My Dear Friend,

Thank you for being here. It has been one and a half month since the accident in Crete, and almost three weeks since my surgery. I am so grateful, and ready to finally begin a journey of healing.

What began as a fracture became, for some days, something far more uncertain. Touching the possibility of actually not making it, followed by many weeks of stillness, has shifted something within me that continues to unfold.

“Above all, these weeks in quietude have been a profound lesson in simplicity, in shedding all that is not essential.”

The body needs this clearing, this openness to heal. Deep listening and sensing patiently moment to moment exactly what is needed. These are, of course, the very qualities we hope to cultivate on our yoga mat, but how often do we actually live them?

American poet and author Mark Nepo likens the process of ageing, another stage of life that requires simplicity, to a meteor entering the earth's atmosphere. The more the meteor burns, the brighter it gets. As it enters the atmosphere, more of it burns away until there is only light. "As we hurtle through the years, he writes, we are worn of all that doesn't matter. As experience wears us down and burns us up, we grow brighter." We get closer to our essence with each layer of nonsense we shed until only light remains.

Australian musician Nick Cave, who has lost far more than a hip, speaks of loss as a fork in the road.

“We can close in around our loss and grow resentful, or we can let it split us open into something we couldn’t have reached otherwise.”

I'm learning that healing asks the same question, over and over, of every small task in front of me. I can let my limitations be frustrations or they can bring me into presence in a entirely new ways.

Going from someone who travels the world for a living, to someone for whom walking from the living room to the kitchen is a journey requiring my full attention, is humbling to say the least. But not so different, really, from a continuous walking meditation. All day. Lifting. Moving. Placing. Shift the weight. Lifting. Moving. Placing...The idea that this will be on autopilot in only a couple of weeks feels daunting.

My surgeon has asked me to keep my crutches for thirty days, even once I no longer need them for walking, to allow the bone time to solidify around the new material inserted into my joint. Browsing the internet for more information on yoga and recovery after hip surgery, I find something I can only describe as a misplaced competition in progress: What day could I throw my crutches away after surgery? An advanced Ashtanga teacher triumphantly flings theirs in the air. Day four and already walking unsupported. Hah. Time to hit the gym and then onto full lotus!

“What is this fear of support when it’s needed? Why are we so unwilling to take help?”

I see the same thing in some yoga practitioners I meet. This unfounded belief that reaching for a strap or block, will somehow erode the true value of their practice. Even make them dependent. How shameful!

I once read about Pando, the famous quaking aspen colony in Utah. What looks like a forest of forty thousand individual trees is, in fact, one organism: a single root system that has been sending up genetically identical trunks for possibly thousands of years. Every tree entirely intertwined and dependent on the others. Not one of them standing alone.

Maybe my crutches are a kind of graft too. A way of staying connected to something other than myself long enough for what's underneath to knit and grow strong. Our cracks, and what we let hold us while they mend, are what make us resilient. And so is our interbeingness. Not one tree standing alone, but a single root system, holding up forty thousand trunks.

“In a western yoga culture that seems to glorify ableism and independence, what if we could practice like Pando trees?”

Growing stronger as a result of leaning into each other, rather than away from one another. The Buddha taught this as the most important support for practice: Sangha. Community. Not as a backdrop to the path, but as a gateway to the path itself.

True healing doesn't happen in isolation. It happens through being with each other and what is right here. Only then can we fully know what medicine is needed, or when to let go of our crutches, whatever day that might be.

With Mettā x

kia, Paris July 2026

To support those in need I’m so grateful to be able to offer a limited number of SCHOLARSHIPS for my December Retreat in Purple Valley Goa again this year. Please help share with anyone who could benefit!

Leaning Into One Another