A newsletter came into my inbox that talked about why the main reason people couldn't manifest was that their nervous system was dysregulated, and then they started to sell their yoga and breathing exercises to help regulate your nervous system. Now, I love yoga, pranayama (yogic breathing) and yoga nidra for regulating my nervous system,…
In the Arrow Sutra, the Buddha talked about two arrows. The first arrow which pierces you contains any number of the unavoidable difficulties in life. This could be chronic pain, which I'll be talking about today, or stress, or grief. Life is suffering, the Buddha tells us, and what causes suffering is attachment, which brings…
For our final episode of pride month, I'm talking abut how we can take up space and claim membership in communities even when we don't feel welcome, and how self-abandonment relates to that. Without getting technical or into psychology jargon, the first step is to stop abandoning ourselves.
I begin by defining and talking about…
The farrier came yesterday, and I used my treat bag to make the experience a bit more pleasant. The senior mare (my heart horse) was all about the treats and it was so good to see her asking for more. Likewise, the other horses were very interested in treats, and everyone took time to savor…
This blog is going to go out to everyone who has a chronic illness, or a disability, or a food allergy, body dysphoria, or even just burnout out and exhausted. Your body is sacred. I'm going to get a little academic here for a moment and mention that I'm using the more secular definitions of…
In last week's show I talked about the grief of feeling like you're excluded from the communities that you are a part of and how that especially feels for neurodivergent and disabled individuals. This week I'm speaking to the communities themselves and talking about what they can do to help people feel more included.
Disabilities…
We don't know what happens inside a horse's mind, how they process information, how the social dynamics of the herd work exactly. We can guess. We can create theories and judge those theories, test those hypothesis against the horses in front of us and how we perceive their experience. But the truth is, we're always…
A recent yoga newsletter mentioned that the wellness of each individual person in a community affected the health of the entire community, and so as yoga teachers we should think about what we're doing to help individual wellness and community wellness off and on the mat. Sounds like a good thing to do, right? It…
The fly mask sat on the table next to the door in my office, ready to go out for one of the older mares who I noticed was having a lot of trouble with flies around her eyes. It's been a crazy week with a cat emergency, which luckily turned out to be not that…
Bhakti is the practice of loving devotion designed to bring you closer to the divine. Spirituality is the connection to something larger than yourself, something outside of yourself, and doesn't necessarily have to do with religion or divinity. What do these two things have in common? Because when you put them together with tools for…
I stepped outside earlier today to open the gates after giving senior heart mare her lunch and to check and top off everyone's water. It was raining. Only it wasn't quite drizzle and it wasn't quite a steady rain, light enough that for a moment I even wondered if it was raining. It was trying…
Whether it's doing work with a therapist or trying to recover from burnout, one of the questions that's asked in a myriad of forms is how does your body feel. What is your body telling you? Where does that reside in your body? The question is often asked with the intention that a simple peek…
Meditation has been my go to in order to help regulate my nervous system and calm my overactive, neurodivergent mind. I'm not talking about spending hours sitting in lotus pose or repeating a mantra, but rather a tool that I can return to maybe for fifteen minutes at most, to bring me back to center…
I recently came across the term "hyperverbal autism" and it described me perfectly. When I shared the post on social media, many people I knew (who were also neurodivergent) said that explained them too, and the curious thing was, until now, no one had heard the term before.
What did we have in common? That…
Every day my horses tell me about the power of trust. Whether it's the rescue who lets me love on her after being standoffish and skittish for so long, or the senior heart horse who calls for lunch, knowing that I'll do whatever it takes to make sure she's cared for. The roly poly "baby"…
Last night I was reading through a novella I published back in 2019 in order to update and republish it, and as often happens when I'm reading through my older work, I thought "This is good! I can't believe I wrote this". While this is pretty common among writers, for me it made me stop.…