When Life Feels Intense, Try This…
What if, instead of trying to figure everything out, we let ourselves see a little more softly?
Ok, what does that mean, right?…
Lately, I’ve been noticing how easy it is for me to slip into tunnel vision—fixating on what should be happening, how things ought to unfold, or where I think I’m supposed to be by now. Then I think, “chill!… everything is fine. Enjoy where you are right now.” I keep finding that when my gaze gets too narrow, my body tightens. My breath shortens. My life starts to feel hard.
I’ve been letting myself pause and let my gaze soften—both literally and metaphorically—and I can see something shifts. That allows me to step back from the urgency woven into everyday life sometimes, release my attachment to a specific outcome, and then I take in the bigger picture.
In that wider view, I start to notice what I was missing all along: subtle moments of ease, quiet support, unexpected beauty, and small joys that don’t demand anything from me.
This month, our theme is Soften Your Gaze.
It’s an invitation to loosen our grip, to stop forcing clarity, and to trust that when we widen our perspective, life often reveals exactly what we need. Softening the gaze doesn’t mean we stop caring—it means we stop straining to get anywhere but where we are right now. We learn to meet ourselves and our lives with a little more curiosity, compassion, and patience.
This theme will be gently woven through everything we explore together this month:
* Virtual Yoga Deep Dive: practices that invite steadiness of gaze without rigidity
* In-person classes: play with movement and breath that encourage shifting of external gaze, but keeping the internal gaze
* Women’s Day Long Retreat- Root To Rise: join myself, Linda Wellington, and Elena Larsen for an amazing day long retreat that will leave you feeling restored and energized.
As we move through February, let’s give ourselves permission to slow down. To relax the muscles around our eyes. Maybe try to look again—with softness, with trust, with a little more grace.
Sometimes clarity doesn’t come from trying harder and doing more. Sometimes it arrives when we finally soften enough to see it.
