I don't like being bothered when I'm on my device or computer

Faltering, he paused and then answered, Uh. Maybe later she'd bundle up and make a snowman, but for now: cartoons and salty snacks. It was a snow day! Now that we're supposedly grown up, there are still days we just want to get back into bed. Days we want to pretend we're sick, just rest. Eat what we want with no thought, watch whatever we want on our screens, sleep. Part of staying sober is hearing the voice inside that cries for a break sometimes--from work, from parenting, from being a citizen in the world--and figuring out how to answer it. We sure used to know how to give ourselves a break at the company party, chasing and finding oblivion via the open bar. From the beginning of Thanksgiving through New Year's Day was often a very thorough departure from sanity, and, in many ways, we still totally want that feeling--minus the hangover and inappropriate blackout texts to a coworker and the dented car. When we need oblivion, or a break from the mundane, we can also indulge in an adult snow day. It's one easy way to be happy--taking a day off for absolutely no reason--but it seems so hard and illicit. Incidentally, this commercialisation was initiated by a pilot who had obviously reached a breaking point, having inefficiently dragged suitcases around for years. Clearly, they too were in possession of some `experiential insight'. Today we cannot imagine heavy luggage with no wheels on it, and many might assume that we could have easily solved the problem ourselves. But the reality is it took more than just noticing how heavy bags were to carry -- it required insight to recognise this as an opportunity. Our minds are data banks filled with useful intelligence, but it requires insight to transform this `inside information' into a new discovery. A good friend of ours, Peter Cook, is the CEO of Thought Leaders. It's an organisation that helps smart people become commercially smart also. He tells the story of going skiing with his wife, Trish. Now, both Peter and Trish are accomplished skiers, but Pete assures us, `Trish is way better.

On a ski holiday they enrolled in a high-performance ski school - essentially the training that ski instructors do. For some of my clients, it means having their partner take care of the kids for an allotted amount of practice time each day; Set aside some time to think about what adding a breathwork practice to your day might look like and where it would feel best in your current schedule, and be willing to experiment with different approaches until you find what works best for you. I suggest that you practice daily, and when I say that, I mean it with as much softness and spaciousness as possible. You don't want your breathwork practice to be one more thing on your never-ending to-do list. Instead, frame your breathwork practice as your time each day to do a deeper level of self-care by getting in touch with your life energy, your emotions, and your body. In the beginning, it's preferable to practice around the same time each day. This helps reinforce our nervous systems, which learn through repetition, and sets up our body to know, just like we know when we're hungry or need to stretch, that it's time to practice. With time and dedication, your body and mind will come to look forward to your breathwork practice as a time to nourish yourself, gain clarity, and center yourself in the here and now. For those of you who work for yourselves or have busy family lives with ever-changing schedules, practice each day when you can. You will still receive the benefits of the practice and, again, the real key is to get it in each day just like you do your veggies and water. Dressage is a French word that simply means training, but equine dressage has as its goal perfect communication between rider and horse. Developed from the training of war horses in the Middle Ages, in which a knight needed his horse to respond immediately to commands, dressage evolved to finely choreographed performance. The highest level includes the airs above the ground of the Austrian Lipizzaner and the Spanish Andalusian horses, but there are many levels for riders and horses less accomplished, including novice, intermediate, and advanced training classes. Although dressage may seem artificial, horses are not asked to do anything that they do not execute in the wild state, and riders learn to communicate with the horse through very subtle movements. Jumping lessons included stadium courses constructed of rails, gates, and other hurdles set in an indoor or outdoor arena and cross-country courses in which more natural-looking obstacles, such as brush piles, coops, logs, and stone fences, are built in fields and woods. At hunter stables the object is not only getting over the jump but achieving regular stride and creating a perfect arc in midair. I appreciate the naturalness of combined training in which a good jump is one in which no rails are displaced and both horse and rider are together on the other side. Riding a horse over a jump inspires feelings of power, flight, and fearlessness. Even several strides away from the obstacle, the accomplished rider knows whether the jump will be successful.

Perhaps pole-vaulters know something of the same thrill. Can you tell me a little bit about your company? What is your name? Frustrated, angry, each word clipped, I said again, Can you just please tell me about your company! We are a fifteen-year-old nutritional company and do business in forty-five different countries. How much are you paying? Well, he stammered, how many pounds do you want to lose? Why couldn't he just tell me how much the position paid? Embarrassed, I answered, stiffly, Fifty. He seemed relieved. What is your name and address? Once in a while--or anyway, once--just do it. Shed the shame. Stay in your pajamas. Say goodbye to your family, or your roommates, or your startup company where you spend eighty hours a week, turn off your phone, and lock the bedroom door. Slip under the sheets, courting dreams. When you wake up, read trashy magazines and watch House Hunters and put on a pistachio-green face masque. Amanda once spent an entire day reading and slowly eating a bag of chocolate chips because there were no cookies in the cupboard. Regular life will be waiting when you eventually open the door. But for now, play hooky in a snow globe of your own, the hours sparkling as they fall gently, uncounted.

You're allowed to disappear. As part of the preparation they both had to rate themselves out in a bunch of different categories (skiing bumps, jumping, steep slopes, etc). When Pete submitted their self-assessments to their guide he also somewhat sheepishly admitted that he had scored higher than Trish, even though she was definitely the stronger skier. Don't worry, the instructor said, we always downgrade the assessment for men and upgrade it for women. Now, aside from the sad state of affairs with regard to gender expectations and relative self-belief, this story also demonstrates the power of insight. The ski guide clearly had enough experience and insight to not simply trust the data given to them and had devised their own system, however rough and ready, to make the performance and results more reliable, and a lot less dangerous. This is meaning-making in action. It's not simply trusting the numbers, but adding the numbers to our understanding, experience and instincts. Ultimately, data is incredibly valuable, but it is rarely a complete picture of reality. Creating meaning beyond numbers; Developing a capacity to transform raw data into meaning and value is a skill we will always need. It's more important to practice than it is to feel like your practice has to look a certain way. If you already have a meditation practice, you can add one of the breathwork practices to it. If all of this is new to you, then start by choosing a practice in the next section that resonates with you in that moment. For those who are new to establishing a practice, I recommend starting with one practice and doing it every day for two weeks. At the end of those weeks, evaluate where you are and continue with that practice or choose a different one for the next two weeks. At the end of most of the practices in the next section I have a note about closing your practice. Taking a few moments to acknowledge the end of your practice will help you assimilate what you gained from your session. It is also an easy way to transition into your next activity feeling more aware. In many yoga classes it is common to come out of savasana into a seated meditation, placing your hands together in front of your heart and recognizing the teacher within.

I find this to be a grounding way to support and affirm my focus from class, allowing it to linger throughout the day. Cyclists know the exhilaration of fast motion through space, but they do not know the exultation of galloping a horse over level or rolling terrain or the feeling of partnership and communication without language. I never pursued the more advanced levels of combined training because riding competitively never interested me as much as riding for fun, so I turned to foxhunting and trail riding. Although formal hunting requires specific attire, and there is certainly a good bit of clannishness among members of older, established clubs, fox hunters seem more genuinely interested in riding for the fun of it and are overall less snobbish than many competitive riders. Trail riding provides the opportunity to see different terrains from the back of a horse and to feel connected to the earth. There is no clannishness or snobbishness among trail riders; For eighteen years between high school and the end of graduate school I kept no horse until I bought Kestrel, a chestnut Quarter Horse-I used to think that having two names for a horse was superfluous but then realized that just as formal names and nicknames serve to identify us to strangers, acquaintances, and friends, so they do with horses to signify public and private identities. Herd animals must have companions, however, and some horses refuse to eat if they cannot see another horse. In this way they are like people: even introverted and solitary ones usually need some company. Only once have I seen a horse willingly wander so far from the herd that it was unable to see the others: in 2001, climbing in Nepal above seventeen thousand feet, I glimpsed a lone gray horse of the sturdy variety cropping the sparse grass of the slope. Perhaps he was like those rare people who can be happy entirely alone, such as hermits or frontiersmen. What the hell is going on? What kind of company asked questions like this? Shouldn't there be an interview? Was there even a position available? Wasn't this illegal? Tell me how I get paid to lose weight? Silence and then, Well, we set up an appointment with you, and you come down and meet us-- I cut him off, furious now. Why won't you tell me how much this job pays?