Grounding Myself

Remembering the essential work of putting on my own oxygen mask first, and a 15-minute practice for the root chakra.

I don’t like to start my posts with a jump scare, but that’s how I began my morning.

I made the critical mistake of doing something I so often advise others to avoid: I rolled out of bed and, before the sun was up or the coffee poured, opened my news feed. What I found there frightened me more than any Halloween haunted house ever could. As a former US Department of Agriculture employee, current farmer and health coach, resident of rural America, and human being, the idea that feeding people can be politically weaponized frightens, nauseates, and unsettles me.

I spent most of the remainder of the day fighting back rising anxiety and anger - trying, with limited success, to get the ground back under me. Time on the mat. Morning pages. A long walk with the junior pup. A good long think, some longer text threads with friends. Another walk; my favorite class at the gym. All usually useful, but fairly impotent against that early-morning cortisol spike.

Today was one of those days I needed …