These days, we encounter a lot of aggressive boundary-setting (“you’re toxic, I’m ending this conversation, because boundaries”). I think we may have missed the spirit of boundaries. To me, boundaries are not just about recognizing our needs & protecting our energy. There’s a subtlety around intention– that the goal is to promote connection, not separation–but a connection that honors our needs.

Not: I’m setting this boundary because you’re a toxic bitch & I want you to know that & feel bad about it.

Or: I’m denying access to me as a punishment for your bad behavior, I hope you suffer.

Instead: I want our relationship to work, but the way we’re showing up for each other is not working for me & it’s damaging our relationship. I’m setting this boundary in an effort to protect our relationship & set us up for success.

Here you’re ROOTING for the relationship to work, for the other person to get it & successfully respect your needs.

Btw, when we’re mad at someone, we love it when their bad behavior goes from bad to worse. We love feeling even more justified in our anger & resentment. Argh, we think to ourselves, can you believe how awful some people are (and by comparison, how virtuous we are)? From this state, we unconsciously set unrealistic boundaries, designed to fail. Then we think: Ugg, I even set a boundary (how woke and amazing am I?) & she STILL did the thing. We’re done. I’m writing her off as a person.

Try instead: hey friend, I want our relationship to work. When you comment on my weight/use the incorrect pronoun/ask me if I’m having kids, I feel uncomfortable. I really want our relationships to work so I’m asking you to not comment on my body/use my correct pronoun/not bring up family planning, so our relationships can feel good for both of us. In this case, we’re rooting for them rather than trying to catch them in bad behavior. Our intention is for the other person to get it, to succeed, for us to be treated in the way we need to be treated, AND for the relationship to work. This is hard and humbling work, but it really comes down to whether we want more connection or more separation in our lives. Boundaries can achieve both.

A few friends called me in to reflect on the wording I used in a recent social media post about personal responsibility in health. I now understand that the term “personal responsibility” can be a dog whistle denying the structural disparities, systemic racism, and economic inequality that impact our access to healthy food, education, and freedom from stress and trauma. Thank you for calling me in.

Here are some reflections on this issue: the structural disparities and systemic racism are undeniable and infinitely impactful. However, it’s a both/and. We need to be having both conversations. We need activism & policy change and there are inexpensive, accessible things we can do as individuals to feel better. Education on strategies for better health does not have to take away from prioritizing policy change, and by avoiding the conversation, we do a disservice to those who sorely need better physical and mental health today. Better sleep and a few minutes a day of breathwork can happen in tandem with activism (in fact, they can help us have the energy to fight to make the world more just).

This is about reclaiming the power away from the corporate interests that have told us how to eat, what to drink, and how much to scroll, and handing the power back to the individual.

Here are a few inexpensive tips to help you feel better today:

• don’t keep the phone on the bedside table at night
• get vitamin D from the sun
• take 30 seconds to do a breathing exercise (inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8)
• swap out processed foods for real food (try: rice & beans with frozen veggies)

Yes, we need to focus fiercely on policy change and anti-racism activism. And we also need to remember the small, free changes we can all make as individuals to reclaim our mental and physical wellbeing and take back our bodies from a world trying to make money off of us at the expense of our health.

I know date night is barely a thing these days, but if you do have a way of taking a night off with your person, I would suggest doing something out of the ordinary. Dinner at a restaurant is…fine…but it’s also expensive, boozey, standard, and slightly challenging under the current conditions. How about a hike? Or making your own silent disco in a park? In our case, we recently got a sitter and took a night off to go eat a picnic dinner in a park while listening to live music and then went to an outdoor natural hot springs spa–all for less than a typical restaurant meal. When we put our relationships into a new context, it breaks us out of the usual conversation topics and patterns. This is healing for a relationship (especially coming out of months of quarantine). I also find it stretches time–I’ll never remember a random date night at a restaurant, but this sublime experience will get filed under peak life experiences in my brain.

GABA – neurotransmitter that allows us to feel calm rather than anxious, panicked & unable to sleep – GABA functioning is compromised by alcohol, chronic stress, poor nutrition, & chronic benzo use, and when we’re missing certain beneficial bacteria in the digestive tract. ⁠

Melatonin – supports immunity and restful sleep – suppressed with light exposure after sunset (think: screens)⁠

Vitamin D – hormone necessary for immune function, mental health, hormone balance, bone density, healthy weight, decreased risk of autoimmune disease & cancer, and basically everything else – we make it when the sun hits our skin, which doesn’t happen all that often in modern/indoor/quarantined/sunblocked life. ⁠

The world needs each and every one of us telling our truth. The criticism makes it so uncomfortable (believe me, I KNOW), but that’s not a reason to stop. Drown out any of the noise that’s not coming from a place of love, check in with yourself and get back in alignment with your intention, balance humility with conviction, get out there and sing your truth like the world depends on it. In some small and actually enormous ways, it does.

I’m seeing so much of this in my practice–people are finding this time challenging, yet they acknowledge that others might have it harder, so they feel guilty for complaining and attempt to deny their own struggle. This is not helping anyone. Of course it’s important to keep perspective on the range of ways people are affected, but also, all suffering is valid. There’s no need to compare or invalidate any struggle. Give yourself space, patience, and compassion for whatever you’re dealing with. If you still find yourself feeling guilty, let that feeling fuel you to show up in service in any way you can.

In 2017, I packed up my family and traveled around the world for 7 months. After 15 years in NYC, I had been craving nature, dirt, and serenity. We sublet our apt and switched to working remotely so we could live on a permaculture farm in New Zealand, hike the Na Pali Coast Trail in Kauai, swim in the Dead Sea, surf among dolphins in Byron Bay, Australia, and live on a farm in Sicily, eating the food grown in their rich, volcanic soil. You know what else we did? We took 25 flights. I’m not proud of this.

When I look around NYC these days, I notice the absence of constant overhead flights and helicopter tours, that the monolithic cruise ships no longer set sail every Sunday. I also notice the absence of smog, that the Hudson River looks cleaner, and the air smells fresh. I’m grateful for every chance I’ve had to experience the wonders of this planet, and I realize now the best way to practice devotional worship of our planet is to slow way down, keep it simple, keep it local. It would be disingenuous for me to say I’ll never travel again, but I do plan to make these choices consciously. Booking a flight, having something shipped to my door from a factory across the world…the true cost is hidden. Our economy has made these things more accessible than they actually are, and our planet foots the bill. On this earth day, I’m meditating on Thich Nhat Hanh’s words: “walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

Every time I take my daughter outside for a walk, I notice that spring is putting on a grand performance of tulips, daffodils, and dogwoods to an empty theater. We walk along the deserted streets, taking in the poignant, fleeting beauty of each crocus all for ourselves. I think about all the New Yorkers, holed up in their apartments, missing spring. And it occurs to me, while we may be missing spring, there is also a springtime of my daughter’s life, that I was partly missing in the pre-coronavrius days of school, childcare, and long work hours. Now, with equal parts gratitude and feeling like I’m drowning with work, I spend long stretches of the prime working hours of the day sitting on the floor playing legos with my daughter. Acknowledging the privilege in this (some parents still have to report to work, even if it puts them at risk, some are forced home but with immense financial stress…), I can’t help but notice that this global shift has coaxed me and many parents into closer connection with the springtime of our children’s lives.

In the past we would preferentially connect with friends and family who live locally. Now it’s all the same zoom call whether we’re hanging with the friend from down the block or the cousin who lives on the other side of the planet. To me it’s a silver lining that social distancing has paradoxically eliminated the distance between us and our loved ones scattered across the globe.

Throughout human evolution, you couldn’t help but have a properly calibrated immune system. It got trained by a diverse gut flora in infancy, and then challenged with frequent exposures. These days, there are so many aspects of modern life, from antibiotics, to excessive hygiene, to pesticides that cause leaky gut, that leave our race car immune systems very confused, speeding in all the wrong directions. A dysregulated immune system might attack the self (autoimmune disease), and fail to keep an infection in check. I think we should do what we can to maintain strong terrain and a balanced, calibrated immune system. How? Longer conversation, but it starts with eating fermented foods, avoiding interventions that damage our guts, gardening, and managing stress.