I declined morphine in the emergency room. The doctors hated me for it. I was afraid and in agony, and occasionally I would scream for help because the pain was so fierce it shook my body and it was the only way I could advocate for myself, left alone for unbound stretches of time. Guttural cries. I remember, years later, when I trudged through The Body Keeps the Score trying to understand myself on a cellular level, I learned how harmful morphine is after a traumatic accident, and felt grateful that my intuition had saved me, in some small way, from a medically-induced freeze response. I added to the list of ways it could have been worse.

My mom joked that it took me a year to realize I had been hit by a car. When they wheeled me through the hospital doors, I asked the paramedics at UCLA how long they thought it would take because I had a meeting at Netflix at 9am. They laughed in response, understanding the severity of my injuries before I could feel anything. I went back to work three weeks later, as soon as I could move. I flew to New York for full-time caretaking and went into our midtown office in my sling before I could wash my own hair. I tried to dive back into my projects completely, to pick my life back up at the pace I had lived it before, refusing to stay still even when my body demanded it.

The fastest I could operate was at half-mast and overriding it was no longer an option because I couldn’t make myself care about the same things anymore. When I tried to fit myself back into certain aspects of my life, I couldn’t make them meaningful. My career, into which I had poured all of my energy and upon which I had built my identity, felt hollow. Even at its most engaging and creative, the disconnect between what I was doing and what was important to me became glaring.

I started a blog immediately. It was a short-lived project called UpLifted, a play on words that paid homage to the positive spin I put on flying through the air. After a handful of essays, I felt that I had explored as much as I could about the accident and its impact.1 Intellectually, I understood that, if I died before putting any energy toward my own dream, I would waste this gift of a wild-and-precious life. I liken it to Olivia’s arc in The Overstory2 - a character who was electrocuted and awoke to a certain understanding of her mission in the world. The truth is that my discontent grew glaring after the accident but it was already there. I had been in Joshua Tree the day before, watching the stars and contemplating publishing an essay I’d written about time I spent in the Sahara desert. The seed had already been planted, the wheels set in motion. And, still, while my life feels unrecognizable now, it took years of effort and unlearning to get to where I am now from where I was.

Even the idea of coming to know my body, which eventually became such an urgent mission that I restructured my entire life around it, was of importance before the accident. The disconnect between my mind and body existed long before. In fact, in some ways, the accident was like medicine for it. I could no longer ignore sensations. I recognized them as messages, and practiced tuning into subtler and subtler feelings. My high threshold for pain was no longer a badge of honor. It was a sustained abandonment of my body. The accident didn’t cause the disconnection, it highlighted it so I could examine it more closely and heal it.

Sometimes, still, I wonder if some of my personality changes are a result of brain damage (sincerely) or if they’re just normal ways that a brush with death will change you. I used to talk about it with my friend, Osa: how it’s hard to have certain conversations with people who had never been intimate with mortality in the same way. It pries open a certain sense of understanding, rearranges priorities in a unique (and sometimes challenging) way. For example, I used to pride myself on the way I could delay gratification but I now have a much harder time planning too far in the future. I did some things that I might have been afraid of before almost dying (fell in love, bleached my hair, got tattoos). In other ways, I became more cautious. Health anxiety makes me spiral (although that feels more under control than it did for a while).

It’s been 8 years to the day, which seems both longer and shorter than it feels. While the accident itself was awful, it humbles me to think of all the blessings that were born from it. It resulted in the most profound and unwavering experience of gratitude I’ve ever had. Unshakable. Aliveness feels much more potent when contrasted with its opposite. I try to tap into that feeling, especially, on the anniversary of the day, to remind myself what a unique gift it is to be in this world.

I learned to practice gratitude from a place of blinding pain. It reminds me, when hard things happen, that I am capable of coming out stronger on the other side. It made me disentangle my worth from my productivity (sort of, although maybe the pendulum swung the same in this iteration of my life as an artist. If i haven’t written today, do I exist at all?) or at least it made the entanglement obvious enough for me to see. It also made problems I’d ignored unignorable, forced me to adjust my priorities, reminded me that I am granted one precious life as my-small-s-self, with these specific desires and talents and lessons. It was an invitation to love myself broken and to remember my wholeness that way. And I share this story with the hope that one doesn’t actually need to brush death at all to feel such vitality, that we can all tap into it just by knowing.

Warm days started slowly and then came all at once. Sun suddenly strong, air thick like honey. Historically, summer in New York has felt like something to leave but this year demanded I stay, and I have been pried open to receive its blessings. It began with a fire, the element of transformation, as all purifications do. I cried a lot, felt displaced in my own home. Routine fell away and, instead of feeling lost, I felt awake and the city came to meet me. “If you learn to stay open after the fire, your life will change,” Megan said in yoga this morning. What if the fire itself opens you up?

Every year, shortly after the firefly prayer, I remember when my high school friends and I all agreed that the 4th of July was basically the end of summer, even though it was actually only the beginning. I was already fascinated by the phenomenology of time, and how some perceptions seemed personal while others seemed universal. Summer, somehow, ushers us into a collective temporal experience. Long days race by but the moments feel eternal, lingering in memory long after they’ve passed.

See also: New York Knicks in 5, an insistent invitation, a call to everyone and anyone to experience joy together. The NBA finals became a unifying force that taught us, through experience, about collective effervescence. The term itself makes me smile because what I am experiencing lately is an internal effervescence, a sensation in my chest that feels like fizzing, like atoms are colliding inside of my body to dissolve the parts that keep me stuck. The Knicks won and the streets were so alive with energy that the mornings had a quiet afterglow. We all entered into the same rhythm, one that felt distinctly youthful. One morning, I walked along Prince Street when it might otherwise have been bustling. Instead, it was permeated with calm that I inhaled all the way down to the bottom of my belly, smiling. The air was warm that morning, a caress on my skin. There was a softness in it that I swallowed and became.

That’s the magic of New York summer that I’d forgotten. After a long, cold winter, the warmth thaws us all at once. There is a generous melting of edges. I am soft like butter, the way I always aspire to be: intact but still malleable. A finger presses into my skin and leaves a mark, a thumbprint. Distinct. Could only be you or yours. and so I change a little bit. and you change, too. and I do it for some greater good outside of me, like I am someone more courageous than myself.

I’m imagining how long this essay might take me, thinking of all the layers of truth that exist underneath this. By the time it’s fully formed, the moment might pass and I can lose the whole thing - but I can also see the way this is a blessing. The inspiration that strikes from a sentence, a flash of a thought, begging to be born. I want to be worthy of it. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It’s a sword with two edges but I can wield it responsibly, with the understanding that something so sacred both deserves and requires sincere, devotional effort. The other truth is that I already am. I know because it’s here, because I want to be, because I put the reps in, because I am the architect of my life and I am designing it this way. I am stretching my arms out, turning my palms up, and creating a sense of spaciousness for myself where one did not exist before. Pressing until the walls expand and come down completely, and I am abiding in infinity.

So I am returning, joyfully, to the object of my attention. It was my mom who taught me how to do it: how to experience the fullness of the present moment, how to live completely inside of it. One summer, when my sisters and I were kids, she took us out to Montauk. We went on a mission to find the sunset when the sun started to hang low in the sky. It was so beautiful and profound that it became a part of our biological memory, etched into us. Golden light smeared across a deep red sky. All three of us, now, addicts, drawn like moths to flame when the sun starts to dip. We watch with our mouths agape and admire. “Take a picture of this moment,” she sang to us. She meant for us to do it with our minds. We looked out at the view and stretched the moment, became undifferentiated from it. We took pictures with a camera, too, and, when we developed the film, we all agreed that it didn’t come close to the real thing.

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If I could pin this season down, it wouldn’t be the thing I love, so I just have to bear witness to its speed. I’m thinking of a fistful of fireflies like a fistful of sand, as a measure of time fleeting but more beautiful. The first day of summer is the longest day of the year and it all gets shorter from there. It feels over before it begins. When you put them in a jar, make them belong to you, you lose them. There’s something underneath this, too. Two things: 1) A clenched fist killing the thing you love (an incomplete thought about non-attachment). but 2) the deeper and richer truth that also exists, a layer beneath, is that presence is the window to eternity. Deeper and richer, still: it is the thing that allows the moment itself to change you. Bliss pressed against my skin, held long enough to leave a mark.

I discovered broom on the Summer Solstice when Maia invited me to meet her at Elizabeth Street Garden. I sat with my back against the stone base of a statue and offered the totality of my attention. My chest became light, the way it has been lately. I am initiating moments of stillness when I can, savoring the slowness of them. I am stretching time just a little bit, leaving my mark on it, too.

So I’m reading instead right now - voraciously, at a break-neck speed. It reminds me of myself as a child. I would walk into the school library before homeroom to pick up a book, which rested open in the hollow spaces of my desks throughout the day, to be finished and swapped for a new book before leaving that afternoon.1 Then I’d go home and finish that one by morning. I spent a whole year of junior high this way. Two books a day, racing myself across the shelves of my middle school library. Mrs. Middleman, the librarian, was small, with short, grayish-brown curly hair. She wore dresses often. “You, again,” she might have said with a smile that reached the edges of her eyes. “Here, you might like this.”

Sometimes I wonder what else was going on at the time that forced me to read with such urgency, like I was shutting every other thing out. When I think about who I’m writing for, a lot of the time, it is for that version of myself, the girl who clutched books like a lifeline.

I went to the Barnes and Noble at Union Square last week, which now holds the title of my favorite bookstore in the city. I’d been looking for a specific book, a New York Times Bestseller that suspiciously wasn’t available for purchase at either McNally Jackson or The Strand. (I couldn’t contain my surge of anger when I asked why they didn’t have this book at McNally Jackson. By the time I got to The Strand, I was too tired.) I stopped in after the market, after coffee and pastries on the roof. It was the kind of morning I envision when I imagine my dream life, which seems to be comprised of a string of Wednesdays. Walking into the vast store, this sea of books, I felt at ease. Shoulders softened. Breath settled deeper into my belly without effort. That also reminds me of a younger version of myself, spread out on the floor of the Barnes & Noble in Forest Hills with my best friends, surrounded by French poetry books and books about love and sexuality and intimacy (this is a true thing).

Recently, I was on a date, and we started playing We’re Not Really Strangers. We pulled a card that asked about our favorite cereals, and I said something like cocoa crispies. “I love discovering consistent things about you,” he said. “This, the rice crispy treats.” I smiled with the full force of my cheeks. Sometimes, I look to my consistencies as a source of truth. I have always loved reading. I have always found writing powerful. I have always been fascinated by sex.

Here’s the other truth about consistency: it’s an illusion, a shackle. In equal measure, a guide-post and a limiting belief. I don’t know how to differentiate between the two. Me, loving reading and rice crispies. Innocuous. Proof that I am me: a nathalie-shaped force at the center of my universe, growing only slightly in size but imprinted more firmly, a divot in the ground where I stand just from the weight of me. Still, there are ways I want to change, need to reset the software of my mind (and the hardware of my body) to become compatible with the life I am creating. “It’s a slow process,” Batsheva said this week, pointing to the ways I have systematically shifted what I believe to be possible, and how I show up in the world to meet it.

I was supposed to go to a party on Saturday night but The Namesake was calling me so loudly, I could not ignore it. I sat down and finished the book that night, and I loved it. I loved it so much that moving onto the next book felt has like a betrayal, wisps of The Namesake still returning to me when my mind gets quiet.

I went to 5Rhythms last night. Andrew and I tried to debrief our experiences afterward - one of my favorite things to do, especially when it’s challenging. Both Andrew and I had to deliberate before we could pin down whatever revelations we both had. Even still, I don’t know that I managed to recall the most vital moments. They are lost to me now, and that makes them feel even more real somehow. A formless thought so true it cannot be contained in words.

I remember how earnestly we debriefed when we first started going to 5R, when it was new, and we witnessed ourselves in the wave for the first time, what it brought up, what it awakened, how we could move differently afterward, and progressively, all the time. Last night, Nico pressed the idea of letting our heads loose. I felt that it was directed at me when he mimicked someone who was surveilling the scene vigilantly, head steady atop a moving body. I practiced letting my neck feel soft and my head feel heavy, what moves differently within me when I let go. The way we hold our bodies is a metaphor.

I had flashes of the world in my vision when I closed my eyes. I could feel myself in Paris or India. It was vivid, involuntary, potent. Some latent desire that is suppressed by fear, maybe. Something sticky and heavy that can’t be lifted off like a curtain or a veil but can be moved through, like molasses. And also suppressed by something sturdy and real,2 like a conflicting desire to cultivate steadiness in my life. This morning, while I reflected on the experience, I thought it must be related to The Namesake - and I think about the ways books open things up in us.

Of all the books I’ve read lately, The Namesake is the one. It hit me like a freight train.3 I feel that I have come into contact with perfection: the pace of the book, the language, the interiority that shifts (somehow flawlessly) across the characters to provide a comprehensive landscape of the external experience. Subjective reality melting with common, transactional reality to offer a complete picture. Reading it/loving it/[integrating loving it into my personality] filled me with energy. It also punctured me with an acute sense of dread, as well as a vague, debilitating determination.

I am here to say something because I know there is a benefit to showing up consistently, even when things feel unclear. I know the importance of struggling to write and writing anyway, of creating the conditions for creativity and just abiding there, even when the outcome is messy, can’t be calibrated correctly enough to say anything at all. I am grabbing the scared parts of me by the hand and telling the critical voice in my mind to fuck right off. It’s taking up too much space and making me feel stuck.

So I’m thinking about striving (still) and the challenges of surrender (also still). How, when I felt I couldn’t write, and I just let myself read, there was a visceral softening. I was watering the soil of my garden. There’s something meta here that I can’t quite sort out yet, something contradictory: how I might just have to surrender to the striving itself. I don’t actually know what that means yet but I’m going to sit with it. Sometimes I fight (with vitriol) against my desire to create something perfect and I end up strangling myself in the process. But I’m thinking of the sheer perfection of The Namesake and remembering I know ball.

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I remember the writers workshop I took with Ms. Rizzuto-Zaika after school in the third grade, with our marble composition notebooks, where she said “if you feel like you don’t know what to write, write ‘I don’t know what to write’ over and over again until something comes out.” I still turn toward that advice, decades later, when I feel stuck and don’t know where to go. I return to that classroom, and that notebook, and that version of self. “I have never been unburdened,” I thought to myself today. Not even then, probably. I struggle to imagine a version of myself who wasn’t always striving for some kind of perfection.

The past few days, I’ve fumbled through meditation. Opening my eyes to check the time at regular intervals. I think there’s a correlation - not wanting to write and not wanting to meditate. Or, rather, wanting to do both and struggling. I feel like I’ve finally created the conditions to write, and the work itself is a moving target. There was a brief moment of lucidity, and I moved ferociously. I wrote for hours every day. The energy moves in a circular fashion. Sometimes, it is exhausting to have written too close to the core but sometimes it invigorates me.

A new question I fear I have to ask myself at this juncture is what am I afraid to say?4 The nature of my writing (of writing, in general, I suppose, when it means to do something rich and sincere) makes it inevitable that I will press up against an uncomfortable edge. Over and over again. Eventually, the edges soften if I lean against them long enough, even when it feels rough, scraping off dead layers of skin. I am learning to do it with compassion, to hold myself when I need holding, to steady myself when that’s what’s required. I am also practicing letting myself be held without feeling like I’m losing something. And resting when it’s time to rest.

“You see,” Simon says, “You would be chewing for the rest of your life if it weren’t for this milk.” and I laugh. It’s weightless, like I could float away on it.

We talk about the merits of cold milk. I sip it with force and curl my tongue so it doesn’t linger on my tastebuds but I concede that it’s better than I expected. I dip my cookie inside the cup and hold it there. When I bring it to my mouth, it’s moist and cold. It has become delicious. Perfect, even.

It was my 34th birthday. If the rest of the year feels as precious as the day itself did, I’d hardly be able to count my blessings but I’d never stop trying.1

We danced before we got to the bodega. I dressed all in white, everything translucent. I put my shame on a shelf to rest or gather dust - to shrink, in any case, and dry out. It’s allowed, of course, (shame), but maybe something sweet that comes with age is that it doesn’t feel like it belongs to me anymore. Instead, it’s something that’s been handed to me and forgotten, and I am realizing now that I no longer need to carry it.

I twirled in the center of the dance floor, skirt turned into a canopy, let my limbs loose, my hips and my spine, and I was carried by the current of music. I find the arcs of 5Rhythms hit or miss sometimes, and it’s impossible to know if my joy was derived from the journey itself or infused in it. It doesn’t matter. Whichever direction it went that night, it was perfect.

My dad has always told me that, on our birthdays, we have a special power to bless people. Maybe that’s why we blow wishes into candles and hope they’ll come true. So I spent much of the morning and afternoon concentrating on blessings. Mom, Dad, Danielle and Ariana. Everyone in the world. A little bit for myself. When I got to 5 Rhythms, I felt like I could bless the whole dance floor, so I did. Anyone I passed: may they be happy, may they be healthy, may they know love, may all of their obstacles be removed, for the highest good of all beings, amen. While I danced, I spread my arms to clear paths and, when I passed my friends, I prayed their blessings so fervently, it was a force.

And they became angels. Whether or not they knew it, they rained blessings over my head with fingertips while they passed me. It was a distinct, unshakable feeling. I drank it all in like an offering of water and felt quenched, gratitude spilled over the edge of my cup.

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On energetically potent days (ie, birthdays, new moons with 7 planets in aries), I get so wrapped up in potential that I can drive myself and everyone around me crazy with my desire to actualize. So I began the day with a future refuge meditation: I envision my perfect paradise and a woman comes forth to meet me. She is golden and radiant, wearing some beautiful flowing and fitted white skirt, embodying the force of sunlight while the sun itself hangs low in the sky behind her. She is me but perfect - in her poise, in the strength of her compassion, in the easy way she loves. She kisses me on the forehead, always, and smiles at me like she’s so happy to have found me sitting there, cross-legged, on the shore or on the mountaintop, anywhere the sun is warm on my skin and the breeze is soft. I offer her tea and flowers and invite her to come sit next to me. I ask her the questions of my heart, make my desires known to her and ask her to help me get there. She is already there so she says with patience, “Of course, my dear. It is easy now. You are doing all the right things but I’m here to help.” After my short meditation, I write about my life after my accomplishments - my own book deal, traveling for work, traveling for fun, writing on my balcony, making tea, making love. It all comes flowing out of me, like of course this is where we’re going. It feels like we are already here.

When I contemplate my future self, she is always holding bliss with an open palm, unafraid of it leaving. I remember that and I practice embodying it. It softens the energy of the day and makes it accessible.

The magic of my birthday has hardly diminished since it ended. It’s part of the blessing of being born in spring. Joy is sustained on a floral-scented warm breeze that long outlasts the initial breath. It’s diffuse, nonspecific, mainly just that the air outside is gentle on the skin and my spine can soften.2 It feels like the city is opening up to me, or I am opening up to it, finally, after all these years of trying.

Spring entered differently this year. Maybe it’s the tremendous relief warmth brings after such a frigid winter. Maybe it’s some long-held fog lifting to leave in its wake a feeling of momentum and clarity. Maybe it’s that every single planet is stationed in Aries. I don’t know what that means, astrologically, but I can feel it: like all of the cosmos are behind me, the wind in my sails. I am operating with force.3 It feels like the energetic equivalent of a superbloom. I’m running into a lot of people from my past and I’m remembering who I am. I gave myself permission to blossom and I am starting to ripen and bear fruit. A series of great rememberings, again and again and again.

I went for a walk this morning, almost two whole weeks later (having missed three of my self-imposed deadlines to post this essay ~ but here we are, we made it). There’s a chill in the air (again) but it feels lighter. Fallen pink petals line the streets now, trees green and lush overhead, juxtaposing bright softness against the gray hardness of concrete. Beautiful, still, even on the ground. A confettied signal of celebration for nature’s reawakening.

The universe is giving messages about stepping into the current before being ready so I am gathering the hem of my skirt and diving in. Please please please come join me 🌸

“I think I’m just overwhelmed,” I said.

When we found the healing succulent, Liz wriggled a leaf gingerly to extract it from the base of the plant. She passed it to me with both hands, an offering with reverence.

“You could also put chamomile tea on it,” she said, and I agreed. It was something I thought of myself when I was contemplating remedies for this mysterious little bodily upheaval.

I am exhausted. Anyone who has ever done a yoga teacher training is familiar with the sophomore slump two thirds of the way through. Energy levels are low. No amount of rest is sufficient. Everything feels hard or impossible. The body resists movement.

I hate when people call yoga trainings “retreats.” We have class and communal meals straight through from 7am to 8pm. It is effortful beyond belief. Still, because this was my fourth training, I intended to treat it like a retreat, a little. An opportunity for deep nourishment (it has been) and to write more (this was a stretch, it turns out, overextending myself in pockets of time, never feeling fully satisfied by my effort) and to soften into my own strength (I am still in contraction so it’s hard to tell). My shoulders are tense and mobility feels limited but my lateral bends feel deeper, stretching into side-body, and the edges during my morning meditations are dissolving, little by little, until there is only softness and stillness. Maybe that can be a sufficient metric.

In this moment, it’s hard to tell if coming here was the most correct move but it was a move and, for that, I’m glad. Sometimes it feels urgent when I leave, like I cannot go another second staying. There’s sun and expanse of sky and sweetness in connection here and, for that, I am even more glad. The birds are singing and the air smells like rosemary that’s blossomed into small purple flowers and, for that, I can be glad, too. The gladness is taking over, which is fortunate because the fatigue is threatening. Anger is simmering without a felt reason. There is something brewing beneath the surface and, in order to make room for it, I can offer it gladness. “You are safe here, too,” I want to tell whatever it is that feels hot on my skin. For a moment, while I walked through the grass toward this table perched on a bed of rocks, I felt a flicker of acceptance, a realization that fighting it is futile. And I noticed that, in acceptance, the thing itself softens. The throbbing, burning, swollen pink rash on my fingers dimmed in intensity almost instantly.

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What my body knows:
My body itself is a layer of illusion but, still, I feel like it knows truth better than my mind. My mind, which has been proven to create stories to make itself more comfortable, to fill in gaps of understanding between things it believes. My mind, which can be tamed. I have come to trust my skin as my first line of awareness, when something is hidden beneath the surface of my conscious mind, and my body is trying to make its message known.

My palms are teeming with energy from reiki yesterday and, even though I am feeling contracted, I’m also feeling charged. I could use a couple of days of rest for integration and recovery. When I did my first, Yoga Teacher Training, I was only just learning how to listen to my body, and I didn’t understand the contraction part of the arc. At the time, I hardly knew how to rest so, when contraction came, I tried to push. I sustained a small injury, then, which I slip back into from time to time, and the medicine was stillness. “Lay on the ground,” Sophie insisted, “and don’t move. At least an hour every day for five days.” I heeded the call when the training was complete, when I felt like I had absorbed every bit of information I was offered, and wrung out any exertion from my body. This time, instead of resisting the contraction, I am trying to practice softening into it. Pull back, actually. Do less. Let myself be carried by the current that has already been infused with my effort.

“You’re not working hard enough,” teachers sometimes surmise when they see me in asana practice, especially toward this midpoint, even though I am in full protection mode, and sensation is screaming. I imagine what would happen if I touched them and they could feel what my back physically feels like when I practice.

Once, in lecture, a teacher explained that stiffness is trauma translated by the body, and I burst into tears remembering that stiffness existed in my body even before the accident, that there was some part of me that stored every experience that rejected love, that that could be embedded in my cells somehow, a part of me. A rejection of self so strong that it restricted my movements. Settled into my hips, moved up to my shoulders, rendered me immobile, made me weak. Sometimes, I have a teacher who can guide my body toward strength, but, often, I have to be that teacher myself and it is a slow process.

“You are safe,” I have to tell my body. “I am becoming a woman who is strong.”

This afternoon, we did a meditation that incorporates all of the senses. One at a time, focusing on five things you can see, four things you can hear, three things you can feel, two things you can smell and one thing you can taste. After a few minutes with each one, you integrate it all at once and what you might experience is a heightened state of awareness, a richer vitality.

The breeze is cool and it animates every branch and every leaf, like the whole world and all of its parts is pulsing with life. When I look at it all, I feel tapped in. Bird song is competing with the drill of a plane and the distant sounds of lawn mowers and jackhammers. Everything, everywhere all at once. Instead of a scattered feeling, there is a completeness about it. At the same time, I feel the smoothness of my breath. There is a sense of simultaneously bearing witness to everything and being a part of it.

Not in the same way of “I am creating my own reality,” that I normally feel, which is always true but maybe not the whole truth, always empowering, sometimes burdensome. Instead, I feel embedded in the rich tapestry of existence. The folding and unfolding of everything. The sway of the tree and the brush of the wind. “Everything you touch touches you back,” Liz said while we all held hands in a circle the night of our cacao ceremony. And there was a pulse that went around the room: tender squeezing, felt affection.

In the city, it’s easy to forget the aliveness of everything. There’s a lot of brick and concrete, and I’m staring at my phone all day, willing it to become something meaningful for me. I spent the first two weeks of this training almost entirely offline. Scattered messages here and there, short calls with my parents and sisters. I keep my phone on airplane mode while I travel, even though, in theory, I can take it off. It’s liberating, for one, and, also, I can feel myself coming back to life. Reanimating alongside the trees.

When we get to the point of contraction, we are nearing the end of the arc. I love the feeling of building, and of tuning into something greater. Yes, every single thing we ever do is an opportunity for self-study but I can’t help but love a container for it. The drishti of curiosity! The elegant dance of teacher and student. If the mat is a training ground, the curriculum of a YTT is the perfect opportunity to practice being challenged and coming out stronger on the other side. “Everything you touch touches you back!” and the exchange of wisdom among a group of people who have committed themselves to learning something new is a vital pulse of energy. It is completely alive and penetrating.

LIKE I DID THIS!!1 The air is warmer today and it carries the fresh scents of flowers and cut grass. I drank a sip of coffee this morning with honey in it, local and of lavender, a subtle sticky sweetness that tasted like a blessing. I am looking out toward my surroundings, listening to the birds chirp in February, watching the leaves blow in the breeze, sun casting dancing shadows on the table, rolling hills in the distance until the horizon becomes the sea covered by a layer of haze. The scene turned ethereal by soft lines instead of hard ones. Sunlight dispersed instead of concentrated. Coolness contained in dry air molecules in the shade. Grand houses cradled in bursts of trees that cover the grassy hillside. Everything lush from the weeks of rain that dissipated for us, mostly, and which will return when we leave.

The real challenge, though, once I’ve moved through this moment of contraction is how do I take it all home with me? I suppose I step off the plane with arms outstretched, palms overturned, holding what wisdom I’ve integrated and now have to offer. A new confidence that I’ve invited into my body. A small knee injury to nurse. A sense of spaciousness.

I will arrive in New York and it will be colder than it is here, and I will still have to go to work, and there will still be demands on my attention so my life will have to consist of something other than asana and writing and making love when the opportunity arises. But I can interact with all of these things differently. Chop wood, carry water. I can make more of a point to cuddle up in my bed, turn my hands into instruments of healing, warm and pulsing with energy, blessed and blessing. And maybe there will be some new joy that becomes intertwined in the other parts of my day, a love that stretches the corners of my consciousness and softens them, a richness that exudes from my sense of purpose.

Here, I tap into it easily.

“I am a writer,” I say as my introduction, without hesitation, because it is the thing I know to be true above any other thing. “And I am a yoga practitioner” which is equally true. I practice reiki, and I guide meditations, and I have a gift for understanding and translating the esoteric, I know. And, although it is a slow process, I am becoming a teacher who can guide bodies toward their innermost strength.

I recognized this morning’s practice from Costa Rica. It shook my understanding of the world the first time, so the memory floated easily to the front of my consciousness. The sequence felt joyful, then, with an element of looseness and play. The theme was about inner dialogue. I am loving awareness, Liz encouraged us to recite, while guiding our bodies to move in special ways. This time, the sequence showed me my rigidity, which felt frustrating and disheartening for a moment. I heard my mental chatter: an imagined conversation between Liz and me, in which I explain why this practice is so challenging for me, what this year has looked like and how it’s all felt in my body, why it made me stiff. When I noticed it, I let that all become quiet, and I replaced it with “I am becoming a woman who is stronger and more mobile.” With that shift, I understood that the practice was a step in the direction of where I want to go with my body - somewhere dynamic and fluid.

Vṛtti sārūpyamitaratra.1 When we are wrapped up in the fluctuations of the mind, unable to stay present, we risk identifying with our thoughts. To recognize (!) and modulate (!!) the movement of the mind is no small feat. From a physiological perspective, there is something particularly powerful about doing it in motion. Nervous system regulation meets neural pathway rewiring. Whether or not you’re doing it consciously, practicing yoga gives you the tools regain autonomy over your experience. It puts you back in the driver’s seat of your life. If it sounds like magic, that’s because ~it’s science~. A spiritual practice with a scientific method.

We spoke about ahimsa yesterday and what we can do, practically, when we notice trains of thoughts that are harmful toward self. “Engage with it curiously,” I suggested. “Where does this thought come from? Who does it serve?”

“Neutralize it,” Liz offered.

“Sometimes,” Mimi said, in a quiet way that demanded our attention, “I put it down… and I find that it melts. Or I come back to it and it feels lighter. Or I have more strength to hold it.” And there seemed to be a collective exhale after that, a sigh to acknowledge the wisdom of it, the melting of our edges, the neural pathways that are engrained so deeply that we can’t see above them. They feel like a valley of death sometimes.

I’m doing a lot of identity-based work right now, and all of it requires me to become intimate with my own mind. Instead of manifesting a life that I want to build, I am contemplating who I want to be and acting like her: creating the pillars of my identity and embodying them. These bridge affirmations, bridge statements, bridge manifestations feel powerful. I am always becoming! And I always already am!

In general, I am the kind of person who has to know something as completely as I possibly can before I feel comfortable offering it. I tend to keep things close to the chest. Sometimes, I tell myself that I’m working on that quality - fear insidious behind the mask of perfectionism - but other times, like right now, I’m happy to give myself grace about it because I can feel myself stepping onto the launchpad with a sense of earned confidence. In this moment, I don’t mind being someone who has to refine before I iterate, even though I know it’s a different, more painful path. I constantly have to remind myself that there is no such thing as perfection, only a desire to aim for something like it. Underneath everything is devotion, a perfect practice.

Because of that, this is my fourth Yoga Teacher Training. None of them felt coincidental. All of them seemed to come to fruition almost magically. Not without effort or obstacle but, ultimately, the path to each cleared, the timing felt divine and I felt powerfully changed by the experience. I remember, during my first training, Annabelle said “some teachers teach their whole lives with a 200 hour certification, and some don’t teach until they reach their 1,000 hours.” “That’ll probably be me,” I said, half-joking, not realizing I was speaking something true into existence.

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“Haven’t you already done one of these? Like, that’s irresponsible,” a friend said while we were talking beneath scaffolding on a rainy day on the Lower East Side.

I listed the reasons why doing this training felt important to me. A lot of what I’m trying to do in this essay is justify why I went for my fourth training in four years when my teaching experience is scattered at best. Part of the truth is that I love learning, and learning about yoga specifically gives me a bottomless kind of energy. Sitting in an upright position listening to a lecture fills me with an acute, distinct and immeasurable joy. As an adult, I also enjoy the process of discernment. Does this resonate in my body? Does this challenge my beliefs? Can I learn this or integrate it in a way that proves or disproves its benefits? Most importantly, the purpose of all of these trainings is: How can I ingest this so I can offer it up?

When I enter into an immersive yoga experience, my body immediately becomes more mobile. It has me questioning the details of my stuckness, the underlying mechanism that keeps me pinned down and makes my bodily movements feel inaccessible. I started last year soft, strong, pliable, and I spent the past year neglecting my body, abandoning it in so many ways that it stiffened.

A story I’m telling myself lately is that asana is hard for me. I’ve even heard myself say it aloud a couple of times. I furrow my brow afterward, longing to take it back, to breathe the words back into my body so they don’t infect reality. What I mean to say is that I am in the process of getting stronger. This is the unfolding.

It is hard (a story and a truth) and I love the challenge of it. I am fiery by nature and, while I sometimes appreciate some space from the flame, the fire of transformation, the discipline of it, is invigorating to me. We just left the year of the snake, a time of shedding, and I find a real pleasure in burning everything down to reemerge from the ashes. I’ve done it over and over again, big life sheds. A liberation. In it, I get to see what is real, what is lasting.

Becoming a yoga teacher wasn’t always in the cards for me. When I first arrived to the mat, it was a sanctuary that I wanted to leave unsullied by responsibility, a place for peace and for effort. That felt like enough. Over the past few years, that’s shifted. Yoga has become the foundation upon which every other thing in my life is built, a practice I know intimately from multiple unique perspectives, including healing from injury and chronic pain, feeling disassociated from my body and yearning to come home, living in a body that tends toward stiffness. I’ve shifted from “asana is challenging to me, so who am I to stand at the front of the room?” to “the challenge itself is the benefit, and who am I to withhold what I’ve learned?”

I know that there is always progress still to be made, always farther still to travel. At the same time, I am feeling perfectly positioned to offer whatever guidance I can so each person can come to know their own embodied wisdom.

For now, I’ll leave you with these questions: have you tuned into your thoughts recently? can you recognize any patterns? do they take you where you want to go?

“Can you practice the sensation of love? Call back to a memory. Let it be cinematic.”

Sometimes, I recall a memory and experience the sensation that arises in my body. Less frequently, I can create the sensation itself: warmth that radiates from the center of my chest, an openness, soft and tingling. This morning, I dropped my attention into my heart and the memory unfolded with ease. I woke up knowing it was his birthday so he was already on my mind.

Osa and I mostly connected about music in college. I loved the music he made, loved that he made music at all. He was always putting me on to some album or artist. The most meaningful thing he taught me, though, was how to listen with distinct reverence: how to parse out specific instruments and how to let it all wash over you at once.

I frequently walked into his house unannounced. It was the central meeting point for most of my friends and, at almost any given moment, I could find a handful of people I loved sitting in his living room. One night, Osa was sitting alone on the couch when I opened the door.

“Hey,” he said, tilting his head up toward me. “Wanna smoke?

I said yes. I’d just finished a shift at the convenience store on campus. It was dark and I was tired, happy to unwind. I put my backpack down and sat next to him while he prepared the joint. He didn’t actually know how to roll one, which always strikes me as funny because he smoked a lot and had elegant, dextrous fingers. He used this little gadget that would shape the joint for you. All you had to do was pack it and seal it up.

We had all sat around those speakers to listen to music before. We’d listen to Bon Iver on moody days while James played the guitar and we’d scream about skinny love until our throats ached. That night, though, it was just the two of us - a rare friend group permutation. Osa played Dark Twisted Fantasy, an album we all loved and listened to often that year. This was different, though. Intentional. He turned the lights down and the speakers up while we passed the joint back and forth. Occasionally, he’d lean over to talk about hi-hats or a specific lyric that impressed him, and I’d nod, enraptured, but mostly, a soft silence settled between us. Music became the only thing that filled the space around us and our aliveness entangled itself in it. My shoulders softened. The sound vibrated in my chest like it originated there.

I could feel the weight and the lightness of the moment as it was happening. Oppositional forces. Like it was the most sacred thing I had experienced in all my time in college. I knew it then, too - in a way we hardly ever have the luxury of when we’re 21 and think we’re infinite so we sail through our days holding everything loosely. It’s not my rosy retrospection, not just me missing him right now, wishing we could run it back somehow. I went home and wrote about it afterward, a little passage in an otherwise empty notebook. I found it last year and sent him a picture, bittersweet with memory, and laughed while I cried because I felt like I could have written it that day.

He was extra chatty one day when I went to visit him in hospice. It felt like he didn’t want me to leave. I always cleared my schedule on days I’d visit so I wouldn’t feel pressed, so I could linger as long as he wanted. At some point, he got tired. He asked if I’d mind staying and just listening to music. A decade had passed since we left school but we were the same kids, really. He’d made a playlist for the end of his life, with something like 40 days worth of songs on it, and he would play it on shuffle. Embrace the randomness. We listened to 2000s R&B that reminded me of Next or Boyz II Men. Sometimes, I’d close my eyes to listen with my whole heart or to stop myself from crying but, in the moments I felt brave, I looked at him. He was skinny by then, and I think he was in a lot of pain but, while he was listening to music, he was serene. Almost angelic already. His eyes were closed, a soft smile spread on his lips. He had a thin metal baton in his hand that he waved like a conductor. He was so in tune with the music that I don’t know if it would have kept playing if he stopped.

I didn’t know how to finish this so I asked my friend Maia to take a look at it. “Tie it back to the yoga class,” she said, because she’s intelligent and that makes sense. But it doesn’t end in the yoga class. It’s Friday morning and I’m still in it. I’ve sat with this essay every day for a week and, in doing so, I’m sitting with love, grief, fear, doubt. A beautiful and challenging mess of emotions. I am inviting in my courage, and I am cradling my shame. I’m remembering that that was the intention for Intimate Curiosities, anyway: allowing myself to feel all of it, even if (when) I don’t know what I’m doing.

This morning, in therapy, Batsheva1 and I talked about some of the work I’m doing, something specific I’d like to see come to fruition. I felt a contraction in my chest about it. Fear, doubt. We settled with it. We contemplated, for a moment, its opposite. After a while, I felt the sensation dissipate. It transformed into something softer and more open. I thought about Osa then, again. His courage. The way he treated me like an equal as an artist, even though he’d spent his whole life pouring himself into that identity and I’d run away from it, claimed it tentatively before I could say it with my chest. I told her about this essay and, ever the poet herself, she said, “we make each other real.”

I know we can’t hold things, even memories, too closely. I also know that the other side of grief is love. And this feels so silly. I entered a space of love and it became sharp like a knife before it softened again. I guess writing this is making me feel like I don’t know anything about anything. In posting this, am I making my sadness performative? But I just want to talk about it, you know? It was his birthday and I want to keep his memory alive in a way that feels meaningful, to tell everyone what a gift it was to know him and what an honor it was to call him my friend. It makes me want to examine the nature of friendship and of love, and what it means to show up for the people we care about. So thank you thank you thank you for sharing this memory of Osa with me, for holding it and him in your heart for a moment, for reading this and being with me in the mess of it all.

Last week, I noticed my ~interdigital folds1~ were dry and cracked. Flecks of skin peeled off between my fingers, slicing into my palm. Today, it felt painful and my hand became stiff. The dryness crept down toward my knuckles: inflamed and scaly ridges, ready to fight me when I make a fist. The joints on my right arm started to ache and contract, like whatever it was was creeping upward. Wrist. Elbow. Shoulder.

I ran outside to breathe in my paint-splattered white t-shirt, arms bare to the wind, gaze up toward the blue sky seeking spaciousness. Oxygen felt so good I hardly registered the cold. When I walked back inside, I barreled into my coworkers’ arms, tears streaming. They sat me down, offered me water and wet towels and aquaphor. “Of course your hands are dry!” they said, and I laughed. I knew my tears were only a little bit about the eczema I may or may not have developed, and more about Osa, about whom I thought in every free moment yesterday and today, and more about Ayan, whose absence finally feels glaring, even though I don’t want to see him, don’t want to talk to him, certainly cannot go crawling back to crying about eczema on my knuckles.

“Grandma Nathalie, why do I have hives AND eczema?”

“Well, sweet granddaughter, it’s because I and I alone don’t know how to handle my stress and so it eats away at my skin before it carves something out of my soul.”

In the end, I ran outside before the pink light faded and it was breathtaking. It let something loose in my chest. When I think about the woman I want to be2, she is someone who catches the sunset and holds it, knows it as medicine and magic. The essay I’m trying to get right will follow, even when I give myself a moment to appreciate something as special as a sunset.

“Can you separate the sweater from the person?” “Can you separate the song from the person who gave it to you?” I can, I suppose, but why would I want to? When the thorn pricks, it reminds me of the joy I had and lost. Still, what a blessing.

The last interaction we had, really, was in October of 2021. Absolutely was on its way out and the live-ish studio-ish version of Big Mike’s was released on Instagram. I sent it to you. “Very very good,” I said, in the cold way I communicate when I feel love and fear. I only knew Skin before then but it was still my favorite song.

I heard The Dress for the first time when I listened to Absolutely straight through. It holds all the energy of heartbreak in it, so I thought of you. I still think of all the ways I can’t apologize to you, still feel chaos in my body when I run into you, like there are all of these atoms going crazy, all of this energy that doesn’t know what to do with itself. You were my first love. And I didn’t know how to hold love at the time. It’s not that I didn’t want it, I just didn’t know what to do with it and, in some way, didn’t feel worthy of it. Or maybe it is that I didn’t want it. At the time, I only knew love as something to fear, something that could rip you apart or suffocate you. I hardly wanted anything to do with love but I wanted everything to do with you, and I tried to hold those two things separate for as long as I could. It seemed best for both of us. Me, leaving. You, young. Whole life ahead of you. I thought that everyone must be as afraid of love as I was. But I never felt more brave than I did in the moments I was with you.

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Sometimes, when I’m asked to hold the feeling of love in my heart, the cleanest version I can pull is sitting underneath the tree on your back patio. Cool summer nights wrapped in your heaviest sweatshirt and passing a cigarette back and forth before we got ready for bed. American Spirits. “Now, drop the memory and focus on the sensation. Remember that you created it.” but what if I’m the one who destroyed it, too? Maia says you can’t say the wrong thing to the right person, but what if you actually can? There are some things you can’t take back, like having a whole other boyfriend while you’re in love with someone for the first time. And then never being brave enough to talk about it, not sure if it would inflict more harm.

I guess part of me is wondering if the force of my love for Dijon is, in part, some kind of repentance, a display of affection years removed, meaningless except in my devotion. To be fair, the love is true. The music does something to my cells, alters my chemistry. It all feels like love anyway. The best way I could express my experience of Dijon night two in New York was that the sound felt big. It’s a rudimentary word but it’s the simplicity that makes it the most honest. I closed my eyes, at one point, and I felt like I could have been outside, the sound was as spacious as an open field, and it danced across the room, carrying me with it, even while my feet were planted in one place on the ground. When I went home, I was so wired with energy I couldn’t sleep, and I paced around the city in cold air until I landed somewhere I could move. That part didn’t feel connected to you. I was transcending this earthly form. I was at the concert with a boy who made me think of you, actually, who once held me in the same way you held me, tight but not suffocating. Something sturdy I can lean against and soften into.

The first time I heard Dance Song, Dijon played it at the Re:SET show in Forest Hills. I stood at the center of the crowd with my hand on my heart, immobilized by the magnitude of my emotion. All of the other songs I’d heard so far felt more connected to you in energy, grown directly from a seed you planted. But I’d never registered Dance Song before, and it was its own seed - attached, instead, to some future memory. Can I put my head by your head? when I would be moving in step with some yet to be known person with whom I could be in easy love. It feels potent, maybe even more in retrospect: this idea of courage in love, of an openness that I can access again, tracking it back to the first person who made me feel safe about it and expressing some sort of gratitude for it, some kind of apology.

They say your first love never really leaves you. I’m learning that love is infinite, actually. We have all this other stuff that masquerades as love, so we think it could be some painful thing, but it really isn’t. In its true form, it’s the only thing that means anything. It’s the water and the sunlight and the seeds in the garden. It is the greatest force that acts upon me (upon us all), that shapes me into who I am. It shows me who I want to be.

It got me thinking - a lot. First, about the importance of collective rest, especially as Thanksgiving was approaching. Judith Shulevitz, an author I admire, wrote about the Sabbath, how valuable it is for everyone to stop at the same time. It feels holy, when I think about it, even if you remove any idea of divine decree, a sacred pause that can be more social contract than covenant. With everything online 24/7, those moments of collective quiet feel few and far between. In New York, pausing can feel like it sets you back in the rat race. But, right on schedule, quiet started to permeate the city on Wednesday afternoon - and it did feel divine.

Radical self-acceptance is a theme I’ve explored in my writing before. Ultimately, that’s what this is. I want to be free to say the word radical one hundred times in this essay - radical self-acceptance, radical gratitude, radical love, radical RESPONSIBILITY. It’s all kind of related, you know? Sometimes, it’s all of those things in the face of discomfort. That’s what makes it radical: when things aren’t going the way you want them to go, when you’re not exactly where you want to be.

I have decided, ~radically~, to love the life I’m living right now. In some way, it feels like resistance, to declare that I have (or I am) enough. Especially as Final Hours! emails flood my inbox with Black Friday sales, feigned urgency for things I don’t necessarily need.

What I mean by “radical gratitude” is practicing the complete acceptance of the circumstances of your life before they are what you want them to be. I am, so often, trying to rush my life away, to get to the part where I feel satisfied. I wrote about the value of desire, and the importance of naming it, and now I am speaking of something a little different, even opposing, but simultaneously and forcefully true.

I think there’s something magical about deciding to love everything as it is exactly right now, remembering that, at some point, I prayed to be right where I am, and now I’m here. The big magic is in the word decision. The more I learn about love, the more I come to know that it is a verb. To love is an action, it is a choice. It’s always within our power to turn that toward ourselves.

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As I was walking home from work the other day, a question occurred to me: What miracles happen when we decide to radically love the circumstances of our lives? The question felt pertinent to the most recent Women’s Circle Ariana and I held. The theme was trust, and how residing in that space invites miracles.1 We talked about going into the darkness of winter and remembering the cyclical nature of the world - that brightness will come again and, also, that there is an inextinguishable light always within us. I sent the question in the group chat of the circle, basked in the warmth of awareness that holding space that way is a precious milestone for me, something I have longed to do for years. Let me slow down and be with her!

As.I was writing this, I came across a paragraph I wrote last year when I tried to write an essay by this same title:

“Let me slow down and be with her,” has felt especially challenging lately. I’m sitting at the garden. Some of the leaves are already turning red. While I walked to Happy Medium yesterday, after a day of self-loathing, which felt so uncharacteristic or maybe i’ve just never been conscious of it before, I felt like I could finally breathe. I looked out at the buildings of downtown manhattan, bright, illuminated against the dark sky. The sight of them softened something in my chest, they reminded me that I am really here. I don’t know how to explain why it had such an impact on me but let me try: One World Trade, the tall downtown buildings, bright against the night sky, it feels like the essence of New York City to me. Signs of life piercing the dark sky. More life than we can know about, it’s all right here.

I’m thinking about how many years I sat in LA and wrote about how badly I wanted to move back to New York, how I’d sob on every flight back because I longed for easier access to my family and to the energy of this city, to the expansiveness of it, its magic. I’ve spent the past three years trying to know it, and struggling to hold it, finding it to be fickle like the soft sand of an hourglass. Everything is only a mirror. We are constantly moving with the universe to come to know ourselves, and I’m learning that it can feel like wrestling or dancing, depending on how we choose to engage with it.

One of the ways this is manifesting for me right now is that I am choosing to radically love my parents. That seems silly, almost, because OF COURSE I do love them. But also, sometimes, I get frustrated by them. A couple of weeks ago, my parents came into the city on my one day off. I usually spend it practicing yoga and writing and maybe doing laundry, and taking a luxuriously long shower before laying around in my towel until my hair is completely dry (it’s a ritual). Plus, I had a date that night. So I just felt completely burdened and exhausted. Which…. Even while it was happening felt absurd to me, and unfair, and more of a reflection of me than it was of them. In the days that followed, I wondered what I could do to shift that experience. Because maybe (!) it’s possible (!) that I am actually seeing myself as a burden. I am, after all, derived completely from them.

I heard someone say, recently, that being overly critical of our parents signals that we are overly critical of ourselves. Our families are often the people who we love the hardest, and who might also feel hardest to love. Really, I think it’s just hardest to watch them suffer2, and their suffering is so much out of our hands, even though we want to grab them and shake them and hug them and fix every single thing for them. ~and~ at the same time, it’s easiest to blame them for our flaws, for the things about us that make us feel unloveable. So it’s a complicated thing but I am on a mission to make it less complicated, if only for a moment at a time, to just lean into the joy of being around them, of knowing them at all, of having them be a part of me.

I remember standing on a rock in the river at Lakshmi Rising the first time I went, in Costa Rica at the end of 2022. We had done a ritual of release beneath a waterfall, and we stood in a circle with an invitation to share aloud what we wanted to let go. Among other things, I said that I was almost ready to release the responsibility for my parents’ happiness, but I wasn’t quite there yet.

I so often return to the quote Let me slow down and be with her because 1) it’s hard for me but also 2) it reminds me that I am living a version of my life I once dreamed of, yearned so desperately for that my heart ached. And I suspect that, one day, when I am caught up in some of the bigness of my life, I will long for these moments, too, for the practice of becoming myself, for the privilege of self-exploration, of living on my favorite corner of the city that raised me, coming to know it differently and learning to love it again, of being a train ride away from my parents and my sister, all of whom I love so dearly and so richly that it feels almost impossible to understand. What kind of blessing is that!

And, on my quest for a life lived fully, the idea of taking that for granted crushes me so completely that I can hardly breathe.

But Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and it’s my favorite holiday. The food and the expressions of gratitude and the crispness of the weather and being around my family, choosing joy. So, my friends, that is what I intend to do.3

“Why don’t you come to this cacao ceremony with me?” I asked him the week before. “I think you’d like it.” I didn’t know what it would entail when I extended the invitation but my first Tea at Shiloh experience had such a profound impact that I trusted them to guide with sincerity.

At our seats, we receive a small ceramic cup to cradle between both palms. Esmerelda glides around the room to pour smooth, rich cacao into each of our cups. The only sounds are breath, whispers of gratitude and the shiny percussion of cacao falling into itself. Ritual. I close my eyes and inhale deeply, sink a little into my seat.

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I, myself, had just supported my sister’s Women’s Circle by leading a group of women in meditation and guided journaling practices. “How do you make each day sacred?” we asked, because the days are getting shorter and dropping temperatures demand that we move more slowly. Collectively, we sipped bitter cacao and shared intentions for the coming month. Mine was a return to ritual. I had pretty much stopped meditating, hadn’t practiced asana in a full three months and I held it in all my body: perceptible rigidity. When I found myself seated in this circle, holding a small cup full of ceremonial cacao to my chest while I tuned into my heartbeat, I felt that I’d been handed ritual on a silver platter.

“How is your heart?” Esmerelda asked each of us. “What is your intention for this evening?”

“I feel at home in my heart,” I said, “and I intend to see where it leads me.”

Friend, this is where it led me first: a concert that turned me inside out so the music and warm evening wind felt inside of me, not separate. When I listen to Dijon in stereo, it already feels like the frequency of love. The experience in real life undid me. It wasn’t only that I could feel the music vibrate in my chest. There was softening, an unknotting, that rippled across my entire body. Tears gathered behind my eyes when he played Baby and sampled familiar songs (higher love for higher!), and screamed raw and ragged from the core of his being. I lived layers and layers of love in deep presence. It felt like coming home.

I designed a week-long ~personal writers retreat~ for myself1 as practice for retreats I intend to host. Every experience was an opportunity to rest in the seat of my heart but it was the structure, in the end, that invited real softness. I sat for meditation each morning, practiced sun salutations (which challenged my stiff body and reconnected me with my cellular memory of devotion), wrote each morning at the round white table outside of Moon Juice on Rose. My favorite thing that I incorporated was The Fountain writing practices by and Kimberly King Parsons.

When I traveled, and the backdrop of home changed every day, I internalized a sense of home through ritual. It was in meditation that I found my center, in morning pages that I could witness my patterns, through breathwork that I regulated my nervous system, in asana that I came home to my body. When I was even younger, I became obsessed with optimizing my morning routine specifically. Mostly because the benefits were so clear and tangible, and I loved the morning anyway, and everything that followed felt like bonus after that.

All of this to say that I am no stranger to routine but it had fallen away amidst the heat of summer and my erratic schedule and the whirling busyness that New York City compels. When I run around, it’s really like spinning, the strength and speed and destruction of a tornado. The time scarcity that always finds its way to my movie screen had been taking a leading role the past few months. I’d been forgoing discipline in my delirium after late nights working at the art studio, when I would come home - body broken, mind fried - and could do nothing but lay my bones down horizontal. I, a creature of the morning, occasionally have to work until midnight. It doesn’t suit my body, and I feel tired and out of it in the days that follow. It takes me a long time to get myself back on track. Sometimes, life demands that you move faster and you have no choice but to keep pace. Planting myself firmly in New York had that effect. The revered self-sacrifice - but all of the work that I had done previously kept me tethered to my body, hanging on by a thread but still present.

Add to that: In the past couple of months, I tried casting the net of my energy wide enough so home could also feel like something that existed outside of me. In externalizing my home, ritual fell away. I think it’s necessary, sometimes, to let everything go and experiment with surrender. All of my practice had been for that very moment of departure.

The return to ritual has ultimately become a story of coming home to myself. It sounds silly, I am aware, because I am *at the same time* inescapable to myself. But I am constantly learning about the truth of my nature and, in the moments when I am spinning, there is a palpable separation. The trick, now (in post-retreat peace and fortitude), is seeing how long you can hold it.2

As I write this, I am sitting at the table in my living room. I’ve brewed a perfect cup of tea (strong ginger + KCC signature chai + whole milk + a pinch of turmeric + a pinch of anima mundi rose powder). The flowers I bought from the market (celosia) look like a flame. They’re in a thin glass vase that puts their pink and orange stems on display. My favorite candle is lit. Everything glows soft and the air smells like beeswax. I am returning to ritual.

It feels important to note that ritual doesn’t require anything extravagant. It simply cannot feel rushed. It’s a deep exhale, a rich act of self-love. Devotional, it is an act of prayer, an offering. Sitting at the intersection of presence/intention/boundaries, ritual can turn anything we already do (shower, eat) into something more meaningful and nourishing for the spirit. Par example, deeper presence in the shower is probably my biggest bliss. It gives me the space to ask: where can I soften?

I am coming home to my body, reanointing my space, calling back my energy and channeling it into myself so I can offer the big magic of overflow to the world. It makes me think of The Wellness Industrial Complex, how our health is stolen and then sold back to us. It is my favorite indulgence, to be clear (& tbh I will link my favorite ritual tools if you have the means/interest in investing) - and YET I am reminded by this return that is only asking me to breathe a little deeper, soften into spaces that feel like home, carve time out for slowness. How we do one thing is how we do everything. The calm ripples out into the dusty crevices of our lives and clears them out.3

So I am peeling pomegranates like a prayer. Nudging each kernel with my thumb, pressing gently to release: an offering of time and energy, a devotional act of patience. That is my ritual now. We are never guaranteed a reward and, still, when the seeds are swollen with juice, the experience is equivalent to bliss. The whole act is an offering of love. Let me be brave with it, soften into the experience of it and allow it to be joyful.

~if you have the means/desire to invest in ritual tools, these are my very favorites~

1. The Five Minute Journal: low hanging fruit and extremely powerful! All it asks of you is a commitment of a few minutes each day. Minimal effort, maximum reward.

2. Moon Juice Magnesi’om: Early mornings start the night before. Bioavailable, restful, restorative.

3. Mystical Oneness Beeswax Chimes by : ceremonially hand-dipped beeswax chimes, ritual is inbuilt

4. Kolkata Chai Co Signature Chai Mix - my first true lesson in ritual

5. Insight Timer: !!free on the app store!! And fantastic. IMO the best meditation app on the market.

6. honorary suggestion for anyone heading into a colder season: Wintering by changed the way I view winter when I moved back to New York in October 2020

I am currently intimately familiar with the vulnerability of wanting, actively looking over the cavernous canyon of my desires toward the horizon of my dream life. Two things must happen on this journey: small steps forward on the path that unfolds as we walk it and giant leaps of faith. The former requires trust. The latter requires activation energy. My friend, Tayler, described it physically, drawing a graph in the air of jumps and plateaus of success. I reached out to her because I was contemplating how we can cultivate reserves of enthusiasm to carry us, especially, through fear-filled moments.1

To backtrack: Preet was the first person who ever asked me what I really wanted, more than just within the confines of what I believed to be possible based on circumstance. When I first got to Selina in Paros, the woman at the front desk added me to a community group chat. Shortly after, I received a text with details for a New Moon guided meditation. It gave me the distinct feeling that I was exactly where I was meant to be, that the universe was holding me sweetly with this offering. When Preet introduced himself later, out on the deck overlooking the midday sun-drenched sea, I remembered that his was the name signed at the bottom of the message. I told him how meaningful it was for me to receive. I didn’t explain how badly I needed it, how much pain I was in. I only told him that I had been out in the world, alone on an empty island, how I’d been looking for community and found it.

We gathered for meditation that evening, a group of us sitting on the deck overlooking the strait between Paros and Antiparos. The water reflected the rich orange and pink that the clouds held, vestige of the setting sun. Afterward, I told Preet how vivid the meditation felt, how uncommon that was.

“I also guide people in breathwork,” he said. I can’t remember if I even knew what breathwork was at the time. I’d never done it before but, after the power of that meditation, I felt open and trusting.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

He gave me homework. “Write down all of the obstacles that you feel like you’re facing in your life. We can meet tomorrow at 2.”

I took my homework more seriously than I’d ever taken homework before in my life. I was unstudious as a child, and this felt more meaningful, like a step on the path to self-realization. I saw that, even then: a moment that was significant even as it was unfolding.

When I met him at 2:00 the next day, Preet invited me to share my list. I started and he paused to ask, “What are these obstacles to? What is it that you want?”

I had never been asked that before. It was an uncomfortable question. To want might signal lack, that we do not have (or ourselves are not) enough. A month prior, in the heat of a painful break up, my boyfriend looked at me across a table in Porto and said, “You want too much. You’ll never be satisfied.”

It’s possible that he was right. I think that is the thing that we (I) need to hold. He was right and wrong at the same time. We are allowed to want - a lot, big things. In fact, I encourage it! But is the desire meant to be a balm for a wound? Is it meant to convince you of your worth? Are you resting your happiness on the shoulders of some future self, still yet to be realized? That wanting is endless. He was right that that would have been a bottomless pit of desire. The self that sat across from him wanted hungrily, unfairly, because she was desperate to fill an unfillable void, to soothe the part of herself that felt incapable and unworthy of love. I say this affectionately now, with a desire to hold her and say the things my ex-boyfriend couldn’t have said - because he didn’t want to and also because I am the only one, actually, with the power to say them to any real effect.

Like how, for years, I wanted to have an orgasm and it finally became real when I learned that it could only come from me.

“I see you,” I can offer her, while she sits, sobbing, at that small round table, begging for the man she loves to look at her and really see her. “I know your heart.”

I think it would be easy, and really satisfying, to vilify my ex-boyfriend in that moment, to imagine a perfect world in which he looked at me and said “I see you and I hear you. I know you are a good person and you strive to soothe the people around you, to hold everything together in your flimsy little heart.” but, with that alone, I might not have been able to get to a place where I could really want, and have those desires be branches and roots instead of band-aids, things that are sturdy and expansive, not emptinesses that I was trying to fill.

In doing that for myself, I can recognize that my desires are coming from a different place now. Even some of my travels were born from a need to run, to be anywhere but here. I was searching. I still needed to be far away from the city that held the energy of my last relationship and of my parents’ sadness that was unresolved by my presence. This year, I challenged myself to confront it. I learned to love the place my feet are planted. I turned New York City into a village and allowed my roots to seek soil, finally. Now, firmly planted, my branches are aching to move and expand. My travels are taking me toward something instead of away, and that feels really full. It’s subtle, indiscernible to the untrained eye, but I am moving differently. I can feel it.

The truth is that I do want really big things. I want to publish my book and I want it to change the way we, as a society, talk about pleasure and intimacy. I want it to stay on the New York Times best seller list for months. As I write this, I can feel the tremendous power required to take ownership of these desires and I know that I am ready to say it with my whole chest, to move toward that reality with alacrity, to get up again when I stumble. “What if I fail?” is so much less scary than “What if I never try?”

I remember, one day, when I was feeling down about my writing, and how long it’s taking, I spoke to a dear friend. “What?” he said, “Did you think it would be easy?” I whined that I did, at least easier than this. At least not impossible.

But he was right. In the moments when there are pitfalls, when looking at myself and baring my bones feels uncomfortable, when words become muddy, I can get back up. Because I know, in my heart, that this desire is my lighthouse. It is the thing that guides me home. It is the path unfolding before me, nudging me toward myself.

I’m reading How to Manifest, by Lacy Phillips.2 Phillips breaks manifestation down into three steps: expanding, unblocking, and taking aligned action. I created a list of expanders, people who have (in part or in full) actualized dreams similar to mine. Tayler Carraway, co-founder of Happy Medium and recently published author3, is someone I admire and ~fortunately~ also someone I know. She is an artist in a true sense of the word, bringing formlessness into form and inspiring others to do the same. When you want big things, how do you become big enough to hold them? I wanted to ask her. How do you cultivate the courage to go all in on your dreams?

I applied to work at Happy Medium with the thought that sincerely supporting other people on their creative paths might plant good seeds of creativity in my own garden. It’s been a silent and steady process. Turns out, being surrounded by art supplies DOES in fact encourage you to make more art!! Bearing witness to people’s creative efforts DOES in fact inspire your own! Reminding people to be brave enough to be terrible reminds you that YOU can be brave in that very same way. Service erodes the barrier between self and other. You speak to a mirror in that way. I’m even thinking about the watercolor plates that we prepare at Art Cafe. I suck at this task, always over- or underestimating how much of each color we can fit on the palette. It’s shown me the importance of showing up poorly with enthusiasm, how that’s better than not showing up at all; of having places and people that encourage you to risk imperfection. It is, in fact, inevitable, and the expense of not trying is far too steep.

All of that to say, I can recognize the way spending time at Happy Medium is fortifying me, preparing me to hold a big life. Still, there was something extra special about sitting down with Tayler, personally, to hear her story. “How do you cultivate the confidence?” I had the pleasure of asking. She is a self-proclaimed queen of not caring what anybody thinks about her. There’s an undeniable secret sauce in that. It quiets the external voices that become our subconscious self-limiting beliefs. “Knowing that you definitely have something here, and it’s more a matter of marketing it and not a question of, ‘is it actually good or not?’” Tayler generously says that, “Almost everybody has an amazing idea. It’s just, do enough people know about it, and do the right people know about it?”

When it takes a long time to get what we want, it might feel safest to shrink ourselves, to tell us that what we want is actually something different, smaller, more easily attainable - when, in fact, it is an invitation to grow, to connect more deeply with the force of our desire. I write to give myself what I need, as a reminder that by offering it to others, the light of it isn’t diminished but multiplied. The strength of it compounds. I write books because I am looking for answers, and I know that they exist within myself. I pull them out for me and for you. With big love!

I became fascinated by intimacy when I realized I didn’t how to do it, how to be genuinely intimate. I read The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm like one might read a manual on how to fix a car. I took notes. I held my own experience up to the light to examine it. The most glaring symptom - my check engine light - was a feeling of disconnection from my own body. I couldn’t feel anything, so I took myself on a journey of self-connection. It started small: developing sensitivity by practicing with feather-light touch on the inside of my wrists. Then it became bigger: a guided rebirth breathwork with a profound healer and friend, peeling back the layers of my desires, practicing yoga asana and then expanding and refining my understanding of yoga, healing from injury, strength training, a mystical massage, and a session with an osteopath who ended by holding my head until I felt safe enough to release long-held tension in my neck and shoulders, an act so deep and profound that, when I got home, I made my friend let me hold his head, too.

All of this to say that I’m thinking about intimacy being built in the rupture and repair and I’m wondering how I can apply this wisdom to my own body. Literally, in the way tissues tear and knit themselves back together, stronger. But I’m also thinking of the efficiency of bodies, how they want to get healed so badly that, without proper care, they can put themselves back together misaligned: cross-hatched scar tissue that stiffens and shrinks range of motion if left untended.

This morning, my left arm slipped forward while I was getting into my first creaky downward dog in an over month. My shoulder tensed, arm extended too far in front of my body. I bent my knees to rest them on the ground so I could press my torso upright with my right hand. Gentle. I took a deep breath to feel into my shoulder socket, pressing my right palm against my collarbone as I tilted my head left and right, exploring the range of motion of my joint.

“Does this hurt?” I asked myself.

My back is sensitive, shoulders in particular, loaded with emotion. Breath became my anchor. I tried to ground myself in the truth of sensation, instead of getting carried away by the story fear would tell me. I tested some other movements - slowly, with control - to feel into experience.

Right now, I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed and an old injury along my spine is singing, a delicate sort of pain - contracting, pulling from the inside. There’s a new stiffness. I feel the way it triggers my fear. In The Covenant of Water, the main character talks about the second arrow1 of injury: the betrayal one feels by their own body (and vice versa). My joints’ crackling symphony used to scare me. It felt like my body was rebelling against me when, really, it was just trying to communicate with me, asking for support and connection. So, today, I asked new questions:

How can I show up differently today? How do I meet my fear about back pain without panicking? What can I do to honor my body?

Through various somatic practices, I’m learning how to connect with my body, how to listen to it without fear, how to trust it and trust myself to take care of it. The grand gestures are great but it’s the small, consistent efforts that make the biggest difference - gentle touch healing, self-massage, a discipline of movement and stillness in equal parts. One of the strongest ways, if not the very strongest, is to listen - to create the space and circumstances quiet enough to hear. Open a sincere dialogue. The body screams when we ignore it. The years I spent overriding its signals culminated in numbness and then in nightly breakouts of hives that lasted 14 months.

Sometimes, when I get hurt, I ask myself: is this actually painful? Occasionally the answer is no. Then, I can get clearer about the sensation and ask, ״what do you need right now?” In The Mindful Body, Dr. Ellen Langer talks about mindfulness as medicine for chronic pain. Often, she explains, we get so wrapped up in the story of our pain that we forget to be present with the truth of what we’re really feeling.

It’s about more than just injury and specific healing, though. If we can tune into subtle sensations, honor the needs that our bodies whisper, we can reawaken that connection to ourselves and to our body wisdom. Part of that is moving from a space of trust instead of a place of fear. Asking questions, listening for the answer, heeding the call. There is no shortcut to building intimacy - and it’s not a perfect science. Occasionally, I still find myself negotiating with the answers I receive because they’re inconvenient, overriding fatigue or wanting to be ready faster. Still, I know I am building this portal of connection brick by brick. Every time I listen, the voice gets clearer, the commitment is strengthened, the rupture is repaired.

There seems to be a thread here: despite my best effort to integrate with intention, to hold onto the habits that I cultivated in my personal paradise, I necessarily put some things at the back of the shelf when I returned. Coming home can be a negotiation between your past and present selves, navigating the rubble of a former life. If that sounds dramatic, it’s because it feels dramatic - intentionally. I think the point of travel is often to remind yourself that your reality is just a story you’re telling.

I integrated a mantra, accidentally, while I was in India. “I am not my conditioning,” I would tell myself when I awoke each morning as I reached for my phone before I opened my eyes. “I have free will. I can make different choices.” I would put it back down without unlocking it and get out of bed to brush my teeth. At Sarvaguna Yoga Dhaama, Dr. Keshava often reminded us about the truth of our nature: the spark of divinity that exists within each of us, covered only by our own limiting beliefs about who and what we are, the covenant that we’ve accepted with the world in which we live. It gave my mind something precious to turn toward. For longer and longer stretches, I resided in the space of knowing.

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It’s been about a month since I returned to New York. And my clothes still smell like jasmine! It felt like a miracle that the scent could have remained for as long as it feels like I’ve been back (an eternity). I want to say something like “the amount of life I’ve fit into the month since I returned,” but I hate that. It’s not more life than I lived in a month-span while I was in Goa. Many days in Goa were rigorous, in fact, but I discovered a boundless well of energy that was replenished by the very nature of the fullness of each day. I felt so engaged that moments stretched. In contrast, I’ve noticed the way time collapses into itself here, a nuclear reaction of striving.1

I started reading The Artist’s Way while I was in Goa. It takes about three months to complete, if you’re pacing it according to Julia Cameron’s recommendation, so I can use it as a neutral marker of time. One of the commitments of the process is a weekly Artist Date, time dedicated to nurturing your creative consciousness. This week, I took myself to an evening showing of All We Imagine As Light at Cinema Village near Union Square. It’s a tiny theater with only a few rows of seats. I was one of three people in the audience and I sat in the middle of the very back row. I didn’t know what it was about but I knew it was (mostly) in Hindi and Marathi, which I thought could help me lick the wound of missing India, and the title is pretty.

The film itself was beautiful, broken up into urban scenes in Mumbai - on trains, in the market, at restaurants, in the apartment the main characters share, at the hospital in which they work - and tropical scenes in Kerala - at a hostel, on the beach, in the sea. The shots were gorgeous. Pale, ethereal colors. Still camera frames while the world moved within the scene.

A common device for explaining the mechanism of our mind is the concept of the movie screen, how we project our reality onto a blank canvas and get so caught up in it that we forget it’s a figment of our imagination. A dream within a dream. And so I forgot myself for a moment; I got swept up in the story.

Something I’m wrestling with is this feeling of time scarcity. That’s more of a mindset than anything else, something that shows up on my particular movie screen no matter where I am. Even when I was in India, I always felt busy, always felt like I had to be somewhere or be doing something. New York tends to exacerbate it. But, yesterday, Stephen cued us into savasana. “You don’t have anyone to be,” he said. I smiled and felt some old tension melt away. I thought it was a precious play on “you don’t have anything to do or anywhere to be,” but actually more sincere. It reminds me that, at our core, we are all the very same vibration of being, unburdened by surface level desire and aversion. And, while it takes effort to know that Self completely, we can do the work and then! surrender! like the blank movie screen without anything playing on it at all. Just a brilliant white light.

Dr. Keshava and I did a single reiki session the night before I was supposed to leave Sarvaguna Yoga Dhaama in Goa. I had requested it after hours of daily asana practice fatigued my shoulders to a breaking point, remembering the profound therapy I’d received from him in Dharamshala.2 At the end of the session, he looked at me, seriousness pressed on his otherwise serene face. “We need one more session, maybe two,” he said. I nodded and sighed in gratitude.

“What do you feel when you’re doing it?,” I asked, needing to know that there was something real keeping me rigid, something tangible that someone else could touch. “Can you feel the tension?”

“Yes,” he answered, moving his head from side to side. “In your spine.”

I am still too entrenched in my gratitude for Keshava to speak with any perspective on how meaningful it was for him to offer his time and energy like that. I’ve written and rewritten paragraphs and they all come out saccharine. But I will say this: I have encountered genuine healers and masters all over the world - people who can understand the severity of an injury with the soft touch of a hand, people who can walk you toward some unseen part of yourself to help you hold and integrate it with compassion - and I have admired none so much as Keshava. So, when he said, you’ll need two more sessions - day of departure - I said, “Bet, I will be there,” with the utmost appreciation.

We did a quick session immediately before I had to leave, only 30 minutes, and I felt tears pool in the palms of his hand while he cupped them over my eyes, warm with energy. When I left, I pressed my palms together at my chest and flattened them both over my heart while I said thank you and goodbye, and, “actually I’ll see you soon.” I walked toward my room to finish packing and stopped short, sadness like a serpent blocking my path. “Is everything okay?” He asked. “I’m just sad to leave, but I’ll be back,” I told him, with a certainty that resounded in my thoughts the following days. “Soon,” I repeated, imagining returning to Dharamshala to continue my studies. Thank you again, I called back, without turning around this time, emotion gathering in the space of my chest.

The airport is two hours away from Agonda, and I negotiated my departure time to be just a little later than would be advisable. This is standard protocol for my travel days. I always try to pack as much love as I can into the skint corners of my last day. I had spent the day running around - extra classes, a lovely ride to a different beach - and I dreaded leaving. I rushed to pay for the little gifts I’d set aside as I walked past shops throughout my time here: a little paper mache elephant with orange flowers painted onto its body and a black pashmina scarf from Kashmir. I began packing - slowly, slowly - the day before, so most of my clothes were already tucked away in my small suitcase, belly up and unzipped.

I returned to my room to finish with 15 minutes to spare before I had to leave. All of the small things I needed to consolidate seemed to multiply across the room - toiletries and books and papers that I’d scattered while I studied. At 6:30, when my car arrived, I was still moving around the room with the adeptness of someone who has never traveled before in their life, my mind entertaining the deep part of my being that was reluctant to leave.

My friends, Gabi and Gosha, walked up the steps to my room. My door was open. I was trying to will myself outside of it. “I think it’s time,” they said to me. Vicky, the school’s head staff, followed close behind to tell me my car was waiting and to help me take my bags downstairs. I walked down after him carrying my toothbrush in one hand and a pile of books in the other hand, with my water bottle balanced in the crook of my elbow. Gabi and Gosha walked behind me cradling the belongings I left on my desk, a sad and sweet little exit procession.

It was already 20 minutes past the time I was supposed to meet my driver for the long ride to the airport. When I reached the car, a few other friends were already waiting there. I was surrounded by people I hold dearly in my heart. In that moment, I was held up by the force of that love. I hugged them all goodbye, pressed my hand to my chest while I looked at their faces and sighed. The ride was long, and I used it to organize the excess I carried in my arms, hardly breathing. My sadness curdled inside of me, bubbling forcefully beneath the surface.

The time I spent at the airport is its own story. I asked the woman at the AirIndia counter in Goa, in a whisper, what I should do about my visa, knowing that it had expired the day before and assuming I could pay a fine at the airport in order to leave. She looked at my passport, took it to a senior employee wearing an elegant pink dress, and returned five minutes later saying that I wouldn’t have to do anything since I was flying home. I exhaled in relief, counted my blessings, and went through security in record time with an extra bag full of books still in my hand.

Delhi was different. I remember walking up to the counter and looking at the face of the young man with the villainous mustache, corners turned up in a sinister joke. He had a young face and it was angry when he looked at me before he opened my passport.

“No visa?” He asked me without looking up.

“Ah, I have one, but it’s a day expired.”

“Two days,” he accused. It was 1:00 am. “You drank too much in Goa? Where’s your husband?” My body burned.

“You have to go back to Goa,” he told me. “You can’t pay the fine here because you didn’t stay here.”

“I can’t go back to Goa,” I told him. “My flight leaves in three hours.” He laughed at me, then, an ugly sound full of malice, and told me to follow him.

I wish I could say I handled the first hours with composure. I did not. “I cannot go back to Goa. I have to go home,” I demanded, through tears. A man took my passport and left for an hour; the staff wouldn’t look at me or answer any questions.

“Can someone please tell me what I need to do to go home?” I pleaded to a group of airport employees, who stole sly glances at me to avoid meeting my gaze. My whole body was a vicious heartbeat. Every cell trembled. In some moments, I remembered the lesson I had just learned about Karma Yoga while I sat in the meditation room with Keshava hours before, time that felt like a generous parting gift. “I take every result as a blessing,” he’d written. I closed my eyes to try to know that, planted my feet on the ground and grasped for the anchor of my breath. For a moment, my heartbeat softened and steadied. There is a blessing here.

When I finally sat down, I called my parents and heaved my tears. “I’m stuck in Delhi,” I cried. “I don’t know how long I need to stay here.” It was Christmas Eve. All of the offices were closed for the next few days. It was 3am by then and I could hardly see straight. I turned to the woman next to me, dressed in an elegant sky blue kurta, to apologize for crying so loudly and so uncontrollably. She assured me that it was alright, and said she’d also had an issue with her travels that kept her stranded at the airport overnight. “There is a blessing here,” she said, echoing my thoughts while she patted my back, an angel haloed by fluorescent airport lights. She introduced herself as Sindhu. She took me by the hand to immigration, and asked in Hindi what needed to be done. She was calm and they heeded her request, handing me a paper of written instructions. “It could take a couple of weeks,” they said. I booked a flight back to Goa in that instant, and felt a wave of peace wash over me.

The car ride back to Agonda was noticeably different than the one on the way out. I looked out the window the entire time, reading shop signs and looking at people’s faces, studying my surroundings with a blazing intensity. My breath was deep, smooth and even. I felt like I had returned home but with a new awareness of its preciousness. Two hours passed quickly, and my driver helped me back into the same room that I’d been devastated to leave exactly one day before. My bed was made with fresh sheets pulled tight over the mattress. The bright yellow walls welcomed me back and I squealed my joy, so grateful just for the sight of my same bed, imagining the deep sleep I would have after having been awake and in motion for the 24 hours. I walked into my bathroom just to take a deep breath and set to preparing myself for a thorough shower. Keshava messaged me then to invite me down to the dining hall for dinner. I hadn’t eaten since I left, and it was a warm return. Gabi and Gosha were just finishing their meal. Their eyes widened when they saw me. They listened while I told them the story of being detained at the airport. Keshava came, too. He teased me lightheartedly and assured me that everything would be okay. “Let’s see,” he said. “What to do now?” We sat and talked together before I went back to my room to shower and sleep.

The next day unfolded in technicolor. I walked up to the yoga shala with my mat tucked under my arm, through the clearing between the palm fronds, loving the rugged earth beneath my feet more with each step. The other friends I’d said bye to the night before were already there, sipping ginger tea outside the shala. When I unrolled my mat and stepped onto it, my body was stiff from being in transit for an entire day. The joyful ache of stretches made it sing and soften. I closed my eyes to listen to the honeyed melody of Shubham’s cues, and a smile spread across my face just to be there. I didn’t think my joy could be more complete before I left. This was a feeling I could only know by leaving, just to return 24 hours later to the very same place. I stretched my arms up, body warm with movement, finally. I walked to the beach afterward to watch flecks of sunlight dance on the sea, glittering and bright, and offered my breath in gratitude to the force that pushed me to return.

Later, I asked Keshava about Reiki Level 1 initiation. He’d suggested it in passing before I left but there wasn’t any time. Now, I am learning to turn my hands into instruments of healing. It immediately feels welcome in my body, this surge of energy, hot with the fire of prayer and the desire to do something good in the world.

I wanted to reread Shantaram on my flight home.3 It was the best way I could think to honor the time I spent in India, the perfect thing to turn my attention toward for 18 hours of uninterrupted and untethered time. Instead, I am reading it while I’m grounded, and it is giving me exactly what I need. In Shantaram, Khaderbhai says, “The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.” I read it with an understanding I don’t believe I had the first time around. Life is a series of great rememberings: some in a small sense, like the joy of returning to something you love; and some in a grand sense, like moments when ignorance falls away and you catch a glimpse of the truth.

Still, I know why I wanted to capture it quickly at the beginning. When the newness of a place fades, its preciousness takes a new shape. You sink into it differently. At the beginning, it’s pristine and you can feel rigid lines of separateness that keep you awake to the details. Over time, something blurs between you and the experience or the place. You internalize it. That’s the composting, I think. In my fleeting free moments, I walk along the clay-dusted village road. I know it more intimately than I did on the first day. I say hello to the shopkeepers I recognize, a slow and sincere nod with a bright smile, hand pressed against my chest. It’s only a small stretch that I know, on the main road, studded with little shops selling fresh coconuts, vials of oil, singing bowls. The Arabian Sea crashes against the shore on the other side like a metronome. I already see it with different eyes: familiar, softer - not the fresh eyes of the first day. Those can only happen once. Not to mention, we are in class most of the day - a gorgeously rigid schedule, full of meditation, philosophy, anatomy, hours of yoga, and teaching practice. Still, I try to keep my heart open to the details.

All of this learning, also, to hold against the BACKDROP OF GRIEF! But, actually, this time, the grief has become entirely entangled in the experience, threaded through in kind of a precious way, I can’t really explain it. I feel silver threads of his existence in everything, memories coming flooding back to me, especially in savasana. When my mind feels untethered from focus, he floats in: like the time he came to my yoga class in Central Park and unrolled his mat next to mine in the circle, or the last time I saw him, when I said “I’ll see you again when I come back,” and closed the door behind me, leaned against it and sobbed. In some way, I’m happy to be here now. First, I feel his everywhere-ness in a way that I might not have in New York. Maybe it would have only seemed like a there-ness, surrounded by friends talking about him (even though it’s painful to miss the funeral, to be able to mourn alongside people who knew and loved him, too). But I am also learning about mourning in a culture different from my own, and a lot of the rituals feel honest and beautiful. It’s an honor to be able to learn them here, to have prayers recited for Osa, for a smooth passage of the soul.

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In Writing Down the Bones, Natalie says, “You can have parts of others live in you. ‘I am the wing of the crow that has left and will not return.’” I find myself returning to that quote, reciting it like a mantra. He has left a gaping hole in the world but there’s this idea of internalizing him in some way, swallowing the dust of his body. Now, the only thing to do is go forward with a full heart, honor him however I can, with big love and integrity and courage.

It’s been almost a week since I arrived at Agonda Beach and the experience is already slippery. I want to write something about the openness in my heart, the excitement I felt reading the Yoga Sutras in preparation, the deep respect I have for my teachers here, my desire to learn, the way asana is so confronting in my body and why it all feels important. I have been writing myself in circles for days trying to figure out where to start so let me just keep it simple: “Greetings from Goa,” one might begin. “Something in my chest has loosened just by being here.”

We began our first morning together with a fire ceremony and ate kaju katli as a blessing. My gratitude took the form of tears and poured out of me. After months of feeling stuck, somehow suffocated by my own skin, the totality of my joy was like oxygen. When I think to myself, “this feels right, I feel certain,” there is some other part of me that bristles against that idea. Maybe it feels like too great a privilege, in a way - but I’m here in reverence, and the honor is not lost on me.

As it turns out, there is plenty more to say but it’s almost 10pm and I’ve been awake since 6 this morning. A coherent conclusion feels unlikely. In any case, I really just wanted to touch base, to send a note of love and gratitude, to let you know how it’s all going.

More soon xx

Last fall, I was traveling alone in Sardinia. I emerged from retreat certain that all things tend toward goodness and, in a day, the belief that I held so strongly became a dream that felt severed from me. Rage surged through my body, swallowed by grief that felt heavier and more still. Every glimmer of love, every moment of joy and pleasure, every sadness, was transposed onto that backdrop of grief. I had this sense of getting to know the ridges of my emotions, little peaks and valleys that could be encapsulated in a larger despair. After spending years feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of my feelings, I learned that I was spacious enough to hold multiple things at once. 

Every day in Santa Teresa, after spending the morning writing or crying at the cafe on the corner, I would dip my body in the cool sea to put some space between the world and me. Muscles softened, held for a moment by dense saltwater, I emerged feeling new. I’d always pass the market on my way home, droplets of water still beaded on my skin. Greet the vendors. Walk toward the same carton of ripe fruit. I would sort through peaches until I found the perfect one: firm with a little give when I pressed into it with my thumb, heavy and teeming with juice underneath soft flesh. When I got back to my room, I’d strip all the way down and hang my damp bikini off the railing of my balcony to dry. Bougainvillea climbed over the edge to frame the view of sprawling Sardinian hills with electric pink petals. Below me, the streets were still. Riposo called everyone back into their homes, and I could sit outside comfortably, unafraid of being seen. Reclined on the deck chair, I’d cross one ankle over the other on the footrest and close my eyes while I took the day’s first deep breath, velvet skin of peach soft in my hand. Noon sun scorched my skin and I turned my face toward it. Drenched in light, I’d bite into tender summer fruit. Nectar dripped down my chin onto my chest and traced downward toward my stomach, sticky and sweet. It felt like real freedom. That small ritual showed me how simple joy could be, and how it could withstand even intense grief, like a flower growing through a crack in concrete.

Still, I can’t help but feel like joy is a radical act these days. I am thinking of pleasure as an honest form of resistance, something that can carve us open and soften us, and so I am engaging in actions that bring me pleasure, big and small, even when I feel so attuned to suffering. It’s different from the foreground pleasure and background pain that I experienced when I was in Sardinia. There are days when the intensity of my sorrow is equal to the intensity of my joy, simultaneously, like oppositional forces. In my biggest sadness, I can feel a shiver in my chest, my breath ragged, charged with the feeling of being alive. It’s hard for me to say out loud in this space that my friend is dying, that people haven’t stopped dying. There are some days when it feels too much so I fall back into the old habit of trying to outrun my emotions. I find myself spinning in circles - trying to do things, never stopping doing things, until my head hits the pillow and I’m too tired to consider the state of the world. In those moments, when I finally stop, my tears flow in an endless stream. 

On a day when I noticed my endless running, my needing-to-do without getting-things-done, my roommate and I contemplated practicing yoga with my favorite teacher. I made excuses not to go, citing my busyness over and over again. I recognized that I was afraid to pause because the weight that day was too heavy and I feared it would be suffocating. So I went, because the most important time to practice is when we’re too busy. I promised myself that I could let it be easy, just take space to be. For the first time, Kia guided us through a sequence without music. She taught as she typically does - calm, present, aware - and the room was hypnotized by her instruction. The silence beyond her voice gave me the stillness I needed (and had been avoiding). 

One of the most profound things in a Three Jewels class is the invitation to dedicate our practice to someone who could use its benefits. At the end of this particular class, we were guided to envision unconditional love spreading from our heart, reaching through the walls toward the rest of the world, enveloping the entire earth in the blue light of our offering. The visualization cracked the veneer I’d built by refusing to pause, and reminded me what it’s all really for, anyway. Sobs shook my entire body like an earthquake originating in the center of my chest where the epicenter of the blue light had been. It didn’t stop for days. I couldn’t be anywhere without my eyes glazing over in mourning. 2

It makes me think that I want to infuse every single action with prayer. Any time I dance, I offer it to the memory of people who cannot dance again. I was at a concert last week and, for a moment, my guilt creeped in to remind my happiness that suffering exists. Instead of being robbed of joy in moments when it appears, I move to turn it into an offering. I rejoice in its visit and imagine it rippling out from the center of my chest, reaching anyone who might need it. I take that opportunity to pray that every being, everywhere, can be safe and free (finally, finally, finally). 

What I want to say is, “I am feeling a lot of pleasure right now, and I’m also feeling a lot of pain. I’ve learned that I can actually hold them both at the same time and that feels really precious to me, like I have succeeded in my mission to stretch my emotional capacity.” The juxtaposition of my feelings is stark and painful but, in their magnitude, there is beauty. In a way, it speaks to human expansiveness - how I have evolved to hold my own multitudes and navigate a complex emotional landscape. Pleasure doesn’t have to be an escape, but a portal into some deeper part of ourselves, into some underlying truth that exists within us all. It isn’t an antidote to pain. If there is one at all, it’s presence, and probably service (if i’ve learned anything), and definitely love. The thing about grief, which I can see so clearly now, is that, at its core, it is love; a vision for a better world. In fact, I am still choosing to believe that there is love at the core of everything. I know how radical that sounds, I know, but you can’t tell me otherwise.

My experience with pleasure and pain had become a foundational piece of my existence so, when I found Michaela’s Writing Retreat, it seemed targeted specifically at me: “A pleasurable Mediterranean journey imbued with spiritual practices & creative exploration.” Michaela offered a space and community within which I could get comfortable with my own vulnerability, and the tools required to express from that deeper place. When I looked at the itinerary, I was especially curious about a workshop entitled “Cultivating Worth & Pleasure on Your Creative Path.” It was with Alida, the somatic intimacy coach that Michaela had invited onto the retreat. In my experience strengthening my own mind-body connection and expanding my emotional capacity, somatic therapy has opened doors within myself that I had never before been able to access. 

The workshop was held in a renovated a-frame shed on the finca, with smooth marble floors and a slanted roof reinforced by wooden beams. Our evening rituals sanctified the studio. The entire structure was in the shade of a tree at the edge of the property so, even with its large paneled windows and windowed door, sunlight only ever trickled in and the room stayed cool and dim. We opted to be outside in the sun for most of our daytime practices but, for this exercise, we stayed inside our sacred cocoon. I didn’t know what to expect but I felt open - soft and pliable, ready for whatever might happen.

We trickled into the shed one by one. Michaela was seated against the wall and Alida stood in the middle of the room, waving a burning wand of Palo Santo. Smoke curled upward in wisps before dispersing, filling the room so the air was thick and scented. Yoga mats were laid out in a circle around the perimeter of the room and we each claimed one as our own when we walked through the door. I walked to mine at the back corner of the room and crossed my legs into an easy seat on the ground.  Coolness emanated from the marble and chilled my sundrenched skin.  

When we were all settled, Alida dropped us into our bodies with movement. We rolled our shoulders and circled our torsos around our hips, awakening. I closed my eyes and felt free. I committed to showing up fully - partially because I have learned that it becomes an invitation for other people, too, to feel comfortable showing up fully; partially because I believe that you get as much out of anything as you put into it; and partially because I have less concern about making a fool of myself these days, I find something liberating in it.  

Alida instructed us to pull our journals out. She guided us with prompts which called to mind moments that fed or repressed our creativity. I searched the corners of my memory for proof that I was on the right path. I reached toward my four-year-old self surrounded by books and my six-year-old self writing poems as offerings, and on and on throughout the years, digging beneath the layers of debris I’d gathered as I tried to protect myself from the uncertainty of life. 

We were instructed to select one memory that we could anchor into, a repressive one, which we could take this opportunity to reimagine. I couldn’t help the memory that came to me: the time I worked on an essay to submit to our Study Abroad journal while I was on semester in Paris. It was an all-consuming exercise, an exploration of love in every sense. I asked everybody I could about their experience with love, what it felt like and how it changed them. I remembered sitting at the symphony one night and being so moved by the music that I couldn’t help but pull out my pen and write, feverishly, because my whole body felt alive with love. I remembered being woken up by inspiration at 2am and pulling out my computer to get the words down. It felt like the most honest thing I had ever done. Even when I recalled it from Menorca, ten years later, it was one of my proudest accomplishments. Not just the finished product but the way the process of writing it energized me.

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In the workshop, we were invited to speak to the versions of ourselves that existed within this memory. Aloud. First, I whispered. As I imagined my past self seated in front of me, my voice became stronger. I thanked her for paving the way for me to become the person I am today, for her courage and her devotion and her curiosity. I remember laughing briefly to myself because I was sure I wouldn’t cry since the memory I’d chosen was a happy one and, still, I was red-faced and tear-streaked within minutes. After a while, we switched roles. I became my younger version addressing my present self. As my younger self, I told my current self that everything I did was for her, and that I am so proud of the way she turned back toward the life of her dreams, that she is capable and worthy. 

I also remembered the self that, six months later, thought how glad I was to have done that because I had to give it all up to go into the real world. I stood in the barren living room of the house I lived in during my senior year of college, resigned to the idea of a corporate life that seemed like the only way to feel safe and secure in the world. I longed for steadiness, for the sureness of a paycheck twice a month, for a formula and a rubric, for rungs of a ladder of success up which I could climb as long as I worked diligently. In that moment, I willingly placed my dream up on an unreachable shelf and declared, “This is not for me.” 

Eventually, I spoke to both versions of my younger self - the one who lived out the dream and the one who put the dream on the shelf, and I thanked them both for their efforts. I thanked the latter for doing what she thought was best (which was, in fact, for the best. I wouldn’t choose a different life if given the chance). I told her she was brave, too, for marching forth into the world to create a life for herself that was certain, one which would allow her to offer a new kind of support to those around her. I expressed endless love and gratitude for them both. I recognized the limitations and circumstances that enabled their decisions, and felt a surge of forgiveness pour forth from my heart. 

Alida brought the workshop to a close. We were invited to be with every other version of ourselves that had ever existed and ever would exist over the course of this lifetime. In my mind, I saw an infinitely long line of women, of selves, that stretched forward and backward as long as I could see. Me in every single moment. I breathed deeply and let myself lean into the vision. All of my selves joined hands and, with tears of joy, we danced together - liberated and joyful. There was a new lightness in my being, a feeling of acceptance and integration. 

I have been a thousand different women - and, that day, I invited them all to dance. 

I built a life lived in seasons. Time stretched that way. Despite having spent another year in motion, I felt sturdier in myself than I ever have before. I can’t tell if it’s a recency bias (or if that matters) but I feel like I experienced some of my most precious moments within the past year. When I was in France, after a long tree-lined hike with one of my best friends, surrounded by boulders taller than buildings and an ever expansive sky, I waded into freezing water, sat on rocks the size of my fists, and I felt turned inside out. I could feel the wind inside of me, like I was transparent for a moment. There was cyan blue inside of me, too, the color of the sky and the water. I don’t know how to explain it other than that but I was a part of everything around me.  

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The transition from one year to the next has always felt sacred to me. Even now, as it takes a different form, I see in it my love of fresh starts. There is something especially beautiful about a collective reset, how the quiet between Christmas and New Years offers an opportunity to reflect and dream before we ride the wave into a time we designate as new. All of this to say that, some years, this opportunity for reflection feels like a gift of refreshed energy. This year, it feels existential. It makes me feel stuck in place, like I can’t go forward. I can only spin around in circles, weighed down by my desire to do everything and be everything. I couldn’t shake the sting of failure as I worked through my reflections and resolutions. Nothing I am doing right now feels good enough, nothing I am writing sounds good enough. I am buckling under the weight of my own perfectionism, which is just a mask frozen into a forced smile. 

I have often thought of New Year's resolutions as ways to declare our commitments to becoming the versions of ourselves that we long to be. This past year, I sat with the radical concept that we are all intrinsically enough, that those versions aren’t actually separate from us at all. I articulated it better in an older post than I can now: 

It is a worthwhile rebellion to believe that even the versions of ourselves that are a chasm away from the people we want to be are perfect.  There will always be things to work on. We are human; that is our condition. It is the radical and unconditional acceptance of ourselves, as we are, that empowers us to bloom into the people we aspire to be. 

I am trying to reduce my desire to prove myself to the world. There is no need to become something different. In fact, the value, for me, has been in the unbecoming: peeling back the layers of selves that I have created to appease people around me, society, myself so that I might feel worthy of affection. I kept picking myself apart at the seams, trying to get inside, taking deep breaths to soften where I’d meet resistance. I have traced my own outline and circled inward trying to reach the center, unraveling like a spool of silver thread. 

When I sat down to write this, I felt so desperate to say something profound about the nature of time and of memory that I stared at a blinking cursor on an empty screen for days. The best I can do right now is this collection of words, clawing toward some kind of coherence even if I don’t make it there. My thoughts are muddy so this is muddy but there must be some value in letting myself just be this right now, in giving myself a space to be messy and unrefined, meandering around in the darkness feeling for the seed of truth beneath all of these thoughts.