Journal
Here you'll find writing on mindfulness, neuroscience, mental health, physical wellbeing, and yoga.
These topics often overlap: attention, behaviour and embodiment are all part of the same ecosystem of experience, and the aim here is to explore those connections in a thoughtful and practical way. Some posts draw from research, others from lived experience and teaching. The intention is to share ideas that are useful, considered, and occasionally a bit different from what is typically said.
November 8, 2025
Gratitude lives at the interface of body and mind. Deep in the brain, the insula translates sensations like heartbeat and breath into a felt sense of being. When we practice gratitude, empathy, or mindfulness, this same circuitry brings coherence to our inner and outer worlds, helping us feel meaning rather than just think it.
November 8, 2025
Gratitude lives at the interface of body and mind. Deep in the brain, the insula translates sensations like heartbeat and breath into a felt sense of being. When we practice gratitude, empathy, or mindfulness, this same circuitry brings coherence to our inner and outer worlds, helping us feel meaning rather than just think it.
October 25, 2025
It might seem paradoxical that turning inward, through practices like yoga and meditation, can strengthen our outward relationships. But at its foundation, gratitude requires awareness. To experience feelings of gratitude and express them, we first need to be aware of what is happening within and around us. If we are distracted and desensitized, then we don’t have the bandwidth to be mindful.
September 8, 2025
In times of heightened mental demand, such as the return to routine in September, our inner world can become noisy and overloaded. This article explores how higher-order thinking—like planning, reflecting, and managing competing mental tasks—can tax our cognitive systems, leading to fatigue and emotional depletion. Drawing from neuroscience and embodied practice, it proposes that yoga offers a counterbalance: a way to redirect attention toward simpler, grounding sensory experiences that reduce cognitive load. Through mindful movement and somatic awareness, yoga offers not just a temporary escape, but a tool for long-term mental resilience and clarity.
September 8, 2024
You and I are amazing creatures, capable of learning a seemingly endless amount of patterns (ideas, skills, facts) to help us navigate our worlds more effortlessly […]
May 8, 2024
Our minds are beautifully efficient. Some days, I find it hard to appreciate this, especially when I'm tired or overloaded. But even so, there is so much unconscious work going on under the surface that it's baffling how the most seemingly simple feelings and actions come to life.
February 9, 2021
by Karen Andersen “As is the breath, so is the mind.” ~Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā With all the moving parts of our inner being and outer world, […]