My Dear Friend,

Thank you for being here. It is now one month (and one day!) since my surgery and two since the accident in Crete. I am walking without support and gently returning to physical practice. I smile to myself when writing "returning to practice," since this entire journey has possibly been one of the deepest practice periods in my life. It has relentlessly blurred any division between what we generally think of as formal practice and informal, until the two became entirely fluid and arbitrary.

“Paradoxically, while my formal practice has very real physical limitations, its fruits have never felt more immediate.”

Equally, my appreciation of my decades of formal practice leading up to this edge, has also deepened beyond measure. It has quietly over years, softened my heart to allow me to gradually release my rigorous agenda for what my body and practice "should be". I find myself continuously broken open to the tender teachings of each impossible and wonderful moment of healing. And to the fact that we are not a combination of either ors. We are just this multitude of both ands. Living fully in this paradox is what I think of as a spiritual practice of belonging. Which today means to begin to walk again, unsupported by my walking sticks, but fully entrusted to the ground below.

In the practice I call Kāya Bhāvanā, The Cultivation of Embodiment, we learn to yield to earth, and notice how this relationship holds the secret to free movement and open breath. How we are in fact created to be in constant dialogue with the centre of the earth.

“Our vestibular mechanism always communicates not simply with the ground, but with the very navel centre of the earth itself (6371km away!), closely connected to our own belly centre, known as The Hara.”

Sometimes I like to highlight this bond in my classes by shifting or elevating the ground, standing on one leg atop a soft yoga block. This subtle shift of ground allows us to feel how our entire system magically calibrates and adapts to the new surface without us even being aware of how that happens.

In concert with the crystals of our inner ear, there is an entire system of nerve structures that comes into play when we balance. It bypasses the conscious brain and enters the spinal cord directly. This new relationship to ground helps bring those unconscious connections into awareness, so we can sense how our body instinctively knows how to support us. Rather than bracing, we learn to listen, adapt and release.

“To let the weight of our body fall the full distance to the centre of the earth, and trust that distance to be answered and rebound.”

This is the oldest Bandha. It was practised before we had a word for practice, in the first weeks of life, when our head first turned to gravity and found, somewhat to its surprise, that gravity turned back.

Learning to walk again as an adult is having to learn to trust the ground again as if for the first time. As frustrating as it is at times (believe me, it is), I can recognise the gift of breathing new life into this life-long relationship. Just like my beloved, it asks for my full attention and unwavering alliance. To sense this innate intelligence of how our body naturally seeks equilibrium, is to marvel at the wonder of life itself. To have every step be a reminder of this miracle is a beautiful way to walk on this earth.

Each mindful breath, each mindful step, reminds us that we are alive on this beautiful planet. We don't need anything else. It is wonderful enough just to be alive, to breathe in, and to make one step. We have arrived at where real life is available, the present moment. If we breathe and walk in this way, we become as solid as a mountain. – Thich Nhat Hanh

With Mettā x

kia, Paris August 2026

The Walking Quest