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Well, hello again.

I have been absent from this newsletter for the entire season and most of the summer. At first, I wanted to say there was no excuse except that I simply had not made myself sit down and do it.

That is how easy it can be to lose track of the things that are working.

You find a rhythm. You begin creating momentum. Your life starts moving in a direction that feels good—and then you get comfortable. Before you realize it, you have procrastinated your way right back out of the vibration that helped you feel so aligned in the first place.

Or, as I was tempted to say about myself, you “lazy” your way back out.

But that is not the entire truth of what happened to me this summer.

My schedule changed dramatically. I went from teaching two or three yoga classes a day to teaching two or three classes a week. In our restoration business, I went from having three or four estimates a day to sometimes having only three or four estimates in an entire week.

Then I got sick at the beginning of the summer and remained sick for nearly a month. I recovered, only to become sick again and spend another month trying to regain my strength. Those illnesses were followed by what felt like another Epstein-Barr flare-up.

When the summer rains and humidity arrived, my body responded in the familiar way it often does. I do not know why I expected this year to be different, but I did.

For much of the summer, I have only had enough energy to take care of what absolutely needed to be done each day. I have focused on maintaining my physical fitness, nourishing my body, tending to my garden, caring for my home, teaching the classes on my schedule, and completing the work directly in front of me.

Everything else—including this newsletter—fell by the wayside.

Yes, there has been some procrastination. Yes, losing my normal rhythm made it easier to put things off. But there has also been genuine illness, fatigue, and recovery.

Both things can be true.

I can hold myself accountable without shaming myself. I can acknowledge where I stopped following through while still honoring what my body has endured.

That may be one of the greatest lessons of healing: learning the difference between avoiding your life and responding compassionately when your body truly needs less from you.

And now, I am beginning again.

Not perfectly. Not all at once. I am simply taking the next step—and this newsletter is one of those steps.

One of the projects I am most excited to return to is creating a beautiful, restorative indoor day retreat at the end of August.

This gathering will include:

• Gentle, restorative yoga
• Breathwork
• Meditation
• Sound therapy
• Nervous-system regulation practices
• Mindful movement and guided rest
• Additional healing experiences and opportunities for connection

The complete schedule, venue details, and pricing will be announced within the next two weeks.

This retreat will not be about escaping your life for a day. It will be about creating enough space within yourself that you can return to your life feeling more present, more grounded, and more capable of meeting what is in front of you.

So many of us have forgotten what it feels like to be truly rested.

We may stop working, but our minds continue racing. We sit down, but our bodies remain tense. We go to bed exhausted, yet we cannot fall asleep. We may even wake up feeling as though we spent the entire night preparing for something that never happened.

That is why this retreat will focus so deeply on the nervous system.

The sympathetic nervous system is often described as our fight-or-flight system. It helps mobilize the body when we need to respond to a challenge, danger, deadline, emergency, or intense demand.

The sympathetic response is not bad. We need it.

The problem begins when the body repeatedly prepares for danger but rarely receives a clear signal that the danger has passed.

The parasympathetic nervous system is associated with restoration—slower breathing, a steadier heart rate, digestion, recovery, and the ability to settle. These two systems are not simple on-and-off switches; they continually adjust in response to what is happening around and within us. But when stress becomes prolonged, it can affect the cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, muscular, respiratory, and nervous systems.

Living in a continually activated state can look like:

• Waking up and immediately reaching for your phone
• Rushing through your morning
• Drinking caffeine before eating or hydrating
• Holding your breath without realizing it
• Clenching your jaw or tightening your shoulders
• Moving from one responsibility to another without pausing
• Feeling tired but unable to sit still
• Experiencing digestive changes when life becomes stressful
• Reaching bedtime physically exhausted but mentally alert

Your body may have spent the entire day receiving messages that said:

Move. Hurry. Prepare. Solve. Protect. Keep going.

Then, at bedtime, you suddenly expect it to become quiet simply because you turned off the light.

But the nervous system does not always respond to a command. It responds to patterns, repetition, environment, sensation, breath, movement, and perceived safety.

Food and beverages can become part of this pattern too—not because one particular food is universally “bad,” but because stimulants, energy swings, alcohol, heavy late meals, and eating habits that do not support your individual body can add another layer of stress. Caffeine is a stimulant that can interfere with sleep, and research suggests that it may heighten cortisol responses during stress in some people.

This is why nervous-system regulation cannot be reduced to one supplement, one yoga pose, or one perfect meal.

It is a relationship you build with your body.

One of the most direct ways we can communicate safety to the body is through the breath.

Slow, comfortable diaphragmatic breathing—especially when the exhale is allowed to become slightly longer—can help support the body’s natural relaxation response. Research suggests that slow breathing can influence parasympathetic activity and may modestly reduce blood pressure and cortisol levels.

The vagus nerve is one of the major communication pathways involved in parasympathetic regulation. It connects the brain with areas of the heart, lungs, and digestive system. Through gentle breathing, mindful movement, meditation, and restorative practices, we can create conditions that help the body move away from constant mobilization and toward recovery.

Yoga gives the body movement without always demanding performance.

Breathwork gives the mind something steady to follow.

Meditation teaches us to witness what is happening without immediately reacting to it.

Sound gives our attention a place to rest. Research on music-based interventions suggests that they may be helpful for improving some physical and psychological markers associated with stress, although sound therapy should support—not replace—appropriate medical or mental-health care.

Together, these practices can become a bridge back to ourselves.

Place both feet on the floor.

Allow your shoulders to soften.

Breathe in gently through your nose for a comfortable count of four.

Exhale slowly for a count of six.

Repeat this five times without forcing the breath.

Notice whether your jaw softens. Notice your shoulders. Notice the space behind your eyes. You do not have to make anything happen. Simply observe.

This is where regulation begins—not with judgment, but with awareness.

When I first began practicing yoga, my body was a mess.

I was living with pain, physical limitations, stress, digestive issues, and a nervous system that did not always understand what it meant to feel safe.

My journey with yoga has not been a perfectly straight road. I have experienced injuries. I have been forced to stop, adapt, rebuild, and begin again many times.

Eighteen months ago, I broke my tailbone and fractured vertebrae in my back. That recovery has not been easy.

And yet today, my back feels better than it has felt in years—even better than it felt before the accident.

Every time my body has been injured, yoga has helped me return to it with greater awareness. I do not always heal quickly, and I do not always heal in the way I expect. But when I come back, I come back understanding my body more deeply.

Yoga did not make me invincible.

It gave me a relationship with myself that pain could not take away.

Yoga taught me to take up space.

It taught me to feel safe inside my body.

It taught me to become the observer of myself—to witness my thoughts, reactions, fears, and patterns without immediately judging them.

Most of all, yoga helped me find a deep and lasting self-love.

Not the kind of self-love that depends on being productive, healthy, thin, successful, energetic, or perfect.

The kind that says:

I am still worthy when I need to rest.

I am still worthy when I lose my rhythm.

I am still worthy when I must begin again.

I am grateful for yoga not because it gave me a perfect body or a perfect life, but because it continues to give me a way home.

Maybe you have also wandered away from something that was working.

Maybe your movement practice disappeared. Maybe your eating changed. Maybe you stopped writing, creating, meditating, tending your garden, or following through on the plans you made for yourself.

You do not have to punish yourself before you are allowed to return.

You do not have to fix everything today.

Choose one action that reminds your body and mind of who you are becoming.

Take one walk.

Prepare one nourishing meal.

Send one email.

Roll out your yoga mat.

Take five slow breaths.

Begin with what you can do today, and allow tomorrow to meet you when it arrives.

Thank you for allowing me the space to recover, reflect, and return. I am deeply grateful that you are still here.

More information about the August 29 retreat will be coming very soon.

Until then, breathe deeply, nourish yourself well, and remember that beginning again is still beginning.

Peace and Love,

Laura Poche
For the Love of Gut
Loving yourself from the inside out