach, facilitator, speaker, spiritual advisor, and Reiki Master.

She is the creator of the Clarity Map, which alllows you to map out any goal or your life’s big picture in a simple, visual, actionable, and non-linear way, which we talk about in this conversation.

She is also the author of The 24 Oracle Deck, which is created according to the phases of the moon and infused with Reiki Energy to help you gain clarity and closeness to all three of your energy centers – mind, body, and spirit.

You can follow along with her on her Substack and find ways to work with her on her website.

Share

joy, play & curiosity as medicine

Anything can be medicine or poison.

I’ve heard this from many teachers over the years, and it’s proven to be true.

From 2018 to 2021, it was clear to me that I had started (subconsciously) using my self-development, spiritual growth, and wellness journey as a way to (try to) “perfect” myself and to (try to) take away the tension inherent to being human.

I would try to stop and then find myself jumping back in through new side doors. From 2014 onward, in addition to years of therapy and deep self-work, I had read endless books on self-development, spirituality, nervous-system regulation, meditation, mindfulness, breathwork, yoga philosophy, several other spiritual, philosophical, and mystical traditions, astrology, human design, manifestation, tarot, the list goes on.

These were things I loved, and that had carried me through some of the hardest seasons of my life, but I could easily turn them into ways to give away my agency, feel like a victim of my circumstances, sneak productivity into, try to control life, or perfect myself. What had started as medicine for me had become poison.

It was sometime around 2021 that I decided I needed a real break. I needed to heal from healing.

I stopped reading non-fiction and stepped away from anything I could sneak perfectionism or productivity into in the name of growth. I didn't need to dig deeper, learn more, or find a new practice.

I needed self-acceptance and to return to joy, play, and curiosity.

I started reading fiction books I’d neglected for years: romance novels, mysteries, magical realism, and fantasy. Stories that made me feel alive in a way I hadn't in a while.

I had also moved back to New York City that spring, and I coupled it with spending more time with friends and exploring the city as if it were a grand adventure. I took surfing lessons in Rockaway, I biked along the West Side Highway whenever I could, and I explored new coffee shops, bookstores, and neighborhoods. I made having fun my priority, and I came back to life.

When I started feeling alive again, my creativity came back too. It led me to new people, new opportunities, and the energy to create what had been sitting in my heart. Things I couldn’t access when I was in a rut of trying so goddamn hard.

Prioritizing joy, play, and curiosity was the medicine. It still often is.

For me, that aliveness tends to show up when life feels like a giant quest or adventure: exploring somewhere or something new, time in nature, working on a creative project, traveling, moving my body outdoors, getting lost in a story, deep-diving into a curiosity, or following a thread that pulls at me for no logical reason. Following my intuition and noticing signs feels like joy and mystery to me, too. Playing with tarot, certain forms of manifestation (others I find unhealthy, maybe a topic for another post), and energy work all feel like fun to me when I am doing them from the right place.

None of these practices or tools are bad. I’ve returned to them all in a healthier, more playful and intuitve way.

Our culture is so thoroughly soaked in sneaky productivity and perfectionism, in secretly trying to perfect ourselves or control life, that joy, play, and genuine just-for-fun curiosity can be radical and necessary.

This pattern runs deep for me, so it isn’t a one-time fix. I thought it would be a good time to share my favorite (fun) practices around this now, since I’m doing another round of “joy as medicine” in my life.

If you ever need a quick reconnection to joy, play, or curiosity — something that reminds you of what makes you feel alive — here are a few of my favorite practices:

practices to reconnect to joy, play, & curiosity as medicine:

Read more

noticing beauty

The practice is simple: at the end of the day, I write down anything that moved me. Moments of beauty, joy, wonder, love, awe, inspiration, a synchronicity, a sign — the small things we usually rush past without registering that they were even there.

Knowing that I have to write it down at the end of the day requires me to pay attention to the simple joys in the mundane of everyday life. Because if I can’t enjoy the little things now, then how will I ever enjoy anything?

Here’s what a few recent entries of mine have looked like:

• The way the light comes through my bay windows in the morning in the spring

• A text from a friend that made me laugh out loud

• A fresh light green baby leaf on my monstera plant

• The smell of my morning coffee

• Perfectly ripe raspberries

• Watching all the joyful tiny dogs play together in one section of the park

• A song that came on at exactly the right moment

• Finding a parking spot right away when I was running late (and had asked the universe to help me find an easy one)

• Seeing a couple laughing hysterically together on the subway

• Someone sharing their story with me that very much mirrored what I am going through and needed to hear at the exact time

• The feeling of getting into clean sheets

• Cuddling with the pups

• Seeing a hummingbird at the right moment when I needed reassurance (a sign from my grandma)

• Noticing the first signs of green and flowers coming back after this long winter

Doing this practice for a long time has changed the filter of my brain to notice beautiful things that are already there (rather than only focusing on what is going wrong, what I have to fix, etc.)

And it doesn’t require me to pretend everything is perfect or wait until my life is more settled to start appreciating it (which, as we all know, is a moment that never quite arrives).

It’s been part of the daily mindfulness practice in the group yoga therapy class I’ve been hosting the last couple of months, and it’s been one of my favorite things to hear people share in our group chat.

If you want to give it a try, know that at first it can be hard to come up with things to add to your beauty list, and that’s completely normal. But pretty quickly (once you get to the end of the first day and realize you have nothing to write down), something shifts, and you start noticing things in real time throughout your day because some part of your brain knows it’s going to be asked to remember later. It multiplies faster than you’d expect.

You can keep the list in a journal/notebook or the notes app on your phone — whatever you’ll actually use and come back to. Start by writing 5-10 things down a day.

If you try it this week, let me know what you notice.

Share

Today I am sharing a conversation with my dear friend Daniela (), founder of Lunaria Design Studio. Daniela is a brand and web designer, an astrologer, and one of the most naturally creative and whimsical people I know in the most grounded, real way possible.

I wanted Daniela to be one of the first people I sat down with when I brought Real Life Magic podcast-style conversations back, because she is an example of someone who has consciously chosen to live this way. She has built a practice of noticing signs, following synchronicities, and listening to her body as a compass as real, everyday tools for staying present and taking care of herself. And she has done it through some genuinely hard seasons of life.

What I also love about Daniela is that this same philosophy runs straight through her work. She has a rare ability to see people: to hear a vision that someone can barely articulate and bring it fully to life. She was able to bring my vision of Real Life Magic to life in the winter of 2021, long before I shared it with the world. I was blown away by her intuitive and creative work then, and she has only grown more herself and more extraordinary with every passing year.

In this conversation, she shares her story, how she weaves Real Life Magic into her daily life, and how her business (which has taken some pretty wild and beautiful turns) is its own Real Life Magic story.

🎧 Have a listen to her story above.

A little bit about Daniela:

Daniela Martí is the founder of Lunaria Design Studio, where she helps clients build brands with real heart and soul. Her work sits at the intersection of design, spirituality, astrology, and deep self-expression. She offers Brand Astrology Readings, Brand Kits for every zodiac sign, the Planetaria Brand Course, and one-on-one brand and web design projects.

You can follow along with her writing on her Substack, The Lunaria Letter, and receive creative inspiration from Lunaria’s Instagram.

Share

🎧 Prefer to listen? I recorded an (unedited) voiceover for you above.

Real Life Magic Practice # 3

Almost everyone has been told to “sit with their feelings” at some point, and almost no one is taught how to actually do that or what that even means.

Before I found the practice that I’ll share with you today, the idea of sitting with my feelings felt abstract and a little scary. I didn’t know what I’d find if I let myself feel something fully, and I didn’t know where to start.

Luckily, I came across this creative visualization technique in my early twenties, and it changed everything.

It was the first time “sitting with a feeling” made sense to me in a practical way. This technique gave me a tangible, safe container to first explore the physical sensations underneath a feeling, and then to use my creative imagination to create an image or scenario to allow me to feel and process it rather than intellectualize it. It gave me a way to invite a feeling in, let it show me what it was trying to tell me (rather than pushing it away), then give it compassion and take care of it before releasing it.

I use it all the time now. I have my own scenarios for different feelings (anxiety, anger, overwhelm, feeling lost, etc), and I can move through them with more ease than I used to. For example, for anxiety, I picture butterflies in a cage in my belly, all flying around manically, and when I resolve it, I open the cage, and they float peacefully out into the forest. For anger, I picture a woman screaming in a room, and to resolve it, I hand her plates to smash until she cries, and I lovingly hold her in my arms and let her cry it out. It sounds a little wild, and it works. Everyone I’ve guided through this has come up with their own images, colors, or scenarios, so different from one another that it still surprises me how powerful our imaginations are.

I guided my group yoga therapy class through this earlier this month, and the response was so encouraging that I wanted to share it here. One person said it was “really powerful” and that the answer to what she was carrying became immediately clear. Another shared that it was the first time she’d ever physically felt where a feeling was living in her body. Someone else said it was easier the second time she did it with me. This practice (like anything else) grows stronger with repetition.

I’ve guided many people through versions of this over the years as I’ve worked to improve it. It’s inspired by many teachers and blends a few common techniques. My version of it weaves together the RAIN mindfulness technique, somatic processing, mind-body connection, creative visualization, and loving-kindness.

I wish I remembered who I first learned it from over a decade ago. A few years ago, I came across a wonderful version of it by Maya Raichoora, a UK-based mental fitness expert, which reinspired part of this version. Adding the compassion and loving-kindness piece is an important part that I felt was missing from all previous versions of this method that I’ve come across.

If you’d like to give it a try, I added my guided audio recording below:

Real Life Magic Practice #3:
Sitting with the Feeling: Creative Visualization

Sitting with the Feeling: What to Expect

This is a 10-minute visualization you can return to again and again, for different emotions and different seasons of life. The more you practice it, the easier it gets, and eventually you won’t need the recording at all.

Here’s a brief walkthrough of what we’ll do so you’ll know what to expect before we begin: (Audio below)

Read more

Real Life Magic started in 2018 as an idea to write stories about the moments when life feels like it’s trying to tell you something. Stories about synchronicities, signs, intuition, meaningful coincidences, miracles, connections with loved ones who have passed, and unexplainable things. Stories illustrating the idea that when you learn how to listen to life, to pay attention to your body, to timing, to patterns, to the small things you might otherwise walk right past, that life starts to feel more meaningful.

I knew living like this (living in conversation with life) was a grounded choice because I’ve seen it in my life and in the lives of the people I’ve talked to and worked with over the years.

And I’ve learned that one of the most powerful ways to cultivate intuition and start noticing synchronicity is through stories. By hearing someone else’s experience and recognizing a part of yourself in it.

That’s part of what I’ve been building here: a storytelling project, a collection of moments from all kinds of people, different backgrounds, different beliefs, different lives, that show what it looks like, and how meaningful it is to live this way in real life.

I’m collecting more Real Life Magic stories again, so if you have a story of a sign, a dream, a miracle, a moment your gut led you somewhere you couldn’t have planned, something small and impossible to explain, maybe something that you’ve never forgotten or even shared, I’d love to hear it. You can share however feels natural: I’m looking for both longer conversations around the topic (podcast-style), or shorter stories (a short written story, or a casual voice note like you’re sharing it with a friend). I can keep you anonymous if you prefer.

Or if you know someone who might have a story like this, I’d love to be connected to them.

Below is a short one of mine, originally shared on this Substack in July 2023. It’s about my grandmother, a hummingbird, and what it takes to believe you’re allowed to want what you want.

Real Life Magic Moment #3:
searching for signs (july 2023)

About a year and a half ago, I was feeling lost. I was unfulfilled in my job and genuinely unsure whether to quit and give my own creative business a real try, keep the paycheck and continue doing the fun creative things on the side, or give up on my creative side projects altogether.

I wasn’t getting anywhere by looping the same thoughts in my brain. I was exhausted by my inner confusion and desperate for some direction.

One morning, while I was staying at my mom’s house, I decided to go to Meme’s grave (my deceased maternal grandmother) and talk to her about it. I sat down cross-legged at her grave, feeling vulnerable, and told her what was going on:

I told her that my dream had been to have a creative business. And that all of it felt impossible, entitled, frivolous, absurd, overwhelming, etc, and I had this nagging voice of who the hell are you anyway? on repeat. I didn’t know where to start, how to narrow it down, or if any of it even made sense.

Couldn’t I just be happy with my normal job? Couldn’t I just have normal hobbies, do things purely for fun, and watch TV sometimes like regular people? Did I even want to do this?

I begged Meme for a clear sign if I should continue to pursue my creative dreams. I wanted a clear message from her, one that I would understand. None of these bullshit elusive signs, I wanted the real deal. Specifically, I demanded that a hummingbird be included in this message, so I knew I was on the right track.

I handed the burden of this choice to her and decided if I didn’t get that clear sign that day, I would give up on my creative dreams forever. (I know what you’re thinking, not exactly fair to Meme, who was probably just trying to rest and enjoy whatever the afterlife looks like. But, desperate times.)

I thanked her, stood up from the grave, walked back to the car, and got swept up in the rest of the day and forgot about it entirely.

Later that afternoon, I was lazily lying on the floor at my mom’s house with my sister Morgan, playing with my baby niece Florence. In the middle of whatever conversation we were having, Morgan looked over at me and said, “Chelsea, I forgot to tell you. You’ll never guess what we found.”

She left the room and came back with a small pile of our old children’s books.

“We were going through our childhood books to find some for Florence,” she said, “and we found a bunch of your old books with messages to you from Meme!”

The first book she handed me had a hummingbird on the front cover, and a handwritten message addressed to me on the inside from my grandmother.

I stood there frozen for a moment.

Before I could take in what I was holding, chills had spread through my body. I’m not sure a more obvious, undeniable, sign-ier sign could have found its way to me.

Maybe my creative business dreams were worth following after all. At the very least, I could do my best to baby-step my way there and see what flowed.

And when the rational part of my mind told me that none of this was real, I reminded myself that it didn’t matter. That the act of looking for a sign is a sign in itself. A signal from somewhere deep inside that I want to do the scary thing, and I’ve been searching externally for anything to confirm it.

But I prefer the Real Life Magic version of the story: that it was Meme who sent me a sign. It’s more fun that way.

Share

🎧 Prefer to listen? I recorded an (unedited) voiceover for you above.

the part we keep skipping

Something is missing in the wellness, spirituality, and self-development world. And it isn’t another tool, practice, or version of yourself to build toward.

For the first decade I spent in this world, I was doing all of it. Yoga, meditation, breathwork, therapy, journaling, philosophy, and spiritual practices from traditions I loved and studied for years.

But somewhere along the way, I noticed I had brought something into every single one of those practices without realizing it. The belief, sitting beneath the surface, that I was something to fix, optimize, or perfect. That if only my life would settle, if only I could heal more, break the next pattern, regulate myself enough, I would finally arrive at some future version of myself who was evolved enough to deserve to enjoy her life.

I had accidentally brought perfectionism into my practices, and I was unintentionally using spiritual practice to try to solve the tension inherent to being human.

The roots of these practices (yoga philosophy, Buddhism, Taoism, etc) were never about that. These traditions weren't built on a self-optimization framework (obviously). That part is ours. It’s the cultural water we swim in that seeps into everything.

We live in a culture that runs on productivity, on earning rest, proving our worth, perfectionism, and on the idea that who you are right now is just a rough draft.

And the piece we keep skipping is self-acceptance.

Not self-acceptance after the next breakthrough, not when you finally break that pattern, heal, or reach that goal. Now, as the perfectly imperfect, messy, unfinished, always-going-to-be-human version of yourself that exists today.

Being over becoming.

We spend so much time focused on who we're working toward or the next goal or destination, that we slip right past who we actually are right now. The ways we already show up, the small wins, how far we've already come, and the things we already know that we've never stopped to give ourselves credit for.

There’s nothing wrong with these practices (I teach them, I love them). We will always be works in progress and need the support of others and the tools to take care of ourselves, but when we get stuck in becoming, it turns into another way of telling ourselves we’re not enough.

This isn’t about pretending everything is fine or bypassing real problems. We still need to show up in our lives and be active members in our communities.

And still, we can accept ourselves as we are, find joy through the mess, and celebrate the small wins through the inevitable ups and downs of life.

This is where I start in my private sessions and group classes, and below is the class I recorded on this, drawing from yoga philosophy (which was pointing here long before Western science came along to “validate” it), the neuroscience of how we rewire for self-acceptance, a visualization I recorded, and simple practices to begin living with self-acceptance today.

Rewiring Your Brain for Self-Acceptance:
Real Life Magic Practice # 2

Read more

Almost two years ago, I sat down with my friend Mike Tallon to record this story, and I have been looking forward to sharing it ever since.

Mike is an excellent storyteller who has lived many lives across many places. The story he shares in this interview began when he was 15 years old and followed him for the next four decades. It’s a tale of first love, a wrong he spent years trying to make right, and something that happened years later that defies any reasonable explanation.

🎧 This is a good one, have a listen above.

A little bit about Mike:

is a former teacher, a retired bartender, an ex-magazine publisher, and if you get him telling stories late into the night, he might even recall the brief stint as an international booze runner. Originally from Upstate New York, he spent 13 years as a social studies teacher at FDR High School in Brooklyn before relocating to Central America in 2004.

In 2015, he fell gravely ill from an undiagnosed genetic blood disorder and was not expected to live, but he managed to thread the existential needle and return to near-full health. Since then, he’s written a memoir of the experience, Incompatible With Life, which he hopes to see published in 2026. To read the introduction of that bit of real-life magic, visit his website at MichaelJTallon.com.

You can follow along with his Substack, Mike Tallon Writes:

Share

You can listen here on Substack or find the Real Life Magic conversations on Spotify. (Apple Podcasts and more coming soon.)

This is the Real Life Magic podcast, where people share their stories of times they feel they’ve experienced magic in their lives. They could be stories of miracles, synchronicity, meaningful coincidences, serendipity, signs, following intuition, unexplainable events, and the moments that make you believe there might be something more going on in this world.

If you have a story of your own, I’d love to hear it — you can share it ⁠here⁠.

trying to hold an inflatable beach ball underwater
a glimpse into my journal from jan & feb 2026

(As I mentioned in December, I’m bringing back the journal-entry style posts I began sharing on this Substack in 2022. I call this section: wild knowing: glimpses of my journal as I move through the ups and downs of life.)

I recently heard someone describe pushing feelings down as trying to hold an inflatable beach ball underwater. You can manage it for a while, but eventually it shoots up into the air in a way you didn’t expect.

That image has been living in my brain for weeks now, along with a few other seemingly unrelated things: Internal Family Systems therapy, Bad Bunny’s halftime show, and most recently, a New Yorker article about how mindfulness got co-opted by capitalism.

They’ve been forming a pattern in my mind of how to stay present with everything that’s happening right now and holding space for multiple things to be true at once. This is my attempt to make sense of it all on the page:

Over the last few weeks, my brain has kept circling back to something my Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist taught me in my early twenties. She would always say, "Speak for a part, not from a part."

(IFS is pretty popular now, but if you're unfamiliar, it's a form of therapy often called "parts work." The idea is that we all have different inner parts that developed to protect us, and beneath them is a deeper, true self.)

What she meant was that when a part of me gets activated, I (try to) pause. I (try to) feel it first, then take care of myself instead of reacting immediately. And once I’m more regulated, I (try to) speak up on behalf of the part that was stirred, rather than speaking from pure reactivity.

This distinction has been everywhere for me lately. I’ve been activated more times than I can count. It isn’t something to fix. My body and emotions are responding to reality. Instead of breathing them away or pushing them down, I’m trying to listen.

Fifteen years of practicing yoga, mindfulness, and exploring different spiritual traditions have taught me that being human isn’t something to cure. The feelings we label as “negative” (anger, fear, grief, sadness, despair) often carry important information. The practice is staying with it all, with curiosity, instead of bypassing it.

These practices (mindfulness, yoga, nervous system regulation, embodiment work, etc) are genuinely powerful. They’ve helped me develop self-trust, self-acceptance, and a kind of compassion that starts with myself and extends outward. They’ve strengthened my sense of agency and moved me out of feeling like a victim of my circumstances and back into being an active participant in my life. I believe in them deeply.

And at the same time, I've been thinking a lot about how these practices can get twisted. How "mindfulness" became something corporations sell to stressed employees so they can tolerate intolerable working conditions. How "self-care" became only bubble baths instead of also asking why we're so exhausted in the first place. And how we're told to regulate our nervous systems like it’s our fault we are stressed, without also asking what's dysregulating us.

I read something recently, by Ailey Jolie, a somatic psychologist, that's been sitting with me: "You cannot breathe your way out of patriarchy. You cannot meditate, journal, or do yoga your way out of conditions that were designed to dysregulate you."

This isn’t new terrain for me. I’ve been learning about these tensions for years, from teachers like Susanna Barkataki, adrienne maree brown, Michelle Cassandra Johnson, and so many more. And I’m still learning.

The tools are real and necessary, and we can't stop there. When they become the only solution offered, or when they help us adjust to systems that are harming us rather than question those systems, something has gone sideways.

There's nuance here, too. It isn't as simple as "just listen to your body." Our bodies were shaped by trauma, by epigenetics, by childhood wounding, by the same forces we're trying to resist. Learning to tell the difference between what's true in the present moment and what's an old survival pattern or conditioning, and sensing the difference between anxiety and intuition, takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. This kind of discernment is cultivated slowly, often with support, in community, with guides and professionals.

What I’m practicing is learning, over time, to ask: what is this activation trying to tell me? Is this a trauma response? An accurate read on reality? Both? What does this part of me actually need right now?

The political reality in our country and globally feels overwhelming. It isn't new; it's just being brought to the surface more and more. And still, the world as we know it feels like it's crumbling.

ICE in Minnesota (and all over the US). Palestine. Iran. Sudan. Congo. Venezuela. Cuba. The Epstein Files. Leaders openly post racist things. The division across so many issues. I could go on. The list feels endless, and my body knows it.

I’m not an expert in geopolitics or the history of these situations, but I do not believe in more violence, exploitation, or the erosion of basic human freedoms.

Turning away from it all can feel like holding that beach ball underwater, an attempt to keep things manageable. Being honest about what we feel when we take it in is no small thing.

And this is where these practices matter most to me. Because yoga and mindfulness, at their roots, are practices of liberation, into truth rather than away from discomfort. They teach me to allow the present moment exactly as it is, without fixing it or turning away. To notice what's actually here, in my body, my breath, my thoughts, my feelings, the environment, life itself, without numbing or disconnecting. Then, to name it, use the tools I have to take care of myself, and from there, decide how I want to respond with full awareness. To let my feelings guide me toward something sustainable rather than push me into urgency that burns out fast.

And then there is Bad Bunny.

I found myself rewatching the moment he won Album of the Year, that long pause with his hand over his eyes before stepping forward, and I cried every time. Then watching and rewatching the halftime show moved me again: the joy, the celebration, the representation, the political commentary, all of it. (I fell completely down the rabbit hole of articles and posts analyzing every angle, including the criticism of the NFL and capitalism.)

Artists get criticized for being “too political,” but artistic expression as resistance isn’t new. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio (Bad Bunny) speaks up for what he believes in. He isn’t perfect, but he doesn’t separate his joy from his politics.

And watching people respond to it, I kept thinking of Howard Thurman, the theologian and civil rights leader who mentored Martin Luther King Jr, who is often quoted as saying:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

I believe in rest, creativity, joy, and curiosity. I also believe in being an active member of a community and the world. They aren’t opposites. Bad Bunny's halftime show is a good example of what it can look like when someone follows genuine passion and lets it carry something bigger.

I’ve been practicing what I call Real Life Magic, learning how to listen to life itself: to my body, to energy, to patterns, timing, and invitations, and what’s unfolding around me. Living in a conscious relationship with life. It isn’t about escaping reality; it’s about choosing to make meaning within it, and noticing the beauty and aliveness that’s available even inside the mess.

I’ve been trying to weave what lights me up with how I show up in the world. I’m continually figuring out what it looks like (across fifteen years of practice and a lot of ongoing experimentation) to stay present, take care of myself, follow my curiosity/joy, and respond in ways that feel aligned and sustainable.

I won’t hold my feelings underwater like an inflatable beach ball. I practice sitting with them, naming them honestly, and letting the pressure fuel me somewhere true.

That's what I keep coming back to with Bad Bunny. That pause, hand over his eyes, feeling it all before stepping forward to accept the award, and the half-time show that was full of joy and grief, celebration and resistance, all at once.

That’s what I’ve been (trying to) practice too. Feeling the anger and grief, naming what sparked it, and letting that inform my actions without letting it consume me or burn me out. Speaking for the parts of me that are activated, instead of from them. And also, actively practicing noticing beauty, joy, love, and wonder because they’re part of how I stay in this for the long run.

Many of my teachers have explored the idea that multiple things can exist at once: grief and joy, rest and action, art and resistance, following curiosity and taking action, not knowing and still showing up. I’m sitting with that tension and uncertainty, trusting that the next right step will reveal itself as I go.

Committing to the slow, ongoing, imperfect work of learning to listen to myself (mind, body, and spirit, integrated) with support and in community. And to show up, however that looks, with my whole imperfect self, even the contradicting parts.

I don’t have clear answers about the “right” way to show up or what happens next. My approach has changed with different seasons of my life, and I’m experimenting now, finding ways to act that make sense for where I am and making plenty of mistakes along the way.

I’ve been reading many reflections lately about different ways of showing up through nonviolence, art, care, resistance, embodiment, and presence, and learning from the range of voices, perspectives, and experiences shared. Here are a few that have moved me recently:

: Daniela wrote about her own Venezuelan roots and what it means to pursue art during this time here.

: Ekta, who writes from a Buddhist, psychotherapist, and activist lens, wrote about becoming an active non-violent resistor here.

: Liz shared her reflections about acting without letting distress swallow her, and the guilt of pursuing pleasure during this time here.

: Ailey Jolie, a somatic psychologist, writes about the nuanced, often oversimplified territory of embodiment: what our bodies are actually telling us, what they were shaped by, and what it truly takes to cultivate that discernment over time. Her recent note about how our nervous systems aren't broken when they respond to genuinely unsafe conditions has been sitting with me. You can read her work here.

And for a broader conversation about mindfulness and activism, this New Yorker piece (an interview with Jay Caspian Kang and Ron Purser) explores how mindfulness became depoliticized and what it would take to reclaim its revolutionary roots here.

Share

I thought I would write fiction inspired by magical realism. Stories about moments of awe and wonder when people experience synchronicity, intuition, meaningful coincidences, unexplainable events, signs, miracles, and the feeling of being guided.

But not fantasy stories. Stories with small moments of magic woven through regular life. Through the beauty and the grief, the mundane and the extraordinary, and the ups and downs of being human.

As I started outlining them, I realized that every story was inspired by a moment from my life or a real story I’d heard from someone else. What I thought of as “fiction” was actually how I experience my life.

The subtle magic woven through our daily lives is as real as anything else, if we choose to notice and give it meaning. These experiences happen alongside very real things: conflict, uncertainty, injustice, wars, heartbreak, taxes, and mundane everyday responsibilities. Real Life Magic isn’t about ignoring or escaping reality, but about noticing the beauty and awe that move through it.

When we’re present to our bodies, to patterns and timing, and learn how to listen to life, life becomes more meaningful. That, to me, is a grounded choice we can make.

So, I decided to move away from fiction and share a collection of real stories instead. In 2024, I shared Real Life Magic through longer, podcast-style conversations where people shared stories from their lives (which I plan to continue). In December, I shared that I’d also be adding short stories and glimpses into how I actually live and practice these ideas.

I believe deeply in the importance of storytelling. Since the beginning of humanity, stories have helped us make sense of our lives and the world around us. Storytelling builds empathy, creates connection and community, helps us recognize what’s already present, and reminds us that we can reshape how we understand our own stories over time.

Alongside these stories, I started sharing the practices that support them. Last week, I shared the Art of Offering. This week, I want to share a short story from my own life where I used it.

Real Life Magic Moment #2:
Ten Years Later

About 10 years ago, I was living in New York City and struggling with my mental health. I had already been practicing and studying yoga for several years, and over time, my intuition became a powerful source of joy and guidance.

On my lunch breaks, I would go on what I called intuitive walks. I’d leave the office and practice tuning into my curiosity and following whatever direction I felt pulled.

I often ended up at the same bookstore, where I always found myself drawn to a specific book. I’d pick it up, flip through a few pages, and then put it back. I was fascinated by it, but I knew, for whatever reason, it wasn’t the right time to read it yet.

That book was Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith.

Fast forward to May 2024. I’d just returned from leading a retreat in Morocco, and on the surface, things were going well. I’d been teaching for six years, leading retreats, sharing my writing and Real Life Magic, but I had an ache that something was missing.

Around that time, yoga therapy and Prema Yoga Institute specifically kept showing up in my life. Even though it felt like the next right step in my body, I took my time. I knew it would be a significant commitment to go back to school while working full-time, so I researched, reflected, and carefully weighed my options.

In August 2024, as I finally sat down to pay the bill and make it official, fear and doubt took over (as they reliably do when I am about to do something new). The familiar mental spiral kicked in, trying to convince me not to move forward, so I sat down and took a few deep breaths.

I knew reasoning with fear wouldn’t help in that moment. Instead, I did the unconventional thing I’ve done for years when my mind starts looping. The thing I don’t often share out loud because I worry people will judge it, even though its roots are ancient and there’s research behind why it works. I call it the Art of Offering.

I offered the final step of this decision to my highest self. I trusted that if this path was meant for me, I’d be shown in a way I could understand. Then I went out for a walk to get out of my head and give the decision some space.

By the time I got home, the spiral had softened. As I tidied up before returning to work, I felt drawn to check the required reading list for the yoga therapy program.

And there it was: Eastern Body, Western Mind.

Seeing it pulled me back to that earlier version of myself, standing over that book, flipping through its pages, knowing (somehow) it wasn’t time to read it yet.

That small moment, that tiny sign, may seem insignificant, but it was enough. It steadied me and reminded me that I had done my research, the decision felt right in my body, and that fear was the only thing left standing in the way.

It was time to commit to yoga therapy.

(A small note: this book was controversial in my yoga therapy training. There are meaningful insights within it, along with some things I disagree with, and it is a bit outdated with some problematic language. I took what resonated, and left the rest behind.)

Share

I’d love to start sharing shorter Real Life Magic moments from other people, too, so if you have one, please send it my way.

Welcome to the first Real Life Magic Practice

I’ve been keeping a secret.

It’s the unconventional way I’ve been solving problems for years.

It’s the thing I haven’t shared because I fear I’ll be judged, even though it’s worked so well for me and those I’ve shared it with in private sessions.

As someone who has lived with anxiety and an active worry-brain my whole life, few things have brought me the kind of relief this practice does, especially over time as I’ve learned to trust it.

It’s what I return to when overthinking takes over, because thinking my way out of worry rarely produces clarity, especially when it’s tied to fear and uncertainty. Insight tends to arrive when the pressure lifts, so I found a way to lift that pressure.

I call it: The Art of Offering.

This practice is easy to weave into the way you’re already living. You don’t need to be religious or spiritual to do it, and I’ll summarize and provide links to research that seeks to understand why this ancient practice is so effective.

If you’d like to explore this practice in a community, we’ll practice it together in the first session of the 12-week yoga therapy series I’m hosting that begins on Monday.

Otherwise, let’s begin:

Welcome to the first Real Life Magic Practice:
The Art of Offering

Read more

learning how to listen to life

I’ve been trying to figure out what to name what I’ve been teaching.

It is the way humans everywhere lived since the beginning: attuned to nature, timing, patterns, and inner knowing. Long before systems, schedules, and constant stimulation, we learned by listening.

I’ve learned many variations of this way of living, called by different names, from various teachers and ancient traditions:

I’ve learned it through Taoism, where it is called living with the Tao.
I’ve learned a version of it as creative living from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way.
I’ve learned it through yoga philosophy, rooted in South Asia.
I’ve learned it from Tosha Silver, who calls it Outrageous Openness.
I’ve learned a version of it from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.
I’ve heard my Spanish teacher, who is an indigenous (Tz'utujil) Maya woman from Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, share about a similar way of life.
I’ve heard it called wayfinding.
Or living in harmony with nature.
Flowing with life (or dancing with life).
I used to call it intuitive living.
There are endless names for this way of life from cultures all over the world, and they all have their differences, of course.

And I was recently moved when I heard Boyd Varty, author of The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life, describe this way of living through the lens of an animal tracker. Trackers learn to read the environment using all of their senses, entering what he calls “the following state,” which he describes as a greater state of aliveness or “a constant creative response to what is occurring.” It’s a careful observation of the environment, paired with responding by trusting the part of you inside that knows.

I’m clearly not an animal tracker, but I’ve been living my own version of this for a long time, and I’ve been calling this Real Life Magic. I didn’t create this way of living (obviously), I adapted it in a way that works for me, inspired by my fifteen years of practice and study across many wisdom, spiritual, mystical, and creative traditions.

To me, it isn’t about manifesting on demand or searching for signs to make decisions for us. It’s about living in a conscious relationship with life.

It looks like:

• Listening first: to your body, your energy, the space you’re in, and the people around you — and building self-trust by practicing how to trust your inner knowing and refining intuition and discernment over time.

• Learning how to read energy and the environment: noticing patterns, sensing timing, invitations, resistance, and flow, and adjusting direction as needed.

• Attuning to signs, synchronicities, and dreams: not to follow without question, but as information to feel into, reflect on, and integrate over time. Not every sign is meant to be followed.

• Practicing the art of noticing: beauty, awe, love, curiosity, and sensation in everyday life.

• Living life as a quest: staying in conversation with life as it unfolds. Trusting that the next step will reveal itself as you take one step at a time, and growing more comfortable with the unknown (more is often revealed, and you will know what to do when it’s time).

• Noticing what you’re genuinely drawn toward, and allowing yourself to move in that direction (rather than doing what you should do). Making space to explore curiosity, joy, play, and aliveness, and paying attention to the people and places that help you feel more yourself.

• Living with mindfulness and presence: meeting life as it is right now, practicing acceptance, and appreciating what exists in this moment rather than postponing life for some imagined future where everything is finally resolved.

• Choosing, again and again, to make meaning out of your life: and rewriting your story when it’s time.

• Rooting it all in self-acceptance: celebrating the small wins and the ways you take care of yourself along the way.

It is noticing signs outside and sensing truth inside, too. It’s a dynamic, embodied practice where both your body and the environment around you become a compass.

I’m not religious, and this approach can be applied across many perspectives and ways of life — from animal tracking to your workday, to creativity, to doing your daily chores.

We don’t wait for life to decide for us (as victims), but we also don’t white-knuckle something into being with force. Instead, we find the middle way. We learn how to listen, respond, and take aligned action. It’s agency within surrender, choice within mystery, commitment without forcing outcomes.

I’ve called that Real Life Magic, not because life is always mystical, but because when we learn to listen and consciously notice what’s happening within and around us, all of life becomes alive again. It’s a grounded choice to live with presence, wonder, curiosity, and care, even in the mundane moments.

This is what I continue to explore on this Substack, through the practices, stories, conversations, journal entries, and more. And it’s what we’ll be practicing together in my upcoming group yoga therapy class. If you’re interested, you can find out more here. We begin Monday, February 2nd.

Share