I LOVE funny animal videos.

Whether they show a cat that meows like it’s saying “hi y’all” or a dog “singing” with its owner, these videos are the one thing that will get me stuck in a social media scroll.

Until…

I realize I’ve lost precious time that I could have used sleeping, practicing postures, meditating, writing, reaching out to a friend, or doing something else for my self-care and Dharma (Purpose).

Whatever lures you away from your highest priorities, know that you’re not alone in the struggle to stay focused on what matters most in this busy, over-stimulating, increasingly neurodiverse and demanding world. When I survey my clients, they respond that time management and staying focused are the biggest blocks they have to living a happier, healthier, more inspired life and to taking better care of themselves.

Staying focused on what matters most is an ongoing, integral practice that involves more than mental concentration alone. Your Dharma (Purpose) provides a north star, and the 8 Limbs of Yoga are the navigation system to help you eliminate distractions (beyond silencing your phone notifications) and keep moving towards that guiding light while still taking good care of yourself.

The number one question people ask me about the Great Yoga Wall is some variation of “how do I use the Great Yoga Wall safely?”

Feeling safe doing something new is a very subjective, individual thing. We all have different definitions and versions of safety, and different things that help us create and feel it. Though finding a sense of inner safety is up to each of us individually, several external factors can help, including practical tips and knowledge.

In no particular order, here are my top 9 keys to practicing with the Great Yoga Wall safely.

My spine lengthened as if a chiropractor or massage therapist was pulling my upper body away from my lower body.

But no one was in the room.

As my head and shoulders spilled along the floor, my chin and sternum moved towards each other, like 2 friends coming together to share a secret.

On a hot summer day, a breeze of calm washed over me, and my body became cooler.

The sounds around me got quieter as if the rest of the world had become a bit muted. In a good way.

In a way that allowed me to ignore distractions like that last pile of laundry, forget about my to-do list, and reconnect to my true self for a few minutes.

With my eyes closed, I looked inward and took a refreshing soak in supported Setu Bandha (Bridge Pose) on a bolster.

She felt so lost.

Less than 2 years into a PhD program, she realized she was on the wrong path.  She looked everywhere for the answers—different cities, jobs, people—but none of it seemed right.

She had dug herself into a hole and had no idea how to get out of it.

Until…

Last night my husband showed me a video of a fawn stuck in a soccer (or football, for my overseas friends) net and a kind Samaritan who freed it. Though Bambi and his mother initially fled into the forest, at the end of the video, they stopped the man on the road and came up to him as if to thank him for his kindness.

Mark Twain said, “Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”

And apparently it's the one that can transcend even species at times too.

PRACTICE STARTS WITH KINDNESS

With this sort of impact, it’s no wonder that the very first principle in yoga is Ahimsa, which often is translated as Non-Violence, Peace, or Kindness.

On the outset it seems simple—don’t kill or hurt others. It has so many more nuances, though, which makes it so darn difficult to master.

The most common and obvious interpretations of Ahimsa define it as not harming others. Some people choose to practice by becoming vegetarian. Others commit not to kill wasps or other critters that accidently wander inside their homes. More and more, folks are speaking out and mobilizing for social justice causes too.

For me, the practice of Ahimsa means not only abstaining from obvious violence. It also encompasses learning how you might unintentionally cause harm and going out of your way to be kind as well.

AN INTEGRAL APPROACH TO THE YOGIC PRACTICE OF AHIMSA (KINDNESS)

More integrally, Ahimsa includes being compassionate and non-violent to your body, your mind, and your environment, as well as towards other people and creatures.

My handsome hubs and I went for a walk on a windy, sunny, dogwood blossom-kissed Sunday morning here in Charlotte. We walk throughout the year here, and this day was one of those especially nice spring ones, after the cooler days of winter and before the humidity of summer.

When we got home, I immediately started sneezing, not like a time or two, but like 15 times in a row! And so began a day of allergies that signaled to me spring was officially here.

Though the sneezing started literally on the spring equinox, it wasn’t the first sign that my body had given me. For the last couple of weeks prior to the equinox, my digestive system had been undergoing its annual March pivot.

Pretty much every year around this time…

I sat on small metal bleachers set up on a patch of grass at the fairgrounds, completely mesmerized as I watched Bob Baker’s marionette puppets on the “stage” a few rows below me.

At 5 years old or so, I guess I didn’t see the strings, because I seriously thought these puppets were magical and real. After all, they were moving, they could talk, and they were having the most fun adventures.

For a few years it was the one thing I really wanted to do at the fair, even before the midway rides and games. We planned our visits around the showtimes, and it was usually the first stop.

At some age I realized there were strings, with people holding them and making them move. Though the puppets weren’t alive and “real,” that flutter of excitement I felt watching them as a child was.

I remember longing to go with them on their adventures. Little did I know that many years later I’d be having a kind of puppet adventure of my own.

You see, the Sanskrit term for doing yoga with the yoga wall is yoga kurunta. Though kurunta has a few definitions, a common meaning when put together with yoga is a wooden doll or puppet. Yoga kurunta refers to using suspended ropes in a yoga practice, like aerial yoga or yoga on the Great Yoga Wall.

As we draw closer to switching the clocks for daylight savings time this year, I’m feeling less dread.

Most years it’s a pretty rough transition. We only lose one hour of sleep on the weekend, but it throws off my sleep schedule for most of the next week.

When I don’t sleep enough, my body rebels. My digestive system can get so inflamed that it hurts to drink cold water. My head can sometimes feel like it’s in a vice. My brain can get so foggy that I spend the whole day feeling like I haven’t quite woken up yet. Sometimes I can even feel my lymph nodes and gums swelling, even though I’m not sick.

Rather than going into an explanation of how losing sleep can cause inflammation and instead of giving you a bunch of tips for how to make it through the spring forward transition (I did that last year in this post), I want to tell you why I’m not dreading it quite so much this year, even though I know I’ll probably feel like a zombie for several days.

Sure, I’ll be doing some restorative yoga and meditation to help me shake the brain fog and adjust my sleep schedule. On top of my go-to spring forward tips, this year, instead of dreading the clock change, I’m using an old piece of wisdom from my mom along with a little trick I learned from coaching. Perhaps it will help you through a transition too.

I lost a few hours of work as I sat glued to CNN and watched the unfolding of the early hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

You might not know this about me, but one of my two undergraduate majors was Russian Regional Studies. I learned the language, history, politics, and culture before going on to earn my graduate degree in International Policy Studies.

I also worked in the nonprofit sector for 6 years to help stem the spread of nuclear weapons from the former Soviet Union. You can bet that the rhetoric around nuclear weapons and attacks on nuclear power plants caught my attention.

I’ve been out of that field long enough not to have my fingers on the pulse of the situation like I would have in the past, and I found myself spending more time than usual in the news feeds.

I know that my purpose has shifted beyond that particular work, yet I found myself wondering for a moment or two if I made the right call to leave it.

After losing half a day, which is nothing compared to what Ukrainians are sacrificing, I realized something.

After a point, I wasn’t helping anyone by sitting there nonstop, taking in more and more of the same and different people offering the same and different information with the same and different traumatic video footage rolling beside them.

If you know me from yoga and coaching, you might be wondering what any of this has to do with yoga, breathwork, meditation, your purpose, and feeling more rested, focused, and inspired. Well, let me tell you.

When my handsome hubs told me he was feeling really tired and out of breath after walking the few blocks home from our neighborhood “L” station in Chicago, I thought something was off. After he said he also had pain in his chest, neck, and jaw, I knew we had to go to the hospital.

He resisted. I insisted.

When we got there all the tests came back fine. He didn’t have a heart attack.

His primary care doctor asked the hospital to keep him until they could do a cardiac stress test the next day.

It’s a good thing they did, because he had critical blockages in 2 out of 4 arteries in his heart that could have caused a massive heart attack within weeks.

Everyone was stunned. He was way too young to have a heart problem, practiced hot yoga 5 times a week, walked a lot, went salsa dancing relatively regularly, and did all kinds of sports off and on throughout his life.

I’ll never forget what his cardiologist said. He told us that my hubby’s family history of high cholesterol and high blood pressure probably would have caused a problem eventually, but…

With garlic naan, lentils, and various curry leftovers piled up on our plates, my handsome hubby and I sat down to watch the movie, The Fundamentals of Caregiving, a touching story about a man who becomes the caregiver for a wheelchair-bound teenager who has muscular dystrophy.

In one scene, the main character, Ben, sits talking with a pregnant woman named Peaches, who asks him what it’s like being a parent.

Ben answers, “Every corny thing you’ve ever heard about having a kid is completely and utterly true. It’s the only reason we’re here.”

It was one of many bittersweet, lump-in-your-throat moments in the movie, and it got me thinking about purpose.

Purpose answers the question, “why am I here?” or “what is my mission in life?”

Though procreation and caregiving to one’s offspring might be a purpose, it’s not the only one for all of humanity.

I’m not diminishing the importance and beauty of having kids, and the courage and caregiving that parenthood requires.

If having kids is the only reason we’re here, though, then the implication is that those of us who don’t have kids have no reason for being here, that we’re purposeless, or that we’re failing in the contribution department.

People like Mother Teresa, who helped so many children despite bearing none, Oprah Winfrey, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Coco Chanel, Leonardo DaVinci, and many other everyday childless leaders and heroes prove Ben’s statement incomplete.

When I began my career working for the U.S. federal government many years ago, I received so many blessings, many who came in the form of human angels that set me up for the award-winning career I had.

Several of my friends had worked at the same organization for some time and helped me navigate a very complex web of systems and processes both in and out of the office. I started off with a strong female boss who entrusted me with opportunities to shine right away.

My boss assigned not one, but two, amazing mentors to help me learn the ropes. Both had decades of experience in the work I was doing and had different gifts to offer.

I was such an excited newbie, and I smiled a lot. I loved where I worked and what I was doing. Why wouldn’t I let it show?

One of my mentors—let’s call him Jay—had been around long enough to retire and then come back as a contractor. He’d seen the team go through successes and learning experiences. He’d lived through changes in the organization and in the problems we were trying to solve.

Jay found it amusing that I was always smiling. One day he said to me, “Tami, you always smiling. How you always smiling?”

I responded that I loved what I do so why not smile.

Jay said, “That’s a good thing. Never let them take away your smile. They’re gonna try, but don’t you let ‘em.”

I have to tell you, I didn’t believe him.

“First, draw a circle in the middle of the page. Color it in, except leave a little dot that’s not colored to show the reflection. Then draw two little lines like upside down rainbows under the circle, and another one under them.”

My little niece, who lives near Chicago, was teaching me how to draw a fox over video chat, starting with the nose.

“Like this?” I asked, holding my picture up to the camera.

“Yeah! You did it!” she exclaimed, as excited as if I’d won a prize.

Our art sessions are one of the unexpected joys that came out of the pandemic. Sometimes she draws while we talk and shows me what she’s doing at different steps along the way.

At other times, she teaches me, and we draw the same thing. I’ve kept all of the pieces we’ve done together so I can show her one day when she’s older.

When I was in college, I must have missed the memo outlining the requirements for spring break: grab a group of friends, go somewhere fun, and get wasted.

I seem to recall that I always had a paper due right after spring break, which kind of put a damper on it, knowing that at some point I had to work.

Still, when I think back to my own college spring breaks, two stand out in my memories.

For one of them, a group of friends and I (check that box) went to a super fun beach city (Santa Cruz, CA) for a few days. You’d think that I’d be able to check box #2, but our spring break was so early that the beach was cold and rainy.

Instead of bikinis and umbrella drinks in the sun, it was sweatshirts, *actual* umbrellas, and far too much time in the hotel room for us.

On another spring break, a friend and I (again check box #1) decided to head up to the mountains. Again, you’d think I’d be able to check box #2, but the clutch in the car decided to go out on the way there.

Instead of walking through and smelling the forest, we took in the fumes of burning rubber and rode home in a tow truck.

Don’t get me wrong—my friends and I still had a great time. They just weren’t the typical MTV spring break adventures that seem like almost as much of a college requirement as English 101.

My stories pale, though, in comparison to what a group of young spring breakers we saw this year will be able to tell.

It’s that time of year here in the northern hemisphere when we really feel the light stretching deeper into the evening with each day, and depending on where you live, the temperatures start trending warmer, even if only a little.

It’s also the time of year when the switch to daylight savings time can totally throw your schedule and body out of whack. For those of us who have suffered or currently suffer from burnout, you might feel like you’ve got 10 weighted blankets on you when you try to get up those first several mornings. If you’re like me, some years it can knock you on your rear end, making it hard to function during the day for that first week or so.

On top of that, if your burn out comes from overachieving or overdoing, the loss of that one little hour also might make you feel like you’re losing precious time for doing “all the things.” Then you feel guilty that you’re not accomplishing more, especially if you suffer from that all-too-common disease of comparing yourself to others.

So not only does your body feel heavy and lagging—your mind and ego do too.

Despite looking forward to the beauty and renewal of spring, I sometimes dread this switch.

After all, sleep is a powerful healing force, especially in the life of someone who has suffered from burnout or who has been running on empty for too long, and giving up an hour of rest no matter the reason, can be really tough.

Thankfully, through my years of coaching and being coached, and through my experience teaching and studying yoga (it’s a never-ending developmental journey), I’ve learned a few things that help me through the transition. I hope they’ll help you too.

If you’re a baseball fan, you probably know that spring training started at the end of February. (Go Cubs Go!) Inspired by lengthening days, slightly warmer temps, and a whisper for a change within me, I decided to do some spring training myself.

You see, I’ve been trying—with little luck—to convince my body to get up a little earlier for a while now.

But, when I don’t sleep enough, I feel it in my body even beyond being tired.

You see, my old schedule, prior to leaving my full-time job, was to get up at 5:00 a.m., hit the gym, rush home to shower, and speed to work, where I would often stay until 7:00, 8:00, 9:00 p.m. or even later, depending on what was going on that I felt I needed to accomplish. I’d often stay up until midnight, only to get up sleep-deprived and do it all over again the next day.

This chronic lack of sleep and “slay the day” approach led my body to become super sensitive and defensive around sleep. It now rebels when I don’t get enough. I feel inflammation in my digestive system, my head can hurt, and I can get brain fog, as well as other aches and pains. Sometimes I can even feel my lymph nodes swelling as my lymph system struggles to do its job without the sleep time it needs to flush itself out.

Coffee doesn’t help, and in fact, can sometimes make it worse. That’s a whole other story for another time.

This girl needs her sleep.

I never got to meet my maternal grandfather outside of the womb. When I was just a few weeks in utero, Papa passed away at just 45 years old from a severe heart attack that was misdiagnosed as heartburn and indigestion.

I could cite many other cases of heart disease among people I know—some who are winning the battle and some who lost it, including a high school friend who left his body suddenly in his early-40s and my brother-in-law. (See my post What a Grade School Assignment is Teaching Me Today to read about what I’m learning about grief through losing my brother-in-law.)

Chances are you know someone with heart disease as well, and that person might even be you.

Modern medicine has come a long way, but not enough to prevent heart disease from still being one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. and the world. COVID-19 has overtaken heart disease in the number one spot, but why? In part, because it seems to hit those with underlying conditions, like heart disease, harder.

It’s National Heart Month here in the U.S., an event that President Lyndon B. Johnson started to raise awareness about heart disease, and the statistics from the latest update from the American Heart Association are enough to stress out anyone. (1)

I'm a big believer in the wisdom that what you put your attention on grows, so instead of focusing on the worsening numbers, I’m writing to you with a few “Did you know that...?” tidbits about yoga and heart health to empower you to stand up for your self-care.

So, did you know that…

The other night I was rushing to get to a virtual class with my teacher from India, Jehangir Palkhivala. The last class with him had been pretty mind blowing, so I couldn’t wait to see what he would come up with next.

I hurried down the stairs to my home studio with my laptop in one hand, a glass of water in the other, ready for what surprises my teacher had in store.

Except little did I know that the shock of the evening would happen before class…

…when I slipped towards the bottom of the stairs and sprained my ankle.

When I was a kid, I LOVED having an advent calendar during the holidays. We always had the European ones that show a German village with snow-covered cottages full of people peering out their windows at the children and animals frolicking in the streets.

What fun it was to count down the days to Christmas by finding the number for that day and seeing what little surprise was behind it! A cat! Some chickens! A candle! A Christmas wreath!

It was a perfect accompaniment to making ornaments, decorating a tree, and riding around to see all the houses lit up for the season—a few of my favorite holiday memories.

And, of course, each day I opened one of the advent calendar flaps brought me closer to the day when Santa would come down the chimney and leave me a stroller for my dolls, some new art supplies, or as I got older, some acid wash jeans and the latest Aerosmith CD.

Now, as an adult and a yoga practitioner, I’m using the calendar in a little bit different way.

A few weeks ago, my handsome hubs and I took golf lessons.

His lesson was first, so for an hour I sat in the car and listened to a podcast while he was working with the instructor. When it was time for me to go to my lesson, I quickly pulled my hair up, put on my hat, and gathered up everything I needed.

Or so I thought.

While I was standing there in the bright sun waiting for my hubby to finish his lesson, I realized I had forgotten my sunglasses. I started to panic.