My client’s chest heaved and sweat dripped from his brow as he settled onto his yoga blankets. He had sprinted from work to make it to our 7:30pm session, commenting that work had been crazy. I asked him if this stressed him out or if he thrived on it. “Both,” he admitted. “But it’s a good thing,” he paused. “Well, better than the alternative.”

Just as I clicked both kids into their car seats after visiting a friend and her new baby in the Jersey Suburbs, white pellets started dumping from the sky. I had to crouch down to see out of the windshield. Gripping the steering wheel tightly, I questioned whether or not to pull over and wait it out. But I worried that if I did that we could get stuck so I kept going.

The other morning as I raced around trying to make breakfast, make lunches, and brush three sets of teeth, while trying to convince two children under the age of five to change out of their pajamas before 7am, I could feel myself tightening up. One of my teachers says to try and catch yourself when the first domino that leads to your negative emotional state is falling rather than when the 50th has already crashed down.

I arrived at the Advanced Soul and Destiny Retrieval course in Joshua Tree, California with a right eye that looked as if I'd gone a few rounds in the ring with Mike Tyson. For the past six months, since the last time I went to California, I've had a blocked tear duct in my left eye, which caused tears to roll down my cheek so often that the skin under my eye began to shrivel from the salt. After seeing two regular doctors, going to acupuncture twice, visiting the eye doctor twice and then the eyelid specialist twice, a plastic surgeon had to cut the tear duct open to relieve the overflow. "You've got small tear ducts, Lady. What can I say?" he told me.