The Single Change That Has Made My Life Better
AFTER THE HOLIDAYS, I want less. Less food, less spending, fewer commitments on the calendar, a break from cocktails—while breaking out the Crockpot. I crave quieter exercise (solitary walks in the snow, anyone?) and slower books, the kind of novels with such lovely writing I linger over sentences and pause to appreciate allusions. I’ve also started doing something called cocooning. I first learned about it at the Sensei wellness retreat in Hawaii (which I wrote about in our September 2021 issue). During biofeedback sessions at Sensei, I saw—right there on a little readout—what happened to me physically when I altered what I was doing mentally. So to make deep breathing, meditation, and self-compassion part of my routine, I began pulling my sedan into the gravel parking lot of a nature preserve…
