Month: July 2026

Dancing with Distractions

(Title image: Photo by Anuj Yadav on Unsplash)

Lately, I’ve been at odds with my attention. While I used to sit and meditate quietly, I am going through a period where I’m getting frustrated by stillness and crave movement while being mindful.

So because I don’t have patience to sit still today, I am going to toss this little meditation tool into my blog. Hope it helps!

This is what I do when I’m fighting distractions and feel like I’m losing. Instead of giving up on meditating, I give myself some slack.

First, the pause. I bring attention to myself, noticing what it feels like to be a body, whether sitting, standing or lying down. No matter where I am and what’s going on around me. What is the sensation of having a human skeleton with human muscles and organs and blood pumping through everything?

Next, I reach out and find my breath. There it is, in the center of my chest. What are the sensations that I feel when I inhale and exhale?

And I stay there with my breathing. For as long as I can.

Lately that hasn’t been very long. And before I know it, my attention has gotten stuck on some distraction and been pulled away. Maybe a sound, another sensation, even a wayward thought. No problem. I give the interloper an audience and then gently swing back to the breath.

Swinging between distrac– oh, I can see my house from up here!!!
(Photo by Jasmin Chew on Unsplash)

And again, I stay there until inevitably my attention gets tangled up in something else and swings away, towards the enticing distraction. And once again, I realize I’m elsewhere and note what that feels like, and then swing my attention back to what’s going on with my breath.

It helps to understand what it is about that distraction that made it so alluring, kind of like allowing myself to get a fill of it before moving away and sweeping back to the breath.

This is the way that it goes, like a dance. A waltz of sorts. I try to keep the movement smooth, without irritation or judgement. This is just how it is. Befriending my wandering, waltzing mind makes the entire meditation process calmer and more soothing.

It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting on a meditation cushion or mindfully walking home from the trolley station, this method works in all situations. Making peace with my propensity to follow distractions means that I’m free of one more distraction: that nagging feeling that “this isn’t working”.

Give this a try and see if it resonates with you. Then let me know!

Aching for an Injury

(Title image: Photo by Alex Bertha on Unsplash)

My life was recently interrupted by a back strain. I was moving a side table to vacuum under it and stupidly bent at the waist instead of using my legs, pulling the table towards me.

And suddenly I felt an electric jolt of warmth and pain in my back from hip to hip.

This, my friends, is not my first rodeo. I’ve been having back issues since college, when I slipped on ice and thudded down on my lumbar spine. However, first swimming and then strength training reinforced my back muscles and made me less susceptible to injuries like this.

Less susceptible, but not impervious. I was reminded of this in early 2025 when I felt a serious twinge rowing on my erg but stubbornly refused to stop because there were only four minutes left in my workout and I’m a stupid ass. That little stunt required a recovery period of about a month.

Yup, right THERE.
(Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash)

This time was a teensy bit different. The back strain was manageable. It happened on a Saturday, but I was still able to carry laundry, and then I worked out CAREFULLY on Sunday. Yeah, it hurt a bit but nothing I couldn’t handle.

Then came Monday morning and I decided to do a modified version of my high intensity interval training. Sounds crazy, I know, but it was modified. However…towards the end, I started having more discomfort, but again, I figured I could finish it before I did anything really bad to myself. Yeahyeahyeah IknowIknowIknow.

It wasn’t a great workout, but I was moving gingerly and seemed to be holding together. But afterwards, in an effort to “protect” my back, I knelt at my computer (I’ve got my setup adjusted so I can do that when sitting doesn’t feel good) and started my workday.

Maybe it was the fact that I kept tightening my glute muscles to take pressure off my back, and there were adjacent hip muscles that got irritated, but by the time my Monday morning Zoom meeting came around I was having intense back spasms, basically whenever I moved.

Even deeper breaths set them off. I was having trouble staying upright.

Eventually I capitulated and crawled off to bed, resorting to my laptop to get any work done, which was minimal.

So all of that might sound bad, but as far as I’m concerned, here’s the REAL issue. While I managed a few hours of work every day, most of the time I was forced to lie on my back. This should be a horrible thing, not being able to move without pain.

How do I stop feeling guilty about taking a break?
(Photo by Abishek Subba on Unsplash)

Instead, it felt like a relief. My bosses and co-workers knew my situation and didn’t expect much. I didn’t push myself and considered this an obligatory rest week from workouts. And it was phenomenal.

My back gradually improved and by the end of that week I noted, somewhat ruefully, that I was almost back to normal.

It made me sad. I had really needed the break, needed the release of expectations that I would be productive. And that week I had my excuse. It was like a hall pass that allowed me to shirk all my other responsibilities.

This was exactly how I’d felt during my chemo infusions. The after-effects of chemotherapy were miserable and I could not wait to be done with them. But in the background, there was a glimmer of relief that I was allowed to actually rest without anyone expecting anything of me.

And here I am going through those feelings again.

So, I know this is a problem. If getting injured or sick is the only thing that gives me permission to recover from my life, then clearly I need to reevaluate my priorities and maybe make some time for that.

Even after almost a decade of practicing mindfulness and meditation, I am sorely lacking in this aspect of self-care and self-compassion. I know I am. But it’s so hard to stop pushing myself.

So I don’t know now. Am I really being mindful if I’m driving myself to burnout?

Swinging My Hips

(Title image: Photo by Jessie Shaw on Unsplash)

It’s been over nine years since my cancer diagnosis and treatment. That’s almost a decade, which is hard to believe! But here I am.

While the physical side effects of the cancer treatment itself are mainly gone, I am still dealing with some weird psychological ones. One of the most unexpected effects for me was that I lost a chunk of my self-identity.

I’ve written in the past about difficulty of dealing with this change in my sense of self. Part of it was hormonal, brought on by endocrine therapy. I had been pre-/peri-menopausal when I started treatment so I wasn’t ready for menopause. There was so much anxiety associated with surviving cancer, chemo and radiation, the thought of also dealing with one of the biggest changes in a woman’s life hadn’t even occurred to me. I had not seen that far into the future because I was afraid that I’d never get there.

Ah, the joys of letting your body guide how you move through the world.
(Photo by Liberty Ann on Unsplash)

All of this is a long-winded way of getting to the actual point of this post…

So in the aftermath of cancer and this semi-identity crisis, while in yoga teacher training, someone made a comment that stuck with me.

I had bumped into one of the other teacher trainees outside a shopping mall, who said she recognized me from far away. She explained, “I could tell it was you from your walk.”

I didn’t ask for elaboration, but it seemed like an odd comment and made me wonder, what exactly did she see in my walk that made it look so distinct? Some time later, someone else said the same thing! So I started to pay attention.

I realized I wasn’t walking the way I used to.

My walk had become a very quick-paced, tight-strided gait. When I considered myself from the side, my movement looked uncomfortable and self-conscious, as if I were trying to be invisible and not take up space, no mean feat for a nearly six-foot-tall woman.

My flowing saunter had been replaced with something that I can only describe as “getting from point A to point B with my tail tucked between my legs.”

I didn’t feel like a woman. I felt like a survivor, which in itself is not a bad thing. But I defined myself as one, and it had become an all-encompassing definition. Yes, I had survived, but now what?

Moving smoothly, gracefully…
(Photo by Akshaya Jayaprakash on Unsplash)

It wasn’t until I found myself in a completely new environment with calmer surroundings that whatever I was clenching started to unclench and I found myself breathing with more ease. And that’s when I remembered the comments about my walk.

So I reintroduced a playful, natural swing in my hips. Releasing the tension that had built up. Back before I had kids I’d taken several years of belly dancing classes, and I drew on the sensual feelings from that dance form.

I started to roll. It was a fluid motion that felt so right in my body. After years of squats, deadlifts, rows and presses, it was nice to let go of the tightness and return to something that was decidedly more feminine.

This brought with it a mindfulness of where I am in space, and how I move through it. The simple act of allowing my hips to move in their natural arc has reopened a door that I thought was closed forever.

It’s nice to be back.