I’m especially aware of recovery right now—it’s my first week back in training and I am hurting. Stiff, sore, and wondering what I’ve let myself in for. How will I keep going through the many months it will take to build and rebuild strength and mobility? It feels daunting.

Sure, I can limp around feeling sorry for myself (and I will, no doubt). I can also sit still and not hurt—books, movies, scrolling. But I can also move in ways that feel good. I’ve committed to Sensual Embodied Dance sessions all summer, and right now I’m practicing small bursts of non-linear movement. Plus beach walks, ocean swims, reflecting on active recovery.

That’s what non-linear movement (in the broadest sense) facilitates: the transition from no movement to movement, from inertia into flow – and back again. It disrupts, interrupts, unsettles—urgh. And yet, that’s the point.

Exercise itself has never been my mood lifter—I can stay cross and miserable through a workout, LOL. What it does is shift something deeper. It doesn’t cheer me up so I can get back to work with a smile; instead, it makes the basics possible. The first step. The thing I couldn’t do a moment before. Even if I do it in resistance, with bad grace.

I can commit to the contact hours. But can I also commit to active recovery? Because what once felt like “exercise” is now recovery—Pilates, Feldenkrais ATM, all of it.

This shift is part of changing my priorities. I used to unconsciously model my life on the 60+ hour work week: always on, always producing. Now I’m actively turning off. Finishing the day. Letting the ritual of Duolingo, catch up on The Conversation, scroll, and read signal the stop.

I’m adding in food prep as active, transitional recovery. I enjoy it now. What used to feel like more work has become unwinding.  

I see now: what feels restful is mastery. What feels stressful is learning. And what bridges the two is curiosity—wandering, wondering, moving non-linearly.

Because you can’t just do the work. That’s unsustainable. Even my coaching program makes no sense without framing. The guts alone are not enough.

So I’ve reframed: seven sessions. Five hold the essential components of the work itself, and two are the transitions leading in and out.

All of it is about finding wriggle room to dream and do.

What feels like rest for you?

What feels like work?

How do you know when you’ve done enough????