the OM place

09/22/2026

Did you set an intention to relax more in 2026? We are certainly living in a time of heightened anxiety and worry. Give yourself the tools for self-regulation so that you can continue to show up in the world as your most grounded and authentic self.

Join me in the comfort of your own home for a 6:00 pm Roll and Restore Pop-Up. You will need a bolster and some myofascial release balls.

Pop-ups on October 21, November 18 and December 16 (the third Wednesday of each month). $15 per class or $40 for all three.

Register online at https://clients.mindbodyonline.com/classic/ws?studioid=34367

09/22/2026

Did you set an intention to relax more in 2026? We are certainly living in a time of heightened anxiety and worry. Give yourself the tools for self-regulation so that you can continue to show up in the world as your most grounded and authentic self.

Join me in the comfort of your own home for a 6:00 pm Roll and Restore Pop-Up. You will need a bolster and some myofascial release balls.

Pop-ups on October 21, November 18 and December 16 (the third Wednesday of each month). $15 per class or $40 for all three.

Register at

Book and buy with the OM place online.

08/03/2026

It’s a long-standing joke that every perfectionist eldest daughter went through a Greek myth phase and has a favorite God or Goddess (um, Pandora, even though she was technically a human created by gods to punish other humans). So of course, I went to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in IMAX (and trust me, it’s worth every cent to see it in large format).

It’s so much more than a sword and sandal film. It might be Nolan’s finest work.

Originally written around 750 BC in dactylic hexameter, Homer’s epic is a story of gods, monsters, enchantresses, prophecies, and impossible geography. But beneath its supernatural machinery is an intensely physical story. Odysseus is battered by the sea. He explores caves and sleeps on strange shores. He bleeds, hungers, ages, grieves, and survives. It’s this groundedness in the physical world that makes this movie so incredible.

We have entered an era of visual perfection in which almost anything can be rendered, altered, or fabricated. Faces are generated, voices are synthesized, entire landscapes are created without ever existing. And yet the closer an artificial image comes to reality, the more likely it is to trigger the so-called uncanny valley effect.

The uncanny valley is a concept first proposed in 1970 by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori, who observed that when an object appears nearly human but has subtle imperfections, our affinity for that object drops sharply, creating a “valley” of discomfort. Anyone remember the 2019 movie Cats with its unnerving cat-people and abysmal digital fur technology? Occasionally you can see the outlines of actors’ ears or hands where they were sloppily CGI-d out. The uncanny valley turned a great musical into one of the worst films of all time.

Nolan famously eschewed CGI in the filming of The Odyssey. Its world building is based on real people and real objects interacting with each other in real time. His effects, even when they are visibly imperfect, feel more convincing than digital perfection. A computer can produce an image without limits, sure. But the physical world has limits. A set can be built only so large. A prop can be only so heavy. A creature can only move according to the laws of gravity. Light behaves unpredictably, surfaces reflect and absorb, bodies occupy space. These so-called limitations actually allow imagination to become believable.

Perhaps this is why The Odyssey has stuck with me when I have forgotten countless Marvel movies. I have seen worlds destroyed, creatures resurrected, planets invented. For me, spectacle is no longer enough to produce wonder. Real wonder requires friction.

This is particularly suited to The Odyssey, a story that has survived for three thousand years precisely because its mythological wonders are inseparable from the human experience. The crew traveled all over the globe to find actual landscapes, castles, and caves in which to shoot. The ocean itself is a central, living force. Simple waves feel like a mirror of Poseidon’s wrath, the IMAX 70mm visuals emphasizing the ocean’s scale and unpredictability. The man-eating Laestrygonian soldiers were played by actors over 7 feet tall, while Odysseyus and his men were replaced by petite actresses for the scene to showcase the height difference. The Cyclops scene is filmed in a Greek cave using a giant puppet and animatronics. It’s the perfect blend of movie magic and truth. The Cyclops may be supernatural, but the fear of being trapped in an oppressive, dark cave is not.

The Odyssey’s world is grounded in bodies, weather, architecture, landscape, and light. Everything in it can be touched, damaged, or lost. That tension gives the story true power.

The uncanny valley is unsettling because it presents the appearance of life without the full presence of life. The best movies take something imaginary and give it presence, shadow, and texture. A journey is measured in bodies, distance, hunger, time, and loss. The plot is shaped by gravity, light, time, and accident.

In an age of increasingly perfect images, Nolan’s The Odyssey makes a persuasive case for imperfection. The uncanny valley happens when something looks alive but feels absent. The Odyssey works because Nolan makes something impossible feel present.

05/25/2026

From small-bed zinnia warriors to folks tending hundreds of acres, most of my yoga students garden or farm in some way. Before every class, there is inevitable chatter about when the tomatoes are going into the ground, how someone hurt their back feeding the livestock, or does anyone know someone who fixes lawn mowers. Someone will share paw paws from their tree, tomatoes from their garden, or bulbs from their grandmother’s prize-winning irises. There is also much discourse about rain, either the lack of it or how there’s been too much, or do we think it’s gonna rain today?

This week, the discussion was about crop rotation, something I haven’t thought about much in my life. But, for people who live off the land, it is a topic of great importance. In Kentucky, the practice of crop rotation is a turning and a returning, a trust that what rests today might nourish us tomorrow.

I learned that, for much of the early 20th century, Kentucky wisdom held that rotating grain crops like corn with grasses like wheat resulted in the sweetest corn. But that practice faded in many parts of the state during the 1950s and 1960s as farmers increasingly relied on fertilizers and pesticides instead of rotation.

In 1981, University of Kentucky Agronomists James Herbek and Lloyd Murdock launched a modern corn-soybean rotation study that showed that corn grown alternately with soybeans averaged about 10 bushels per acre more than continuous corn, helping to reestablish crop rotation as a core practice in Kentucky farming.

It’s a long-game love note to the land. One season, corn, tall and reaching. The next, soy, returning nitrogen to the earth. Then perhaps clover, or wheat, or simply a fallow pause where nothing is demanded and everything is quietly restored.

I often think of my creativity like corn, with constant output, visible growth, and measurable productivity. Write more. Produce more. Share more. I long to be like the Stephen Kings and the Mary Olivers, those giants who bookmarked each day by a certain number of words. But after a scant few minutes of watching a blinking cursor, I’m apt to give it up because don’t the dishes need washing and shouldn’t I go sweep the floors? It’s harvesting in a different way, this insatiable need to feel productive.

As the house gets cleaner and the words grow further apart, I can’t help but wonder if crop rotation isn’t the same sacred pattern as writing. Like the soil, I cannot give indefinitely without tending to what replenishes me. Without rotation, even the richest ground becomes depleted.

A creative block, then, is not failure, but fallow land. There is no shame in a resting field. No farmer stands at the edge of a quiet plot and demands it yield. They understand that microbes are rebuilding, nutrients are cycling, and the soil is remembering itself.

What if I extended myself the same grace? I haven’t been writing much lately. In fact, this piece is the first thing I’ve written in many weeks. I’ve been publishing pieces I’ve written in the last few years during especially fruitful bursts of creativity.

The once-fertile landscape of my imagination seems barren, but a writing block doesn’t feel irreparable, because I know something is being restored beneath the surface. It’s taken me five decades to see that a creative life is a spiral, circling from quiet input to outward expression, from growth to deep rest.

So now I rest. I tap dance. Play my guitar. Read lots of fiction. Play in my art journal, painting, collaging, and dreaming in a new way. I shall wander, gather, and compost experience.

Because the rains will come, they always do. And with it, the words. Not despite the rest, but because of it.

See y’all in the fall.

05/18/2026

Like all the best stories, the Egyptian myth of Anubis begins in a tangle of love and deceit.

Anubis was born to Osiris and Nephthys. Now Nephthys is the wife of Set, who just happens to be Osiris’s brother and rival. Disguised as her sister Isis, Nephthys conceives Anubis with Osiris in secret and Anubis is born into the in-between of loyalty and betrayal.

Fearing Set’s wrath, Nephthys hides the infant in the desert, where he is later found and raised by Isis, the great mother-magician of compassion.

Set eventually learns of the deception and dismembers Osiris, scattering his body parts across the scorched and barren land. But a now-grown Anubis and Isis gather the pieces, carefully wrapping and preserving Osiris’s body so that he may pass into the afterlife.

Through his willingness to tend to what was broken, Anubis becomes the guardian of the dead. Often depicted with the head of a jackal, Anubis is linked to the wild dogs that roamed desert cemeteries, feral creatures who lived at the boundary between the living and the dead. Anubis becomes their sacred counterpart, a protector of graves, a watcher of thresholds, ultimately overseeing The Hall of Judgement ceremony. This ritual weighs the heart of the deceased against a feather. The feather belongs to Ma’at, the principle of balance, of cosmic harmony. If one’s heart was heavy due to immorality or selfishness, the scales won’t balance, and the Afterlife is denied.

It’s the truth and tenderness of your heart that is ultimately measured. Not your achievements or financial success. Not the story you’ve curated for others.

This can leave one feeling despondent. Won’t all true souls tremble at the scales, full of doubt and regrets?

I worried too much.

I failed people.

I doubted myself.

But Anubis understands mortals in the same way he understands mortality. He’s a Big Picture kinda guy, overlooking small specifics toward a deeper understanding of a life well-lived. He reminds us that good living is a devotion of attention. The heart grows heavy not from failing, but from forgetting to live while alive.

Do you notice the morning when it arrives?

Do you soften more than you harden?

Do you offer even small kindnesses when it’s easier not to?

Do you return, over and over, to awe?

The scales settle by sincerity, not perfection. By a quiet, repeated choosing of life. The soul may then enter Aaru, a lush, fertile realm of flowing waters and abundant crops, where souls are reunited with loved ones. Until then, we needn’t live perfectly. We balance the cosmic scales when we remember to live at all.

📸Tina Brouwer Kraska

05/11/2026

Life is Hard. Art Helps.

The world seems to be spinning just a little too fast these days. My nervous system, an ancient, beautiful, but easily overwhelmed thing, does its best to keep up. It scans for danger, catalogs uncertainty, and tightens my muscles so that I am ready to react. Like, all the time. It’s exhausting.

But what if, instead of outrunning the chaos, I try to create within it? Because just like the biological imperative to fight or flee, creativity is wired into all of us. Art metabolizes chaos, gives shape to the raw material of being alive. The first humans were formed from clay and breath, substance and spirit. That lineage lives in us still.

Art doesn’t have to be good to be good for us. A painting will not fix the world, but it steadies the hands of the one who paints. A poem may not end conflict, but it reorganizes the inner landscape of the one who pens.

When darkness grows too strong, it is not always a warrior who restores balance. Sometimes it is a poet. Or a trickster. Or a quiet figure who plants seeds while everyone else is arguing about the storm. Cave paintings were not formed in easy times. Neither were protest songs, or novels, or quilts stitched together in dim light. Creativity is a declaration that we are still here, despite.

The art of noticing is an act of reclamation. To live creatively in a chaotic world is to refuse numbness, to remain in relationship with experience. It is to notice the particular shade of blue in the sky before a storm, or the strange poetry of overheard conversations, or the way your own breath feels when you finally stop and listen. Attention is one of the most valuable currencies we have, and the world is constantly trying to spend it.

I have been finding solace in art journaling of late, a quiet meeting place between my inner world and my hands. Color, texture, words, and scraps of thought gather without needing to make sense. A brushstroke holds feelings I can’t find language for. A perfectly torn page mirrors something breaking open or coming together. There are no rules in my art journal, only the gentle permission to notice, feel, and respond. Over time, the pages become less a record of what happened and more a living landscape of how it felt to be me while it did.

So when life gets hard, trade creation for consumption. Pick up a pen. Move your body in a way that feels expressive rather than performative. Cook a meal as if it were a small, edible work of art. These acts might not trend or break the news cycle, but they will help you stay human inside of it all.

05/09/2026

Merci Saint-Martin pour ce séjour incroyable! 🇫🇷 🌴

04/27/2026

Once a year, on the first Saturday in May, time slows down in Kentucky to a rhythmic, pounding heartbeat. All eyes turn to a single patch of earth at Churchill Downs in Louisville, where tradition and thunder converge in a two-minute horse race known as the Kentucky Derby.

Now you might be surprised to learn that I am not a fan of the Kentucky Derby, nor of the horse racing business in general. Beneath the fanfare, there is another story unfolding on racetracks across our state, one that is harder to watch, and even harder to justify. While horse racing is often cloaked in tradition and the language of sport, the deeper truth is that this is an industry built not only on speed and spectacle, but on exploitation, suffering, and premature death. A business where human profit and animal welfare are often at odds. Horses are bred to be sleek and then pushed to run at a young age, before their bones are fully formed. But what happens when a leg shatters mid-stride and the crowd gasps? Too often, that horse is euthanized. Not because it’s the most humane choice, but because it’s the most cost-effective. There is no retirement plan for the horse that finishes last.

As you might guess, this is a very unpopular opinion in my state, where horse racing annually brings upwards of $175 billion to the state economy.

But there is one thing about the Derby that I love. It’s not the betting or the fashion or the call to the post. It’s the mint julep, the perfect Southern cocktail. Over 125,000 mint juleps are served at Churchill Downs over Derby weekend.

Before we get to the julep, we need to talk about bourbon. In Kentucky, bourbon is considered a cultural inheritance, a warm handshake from history, a sweet-sour-smooth sermon poured into a heavy-bottomed glass. A birthright.

We begin with the basics, or what is known as the Bourbon ABCs:

America. Bourbon must be made in America.

Barrels. Bourbon must be aged in charred oak barrels.

Corn. Corn must be at least 51%+ of the grains used.

Now all bourbon is wh***ey, but not all wh***ey is bourbon. Over 95% of the world’s bourbon is made in the Commonwealth, where the limestone-filtered water flows clear and sweet, the summers are hot and humid, and the winters are cold and spiteful, which is perfect for aging wh***ey and hardening character.

In an age of instant notifications and same-day shipping, bourbon reminds us that the best things take time. It takes years and sometimes decades for the oak to alchemize, turning raw distillate into liquid amber wisdom. It asks us to savor each sip.

You can sip it neat in a crystal glass at a five-star hotel or slug it from a plastic cup on a porch swing at a family reunion. You can nose it, swirl it, pair it with a great steak, or chase it with a Moon Pie. And it makes fabulous cocktails, from the classic old fashioned to the Kentucky mule, which is bourbon mixed with Ale-8.

Which brings us back to the mint julep. The ingredients are simple: bourbon, sugar, mint, and ice. But to make a mint julep worthy of Kentucky’s long tradition, you have to slow down. First, the mint must be muddled gently, not bruised but coaxed, so its oils rise gently. The sugar is stirred in with care. The bourbon, rich and warm, is poured in reverently. And the ice must be crushed, never cubed, so it melts at the perfect pace. Not too fast, not too slow, like a good story told under the stars. A traditional mint julep is served in a silver julep cup, which allows frost to form on the outside and keep the julep ice-cold.

In Kentucky, bourbon is a love letter to the land, written in corn and oak. So, raise your glass.

04/20/2026

Monday Motivation

After the ice and snow finally melted off our driveway this February after the terrible winter storm, we noticed a new crack in the asphalt. Today, I noticed the most adorable dandelion poking its little lion mane up through that crack. Dandelions are a meditation in resilience.

In a world often dominated by roses and lilies, the dandelion is easily overlooked. To many, it is an invasive w**d, nothing more than an unwelcome guest in a perfectly manicured lawn. Of all the bizarre and inexplicable rigid conformities of mainstream American culture, one of the most puzzling to me is a hatred of dandelions. If I see another commercial for herbicide to “kill those pesky dandelions,” I am going to scream. Why is a uniform-green lawn the ideal? Not to mention that w**d killers like glyphosate harm soil health, pollinators, and waterways.

From the Old French dent de lion, the word dandelion literally means lion’s tooth, because of its toothed leaves. Bees love them. So do salads.

Taraxacum officinale is not native to North America. They were brought over from France by early French settlers who valued them as a food source. The entire plant – leaves, roots, and flowers – is considered edible. Over time, dandelions naturalized in the U.S., spreading easily due to their wind-dispersed seeds.

Despite the assertive spread, dandelions are not officially classified as invasive. They don’t displace native plants or significantly disrupt ecosystems. However, they also don’t provide much value to our local wildlife. Unlike native wildflowers that have co-evolved with pollinators and herbivores, dandelions are simply there, neither highly beneficial nor particularly harmful.

Until we notice how well they model resilience and transformation, that is. Their roots can sink more than 15 feet underground. And if they are far away from soil, they will make a home in concrete, forgotten alleyways, sand, or drought-stricken fields, and asphalt. They do not wait for ideal conditions or the approval of gardeners.

Their presence is a gentle reminder that strength is found in the ability to endure, to adapt, and to grow where no one expects anything to survive.

The life cycle of a dandelion is a lesson in transformation. From a bright yellow flower to a globe of delicate white seeds, the dandelion changes form completely, embracing each new phase with quiet dignity. First it’s the sun. Then a round, full moon. Then, if you blow gently, stars shoot across the galaxy to begin again, far from their origin, full of promise. How magical is that?

Children understand the magic of dandelions better than most adults. They gather them into bouquets, make wishes on their seeds, and see beauty where others see w**ds. What if we all chose to see opportunity in difficulty, to find worth in the overlooked, and to honor growth in all its forms? The dandelion may not be the flower we choose to plant, but it is the one that reminds us that our real, messy, beautiful life will always find a way.

📸 Katherine Dooros

04/13/2026

Our brain is a thinking machine, quietly and constantly asking, “What matters right now?”

Neuroscientists sometimes estimate that the sensory systems (vision, hearing, touch, smell, internal bodily signals) are taking in millions of bits of information per second. Your brain is constantly predicting what will happen next, ignoring what it deems irrelevant, detecting patterns between things, and prioritizing what might matter for survival or meaning. And what you are consciously aware of is astonishingly small by comparison. Neuroscience research estimates that conscious awareness can process only about 40 or 50 bits per second. Out of millions of bits flowing in, only a tiny fraction becomes part of your lived, moment-to-moment experience.

In a world overflowing with sensation, memory, and meaning, something within us must choose what rises into awareness. The salience network acts like a gatekeeper, deciding what gets promoted into conscious awareness. Without this filtering, experience would feel exhausting and overwhelming. Imagine trying to listen to every conversation in a crowded stadium while tracking every flicker of light.

Anchored in the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex, this network acts like a bridge between body, mind, and world. The anterior insula tunes into the subtle language of our body and lets us know when the vibes are off. It lives in heartbeat, breath, and gut feeling. It is deeply tied to interoception, our capacity to feel ourselves from within. The anterior cingulate cortex helps mobilize attention when something meaningful or unexpected appears.

Left alone, the salience network is evolutionarily biased to prioritize threat, urgency, and distraction. But when gently recalibrated, it can also register novelty, beauty, and awe. A sudden birdsong in the middle of silence. The intricate geometry of frost on a window. The feeling of being moved by a piece of music. When we pause to feel the breath, to listen deeply to sounds in the environment, to notice something beautiful without rushing past it, we are teaching our brain what matters. These moments are not important in a survival sense, yet the brain flags them as worthy of attention. Not important, but interesting. When something is marked as interesting, the brain allocates resources toward it.

Mindfulness widens the aperture of salience to include not just what is urgent, but what is wondrous.

Over time, this intentional mindfulness shifts our baseline experience of living. The world does not necessarily become more extraordinary, but we become more present to its extraordinariness. Things like t curve of a leaf, the warmth of sunlight, or the subtle presence of another person begin to register more vividly and more frequently.

Think of the salience network as a kind of inner guide, illuminating new pathways of perception and shaping what becomes real for each of us. It decides, moment by moment, what enters the field of awareness and what fades into the background, orchestrating the ongoing creation of our lived experience.

What matters right now?

becomes

What is here that I have not yet noticed?

📸Tina Brouwer Kraska