The Many Faces of Stress
One of my favorite parts of teaching at Moonbird happens after class.
The music has faded, the lights are a little brighter, and everyone begins rolling up their mats. Some people head for the door while others wander over to make a cup of tea. Blankets are folded, blocks are stacked, and conversations begin almost by accident. Nobody seems to be in much of a hurry to leave, and I’ve come to realize that’s where some of the best parts of yoga happen. Not during Warrior II or even in Savasana, but afterward, when the practice quietly follows us off the mat and into our lives.
A few weeks ago, Sarah and I found ourselves doing exactly that.
Sarah is one of those people who makes you smile the moment she walks into a room. She has an easy warmth about her that immediately puts people at ease, but what I’ve grown to appreciate most is her curiosity. She’s always asking questions, not because she thinks she should know all the answers, but because she genuinely wants to understand. She recently completed Moonbird’s yoga teacher training, and watching her grow into both the practice and herself has been such a joy to watch.
Our lives couldn’t look more different. Sarah is raising a son while balancing motherhood, marriage, and all of the invisible responsibilities that come with loving people well. I’m standing in a different season, looking back over decades of building a career around leadership, deadlines, and responsibility before eventually discovering that what I thought was simply the pace of life had actually become chronic stress. We came to yoga from different generations, different responsibilities, and very different seasons of life. At least, that’s what I thought.
As we sat talking that afternoon, I found myself asking her a question that had been sitting in the back of my mind. “So…when did you realize you were stressed?” She laughed almost immediately. “I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t even know it was stress. It was just life.” I couldn’t help but laugh too because I recognized myself in her answer.
I don’t think most of us wake up one morning and realize we’re stressed. We wake up, make the coffee, answer the emails, pack the lunches, head to work, take care of the people we love, and do it all again tomorrow. Eventually, the way we’ve been living stops feeling like a choice and simply becomes normal. We don’t call it stress. We call it life.
“My normal looked different than yours,” I told her. “Mine was deadlines, meetings, events, and always believing there was one more thing to accomplish before I could finally slow down. I loved the work, but somewhere along the way I convinced myself that waking up tired, pushing through the day, and never really stopping was just the price of building something meaningful.”
She nodded before saying, “I thought I was doing everything right too. Society praises a life packed full of to-dos. I thought I had my priorities exactly where they should be.”
It struck me then that our stories couldn’t have looked more different from the outside. I measured my days in projects and deadlines; she measured hers in school schedules, responsibilities, and making sure everyone else’s needs were met before she ever considered her own. Yet our bodies had been responding exactly the same way. They weren’t paying attention to the details of our calendars. They simply knew they had been asked to stay in survival mode for far too long.
When I asked her what had started to change, her answer wasn’t dramatic. There wasn’t one defining moment that suddenly made everything different. Instead, she described a series of small decisions that gradually changed the way she moved through her day.
“I started intentionally breathing. I learned about my vagus nerve. I started taking things off my calendar instead of always adding something to it. My life is still busy, but I’m learning to schedule time to breathe during the busy.”
I remember smiling because I loved the way she said that. She wasn’t waiting for life to become less busy or believing peace lived somewhere out in the future. She was learning to breathe in the middle of the life she already had.
It feels like such a simple shift, yet it’s one so many of us resist. We keep telling ourselves we’ll slow down after this project, after the holidays, after the kids are older, after things settle down. We wait for permission from a future that never quite arrives, when maybe the invitation has always been right here in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday.
Our conversation wandered for a while before she mentioned teacher training. “I cried the night before my first weekend,” she said. I looked at her, surprised. “I thought you were going to tell me you were nervous.” “I was,” she said. “But mostly it was mom guilt.”
She described looking around the house and seeing everything that still needed to be done. The laundry. The chores. All the reasons she thought she should stay home instead of spending a weekend doing something for herself.
Listening to her, I realized I understood that feeling completely, even though it had shown up differently in my own life. Mine wasn’t mom guilt. Mine was always one more deadline, one more event, one more responsibility convincing me that rest could wait until tomorrow. We had both spent years believing we would eventually earn the right to slow down.
Neither of us ever reached the end of that list.
“So what changed?” I asked. She smiled. “By the third weekend, I couldn’t wait to go,” she said. “I realized I wasn’t taking something away from my family. I was finally giving something to myself.” Then she paused before adding, “I’ve always had so much love to give. I just never thought about how much love I was giving myself.”
That sentence stayed with me for a long time after we left the studio. Not because it was profound in the way great speeches are profound, but because it was quietly true. I imagine there are a lot of women who have spent years giving everything they have to everyone around them without ever wondering whether they deserved a little of that same kindness themselves.
Before we gathered our things, I asked her one last question. “What would you tell another woman who feels exactly the way you used to feel?” She didn’t hesitate. “I’d tell her to start small. One intentional habit a day that lets you breathe. It doesn’t have to be a complete life overhaul. Small changes build momentum, and before long you realize you’re creating a different way of living. I’d also tell her she doesn’t have to live by everyone else’s expectations. She really can create a life that feels good in her heart, her mind, and her body.”
As I drove home that evening, I realized we’d spent almost an hour talking about cortisol without really talking about cortisol at all. What we’d actually been talking about was recognition. We had both accepted certain patterns as normal without ever questioning them. We had inherited stories about success, productivity, motherhood, sacrifice, and worth, and our bodies had been trying to get our attention long before we learned how to listen.
Sarah and I didn’t arrive at yoga for the same reasons, and we certainly didn’t arrive during the same season of life. Yet somewhere along the way, our conversations began landing in the same place. Different stories had led us to the same realization: our bodies had been asking for something our minds had learned to ignore.
Maybe that’s the quiet gift of yoga. It doesn’t ask how you got here or why you walked through the door. It simply offers you a place to breathe, to notice, and, if you’re willing, to begin listening again, and at Moonbird, there isn’t just one way to practice. Some days your body wants to move. Other days it needs to slow down. That’s exactly why our hybrid classes exist. Flow + Stretch, Flow + Align, Flow + Restore, and Align + Restore each offer something a little different, but they’re all rooted in the same intention: helping you reconnect with your breath, your body, and your nervous system. Wherever you find yourself today, there’s a practice that can meet you there.
Until then, here’s something to notice.
If someone asked you the same question I asked Sarah that afternoon…
“When did you realize you were stressed?”
I wonder what your answer would be.