We just returned from our Retreat in Dallas—the first one since the start of the pandemic. I really recommend annual retreat, even if it is in an urban area like Dallas. We ate great food (I’m always looking for vegetarian Tex-Mex), went shopping, took naps, cooled off in the pool, read books, and practiced daily yoga and meditation for extended sessions.

I was amazed at the many opportunities to commune with Nature in this urban oasis. Our hotel was right off a busy highway, but our room was at the back the property along tree-lined sidewalks. We met many traveling dogs, large and small. We spotted a black and white cat sitting in a window watching the bunnies and squirrels. After breakfast one morning I had leftover half a bagel that I tore into small pieces and dropped in the grass. Within minutes a sassy squirrel was following its nose to the spot. Sitting up it held the bagel in its claws and enjoyed breakfast too.

The encounter that made the biggest impression on me was the cockroach who joined me at breakfast another day. Sitting near a wall a saw something move out the corner of my eye. It was a big cockroach on the wall! Its antennae were moving all around as if it was trying to communicate with me. We sat there together for quite some time while I munched on my food. I was well aware that if another person saw the roach it would likely be destroyed, so I gently told it to get out of sight. “You have a good thing going here. Don’t mess it up!”

I have been spending more time “sitting” with things that used to scare me. Maybe it’s the uncertainty of life due to the pandemic or perhaps it’s just the evolution of my spiritual practice, but it’s been quite interesting to see things in a more detached way with less anxiety and fear.

Try this practice: The next time you see something you don’t like, rather than destroy it or move away from it, stay close for a little while longer. Do you feel anxious or afraid? What does that feel like in your body? Notice what strength it takes to do something different than you normally do. Now ask yourself, does the thing I think I don’t like have a right to be here too? How can we coexist in this world that belongs to all of us?

These are great journaling questions that will definitely get you looking at yourself, your life and others in a very different way. You might even be pleased to make friends with a cockroach.

Those of you who know me personally know me to be a generally happy person, very even in my responses to things. Hey, I’ve worked long and hard to get here! But like everyone I have my moments when a switch gets flipped and I go from being open, happy and relaxed to closed, frustrated and angry. I had such an experience this week.

The details of what happened are not really all that interesting, but what was fascinating was to watch this shift take place in my attitude. I decided to bring curiosity to the moment and explore how and why it happened rather than get caught up in what happened. (Isn’t that what we usually do? We dwell so much on the play-by-play that we end up blaming someone else rather than taking responsibility for our own feelings and actions!)

I recently learned that three things contribute to the flipping of this switch. And they are definitely worth exploring:

First, we can be blinded by emotion. This occurs when we hold fast to a belief or attitude and refuse to budge. We won’t see any viewpoints other than our own, so it’s easy to get triggered by something someone says or does.

Second, we can be locked into trauma because of past events in our life that we haven’t yet fully integrated. This can be memories of perceived wrongs or actual experiences of violence or betrayal.

Third, we can simply be physically ill, tired or hungry. We all know we are not at our best when our energy is low.

After I noticed the switch in my attitude, I did a couple of things to calm down (I’ll share them below) and then I was able to see that I was both tired and hungry. Wow, now I understood what had really happened and could stop blaming another person for “making” me angry.

Here are two practices to calm the body and mind so that you can see more clearly too:

One, take a full breath in through the nose and a full breath out through the mouth. Do this 3-5 times. As an alternative, hum on the exhalation. You may remember that humming releases nitric oxide into the body which has a calming effect on the nervous system. Research has shown that humming releases a whopping 15x more NO into the body than nose breathing!

Two, cross your wrists over your heart and place your hands on opposite sides of the upper chest. Your fingers will touch your collar bones. Gently alternately thump your hands on your chest by bending at the wrists. Do this slowly for a minute or more. You will be amazed at how quickly you calm down. (If you have kids, teach this one to them!!)

Observe your reactions to the world and take responsibility for what you see. Life will look different to you, I promise.

Today I want to share with you Natural Breath. Isn’t this a funny concept? We breathe every day, many thousands of times every day, so breathing is a “natural” thing for us to do, right?

In yoga, we put a unique spin on every activity, and breathing is no different. Natural Breath exercise posits these questions:

What would happen if I brought my full attention to my breathing? What might I discover there?

Natural Breath can be practiced anytime during the day for a quick check-in or right before bed to relax the body. It’s also a good thing to do right before practicing any yoga pranayama exercise to establish home base.

Practice in an upright seated position or lie down comfortably on the floor. It’s important to be comfortable so you are not distracted by pain in the body.

Start by breathing naturally. Do not try to interfere with your breathing by making the breath longer or deeper or directing it into any place in the body.

To observe the natural breath, begin with the nostrils and progressively make your way through your whole body, observing how the breath feels
In your nostrils,
In your throat,
In your lungs,
In your chest and upper back,
In your belly and lower back,
In your pelvic floor,
In your arms, and
In your legs.

Feel the whole body breathing as if you are breathing through every pore. Linger here or at any point along the way.

To finish, you can either transition into a yoga pranayama or slowly come out of your position and gently move into your day.

If you like, you can make a few notes about where your breath felt tight and restricted or open and free. Did you see colors? Did you feel sensations? Did particular thoughts or emotions arise?

Ahhh, this is the beginning of a meditation practice, and a deepening of your relationship with your own body.

I am surrounded by nappers.

Four of the nappers are fur babies, all cats, who sleep more than they are awake. The other napper is my partner in life, my spouse, who has taken afternoon naps for as long as I have known him. He loves his afternoon nap! He gets up early, writes for several hours, exercises, has tea and homemade bread, then takes a nap. He rises rejuvenated, refreshed and ready for the second half of his day.

I am not a napper. It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that I have always been a fitful sleeper and I find that if I take a nap during the day I sleep even more poorly at night. (As an aside, I have learned so much about sleep from Dr. Michael Breus, aka “the sleep doctor”, and discovered that my intuition not to nap is a good one.)

Because I don’t take a nap, I tend to work all day and even into the night since I teach several nights a week. This is bad news for me, my friends! Not only is this practice bad for my health, it also negatively affects my productivity.

Every body and mind need rest to digest food and emotions, to balance the nervous system, and to support healthy living for the long term.

Over the past year, one word keeps showing up in my meditations—REST. I have been on a quest to understand this message which arises from deep in my soul.

I will share with you some ways I incorporate rest into my day. Please notice what is NOT included: drinking alcohol or caffeine, playing video games, reading, binge-watching shows, spending time with friends. While these can certainly be pleasant activities, and they do give us a break from “work,” it is not right to call them “rest.” Rest calms body and mind, while leisure activities continue to agitate body and mind.

Here are some of the ways I incorporate rest into my day:

Meditation breaks at noon and late afternoon provide quiet. They help me notice any whispers of pain or discomfort that may be brewing so I can take care of them before get overwhelming.

Yoga nidra guided meditation, either self-guided or with a recording, let me lie down or sit in a relaxed position and take a deep dive into the intentions of my heart.

Restorative yoga with lots of physical support—pillows, blankets, cushions—with an eye covering or darkened room bring the autonomic nervous system into balance so that my stress response is mitigated.

Occasional naps with a furry companion, because they are, after all, our best teachers.

“Replace ‘I will relax when. . .’ with ‘I choose to relax now.’” -Alan Cohen