A confession to start: when something hurts, my first instinct is not to breathe it in so I can save humanity. My first instinct is to find the dark chocolate.
So you can imagine why a small card from Pema Chödrön's deck of Compassion Cards stopped me in my tracks.
Pema, an American-born teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, describes a practice called tonglen. The idea is beautifully backwards. As we breathe in, you take in what's hard, our own heaviness and, by extension, the heaviness of everyone who feels the same way right now. As we breathe out, we send ease, joy and relief out into the world.
It's the opposite of what most of us do on autopilot, which is to hold tight to the good stuff and shove the hard stuff out the door before anyone notices.
Start with yourself
What I love about this concept is where it begins. Not with the suffering of the whole world, which, let's be honest, is a lot to ask before coffee. It begins with us. The tight shoulders. The worry we've been carrying around all week like an overstuffed tote bag. We notice it, we breathe it in, and something quietly shifts: we realize that somewhere, someone else is carrying the very same thing. Our hard day stops being a wall around us and instead becomes a thread connecting us to each other.
And the good moments work the same way in reverse. The first sip of my morning coffee, my dog's ridiculous joy at my return (seriously is there anything sweeter), the light falling just right across the green lawn in my backyard. My little moments of joy don't have to stay private. I can send them out, too.
Where sanctuary comes in
Here's the thing I keep coming back to: it is very hard to breathe deeply in a room that's shouting at me. The pile of mail, the blaring television, the chair nobody actually likes sitting in. We can't notice what we feel when our surroundings keep tugging at our sleeve.
That's what sanctuary is really for.
Not perfect rooms or magazine-ready shelves, but spaces that let us exhale long enough to notice what's going on inside. When we can notice it, we can hold it with a little tenderness. And that tenderness has a way of spilling out the door, onto the people we live with, the people we work with, maybe even the stranger in line at the grocery store.
Peace around us inspires peace within us. And peace within us, it turns out, travels.
That's the quiet hope behind every space we design: that a room can be a place to pause, and that whoever pauses there might carry a little more kindness back out into the world.
Your turn
So tonight, find the spot in your home where your shoulders drop an inch. The reading chair, the end of the porch, even the parked car in the driveway (I won't judge). Take one breath in for whatever feels heavy, and one breath out for whatever feels good.
Then I’d love to hear about it. Where is your sanctuary? Tell me in the comments or on Instagram. And if you're longing for more places like that in your home, I'd be honored to help you create them.
With love and gratitude,
Lisa