No matter what side you’re on, the U.S feels more divided than ever, doesn’t it? The people you love most may be divided, too. When people are at odds with each other, it’s natural to feel anger, concern, fear, or grief. Yet here you are, big-hearted soul. And you are still breathing. Take a moment to place a hand over your heart or your belly, directly onto your skin if you can. Feel the warmth radiating from your palm and fingers onto your chest or the softness of

One of my long-time yoga students recently pointed out that my answers to questions in class are usually a variation of, “It depends! Here's why...” Today, I thought I’d offer a similarly squishy answer to a question I field often. “What’s the best way to meditate?” Meditation can seem intimidating and mysterious when you’re new to it, can’t it? There are endless techniques out there and you may have heard just as many rules about how to do it “correctly:” You

After what feels like weeks upon weeks of rain, the sun has finally emerged here in Chapel Hill. The past few days have been beautiful, balmy, and nearly 90 degrees, and after being in a bit of a funk, the lure of light is irresistible. My yoga mat has a few bits of fresh bark ground into it from practicing on the porch, and I’ve got a funny tan on my lower legs from wearing my capris for meditation in the sun. In honor of one of my favorite outdoor yoga seasons, I’m off

This past year, I’ve been grieving. Grief can be an alarmingly unpredictable thing, swinging you perilously between panic, numbness, stomach-turning sadness, and peace, sometimes within the course of a day, an hour, even a minute. And oh boy, the tears. We have a difficult time with tears in our culture, don’t we? There are times, of course, when crying is inconvenient or feels inappropriate. There are other times when crying is thoroughly inescapable and you hav

The summer before I started yoga teacher training, I aggravated an old running injury and found myself with continuous knee pain. Most movement and even some sitting and lying positions hurt. So nearly every evening that summer, I showed up to my yoga mat with the same intention: to be gentle. I chanted it to myself before every sun salutation, every forward bend, every hip opener, every last movement: “Be gentle.” If any hint of pain or tweaking arose, I would again finel

Americans are big fans of ambition and productivity. We work long hours, wear “busyness as a badge of honor,” and set New Year’s resolutions designed to take us from non-runners to marathoners in a flash. This can lead to advances in science, humanitarian contributions that help the world become a better place, and professional success. When it comes to lifestyle change, however, we can feel as though we’ve failed if we fall short of our high expectations. Here’s an

Recently, I came across a box of some of my many old journals. The last time I stumbled upon them, I found some embarrassing relics of my past, including a love letter to New Kids on the Block and a photo of my face pasted onto a model posing with Chris O’Donnell. This time, I found a notebook of mostly tables and numbers. I flipped through a couple of pages before I recognized it as one of my old “health tracking” notebooks. From high school through public health grad

Over the weekend I came across this headline in the Charlotte newspaper: “Boomers ready to retire from holiday hubbub, but their kids won’t let them.” Oh boy. There was definitely a time when I was guilty of putting pressure on my poor parents to relive old holiday traditions! Giving people the nostalgic holiday experience that they want can become overwhelming if it’s directly at odds with your own self care. In my last blog post, I shared my one holiday eating “rule”:

I don’t know about you, but for me, the chaos and grief in the world has seemed particularly loud this year. In the past, these might be times when I just accepted that I was going to slip into an incapacitated sadness of sorts, anticipating that my emotions would become too raw for me to do anything but get by in my daily life, let alone take action. I've learned over the years that to avoid reaching that state (and fast-tracking myself to depression), it can help to creat

The other morning, on my way to the mailbox in stained house-cleaning clothes, I thought to myself, “Oh, I should definitely know better by now.” You see, not that long ago, in these same ratty clothes, I was caught on camera by the Bing Maps mapping car. Now that there’s a photo of me looking unkempt and startled, available to anyone looking for street view directions to our neighborhood, you’d think I’d put more effort into my appearance when I go to the mailbox. Clearly th