I’ve been busy cooking up a big, new offering that will launch later this summer, and it is taking up most of my creative, deep-thinking energy. So for this month’s newsletter I am going to do some crowd-sourcing!

Last spring I reconnected with the man who married me — not my husband, our wedding officiant, Michael Koran. Michael and I began meeting regularly this past year to talk about death. Anyone who knew him would not be surprised to hear that, as he was always posing and pondering existential questions. However, in this case it was because Michael was dying, and I was his death doula.

To add to your anti-anxiety, serenity-now toolkit I want to recommend the meditative practice that I lead at the beginning of group healing sessions to get deeply plugged in and connected, aligning the Hara Line.

Most of my conversations these days start or end with, “So what are you doing to stay sane?” With ignorance, avarice, and cruelty running amok, it is certainly a challenge. Here are some practices that I have found helpful.

While distractions, denial, escapism, and mood-altering substances can provide some relief, what is truly helpful when we’re feeling burdened with worries? When we’re dealing with natural disasters and threats and insults and attacks on our physical, mental, and emotional selves, on our families, on our neighbors and communities, on our environment?

Gratitude is an energetic state, a frequency, like a radio station you can set your dial to at any time. It is uplifting and expansive and fulfilling and you don’t need to do any thinking or bargaining or promising to get there, you just need to remember to tune into it.

I have been thinking about some of the lessons of Pompeii lately. About what can disappear in an instant and what might persist long after we’re gone. About the legacies we leave as individuals, as communities, as cultures. Sometimes these questions feel abstract and sometimes very close to home.

We all go through times when we feel out of sorts, off our game, stuck in a rut, activated and triggered, or repeating the same unhelpful behaviors. These times provide an invitation — to go inwards and reclaim and unleash our true power, purpose, and vitality.

In each session we’ll learn and practice techniques to help us call forth the qualities and potencies of each chakra.

We are continually interacting with other people’s energies, positive, negative, high, and low. Depending on the nature of your boundaries, you might be letting in and carrying more foreign energetic “material” in your field than you realize, affecting your mood, emotions, energy levels, and even thoughts.

The other night I was out dancing in a club with a new friend when I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to catch a plane in the morning but hadn’t packed any snacks! A stranger called me a car to get back to my friend’s apartment. I was so grateful because I couldn’t figure out how to make my phone work. Then an elevator let me off on a random floor of a hotel, and I had to try to find my way down to the parking lot through a fancy lobby that I recognized from a movie. Then I woke up.

As summer’s sultry vibe settles in, time seems to slow and expand. We have places to go, things to do, people to meet, and yet the heat dictates a slower pace.

While this can feel frustrating when we are trying to get things done, it also provides an opportunity to reconsider the value of taking a slower, more deliberate approach. For healing and self-awareness, for example, softness, curiosity, and compassion can yield more subtle and profound rewards than aggressive action.

If you’re not feeling connected to the fertile abundance around and within you, spending some time working with the sacral chakra, the seat of our deep life force energy, can help. The sacral chakra, in the lower belly, draws energy up from the root and uses it to fuel our vitality, creativity, sensuality, sexuality, playfulness, and sense of freedom and flow.

If your mind is feeling a bit noisy and cramped these days, or if you’re seeking inspiration or guidance and wondering why it hasn’t shown up, consider where in your day you might reclaim some pockets of time where you are not overloading your senses with someone else’s thoughts and ideas. If you find that quiet can send you into a ruminative loop, try “turning the channel” and opening your curiosity to your surroundings. Open your senses so that your own creativity, inspiration, and intuition can get a word in edgewise.

How do you tend to make decisions? Do you go with your first instinct no matter what? Do you weigh pros and cons, ask a trusted friend (or many!) for advice, read articles, fret and fuss? Or maybe you put off choosing until it’s almost too late and then let circumstances decide for you?

While I have done all of the above at different times, more and more I’m making an effort to skip all the hemming and hawing and instead turn to intuitive guidance.

We pick up energies as we move through the world, and sometimes they stick like lint on a nice pair of black pants and don’t come off in a regular wash. Even when fear, grief, worry, anger, and despair are ours to experience, analyze, and process, it’s all a lot more challenging when obscured by environmental gunk. A good energetic lint-roller can do wonders to alleviate fogginess and pressure.

When the subject of "self-love" comes up, does it make you smile? Or cringe? Shrug? Cower? So many of my clients struggle with self-love. It's disheartening but not surprising — our culture of showy self-aggrandizement does not exactly encourage compassionate self-acceptance.

Have you had the experience of “waking up” at some point during your day and realizing you hadn’t been fully present until that moment? It can be startling and also clarifying, like when the optometrist clicks that just-right lens into place. Experiencing clear vision brings the realization that up until that point you’d been seeing everything blurry.

With temperatures dropping, indoor crowds increasing, stress levels spiking, and viruses multiplying, below are a few of my go-to practices for keeping blood circulating, lymph moving, and energy flowing. If you have a favorite time-tested practice I would love to hear it!

When I’m feeling out of synch with the time, the weather, and my schedule, or if I’m repeatedly waking up depleted, scattered, foggy, or overwhelmed, I know it’s time to do some grounding. Connecting the root chakra to the Earth provides a deep sense of stability and support while aligning the body to seasonal rhythms. Now is an especially apt time before all the year-end festivities, pressures, and triggers start to accumulate.

Placebos have been on my mind lately. My family has been passing around a tough cold these past few weeks and going through a fair amount of DayQuil for symptom relief. You may guess where I’m going with this — did you catch the recent news from the FDA announcing that its decongestant ingredient (found in many common cold medications) does not work?