Grounding through traffic: a journey of response

You can tell your state of centeredness or grounding by sitting in traffic. This morning I was headed to my yoga studio for a teacher training practice and I was feeling pretty calm and centered on the way there. Someone had not cut me off, but someone was just driving really slow, and it was at a fork or nearing a fork in the road. The person was in the wrong lane. I was trying to go right; they were in the right lane but needed to go left, so they were kind of holding up our flow of traffic. You know, again I was feeling pretty calm and centered and just paused to give them some time to get over and kind of figure out where they were going.

But then later this morning I was coming back from yoga, and you would think I would still be calm and centered, but I started getting in my head. I have been worried about finances, and that was getting the best of me. So on the way back, I was getting off the freeway exit towards my house, and another car was slowing down, just lollygagging off the exit. I found myself getting really frustrated and angry at them. I wanted to honk, but I didn't. I was able to catch myself in the moment, and I'm sitting here later in the same day just reflecting.

I realized that I let my emotions get the best of me in that later example, and you know that's human, right? Human nature. We can get wrapped up in our emotions and what's going on in our head. But I just thought that was like an interesting real example of how even in myself—and I wonder how this applies to you—I noticed just reflecting on it how when I was centered and grounded and not in my head, not worrying about the future, I was able to pause and respond.

Versus when I was worried and in my head, swirling in my thoughts, I was quick to react. So it takes practice, of course, over time to have a steady routine of bringing yourself back to baseline, back to grounding. But this example hopefully illustrates why that's so important. The more that we can establish a practice for ourselves to come back to our center, the more that we can respond with love and compassion and patience in the world.