One of the most painful parts of being human is the common delusion that we are separate and alone. Winter makes this feeling all the more acute if we only burrow into our houses, away from other people, nature, and the elements. Isolated, it is easy to get lost in our own minds and thoughts. We forget who we really are; we forget how connected we are to all of life. 

I cried so much in the months after I had both of my two kids.I cried in banks, in coffee shops, and lord knows every room of my house. I’m not actually sure who cried more – me, or my colicky babies. It wasn’t quite post-partum depression –I prefer to describe it as the everyday gut-wrenching, confusing, disorienting, sleep-deprived vertigo of parenthood.Meanwhile, here I was, a meditation practitioner for almost two decades, with no clue about what my carefully cultivated spiritual practice had to say about this massive life shift.

Several years ago, I woke up one morning with a case of vertigo so bad that I couldn’t stand up, walk, or move my head without waves of nausea and vomiting. It turns out I had an inner ear infection and had to be on bed rest for several weeks. During this time, I kept asking myself, “how did I end up here?” The answer was that I was stressed–not necessarily from the external world, but from a battle that was taking place within me. The problem boiled down to this: after more than a decade of toiling away and climbing the ranks in my dream job, I didn’t want to be there anymore.‍

The goal of these practices is not to get rid of anxiety, but to understand and befriend it so we don't get overwhelmed.