BUILDS

Bioinspired Universally-Infused Loving Development Series

Weekly reflections on Life’s universal patterns and personal inquiry into healing, growth, integration, and relationships.

Cellular

January - March

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” ― Carl Sagan

As far as we know, our reality seems to have begun in the stars. One mighty burst of light, and energy and matter collected around each other, motivated by pushes and pulls—motion and attraction. Nine billion years later, Earth developed into a planet, mostly composed of water. Hundreds of millions of years following, life would form the first cells within a primordial soup of complex, carbon-rich chemical compounds. This is where we begin and where we exist to transform as we begin our BUILDS (Bioinspired Universally-Infused Loving Development Series).

If we were to map the age of Earth (which is currently estimated at about 4.5 billion years old) on a Gregorian calendar year, we’d learn that humans are a very young species—giving rise to homo sapiens less than an hour before midnight on December 31. At first, life began as single-celled organisms, which evolved into multicellular organisms. At the Cellular level, this season’s weekly reflections will be geared toward aspects of building upon knowledge around basic human life functioning, homeostasis, hormonal balance, metabolism, and regeneration.

Week 1 BUILD: The Basics

Reflect: Healthy cells allow for well-functioning nutrient absorption and metabolic waste removal. This is the basic building block for a sense of wellbeing; and for healthy cells to thrive, we need 4 key elements: strong nutrients (i.e. the food we eat, clean drinking water), rest (i.e. sleep, balance between activities); movement (i.e. walking, exercise, stretching); and balanced levels of stress (i.e. feeling safe, loved, connected, challenged in supportive ways). As we move through the year, we will routinely come back to ground in these 4 key elements.

Try This: Which of these 4 areas do you feel strongest and which need your attention this week?

Week 2: Food

What makes food healthy for our cells to function? Give energy? Build muscle? Digest properly? Nutrition in the form of food requires a bio-individual approach, meaning that as an animal living in a unique context in your part of the world, what food is beneficial for your body (and what is accessible) will be unique. It’s not just about calories in/calories out, despite popular belief. Not all calories are created equally. Cells are made from food. If fed garbage, the body is created on weak and damaged tissues and bones.
In general, the best nutrients to eat to support cellular functioning come in the form of whole foods that have been minimally processed—eating just enough, but not too much. Locally-sourced food not only supports sustainable practices, but also connects you deeper to the land you touch. Eating what’s in season, what is pollinated by local organisms, and learning what your body needs rather than following a fad diet will help your cells thrive.
Bottom line: To best promote the body’s homeostasis and functioning in ways they are designed to, try to eat with intention by sourcing anti-inflammatory, nutrient-dense food that offer plenty of macronutrients and micronutrients.
This week, notice how you feel during and after you eat. What foods make you feel energized and nourished? What foods do the opposite and bring feelings of fatigue, brain fog, or more cravings?

Week 3: Rest

Our cells are built on a 24-hour clock called Circadian Rhythm. All of our physical, mental, and behavioral changes are affected by this clock—just as the Earth regulates its own 24-hour cycle upon rotation on its axis. Sleep is essential for cellular regeneration, balancing energy, and removing toxins, but rest goes beyond sleep. Recovery after exercise is needed so muscles can rebuild. Our brains need rest during waking after an information-loaded meeting or faced with emotional stress. When the body is sick or recovering from injury, rest promotes recovery. It all comes back to balance and real-time checking in for what kind of rest and how much is needed for your unique self at that moment in time.
Consider your sleep habits. Do you know whether you’re getting enough quality sleep? What habits in the day and evening prior allow you to feel nourished and energized upon waking?

Week 4: Movement

Across the Animal Kingdom, regular movement of the body is shown to support growth and resilience—from cellular regeneration to strengthening bones and muscles. Looking like a fit human is nice, but movement helps us in many different ways physiologically, mentally, and emotionally. It can help reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety, keep blood flowing to parts of the body, and increase energy (when in balance with rest).
Movement helps improve sleep quality, can reduce pain, control body mass, improve memory, reduce injury when performed safely, enhance sexual pleasure, and increase functionality of joints. And there’s so much more benefit to be had with this core element. Sitting is the new smoking, and there are major benefits to experience when we put our bodies to the functional use they were intended for.
This week, notice how much time you sit compared to how much you move, and find ways you can add movement breaks—from a minute of jumping jacks, to a 5-minute stretch or dance to your favorite song, 10-minute walk, or fitting in a full exercise routine between commitments.
Bonus: can you move outside, find a pocket of nature to immerse yourself in?

Week 5: Balancing Stress

Stress is often discussed as a negative thing, but in reality it’s a healthy biological response the body makes when responding to increased mental or physical exertion, or when faced with danger. It’s a process that raises cortisol levels (cortisol is a hormone that plays a role in regulating stress), enabling the body to move or think fast and is designed to keep us alive and thriving. Healthy levels of cortisol can improve memory, strengthen the immune system, and improve mental cognition.
However, in our modern society, our biological responses have not yet adapted to conceptual stressors that aren’t life-threatening—but still trigger the autonomic response to a perceived threat. And because those occurrences seem to never cease, cortisol levels often don’t get a chance to lower; and the chronically high levels cause destruction on a cellular level.
So for example, when we exercise, we’re putting healthy stress on our bones, muscles, and mental processing. After we take the time to rest and recuperate, our body regulates. But if we instead exercise again too quickly and too rigorously, consume aggressive news coverage and internalize physical threats from across the world, respond to work demands as life-threatening, or deeply worry over a loved one to an unrealistic level, our bodies (and minds) become exhausted.
There are ways to manage stress levels, like breathing techniques, movement, yoga, tapping, journaling, and various therapy approaches. Snow monkeys, for example, find relief from stress through physical closeness and touch from family and friends. Antelopes shiver, and in doing so, release pent up fear or anger. Whatever approach you take, it’s about balance for your unique needs.
Notice this week what kind of stress do you feel that is positive in your life. What kind of stress is unhealthy, unregulated or unnecessary? With this awareness, what shifts can be made to work toward balance?

Week 6: Resilience

Each weekly BUILD is designed to grow upon one another, taking one step toward awareness and practice to sustainably improve habits and create long-lasting change. In this approach, we are looking at health not just to cure or prevent disease, but also to feel strong and capable now and in the future. By integrating multiple approaches that support health, we’re building resiliency; and in this pursuit, it stands to reason that how healthy you are before an accident, injury, illness, or stressful event can determine your ability to recover.
In ecology, resilience is perceived as the ability to bounce back from a challenging event. Across the natural world, we can find examples of how organisms have adapted and changed to respond to their environment and built resilience that not only protects them from repetitive harm, but also supports their ability to thrive.
Personal resilience begins with belief and is followed by action. It requires consistency and deep loving support for yourself.
This week, think about a challenge you’ve overcome in the past and how you adapted to the situation. How did the experience allow you to grow? How did it enable you to become more resilient today?

Week 7: Meditation

Meditation is a way to cultivate awareness, compassion, and focus within yourself. Ancient traditions have used the practice of meditation to go inward, discovering spiritual and faith-based connections beyond what our scientific devices can analyze. Research has focused on the physiological benefits experienced, including a lowering of the heart rate and blood pressure, decreased levels of cortisol, balancing hormones, improving the ability to learn faster and retain more information, and improve overall cell health.
Some shy away because of the hype surrounding the terminology. But it’s actually really simple—the goal is not to eliminate thoughts as you sit or lay in stillness. The goal is to become aware of the brain’s mental chatter, greet thoughts with compassion, and return to focus on the breath or the space between breaths. In doing so, we are training our brain not to react to stimuli outside the meditation space without our awareness and approval. By practicing meditation even for a few minutes every day, over time you can strengthen neural pathways in the brain that balance stress levels.
Each day this week, set a timer and sit for 5 minutes in stillness. Focus on breathing into every cell of your being. When a thought arises, greet it by saying “thought.” Become aware, let go of expectations, and allow what is to be what it is with loving compassion.

Week 8: Mindfulness

Mindfulness is being aware of being aware. As an exercise, it is about both observing the present moment without trying to change it. As a habit, it is thinking and acting with focused attention.
When we run from one moment to the next, allowing thoughts to constantly chatter in the mind without noticing, we are allowing ourselves to be influenced by every stimuli that we come in contact with. Slowing down and becoming aware of the present moment can help improve the body’s physiological response to external stressors, as well as the perception of pain. In the coming weeks we’ll explore how pain is processed in the body, but for now, imagine that what we focus on we bring more attention to—so that means when we focus on fear as it relates to a painful sensation, for example, we end up amplifying the signal of that pain and making it worse, because we are signaling to the brain there is a threat and that danger is worthy of our heightened attention. Conversely, when we focus on calm breathing and detaching our identity from a fleeting emotion or thought, we amplify the feeling of peace.
Mindfulness is not about controlling thoughts, and it is not a coping mechanism. It is an exercise to train the brain how to focus attention—and redirect focus when desired. And with building this skill, it becomes a daily habit where we can move through life less reactive to internal and external stimuli. We can think of it the same way as exercise for building muscles. It takes practice; and with consistency, we can grow stronger and more capable of responding in healthy ways when under stress or distress.
Mindfulness teaches us to more quickly notice when distractive thoughts arise; and thus it stands to reason that the exercise itself warrants distraction, because that’s the way we can practice noticing, releasing control, and redirecting thought back to the breath or observing the present moment as it is. We are releasing friction that challenges the way the brain functions and leaning in to using the mechanism it uses for our benefit. Over time, we reduce stress by training the brain not to throw so many worries at us.
This week, pick one meal a day that you’ll choose to be particularly mindful of when eating. Turn off all distractions and focus on each bite, feeling the sensation in your mouth as you chew, smelling and tasting the ingredients, and observing your thoughts as they arise before returning your attention to your meal.
Then, after the first day’s activity, on the next day, add an additional 5 minutes to sit in stillness as you had done last week with meditation. Use your breath to return to the present moment.
And on the third day, and for each day that follows this week, make an attempt to increase this time for practicing mindfulness to 10 minutes, in addition to the attention-focused daily meal. Yes—that may sound daunting. But think of the activities like a workout—they are not designed to be easy, but instead designed to challenge you. The goal is to feel you’ve earned a solid workout by exercising the brain.

Week 9: Setting Intention

Setting an intention triggers your brain to release chemicals that signal the rest of your nervous system to pay attention to whatever you’re focusing on. This is not a mystical concept—it is neurochemistry. Creating a specific intention stimulates repetition of the thought, and what you think shapes your self-perception and your actions. You become an active driver in your mind, using the power of the brain to alter the way you perceive and respond to the world.
Writing intentions in a journal is one way to create a habit around this practice, but it can also be as simple as waking up in the morning, and while laying in bed, decide how you want to feel/think/respond to the day ahead.
Try this: Each morning this week, write one intention that you would like to invite for the day. It can be the same one for each day of the week or a new one daily.
If you don’t have one readily come to mind, try: “Today I intend to speak kindly with myself.” Or, “Today I intend to try my best and know that it is enough.”

Week 10: Affirmations

Affirmations go a step further than setting an intention. If our thoughts shape our perception, it stands to reason that by dictating a loving message to oneself can shift the brain’s reward pathways and process a positive reaction to the moment. By changing the narrative, you’re creating a story that you want to believe.
In making this intentional shift, the more positive affirmations signaled to the brain, the less power negative thoughts have when they arise. It’s both a way to rewrite the story and a way to emotionally support yourself in response to stress or painful situations.
Write 5 affirmations to yourself that support your strengths and motivate you to achieve your goals. Place these affirmations somewhere you can see them each day this week. Repeat them out loud as often as necessary.
For example, you could write:
I believe in myself.
I am capable.
I am resilient.
I am worthy of love.
I have abundance now.

Week 11: Breathing

Some of us are unknowingly breathing too shallowly, decreasing the lungs’ ability to properly send oxygen into the bloodstream and release carbon dioxide as a waste product. It can help to adopt a practice of deep breathing—full belly breaths set with intentional awareness. There are many different approaches of intentional breathing, often called yogic breathing, that can be researched online. For our BUILD this week, we’re going to start simply by noticing the way we breathe and understanding some of the benefits for taking deep breaths.
Deep breathing helps ward off disease, including reducing blood pressure, lowering chronic stress levels, aiding symptoms of anxiety and depression, and even improving quality of life for cancer patients and those that have diabetes. Overall, it promotes a healthy wellbeing and enhances all functioning at the cellular level.
Try a physiological sigh. This is a full body breathing technique that, easily explained, consists of a breathing pattern of one long inhale through the nose, followed by a rapid extra inhale. Hold for a pause at the top of the breath before allowing a slow and controlled exhale through the mouth. The first breath fills the lungs as much as possible, the second quick inhale further opens the air sacs in the lungs called alveoli. Then the slow, controlled exhale helps lower blood pressure, boost endorphins, and provide a deep sense of calm.
Try a couple rounds of this, and you’re sure to experience a slowing of your heart rate and calming of the mind in real time.

Week 12: Acceptance

Suffering comes from wishing things were different than they are. It’s the power of the mind to place judgment on pain, discomfort, frustration, or any other ailments or external situations; and this judgment causes friction—which in turn stimulates more agitation. Some terrible things must even be accepted in the moment as they are in order to move out of a harmful situation, change a behavior, or be able to speak up and stand your ground. When we accept things as they are, we stop trying to negotiate with reality—a pointless endeavor that only leads to more difficulty. You cannot argue with what is. That's insanity. What you can do is accept what is and respond accordingly.
We’re not talking about preventing emotions from being expressed—quite the opposite actually. It’s about acknowledging these emotions, the pain and challenges, and meeting them with loving kindness. Then from there, clarity can influence behavior on what to do or think next.
This week, notice if there are pieces of your life that you are fighting to accept—a situation beyond your control, a person whom you wish would behave differently, an injury taking a long time to recover, a loss, or perhaps an illness that must run its course (or has become your life-long prognosis).
Write about how you might lean into acceptance and let go of the expectations or desire to have things different than how they are. Are there ways you can dis-identify with your thoughts, release judgment, and find acceptance in order to embrace peace?

Week 13: The Power of Perspective

You are the story that you replay in your mind. Your thoughts and experiences are filtered through this unique perspective. Everything you know to be true is created in your brain. Life is a series of processes, originating in the smallest cells and manifesting in ways that shape entire bodily realities. Many living organisms are not aware of that which is beyond their own perception. Some try to control circumstances or other beings despite it/them being out of their control. How we perceive, how we choose to respond to what’s happening by slowing down, and seeing the steps in the process as they appear, disables the automatic reaction programmed by the brain. We take back control of our sense of self, understand the context we exist in, and find clarity in our relationship to the external world. Power is recognizing what we choose to focus on—our unique perspective.
In reality, there are far worse situations than yours if you’re reading this—and yet, your reality (pain, struggle, joy and all) remains both important and worthy of your attention and love. It’s about what story we choose to write, along with the circumstance experienced in a given moment. Become the author of your story—recognize that which you may be blowing out of proportion, where you may not be honoring or expressing emotions, or where you may change the narrative from that of suffering to one of gratitude.
Pay attention to the stories on replay in your brain this week. Observe any patterns, emotions, or thought processes. Consider which may not be serving you and can be released or rewritten. Where can you remove friction?

Organs

April - June

“Given appropriate conditions to develop further,  thoughts breed actions of the same kind,  as a seed can only grow into one particular kind of tree.”  ― Eknath Easwaren

We began at the Cellular level, building from the bottom up. Continuing at this pace, we deepen the interplay between cells, the tissues they form, and the tissues that then form organs, which perform remarkable process-oriented functions that help us grow, heal, and thrive in the environments we live in.

Recognizing that life on Earth is interconnected and interdependent, we, like our fellow Earthlings, are subject to sunlight, water, and gravity; limits and boundaries (like the amount of fresh water available or our atmosphere before it blends into space); cyclic processes (like seasons, night and day, and menstruation); and the idea that the continual change and evolution strives for survival—aiming for “balance” that is always in flux, because of the complex play of interconnected systems. Here we can identify a form of suffering in resisting this truth, expecting life to be in a straight-lined trajectory rather than a series of processes. By embracing the nature of change and finding one’s natural flow of life, peace becomes inherent in the present moment.

At the Organ level, this BUILDS season’s weekly reflections will be focused on how cellular processes come together; and we’ll work toward deepening the way we see aspects of ourselves, which serve to build upon the more integrated interconnectedness to be explored in the season to come.

Week 14 BUILD: Pain

Reflect: Pain is physical or mental discomfort processed in the brain and can establish learned patterns to help protect oneself from future harm. The associations we make when we feel a sensation is often amplified—essentially, what we focus on gets more attention in our brain and different parts of our body respond to the signals.

Think of pain like an alert or a smoke alarm. In an acute situation, like a cut, the large skin organ releases chemicals that transmit messages to the brain that prompt inflammatory cells to come to the rescue, blood platelets to form, and simultaneously sends messages to the nervous system to signal a sensation of discomfort: danger! In normal situations, the pain will diminish and the wound will heal.

In another scenario, an injury in the form of a broken ankle may be addressed with surgery, followed by pain pills and rehabilitation. After the acute healing process has passed (typically 6-8 weeks for this kind of injury), pain may still be experienced, but it may not be coming from the injury anymore—despite it seeming to be the cause. Pain can be complicated to understand, but in this surface-level understanding, we can acknowledge that 1) all pain is created in the brain, and 2) painful symptoms may be associated with a deeper underlying cause.

Dr. Howard Schubiner, a specialist in Mind-Body Syndrome, has shared 6 F’s that cause acute pain to turn chronic through the power of our perception. By taking control on how you respond to painful sensations/emotions, you can find a compassionate way to stop reinforcing a reality of danger, soothing the brain and allowing for less amplification of the pain. The 6 F’s include: fearing the pain/symptoms; focusing on the pain; getting frustrated with the pain; fighting the pain; trying to fix the pain; and trying to figure out what the pain is/means. Essentially, we avoid these reactions and quit trying to make the pain go away, and instead work to calm the fear. Your brain is just afraid. In some acute scenarios, this fear will save us. But in most chronic sufferers today, it keeps us in a constant state of stress and suffering.

Try this: Notice any pain you may be experiencing this week. It could come in the form of simple aches and pains, or perhaps you’re suffering from chronic pain or illness. Rather than trying to change the situation, treat the pain like a scared child hiding from a monster in the closet. How can you offer them comfort and love? Can you reassure this scared child with calm, soothing energy? How can you invite curiosity into the pain, emotion, or resistance?

Week 15: Consumption

Consumption is more than what you eat or what you buy. We are endless consumers, sponges absorbing the energy around us. What we watch, listen to or read, we absorb. They become part of our thoughts, influencing our way of being and responding to the world. Consuming social media, music lyrics, TV show dialogue, bleeding news headlines, podcasts, perspectives from friends, family and colleagues—all content you introduce to your brain becomes part of you in some way.
From perspectives on other cultures, religions and politics to judgment on self, what you go looking for in information consumption, you will find. Are you consciously aware of what you are consuming and how it affects your mood, worldview, conversation style, or self talk and self perspective?
This week set an intention to become aware and observe how your consumption choices affect your overall wellbeing.

Week 16: Past Stories

Most humans spend their time thinking about the past or trying to predict the future, which is typically shaped by what past stories have shaped reality. In truth, the only real moment is the present, and bringing awareness back to the moment encourages a more peaceful, productive and pliable life. However, there is benefit to processing our past so we can better understand our present, and thus better influence our future.
Seemingly automatic reactions to situations, people or particular triggers are completely designed from things that have happened to you. Each of us inherited a reality as a child, offered by our family structure (or lack thereof), education offering, and societal values. It’s important to spend time understanding how you got to be the human you are today, taking responsibility for what you have now and letting go of what was to make room for a new future. Sometimes the healing process requires understanding of what happened to you so you can heal the hurt parts and shift thinking into how the event happened for you. In a way, our lives can be elegant explorations of questioning what really resonates and holds true for our values and beliefs each new day.
This week, take some time to reflect on what major life events shaped the person you are today. How did they construct your thinking and associations? Which areas need loving support from you to heal properly so you may feel more secure in the present moment?

Week 17: Predictive Coding

Just as your brain processes pain, it also processes every aspect of your perceived environment. Predictive coding refers to the way the brain constantly makes forecasts of what's going to happen in the future and signals you to pay attention to the things that don’t meet that prediction. To keep you safe, the brain sets expectations, shaping awareness based on previous knowledge. It’s both responsible for the repetitive ways of thinking and behaving, as well as the sensory input that has been “muted,” i.e. not in your awareness (for example, do you know what your home smells like in the absence of cooking or new smells?). Basically, the brain learns patterns and then conserves energy by not paying attention to that which is familiar and deemed not a threat.
Unfortunately, and fortunately for some scenarios, the brain is impeccably good at predictive coding—so much so that you may not notice when you’re running on autopilot, such as in the case that you may be driving home from work and not notice that you’ve arrived home. Or perhaps you go on the same walk every day but do not notice the tree that’s outside your front door.
Becoming aware returns to strengthening the practice of mindfulness—are you paying attention or is your brain on autopilot? The same process happens for thinking patterns, movement, and even pain signals.
Pay close attention this week to familiar situations and see if you can find something new. For example, sitting at the breakfast table with your family, can you notice something new with someone or something in the room? Going on a walk in your neighborhood, can you find a new detail in the landscape? Getting out of bed in the morning, can you notice what series of events instinctually happen in the first hour?

Week 18: Habits

Time to check-in on those 4 key elements for basic survival and audit your personal habits deeper. Food is medicine built with many macro- and micro-nutrients, and consuming the right amount of water will help keep your cells—and organs—functioning well. Sleep can be improved in various ways, from limiting technology use close to bedtime, keeping the room cool and dark, and having regular sleep schedules. As a species designed for movement, exercise in its many different forms helps encourage healthy, strong bodies. Managing healthy levels of stress can keep things regulated and stimulated for growth. And all of these aspects help increase resilience and can positively—or negatively—affect one another.
Choose one area to focus on this week to see what process of habits occur in that particular area to inform your decision-making process. For example, if you were to focus on nutrients, and food specifically, consider the process of going to the grocery store, choosing which foods to have in the house, meal preparation, cooking with love, eating with intention, and ultimately digesting said meal, expelling the waste and regenerating cells with the nutrients absorbed. What does the body tell you about these habits and what feels good? Where is there a leverage point to change to improve the process that feeds ill-serving habits?

Week 19: Emotions

Expressing emotions is healthy. Trapping them inside keeps us stagnant. Everything is energy—including emotions. They are perceived in the brain and often felt across the physical body. They can rule us, we can try to dominate them, or we can let them flow through us, unafraid and free from resistance. Ultimately, the more intune we are to our brain’s processing of thoughts and emotions, we can release trying to control them, and instead learn what they have to teach us, console them, or even learn to rewrite them.
There are plenty of emotional interventions, including ways to manage stress and anxiety techniques. Cognitive behavioral therapy and practices such as Emotional Awareness Expression Therapy (EAET) have proven very successful in understanding the process of emotions and working through the process of healing. We can begin by building awareness, as with all reflections from our journey thus far.
When you feel a sudden, strong emotion come on this week that feels negative, first become aware of the sensation. Allow the emotion to be felt, not being afraid or fighting it. By letting the energy move through expression, you become more empowered to redirect the thoughts around the emotion to reframe the narrative and offer unconditional loving support to yourself. Remember, where there is grief and loss, there is deep love.

Week 20: Processing Information

We’ve already explored some of the ways the brain perceives your environment both internally and externally. When receiving information, special neurons transmit as electrochemical signals in the brain, triggering different responses. Each area of the brain is highly specialized and capable of deciphering messages received—and are subsequently deeply connected to the organs throughout your body, affecting them based on various factors, such as a perceived threat response or exertion (stress). Predictive coding tells us that these patterns both save energy, but can also keep us trapped in a perceived reality of suffering.
We can learn to train our brain to respond in different ways to the information received. For example, when thinking about exercising for the first time in months, it may feel like the most daunting task. To establish a pattern that embraces the health benefits of movement, we may begin by putting our shoes by the front door and attach it to a forced thought of hopeful joy. Then when we wake the next morning, pushing through the daunting thought, return to the hope, put our shoes on, and make the effort to walk—signaling the neuromodulator dopamine to initiate motivation. Coming home from the walk, we intentionally think about feeling proud, and coupled with the neuromodulator serotonin produced, we feel pleasure. It’s both intentionally-driven with a dose of willpower that can be overcome with the right hacks. Building on this daily, it no longer feels so difficult to take that first step.
Retrain your brain this week by mimicking the function of learning that occurs in the brain. A new signal that is coupled with retention, and best with practice, becomes a learned skill. Consider a trigger that you’re working with—perhaps receiving an email from a particular colleague, a phrase your parent repeats, a tone from your child, or a startled reaction to a car exhaust leftover from a traumatic memory. Consider what kind of thought or behavior could be supplemented to retrain your brain into learning a new response. For example, in the case of the latter traumatic event, consider: “When I hear this sound, I invite love instead of fear.” Then repeat. And again. And again.

Week 21: Heart

You’ve likely heard a lot about how to support healthy heart functioning—exercise, lower cholesterol and keep blood pressure in check. These are great habits, but often harder to put into practice. If you have a healthy heart, you likely have a healthy brain, because the more blood flows healthy nutrients through the body, the better blood flows through the brain, preventing degeneration, dementia, and diseases like Alzheimer's. At the risk of taking a reductionist approach, as with all our BUILDS that scratch the surface, let’s focus on heart health this week and cover the basics.
Choose one of the 4 key elements to focus on as it relates to heart health this week. Perhaps in terms of movement it’s making sure every day you walked a minimum of 10,000 steps or reached at least 180 minutes of Zone 2 cardio (basically moving at a fast enough pace that you can keep a conversation, but just barely). For food, you may seek foods rich in Omega 3’s, healthy fats that help regulate heart rhythm and blood pressure. Focusing on sleep, try deep breathing before bed with close attention paid to slowing heart rate. For stress, notice how rapid your heart races throughout the week, and what is happening when it does.

Week 22: Lungs

Your lungs’ main job is to move oxygen from fresh air to the rest of your body and remove waste gases (fun fact: what our waste gas of carbon dioxide is to plants is what plants’ oxygen is to us—we have evolved interconnected, and it is no coincidence that one’s waste is another’s nutrient and vice versa). Breathing deep allows for more oxygen to pass through, as does minimizing toxins in the air and not smoking. The lungs are deeply connected to the heart and brain, serving as another way to benefit overall human functioning.
Taking care of the lungs to support optimal performance, and avoiding disease, can come in many ways, such as aerobic exercise. This rhythmic form of movement helps strengthen the respiratory (from nose to lungs) and cardiovascular (heart, blood and vessels) systems better absorb and transport oxygen, which as you know by now boosts oxygen availability in the brain which keeps us alert, focused, calm, and most importantly, alive.
Every day this week, practice 2 minutes of physiological sighs in the morning and the evening. Remember this is a full body breathing technique that consists of one long inhale through the nose, followed by another rapid inhale. Hold for a pause at the top of the breath for a few seconds before allowing a slow and controlled exhale through the mouth. The first breath fills the lungs as much as possible, the second quick inhale further opens the alveoli, which allows for greater oxygen absorption. Then, embrace the sense of calm that comes with the slow, controlled exhale. Only one week, twice a day. Give it a try, and observe how you feel.

Week 23: Skin

As the largest organ in the body, your skin is the first response to the outside world. It perceives sensory information, notices changes in temperature and touch, and can even signal alarm from surrounding threats before we are consciously aware. We care for our skin from the inside out—consuming nutrient-rich foods, drinking plenty of clean water, and limiting consumption of things that accelerate cell death (like alcohol, smoking, high sugar, and trans-fats).
We also keep cells nourished by limiting exposure to external toxins, such as cancer-causing agents found in some moisturizers or deodorants or extensive UV radiation. It’s a big area of exploration and many points of leverage to make change in an individual’s life.
Let’s focus on a commonly talked about practice in the health and wellness industry that has a lot of research to back it: cold exposure.
People have been using cold water therapy for centuries to improve skin health and overall health. By exposing the body to cold water, blood vessels constrict and inflammation decreases. It’s a mental play just as much as a physical aid. The more you surrender, lessen contraction, and breathe into the discomfort, the more resilient you become. Try adding 30-seconds of the coldest water temperature at the end of your shower this week and practice breathing into it. Allow your body to warm up naturally after showering and before drying off with a towel. You may notice an immediate radiant effect on your skin after, but you’ll surely feel alive, vibrant, and stronger overall.
Bonus: try this 3-4 times this week and see how it affects pain, energy, or mood.

Week 24: Muscles

Skeletal muscles allow us to move in elegant and powerful ways when thriving, and even when maintained at the most basic levels allow us to maneuver the physical world in ways that offer freedom. If we nourish the building of this strength over our lifetimes, as we age we can continue to be more mobile and less reliant on others when faced with injury or as degeneration inevitably occurs.
The process begins wherever you are today, and this loving intention toward supporting muscular development embraces natural forms of aging. Gaining years doesn’t have to mean weakness and obesity. How good you feel and function will be determined by the support of muscles today. Practicing healthy habits like regular movement, eating nutrient-rich foods, and utilizing the muscles across the body will help keep muscles strong and encourage more mobility and prevent pain as the body ages.
If you are able-bodied, see if or how well you can get up from the ground without using your hands. Try this each day this week, and be mindful of every muscles’ engagement as it flexes into action.
If you are struggling with mobility in some way, or want to do this exercise as well, lie down on the ground and close your eyes. Starting at the top of the head, imagine each muscle as you travel down the body to the toes. Beginning with the facial muscles, tense as tight as you can and then release. Move down to the neck and shoulders, chest, upper arms, lower arms, abdominals, glutes, thighs, calves, all the way down to feet and toes. Notice how it feels and reflect on the experience in a journal.

Week 25: Hormones

Perhaps one of the greatest examples of processes occurring in human bodies would come from hormones, chemical substances that make us who we are and how we function. Produced in the brain, adrenal glands, reproductive organs, and other less famous glands and organs, hormones offer us a path of growth and demise and are greatly affected by our environment and experiences.
Food, movement, rest, and your environment all have an impact on your hormonal balance. Higher stress levels can slow thyroid function, which can aid to weight gain, mood instability, and fatigue. It’s a big topic to explore, as are most of our BUILDS, but we can start in one area that is within our control.
Choose either the bathroom or the kitchen to explore labels. Look at the products you have and identify any toxins that may be disrupting hormones.
Keep an eye out for: phthalates (found in cosmetics and body/hair products, fragrances, food packaging); triclosan (personal care products, like toothpaste, body wash and soaps; parabens (found in hair products, makeup, moisturizers, and beyond); and Bisphenol A (BPA is used to make plastics and resins. Mostly in packaging and canned foods or beverages).
While you may not be in the position to buy new products, on the next round of purchasing consider finding alternatives and read the labels before you buy.
Note: I feel angry that you are responsible for navigating this—you shouldn’t have to be a chemist to buy personal care products off a shelf. Unfortunately unintentional consequences have permeated our world in many ways. It is up to us to navigate the dangers and do the best we can. That’s what BUILDS is about—progress over perfection. One day at a time.

Week 26: Interconnected

If you’ve been following along this far, you may think of each BUILD as scraping the surface, and in a way, we are. We’re building awareness of each level so we may train the brain to pay attention to these ideas and habits—as we bring them all together to truly illustrate the deep interconnectedness they play on personal health and wellbeing, as well as the world around us. Cells come together to form tissues, to form organs, to form organ systems, to allow the body to function in the impeccable ways she/he/they does/do.
We’ve already begun to understand how processes across organ systems affect others and in turn affect our overall mood, sense of self, and connection to the world around us. Ultimately we’re not trying to integrate every BUILD into our life—some may not resonate or be accessible. Not adopting every positive habit you learn about doesn’t mean you’ve failed. The goal is about changing the lens on which reality is perceived, finding leverage points in your unique life to feel better, and to become more resilient than you already are.
Notice how deeply interconnected habits are in your life this week. How does sleep affect energy for movement? How does stress affect your eating? How does your mood impact your conversations with others? What areas can you focus on to support healthy behaviors that can offer multiple benefits across the body and mind?

Body

July - September

“In a fractal conception, I am a cell-sized unit of the human organism, and I have to use my life to leverage a shift in the system by how I am, as much as with the things I do. This means actually being in my life, and it means bringing my values into my daily decision making. Each day should be lived on purpose.” — Adrienne Maree Brown

At the Body level, this season’s weekly reflections will explore the ways our body acts as a multi-layered system, where behaviors, thoughts, and emotions impact organ functioning and influence the overall body’s health and wellness. And then we interact with the world around us not only to survive, but to experience the richness life has to offer. We are our thoughts. We are our actions. Our lives are a beautiful story written and shaped by who we decide to be in each moment we are alive.

Our human existence is defined by where the sciences and humanities meet—biology and behavior, psychology and emotion, technology and art, chemistry and connection, physics and consciousness, analysis and reflection. Let’s dig in.

Week 27 BUILD: Brain Health

Reflect: Your brain is the control center—its different lobes manage different functional areas, from movement to speech to making sense of one’s internal and external environment. A healthy brain equals a healthy life. Taking care of this complex organ helps protect your overall well-being, enhance creativity and joy, connect deeper, and generally be you—sharing your unique personality with the world.

A shocking reality is degenerative diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s begin in your 20’s. By the time symptoms are experienced later in life, it’s already too late to make significant changes. It’s important to take control of brain health now.

Try this: Hopefully arriving in this week’s BUILD, you’ve already begun cultivating a practice of meditation, mindfulness, journaling, and noticing how nutrients, rest, movement, and stress management habits are changing. This week, by focusing on brain health, look into one of the core elements and your habits in that area.

What can you do to nourish your brain’s health? Perhaps it’s about seeking out brain nutrients, like wild blueberries or foods high in protein and omega 3’s. Maybe it’s about incorporating a minute breathing meditation after each work meeting and resting the brain. Perhaps you’ll integrate 20 minutes of fast walking each day this week. Or you might try aiming for at least 8 hours of sleep each night. Do what feels accessible and nourishing for you wherever you are this week, setting the intention that your brain is your ally, and your focus is on supporting its functioning.

Week 28: Neuroplasticity

Our thoughts determine our reality. Everything you think and how you perceive the world is shaped by the imprints and chemistry in your brain. Neuroplasticity is the nervous system’s ability to form new connections, strengthen existing ones, and reorganize as needed. Simply put, the brain changes in response to events and makes good guesses so we can interact with the world safely. When we think and learn, we change the way the brain functions. Some cells are programmed for death and others are removed when not put to use, because the brain is an efficient master organizer.
We can mimic the human adaptation of neuroplasticity to reprogram the mind. We can change our thoughts and utilize the strengthening mechanisms to become smarter, wiser, and more resilient. It’s not always our genetic makeup and predisposition for disease or things that happen to us that determine our ability to perceive our environment with dexterity, creativity, and strategy. We can choose how we respond and alter some influences that give us a fair shot at evolving to thrive. What we believe, what we nurture, and what we play on repeat becomes reality.
This week, use creative expression in a new way. This practice engages the brain’s neuroplasticity, helping to strengthen connections or build new ones where possible.
For example, if you gravitate toward using words to illustrate detailed stories, try telling a story solely through drawing or a collage of images. If you lean toward working with your hands more than verbal communication, try writing a story using new vocabulary and sensory detail. Perhaps you may try narrating a fairy tale where the characters are created from people in your life. There is no wrong way to do this—only to ensure you’re imagining and applying new ways to communicate, design or engage creatively.
Bonus: If you can make your way outside, try sketching an organism and observing how they engage with their environment. This approach takes on multiple brain areas and can spark curiosity from the natural world in a new way.

Week 29: Values

What does it mean to live in your values?
It’s about honoring the beliefs that are most important to you and practicing behaviors that support these beliefs. First they must be identified, and next, behaviors can be integrated so you are empowered to design your life with intention and stay true to these beliefs. Only then can you have the agency to stop negotiating with reality and allow the values you’ve outlined for your life to become non-negotiable. You no longer settle for that which does not serve you or waste time focusing on habits that deplete your inner reserves.
What values define your beliefs? How do they influence the way you make decisions?
Make a list of 10 values that fill you with a sense of purpose. For example, values can be personality driven, such as trust, integrity, loving, kindness, authenticity. They could be goal-oriented, as in making a positive difference, being financially stable, having strong health, or having a fulfilling job.
Personal values could also support others, such as that with community, connection, and environmental stewardship. Perhaps you want to prioritize family time over accumulating stress from overtime. There are many values that can be selected—but the next step is just as important as identifying which beliefs you hold true. This comes in the form of action—so the next part of this week’s practice is identifying one or two behaviors that can support one or more of your values. What can you do this week as an act of self-love that supports you in the hard work of living into these values?

Week 30: Water

As a species mostly composed of water (about 60%), it’s an incredibly important nutrient. Getting enough clean drinking water is not only a privilege, but essential for optimal functioning so the disparity remains, and we often do not respect this precious resource enough.
How do you make sure you’re not getting toxins or pharmaceuticals in your water? It’s beyond your body and part of the next level of Ecosystem, but as an individual you have a responsibility to yourself and your community to influence clean water rights.
At home, the best way to learn about the quality of your drinking water is to contact your local utility. They can tell you where your water comes from and how it is treated. If you don’t want to do that, or don’t want to take any risks, there are many water purification systems priced at different levels. There are endless benefits—and risks to avoid—by looking at your water quality and ensuring you’re getting enough.
Utilize your privilege and right as a citizen. In the United States, registration is open for voting, and you can decide how your water is influenced by voting for candidates and on policies that align with environmental stewardship. If you do anything this week, REGISTER TO VOTE at vote.gov.

Week 31: Leveling Up Movement

Integrating movement with intention is what yoga is all about, and generally speaking, all movement made with intention will have profound benefits on stronger regeneration for the body and mind. By introducing healthy stress in the form of movement (bouts of intense activity) followed by rest and recovery, you can reaffirm the body’s feeling of safety, just as she/he/they would have if they escaped from a predator (which is one of the ways we humans, and other organisms, developed such coordinated movement). The society many of us live in does not promote a feeling of safety when so much uncertainty constantly keeps us in a state of stress. Intentional movement can help the body and mind recover better and stronger.
Ultimately exercise of any form is not supposed to abuse the body. We’re going to focus on empowering the body to heal—and sometimes, that means movement is not actually movement at all but a perceptual intention of the experience of moving. Seem pretty out there? Explore this week’s activity.
Intentional movement, or even the intention itself, can support rapid muscle regeneration, strength, and resiliency. Depending on your mobility, choose one of the following to do this week:
1) After warming up with a light walk, engage your mind and scan through your body. When ready, set a timer for 30 seconds and sprint as fast as you possibly can. Then sit/lay down for as long as it takes for your body to feel recovered and heart rate lowered. Focus on your breathing. Then when you’re ready, stand back up and do it one more time followed by the same intentional rest. Do this two times spread out during the week.
2) Find a yoga video that is 10 minutes long, and be fully present while following along two times during the week.
3) Connect to each stroke or step while swimming or walking in a pool for 15 minutes once this week.
4) Turn on a song at random three times this week and dance. Bring in the joy, let the music reach every cell of your being. Be mindful of how your body moves, and let go of stagnant energy.
5) Set a timer for 5 minutes and lay on your back. Close your eyes, and imagine in your mind running along a beach or in a forest. Focus intentionally on what you see, what it smells like, how it feels to move with such ease and mindful intention. Do this 5 times this week.

Week 32: Self Perception

Cell death is just as important as cell life—woven across our bodies, our brains, our very thoughts—as real as the supernovae that give birth to new stars. In alignment with nature’s programming, energy cannot be created nor destroyed—only changed from one form to another. So it is here we might invite another deep shift in perspective; and in doing so, awareness of the power of perception is reinforced. Death to the thoughts that have limited our beliefs, shamed our wellbeing, fueled hatred and resentment. Birth to love, forgiveness, acceptance, and detachment to material things or situations beyond our control.
Each day you are given an opportunity to choose which habits and thinking processes can be integrated to help you improve in ways that feel good to you—but you are already enough. It’s time to shift the narrative that society transmuted from needing to prove yourself to be worthy into one of loving acceptance, knowing to your core that you are already worthy of being loved, because you are alive. You are a natural organism in the soup of life.
Lean into the nature of change. Here lies an invitation to be curious and release the perception of self that no longer serves you.
Notice the self-talk that is narrated in your mind this week. What thoughts control your perceived reality? As negative or harmful self-talk arises, politely say to your brain, “These thoughts are real, but they are not true.” Invite kindness and reframe the thought to one that is loving and accepting of being an imperfect animal just trying to do their best.

Week 33: Mind-Body Connection

Our brains create our experience, and there is a strong connection between what the mind senses and the body experiences. This mind-body connection within ourselves is often eroded as we age, inundated with complex systems, limiting rules, other people’s oppressive thoughts, and challenging situations that cause us to fall prey to automatic reactions based on previous programming. This in turn can stimulate the brain’s ability to predict situations to keep us safe from potentially dangerous situations in ways that are actually destructive in and of themselves.
When our mind-body connection is weak, we aren’t always able to decipher what where pain originates from—which can mean after countless doctors visits for pain, depression or anxiety, healing feels impossible. Broad diagnoses are made, medications prescribed, and suffering continues for months and years. We return to the idea that the brain keeps the score, and the body keeps the scorecard. In the absence of acute injury or disease, a symptom of pain may be caused by unresolved trauma or stress, or could even be manifested from personality traits that affect the way you respond to the world around you.
The goal of healing through mind-body connection is to reduce stress and pain and improve health by understanding the real underlying cause of symptoms, learning how to identify and express emotions related to stressful experiences, and engage in daily life with genuine loving awareness.
It’s worth noting that this kind of work can benefit greatly from a professional trained in psychophysiological healing such as myself, and simultaneously important to recognize this healing work will not be able to help everyone. There is current trauma still being inflicted on many people, and while we can work through healing some ancestral trauma, the hurt still being done makes it near impossible to overcome without systemic change.
The more you invest time and energy in strengthening mind-body connection, the more you’ll get out of it. By enhancing awareness to the present moment of what you’re thinking about, and how you’re feeling and experiencing sensations in the physical body, we spark neural-pathways in the brain to increase our resilience and reserves.
Sit or lie in a comfortable position. Scan the body from head to toe, stopping in any area that feels tense, painful, or constricted in some way. Observe the sensation. Release judgment and invite a deep breath into the area. Move on to the next area when you feel ready. Return to the breath each time your brain tries to flee to a thought outside this practice. Notice what narrative is being told. Build the awareness and connect the body’s breath with the mind’s gentle exploration of each area of the body. Notice how you feel after and repeat as often as you can through the week, especially if you notice feeling stressed, pressured, or hurried.
If you feel pain during this exercise or in general, tell yourself, “I am safe.” Try not to be afraid of the pain or attempt to change it. Remember that fear drives the danger signal to be stronger and will make the painful sensation worse.

Week 34: Sunlight

Since our cells are on a 24-hour clock, it’s a research-backed solution that getting sunlight in your eyes within the first hour or so in the morning can help regularize your full body circadian rhythm. Looking through a glass window is not enough—the best practice is to get outside as soon as possible and look into the horizon (not directly at the sun—ever. Protect those eyes!). If you wake early enough and it’s still dark out, try turning on as many lights as you can and go outside when possible. This practice will improve your energy levels through the day and your sleep at night.
There are added benefits of sunshine on the skin for vitamin D production, a hormone in the body that promotes a myriad of positive health benefits from bone growth to helping the body absorb and retain nutrients. We’re walking a tightrope for sun exposure, and your body will be unique for its requirements based on your ancestry and location.
Each day this week, aim to get 15 minutes of sunlight in your eyes first thing in the morning. Don’t look directly at the sun or wear sunglasses, and instead look out toward the sky or in the environment in which you find yourself. You could go for a walk, observe the environment, or even try journaling outside. Even in the colder months this practice will offer great benefits. Notice how you feel after a week of doing this, and see how you might integrate it into your daily habits for the rest of the year.

Week 35: Energy

How we spend our time and where we use our energy offers a direct evaluation into where we’re prioritizing (or not prioritizing) our values.
We may say that we value friends and family, feeling joy, and having good health, for example—but might realize that we actually spend 50 hours a week working at a job that makes us feel depleted and irritated when finished, aren’t sleeping well or eating in ways that nourish the body and brain, and rarely see friends—or worse, are short-tempered with family we share a home with.
Noticing where you spend your energy is a way to build awareness and find a way to influence change so you redirect your effort to areas that nourish and support your values.
This week do an energy audit. Mark how much time you sleep, work, socialize, prepare, reflect—evaluate every minute of your time. Then return to the values you laid out for your life weeks ago. Is where you’re dedicating your energy aligned with your values? What things can be released in order to better spend your energy in ways that serve your greater purpose?

Week 36: Leveling Up Sleep

Early on we looked at how restful we felt after a night’s sleep. Now we can deepen our habits and understand how sleep infrastructure affects the regeneration of cells across our body and system-wide functioning.
Aiming to get 7-9 hours of sleep is a starting point, and leveling up comes from the quality of this sleep—aiming to get at least an hour and a half of REM and deep sleep stages. There are many things that can benefit healthy sleep, including maintaining a regular sleep schedule, avoiding alcohol, not having caffeine within 10 hours of sleep, and using the myriad of sleep hygiene techniques like regular exercise, keeping a cool, dark room, and not using technology or bright lights within 2 hours of sleep.
Choose one of the habits above (or more than one if you’re feeling up for it), and make a regular practice this week to focus on integrating it into your sleep routine. Notice how you feel each morning when you wake and reflect on any challenges that keep you from keeping the practice going.

Week 37: Nature Heals

A strong dose of nature can benefit mood, energy, and mental and emotional health. Spending quality time in natural environments is strange for some and inaccessible for others—and yet, it is essential for operating in optimal functioning as an animal.
Nature is where we come from, and ecosystems often look starkly different from our concrete jungles. It’s not just about seeing natural landscapes. It’s about feeling the energy there, hearing the peaceful sounds, releasing the brain’s constant mental processing of fast-paced stimuli found in urban areas.
Being immersed in nature can lower stress levels, improve sleep, and create a sense of balance.
Choose a day and a location where you can spend 2 hours in nature this week. Bring curiosity and observe the organisms and their ecosystem. Release expectations and just be present. Notice how you feel after.

Week 38: Suffering

Pain is inevitable in a life where death is certain. We love and have loss. We get injured and sick. We have expectations and feel disappointed. While all this is true, we create our own suffering when we wish things were different than they are, amplify negative emotions, and attach our identity to the outcome of our actions (or worse, attach our identity to what we think others think about us).
While we continue to strengthen our mind-body connection, we can begin to look beyond just ridding uncomfortable symptoms and understand the root cause of suffering, thereby inviting loving support to truly heal.
Evaluate an area of your life that you feel suffers from pain, anxiety, sadness, despair, anger, resentment, or any kind of resistance to what is. Notice what happens when you amplify the feelings versus when you invite acceptance love, releasing the power from the sensation. Can you invite more ease and gratitude into the discomfort? The pain can still exist, but how might we change the perspective we have on it to ease suffering?

Week 39: Wisdom

Living “pono” (which comes from the word Ho'oponopono) in ancient Hawaiian culture is a spiritual practice that involves learning to heal all things by accepting “total responsibility” for everything that surrounds us—in a sense, it’s a way of taking ownership over our behavior, offering reconciliation, and paying homage to human elders and all the rest of nature’s elders. It symbolizes a deep connection to place, looking at the bigger picture for which we are inherently and intricately connected.
By tapping into Indigenous wisdom from peoples around the world, we can glean insights into a more regenerative and reciprocal way of interacting with each other and our environment. Learning from our ancestors, and fellow species (the survivors), teaches humility, grace, and a sense of responsibility, agency and honoring of abundance. We must recognize as humans, and most of us settlers, whose lands we touch, how we may respect our elders, and where we can deepen our connection to the natural world we are very much a part of.
This is one way to approach the ethos of biomimicry. The (re)connect element of biomimicry is about healing with nature, accepting our oneness as part of the natural world, and perceiving all life as valuable as our own. When we emulate nature, we’re essentially fitting into the system from which we’re apart and integrating strategies to function like so. This is not a new practice—but a renewed invitation to embrace.
Seek out an elder in your community. They may be a grandmother, a leader, or perhaps an organism that has been living there much longer than you. See what you can learn from them, what wisdom they have to offer. Do so respectfully and lovingly—with no expectations except to be open to anything you may learn.

Ecosystem

October - December

“We must tune in to our ability to see beyond the physical reality that surrounds us, and awaken to the vast unseen world that exists. Then we can begin to see beyond sight and to hear beyond sound. We see the underlying structures that support our world, and life begins to take on new shape, new meaning.” ― Sherri Mitchell

At the Ecosystem level, this BUILDS season’s weekly reflections connect us more deeply with the world around us, recognizing that what happens outside our bodies impacts what happens inside—as well as the converse: how we impact the world around us.

Nature is an essential part of our existence. In fact, it is our existence, because we are one in the same. Here we re-arrive to awareness of living on planet Earth: our home. In this realm, we must abide by planetary limits and boundaries for these are conditions that Life has evolved as we know it due to the dynamic changes occurring at the micro and macro levels. Here we observe the ecosystems services, biodiversity, growth and evolution, and cocktail of liquids, solids, and gasses that allow us and our planet-mates to breathe, feed, and breed. All plays into our own survival and ability to thrive sustainability and holistically.

Beyond our physical bodies, we can observe the vast biodiversity that surrounds us and an array of mentors that have evolved in all shapes and sizes, developing countless strategies to survive in the context of Earth’s abundance. Truthfully, scientists cannot actually confirm where time, space, and matter come from so theories guide us; and we enjoy the play of consciousness, which is always up for interpretation.

Learning from our wise elders and continuing to integrate development with growth, we continue building in this last season, cultivating a deeper sense of interconnectedness and loving awareness.

Week 40 BUILD: Environment

Reflection: We influence our environment just as our environment influences us.

In today’s modern society, it’s nearly impossible to live a completely clean life free of toxins, because so many unintentional consequences have been built into the infrastructure, such as lead or microplastics in our drinking water. We often cannot control the soil in which our food grows. Endocrine (hormonal) disruptors can be found in the lining of our food containers, makeup, shampoo, and beyond even into furniture. It’s impossible to avoid smog in an urban area or smoke in a town prone to neighboring wildfires. However, we need not fear our environment. We can only try to influence some things within our purchasing power and do the best we can.

The other side of this intentional behavior is that what we purchase, or how we vote, also impacts the environment around us. By choosing to buy clothes made of sustainably-grown bamboo versus polyester, for example, we don’t unintentionally put microplastics back into our waterways. By voting for legislation banning single-use plastics, we help prevent more waste from polluting our oceans. Some things are beyond our control, and yet in some other areas we can make a difference.

Try this: This week, consider where your clothes are made, what they are made out of, and how they are made. How do the purchases you make affect the environments in which they are made, and what happens at the end of your use? Are there ways to support sustainably-made clothing without spending more resources than you have? How can you shift your purchasing to consider the environment in which you live and that which you affect based on what you buy?

Week 41: Contagious

Typically when we talk about being contagious we’re referencing spreading disease. However, energy can be contagious in many forms, including emotions. When we compliment others, we spread kindness. When we yell at others, we can spread anger (or fear). Everything we do has a ripple effect in some way; and when we use this intention toward helping someone, or many, in our community—or perhaps even beyond into our ecosystems, governments, and planet as a whole—we can make profoundly positive effects.
Bottom line: just as a virus is contagious, so is your mood.
Find a way to compliment someone each day this week without any expectation for return. Simply offer kindness and trust the love will spread.

Week 42: Deepening Nature Connection

When we recognize just how interconnected we are to the natural world, the studies behind forest bathing improving mental and emotional health make a lot of sense. This is something you don’t need to read in an academic paper to know to be true, it’s something you can directly experience yourself by visiting a grove of trees, gardening, or listening to bird songs.
It feels right to connect with a form of nature (this could be immersement in a forest or as simple as sitting in a patch of grass with your dog). It feels right, because it’s our origin story. The natural world and its diverse elements symbolize where we come from, and this is not just biologically passed on through genes—it’s our birthright as homo sapiens living part of the animal kingdom, despite how foreign it may feel sometimes behind constructed walls.
Tap into your five senses as you sit quietly in a natural environment: feel the healing medicine that comes from reconnecting to this place and then notice the stark difference from walking down a busy street.

Week 43: Waste

The counterbalance of life affirms that for each nutrient there is a waste product. Fungi are champion organisms in waste elimination, using enzymes and other chemical reactions to break down waste and extract energy for renewed use. On the forest floor, there’s always balance—and everything is a nutrient.
However, in today’s modern human society we have seemingly tipped the scale on waste, culminating in massive landfills, pollution, and disease. Our nutrient cycles have been broken, and it’s nearly impossible to live without leaving some trace in most areas in the world. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try our best to do what we can.
Nature uses materials and energy in efficient ways, and we can learn from and model this behavior by minimizing waste, reducing water use, and in general consuming less.
This week, pay close attention to how much you throw away. How much packaging is necessary? If packaging is unavoidable, can you opt for products that prioritize biodegradability or recyclability? Can you choose items in the grocery store, for example, that aren’t wrapped in plastic? Are there materials that could be reused? How might you be like fungi and turn waste into nutrients—considering scraps from veggies to make broth or purchasing the “ugly” produce from places like Imperfect Foods?
What are some tangible ways that you can reduce waste?

Week 44: Vote

Humans aren’t the only animals to use a democratic process. While they might not vote for a leader, they do regularly make collective decisions that influence their everyday lives. We often think about voting as it relates to a presidential nominee, but in reality, lower level district representatives and legislation can often make much bigger differences.
Next week is your chance to vote. Take the time this week to look at what’s on the docket for your county, and become informed on what may be impacting your values. By participating in the system, you get to use your right as a citizen to influence change.

Week 45: Community

Your community includes people that live near you, groups you may participate in that share interests, or those that share a culture or belief system with you. Resilient communities, such as those found in the “Wood Wide Web,” effectively and fairly distribute resources and communicate with one another. Ultimately, the most resilient communities are those that have high biodiversity and are deeply interconnected.
Unfortunately, there is an epidemic of relational poverty in today’s world of screens and seemingly invisible, alienated suffering. Even though our ancestral tight-knit tribes have seemingly dissipated, we can still return to the understanding that we each are part of a community and make an impact.
Plenty of research shows the benefit of having support and love shared between other humans (and other animals). Being in the mere presence of others can synchronize heartbeats and breathing rhythms, which of course could be a positive or harmful truth.
Before we truly understand the benefits of contributing to a community, we must first recognize that other people have had different experiences, have responded to these experiences uniquely, and thus are as foreign to you as you are to them. Not being aware of this can cause misunderstandings, assumptions, judgment, and a slew of other responses. Basically, everyone sees the world differently.
Before we can commune peacefully together, we must learn to respect these differences, greet conflict with empathy, and recognize everyone is coming together not only for means of survival, but because community has helped our species thrive.
Notice how becoming aware of other people, issues, or situations grows empathy and compassion. How does this awareness bring you closer to the people around you? Are there bonds readily available to you that can be strengthened? How might you contribute to your community in a more authentic and connected way?
PLUS: VOTE! If you haven’t yet already, you can use your democratic right to directly influence your community by voting in the 2024 election.
The power is yours.

Week 46: Eat Local

We are deeply attuned to the environment in which we live; and when we eat locally, we support our microbiomes, immune systems, and the community in which we are a part.
Buying locally is also a great way to embrace seasonal produce, which can often be more affordable buying organic. There are also additional sustainability benefits for choosing food that travels less distance to get to your market. Plus, locally grown fruits and vegetables are typically free of the chemicals that are added to support freshness during transportation.
Depending on where you live, you may be influenced more or less by seasons and tuning in to your body's needs throughout the year can be a beautiful way to learn about eating locally in alignment with your health. The ultimate goal is to support local, regenerative farms that do not use synthetic chemicals.
This week, research what local produce is available to you this season and make a point to stock the house with fresh goodies. If you’re living in North America, the fall’s cool, dry weather has brought nutrients like apples, beets, broccoli, carrots, collard greens, kale, mushrooms, parsnips, pears, persimmons, pumpkins, spinach, and winter squash.
Notice how you feel when introducing local ingredients.
How might you more deeply connect with the farmers and the love they put into making the food available for your consumption?

Week 47: Home

Just as you are feeding your body with healthy nutrients to support your body’s functioning, creating a home that nourishes your health can be just as important. A home that feels safe, comfortable, welcoming, and offers love can feel empowering and support your pursuit of a joy-filled life.
Many organisms build homes, and what we’ve learned is most are designed to protect from the elements and raise young. We humans go a step further and often have deeper connections to these spaces we’ve created. All are bio-individual—some may prefer travel and their home changes often. Others seek to live in the same home for all their lives. Some may prefer rural environments, others busy cities. Some may like minimal design while others surround themselves with decorations.
We can’t always change our living situation to make it more safe. But we can work toward creating safety and comfort inside of ourselves. We can also detox our home environments to release what we no longer need, reducing toxin exposure (such as in furniture, cleaning and beauty products, clothing, or pesticides in food), and try to improve indoor air quality. Filling the space with plants, maintaining a clean, cool sleep space, or positioning sitting areas that look toward the window are some ways to support home health. Ultimately, it’s important to recognize how your home can reflect your values, support your goals, and nourish your health and happiness.
Reflect on your home environment and how it makes you feel. What would your ideal home feel like? How is it different from your current situation, and what are some ways within your control that you can make changes?

Week 48: Gratitude

Nothing changes your life like perspective.
Adopting a gratitude practice allows us to shift perspective to one of appreciation. Gratitude for the abundance of the natural world that surrounds us, gratitude for the times of love, and gratitude for feelings of goodness. Also—gratitude for the lessons and strength we gain from painful or challenging experiences. Celebrating what we learn, how we grow, and how we overcome adversity can offer a stimulating source of reverence for being alive.
Practicing gratitude invites a shift in thought and allows us to find the light in the darkness, while also not taking present moments for granted.
Everything is energy, including your thoughts and words. Use the intentions and affirmations you've been working with to normalize gratitude for all that it is to be alive, because today, we have the privilege to breathe.
Develop a daily gratitude practice this week near the end of your day. You can write or merely say outloud 3 things you are grateful for that day. It could be friends and family you get to share a meal with or perhaps you are making progress toward healthier sleep habits, nutrient consumption, exercise, or balancing stress levels. Whatever comes up for you, acknowledge and feel reverence for being alive today.