I regularly check social media to see what friends and family are up to

It's what I made last month, she answered slyly. But it's not the law of the universe, and we're exploiting the ritual to get out of the discomfort of sobriety. Being okay with toasts has evolved for us into recognizing them as social practices that do have meaning, but the meaning doesn't reside in the alcohol. If we can locate the beating heart in a ceremony--which at a wedding is to wish love and joy to the couple with a raised glass--and we practice that, the nature of the liquid in the goblet doesn't matter. And anyone who truly can't handle us breaking from the small print of the tradition, even while we hold to the soul of it, can kiss our sweet ass. At a dinner party in the Hamptons, Jardine was about to toast with everyone, and an older man in a cashmere sweater across the table looked down his nose and waved her away with his long tan manicured hand. Not you, it's bad luck to toast with water. You know what else is bad luck, sir? In the end, we chose The Vanish, because, like any social butterfly with their own agenda, that's what we aim to do. We had always surrounded ourselves with friends who liked to drink . We tried to moderate hard, counted drinks, or only drank wine (or only drank vodka), or had a glass of water for every glass of wine. At the time, the connection and usefulness of such an interest was not immediately apparent and yet it's something we now take for granted. In much the same way, George de Mestral didn't start life as an entrepreneur, but as an electrical engineer who enjoyed the outdoors. But while he was out for a hike one day, his curiosity was piqued upon noticing the burrs sticking to his trousers. When he got home he took a closer look under a microscope. He noticed how the burrs were made of tiny hooks, an effect he thought he could replicate using artificial materials. This simple act of curiosity led to the creation of Velcro (and the Velcro Company), an invention that is sold all over the world and brings in revenue of around $100 million every year. However, de Mestral's journey was not as simple as it plays out in a short, two-paragraph retelling. It took years for his invention to come to fruition. But his curiosity was the catalyst for his breakthrough innovation, which, every day, saves many parents from tears and tantrums due to shoes being `too tight' or `un-tie-able'!

This capacity to draw from broad experiences goes well beyond undermining the shoelace and zipper industries. This is key for boundary work. I suggest practicing daily for two weeks initially to start to establish a new boundary system for your body. After the first two weeks, practice the Boundaries Breath at least three times a week. If you identify as an empath I highly suggest practicing daily for many months to really solidify this practice in your body. In each practice session after the first, experiment with the distance of the sphere. In some sessions pull it closer to you and in others expand it farther away. Note the changes that come in your journal. After several rounds of practice, you will have a good idea of where the sphere is most comfortable for you. Then work with that distance for at least one week, or more if you choose. The Boundaries Breath can bring up big emotions, childhood, and family-of-origin work. Tradition has it that the husband and wife who built the original cabin planted the spruces to celebrate their marriage; I wanted to change it to Windhover Farm but finally decided that those trees bear witness to a history longer than ours. The county road forms the border on the west side; Locals call the road Honey Creek because it runs parallel to a stream of that name a quarter of a mile to the east. According to the story, a bee's nest fell into the stream, after which the water always tasted sweet. To the north a hayfield rises to the neighbors' new house about a half mile away. Separated from the lawn by a line of varied pine and spruce, the bright green of my riding area ends at the border of their thirty-acre hayfield where the alfalfa grows dark green and, just before cutting time, bends like waves before the wind. On the south side, our land slopes suddenly downward into the pasture that takes up most of our acreage. The southeast corner was cut out of the property when the original farmer gave an acre to a son to build a house.

A row of tall Norway spruce demarcates the boundary. Whaa-whaat, from selling these pills? I felt dizzy. Handing me an even bigger readout, she said, I use to make over ten thousanad a month, before the United States Senate made us relabel our packaging. I stared at the $10,000 checks from the last years, looked at Linda, and then around the house. I noticed a picture of her in front of a plane. She caught where my eyes had landed. I learned how to fly and bought a plane, she said casually. Sitting there, I started to shake and got really excited. If this lady could earn that kind of money, with all her problems--she couldn't even leave her house for goodness sake--I would get rich. In all your advertising and business cards. We blacked out anyway. We overdid it. The hopes of a manageable and harmless and go-home-before-sunrise party ended--more often than not--with a morning stomach full of sour displeasure, shaky hands, and a long journal rant about not doing that again, seriously. Sober, we didn't suddenly let go of the party dreams; It was the mirage of finding sisterhood at dawn, or rediscovering the early days of love while people straggled out of a closing bar. Hang in there, we always coached ourselves, the prize is on its way, just don't go home, never go home, wait for it. Then we jumped on the wagon. As newly hatched soberlings, we feared being alone in the nest, and we feared the world outside the nest. We were still invited to parties and so we went.

But we didn't want to be at parties sober and we didn't want to be at home sober. Conceptual breakthroughs, a form of inductive reasoning, occur because you see a relationship that was not seen before. So how does that happen? We believe that often, the stimulus for a conceptual breakthrough is an analogous experience. For most of us, our education and skill set tend to go deep and narrow, and this lack of `unrelated stimulus' can actually limit our creativity. If you, like us, are a fan of the movie Avatar, you will not be surprised to hear that its creator, James Cameron, was a long-time fan of deep-sea diving, having become obsessed with Jacques Cousteau as a 15-year-old. In his 2010 TED talk he shares how his love of diving had an impact on his career. Cameron tells the audience about making Titanic and convincing the Hollywood studios to fund his dive on the wreck (principally because he desperately wanted to see it for himself) by explaining why it would make great PR and generate column inches and ticket sales. It was adventure, it was curiosity, it was imagination . This exploration, flying a robotic vehicle underwater through the Titanic's remains, and the unique combination of Cameron's life experiences, had a fundamental influence on how Avatar was made: It really made me realise that the telepresence experience -- that you actually can have these robotic avatars, then your consciousness is injected into the vehicle, into this other form of existence. As uncomfortable as it might be in the moment, it's actually a really good thing. Whatever surfaces during your practice sessions and while you're out in the world is ready to be explored, healed, and integrated. Learning to set boundaries has been one of the most challenging and rewarding practices of my life, and I am still learning each day. In the beginning, my boundaries were really harsh and intense because I had to break the habit of years and years of putting others' needs before my own and merging with them on a regular basis. Today my boundaries, while firm, are much softer, and actually I enjoy saying no and practicing self-care. One of the first breathing practices I learned in my early yoga days was kapalabhati, or skull-shining breath. I found this practice difficult and intense but loved how it made me feel afterward. The Cleanse Breath is a modified version of the classic pranayama technique, and though it's less intense on the system, it has similar effects and benefits. As I mentioned in the section entitled Breath: The Foundational Tool, the majority of the toxins in our body are released through our exhale.

The Cleanse Breath places emphasis on the exhale with a slight drawing in of the abdomen to gently cleanse and tone the respiratory system while purifying and refreshing the body and mind. A spring-fed stream crosses my pasture from the west, flows into a drainage ditch on the township road, and ends in Honey Creek. Our watershed comprises no fewer than 250 acres, so we never have water problems except in the hot summer of 2005 when our cistern went dry and we dug a new well that taps into a deep aquifer. Just below the stream, a small farm pond, originally dug when a pipeline was laid under the lower pasture, is gradually filling in--due, I suspect, to the process of eutrophication. Partially surrounded by cattails, it is home to frogs, turtles, red-winged blackbirds, and sometimes Canada geese. I put up a birdhouse there for tree swallows--the only songbirds, I have read, that will build over water. The best view lies to the east, where the land slopes gradually toward Honey Creek and then rises again. Trees line the deep, swift-flowing stream that is home to snapping turtles, beaver, great blue herons, noisy kingfishers swooping for their catch, and, in the last year, a pair of sandhill cranes. Long, slender branches of ancient willows with silvery leaves reach to the water's surface. There are eastern hornbeam, American beech, white ash, northern red oak, black oak, sumac, and black cherry, with two massive white oaks reaching above the others. On the far side of the creek, bands of contour-plowed fields measure out the hillside to a township road, beyond which three wooded hills rise. Give samples that the person can feel instantly. If you don't have any yet, show your colleagues' checks. I used dozens of $30 checks to show my customers who had experienced success to entice them into registering with the company under me. After using the products, for the first time in my entire life, I had no trouble getting out of bed. The pounding of my heart startled me awake; I met my eyes in the mirror and felt a rush in my solar plexus. OMG, this stuff works! I yelled out loud. A huge grin filled the mirror, but before I could admire it, my old self filled my thoughts.