The other day I was in a conversation and got triggered by something. Not in a big or obvious way. Nothing I said out loud.

But I could feel it in my body. A tightening. My attention narrowing for a moment, and my mind starting to spin a story around whatever had just landed.

As I began to notice it, I could feel that edge that starts to build when something hits a nerve.

I did my best to keep the conversation going, as I felt the tension in my chest, my breath getting shallow, and my mind struggling to stay present.

Thankfully I was able to not react and to just stayed with it.

I’m starting to see more clearly that its not just the reaction in my body, but how quickly my mind can start to build a story around it. That story is what pulls me away from what’s actually happening.

I’m noticing that it doesn’t happen all at once. There’s usually a point where something shifts. A word lands a certain way. A stern look catches you off guard, and suddenly it feels like it means something.

Almost immediately, meaning gets attached to it. What they meant. What it says about us. What we should say back. And it builds fast.

Before we even realize it, we’re not just feeling something in our body anymore. We’re inside the story forming around it.

And once we’re there, everything shifts.

It’s harder to actually hear what’s being said. We’re reacting to what we think is happening, not what’s actually happening. Fear or anger start to rise, and it all feels justified in the moment.

The more I see this in myself, the more I notice how often it plays out between people.

It starts in one person, but it doesn’t stay there.

Before long, it begins to move between both people. And now it’s not just one reaction. It’s two people reacting to each other through their own internal stories.

You can feel it in your body, the pull to react or shut down.

That’s what I mean by leaving ourselves.

Not disappearing completely, but losing the ability to stay present with what’s actually happening and to stay with ourselves in the middle of it.

When that happens, we’re not really able to support ourselves. We’re not grounded or open. Not responding from anything clear. Something else has taken over, and it’s driving us.

So the question isn’t just what we feel. It’s whether we can see that moment as it begins. Not once the story has taken over. Not once we’re already reacting. But right there as it starts to form.

Because even that small moment of seeing changes something.

It doesn’t make it go away, but it creates a little bit of space. And sometimes, that space is enough to stay with ourselves, find our breath, and not get pulled into the story our mind is spinning.

A Practice

I recorded a walking meditation to go along with this. It’s a simple way to notice what gets triggered in you and to stay with yourself as it happens instead of immediately reacting.

This is part of a short series I’m putting together around this idea.

Maybe this is where the work begins. Not in trying to fix what we feel, but in learning to recognize how it starts, and staying close enough to ourselves to see it happen.

You can listen here:

And you can explore the full series here:
https://vitalhealing.substack.com/s/walking-meditations

Subscribe now

Not to fix it. Not to push it away.

Just to notice what’s happening, and to remain with yourself as it moves.

You can walk, sit, or rest while listening.

Meditation 1

Stay With What You Feel -

A simple practice for staying with what you’re already carrying.

Meditation 2

Walking with What’s Triggered

A practice for noticing what gets triggered and staying with yourself as it happens.

Subscribe now

The other day I was driving and someone came flying up behind me. Close enough that I could feel it. I noticed my grip tightening on the wheel, and my chest pulling in just a little. As my attention narrowed, I found myself watching the car in the rearview mirror.

Nothing had really happened, yet something in me was activated.

For a moment, I could see it happening.

It’s easy to carry that activation forward. Even after the car passes, the tension doesn’t always go with them. It can follow us into the next conversation and affect the way we respond to things that normally wouldn’t matter. We carry a little more edge in our voice, and less patience than we had a few minutes before.

What I’m starting to see is that when something like that rises in us, it doesn’t just disappear. It stays in the body for a while. If we don’t give it a moment, it has a way of showing up somewhere else.

That moment of seeing it gives us a choice. We can pause, take a breath, and give it a little space, instead of carrying it forward.

One of the simplest ways I’ve found to do that is to come back to my breath. Just noticing it. Slowing it down a little. Letting the exhale be a bit longer than the inhale. Giving my body a chance to settle instead of immediately reacting.

It doesn’t make the moment disappear. The person behind me may still be there. It does change what happens next.

And the more I pay attention, the more I see this isn’t just about that moment.

There’s something in us that doesn’t like to hold tension for very long. When it builds, it starts looking for somewhere else to go.

Before we realize it, there’s a pull to bring someone else into it with us, to push what we’re feeling out into the world.

René Girard wrote about how human beings deal with tension and conflict, especially in Violence and the Sacred. He points to how quickly we move what we feel out of ourselves and onto something or someone else.

And you don’t have to look very far to see it. It shows up in small moments like this all the time.

For me, I’m still learning that sometimes it’s as simple as pausing for a moment and letting my breath slow things down.

Sometimes it’s getting up and walking, letting my body move while whatever I’m carrying begins to soften. Other times it’s using something like mala beads, running them through my fingers to give my breath somewhere to land.

None of it is complicated. None of it is perfect.

It’s enough, sometimes, to keep what I’m feeling from becoming something I hand off to someone else.

Maybe the work is simpler than we think.
Notice what you’re carrying. Give it a moment.

You might not change the moment.
But you might change what happens next.

I also recorded a walking meditation to go along with this.

It’s a simple practice called Stay With What You Feel, using your breath and your steps to give yourself a little space to be with what’s here.

If you’d like something more experiential, you can find it here:

If you want to listen to the meditation on your podcast app you can find a link to that here:

https://www.vitalhealing.org/p/listen-to-the-vital-healing-podcast

I’ll be sharing more of these over the next few weeks, both here and on YouTube.

Subscribe now

Yesterday was Good Friday, and a good friend of mine sent me a meditation from Richard Rohr that has stayed with me. He writes about how Jesus refused to pass his pain on to others, and that line has been sitting in me, so I recorded this reflection.

There was a time in my life when I thought I was going to figure it all out. I believed that if I worked hard enough, understood the right things, and believed the right way, everything would eventually make sense. But life never became clean. It stayed complex, and in many ways, it stayed confusing.

Somewhere along the way, something began to shift. I stopped looking for answers and started looking for presence, not because I gave up, but because I began to see that answers were not actually healing anything.

What I needed was not a system that explained life. What I needed was a way to be with life without turning against it, and without turning against myself.

Because when I look honestly at my own life, and at the world around me, so much of what we call suffering is actually pain being passed along. Hurt people hurting people, fear creating more fear, and shame reinforcing shame. It moves through families, through relationships, through religion and culture.

We take what was done to us and, without even realizing it, we hand it to someone else, sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, and sometimes only inside our own bodies.

What I am beginning to see is that this is a cycle. This is the crucifixion that keeps happening, not just once, but over and over again. So what if salvation is not about escaping that? What if it is about interrupting it?

What if the invitation is this simple, and this difficult. What if we can feel what we have been given without passing it on, and stay present to our pain without turning it into blame or control.

To stop the violence not just out in the world, but within us, in the way we speak to ourselves, in the way we reject parts of who we are, and in the way we brace against life.

I am not saying this is easy. In fact, it may be one of the hardest things we will ever do, because everything in us wants relief, and the quickest relief is often to discharge that pain somewhere else.

But what I am beginning to notice, slowly, in my own body, is that when I stay, when I breathe, when I do not run, and when I do not turn it outward, something begins to soften.

And underneath the pain, there is something else, something alive, something whole, something that was never actually broken.

And maybe that is what it means to come home, not to fix ourselves, not to figure it all out, but to stop leaving, to stop passing the wound, and to become a place where the cycle ends and something new can begin.

Happy Easter

Subscribe now

If you would like to read the meditation by Richard Rohr you can find it here:
https://cac.org/daily-meditations/jesus-forgives/

You can tell a lot about a person by the way they breathe. Not just physically, but emotionally. Whether they feel safe… or whether they’ve been bracing themselves for a long time.

We talk about coming back to the body as if it’s simple. As if it’s just a matter of slowing down, taking a breath, and being present. But what does that actually mean?

To come home to the body is not just to notice it. It is a return to ourselves in a way that is honest, steady, and willing. It is the quiet act of gathering the parts of ourselves we’ve left scattered along the way.

So much of our life is spent moving away from what we feel. We distract, we manage, we push through, and we override. We learn how to function without ever really being with ourselves.

Coming home is the opposite of that.

It is the willingness to stop pushing away. To soften enough that we can begin to feel what is actually happening inside of us. Not to fix it. Not to analyze it. But to be with it.

The breath becomes a bridge between our awareness and what we are experiencing in the body. Not as a technique to control our experience, but as a way to gently support it.

When we begin to breathe with awareness, something starts to shift. The body, which has often been held tight or guarded, begins to soften. And in that softening, space opens.

This space is not empty. It is supportive. It allows the parts of us that have been bracing, protecting, and holding fear to be met in a different way. Instead of being pushed aside, they are given room to exist. And in that room, something begins to change.

We start to realize that we can be with ourselves. Not just the calm and composed parts, but all of us. The tension. The grief. The uncertainty. The places that feel unfinished.

This is where love becomes real. Not as an idea, but as an experience of holding ourselves with care.

And this kind of care is not abstract. It shows up in how we begin to make space for ourselves in our daily lives. In choosing to slow down, even briefly. In giving ourselves moments to rest without needing to earn them. In turning toward what we feel instead of constantly moving away.

These small acts of self-care begin to build something deeper. They build trust.

We start to trust that we can be with ourselves. That we are not going to abandon ourselves the moment something feels uncomfortable.

And as that trust grows, something else begins to settle in the body.

A sense of safety. Not because everything is perfect, but because we are present with ourselves and not turning away.

And from that safety, the softening deepens. The breath begins to move more freely. The body no longer has to hold itself in the same guarded way.

The way we breathe starts to reflect the way we are living. Less tight. Less braced. More open. More supported.

And from there, something begins to unfold.

As we create space within ourselves, we also begin to see more clearly. We start to notice the patterns we’ve been living inside of. The ways we’ve been shaped by family, culture, and the world around us. The beliefs and systems we inherited without ever choosing them.

The breath does not force us to reject these things. It simply allows us to see them.

And in seeing, there is space. Space to appreciate what has supported us. Space to question what no longer fits. And space to recognize that others are living within their own patterns as well.

This softens how we meet the world.

We become less rigid. Less reactive. More able to hold differences without needing to fight them.

And this is where the practice extends beyond ourselves.

Because when we learn to create space within, we naturally begin to offer that same space to others. We listen differently. We respond with more care. We allow people to be where they are, even when it is different from us.

This is not passive. It is deeply active.

It is the work of staying present, staying open, and staying grounded in something real.

And it begins in a very simple place.

With a breath. With a softening. With the willingness to come home, again and again.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve shared here. Spring has been picking up, and I’ve been spending more time outside, working, moving, and just being in it, practicing what it means to stay and come back.

If you’d like a glimpse into some of that day-to-day, I’ve been sharing short videos along the way.

You can find those here:

https://www.youtube.com/@vital_healing/shorts

Subscribe now

Episode 1

Chapters 1–2 — Arrival and First Encounters

Listen

01 — The Idiot | Arrival and First Encounters (Chapters 1–2)

What I’m noticing

I’ve been spending time with The Idiot, and right from the opening chapters, there’s something quietly disarming about Prince Myshkin.

He arrives without pretense, without strategy, and almost without protection. In a world that seems to run on calculation and social performance, that kind of openness feels both refreshing and vulnerable.

As you listen, you might notice how quickly the tension builds, not through action, but through presence. Who he is begins to affect the people around him almost immediately.

There’s no need to analyze it all right now. Just listen. Let the tone of the story settle in.

Continue

Episode 2 will continue with Chapters 3–4.

(Coming Soon)

Every moment of our lives is carried by the breath.

Most of the time we barely notice it. The breath rises and falls quietly as we move through the day.

When we slow down and return our attention to it, the breath becomes more than something automatic. It becomes a doorway back into presence.

For many of us on a healing journey, that doorway becomes one of the most reliable ways of coming home to ourselves.

And when people gather to breathe in community, the experience deepens. That is why I am excited to share an upcoming opportunity to join people from around the world in a moment of breathing together.

On April 11, people across the globe will observe World Breathing Day, a global event organized by the International Breathwork Foundation.

People from around the world will gather to breathe together. Some will meet in local spaces while others will join online, forming a global community for a few hours of shared breathwork.

This day matters to me because breathwork has changed my own life in ways I never expected.

It helped me begin working through layers of grief and generational trauma that had been stored in my body for years. So much tension had built up inside me that I did not even realize how disconnected I had become from my own body.

Through breathwork I began to soften that tension. Slowly my body started to relax, and I began to feel again.

It slowly began to change the way I related to myself. I started learning how to meet my own experience with patience and compassion.

Breath by breath, the tight places inside me began to unwind. Each inhale and exhale created space for healing and helped guide me back home to myself.

This year I’ll be assisting Professional Breathworker Kate Becker and her team at the New Orleans gathering.

If you happen to be nearby, we would love for you to come breathe with us.

World Breathing Day Gathering – New Orleans

When
Saturday, April 11, 2026
12:00–3:00 p.m. Central Time

Where
First Grace Church – Fellowship Hall
New Orleans, Louisiana

Practice
Conscious Connected Breathwork in a supportive community setting. No prior experience is required. This event is open to adults 18 and older.

Registration and Details for the New Orleans Event
Kate Becker Event Page
https://www.theradiantshadow.com/worldbreathingday2026

Joining Online with Zoom
If you are not able to attend in person, you can also connect with the global World Breathing Day gathering online through the International Breathwork Foundation.

Zoom Sign Up
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/worldbreathingday/2075342

This reflection grew out of the first episode in a new series I’ve started called The Living World. In these episodes, I step in front of the camera and spend time out on the land, noticing what is happening in real time. You can watch the full afternoon along Piney Creek above ⬆️.

Over the last few weeks, I kept noticing turtles out on Piney Creek even when the air temperature was hovering in the high thirties. I was cold, and the wind was cutting across my face. Still they we surfacing, and floating in the sun.

At first, it was simple curiosity. Why were they out on a day like that, and what was happening beneath the surface that I couldn’t see?

The longer I stayed, the more I realized I had assumed something that wasn’t true. I thought winter meant the turtles disappeared. It doesn’t. I began to realize the creek was holding more warmth than I had expected, and the turtles were simply responding to it, rising into the sunlight when it was there, climbing onto logs, settling back down when they needed to.

Nothing dramatic.
Just life unfolding.

A quiet process that keeps moving whether I’m paying attention or not.

And what stayed with me was how quickly I can mistake stillness for emptiness. How easily it is to be somewhere without ever really arriving.

The turtles weren’t performing. They weren’t proving anything. They were simply responding to the world around them.

The only reason I saw it is because I stopped.

There is something grounding about that. Something that brings me back into my body and back into a closer relationship with the world around me instead of just passing through it.

That afternoon the creek was moving, the turtles were surfacing, and the beaver passed through without apology.

And for a few minutes, I was able to arrive.

Subscribe now

Keith Rowe is a breathworker, teacher, and founder of Vital Healing, a nonprofit that helps people reconnect with the wisdom of their heart through through breathwork, inner exploration, and walking meditation.

He is co-creator of the upcoming Walking Pilgrim app, a 33-day journey of mindful walking and presence. Sign up to receive updates for when it is released at walkingpilgrim.com.

Lately I’ve been noticing how easily we can change our environment without changing our attention.

We step outside, take a walk, or sit somewhere quiet and think we are resting. But often the mind keeps organizing and planning, replaying conversations in the background. The surroundings change while the inner noise stays the same.

I see this most clearly when I’m walking along the creek.

My body is there, yet part of me is still producing. I’m thinking about a video I could make, a scene I might frame, or something in my life that needs attention. The landscape passes by while my mind moves ahead of me.

Then something catches my attention and I stop.

Not because I planned to, but because I notice a root pushing out from the side of a tree, or the texture of a decaying stump. Small patterns and movements that normally wouldn’t register suddenly pull me in. When I actually look, the pace inside me changes. I’m no longer leaning toward tomorrow. I’m just seeing what is right here, right now.

Nothing around me has changed, but something in me has let go.

Over the past months I’ve written about presence and about loosening our grip on constant thinking. Most of what I was trying to describe first became clear in moments like this while moving, when my breath and steps settle into their own rhythm and my attention no longer reaches ahead.

Ordinary things begin to register again. The sound of my steps. Air moving in and out. A distant sound my mind would normally filter away slips through. Thoughts still come, but they no longer control the moment.

The experience is simple enough to overlook. The body recognizes that it is allowed to be here instead of preparing for somewhere else or bracing for the next imagined demand. And in that shift I started to understand that presence isn’t something we create by thinking about it. It appears when the body stops organizing the next moment.

Because of that, I’m going to begin sharing recorded walks here in the coming weeks.

They won’t require anything special. You can listen while walking, sitting, or moving through your day. The intention is simply to spend a few minutes breathing and noticing together.

Most of this work has never really been about learning something new.

It has been about remembering what becomes obvious when we are finally here.

My mentor Jim Morningstar said to me this week that breathwork is really a kind of intuition training. We are not installing something foreign into ourselves. We are returning to what already lives in us and rediscovering the quiet intelligence we tend to overlook.

In that sense these walks are not meant to take you somewhere else. They are a way of practicing coming back, again and again, until presence begins to feel familiar instead of impossible.

Subscribe now

Keith Rowe is a breathworker, teacher, and founder of Vital Healing, a nonprofit that helps people reconnect with the wisdom of their heart through through breathwork, inner exploration, and walking meditation.

He is co-creator of the upcoming Walking Pilgrim app, a 33-day journey of mindful walking and presence. Sign up to receive updates for when it is released at walkingpilgrim.com.

I’ve been noticing a particular kind of tiredness lately. It’s the kind that doesn’t really go away with sleep.

Even when we stop working or try to wind down the day, something in us keeps going.

Sometimes I catch myself reaching for my phone without thinking. Other times the phone is nowhere near me and my mind is still running conversations and plans in unfinished loops.

It’s less about stimulation and more about never fully stepping out of engagement.

Many of us live there nowadays. Rest doesn’t really mean letting go of the day or our thoughts. It looks more like pausing visible activity while part of our attention stays attached to what we were doing. Much of our energy remains organized around the next demand.

So we get tired in a way sleep alone cannot repair.

It isn’t really about devices. We can do this with work, relationships, news, or our own thoughts. The object changes but the pattern stays the same. Something keeps holding our attention and keeps the body slightly activated.

You can see it in ordinary moments. Meals eaten while reading headlines. A walk where the body moves but the mind rehearses conversations.

The body is here, but it never receives the message that it is allowed to stop preparing.

Without that signal, stopping activity doesn’t feel like rest. It feels like waiting.

And waiting takes effort.

Over time the nervous system adapts to this constant partial engagement. Even in stillness it stays lightly braced. Sleep restores energy, but not deeper renewal, because renewal depends on more than inactivity. It depends on release.

By release I mean the moment the body is no longer oriented toward what comes next. Attention is here rather than ahead. Nothing is being monitored. Nothing is about to be resumed.

That moment is simple, but unfamiliar. Which is why sitting quietly, walking without input, or breathing without purpose can feel uncomfortable at first. We are used to remaining connected to something.

But when that connection loosens, even briefly, the environment becomes noticeable again. Time feels less compressed and the body stops holding itself together so tightly.

Rest begins there.

Maybe we aren’t actually short on breaks.

Maybe we are short on moments where nothing is being asked of us at all.

As you move through your day, try returning to the present moment and just be there for a minute. Let your breath deepen a little. Over time this allows us to spend more of our lives here and less of it worrying about what comes next.

As we are nearing the end of this read, just notice where you are for a moment.

Nothing to fix right now. Nothing you need to prepare for in the next few seconds. Just the room you’re in, the sounds around you, and your breath moving on its own.

Most of the time we move straight from one thing into the next without ever feeling a clean ending. So before you go on with your day, let this be one of those endings. A small pause where nothing is being asked of you.

And maybe that’s enough for the body to remember that it doesn’t have to stay on all the time.

Thank you for joining me on this Vital Healing journey as we find our way back to ourselves and back to each other.

Subscribe now

I’ve noticed something unsettling about how we’re living right now. You can turn on the news and see unrest and upheaval in one place, and then step into a gas station or a grocery store somewhere else and everything looks calm, orderly, routine. People are moving through their day, filling their cars, buying snacks, heading somewhere.

But it doesn’t feel like presence. It feels like going through the motions. A kind of checked-out steadiness that passes for normal because it’s familiar. There is a quiet disconnection that has become socially acceptable.

It’s as if we’ve learned how to function while staying slightly removed from what’s actually happening, both around us and inside us. The body keeps moving. Life keeps happening. But something essential isn’t fully present.

What’s easy to miss is that activation doesn’t always look dramatic. It doesn’t always show up as anger, panic, or conflict. Just as often, it shows up as quiet vigilance. It may appear as staying busy, distracted, or moving through the day without ever fully arriving. Our nervous systems can be activated even when the surface looks calm.

I’m not talking about whether anger or grief are appropriate responses to what’s happening in the world. I’m talking about how often our bodies never get a chance to come out of activation at all. The baseline has shifted so far toward urgency, alertness, and reaction that settling feels unfamiliar and even suspicious.

When this becomes normal, we don’t experience it as distress. We experience it as being informed, engaged, productive, or awake. But the nervous system experiences it as never quite resting. A body that never rests has a hard time staying present, empathetic, or capable of holding complexity for very long.

From the perspective of the body, much of modern life quietly keeps us cycling through a few familiar patterns. We become certain and reactive, quick to defend or justify ourselves. Or we drift into distraction and avoidance, numbing out just enough to get through the day. Or we keep taking in more and more, news, content, stimulation, productivity, without ever having the space to digest what we’ve consumed.

We fall into a repeating loop of fight, flight, or consume.

These aren’t moral failures. They’re survival responses. Ancient, intelligent ones. But they were never meant to become permanent ways of living.

When survival becomes the default, presence narrows and empathy becomes harder to access. Nuance begins to feel overwhelming, and everything starts to register as threat, demand, or scarcity. Some people express that pressure loudly. Others disappear into quiet compliance or distraction. Both are signs of nervous systems that have been activated for too long.

This is why so much of my work has turned toward breath, walking, and slowing down. Not as an escape from the world, but as a way of restoring capacity inside it. Because no matter how justified our feelings may be, a chronically activated body eventually loses the ability to respond with care.

We’ve seen throughout history that without care, even the most righteous causes begin to fracture. And the more we can come back to ourselves and to our own felt experience, the more capacity we have to stay present and participate with the world around us.

Subscribe now

I recently finished reading The Nature of Oaks by Douglas Tallamy, and it changed how I see the ground beneath my feet.

Tallamy spends a lot of time talking about leaf litter. Not as debris or mess, but as habitat. As shelter and a nursery that supports hundreds of species within those fallen leaves. Caterpillars overwinter there. Birds are raised on what emerges from that layer of decay and renewal. Soil is slowly rebuilt, season by season.

What we so often rake away is where life is being born.

That realization has stayed with me. It has me rethinking how I tend the land, and what it means to let a place be alive rather than orderly.

An oak tree does not offer beauty in a narrow or merely decorative way. It gives of itself constantly. Leaves fall. Acorns drop. Insects gather and fungi work quietly underground.

The oak does not decide which creatures deserve its gifts. It does not hold back because things might get messy. It releases what it is, and an entire ecosystem forms around that release.

As I sat with this, I realized how closely it mirrors something deeply human.

A friend once said that his work as an artist is not about creating things, but about releasing beauty. Working with what is already there and helping it come into the world.

That feels very close to what the oak is doing.

Inside me, I still notice an urge to manage what I share. To shape it, soften it, or hold it back until it feels more finished or more acceptable.

The more I lean into putting my work into the world through writing, video, and simple acts of sharing, the more able I feel to let beauty move into other parts of my life.

If something feels beautiful and true to me, there are likely others who will feel nourished by it. Not everyone. Not always. But enough.

Like leaf litter beneath an oak, what we release does not need to be perfect or impressive. It just needs to be allowed to fall where it may.

When we stop raking ourselves so clean, when we trust our own cycles of giving and resting, something gathers around us. We begin to live in a web of connection and community.

I am learning to trust that what wants to be released knows where it belongs.

If you find yourself lingering with any of this, you might notice where beauty is already gathering in your own life.

Not something to create or fix, just something that is already there, waiting to be given space.

Subscribe now

This reflection is shared as a spoken piece in the video above, layered over time-lapse footage from the work at Cambridge Cemetery. You are welcome to watch and listen, or to read the essay below.

Winter has been calling me back into my body.

Not in a poetic way, at least not at first. More like a quiet insistence. Cold air on my skin. Muscles waking up as I lift, carry, and steady myself on uneven ground. It is in the smell of damp leaves and old stone. The sound of wind moving through bare trees. The simple weight of being here.

I can feel the difference in myself.

For the last six months, much of my work has lived in words, written reflections and long-form pieces that moved thoughtfully through ideas. Embodiment has always been there, through breath, walking, and listening, but often alongside the reflection. This winter, the work is asking to come first, and the words to follow later, if they are needed at all.

This winter, something has shifted.

I feel less interested in explaining and more interested in doing. Less drawn to long essays and more drawn to movement and labor. I am enjoying being outdoors until my hands are cold and my legs are tired. I have noticed a small tension in me around this change, as if I should be producing something more articulate or polished. But when I listen closely, the call is very clear.

Come back to the body.

Come back to the earth.

Let the ground do some of the teaching.

So my Substack has been changing with me. Fewer long pieces. More video. More time-lapse and quiet observation. Not because I have nothing to say, but because right now, I am learning again how to listen.

This week, that listening took place at Cambridge Cemetery.

Cambridge is one of the oldest burial grounds in this area, with graves dating back to the early 1800s. It is a small place, tucked into the land, holding generations of memory. Some of the earliest graves are marked by thick, flat stone slabs, heavy and solid, originally set atop short square columns, roughly two feet tall, made of stone or early concrete.

Time has taken its toll on those monuments.

Many of them are cracking, crumbling, or beginning to lean under a weight they were never meant to carry forever. In some cases, trees have grown so close that their slow expansion is pushing the stones, threatening to topple them. Gravity, weather, and time are doing what they always do.

So we made a decision to intervene gently.

We used the tractor with pallet forks to lift the stones, working one at a time. We lifted the flat stone off each marker, then laid its short column down on its side within the existing foundation. We ended up doing two of them this way, keeping everything together, nothing removed or discarded. Once the columns were settled, we set the flat stones back down on top, now resting close to the ground. The markers are preserved, and all of the original materials remain together. Most importantly, the stones no longer stand a chance of falling and breaking.

This was slow, heavy work. It required attention and cooperation as we worked together to move, guide, and settle each piece safely. This was not the kind of work where you can afford to be a bull in a china shop. It asked for presence, patience, and care.

As we worked, something in me settled.

There was no need to rush. No need to narrate. Just hands on stone, feet in leaves, and breath finding its own rhythm. The past held carefully, not propped up beyond its strength, but set down with care.

That feels like winter to me.

Not a season of collapse, but a season of grounding. Of lowering what has been held too high, and letting things rest where they can endure.

I am realizing that this season of my life does not want me in my head as much. It wants me in my muscles, in my breath, and in my senses. It wants me to gather experience first, and let clarity arise later, without pressure.

So if my writing feels quieter right now, or if my posts lean more toward movement and image than explanation, that is not a retreat. It is a return.

A return to the body.
A return to the land.
A return to a kind of knowing that does not require so many words.

I trust that what needs to be said will come in its own time.
For now, winter is teaching me how to stay close to the land.

Wherever you find yourself this season, I hope you are listening for what winter is quietly offering you too.

Below you can find the full time-lapse of the work at Cambridge Cemetery. This version is shared without narration, just the work itself unfolding.

If this reflection or the videos resonate with you, I would be grateful if you would like and subscribe on YouTube, and follow along here on Substack.

Subscribe now

This past week we put up two wood duck boxes along Piney Creek and filmed a couple of time lapses while we did it.

I enjoyed adding simple line art to the fronts of the boxes. One has several Kokopelli figures burned into the front, and the other has a peace sign. Decorating them has become part of the process for me, and it is something I look forward to while I am building.

We placed both boxes close to the water. Wood ducklings leave the box shortly after they hatch and make their way to the creek to meet their mother, so keeping that distance short matters.

Before mounting the boxes, we took some time deciding where they should actually go. In one case, I walked up to a tree that seemed like the obvious choice at first, but once I stood there with the ladder and looked at it more closely, it just wasn’t the right fit. We adjusted and chose a different tree that made more sense for the placement.

To mount the boxes, we secured a 2x10 to the tree using lag bolts and screws, then fastened the box to that board to keep everything solid. You’ll see ladders, repositioning, and a bit of back-and-forth as we figured out the best way to do it, especially on the island where Piney Creek splits and runs around a piece of land.

We also cleared out some low limbs around the trees where the boxes went up. Just enough to open up the approach and make the flight path easier.

Inside each box, we added large wood shavings for bedding. Wood ducks do not bring nesting material with them, so this becomes the base layer of the nest.

While we were out there, we also found debris that had washed in during a previous high water. We wrapped a chain around it, lifted it out, and moved it back toward the shop.

We are doing this in early January so the boxes are in place well ahead of nesting season, with time for the ducks to notice them and get used to them being there.

Here is the Kokopelli install:

Subscribe now

Keith Rowe is a breathworker, teacher, and founder of Vital Healing, a nonprofit that helps people reconnect with the wisdom of their heart through through breathwork, inner exploration, and walking meditation.

He is co-creator of the upcoming Walking Pilgrim app, a 33-day journey of mindful walking and presence. Sign up to receive updates for when it is released at walkingpilgrim.com.

As many of my readers will know, I have been building different types of nesting boxes over the last month and placing them around the farm, creating more spaces for wildlife to return and settle.

What began as one or two small projects slowly became a rhythm of measuring, cutting, assembling, and learning as I went.

As I was researching different plans for bluebird and wood duck boxes, I came across a PDF for a barn owl nesting box. That tickled my brain. I had not been thinking about owls, but I have always loved their mystery and quiet beauty. The more I read, the more curious I became.

That curiosity led me to learn more about how they live and hunt, and how closely their presence is tied to the health and balance of the local ecosystem.

I learned that barn owls are quiet and efficient hunters. They do most of their work at night, and they ask very little from the land beyond space, shelter, and a place to raise their young.

So the barn owl box fit naturally alongside the other boxes already going up around the land.

For a long time, this land and my life carried a very different kind of intensity.

During my thirty years of large-scale poultry production, feed moved through the farm in enormous volumes. The chickens consumed close to half a million pounds every month. Anywhere that much feed is present, rodents are guaranteed to follow.

Rodent control became constant. Baits and poisons were part of the routine. We rotated products every few months to keep mice and rats from building a tolerance to the active ingredient. It was not something I enjoyed, but at that scale, complete control became part of the work.

Over the last year, as I have begun to scale things back, the questions have started to change. I am no longer focused on how to eliminate rodents. I am working to restore balance. I am trying to step out of the business of managing every outcome and let the land take on more of that work itself.

That is where the barn owl boxes really began to make sense.

Barn owls are not interested in our systems or schedules. They hunt quietly, moving low over fields and along hedgerows. A single family can consume a remarkable number of rodents simply by living the life they were made for.

No chemicals, secondary poisoning, or ongoing intervention.

Only the owl’s presence.

Working with the owls is not about outsourcing a problem. It is about stepping back far enough to let another kind of intelligence participate.

As I built the nesting box, I tried to follow that same spirit.

I started with a used piece of plywood, measuring and marking out the pattern, doing the best I could with what I had.

The edges were not perfect. The lines wandered a little. Making long cuts with a skill saw has a way of reminding you that precision is not always guaranteed.

And that was fine.

I used scrap wood for the supports. Old one by twos and two by fours, some of them rough, some of them with old nails still in them. It was not especially pretty, and all of it worked exactly as it needed to.

You do not have to be a master carpenter to make a home that an owl, or other wildlife, will love.

I attached the support pieces in the corners first, giving each panel something solid to fasten to. Later, I added more scrap pieces in the middle so the top and bottom would have support. It was a build shaped by function more than appearance.

At one point, I thought I was finished. I had already screwed the top onto the box when I realized I had forgotten something important. The interior partition that helps keep predators from reaching the chicks was still missing.

So I took the top back off.

I paused and looked at what I had. It took a few minutes, but I figured out how to add the partition after the fact using glue and more scrap wood. It took a little creativity and a little patience, and I reminded myself that it did not have to be perfect.

Later, I realized something else. One of the end panels needed to be cut in half so it could open for cleaning between seasons. That meant taking another piece back off and reworking it.

Nothing was ruined. It simply became the next step.

That is part of the joy of building this way. You take it as it comes. You breathe with it, and you work with what is in front of you.

After creating the opening for cleaning, I finished by drilling a few ventilation holes and adding a decorative metal plate to the front of the box. Even with a small gap along one edge, it will serve its purpose well.

The birds have never complained about a little imperfection.

This box will be mounted up under the roof of a shed, protected from weather and harsh sun, overlooking open fields and grasslands where owls can hunt. It offers shelter, not control. An invitation, not a guarantee.

Rewilding the land, I am learning, also asks something of us. As the world around us is given more room to return to itself, something in how we live and move begins to loosen as well.

Patience is replacing urgency.
Trust takes the place of control.
Something in us learns how to stand back and listen again.

For anyone interested, I’ve included a PDF of the barn owl info and box plans I used as a starting point. The build is forgiving, and the plans are simply a guide. I found this PDF at The Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance. Many thanks to them!

Barn Owl Info and Box Plans

5.21MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Time Lapse of the Owl Box Build

Keith Rowe is a breathworker and teacher, and the founder of Vital Healing, a nonprofit supporting reconnection with the body, the heart, and the living world through breathwork, inner exploration, and walking-based practice.

He is a co-creator of the upcoming Walking Pilgrim app, a 33-day journey of mindful walking and presence. You can sign up for updates at walkingpilgrim.com.

Subscribe now

As this year comes to a close, I want to pause and say thank you.

Thank you for reading, for walking alongside this work, and for being part of the larger conversation around healing. It means more than I can put into words.

This week, as the new year arrives, I am taking a brief pause to rest, reflect, and prepare for what is coming next. There are new offerings taking shape, along with fresh writing and practices that I am looking forward to sharing with you.

Until then, I pray you have a gentle and hope filled start to the new year. May it bring clarity and moments of real connection.

Wishing you much light and love as the year turns.

Keith

Subscribe now

Video Version

Since we find ourselves at Christmas Eve, it felt like a good moment to pause and look at a familiar story. Not the story of the Christ child or a retelling of the nativity, but another Christmas story.

It is one that tells us about love finding a way into the world, and about compassion and generosity softening even the hardest hearts.

There are a handful of Christmas movies we try to return to each year. Some of it is tradition, and some of it comes from a love of nostalgia. There is something grounding about watching a cartoon or a movie that has been part of our lives for a long time. It becomes something we have carried with us across many seasons, and it can keep meeting us a little differently as we grow.

One of those stories for me has always been Mickey’s Christmas Carol. It has been part of my childhood Christmases for as long as I can remember. I am sure many of you have seen it and remember that in that telling of the story, Donald Duck’s uncle Scrooge plays the part of the miser, and Mickey Mouse is left having to work on Christmas Eve just to make ends meet. As a child, I did not analyze it or think much about where it came from. I simply enjoyed returning to it, year after year.

A few years ago, I came across another film centered on Dickens and the writing of A Christmas Carol. It is called The Man Who Invented Christmas. This film offered a way inside the story. It gave me history and context, and it helped me see the familiar characters from a deeper angle.

Watching it helped me see Charles Dickens differently. Not as a distant literary figure, but as a human being under real stress. It also helped me see Scrooge differently. I was able to look past the cartoon miser and see someone shaped by fear and loss, a man who had grown hardened under the ongoing pressure of living in fear.

Of course, The Man Who Invented Christmas is a work of fiction. It takes liberties. It imagines conversations and compresses timelines in order to tell a compelling story. But when I spent a little time looking into the history behind it, I was struck by how much of the emotional pressure portrayed in the film was grounded in real life.

When Dickens sat down to write A Christmas Carol in 1843, he was not writing from a place of ease. His most recent book had failed, and money was tight. He was responsible for a growing family, with another child on the way. His publishers were skeptical, and Christmas itself was not yet the cultural centerpiece it would later become.

At the same time, Dickens was carrying the weight of his own past. His father was sent to debtor’s prison when Dickens was a boy, an experience that marked his childhood and forced him into factory work at a young age. That early trauma reemerged during this season of his life, stirring old wounds around shame, responsibility, and survival. Those experiences with poverty and insecurity never fully left him, and they shaped the way he saw the world.

Seen in that light, A Christmas Carol does not emerge from comfort or certainty. It emerges from a man trying to keep his footing, while a deeper truth about love seeks expression through his life and work.

And that context changes how I see the story.

Scrooge no longer feels like a simple villain or a moral device. He feels human, someone who learned over time that staying closed felt safer than risking loss again.

The story does not treat that hardness as something to be crushed or corrected.

Scrooge is not redeemed through punishment or shame. He is not transformed by being scolded into goodness. He is changed by being loved and seen. His heart softens as he remembers what it is to be human, and love is allowed to flow back into his life after so long of being held at a distance.

That is something The Man Who Invented Christmas captures in its own way. As Dickens struggles with the character of Scrooge, he slowly comes to see that Scrooge cannot be forced into change. He has to be understood. He has to be given a way back into relationship and community.

In both the story and the telling of how it came to be written, change does not come through force. It comes through reconnection.

That feels worth sitting with, especially on Christmas Eve.

The holidays can be beautiful, and they can also ask a lot of us. Even good moments can stir old memories, grief, and quiet pressures. Many of us carry more than we realize, and we often carry it silently.

One of the gifts of A Christmas Carol is the reminder that love does not wait for perfect conditions. It does not arrive only when everything is settled or healed. Sometimes it enters through small, human moments of kindness, and through the presence of someone like Tiny Tim, whose simple humanity softens what fear had hardened.

Love often returns that way. Not all at once, but gently, as we lean into our heart’s calling and allow ourselves to be moved.

Sometimes it is enough to pause and acknowledge that the holidays can hold many things at once. Beauty and strain. Joy and grief. Memories in all their tenderness. Even within the complexity of our relationships, it can be enough to slow down, to breathe into what is stirring inside of us, and to let love have a little more room.

If you are looking for something gentle to watch this Christmas Eve, you might consider The Man Who Invented Christmas. It is not a replacement for the traditional stories or your favorite holiday films, but it can be a companion to them, a reminder that love often finds its way into the world through very human paths.

And that has always been part of the Christmas story. It is not about perfection or performance. It is found in the quiet return to love, and in creating a little more space for love in our hearts.

I am wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a joyful New Year.

Thank you for being on this journey.

I pray that light and love accompany you on your way.

Subscribe now

Keith Rowe is a breathworker, teacher, and founder of Vital Healing, a nonprofit that helps people reconnect with the wisdom of their heart through through breathwork, inner exploration, and walking meditation.

He is co-creator of the upcoming Walking Pilgrim app, a 33-day journey of mindful walking and presence. Sign up to receive updates for when it is released at walkingpilgrim.com.

Here are some resources for songbooks and tablature designed to make learning songs easier. Enjoy!

From the Flute Tree Foundation

Minor Key Native American Flute Songbook
from the

A great resource of all type of songs that are grouped by different cultural groups, activities, and traditions. Alternatively, you may view the melodies alphabetically.

Includes:

• Camping and Scouting

• Children’s Songs

• Christmas Hymns and Carols

• Dance Tunes

• Folk and Western Hymns and Spirituals

• Lullabies

• Native American

• Patriotic

• Musical Scales

• And Much More!

https://www.flutetree.org/songbook/minor/

Flutopedia’s Native American Flute Song Book

Another great resource for songs and tabs. It includes:

• Traditional Native American Songs

• Americana Folk Songs

• Popular Music

• Hymns and Carols

https://www.flutopedia.com/song_book.htm

My deepest thanks to Clint Goss and Vera Shanov for their ongoing contribution to the Native American style flute community.

Clint’s website, Flutopedia, is one of the most comprehensive learning resources available for this instrument, offering everything from breath and tone development to music theory, improvisation, and community guides. It’s a remarkable gift of time, care, and knowledge.

You can read about my time with Clint and Vera at Flute Harvest in this reflection. Their teaching and gatherings continue to inspire the spirit of Wind Song Circle.

Below are a few of the Flutopedia pages and related learning materials I most often return to for guidance and inspiration.

For Getting Started

• Introduction to the Native American Style Flute – A perfect overview of the instrument, its history, and its spirit.

• Playing Techniques – Core techniques for tone, breath, and finger placement.

• Scales – Common scales for Native American style flutes
  
  For Deepening Your Practice

• Breath and Tone Development – Breath practices for flute players.

• Improvisation – Encouragement and exercises for finding your own musical voice.

• Tuning and Intonation – Understanding the relationship between tuning, emotion, and expression.

For Musical Growth and Connection

• Backing Tracks and FluteCasts – Practice tracks for improvisation and performance.

• Flute Circles – A room full of flutes.

Flute Harmony Wheel - Which flutes sound best together?

Gear for Playing & Recording

More Great Videos

The Dominant - Native American Flute - Intervals - The Perfect 5th

Mode Four - Native American Flute

The Blues Scale on Native American Style Flute

The Blues Scale for Native American Flute

Subscribe now