There are times in life when it feels as though someone has quietly pressed the fast-forward button.
Everything starts moving.
Decisions need to be made. Things change unexpectedly. Plans shift. New ideas arrive before you’ve had time to finish processing the last ones.
And sometimes, if I’m honest, it can feel like life has developed a rather questionable sense of timing.
That is a little how the past few months have felt for me.
There has been an extraordinary amount of movement — personally, creatively and energetically. I have found myself thinking about the current planetary constellation quite a lot, not because I believe we need to blame the stars for everything that happens to us, but because it has given me a beautiful way of reflecting on just how much movement and change there has been.
And then, of course, there is my book.
It is almost finished.
Almost.
Which is both incredibly exciting… and slightly terrifying.
And just when I thought I was safely approaching the finishing line, something rather unexpected happened.
I lost a substantial section of it.
Yes. Lost.
A rather significant piece of my almost-finished book simply disappeared.
I would love to tell you that I responded with complete Ayurvedic equanimity.
I did not.
There may have been some staring at the screen.
Some deep breathing.
And possibly a few words that would not make it into an Ayurvedic textbook.
But once the initial panic had passed, something interesting happened.
I realised I was being given an opportunity to practise exactly what I write and talk about so often.
To pause.
To ground.
To stop trying to force the next step.
And to trust that sometimes moving forward does not look anything like we imagined.
Perhaps that is what staying grounded during change really means — not stopping the movement, but finding enough steadiness within ourselves to move with it.
When There Is Too Much Movement
One of the things I love about Ayurveda is how beautifully it helps us understand our relationship with change — and why staying grounded during change can make such a difference.
Vata is associated with movement, air and space.
And we absolutely need Vata.
It is what allows us to think, create, communicate, adapt, travel, imagine and begin something new.
Without movement, life would become very stagnant indeed.
But too much movement, without enough grounding, can leave us feeling scattered.
You may recognise it as:
- having twenty things on your mind at once
- finding it difficult to finish one thing before starting another
- feeling restless even when you are tired
- becoming more easily overwhelmed by noise, information or decisions
- digestion becoming more unpredictable
- sleep becoming lighter or less restorative
- feeling as though you are constantly trying to catch up with your own life
And sometimes it isn’t that there is actually too much happening.
It is that there isn’t enough stillness around what is happening.
That distinction has been particularly meaningful for me lately.
If feeling tired and overstimulated at the same time sounds familiar, you may also enjoy Why You Feel Wired but Exhausted — An Ayurvedic Explanation for Modern Life.
Perhaps You Don’t Need to Stop the Movement
This is something I have been thinking about a lot.
When life becomes fast or uncertain, our instinct can be to try to control everything.
We want to know:
What is happening?
Why is this happening?
What should I do next?
How can I get everything back on track?
I know this instinct well.
And there is nothing wrong with taking action.
But there is a difference between responding to life and trying to wrestle it into submission.
Sometimes the most supportive thing we can do is not stop the movement.
It is to create enough grounding within ourselves that we can move with it.
That, to me, is one of the great gifts of Ayurveda.
It doesn’t ask us to create a perfectly controlled life.
Because frankly, good luck with that.
It asks us to build enough stability within ourselves that we can meet life as it unfolds.
What Staying Grounded During Change Really Looks Like
For most of us, staying grounded during change is much more ordinary than we might imagine.
It doesn’t have to mean disappearing to a retreat, meditating for an hour every morning or suddenly becoming the person who makes their own herbal tea blends at 5am.
Although, if you are that person, I admire you.
It might mean eating your meals at reasonably regular times rather than realising at 3pm that you’ve had coffee and half a banana.
It might mean putting your phone down long enough to hear your own thoughts.
It might mean going for a walk without listening to anything.
It might mean finishing one task before opening another twelve tabs.
It might mean getting into bed a little earlier rather than squeezing “just one more thing” into the day.
And one of my favourite Ayurvedic practices when life feels particularly full is warm oil self-massage — even if it is just massaging a little warm sesame oil into your feet before bed.
There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about it.
Warmth.
Touch.
Slowness.
A reminder to come back into the body.
These things may look small from the outside.
But when life feels like it is moving very quickly, small acts of steadiness can become incredibly powerful.
If you’d like more ideas for creating simple rhythms your body can rely on, you may also enjoy Ayurvedic Daily Routine for Real Life.
When Something Doesn’t Go According to Plan
The experience with my book has made me think about how quickly we can interpret an unexpected event as a problem that needs to be fixed.
We assume the original plan must be the right plan.
That if something goes wrong, we have somehow failed.
But sometimes a detour gives us information the original path couldn’t have given us.
What initially felt like a horrible interruption has actually taken the writing somewhere I don’t think I would have found otherwise.
The rewritten section is different.
And I think it is better.
Not because losing it was some magical gift — I would still very happily have kept the original version, thank you very much.
But because being forced to stop and look at it again created space for something new to emerge.
That has made me think about how often we ask:
How do I get back to where I was?
when perhaps the more useful question is:
What is this asking of me now?
That is a very different question.
A Little More Trust, A Little Less Forcing
I think many of us are living with an enormous amount of pressure to know what comes next.
We want the five-year plan.
The right decision.
The perfect timing.
The certainty that everything will work out.
But life rarely gives us that luxury.
Sometimes we are given the next step rather than the whole staircase.
And perhaps that is enough.
One of the things I continue to learn through Ayurveda is that balance is not a fixed state we achieve once and then keep forever.
It is something we continually return to.
We notice.
We listen.
We adjust.
We come back.
Again and again.
This is also something I explored recently in Ayurveda and Intuition: Listening to Your Heart, Belly and Inner Wisdom — particularly the practice of noticing what the body is already trying to tell us.
And About That Book…
I am very nearly there.
The book is almost finished, and I am both deeply excited and slightly amazed that these pages, which started as an idea, are now becoming something real.
I don’t want to tell you too much yet.
But I will tell you this:
It is not a book about becoming a more perfect version of yourself.
It is about coming back to yourself.
It has been shaped by years of learning, practising, questioning, working with clients, making mistakes, starting again — and, increasingly, by understanding that true vitality isn’t about pushing ourselves to become more.
It is about becoming more deeply connected to who we already are.
And apparently, the book wanted one final lesson in that before it was allowed to leave me.
I’m looking forward to sharing more with you soon.
A Final Thought
Perhaps you are experiencing a lot of movement in your own life right now.
Maybe things are changing in ways you expected.
Maybe they are changing in ways you absolutely did not ask for.
Maybe you are beginning something new.
Or perhaps you simply feel as though there are too many tabs open in your head and you’re not entirely sure who opened them all.
If that is you, I don’t think the answer is necessarily to do less, stop everything or retreat from life.
Perhaps the invitation is simply to create a little more ground beneath yourself.
Eat.
Rest.
Breathe.
Walk.
Be quiet for a while.
Feel your feet on the floor.
Let yourself finish one thing before rushing towards the next.
And when something doesn’t go according to plan, pause before deciding that it is a disaster.
Ask yourself:
What is life asking of me now?
Not forever.
Not for the next five years.
Just now.
Because sometimes the path forward doesn’t require us to know exactly where we are going.
Sometimes we simply need enough steadiness to take the next step.
And then the next.
With a little less forcing.
And perhaps a little more trust.
Curious About What Your Own System May Be Asking For?
The Vitality Imbalance Quiz offers a gentle insight into your current state of balance — helping you recognise where your system may be experiencing an imbalance and where it may benefit from some additional support.
Take the Vitality Imbalance Quiz
And if you’d like to hear more about the book as it comes closer to launch, stay connected — I’ll be sharing more very soon.
