Peace Begins With Me
My mom taught a course in which participants were guided to write a “dharma code,” or a statement of life’s purpose. Most people would write at least a sentence or two for this, but my mother's own statement was just one word: Remember. What did she mean by this? She said her purpose was to remember the universal love that is at the core of all beings.
Isn't that what we all need right now? How has the world fallen so far astray from remembering the humanity within one another?
All fall I've planned as November's offering a beautiful meditation I recently discovered called Sweet Remembrance, recorded by my mom in 2015 on a difficult day in my own life. In it, she asks you to turn into different senses, remembering such sweetnesses as the smell of a flower, and to remember the connection of the individual with the universal. You'll find this 15-minute practice now in the Right Side Up library (free access to this and dozens of other mediations here), and I hope it serves you during what has turned out to be an extraordinarily difficult time.
Keep reading to learn about my new free content to promote peace within ourselves, if not the larger world.
Love,
Sara
Sharing simple practices for calm and tension relief
Life is a pulsation of opposites: inhale and exhale, light and dark, effort and surrender, stability and freedom, on and on. The word for this in yoga is spanda. With so much suffering on the planet, I’ve been trying to pause and notice the contrast in the natural beauty all around us.
The challenges in my life feel mundane to write about during this devastating time. (A recent highlight: The dog woke me up with an upset stomach at 3:30 a.m. We walked in the rain until 4 a.m., and nothing came out of her, then she ran inside and pooped all over the rug in my kids’ room.)
I have started posting reels with brief tutorials of breathing exercises, stretches, meditations, grounding techniques and other simple practices that help me to cope and feel better in my body.
In the past decade, I’ve been on a long journey to regulate my nervous system and heal from back pain, insomnia, anxiety and digestive issues.
I stopped teaching regular yoga classes both because of caregiving overwhelm and because I felt I needed to heal myself first. Part of me still feels like I need to have everything figured out before sharing, but I have come a long way and learned a lot. It feels like the right time to be of service as best I can.
No one ever gets it all figured out, do they? Yet peace begins within each of us.
I’m putting this content on Instagram, my professional Facebook page, and — Lord help me — TikTok. Of course, I continue to share dozens of guided meditations and breathing practices recorded by my mom to you, the valued subscribers of this free monthly newsletter. I'll still do occasional posts about yoga off the mat and life's quest for balance. (And yes, I'm still writing my book.)
If you find these offerings useful, please consider telling a friend. As always, I welcome feedback and suggestions.