Take a moment, notice your breath. Are you breathing into your chest or your belly? In through your nose or mouth? Is your breath shallow or deep? These sorts of questions used to annoy me. I often assumed that people who asked them were a bit stuck up, a bit too “granola” with the tendency to oversimplify things. As a somatic (body)-based therapist, I believed that the breath was important, but I thought of it as [...]
When I moved back to my hometown for grad school, I told myself it was temporary—just a couple of years, then I’d be off to find my place in the world. But grad school came and went. I started dating someone. I settled into the everyday rhythms of Santa Cruz. I had my community, my family close by, a climbing gym I loved, the ocean at my doorstep. Life was good. And yet, something felt... [...]
I don’t know about you, but sometimes my brain feels like it is whirring so fast with thoughts that I can’t even think straight. For years, I have struggled with an overactive mind that seems to laugh in the face of meditation then look at me with a smirk and hit me with a big dose of anxiety. The only times I have been able to truly calm my monkey mind have been while swimming, running [...]