How Do You Want to Feel in 2022? An Invitation to Slow Down and Savor

“The way to develop the habit of savoring is to pause when something is beautiful and good and catches our attention — the sound of rain, the look of the night sky — the glow in a child’s eyes, or when we witness some kindness. Pause… then totally immerse in the experience of savoring it.”

— Tara Brach —

What’s on your heart as this new year dawns? I hope 2022 — or, as I’m currently calling it, 2020.2 🤪 — is being gentle with you so far and that it brings individual and collective healing to our fractured psyches and the world we make and remake each day in our own image.

This is the time of year when we think about new beginnings. When we challenge ourselves, setting ambitious stretch goals for how we want to change and what we want to accomplish by the time we complete our next trip around the sun. Goals and ambitions that, despite our best intentions, often peter out and fall by the wayside while the year is still in its infancy.

I make it a practice to consider how I want to FEEL in the year ahead rather than what I want to DO. For me, this simple but powerful question is more effective in producing meaningful and sustainable behavioral change than setting goals and making resolutions.

If you struggle to find the feeling, it’s sometimes helpful to look underneath the goals and resolutions to understand the underlying emotional motivation. As an example, I can resolve to lose 22 pounds in 2022 and commit to a strict diet. Or I can think about the feeling underneath the resolution which might be aliveness, lightness of being, energized, etc. With the specific resolution, I’ll either succeed or fail — and in my experience I’ve failed far more than I’ve succeeded or managed only limited success rather than sustained change. If I focus on the feeling, I can come up with myriad ways to embody and live into my emotional intention — myriad chances for success with a broader potential impact.

Once I sense into how I want to feel, the next step is to build daily practices to embody and live into my emotional intention each and every day. Because embodied practices transform an otherwise intellectual construct into a somatic experience — a felt sense that comes to life inside of you as you move through the world.

For the past few years, as part of this practice, I’ve chosen a word to guide my year, a word that captures the essence of how I want to feel.

For 2019 it was TRANSFORMATION, a word I chose at the end of the year while doing Susannah Conway’s Unravel Your Year journaling workbook. It wasn’t intentional as much as descriptive — a word I chose in hindsight at the end of 2019 that captured the essence of a year of major change whose highlights included arthroscopic surgery to rebuild and fortify my right hip, orthodonture and cosmetic dentistry to remake my bite and my smile, and coming out as queer to honor my heart and soul’s truth.

As part of that same journalling exercise, I chose FAITH as my forward-looking word for 2020–and boy did I/we need it in the year of pandemics that no one saw coming! 2020 was the year that I decided to leap into the unknown and begin a trust fall with the universe, crossing over to The Other Side of Fear to bring Contagious Vulnerability to life in the world.

For 2021 my word was MAGNETIC as I wanted to draw opportunities to me rather than chase them — to work with the energy of the universe rather than against it. To hear about how that one turned out, you can read this piece I wrote a few weeks ago.

This year I’ve chosen SAVOR after a much needed, week-long practice of slowness and stillness between Christmas and New Years. A languid state of dolce far niente that was clearly my soul’s response to the intensity of last year’s magnetic storm chasing!

As I reflect back on the past years and their words, I notice that they were more conceptual and descriptive of my experience than embodied or practiced. They were alive in my mind but not felt in my somatic experience. This year is different. For the past week I’ve been presencing with savoring, treating it as a mindfulness practice to embody and live into my intention rather than the set it and forget it approach I’d taken in years past.

It started with food. I’ve always been a ridiculously fast eater, always the first to finish and often eating more than my body needed. With the seed of savoring planted in my consciousness, I’ve been making it a practice to slow down my consumption, chewing each bite at least 11 times (I love the energy of the number 11 and love to weave it into my daily practices), savoring the experience in my mouth, noticing the flavors and textures and how it makes me feel inside, putting my fork or spoon down between bites and taking 1–2 breaths before continuing. I’m already noticing positive effects. I’m tasting and enjoying my food more, I’m more present with those I share meals with, and my body has time to let me know before it gets full which has led to more ease-full digestion.

From food my intention to savor flowed organically to my media consumption and communications. I noticed that I was equally voracious, fast paced, and disconnected as I read — really skimmed — the firehose of content I chugged each day like a frat boy funneling beer. I gave everything my constant partial attention, consuming a lot, absorbing and retaining far less. I’ve been practicing slowing down, focusing on one thing at a time rather than mindlessly multitasking. Making more mindful choices about what I choose to engage with and noticing how my choices make me feel on an energetic level which in turn fuels more conscious future decision making.

It’s hard — because the early stages of any new mindfulness practice are the most challenging as the new behavior slowly takes root in your consciousness and somatic experience and begins to displace the old — but the effort is deeply rewarding and I’m already feeling an energetic impact which encourages me to keep going and recommit when I drift back into old ways.

I’m noticing that my intention to SAVOR 2022 is always with me — alive in my consciousness, infusing whatever I’m doing with a devotional intention. Savoring has become one of my mindfulness practices — a state of awakened presence to and appreciation of each moment of my lived experience.

I realize that SAVOR isn’t technically a feeling but as I continue to journey with the energy of it, I’m starting to feel it.

I invite you to try something with me. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and chant the word YUM — just like you were in a yoga class chanting OM. Really hold the MMMMM. Try it a few more times and notice how the sounds reverberates in your body. Where in your body do you feel the vibration? Is it localized or does it permeate throughout the cells of your body? What is the quality of the energy in your somatic experience? You might alternate chanting YUM and OM and notice how the vibrational energy of each sound is different. For me OM resonates inwards while YUM radiates from my center outwards like I’m smiling from within.

This resonant YUM is what savoring feels like to me. When I savor I can feel vibrational energy in all the cells in my being — energetic aliveness that is simultaneously awakened and calm, deeply present to and in reverent awe of what’s here now. When I find myself rushing or disconnecting, I call in the energy of YUM, slowing down and returning to presence and because YUM feels like a full body smile, there’s no judgment in these gentle corrections.

My savoring practice is also transforming how I show up in relational spaces. I am more fully present with my beloveds, with the amazing beings I guide on journeys of becoming as the Vulnerability Doula, and with the beautiful strangers who join our Contagious Vulnerability experiences live each week on Clubhouse. Presencing deeply and savoring the sweetness of all my engagements with others is making for richer, more connected, more meaningful shared experiences. And I swear that my cats can feel the difference as I savor our snuggle sessions.

Andrew Carnegie famously said that people won’t remember what you said, only how you made them feel. I believe that how YOU feel is how you will make OTHERS feel.

That the energetic state of your inner landscape has a direct impact on any relational space you find yourself in.

That the state of ME infuses and affects the state of WE.

That to change the energy of our world, we must first tend to our own energetic states of being.

I am choosing to SAVOR 2022 in hopes that my energy becomes contagious and invites others to slow down and more fully appreciate the gift of this precious life. Will you join me in slowing down and savoring 2022? Or is there another word that’s more alive for you? Whatever word you choose, I hope you’ll savor the experience of bringing it to life inside of you and in the world.

I’d love to hear what’s on your hearts and what your words are for the new year if you feel like sharing. And for female-identifying readers who need help building practices to live into your intentions for change, I’ve created a 6-week online retreat that will help you do just that. It’s a healing journey of layered practices blending mindfulness, restorative movement, quiet contemplation, and Contagious Vulnerability that begins on January 30, 2022. You can learn more here.