Greetings, Reader! "Is it normal to be this exhausted all the time?" a client asked me this week. Another said, "I can't believe how physically tiring pain is." A third said, "My executive functioning is nonexistent right now. I keep starting things, forgetting what I'm doing, and giving up because I just don't have the energy." My friend, our nervous systems were not built to hold the trauma and tragedy of the whole world, and they were especially not built to hold it all while still going...
12 days ago • 3 min read
Greetings, Reader! Many years ago, I was working in an orthopedic PT clinic that wasn't a good match, energetically or philosophically. It felt like I was always swimming upstream, and I was exhausted from working so hard fighting the current. When my dream job landed at my feet, it should have been an obvious yes, and it was to everyone else, but I hesitated, and my rational mind could not understand why. Even after I accepted the position and felt a wave of relief flow through my body, I...
18 days ago • 2 min read
Greetings, Reader! When my wife and I got married almost 12 years ago, one of my conservative, religious uncles came up to me with tears in his eyes and said with a mix of love and disbelief, "Rach, I wasn't sure what to expect because, well, you know, but that was a real wedding. You two really love each other. It's beautiful." I come from a big family, and all of my aunts and uncles and cousins are MAGA supporters. I'm pretty sure my wife and I are the only queer people most of them know,...
24 days ago • 4 min read
Greetings, Reader! How is your heart these days? Or maybe I should ask, how is your nervous system? So many of the people I've worked with in the past few weeks have shared that they feel exhausted, but can't sleep; revved up, but unable to focus; or completely shutdown and unable to get motivated. If you are feeling the same way, today's free practice is for you, and I want you to know that your body isn't broken; it's telling the truth. Remember, we have four biological responses to danger:...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Greetings, Reader! A few days ago, I was walking in my neighborhood, and I heard, with perfect clarity: "You don't need magic; you just need trust." I felt it resonate in my bones. There was no doubt in my mind that this was true. At the time, I thought it was a message from the universe telling me to trust myself, and in a way, it was, but not in the way I had assumed. Yesterday, I began a holistic healing course I've been looking forward to for a long time, and I dropped out half-way...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Greetings, Reader! Remember how I said last week that winter is a time for rest and replenishment? Well, it turns out the universe had other plans, because this first week of the year has been a doozy. I was planning on writing this week about the symbolism of the Bear in qigong practice from the perspective of rest, but it seems more fitting this week to talk about the Bear's purposeful rage. Rage is sacred, and it is the appropriate response to injustice. When rage arises, it comes from the...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Greetings, Reader! Legend has it that every member of my family will accidentally set at least one mappina (dish towel/rag) on fire in their lifetime. It became a running joke when I was a kid, because many family gatherings inevitably involved someone yelling, "The mappina's on fire! The mappina's on fire!" I fulfilled the prophecy over 20 years ago when I used a mappina as a potholder to lift a pot of bubbling soup off the stove. The corner of the mappina grazed the burner and went up in...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Greetings, Reader! In the Ayurvedic tradition, late fall and early winter are governed by wind and space. Their cold, dry, rough, subtle qualities perfectly describe the austerity of stick season. But in the Chinese tradition, winter belongs to the water element. Water is able to shape-shift and adapt to its environment. It doesn't waste energy trying to push through the frozen ground. Instead, it too freezes, storing energy in stillness; energy that is waiting patiently to thaw and flow...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Happy Solstice, Reader! The solstice is my favorite time of year. What can feel like duality - the longest night for half the planet and the longest day for the other half - to me feels like balance. I'm deeply drawn to seasonal rhythms and the way energy naturally moves between expansion and contraction over the course of the year, as if the Earth herself is breathing. The winter solstice marks the deepest point of that exhale. If we are willing to surrender to the stillness, we can connect...
2 months ago • 3 min read