If you’re an empath, a sensitive soul, or simply someone who feels the undercurrent of the world a little more deeply, this season, year, life may be asking a lot of you.
I notice things first in my own body. The collective hum of uncertainty. Anxiety and rage caused by a simple news update. Feeling disconnected from my day. Restlessness. Then it begins to show up in my therapy practice. One client after another feeling overwhelmed, depleted, and hopeless. As if our own personal lives don’t offer enough stress, we now live and breathe chaos in our politics, healthcare systems and basically every infrastructure of our society. It’s too much.
And for those of us with sensitive tentacles, we can feel it all. The line between what is ours and what belongs to the collective can become blurry.
Our emotions need to be digested just like our food. Most of us are walking around with extreme emotional constipation. We take in headlines, conversations, social media, community anxiety—but we can’t let it go. Over time, this can leave us feeling exhausted, reactive, disconnected, or and depressed. I know it, because I’ve felt it too.
Self-Care as a Political Act
In times like these, self-care can feel indulgent. There’s often an unspoken message that we should be doing more, staying informed, staying activated, staying vigilant. Don’t stay home! Get out to the protests, the gatherings, where your voice can be heard. Whatever you do, don’t slow down!! While this approach is good at times, it’s only a small piece of the resistance.
You see, caring for your nervous system is preparation, not withdrawal.
The writer and activist Audre Lorde famously wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” When systems feel unstable or unjust, tending to your body and heart becomes a quiet refusal to be depleted. It is a way of sustaining your capacity to show up for what matters.
Burnout does not serve movements. Dysregulation does not deepen dialogue. Chronic overwhelm does not create lasting change.
Regulation does. When you are grounded, you make clearer decisions. When you are resourced, you engage with more intention. When your heart is tended, you can remain open without collapsing under the weight of the collective. We can build up our emotional muscles to sit with the feelings that come and go, without collapsing.
Self-care, in this context, is not bubble baths and avoidance. It is boundary-setting. It is discernment. It is learning to ask, Is this mine to carry? It is choosing rest so that your compassion remains intact.
Returning to the Heart
One of the most powerful practices I teach is discernment. Not every feeling that moves through you originated within you. Learning to gently pause and ask, Is this mine? can be transformative. So can placing a hand on your heart and simply noticing your breath. So can moving your body slowly enough to hear what it’s trying to say.
Staying open-hearted during turbulent times does not mean absorbing everything. It means cultivating enough internal steadiness to respond rather than react.
I hope you can join us in this supportive space where we can slow down together. Through guided instruction, reflective discussion, gentle yoga, and subtle energetic awareness, we’ll explore tangible tools for regulating the nervous system, strengthening emotional boundaries, and reconnecting to inner resource. My intention is for you to leave feeling clearer, more grounded, and more at home in your own body.
You don’t have to shut down your sensitivity to survive these times. You can learn to hold it with skill and compassion. YogaOne Workshop scheduling available here.
**If you’ve been carrying more than your share, consider this your invitation to set some of it down. Spring is a season of renewal. Tending your own heart is not stepping away from the world; it is strengthening your ability to stay in it with courage.
