Stress is a fact of Life. All Life. Yet, without an orientation, and without strategies for optimizing the power of stress in  productive ways, we end up sick, exhausted, bitter and alienated from our own lives and the lives of those around us. Where then can we look for help? How about in the roots.

By the roots, I mean the root vegetables; the ones with the ability to grow long past the time when the other crops have yielded to the stresses of cold temperatures. In response to frost, our root friends send out sugars to protect themselves, rendering them hardy and sweet to consume. How can we do the same?

The next time you feel the tension building, catch yourself. Focus on your breathing. Let go of just one tension in the body. Breathe and notice. Say “yes” to whatever is in front of you, for no other reason than because it is. (Could you imagine the carrots refusing to accept that the temperatures have dropped?) Then, ask yourself, “What is possible here?”

As the Zen proverb goes, “The obstacle is the path,” so too could we go, knowing that  nothing needs to be avoided, only included. What a sweet path with the stressful “frosts” of life we could walk.