I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles. ~ Anne Frank

Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known. ~ Carl Sagan

Earth Day has always been sacred to me ~ given that ecology and yoga are such deep mirrors of each other.

I graduated summa cum laude from UCSD with a degree in “Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution.” Patterns and flows within webs of relationship is how I’ve always seen the world ~ and everything in it.

Fun fact, I was co-author on a study about the rate of speciation in birds, published in the journal, Evolution. (I always wonder about the rate of speciation in humans... and the flip side: our daily assumption that things stay the same. But I digress...)

I remember crying in a big lecture hall at UCSD learning about the then sharp decline of prairie dog populations (due to industrial agriculture practices) ~ how crucial they were to soil health, how much the soil ecology was suffering without them, how that one species’ behavior impacted the entire prairie ecosystem of plant and animal life, hydrological pathways, water tables, etc etc on & on.

I could see the interconnection of complex systems, truly interdependent. I was devastated that “they - Big Ag” (I now understand it as the narrow incentives of capitalism, or the ‘​Superorganism​‘) didn’t wake up and do things differently.

I could feel the trajectory of that kind of relationship with the Earth ~ Earth as more-than-human life, as land, as resources, as life systems like water and climate cycles.

The trajectory we’re seeing more and more clearly now. The scale of the news has ​exponentiated​ since the prairie dog.

The state of the world can be overwhelming. It would be strange for it not to be, at least some of the time. How many of us, at some point in our lives had the desire to do *that thing* to ‘save the world’? And then get stopped feeling our tiny single self vs the enormity of it all.

Nature has some lessons for us: grassroots, networks, from the ground up, is how anything grows.

I’ve always loved days where great masses of people turn attention to the same thing. Even the Super Bowl is fascinating for that reason, but there isn’t a better subject for our shared focus, in my opinion, than Earth Day.

Today, Earth Day, I invite us all to contemplate how we can choose to better our relationship with the Earth and all life.

Earth Day reflections:

• When did you last touch the Earth with your bare hands?

• Do you know where your food comes from? Your water?

• What did your ancestors’ relationship with the land look like? What changed?

• What would change if you felt every breath as tree exhalation, and every exhale the breath of the nearest tree?

• How much time do you spend on screens vs. in direct contact with the natural world?

• When was the last time you felt genuine awe at something in nature?

Make prayers for Earth and life today, in whatever way that looks for you.

Garden, even if it’s one herb in a pot. Sit with a tree and breathe. Get outside, to a beach, a river, or a hike. Make sunset an outdoor ritual. Move your body with more awareness of the ground and gravity. Touch soil.

Read ​Ecology of the body ~ Our dance with gravity​.

You may find some wonder-full new angles of being in relationship to the Earth.

And wonder is part of our human medicine cabinet in these crazy times... with of course, movement.

This Friday our monthly, donation-based ​Embodied Resilience Sadhana​ practice will be dedicated to Earth Day.

All are welcome, as we’re in this together.

I used to think I had to choose: save the Earth or work with human bodies.

In college, my two best friends were passionate about human health while I was the ecology major convinced environmental work was more important. I laugh at myself now ~ I’ve spent decades immersed in the ecology of the body, and it turns out they’re inseparable.

The work feels microscopic sometimes. One person, one body, one movement pattern at a time. And yet it’s profoundly fundamental.

In a rapidly changing world, resilience isn’t an abstract concept ~ it’s about what’s tangible.

There’s a growing awareness of the need for individual nervous system regulation ~ and our human superpower of co-regulation. This trend points to a growing collective need for individual and collective resilience in our world.

It seems trite, but true: it all begins in the body.

The body is where we regulate with a deep breath, tune into instinctual sensory signals, and resource our nervous system in the heat of the moment. It's where we express and read signals of co-regulation in relationship with others.

Our ability to stay present under pressure, digest intense experiences, navigate uncertainty ~ this is the ground of our capacity to adapt, and it lives in the body.

Obvious benefits of embodied practice include greater sensitivity to somatic signals of stress, our ability to interrupt stress cycles and know how to resource ourselves through sensation, grounding touch, slow breathing, sound, etc.

There are other, important yet less obvious, benefits of embodied practices: when we move well, our tissues are fluid and responsive rather than rigid and held. The physical tissue tone and tension translates directly to our nervous system tone and tension, as neuromyofascia is one system.

When our tissues are fluid and our nervous systems aren’t locked in chronic stress patterns ~ we become more flexible and adaptable in every aspect of life. We show up differently. We relate differently. We’re more able to respond rather than react.

Embodied practice matters so much right now, as a fundamental resource and anchor to being in good relationship with reality itself.

Yet here we are, living in a time where so many forces pull us away from embodied connection to tangible reality.

Life interactions are increasingly mediated by screens, abstracted from direct experience, happening in 2D and our minds, rather than experienced in and through our senses of being in a living body.

We’re starting to see more impacts of outsourcing our thinking to AI systems that promise efficiency while eroding our attention, presence, capacity for intellectual inquiry and clear-sightedness about reality itself.

When we let AI do our intellectual work, we risk losing not just cognitive skills but the embodied intelligence that is innately human, based in our felt senses, in our soma itself, and rooted in relationship.

A new documentary just came out ~AI Doc: How I Became an Apocaloptimist~ and it brings crucial, timely awareness to many more issues brought up by AI.

I’ve been fascinated with these conversations as AI brings us face to face with fundamental questions:

• What does it mean to be human?

• What are our values as one human family?

• How does our society relate to Earth’s resources and webs of life?

The race dynamics around AI development carry both infinite negative potential and infinite positive potential (but only for a very, very few). Increased public awareness and clear seeing about these issues matters so much.

AI is a species-level rite of passage, forcing humanity to confront its own maturity and capacity for collective action.

“To have power that is this powerful, you have to have the most humility that you have ever had. You have to have the most restraint and care that you have ever had.” ~ Tristan Harris

I hope you go see the film, or tune into this conversation with Tristan Harris, (one of my favorite communicators in any domain), or read this piece about the film by my friend Samantha Sweetwater for a look at deeper questions AI brings to our awareness, because:

AI is a gateway issue to everything else.

“If we want to get out of the mess we’re in - the mess where perverse incentives are an underlying cause of all of our most intractable problems including democratic backsliding, ecological decimation, ubiquitous surveillance, and war - we’ll need to become educated about incentives.” ~ Samantha Sweetwater

Clarity builds agency and the common ground needed to choose a pro-human future. The story isn’t over and we can help write it. Join the Human Movement.

We must stay connected to what’s real, what’s tangible, what matters most.

Embodied practice is a crucial tool of remaining in touch with and choosing our humanity.

It may sound trite but it’s truth: the body is how we stay connected to what makes us human ~ curiosity, empathy, courage, the capacity for genuine connection. This body is where we resource ourselves to stay regulated when everything feels chaotic, to choose real life connection over isolation even when the algorithms want us scrolling alone.

While tech billionaires engage in an extremely dangerous AI arms race, our embodied presence becomes a form of resistance. We choose to feel, to connect within ourselves as well as to the tangible real world around us. Embodied presence supports tending real life relationships with other humans, ecologies, more than human life, and the flow of resources that support our lives.

Good relationship with the ecology of the body supports more intimate relationship with the physical web of life itself. It’s no coincidence that the lessons of fascia and ecology point to the same wisdom: we’re embedded within a design of diversity within interconnection.

Separation and abstraction are illusions. We’re truly in this together.

Thankfully, we share moments that remind us of this truth.

It’s almost Earth Day ~ a day that has always been sacred to me personally. In fact, over the last 6 years, it was the day I always started deeper trainings on Embodied Resilience, to anchor the bigger value of how we relate to Mother Earth.

I used to celebrate at the largest Earth Day festival in the country at Balboa Park in San Diego. Every year, friends and I would set up on a lawn to connect with others though AcroYoga, partner acrobatics, and hoopance. What vivid memories I have of sharing joy of human connection in celebration of the Earth. We’d build human pyramids, dance with hoops spinning around us, invite strangers to embody curiosity, play and trust… all of us laughing and amazed at what our bodies could do in collaboration.

The work of honoring and tending to the body is inseparable from the work of honoring and tending to the Earth.

I’ve always loved days of shared global attention ~ days when we have an unspoken sense of connection to our shared human family. Shouldn’t Earth Day be the most potent one?

One day to honor, together, how much we depend on Mother Earth, on her bounty, diversity, wisdom and flow of nature as our support system?

This week, we witnessed another shared moment of global attention ~ one that held the much needed medicine of wonder.

The Artemis II mission circled the moon ~ the first astronaut voyage in over half a century. A Reuters poll showed 80% of Americans held favorable views during the mission, bridging political and social divides. The collective awe of watching four humans venture to the far side of the moon united us in wonder. Just looking through this NASA gallery brings me to tears.

These moments of collective wonder remind us we’re part of something bigger.

They call us back to what matters.

“In all this emptiness, this is a whole bunch of nothing, this thing we call the universe. You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together…. This is an opportunity to remember where we are, who we are, and that we are the same thing, and that we gotta get through this together.” ~ Artemis II Pilot, Victor Glover

Watching the splashdown yesterday, it stood out to me how long it took to “extract” each astronaut. It’s hard to imagine being weightless for days, reentry at 3-4 G’s, and then re-acclimating to 1G - gravity, that force that binds us to Earth.

I often describe gravity as a form of love, as indeed it is attraction between the Earth and our bodies. It’s also what informs the intelligence in our tissues in literally shaping and crafting our physical architecture to move ~ to live.

Have you ever pondered how crucial gravity is for human life?

The anatomy we study is, literally, the footprint of the life force figuring out how to move around on two legs, in the volume of space, on a round planet spinning through space, in the primary influence of gravity.

In weightlessness, muscle protein synthesis drops within 24–48 hours, with significant loss in muscle mass (up to 20%) occurring in as little as 5 to 11 days without intervention. Bone loss begins almost immediately. Without the compressive force of gravity, the intervertebral discs expand and the natural curves of the spine decrease and elongate... within the first few days!

Proprioception (sensing where the body is in space) relies on mechanoreceptors in our fascia that sense pressure and force. In weightlessness, there’s less mechanoreceptor signaling, so the brain’s map of where the body is becomes fuzzy and distorted, leading to significant coordination issues (sensorimotor decoupling).

All of this just from removing gravity!

Gravity is the fundamental influence on our structure and function, not just on an immediate basis of how we hold and support ourselves, but on the very functioning of our biology and shaping of our anatomy. Without gravity, the body treats its own structural strength as a metabolic "waste" and begins to dismantle itself.

Embodiment is literally about being connected to the Earth!

When we move and attend to sensation, when embodiment becomes a practice of awareness and being, more than just fitness, we are tuning into our dance with gravity, our relationship to the Earth’s attraction, to Earth’s love.

Embodied practice connects us more intimately with what it means to be human on this shared Earth.

When the world pulls us toward screens and abstraction, when perverse incentives drive races nobody can win, when uncertainty overwhelms ~ we always have the tangible ground of our own aliveness.

This is why embodied practice matters so much right now.

Not as escapism, not as distraction, but as a fundamental path for choosing life, for choosing connection, for choosing to honor the Earth and each other.

We can choose how we respond ~ especially when we stay connected to the wisdom of our bodies.

Move your body with love. Feel the ground beneath your feet. Let gravity remind you: you are held by the Earth. You are loved by the force that shapes your very bones.

Remember you’re part of this beautiful, fragile, interconnected web of life.

You belong here. We belong here.

May we root into our bodies and to the Earth, to rise in solidarity for all life.

I realize I don’t share my own story very often, but it feels like now’s the time.

Modern postural yoga broke my body. It pulled my joints apart, and because neuromyofascia is one system, it also pulled my nervous system apart.

Not because I practiced carelessly or pushed through pain. But because I was so devoted. I practiced religiously. I studied diligently. I trusted my teachers. First it was “do your practice and all is coming” ~ the tagline of the intense Ashtanga Vinyasa style. Breath and presence to stay centered inside of physical intensity.

When I shifted to a style deeply focused on “proper alignment,” the scientist in me became even more diligent ~ practicing more precisely, correcting myself constantly, following the rules I was taught were healthy and would not only keep me safe but support my vitality in every way.

In reality, devotion to ‘alignment’ made everything worse.

Years of overstretching in yoga asana had already destabilized my ligaments. Then strict rectilinear alignment rules ~ the idea of moving in single planes, in parallel, stacked, square and linear shapes, framing movement spatially to a grid ~ accelerated my body’s breakdown.

In particular, my sacroiliac joint (aka the SI joint, the back of your hip, center of the pelvis) became so unstable I couldn’t sit in a car for more than 15 minutes without excruciating pain. I couldn’t sleep without propping up my knees. The vulnerability spread through my structure. I spent a few years in pain, confused and devastated, wondering how something that was supposed to heal me had broken me down. I was in my 20’s.

The journey from there to where I am now ~ feeling strong, capable, and better than I did 20 years ago ~ took years of unlearning. Years of questioning everything I’d been taught. Years of digesting the implication of learning that our bodies are not designed to move in straight lines and single planes, and that insisting on this over years of devoted, diligent practice ~ as many of us do in yoga and other mindful movement modalities ~ leads to distorted force distribution, destabilized joints, and structural vulnerability that registers as danger to your nervous system.

We’re designed for volumetric three-dimensional motion, one that fills and spirals instead of flattens. When we’re able to experience the felt sense of non-linear integration, it’s undeniable.

When I finally understood that the “correct alignment” I’d been practicing was working against my body’s natural design, everything shifted.

Not easily, not overnight, but steadily over time.

This is why I’m so passionate about this work. It’s been quite the journey, intellectually, emotionally and professionally to be a singular voice in yoga spaces, teacher trainings, movement education and public conversations. I’ve received outright and passive aggressive hostility along the way. But I keep showing up because the need is real, and the truth matters so much to me. It’s completely transformed my own life for the better.

I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I did.

I don’t want devoted practitioners breaking down their bodies in the name of “doing it right.” I don’t want to see more yoga teachers needing hip replacements, more longtime embodiment practitioners unable to practice because the very thing that was supposed to support them pulled them apart.

And right now, we need embodied practices more than ever.

In a world that feels increasingly overwhelming, where many of us are unconsciously bracing against chronic stress, movement is real medicine. Mindful movement is literally medicine for mental and emotional balance, for nervous system regulation, for vitality, courage, adaptability and centering in oneself.

The yogic approach of daily practice for centering and knowing the self has never been more relevant. But not so great if that practice is working against your design.

This is what the ​FREE 3-Day Liberating Alignment Masterclass​ is all about.

I’ll walk you through the context of how we’ve missed the reality of our non-linear design in standard biomechanics and movement practice and teaching. My intention is to help more yoga and movement practitioners and teachers see the issue at hand, as it’s a completely different paradigm than what we’ve all been taught.

It’s not an opinion, an abstract philosophy or wellness trend. It’s practical understanding of how your body actually moves so you can practice in ways that cultivate true integration instead of breaking you down. It’s based on a synthesis of research that’s out in the world, that I’ve learned through studying the ​Axis Syllabus​. My humble contribution is to be a translator who can bridge yogic philosophy and the values of personal practice with the embodied application of movement science and research.

I’ll share what took me years of pain and study to learn. You get to skip the breakdown part and go straight to the freedom. Plus, I will be thrilled to have more folks to share in this paradigm shift and conversation. We’re in this crazy world together, we need community, and movement in community, more than ever!​

These three sessions of theory, practice and discovery could change how you move for the rest of your life.

Your body knows the truth. Let’s tune in together. See you there.

A note on why this matters so much: ​Liberating Alignment​ isn’t just about biomechanics. It’s about dismantling the “power-over” paradigm that is ravaging the world and life… It sneakily lives in our bodies ~ the forcing, the correcting, the idea that we need external authority or to tell us how to be, or that simplified geometrical outer shapes lead to coherence in a living body in motion. Grid-based alignment is domination culture written into movement. This work is part of something much bigger. Let’s discover, unlearn, and stay curious about what is possible together.

I hope you can join me for the masterclass. It’s free. It’s challenging everything, and it’s time. ​Register HERE​ I know this can be confrontational. I’m here for your questions, reply any time.

​Liberating Alignment​ isn’t just about biomechanics.

It’s about dismantling the “power-over” paradigm that is ravaging the world and life… It sneakily lives in our bodies ~ the forcing, the correcting, the idea that we need external authority or to tell us how to be, or that simplified geometrical outer shapes lead to coherence in a living body in motion.

This work is part of something much bigger.

Let’s discover, unlearn, and stay curious about what is possible together.

I’ve been hunkered down filming lectures, editing, building something I’m genuinely excited to share with you: ​Embodied Resilience: Liberating Alignment​, a course that challenges everything we’ve been taught about “proper” form and alignment. It’s the evolution of years of other trainings, distilled into a more accessible format than ever.

To celebrate its birth into the world, I’m offering a ​FREE 3-Day Liberating Alignment Masterclass​ at the end of this month.

Discover why it’s time to shift from the mechanical, grid-based view of the body (that comes subconsciously from biomechanics describing movement in one plane at a time) to a perspective updated with current research in neuromyofascia (nervous system-muscle tissue-connective tissue as ONE system) and the related model of biotensegrity as the “new” biomechanics (volumetric, non-linear, and relational force distribution).

This approach, in fact, actually aligns (pun intended!) with yogic philosophy more than the way we’ve been teaching “alignment” in modern postural yoga. Of course, the standard way alignment is taught is not only prevalent in yoga but in most all other fitness and embodiment practices that use outer form as a focus.

Are you seeing what I’m seeing?

• Yoga teachers needing hip surgeries ~ I just found out that a long time collaborator from San Diego recently got bi-lateral hip replacements (!!), making it a total of 4 peers who have had at least one hip replacement in the last year. (These peers are in their 40s-50s, max!)

• Massage therapists and personal trainers reporting that they see many “hurt yogis” come in for help with pain.

• Personally, I’ve been working with clients who have practiced pilates for decades, presenting predictable patterns in their own bodies that decrease their resilience, based on outdated biomechanics and cueing.

• In a yoga teacher training I’ve been part of for 12 years (where I’ve chosen to avoid teaching asana for the last 5 years or so), graduates choosing to take months off from their practice, getting cortisone injections, turning to strength training (which is great! yet why not avoid breakdown to begin with?).

And outside of a few personal conversations with long time teacher peers, no one seems to be connecting it to how we’re moving.

I was told three times recently that my work is “threatening” to what xyz teacher/studio/course is based on, relative to the conversation. I am fully aware it’s threatening to the status quo, and it’s part of why I’m so passionate about it. I’ve learned from ​my own teachers​, and what I offer to these shifting paradigms is a synthesis that meets the context in which I educate and train others.

I want to be clear: I don’t intend to threaten. I intend to help.

To help people avoid the intense body and nervous system breakdown I experienced. To help them avoid learning the hard way through injury. To share what years of study in fascia research, biotensegrity, and movement science have taught me about how we’re actually designed to move... and how that relates to the deepest meanings and teachings of living yoga.

It feels more and more important every passing day, because mindful movement is one of our most potent tools of regulation, resilience and mental health in these turbulent times. The body is where we most regularly and reliably resource ourselves for adaptability in times of intense change.

What if we could move well for the whole of our lives?

What if liberation from outdated alignment rules could prevent injury and create genuine freedom and longevity, and support mental-emotional health?

What if you, yourself, knew how to assess what your own bodymind needed, and how to track if certain cues, practices, methods were good for you?

It’s possible ~ and it’s life changing.

I hope you can join me for the masterclass. It’s free. It’s challenging everything, and it’s time. Register HERE

​I know this can be confrontational. I’m here for your questions, reach out any time. (it took me seven years to digest it, and it has completely changed my life, my body, my movement and my results with clients for the positive!)

Last week I included an AI-generated spiral image in my newsletter, and a thoughtful reader wrote to say they appreciate my writing but didn’t want to see AI images.

I’m grateful for that feedback, and it’s an important conversation - what’s our relationship with AI? Are we discussing it enough? So yes, I’m here for this conversation.

And yes, it has to do with embodiment.

As someone trained as an ecologist, who’s been concerned about climate change for as long as I remember, I am very aware and concerned with AI’s ecological footprint: massive water consumption, massive energy use, and the way it’s being rolled out without much regard or really any regulation on these aspects. Then there’s the impact it can have on our own ability to think and create, to study and learn (already massively impacted by the internet), and the extractive nature of training itself on the work of artists and writers without consent. That’s before the potential implications of significant job displacement, power consolidation and surveillance.

Overall, I am happy to see a rising tide of rebuke, and hope the need for guardrails and regulations becomes regular conversation ~ because AI is a force multiplier for whatever task or industry it is applied to.

Which is why I have used it, as a solopreneur with a mission to transform paradigms, it has seemed it could be a boon to help all the digital tasks that are part of this work (believe me I’d rather be in the studio than on the computer). And yet it confronts so many of my core values. So I do use it, though lately as sparingly as possible.

Image creation was quite fascinating when I first tried it, and I now scroll back through the images I created and see what I can use without generating more. Most of them are versions of filigree sparkling spirals of course... and yet why not find spirals IN nature to share with you? The feedback last week stuck with me and I’ve been grateful ~ we can rebel against the AI being pushed on us in small ways, and I welcome the nudge, thank you.

AI is also many things that ‘came before’ what we see now, and I will admit I do love using Otter for voice transcription, and have been using Notebook LM as a research assistant (big writing to come;). These two in particular bring so much benefit and aren’t the ‘generative’ kind, so less resource intensive.

Is AI good or bad? What’s your relationship with it?

As with most things, there’s complexity and choice, give and take, a both/and.

Those who only catastrophize may go too far, and those who only champion AI’s benefits aren’t telling the whole truth. One thing is for sure, we need guardrails and regulations. AI regulation should be one of THE top sociopolitical issues right now.

We’re all navigating this together. Having conversations about it gives us more clarity and power to make informed choices and push for guardrails on the race for AGI.

My favorite AI resources:

• ​Why AI Is Our Ultimate Test and Greatest Invitation | Tristan Harris | TED​

• ​Tristan Harris on the Diary of a CEO podcast​

• ​The Wide Boundary Impacts of AI | Daniel Schmachtenberger​

• ​Ultra-Processed Information: AI and the Coming Deluge of Noise

• Michael Pollen Punctures the AI Bubble​

• ​The Impossible Triangle: How Containment Strategies Create Adversarial AI Systems (This essay is written for technical readers, safety researchers, and policy people.)

What’s becoming clearer to me is the increasing move toward more tech, more data consolidation, more digital power is counter to the living, breathing, feeling experience of life itself.

This is exactly why embodiment as a practice and way of being matters more than ever.

The Era of Embodiment isn’t coincidental. Being in touch with sensation, your body’s wisdom, and direct tangible experience is our antidote to the speed and complexity of modern technology in all forms.

Animal Intelligence is the better AI.

(thanks to Shiva Rea for this term)

The body is our fundamental ‘technology’. The oldest intelligence. The most reliable one.

Embodied practice helps us digest and process it all. Movement is how we’re designed to digest experience: take in through the sensory channels --> make meaning --> respond through the motor channels (the only pathway for signals to move out of the brain is via the motor cortex).

It grounds us in what’s real and tangible when so much feels abstract and overwhelming. Life happens in the tangible reality, and staying rooted here connects us to our humanity.

Embodied awareness returns us to ancient teachings about presence and aliveness that no technology can ever replicate or replace.

All of this, and the state of the world generally, is a big reason why I’m so driven (sometimes working for months without a day off!) to share this work. The body is where we resource ourselves for adaptability in times of intense change.

Millions of people have found refuge in yoga and embodied practices, yet many if not most are taught to move in ways that pull joints and nervous systems apart over time, dis-integrating the capacity of our bodymind by following unnatural and outdated ‘rules of alignment.’

Right when we need our embodied practices more than ever.

If you’ve been curious about why I’m so passionate about Liberating Alignment from outdated paradigms, this is a big part of it.

We need these practices to stay connected to the tangible, the real, our feeling bodies, our humanity.

We need practices that actually work with our design, not against it.

Join me for a 3-Day Liberating Alignment Masterclass, March 27-29, to get an overview of what this paradigm shift is all about ~ an evolution away from mechanical ideas of movement to one that honors the wisdom of nature that has shaped and continues to shape us. It’s free for a limited time.

We’ll talk openly about what matters. We’ll get grounded in what’s real.

Let’s start a movement for LIFE.

​

🌹 May the four winds blow you home again. 🌹

The start to 2026 has been one for the record books.

An unforgettable initiation into layers of shock and grief. A sense of the world falling apart. Simultaneously brought to tears of deepest gratitude and profound loss.

The death of Bobby Weir impacted me deeper than I ever thought it would… even as I always knew his passing would be a significant one.

Partly it was hearing the news while at a weekend memorial for a dear soul sister whose death was even more of a shock. It also landed as a shock, as his health challenges were kept extremely quiet. Perhaps it feels an even greater loss because of Bobby’s example of kindness, presence and his mission to share joy and love of life through music - contrasted to the bonkers and dangerous timeline of current events.

We really thought the Weir Wolf would be up and at ‘em, playing music for us for many more years. That’s why it’s so heartbreaking.

Few people are more well-prepared to live a long life as he was.

And that’s the context in which I knew him.

I first met Bobby backstage after a Further show in San Francisco. It was brief, though only the first of many moments in his great presence.

Over the years, pretty much the last 10 between the 50th and 60th celebrations of the Grateful Dead’s legacy, I was blessed to be part of ‘Bobby’s friends’ at every show I could attend… as many as possible, which never seems like enough.

There were meet ’n’ greets with tons of people lined up to give their thanks, times backstage where it was only a few of us, visits to his hotel room for banter after, crossing paths with any number of other famous friends of Bobby’s ~ Woody Harrelson was definitely my favorite to chat with about yoga and fitness.

Pre-show meditation was the most powerful. Being ‘the Shakti’ by proximity inside what Bobby termed ‘the Sanskrit Mafia’ or ‘the Skrit-boys’ (Christopher Tompkins and Christopher Wallis) and being part of 3-ish years of pre-show meditations was an honor and gift that I’ll cherish forever.

Those pre-show meditations were sonic meditations, using bija mantras (single syllables) for resonance, to help ground Bobby (and maybe warm up his voice?!), before taking the stage in giant stadiums across the country.

I was told that it helped his stage fright. Stage fright!? The person who seems likely to have played in front of more people than any human on earth? I took that data point as perspective on his humanity and humility, which were embodied through and through.

Knowing Bobby in his later years, he exemplified someone who still lived by wonder, curiosity and playfulness, even in his quiet stoicism. To consider all he’d experienced in his life was simply beyond my imagination. And yet, he was deeply interested in things like running barefoot, getting down on his knees to drink directly out of streams, ancient Indian physical and yogic arts, and whoever was with him in the present moment.

My relationship with Bobby was in support of his physical and mental vitality, especially in his workouts.

Though I was often tasked to guide or refine, Bobby was basically a ‘trainer’ for the ‘gym monkeys’ a group of 2-5 of his guy friends (and sometimes yours truly). He’d create a ‘set list’ of exercises, run it by the group, and we’d ‘get around to it’ together.

Bobby, even in his 70’s, put us to task.

The most sore I’ve been in the last 15 years (and my life is about movement and training) has absolutely been after Bobby’s set list workouts.

It’s a big part of why his passing has hit extra hard… I knew him as a shining example of the power of movement and meditation on vitality, presence, and what seemed like guaranteed longevity (F cancer!).

We would run barefoot on the beach, throw weighted balls, work with maces, weighted clubs, suspended bands (my favorite:), cyclical vinyasas (I helped with getting rotation and mobility in the ‘undercarriage’ as he put it), and often bodysurf in the ocean (he called it ‘the drink’).

I often shared his workout and age (but not his identity) as an example of the power of fitness for longevity of body and mind, and the power of non-linear movement as the best approach for optimal body freedom. Playing guitar all the time for 60+ years created a pattern that, for a time, caused Bobby enough pain that he couldn’t play for more than 45 minutes or so. He apparently tried everything he could to help, and the only thing that did was first swinging weighted clubs… and then all kinds of non-linear strength training. Personally, I loved this story, and would geek out with him about it.

He took videos of me spinning double hoops off-body, asked for videos of other pointers to be sent while he was on the road, and he respected my opinion and suggestions to optimize his practices. I was honored to offer even a tiny piece of support toward the magic of the music he carried. The day before setting off on The Final Tour in 2023, I went over to teach him a few introductory stances from Kalaripayattu, an ancient Indian martial art he was intrigued by when he saw me demonstrate some of the sequences. He even brought me back the morning of departure to do it again, even though I fully agreed with his wife, Natascha, that they had too much to prepare and there wasn’t time, Bobby!

I did my first deadlift at Bobby’s. He gave me my first kettlebell.

He gave us a mace and clubs, various other items passed along, many stories, and so much of his deep wisdom and presence.

Bobby was one of the most truly generous souls I’ve encountered in this gift of life.

I wish I could have made it to the workouts more often, but it was sometimes hard as you’d never know how long the day would be, often listening to records or talking about Tantric goddesses and their mantras.

Once we even set up a full moon Kali fire puja, just Chris Tompkins, Bobby and me.

It’s wild to have all these memories come flooding back. It’s still heartbreaking that he’s gone. Our candle is lit daily at the spontaneous Bobby memorial at home, photos of him with my puppy Lila as tiny thing.

What a blessing he was to us all.

And the music… we’ve been so so blessed.

If Bobby has his way, the music will never stop.

Though I was just a little too young, and my folks a little too strict, to make it to many shows when Jerry was alive… I did make it to one.

The LA Sports Arena, December 18, 1994 (am I turning into one of those show date nerds now?! I looked it up for this piece ;-), 16 years old: there was one, strong, standout take away from that magical whirlwind.

Strangers could be KIND.

It felt astounding at the time… not so sure why… but it felt like an entirely new way of being in the world cracked open for me. Everyone I encountered was smiling, making eye contact, saying hello, many giving away flowers. It was unbelievably welcoming and full of love, and the rest of life didn’t generally feel that way.

What if kindness as a default was possible?

That was the lesson the Grateful Dead first gave me.

Loving their songs since I was 12 (still not quite sure how they found me), and then listening all through high school and college, with so many significant life moments, relationships and adventures marked by the music, my time to really embrace being a Deadhead and chasing shows came later, with Dead & Company… with Bobby leading the band as the epitome of the mystic cowboy troubadour, howling barefoot monk, wild and wise man with the spirit of the wolf.

Which means, many of the songs that Jerry or others sang, became intimate to me through Bobby’s voice.

They were Bobby songs to me.

And he believed they were entities with their own power and identity.

Couldn’t agree more - songs played, sung and danced by thousands of hearts over decades, over generations, have a force beyond just notes and lyrics. There’s truly a Shakti, a power, that flows through them.

Bobby bowed into being a channel for that unnameable power.

He was a devotee of the goddess, of the flow, of the moment, of the inexplicable magic that can heal through music.

He was a devotee of channeling vibration.

The first week after his passing, I couldn’t bear to listen to the music, or even a riff of his voice. I poured through social posts, the absolute public outpouring of love from what seemed like everyone, everywhere. Crying between clients, stunned by how much this loss hit me. Was it because I lived in his longtime hometown, Mill Valley? Where just walking my dog Lila we’d encounter mutual friends, shared tears, stories, or the flowers and candles at Bobby’s Sweetwater Music Hall or the town square?

No, it was because of the way I knew Bobby ~ as possibly the person most ambitiously preparing to live as long and vital as he could.

After a life on the road, full of all the adventures and challenges of being a rockstar, coming through it all to lead the band with utmost presence and service to the greater whole, supported by bodymind fitness at the core of his life.

The power of the music was his mission.

I couldn’t get over feeling it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

And yet, he was probably more at peace with his mortality than the rest of us.

Bobby’s memorial, Homecoming, was beautiful and healing.

The tribute concert, Howling Wolves was magic, and really brought home that the songs are living beings (how else can that many musicians, on such short notice, sync up like they did?).

Thousands of hearts broken open, dancing singing and sobbing all at once.

The second week I bathed in the music.

Bobby gave us so much. We will always be grateful.

He certainly fulfilled his mission of playing all the way till the end.

Bobby talked openly and often about seeing the music continue far beyond him.

I heard him speak about it in person many times.

He repeated this over and over, probably to get it into everyone’s heads so we’d be ready to keep it alive after he left us.

Oddly, out of seemingly nowhere, in December I felt a visceral pondering awe at the great power of music on human hearts, souls, lives. Not a novel thought, but it started to wash over me daily, tangibly, perhaps in response to the great need for our resilience in spirit and soul, the need for sharing in joy, community, and dancing - the oldest technology of reconnection, transformation, and prayer.

Now I wonder if I was also feeling Bobby’s journey.

Bobby believed music would bring people together, even amidst the seemingly great divides, especially here in the USA. In fact, the Dead’s music played a major part in my own appreciation for the spirit of Americana, reclaiming the colors red, white and blue, and the flag ~ for the true spirit of freedom, possibility and solidarity that it originated from.

The last decade of shows was full of moments of heart-swelling love for the collective of humanity, and particularly for the people of this country.

The soul fuel of being part of a crowd of thousands singing together at the top of our lungs, lyrics that fit perfectly to the challenging times we’re living in - it’s indescribable.

And of course, one of my favorite songs, Touch of Grey… Bobby’s final song at the 60th anniversary shows in Golden Gate Park, the song I heard on the radio right before learning of Jerry’s passing, and the song I used for a soul-bearing retreat-leader talk that changed (saved?) my life at age 17:

We will get by

We will get by

We will get by

We will survive

---

Borrowing words from Billy Strings, who may have said it best:

“Bobby is more magical now than he ever was. I’ve never known a person so in tune with the cosmos. Who was so mystical and smart and mysterious, alluring and radiant. He was a star wrangler .. a celestial skysage who traded fear for wonder. Now he is riding the northern lights and skipping barefoot between the constellations…”

For the non-Deadheads who’ve read this far, just gonna say, the magic of the Dead is real::

It’s personal, if I had to pick a favorite song, it’s most likely The Eleven.

I would sing as loud as I could: “No more time to tell how… this is the season of what now… what now… what now?”

Bobby was truly one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.

His presence in every interaction was completely in the moment.

What a teacher for us now.

His music and life demonstrated the profound practice of deep, present listening.

Listen first, and then respond. And above all, kindness.

Bobby Weir had a profound impact on so many of us. May we carry all of his lessons onward, in our own hearts, our own lives, and in the power of sharing music (and dancing!) as a necessary technology of humanity, community and resilience of the spirit.

Thank you Bobby. Thank you for everything.

You will always be a true inspiration of vitality, presence, devotion and living with wonder, curiosity and fearlessness.

We will keep the music alive for you.

And be always and forever Grateful.

Our hearts are with the Weir women, Natascha, Chloe and Monet.

Our new mantra: “Be Like Bobby”

Yes, we all have voices in our heads.

It’s a natural part of consciousness.

In Sanskrit, it’s called citta vritti ~ the churning, whirling, chattering monkey mind.

This level of our mind is constantly narrating our experiences, sportscasting our thoughts, emotions and subtle judgements of the world around us… and within us.

Our background inner self-talk creates the ground of meaning-making which colors our lives. This inner dialogue isn’t always the kindest, most encouraging inner voice we deserve. It’s often our toughest critic, pointing out all the places we ‘should’ know, do, or be better.

What if our inner dialogue could be a compassionate cheerleader instead?

First, it’s important to realize one thing: transforming the inner critic to an inner support isn’t done by sheer will to change your thoughts.

Your nervous system is the gatekeeper.

The state of your nervous system is the biggest influence on the tone and tenor of your inner self-talk. And most of us can’t change our nervous systems from sheer will or belief, either.

The solution is in using the body to quiet and shift those stubborn voices in your head.

All of our patterns of being, thinking and living are held in our tissues.

Neuromyofascia ~ a now commonly accepted term ~ in and of itself invites us to expand our usually reductionist view to a more holistic one of the bodymind as ONE system.

Nervous system tissue + muscle tissue + fascia/connective tissue as one ~ a frame that brings modern research around to agree with timeless wisdom teachings about the inseparable beingness that we are as humans.

Think about it: your emotions impact your posture, breath, and nervous system state ~ and vice versa.

We don’t see depressed people with great posture. Generally, happy people aren’t usually slumped over. When we’re stressed, we breathe faster and/or higher in the torso, creating patterns of engagement and tissue tensioning that impact how we carry ourselves.

The way we think impacts the way we feel.

The way we feel impacts the way we inhabit our bodies in our movement, posture, breath and presence.

The way we move and hold ourselves, within and without, influences how our heart and mind perceive, process and respond to life.

The body holds what thoughts and will alone cannot reach.

The body is THE tool to regulate, resource and transform your nervous system state… and thus your inner self-talk.

The dance of your nervous system and the voices in your head:

• When your nervous system is dysregulated in activation (fight, flight, stress, overwhelm), your inner voice becomes harsh, critical, anxious.

• When your nervous system is dysregulated in deactivation (freeze, fawn, flop, fake it), your inner voice becomes defeatist, giving up and feeling like there’s nothing left to live for.

• When you can create a state parasympathetic rest, your self-talk naturally softens, becoming more compassionate, understanding and tender.

• When you can resource yourself into a state of safety and social engagement (alert, calm, present, safe, relaxed), you’ll find the awareness and agency to consciously navigate and transform the patterns of your inner dialogue.

The body is the way.

When you free the soma, you free consciousness.

"Soma" means the living, breathing, feeling process of being alive in a body, as experienced from within ~ not the body as object, but the body as felt experience.

It’s incredible to see the term ‘somatic’ becoming a mainstream word these days. There’s somatic this and somatic that everywhere you look. Though often slapped onto trends as a buzzword, it’s also a sign of meeting the needs of our time.

We’re (finally!) embracing the incredible power of embodied awareness, mindful movement practices, and somatic approaches (prioritizing and leading from the direct felt sense experience of and through the body), on the vitality and balance of our psyche and spirit.

The body is where we can make the most significant change to our nervous system state. From that change in state, we can more easily shift our inner narratives and settle the monkey mind.

Rather than trying to change your internal dialogue with the mind, somatic practice changes the background internal landscape that gives rise to your inner self-talk.

What a gift in times like these.

Practical somatic tools to quiet your mind.

Movement is how we’re wired to digest life.

We take in the world and all of our interactions and experiences through the sensory pathways of the nervous system. Then, the central nervous system is where we make sense of, process and digest what we took in. Finally, the only way ‘out’ of the central nervous system is through the motor pathways of the nervous system.

Movement is how we complete this ‘digestion’ process of living. This is why we must include the body for real, integrated change in the mind.

Different movement qualities impart different effects on body-mind-heart-nervous system.

Helpful practices to shift your inner dialogue from the ground up:

• Need to discharge stress? Literally, shake it off.

• Transform emotional storms through rhythmic movement.

• Cut through mental stagnation with contralateral patterns (right/left back/forth) like walking, running, swimming, dancing.

• Free yourself from mental ruts with fluid and spiraling movement.

• Ground into deep presence by pressing downward, ‘root to rise,’.

• Cultivate compassion and space for possibility with relaxation and surrender into support (floor or props).

These aren't just exercises ~ they're conversations with your nervous system, invitations to befriend, resource and transform the soma that holds all of your inner stories.

This is some of the wisdom I’m thrilled to share more deeply within the Power of Meditation Summit, January 20-29.

I’ll be leading an embodied practice session, “Unwinding the Heart-Mind: Movement as Self-Compassion,” where we’ll explore some of these somatic tools together.

I’m also offering a featured interview, “The Body Holds What Words Cannot Reach,” where host Kelly Blaser and I delve into how modern movement and nervous system science aligns with yogic and Tantric philosophy.

The summit’s theme this year ~ Healing Self-Talk & Freeing the Heart-Mind Through Dharma and Somatic Practices ~ couldn’t be more aligned with what we need right now. Join world-class meditation teachers, yogis, therapists, and spiritual leaders as we weave together profound Dharma teachings and grounding somatic practices to help quiet and shift those pesky voices in your head.

[Join the Power of Meditation Summit for free HERE]

If you’ve read this far, now it’s time to get off the screen, scan your body, and move the way it asks you to move.

I just completed a three-day training for movement professionals, and I’m still processing a handful of things that came up for me over the 15 hour deep dive.

Being wired for curiosity, I ask as many questions as I can. In every context, I highly recommend it.

Coming from a varied and deep background of study and practice across multiple schools, systems and master teachers of embodied practice and movement science (plus learning alot the hard way from breaking my own body down), I found myself noticing more than a few places where I disagreed with the content of the training.

I was ‘corrected’ into parallel multiple times, when I was intentionally not doing parallel for reasons that I teach my own trainings on. I asked about the origins and intentions of certain exercises. I explained the anatomy behind the conflicts I had with specific choices and cues as the background for my questions.

More often than I’d like, I was left unsatisfied with many of the answers.

It’s bewildering that others accepted answers like: “because it’s the choreography” or “because (main teacher) is a genius” ...though I’m not surprised. Too many methods create boundaries of perception that are hard to sense from within.

It’s a true blessing to find teachers who remain oriented to deep inquiry and ongoing curiosity ~ teachers who continue investigating rather than teaching something because “it’s just the way it is.”

Our bodyminds are living in motion. The life force is flow. You are a verb, not a noun.

Our understanding of bodymind science continues to evolve.

Certainty may be one of our greatest threats ~ certainty of beliefs, outcomes, and any kind of dogma.

Certainty and dogma entrap us. Exploration and education liberate us.

When you look deep enough into anything, you’ll find an endless infinity of investigation.

How can any system be truly genius that doesn’t allow further investigation and dialogue?

I spent more time thinking about those I’ve known personally whose bodies have suffered as a result of movement dogma. The list is longer than you’d think.

Just in the last 9 months I’ve learned of 3 colleagues who have had surgeries this year in either their hips or lumbar spine (lower back). No one seems to question if their decades-long devoted practices in yoga and pilates (in these cases) had anything to do with their need for surgery.

I had the opportunity this week to support a beloved colleague ~ a devoted, joyful yoga teacher with decades of practice and teaching ~ who’s dealing with pretty debilitating pain patterns and facing potential surgery in both hips and lumbar spine. Patterns that are what would result from decades of exploiting hypermobility and a lifetime in asana practiced under rigid alignment rules ~ alignment that we’ve assumed IS the healthy choice.

Years of forcing the body into grids. Years of overriding felt sense in service of external ideals about “correct” form. Those years adding up to now see predictable consequences that often are minimized as ‘normal’ wear and tear.

I’ve got good news for you: ‘wear and tear’ is not an absolute given. Not one bit. I’ve seen, taught and learned from some mindbendingly amazing movers in their 60s & 70’s.

Good movement is one of our best medicines for health and longevity. Period.

And yet, injuries seem to be poking through the surface in long time practitioners and teachers, and even in newer teacher trainees (this month leading a training where there are body pains sufficient to keep a couple students from practicing.)

If moving well is supposed to give us life, why are dedicated practitioners deteriorating?

What if the very alignment rules we’ve been teaching with such certainty are slowly breaking bodies down?

What if our devotion to the practice has been betrayed by dogma that contradicts the body’s natural design? (outdated biomechanics mixed with incomplete assumptions of honoring ‘tradition’)

This isn’t just about yoga. It’s about any movement system that prioritizes form over felt sense, rigidity over responsiveness, certainty over curiosity. This includes the standard assumptions about alignment ~ they’re based on outdated biomechanical models that are sneakily woven into the ground of teaching in every discipline I’ve ever experienced that includes details of form (yoga, many forms of dance, pilates, most weightlifting and strength training, some forms of primal movement, and yes, even the Gyrotonic method in some ways! The Axis Syllabus is the biomechanical study which opened my eyes, mind, and understanding to this paradigm shift ~ though AS focuses on pattern integration, not outer form).

I have much more to say about this ~ about fascia research, biotensegrity as a model for force distribution, ease, injury prevention and movement freedom. Also about how to translate the values of alignment and embodied practice as a tool of integration of body+mind+presence+heart.

For now, I’ll leave you with this invitation:

Notice where you might be overriding your body’s signals in service of an external ideal.

Notice where “correct” positioning feels wrong in your actual lived experience.

Trust the felt experience.

Listening to, and learning to translate your body’s wisdom is the whole point of the practice.

Your body is asking to be met where it is, not forced into where someone decided it should be.

If you’re a movement teacher or dedicated practitioner and you’re also wired for curiosity, endless learning and transforming paradigms of movement science, you’re invited to join us in the Embodied Resilience Mentorship Community.

Add to this the growing evidence that body-based tools ~movement, breath, mindful embodied practice~ are likely our most effective, dynamic, available tools for learning, adaptation, and behavior change. We can appreciate embodied practice in a whole new light, one that reconnects us not only to our authentic selves and embodied wisdom, but also to the patterns, cycles, and flow of nature, as well as the human-to-human compassion and ability to listen that we need to navigate our collective challenges.

This is why I’m so passionate that it’s time to rewrite the rules of alignment that have held sway until now.

Mindful practice is our medicine, but if our mental ideas overrule the reality of nature and her wisdom, instead of reconnecting, we fracture our system. We pull our joints apart, fragment the web of our nervous system, and leave ourselves more fragile, less able to connect from our grounded, healthy heart with others.

I outlined this argument in my presentation at the Fascia Research Congress last month, and I have a surprise for you ~ ​a recording of my talk!​

The lighting isn’t great, I was nervous and rushed (the person before me went five minutes into my time), but I believe I made my point.

I’d love to hear what you think. It’s not long at all, and the link is private since the quality isn't perfect. 🥰

​Watch/Listen to my talk at the 7th Fascia Research Congress​

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another. ~Thomas Merton

I was out of words. Instead, this came through.

Interdependence day

the natural way.

How did we this far stray

from the truth—

of ecological webs,

neuromyofascial meshworks

community, family, friendship and kin?

How hard is it to learn,

that we're in this together…

no matter the weather.

May we live this truth

radically, locally, wholeheartedly.

Cultivation over exploitation.

Nourishment over profit at all costs.

Connection and empathy

instead of isolation and domination.

Life’s beauty, resilience and wisdom

instead of power and supremacy.

It's the age-old story,

and we're still living it,

by golly… in 2025

in what was the United States of America.

Though imperfect,

never fully living up to her stated values…

now, we find ourselves

in a new place

uncharted paths

asking for integrity

to embody our commitment

to life,

to love,

to beauty…

to each other,

to truth,

to interdependence.

Now's a time to dig deep ~ into the grassroots, even deeper to the wisdom of symbiotic mycorrhizal networks everywhere, all at once. Not only in the country in which I live, but everywhere, together. Sometimes under the radar, not necessarily seen on the surface, or posted on social media.

It's my birthday on Monday (level 47 on 7/7), and I have a birthday request: please get involved in weaving interdependence and support in your local community in some way. Learn about ​mutual aid​ and let your creativity loose!

Here are examples of what I've been doing, and things on my list to do this summer, to help inspire you!

• collecting resources for immigrant rights and safety, elderly support, and ecological guardianship

• brainstorming a local women's community network for rapid response needs (whatever they may be)

• proactively connecting with neighbors and talking about the reality of where we are clearly

• getting to know the farmers that feed me more personally

• supporting native planting projects

• offering services for trade inside the community

• ... and more to come

These networks of life-nurturing information and real-life connection are part of the immune system against digitized disinformation and artificial intelligence-fueled unreality.

To keep showing up for our communities, we have to keep showing up for ourselves. It's imperative to tend to your physical, emotional, medical, and relational needs. Dancing and lifting weights to good music this morning was the best way to choose my mental state, and not get overwhelmed by grief and fury as I did yesterday (I'm writing this on July 4).

I know I say this over and over, yet it's because my belief (and the evidence to back it up!) only continues to grow stronger with time... that mindfulness in diverse movement as a practice is one of the BEST tools to keep ourselves regulated, centered, clear and courageous - all ways - and especially right now.

I planned to celebrate my birthday with a special sale, and though it feels a bit odd offering one right now, I know in my heart these resources truly serve our personal resilience in multiple ways. They strengthen the deeper network of human-to-human resilience by caring for our mental-emotional balance, physical vitality, and nervous system regulation... one person at a time. Resilience has always been a theme and my intention, though whew I never imagined it would be so relevant or so dramatic so quickly....

The sale also supports me at a time when it's much appreciated ~ your support circles right back to feed projects aimed at giving back more, nurturing the meshwork of our interdependence, weaving the web with strength... and gratitude.

Embodied Resilience Birthday Sale ~ From July 6-July 13 midnight EDT

• ​Embodied Resilience Training​ ~ 50% off $1300 ($650) with code BDAY7LOVE

  • How to deeply personalize your practice

  • Understand how different qualities & patterns of movement effect your body, mind and nervous system

  • Ten 90min embodied practices

  • Three 75min educational lectures

  • Curated resources to support your learning & practice

  • 20 hours of CEUs for Yoga Alliance & IAYT (contact me for approval process)

  • Access videos on-demand, indefinitely

  • A framework that will support you for the rest of your life

• ​Embodied Resilience: Liberating Alignment​ ~ pre-sale! up to 65% off $2750 ($975 sliding scale) click ​HERE​.

  • The core curriculum of new-paradigm, non-linear anatomy, biomechanics and alignment at the foundation of the Kutilaa School of Embodied Resilience (and the signature synthesis behind all of my work!)

  • Releasing in Fall 2025 (professionally filming this month)

  • On-demand version of the core content inside the ​Embodied Resilience Atelier​ ~ for those who have been waiting!!

  • 40 hours of CEUs for Yoga Alliance & IAYT (contact me for approval process)

  • Transform your body, mind, movement and life through cutting-edge understanding of neuromyofascia and biotensegrity, with a deep dive into every joint and motion center in the human body... which means: seeing your nervous system, muscle and fascial tissue as ONE system, designed to move in non-linear pathways that completely rewrites our idea(l)s of alignment.

  • Adapt any/all of your embodied practices, fitness routines, and daily movement for enhanced performance, injury prevention, and increased bodymind benefits.

  • I'm confident this will change your life.

  • Pre-sale helps support the production process, it really helps! Thank you!

If you have any questions, I'm here for them. And for you.

Celebrating our interdependence,

Michelle

I just returned from a 10-day, offline, silent retreat with ​daily Vipassana meditation​ (4-5 hours), movement, yoga, breathwork, honoring the sunrise and sunset, swimming in the sea and deep ceremony.

A dear sister ​Ali Avalon​ curated this truly ​one-of-a-kind transformative journey​. What a gift to attend as a participant as well as share embodied yoga practice from my perspective.

Reset is a mild description, I feel reborn. Along with this is a realignment of relationship to (waves hands) all the things... and it feels good. Simple, clear, trusting depth of offering over the scramble of trying to do it all.

Emerging from silence to the latest current events has been quite the transition back. As many of you know, I follow things closely, and it's more clear to me that ever that now is the time to stand up for each other, on the side of Life in all ways.

It's time to double down on our practices that keep us regulated, grounded, curious and kind.

It's time to rise up with love like a mama bear, fierce in protecting all that is precious in our lives and our world.

It's time to see what is uniquely yours to do and, like the old parable says: keep digging one deep well rather than scratching at scattered shallow holes.

It's from this place of clarity that I return to our weekly rhythm of these love letters. My intention: to support your bodymind, nervous system, heart, and spirit. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

And speaking of deep wells... something has been gestating behind the scenes for months. Something that feels perfectly timed to meet this moment when we need grounded wisdom more than ever. I'm thrilled to share what's finally ready to emerge... arriving right on time, when we need it most.

ANNOUNCING THE LIVING TANTRA PROJECT

​The Living Tantra Project​ is a new monthly practice community created by the ​Tantric Arts Collective​ -- myself and two powerful yogini sisters, ​Lisa​ and ​Ekat​.

Classical Tantra isn't just spiritual philosophy for me ~ it's a way of life. And it's an absolute game-changer for living with inner freedom and joy, especially in times of intensity.

​The Living Tantra Project​ is here to help translate and apply philosophical teachings to embodied, practical ways of being in your daily life ~ ones that TRULY make a difference. It's where understanding becomes living.

I'll be sharing monthly Embodied Resilience practices plus leading deep dives into embodied yoga beyond asana ~ imagine a whole month exploring teachings on flow or pulsation, from philosophy to movement.

What makes ​The Living Tantra Project​ special:

✨ Integration over information. You’ll get support not just to understand, but to actually LIVE Tantra ~ in your real, everyday life.

✨ One monthly focus. No content overwhelm. No pressure to "keep up". You can’t fall behind ~ only fall deeper in. You'll become the teachings, not just learn about them.

✨ Three devoted guides. Each of us brings our unique lens, united in depth and devotion to this path.

✨ Real community. No performance, no pretense. Just sincere practitioners walking the path together.

✨ Rich resource library. All replays and projects will be available to revisit anytime.

If you feel called to explore the sacred in everything ~ with your feet on ground, awareness clear, and heart open ~ join us ​HERE​. Founding members receive bonuses and lock in the lowest rate forever… only available until July 1.

The Living Tantra Project is more than a membership. It’s a field of transmission for real life.

Sending you a prayer of awe as we wrap up the week of Earth Day ~ a true holy-day in my personal calendar… so it’s been in my heart all week.

Years ago, in San Diego, we used to celebrate at the Earth Day Festival in Balboa Park. Friends and I would bring hula hoops, share AcroYoga, build human pyramids, dance, drum and connect with community. It was, at the time, the biggest Earth Day celebration in the country.

I'm always fascinated by events that bring massive numbers of people's minds to one thing. The Super Bowl. The passing of Pope Francis (bless his work). Earth Day ~ what bigger collective consciousness moment could there be?

We all share Earth ~ isn't that our one uniting factor? Perhaps we also share breath. And space. The need for love.

It feels perfectly aligned that this week marked the official beginning of the Embodied Resilience Mentorship community. The last three years of the Embodied Resilience Atelier always began on Earth Day weekend, yet this one aligned by happy accident.

The truth of our interconnection, interdependence and the fundamental ground of life being relationship is the message of Earth Day. And of living yoga. And of ecology. And of the cutting edge of bodymind, nervous system and movement science. Even at the cutting edge of quantum physics... what yoga, Tantra and Ayurveda have taught for millenia.

We are always connected, never alone.

Even when our collective challenges feel so large... the local, the personal, is where change begins… and who knows how far the ripple effects reach?

The world we dream of begins right where you are – in your community, your relationships, your body. Because you're a sparkling node in the great web of relations. Each interaction sends ripples through nervous systems, cascades hormones, opens or closes hearts. Starting within your own.

Presence and playful adaptation – that's our love in action, riding the waves of life inside and out. It’s also the essence of regenerative embodied practice, what we cultivate in embodied resilience. The body is the ground of relationship with all layers of yourself, and then outwards in widening rings of connection to life.

Once you see the bodymind as an interconnected web where each part, muscle, joint, breath and movement is a node of relationship that affects the whole, movement becomes infinitely more powerful as a practice. And more subtle, directly affecting your nervous system, emotions and awareness itself.

When we attune to the whole web within ourselves through intelligent embodied practice, we cultivate freedom, longevity and power on every level - body, mind, nervous system, heart and spirit.

Here’s a taste of what I mean - why joint alignment for our physical structure is one and the same for the integration and health of our nervous system. A 45min practice exploring the interconnected relationships between ​Fascia, Joints & Your Nervous System​.

Explore how to love your joints in ways that support both sustainable movement and integration in your nervous system (because the neuro-myo-fasical meshwork is one system!)

The ‘spinning wheel of death’ on my MacBook has been rolling almost nonstop this week - a hypnotic mandala of frustration testing my patience, nearly every day. It’s been one of those weeks, whew!

Yet it’s not only me, I’ve heard it echoed from many others: "We never imagined having to hold as much as we're holding."

It makes perfect sense ~ we need to be able to digest what we take in fully, or it clogs and bogs us down and becomes too much weight to handle. Our capacity to digest life’s experiences is a result of the capacity of our nervous systems... and they weren’t made to handle the overstimulation of a tech-driven world taking us away from natural rhythms… much less process the unprecedented situation we find ourselves in now (music helps).

Movement is always my favorite tool with which to digest experiences and emotions, to clear and center my mind, yet it’s even been a slog for me to get moving some days. Though, always worth it - hiking with my weighted vest and morning dance with kettlebells for embodying strength and endurance has been the needed medicine… plus lots of sleep.

Yet there's a greater alignment if we look to the stars. Didn’t expect that from me, I’m guessing… 🥰 I certainly had my moment with western astrology in college, though Vedic Astrology has captivated me for the past few years in a whole new way. (Funny that recently the yoga world has exploded with interest in western astrology, even though Vedic is a sister science to yoga, but I digress…)

According to Vedic astrology, the cosmic patterns help make sense of our collective moment - this weekend a solar eclipse, a traffic jam of planets all together, some retrograde (appearing to go backwards), in a sign that’s about endings, surrender, and rekindling our connection to spirit. Vedic wisdom counsels laying low during this celestial configuration - it's a time specifically for ritual practice and spiritual connection.

In my own conversations and life, this resonates - a revisiting of priorities with deep listening to what is really important, what really matters, and what to let end or let fall away. Accepting doing less, clearing, cleansing and softening self-imposed project timelines. An increased commitment to practices of the heart.

All to be able to better digest life… at a time that on top of already being overstimulated, we’re being faced with a whole lot more to digest than we ever asked for. Or were designed to hold.

So, we focus with devotion and a lean toward service.

For me, this has been a focus on creating a safe, nourishing space for the Embodied Resilience Mentorship Community that begins this week, and returning to daily rituals that awaken my sense of the mystery.

Find time in nature, wherever you can - even just being with the expansive sky and birdsong. Maybe you find the magic in the sunrise or sunset. Nature is there for you, it's your choice of attention. Nature nurtures. Gaia is our mother.

Embodied practice as a ritual becomes a path to deeply inhabit the physical as a lived experience of deep reverence and care for the very power and mystery within all of life. The body is the most tangible way to touch our minds, hearts, and a spirit that's greater than any one of us.

The grace and wonder of the divine is the intelligence alive within creation itself. Present in each cell. Animating every movement. Awakened in each breath. Felt within mindful embodied practice as a gateway to something more. Finding the sense of the sacred through our mode of attention.

How do we bring more life to life?

How do we use our practices to harness the power of life to overcome, as it has for millennia, all manner of adversity of the ages-old battle of Power v Life?

Perhaps it begins with welcoming the spinning wheel, heeding the cosmic cycles in the stars... with patience and simplifying, so we may kindle the fire of our spirit to RISE for LIFE.

Some of the thoughts this week. Thanks for being here. We're the ones we've been waiting for.​

For You🌹A Practice to Ground & Center

Enjoy a practice that your nervous system will thank you for. Move slowly, feeling for the flow of force through your joints, in a dance with gravity, guided by your inner felt sense, honoring our bodymind design. New Moon Grounding ~ Apana, Interoception & Centration

"I wake up torn between savoring the world and saving it!"

"Then I realized,” he said, “that in fact the savoring has to come first, because if there was nothing left to savor, there would be nothing worth saving!"

How do we savor the world and our lives when things feel out of our control?

The answer isn't in our minds - it lives in our bodies, the vessel through which we experience the ecstasy and agony of living... and everything in-between. As we witness familiar structures falter, our physical body offers the most tangible and reliable path to both personal and shared resilience.

Your body knows the way. I invite you to savor the seemingly mundane.

Start with practices that sanctify daily life through your senses. Feel the warmth of morning light on skin. Taste each bite with full presence (all of Ayurveda begins with this one!). Let rhythm move you. Try self massage with a tennis ball or roller to tune into your felt sense. These aren't avoidance or distractions - they're actually embodied gateways to experience the sacredness of life. I know, I know, this may sound a bit woo (new agey), yet it's both based on evidence and rooted in generations of wisdom teachings.

As time goes on, and as life's waves challenge and test my own tools, I've become increasingly certain we're wired to access this life-savoring and life-saving wisdom through embodied awareness and, primarily, movement. We exist primarily as physical beings. Our bodies offer the most tangible instrument with which to transform our energy, emotion, mindset, and agency of attention.

If you haven't discovered your personal movement medicine, now might be the perfect moment. For mental- emotional (nervous system based) benefits, form matters less than the quality of attention you bring to sensation, breath, and presence. (The pattern and quality of movement refine your results for bodymind, emotions and nervous system... for serious practitioners and teachers these become more important to understand. ​Reach out​ or reply to this email if you're interested to dive deeper into these details.)

In a digitally-driven and distraction-filled world vying for your eyes, ears, time and attention, embodied practice is an act of not only resilience and personal well-being, but also of resistance and revolution in service to the sacredness of life. Your attention is a currency in consciousness, most authentically accessed and chosen through physical experience.

A sacredness emerges through this relationship of savoring life that can fill our hearts, clarify our priorities and steer our actions. We attend to the world of interrelationship when we know it through our bodies. I've seen it again and again, in all kinds of people - the embodied path leads us to loving care and tending to the wellbeing of self, other and life itself.

Exactly the medicine we need right now, wouldn't you agree?

We either recognize the world as sacred through our embodied presence and let that transform how we live, relate and support life, or we numb ourselves, blocking the natural flow of reciprocity and awe between our physical being and everything else.

The healing we need for our culture and world begins in your body - in our remarkable design that through presence savors and saves the world, one conscious moment at a time.

“We talk about the mind and the body, as though the mind were doing something to the body, or the body is creating suffering for the mind. We've got ‘mind-body’, ‘mind/body,’ ‘mindbody’ all one word... but we don't have a vocabulary that expresses their absolute interlocked fusion.

What we think of as the mind, what we experience as the body, is all one, continually interpenetrating, interfacing, interbeing, interacting sphere of conscious experience.” - Deane Juhan

🌹A Practice for You🌹​

​Loving Your Nervous System Through Fascia

Explore fascia's link to your nervous system, through working with different tactile tones, touch and movement.

It's stunning how good I felt after this practice, and I hope it supports you too.

Embodied~

To make real. To live your truth & values. To become whole, live fully present & fully alive in connection with all aspects of yourself - bodymind, heart, soul.

Resilience~

The ability to bounce-back stronger from challenge, to digest life's experiences & grow from them. To adapt to change.

​

Embodied Resilience is the what, why & how movement, meditation & breath have effect on our body+mind+nervous system - seen through the lens of modern research woven with ancient wisdom teachings.

Embodied practice is one of our best tools for cultivating resilience inside & out, personally & collectively.

Movement meditation regulates our nervous system, supports mental health, helps us process emotion & transform stress. Intelligent embodied practice keeps our body strong, capable & adaptable, while supporting appropriate mental states - from focus to creativity to energy to deep rest.

Knowing how to self-resource through the body + brain + breath is an invaluable skill - now more than ever.

I often say that our superpower of the times is our human wiring for co-regulation.

It’s so simple and yet so convolutedly buried inside our societal structures - that we’re wired for interconnection, collaboration and community for our survival. In times of radical change, remembering this deep truth is an act of resistance and (r)evolution in service of life.

Thank you for being here, and may the information shared here through Embodied Resilience support you, each of us and all of us, to regulate and navigate our physical-mental-emotional and nervous system needs for staying grounded and connected to what serves life.

Stay for inspiration, awe, education, practical tools for bodymind balance, some mysticism and lots of nerdiness.

Photos: my favorite movement medicine for transforming emotions into focus and power. Stinson Beach, January 2025.

“The body is our greatest ally in the healing process, as it holds the wisdom and resources necessary for healing.” ― Peter Levine

There’s a recognizable quality in my body when anxiety begins to sneak up. It’s stealthy, small at first… thoughts start to race and weave, my body, especially my jaw, tightens slightly, and breath quickens. When I’m able to notice these moments, the most powerful way I can redirect my inner state is to shift my awareness to my physical body.

It’s so simple, this returning to our felt sense holds the key.

Try this right now: feel the part of your body supporting you (your seat, feet, etc.). Just this is the first, most powerful step in calming anxiety. (In fact, I believe that when we ‘take a deep breath’ to calm ourselves it’s actually the felt sense of the body that is the effective piece… but I digress…)

Tuning into our felt sense — ​interoception​ — may be enough for many moments of need for calm. Beyond this starting place, there are numerous somatic practices, schools of thought, opinions, teachers, trainings, programs, methods, etc. out there on what other tools we can use. Sometimes the amount of people vying for our attention to ‘regulate your nervous system’ or learn a trendy ‘somatic’ modality can itself cause anxiety!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s WONDERFUL that understanding nervous system regulation and the power of body-based practices is becoming mainstream. And yet, we’re wired with these tools and they don’t need to be overly complex.

A Somatic Toolkit — Finding Your Ground in the Moment

The body-mind-nervous system speaks in sensation. Touch, pressure, tone and rhythm can change everything.

The foundation of soothing anxiety through the body is about sensing support and connection within. Like swaddling a baby calms her down, certain movement qualities can help us find a sense of peace:

• Felt sense of support — feeling your feet on the floor, pelvis in the chair, belly to the earth (prostration practice a powerful one!)

• Tuning into downward action: releasing to gravity, pressing down against the floor, focusing on lower body regions (in yoga this is connected to Apana Vayu, a primary way prana, life energy, moves)

• Feeling tactile contact with your own body, feeling gentle pressure of your own, caring hands — on your heart is my favorite

• Moving slowly and feeling through what I love to call the ‘great slowliness’ (in Ayurveda this is one of the best ways to calm anxiety)

• Rhythmic movement, like rocking, swaying and walking help soothe, while more active rhythm like running, biking, swimming or dancing can help ‘digest’ charge in the nervous system

• Bi-lateral movement can be as simple as tapping or walking (some overlap with rhythmic movement), supports our brain’s hemispheric communication and nervous system safety

Ongoing — The Ritual of Morning Practice

You’ve probably seen that morning rituals (of all kinds;) have become trendy too! I often see them oriented around productivity, performance and accomplishment… yet doesn’t all of that outward focus really begin from our calm and clear inner state?

There’s a reason why the yogis of old revered practicing in the morning, as it’s a ritual of (re-)connection- not only with all of the layers of yourself, but also of orienting to being woven into the very fabric of existence. Cultivating the state of yoga (union, wholeness, connection) as your default way of being is the goal of all the different kinds of yoga practices, and even without knowing any yogic teachings, mindful movement does this on it’s own!

When we tune into our felt sense of the body and breath, we shift out of the left-brain’s way of seeing the world as discrete elements to be manipulated, towards the right brain’s mode of sensing relationships in order to comprehend wholes.

Cultivating a regular embodied practice to begin your day can dramatically reduce stress and anxiety long term, not only through the movement qualities listed above, but also in developing a greater sense of belonging to yourself and within life’s web beyond your individual body.

A morning movement practice isn’t about achievement — it’s about creating a ritual of return to ourselves, a reminder that we’re not beholden to the many forces vying for our attention, or to the rushing rivers of thoughts that will, inevitably, come.

A morning practice becomes a bridge between your inner state and your outer life.

Finding Your Movement Medicine

It’s important to note that we’re each a unique recipe. Like veggie soup, there are some standard ingredients (water, veggies:), but the full combination of ingredients, flavors, spices, etc. are always unique to the individual.

What soothes one person’s system might energize another. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. That’s why developing somatic awareness — that subtle art of listening to our body’s wisdom — is key.

Here’s what I’ve learned in my years of practice and teaching:

Healing anxiety through movement isn’t about forcing or fixing. It’s about being with your felt sense through movement and breath, with curiosity, care and patience. This is the simple magic of our innate design to ground, soothe and calm our minds and hearts.

Start small and gentle. Create safe space for exploration. Tune into your physical support. Approach ritual movement practice as a tender conversation with yourself. Trust your body’s wisdom, maybe even before you know how.

Embodied awareness is one of our most powerful tools to ground, find our center and cultivate peace. It’s definitely my favorite way to do so, and I hope you’ll join me in connecting within yourself to feel your greater belonging in the web of all life.

Note: While movement can be powerful medicine for anxiety, it’s not a replacement for professional support when needed. If you’re experiencing severe anxiety, please seek a licsenced mental health professional. I’m happy to provide referrals if you need one.

Looking for tools to heal anxiety through somatics, mindbody practices and so much more? Join the incredible (8th edition!) of the Power of Meditation Summit, completely free. I’ll be there as a featured speaker and embodied practice leader, amongst a truly humbling gathering of global teachers. Grab your spot HERE.

Or join this epic Giveaway while it lasts and get my 4-part course Midlife Movement Medicine for free. This course addresses the entire body and will help ground your mind and nervous system at the same time:)

Our bodies, minds, hearts and all of life are made of complex systems and networks of communication, relationship and interdependencies.

In fact, latest research in all manner of disciplines ~ from fascia research and the nervous system, to quantum physics and information ecosystems ~ points us to the same underlying truth: networks of relationship are fundamental. The relationship between things is more important than the things themselves.

I’ve been contemplating this for as long as I can remember, though more in the past two months than ever before.

First, experiencing a cadaver lab brought so many of these concepts home in an unforgettable visceral experience that was deeply life-changing. The body is a web of life figuring out life: adaptable, redundant, complex, its fractal nature leaving footprints of flow and movement within networks, rivers, webs and spiral wrapping. In the body, one thing leads into another, with delineations somewhat (or very) arbitrary, layers of texture divided based on the skill and intention of the dissector, and branching systems (like the circulatory heart tree and nervous system tree) interweaving all of the layers.

Second, attending the long-awaited ​Nerve Tour with Gil Hedley​ (highly reccommend!) today highlighted anatomical networks of relationship between our heart and brain, between the brain hemispheres, and within the nervous system’s own many plexuses that seem to elucidate physical reasoning for many yogic teachings and practices from the chakras to how meditation helps us feel better to why it’s not airy fairy to ‘check in with your heart.’

Third, listening to the book ​Nexus​ has been timely and relevant — I want to encourage everyone to read (or listen;) to it. This book, which is about how information networks can have greater impact on humanity than the information contained in them, has many valuable lessons for us — both to see past events in more nuanced light, and more importantly, to do our best to steer humanity at a time of more widespread and powerful data networks.

All of these perspectives, to me, are reasons why embodied practice is essential for our vitality and resilience. The body is the most accessible way to checking in on and tending to networks of relationships within ourselves. When we do that, we’re more able to stay centered and tend the networks of relationships outside of ourselves.

I’ve named my work Embodied Resilience because I truly believe with my entire being that practices deepening our relationship to our body + breath + brain (whole nervous system but gotta love the alliteration;) are the best tools we have for living in a time that calls for individual and collective resilience.

“There are alternatives to warmongering and domination. The most direct way is to study the design of life and learn to honor it.” — Nuria Bowart

I recently returned from the Axis Syllabus ​Nomadic College​, and as always, I’m filled with renewed inspiration. It’s the highlight of my year, though words can barely translate why. Perhaps it’s how it satisfies my endless intellectual curiosity, or how it helps me retune my physical balance — both unwinding and integrating in all the right places. It’s also the simple joy of breaking from routine, being on a bit of retreat (8hrs a day of class is how I like it:), surrounded by Western Massachusetts’ stunning fall foliage. But most of all, it’s the community — the most wise, humble, and playful collection of movers, researchers, and teachers I’ve ever encountered. A community devoted to curiosity and endless observation.

Curiosity is one of my highest life values, instilled through studying complex systems like ecology and the bodymind There’s something profound about genuine curiosity. When you follow it, continuing your investigation, you become simultaneously wiser and more humble. As your knowledge grows, so does your understanding of how much more there is to learn.

A Different Embodied Yoga

After 30+ years of practicing and studying yoga and nearly 25 years of teaching, having immersed myself in numerous schools of yoga and various embodied paths, I’ve come to realize something radical: the WAY we engage in our movement research at the Nomadic College embodies yogic principles more authentically than the WAY most modern postural yoga classes present embodied practice.

Instead of telling our bodies where to be placed, what to feel, and when to breathe, we move in relationship to gravity and context, then observe what naturally unfolds. We honor truth (satya) from multiple sources: science, ancient wisdom, modern insights, and most importantly, our own direct experience. We honor non-harming (ahmisa) and unity (yoga) by moving inside of optimal postural protocols for the joints within the whole body fascial network.

We embody our nature through honoring our body’s design that mirrors the patterns of Nature and the cosmos, namely spirals — small and large, parts that become curves, weaving and wavy undulations. The body knows through feeling that this is the reality of our anatomy and biomechanics, even if, somehow, we were never taught it before. (Frey Faust who instigated the Axis Syllabus is working to change the standard language of biomechanics to more accurately reflect that our bodies aren’t flat and that our joints never move in one plane.)

Are We Even Talking About the Same Alignment?

As many of you know, I often say I’m on a mission to “get yogis out of straight lines” — the standard rules of the road for alignment in modern asana… and pretty much every other modern physical format that talks about alignment. Our bodies aren’t designed to be straight, flat, parallel, or stacked. These ideas are easier in our mind, but harder on our joints, which are all curved, and when in optimal relationships create curves in our body’s movement. Our joints are not only nodes in our architectural integrity, but also in our neuromyofascial network. When we dominate our bodies with our ideas of flattening alignment, repeatedly over years, we risk distorting both physical force distribution as well as nervous system communication. We can end up fragmenting both our physical body and nervous system… rather than cultivating unity and wholeness.

It’s personal… I learned this the hard way. In the late ’90s and early 2000s, my dedication to Ashtanga vinyasa yoga and alignment-based Anusara yoga pushed my joints to extreme, flattening ranges, ultimately causing significant physical breakdown. After a long healing journey, I feel a responsibility to share what I’ve learned.

In a fragmented world, supporting our resilience means taking care to no longer fragment ourselves. It’s a tough truth to digest and understand, that the majority of ‘alignment’ in modern movement, if practiced 1) strictly 2) with intensity, regularity & 3) over time, is dis-integrating our bodymind, when we think it’s doing the opposite.

Every time I return from the Nomadic College I am reinvigorated in my commitment to help share and make this change. Alignment is not flat. It’s time to update our approach for better integration, regulation, physical and mental health, movement (& overall!) longevity, resilience and adaptability for times of change.

Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in being part of the shift from domination over the body to honoring our nature as Nature through true alignment that respects our design, join my newsletter (HERE or HERE, take your pick:) and get in touch!

Your nervous system is the gatekeeper of your bodymind state. It’s responsible for everything from your heartbeat to digestion, your sense of pain, your mood, and giving the ‘ok’ for change- like healing.

Learning how to regulate your nervous system is key to accessing a sense of groundedness, ease, and presence within yourself, no matter what is happening in life around you.

The understanding that we want a balanced and regulated nervous system has become common place, but do we know what it looks like when we’re out of balance?

Some of the signals that your nervous system is dysregulated or out of balance may include:

• feeling anxious, restless or on edge, having racing thoughts or racing heart

• being easily startled or lacking ability to calm down

• feeling tired all the time, feeling depressed

• having trouble sleeping, or sleeping too much

• digestive issues, lack of appropriate hunger

• headaches, muscle tension with no obvious cause

• difficulty concentrating or listening

Your body has its ways of letting you know when things are our of balance. Recognizing these messages is the first step toward finding balance and feeling better.

Learn more HERE & HERE, and reset and restore your nervous system through movement, breath and lifestyle with NOURISH.

The desire for everyone to truly know and live from the truth of interconnection has fueled my life since I can remember.

It’s at the heart of yoga and almost every spirituality and wisdom tradition. It’s the fundamental lesson of ecology and systems-thinking.

Imagine if we all felt this in our bones, in our souls, and lived from this place? The whole world would change.

In fact, we need this kind of fundamental shift in consciousness to help us work together in facing global challenges.

After decades of study, practice and ongoing research into bodymind, movement and nervous system science, my key takeaway is that mindful embodied practice is our most powerful tool to truly feel, know and embody this interconnection.

The felt knowing of connection begins within your own bodymind.

We feel more whole, more at home, with simple layers of connection: awareness & breath; breath & movement; movement & emotions; body & mind; then combinations, until we know from direct experience that we are one multilayered magical system of life as a process.

Mindful embodied practice provides tools for regulation, mental clarity, emotional health, physical vitality, and so much more — supporting the longevity of our healthspan when we move well.

Personalized embodied practice becomes the access point to empower our own healing, regeneration, bounce-back ability, optimal performance, mindset and sense-making. All things we need to be able to connect with, listen to, communicate well and collaborate with others.

This becomes the fertile ground from which we’re wired for community and belonging to all of Nature. Imagine if more people made choices from this place! It ​only takes 3.5% of a population​ to instigate massive change!

My greatest wish is to share the superpower of mindful embodied practices on our lives and in our world, with as many people as possible.

Or, at least, to ignite curiosity in how movement can be medicine for your body, mind, soul and beyond!

If you want to feel awe and wonder at the potential power of embodied practices to change lives and change the world, tune in to this presentation: BodyMind Meshwork​, an accessible deep dive into the mechanisms, magic and design of out interconnected bodymind.

Kick back on one of these summer days and check it out, then send me a note on what surprised or inspired you. I can promise there will be something!