Your body will eventually fail you.
Befriending it now is the only path to graceful aging.
Your body will eventually fail you.
Befriending it now is the only path to graceful aging.
Apparently, October is the month I’m going to keep talking to you about death.
…
Here was death – the thing I had learned was somber and dark and horrible and mostly not to be talked about – literally being brought out into the streets. Into community. Grief shared. Lives celebrated. Humanity’s full cycle honored.
Someday you are going to die. As will I. And everyone we love. This is not morbid negative thinking on the cusp of The Big Dark in the Pacific Northwest. This is me acknowledging something I don’t believe we remember often enough. The only other thing certain in life besides our birth is our death.
Lately, I’ve been basking in the first yoga sutra, 1.1: atha yoga anuśāsanam, which approximately translates to: “Now we begin the practice – or the study – of yoga.”
Nicole Bratt is a certified yoga therapist and experienced yoga teacher, located in Seattle, WA, offering private yoga sessions, public yoga classes, special yoga events, yoga teacher trainings, and yoga retreats – both in person and virtually online.
Copyright 2026 Nicole C Bratt All Rights Reserved. | Photography by Sterling Ocean
Stillness is a gift. I’ve been thinking about this lately. What do I remember or reconnect with when I am quiet and still?
Our culture is an anti-stillness machine – for the mind, at least, and often for the body and breath, which follow the state of the mind.
Think about it: Our screens and the attention economy keep our bodies relatively still, often in unconsciously terrible postures that later make us wonder why we have a sore back or achy shoulders. Meanwhile, our minds are overloaded with external content and messages… at the risk of crowding out our own internal beliefs and wisdom.