We are continually experiencing the conditioning to hold on, tighten, or resist.

When you are in touch with your body and heart, it allows you to then be in the world and act with intention and clarity and kindness.

We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.

Stories about ourselves and about the world continually arise in our minds and shape our beliefs about reality.

Suffering is our call to attention, our call to investigate the truth of our beliefs.

This longing to express and celebrate life is innate and quite beautiful.

Offer some gesture of kindness to yourself. Sometimes it's just a message, to say: "It's okay. You're going to be okay. We've been through this before." The intention is reassurance, that you are not alone and you can do this. It is the most powerful way to come out of what I call the "trance of unworthiness."