Three Things This Week

On Regulation, Devotion, and Wandering

Hi gang,

I’ve been thinking about how we connect here, and I wanted to try something new based on your feedback. I know many of you love the Sunday essay; those longer pieces where I work through an idea or observation. But I’ve also heard from many of you asking for something more practical. Something to carry with you. Something to practice, engage with, chew on throughout the week.

So starting today, you’ll get two newsletters from me each week. One will still be that long-form exploration, me mulling over whatever’s caught my attention in the world of health, wellness, business or spirituality. Or lately, the business of spirituality. The other is what you’re reading now: Three Things This Week. Consider it a replacement for “What I’m Thinking About This Week,” but more focused. More useful, I hope.

Paid subscribers will get full access to both newsletters each week. Free subscribers will get one. I’m spending more time and research on these than I expected - and I hope you find enough value in them to support this work. But if the $5 monthly subscription feels like too much right now, just send me an email. I’ll give you a paid subscription, no questions asked.

Over the coming months, I’ll also be sharing conversations with my teachers, friends, and people whose voices I think you need to hear. People who’ve shaped how I see all of this.

I hope you enjoy.

Something to Practice: Listening Through the Body

Everyone says it. Listen to your body. Trust your intuition.

I’ve said it myself a hundred times in a class.

But here’s what I’ve learned after all these years: believing what your body tells you becomes nearly impossible when your nervous system is dysregulated.

When you’re in fight-or-flight, your body doesn’t talk to you. It screams. Every signal feels like a threat. Intuition gets buried under anxiety, stress, survival mode. The science is clear on this: when your nervous system is stuck in overdrive, your prefrontal cortex goes offline. That’s the part that helps you make good decisions. So instead of clarity, you get confusion. Instead of intuition, reactivity.

In those moments, how do you know if it’s fear or intuition speaking?

You regulate first.

Go offline for a weekend. Try breathwork. Visit an art gallery. Move your body. Walk somewhere without your phone. These aren’t luxury practices, they’re the groundwork for actually hearing yourself again. Intuition isn’t some magical superpower. It’s physiological. It’s already in you.

The practice is learning to listen through your body, not just to it. Notice how your breath shifts in certain situations or around certain people. Notice when you feel calm, when you feel wired. Pay attention without needing to change anything yet.

Calm the noise first. The wisdom comes after.

This week: Three times a day, set a timer for three minutes. One hand on your chest, one on your belly (I know it sounds cheesy, trust me)Notice where the breath moves, where it doesn’t. Then just breathe slowly into your lower ribs and belly. This is regulation in real time. This is how trust begins.

Something to Learn: The Alchemy of Devotion

You know I’ve been thinking a lot about spirituality in the age of AI. About what it means to stay ‘human’ when everything around us is becoming automated, predicted, streamlined. And I keep coming back to devotion. There’s something that happens in the brain when we encounter it. I’m not talking about rules or buildings. Though there’s nothing wrong with those. But the kind that pulls you into relationship with something vast and unnamed.

I’ve felt it standing at Big Sur with the wind tearing through me. I’ve felt it listening to D’Angelo’s “I Found My Smile Again” at 2 a.m., the song holding me like an old friend. I’ve felt it sitting with someone in their grief, saying nothing, just being there. These moments don’t ask for belief. They ask for presence. And they change us.

For some people, the sacred lives in temples and texts. For others, it’s in nature, music, the small tenderness between people. Neither is more right. But when we let structure become a cage instead of a doorway, we miss the thousand other ways the world speaks to us.

Neuroscience backs this up. When we experience awe: whether from redwoods or a piece of music that cracks us open, the default mode network in our brain lights up. This is the same network tied to empathy, self-reflection, connection. When we touch something larger than ourselves, the ego quiets. The line between self and other softens. We remember we’re not separate.

This is devotion as a practice. Not performance. Not proof. Just showing up to ordinary moments with reverence. Choosing presence. Letting mystery stay mysterious while leaning in close enough to feel it.

What calls you into that space? Where do you feel connected to something beyond yourself?

That’s your altar.

Something to Enjoy: A Playlist to Walk With

Sometimes you don’t need instructions. You just need music and permission to wander.

I made you this playlist. Songs that hold space. Songs that let you feel without forcing words around it.

Put your phone on do not disturb. Walk somewhere new, or walk your usual route but notice three things you’ve never seen before.

No agenda. No optimization. The Andrew Huberman podcast episode on sound and music is fascinating discussion on the power of these outlets for our health and wellbeing.

Beyond that - this playlist is just for you and the moment and whatever surfaces.

That’s all for this week.

Three small invitations.

The rest is yours.