Kunal Gupta's Blog

Parking in Lisbon is a particular kind of stress. Narrow streets built for horses. Sidewalks that double as parking spots. The universal gesture of frustrated drivers circling the same blocks. The quiet competition for spaces. The mental mathematics of whether that spot is actually legal or just temporarily ignored by police.

So when my partner and I drove to a dinner last week with friends, I was prepared for the usual hunt.

But as I pulled into a parking lot near their building, something shifted. A recognition. I'd been here before. Many times, actually. My hands knew the turn. My body knew where the ticket machine stood. My nervous system, which had been gearing up for battle, suddenly...settled.

It was such a small thing. A parking lot. But in that moment of recognition, I felt my entire body change states.

These friends are also expats, also travellers. They keep Lisbon as their base but are rarely here. We were comparing notes on recent trips, upcoming journeys, the logistics of lives lived in motion. We visit many corners of the world, yet here we were, in this small city, finding ourselves returning to the same place.

"I love the novelty of travel," my friend was saying, "but lately..." She paused, searching for words. "Lately, I'm exhausted before I even leave."

I knew exactly what she meant. Not tired in the body, but tired in some deeper system. The part of us that's constantly evaluating, constantly adjusting, constantly asking: Is this safe? Where's the exit? What are the rules here?

There's a switch in our bodies most of us don't know we have. The sympathetic nervous system: fight or flight, scan and assess, stay ready. And the parasympathetic: rest and digest, settle and restore, let go.

I used to think these states were about actual danger. Tigers and cliffs and genuine threats. But sitting at that dinner table, I realized how much of life is spent in sympathetic activation. Not from real danger, but from newness itself.

Every new city. Every unfamiliar restaurant. Every hotel room where I wake up forgetting where I am. Each one asks my nervous system to stay vigilant. To keep scanning. To never quite relax.

Travel puts us in sympathetic activation. It's not bad, it's why travel feels exciting, expansive, and alive. Our senses sharpen. Colours seem brighter. We notice everything because our body thinks we need to.

But it takes resources. Tremendous resources. A subconscious expenditure that happens whether we notice it or not. Our body is running programs in the background: mapping escape routes we'll never need, memorizing faces we'll never see again, trying to understand if that sound is normal or notable.

It's draining when it's continuous. When you live in perpetual arrival, you never actually arrive.

The conversation drifted to what actually helps us relax. Not the marketed version of relaxation, like spa days and meditation apps, but the real thing. The deeper settling.

"Reading an author I know," someone said. "When I recognize their rhythm, their voice, I just...sink into it."

"Coffee with my regular friend," another offered. "The one where we don't need to catch up because we never really fell behind."

I thought about my own list. The old Portuguese lady at the café who nods when I enter. The way my feet know the route to the farmer’s market. The parking lot that remembers me.

When something is familiar, my nervous system relaxes. It almost doesn't matter if the environment is chaotic or calm. That busy café where I know the rhythm, where my body knows the acoustic pattern, where the chaos is familiar chaos, I can relax there more deeply than in a peaceful place I've never been.

"What about scrolling?" my partner asked. "That's familiar. We do it every day."

But we all knew the answer. Scrolling social media, watching YouTube videos are familiar but not settling. The nervous system knows the difference. Digital familiarity keeps one in sympathetic activation. Always scanning, filtering, trying to separate signal from noise. Your thumb knows the motion, but your body never quite trusts the environment.

It's the difference between a familiar parking lot and a familiar slot machine. One lets you rest. The other keeps you pulling the lever.

Four years in Lisbon. Four years of saying yes to invitations, to events, to coffees with near-strangers who became familiar faces. The openness and curiosity that brought me here has, without my noticing, built something else: a web of familiarity.

The people feel familiar now. The roads feel familiar. Not routine, but familiar. There's a difference. Routine can be a cage. Familiar is a foundation.

I've started designing for this. Another suitcase that lives in the places I return to. The same brand of clothing so my body doesn't have to adjust. A travel pack where everything has its place. Not minimalism—portable familiarity.

These might seem like small optimizations, but they're not about efficiency. They're about giving my nervous system permission to relax. To trust. To stop scanning and to start settling. To be present instead of vigilant.

My friend's daughter reads the same book every night. Has for months. She knows every word, every picture, every place to turn the page. We call this childish, but maybe children understand something we've forgotten: repetition isn't boring. It's how you go deeper.

We're taught to grow out of this. To seek variety, novelty, and growth through change. But what if some growth comes through return? Through knowing something so well that you can finally stop monitoring it and start actually experiencing it.

As we left dinner, walking back to that familiar parking lot, I thought about my own patterns. How I tend to park in the same kind of spot, never the closest, always with an easy exit. Order the same kind of food. Choose the same kind of friends.

Parking in Lisbon is still stressful. The narrow streets haven't widened. The competition for spaces hasn't eased. But I know where the parking lots are now. I know which ones remember me. And in that knowing, that small, unglamorous knowing, my body has found something I didn't know I was looking for.

Permission to finally relax.

And that is how I learned to relax.

Last week, we hosted a games night in Lisbon. Friends were arriving, drinks were being poured, my partner was in the kitchen making dinner. And I was at my screen.

Not just physically at my screen, but trapped in it. The day's to-do list had grown tentacles. Each completed task had spawned two more. Emails marked urgent that weren't. Decisions that felt critical but probably weren't. The peculiar gravity of the laptop that pulls you in even when you know better.

It wasn't until thirty minutes after everyone had arrived that I finally entered the room. My body had been in the apartment the whole time, of course. But I hadn't been. There's a difference between being present and being there, and everyone knew which one I was.

I sat down at the table, still carrying the day with me like an invisible backpack. Someone was explaining the rules to a game. Cards were being passed around. And then something shifted.

Maybe it was the weight of the cards in my hand. Physical. Real. Simple. Our bodies know things our minds forget, that presence often begins in the palms.

I made my move. A choice that mattered not at all, and in that absence of consequence, something loosened. My shoulders dropped. My voice got louder. I could feel myself taking off the day like a coat I hadn't realized I was still wearing.

I've known some of these people for years. But watching them play, I saw something I hadn't seen before. Not different expressions, something underneath. The venture capitalist who couldn't decide whether to trade or not. The designer who became ruthlessly strategic the moment the cards were dealt. The quiet friend who turned into a theatrical bluffer. People becoming more themselves, not less.

There's something about games that reveals us. Not our professional selves, not our LinkedIn selves, and not our dinner party selves. But something earlier. Something we were before we learned to be who we are.

I watched my own competitiveness emerge. The intensity with which I planned three moves ahead. The genuine disappointment when my strategy collapsed. The surprising joy in caring about something that didn't matter at all.

Games are also the great equaliser. We live in hierarchies all day. Who reports to whom. Who gets heard in meetings. Who makes the decisions. But here, around this table, the dice don't care about your title. The cards don't know your salary. Your move is your move.

I've noticed how some of my friends have started reading strategy guides for board games. Optimization creeping in even here. The inability to just play badly. But then someone makes a ridiculous move, everyone laughs, and we remember: the point isn't to play well. The point is to play.

Somewhere during the second round, I noticed something. No one had checked their phone in over an hour. Not because we'd agreed not to. Not because of some digital detox pact. But because we were engaged in something that created its own temporal reality.

Turn-based time. "Your move" as a unit of measurement.

The focus that emerged wasn't the grinding focus of work. Not the heavy attention of deadlines and deliverables. This was something lighter. Attention without tension. The kind of focus that energises rather than depletes.

Hours passed without anyone noticing. Games as time machines, not taking us backward, but removing us from time altogether. When was the last time three hours disappeared without screens, without content, without consumption? Just humans, around a table, moving pieces.

I used to think growing up meant putting away childish things. Now I wonder if growing up means learning to pretend we don't need to play.

We perform adulthood so continuously, so convincingly, that we forget it's a performance. The serious meetings. The important decisions. The urgent everything. We've gotten so good at the role that we've forgotten we're playing it.

But games interrupt the performance. They don't ask you to be professional or productive or even particularly adult. They just ask you to play.

As the evening wound down and people started leaving, I felt different. Lighter. The day's earlier urgencies were still there, but they seemed properly sized now. The to-do list that had felt existential at 6 PM looked almost quaint at midnight.

My partner was cleaning up the kitchen. I picked up the dice, the cards, the pieces. Such simple objects. But they had done something profound. They had returned us to ourselves. Not our child selves, but our playing selves. The selves that know how to be present without trying, how to compete without consequence, how to care without weight.

Maybe that's what we lose when we forget how to play. Not innocence or simplicity, but a kind of fundamental presence. The ability to be fully in something that doesn't matter, which might be practice for being fully in things that do.

The next morning, I opened my laptop to the same urgent emails, the same growing to-do list. But something was different. I had remembered something I'd forgotten I'd forgotten: I know how to play.

And that is how I learned to play.

We were sitting at lunch on a quiet afternoon in Lisbon. A friend was visiting, passing through for a few days, carrying with him the subtle weight of a question he wasn’t exactly asking, how to slow down. He spoke of a growing desire to step back, to soften his pace, to live differently. I listened. I nodded. I smiled.

Then I paused.

And in that pause, I began to wonder if I had anything true to say. It’s been four years since I stepped down from the role of CEO. Four years since I moved to Portugal and left behind a version of life that once pulsed with urgency. From the outside, it might look like I slowed down. But from the inside, the story feels less certain.

Last week, I was in London. A city I know well. A city that knows me well, too.

Almost without thinking, I filled my calendar. Booked back-to-back appointments. Walked fast. Talked faster. Fit it all in. And as the days went by, I realized no one had asked this of me. No one expected it. I did. I carried that rhythm with me, like an old jacket I didn’t realize I was still wearing.

There was a kind of pride in the packed schedule. A subtle satisfaction in moving with speed. And yet, a quiet voice inside was asking: who is this for?

I used to think slowing down was a destination. That leaving my title and office behind would be enough. That changing countries would change tempo. But the truth is, nervous systems aren’t updated by job titles or postal codes. Habits don’t surrender as easily as business cards do.

Productivity, I’m learning, dresses itself up in new costumes. When it’s not work, it’s social plans. When it’s not meetings, it’s creative projects. Momentum doesn’t care about the source, it just wants to keep going.

Which got me thinking: maybe I haven’t been slowing down at all. Maybe I’ve just been rebranding movement. Walking a little slower, but still circling the same track. What if the real shift isn’t in how fast I move, but in whether I move at all?

A few days into the London trip, one of my planned apartment stays suddenly fell through. I found myself with a free morning, an opening in my day that hadn’t been there before. I thought I'd feel relief. Instead, I felt unease. That agitated impulse to do something with the time. Make the most of it. Fill the blank space.

It was startling to notice just how uncomfortable stopping can feel. Not because there's so much to do. But because of how much of my identity has been built upon motion.

There’s a kind of fear in stopping. Of becoming invisible. Of being seen as less useful, less successful, less relevant. We treat rest as recovery only when we believe we’ve earned it. As though permission must be granted.

But what if stopping isn’t failure or retreat? What if it’s something else entirely?

On flights. On silent retreats. In meditation. During fasting. These have become small training grounds. Moments where life slows not by choice, but by condition. My body, when offered stillness, doesn’t always welcome it. There’s discomfort. Restlessness. A buzzing under the skin. But over time, something loosens. Something softens. And in that softening, there's a remembering of something older than movement.

I’ve started to feel that stopping isn't absence. It’s presence of a different kind. Not a void, but a clearing. Not an end, but a pause that allows something new to take root.

Trees don’t slow down for winter. They stop. They shed. They enter stillness with a kind of grace not born from effort but from rhythm. And then, without effort, they bloom again. Nature doesn't try to find a better pace. It simply listens to its own internal seasons. Maybe that is what’s needed, not to force a slower life, but to listen for where life is asking to rest.

Perhaps slowing down is still, in some hidden way, about achievement. Stopping, though, asks for something else. It asks for surrender.

Not necessarily of everything. Even a single meeting left unscheduled. A moment not filled. A breath taken without intention. These can be stops.

It doesn't have to be dramatic. It can be quiet. Gentle. A choosing not to move forward just for the sake of motion. A willingness to not replace what has ended with something new, at least not right away.

Toward the end of lunch, my friend and I sat in silence. The kind of silence that comes not from lack of things to say, but from the weight of something understood. We smiled. Not in certainty, but in recognition.

Maybe what we’re learning isn’t how to slow down. Maybe we’re just remembering how to stop.

And that is how I learned to stop.

This morning, I woke up naturally and peacefully. There was a stillness in the room that I couldn’t place at first. The light outside looked softer somehow, as if the sky hadn't yet remembered what time it was. The clock said one time, but my body insisted it was different.

Then I realized that the clocks had changed. Daylight Savings.

That small, strange ritual of shifting time forward or back. I had gained an hour this time.

The thought made me smile. It was like waking up and finding a twenty-dollar bill in a coat pocket I hadn’t worn since last winter. A feeling of having received something, even though nothing really changed. Time, it seemed, had slipped me a gift.

And almost just as quickly, came the next thought: What should I do with it?

Like most gifts, it came with a subtle pressure to use it well. An extra hour. It could mean catching up on sleep. Replying to texts I’ve let linger too long. Folding that laundry in the corner. Reading that article I've had open in a tab for three days.

It was revealing, this impulse to fill the time, to catch up. To not let the hour go to waste.

That urgency exposed something: a quiet belief that I’m behind. Not just today, but in general. Always catching up. Always returning to undone tasks and unopened intentions, to versions of myself lingering in the past, requesting attention.

Time so easily becomes something to manage, to optimize, to spend carefully. It becomes a kind of currency: traded, stored, budgeted. There are entire industries, philosophies, even identities built on “time management.”

But I've started to notice that some of the richest moments in my life are the ones I didn’t try to manage at all. Sitting with my partner on the couch, saying nothing. Stirring a pot on the stove, lost in the rhythm. Watching the sky turn gold, then violet, then blue.

Time seems to stretch in those moments. Maybe not stretch, exactly. Maybe it just stops being measured. And when it stops being measured, it starts being felt.

That’s what mindfulness has offered for me. Not more hours in the day, but a softer relationship to them. The sense that time isn’t only about what I do in it, but how I meet it.

Sometimes I meet time by rushing through it. Other times, time seems to meet me, when I'm still enough to notice.

This morning presented a small but clear choice: I could spend the hour catching up on what I missed or invite something new into this space I’d suddenly found.

That felt luxurious. Less because of what I’d do, and more because of the awareness itself. To hold time not just as a ticking clock, but as an open hand.

It struck me, lying there, not yet committed to the day ahead, that I hadn’t gained an hour, I had simply noticed one.

And maybe that’s all that’s ever happening. Time is neither gained nor lost, saved nor spent. It’s just here, waiting to be noticed.

Next year, when the clocks fall back again, I hope I remember this feeling. That I don’t need more time. I just need fewer reasons to leave the time I already have.

And that is how I learned to time travel.

Growing up, Diwali was the literal and figurative brightest time of the year for me. Not because of the fireworks or the lights, though there were plenty of both. But because of something quieter, something steadier. A sense of belonging. A sense of rhythm. Ritual.

There were certain rituals that only came alive once a year. Decorating the house with candles and diyas, stringing decorations by hand, and helping in the kitchen with foods we never made at any other time of the year.

Sweets that filled the home with their comforting scent before they ever reached a plate. The ritual of getting dressed, not just in new clothes but in the anticipation it brought. Staying up late, gathering in rooms full of conversation and laughter, sometimes skipping school the next day. None of it seemed extraordinary then. It was just what we did.

But now, looking back, I see how much of what mattered could be found in the repetition. And how ritual, in its own way, etched memory into feeling for me.

A ritual often begins as something ordinary. A gesture, a moment, an object. Lighting a flame. Sharing a meal. Cleaning a home. But done with care, and done again, it becomes something more. It becomes a way to remember. A way to feel anchored in who we are and where we come from. The power lies not in the act, but in the asking: what does this mean, and what does it remind me to feel?

Diwali marks the Indian New Year, a symbolic turning of the page. It’s described as the Festival of Lights, a celebration of good over evil, of light over darkness. But these emotions aren’t just ancient, they’re current. Darkness today feels less mythical and more personal. It looks like burnout. Numbness. Loneliness. Disconnection. In this context, lighting a candle isn’t just a tradition. It becomes something else. A soft declaration that warmth is possible. That we still choose to gather, to care, to see light where it's hard to find.

For a long time, I believed rituals were inherited. That they came pre-shaped by culture, by family, by history. But what I’ve come to understand is that while we may inherit the forms, what we’re really passing on is the feeling. The values. The spirit. Some rituals remain untouched because they still resonate. Others are softened, or even set aside. And some are entirely remade.

This has become more real recently, in the quiet practice of building a shared life with my partner in Lisbon. Two sets of stories, two ways of doing things, gently converging. And a chance not to replicate someone else’s ritual, but to create our own, together. To preserve the essence without feeling confined by the shape. To ask: what do we want to feel? How do we want to celebrate? And what expressions feel honest to us, here and now?

There’s freedom in that. And also a quiet responsibility. To be intentional. To craft not only celebrations, but rhythms. The little things count more than they seem. A morning coffee. A walk on Sundays. A pause before the day begins. A journal entry that no one else will read. These too are rituals. Repeated gestures, not of productivity, but of presence. Not to escape the world as it is, but to meet it more fully, and with care.

This Diwali, I feel myself holding the past and the present together. Remembering a childhood version of myself who lit sparklers and watched the candles burn late into the night. But also noticing a quieter flame now. That of curiosity. Of gratitude. Of partnership. And with it, a simple question: what does this moment want to express through me?

Not every answer is clear. But that’s never really the point. The ritual is not the answer. It’s how I listen, to something deeper.

And that is how I learned to Diwali.

The moment we stepped off the plane, something felt different. I couldn’t say what it was exactly, just that there was no friction. No pause. No lines. No disappointment. No hitch in the process that usually accompanies travel and immigration. We moved from terminal to taxi to hotel without stopping, without waiting, without wondering. Everything worked. And that felt like a surprise.

Travel is a constant in life right now for my partner and I. A new country every month, more or less. I’ve come to expect stumbles at borders, bureaucracy in transit, an undercurrent of disorder that feels inevitable. So when nothing went wrong, when the roads were immaculate, the cars silent, the immigration process a mere glance into a scanner, I noticed the absence. The absence of aggravation. Of chaos. Of stress. And that absence made room for something else.

There was a calm in Dubai. Not a sleepy stillness, but an active one. A city moving forward with so little friction that the presence of forward motion feels inspiring. People drive with awareness. Systems seemed to anticipate needs. A place designed, not just built.

I hadn’t realized how accustomed I had become to expecting failure. To anticipating delays. To lowering expectations so as not to bump into disappointment. But here, things just worked. Not just once, but again and again. The gentle relief that followed each system functioning as it should had a cumulative effect. Like a nervous system remembering how to relax. Like trust rebuilding itself, quietly, in the simple act of things being ready when they’re needed.

There was something else I began to notice. Rules, but not rigidity. Order, but not obsession. There was a logic to it all that felt human, not perfect, but sane. Like the people making the decisions had paused long enough to ask, “Does this make sense?” And most often, they seemed to answer, “Yes.”

A few nights in, over dinner with my cousin who lives there, a conversation about governance emerged. About how leadership works differently here. Not as a function of democracy, but as something centralized, and in some way, more coherent. The public sector leads. The government isn't an observer or resistor of change, it’s the one driving it. Like a company thinking in decades, building a brand, investing in infrastructure not just for the next vote, but for the next generation.

It felt surreal, this idea that a government could operate with the managerial clarity of a business. Ministries as departments. Leaders as stewards. A sense of order not for its own sake, but in service of something larger. A country as a company, not in the commodified sense, but in the methodical, clear-eyed, purposeful one.

I ran a company as CEO for 15 years and understand at my core what it takes to think long-term. To have a vision. A strategy. And a purpose beyond the next quarter or cycle. This is maybe why I felt a deep respect for aspects of what I saw in Dubai.

We visited a museum called the Museum of the Future. I expected something over-produced, a vanity project built for tourists. But it landed as something else entirely. A structure that felt not like an exhibition, but like a prototype. Rooms filled with concepts that, somehow, didn’t feel far off. Personalized medicine, reforestation strategies, vertical cities, archives of DNA in delicate glass casings. There was even a flying taxi, planned for pilot launch in just a few months from now.

It felt like seeing what was once only speculative become visible. Plausible. Perhaps even inevitable.

And that did something inside me. I found myself believing, not just in outcomes, but in the processes that lead to them. In the scaffolding behind dreams.

The contrast, though, was most alive the next day. When we landed in Lisbon. A city I love for so many reasons. But that love was interrupted by a harsh return. An immigration line that stretched the length of the terminal. A grumpy crowd of tired tourists. No messages, no updates, no apology. Just a collective remembering: this isn’t a place where systems work. Not always, and not well.

I found myself missing the future I had just left behind. And yet, I was standing in the present.

This gap between what is and what could be held me. Both Lisbon and Dubai offered opposing reflections. One wrapped in nostalgia, beauty, and inertia. The other wrapped in ambition, clarity, and pace. They both told truths. And they both held a kind of seduction.

In Dubai, we visited the Burj Khalifa before leaving. The tallest building in the world. At the base, a small shop sold miniature replicas, silver figurines that shimmered under spotlights. One now sits on my desk in Lisbon. A reminder of what momentum can feel like. Of what vision can build. There’s a quote from the man behind its creation, etched into the walls of the visitor center. “I had never built a building before. Neither had my father or mother. But we had a dream.” It was built in four years. It takes four years in Lisbon to get a permit to build an extension to a house.

It’s hard not to smile at that. A simple truth. Nothing inherited except imagination.

Dubai is not without its complications. No place is. And this reflection is not a celebration of perfection, but an acknowledgement of potential. That even in a desert, where life should be impossible, systems can be made to thrive. Not in theory, but in practice.

Maybe that is the thing that stayed with me most. That possibility is not abstract. It’s physical. It’s breathable. It’s visible in polished roads and timed lights, in architecture that invites awe, in cities that feel alive not because they’re old, but because they’re intentional.

We often speak of the future like it’s far away. Like it’s something to wait for. But sometimes the future is already here. Called into existence by those who dare to imagine it. Who dare to begin.

And that is how I learned to Dubai.

The car rolled up to the gates, and I already knew the drill. It had been a year and a half since the last time, but the memory felt close. The warmth of the air, the smiles on each face that greeted us, the quiet dignity in their movements. A small ritual welcomed us, along with a clipboard and a pen. Within minutes, we were led to our room, and handed our first instruction: to put on our white pajamas.

No explanation. No options. Just a reminder of what we had signed up for. This would be our uniform, day and night, for the next three weeks.

There’s something disarming about being told what to wear. Especially when the choice is removed so completely. The color, the shape, the fabric. All decided.

It felt oddly comforting.

Maybe it was because so much else would be decided too. What we’d eat. When we’d eat. How often we’d see the doctor. When to rest, when to stretch, when to move. It’s a rare thing, to enter a space where autonomy becomes unnecessary. Even rarer still to feel at peace with that.

This was an Ayurvedic detox program, called Panchakarma. Ayurveda, literally translated to the ‘science of life’, is a 5,000-year-old ancient form of Indian medicine that sees illness not as a disruption to be zapped away with quick fixes, but as something to understand, to gradually unwind.

Less than twenty guests are taken in at a time at the hospital my partner and I went to. It’s not a holiday. It’s not even really a retreat. It’s a hospital. A gentle, comfortable and luxurious one.

Where the primary prescription is silence, warm herbal oils massaged into your body twice a day, and meals made uniquely for your body’s state, determined each morning by the doctor’s assessment. We met with the doctor twice daily. And over time, I began to look forward not just to what he’d say, but to not needing to figure it out on my own.

We didn’t leave the grounds. Not once for three weeks. There was nothing to buy, nowhere to go. No packages arriving, no errands to attend to. Devices are only permitted only inside the bedroom. Music, reading, talking are all not allowed during meals. Eating was intentional, focused and peaceful. Each guest at their own small table. Just food and focus.

At first, all of this control felt strange. Mechanical. But soon, something shifted. The routine didn’t feel like restriction. It felt like rhythm.

We drank only warm water. Ginger-infused. Sometimes plain. The taste, initially flat, began to warm me from the inside. After a few days, I noticed I wasn’t missing cold drinks, or coffee, or dessert. I wasn’t missing anything, really.

The food was always prepared within the hour of being served. Fresh, simple, warm. No microwaves. No leftovers. Every meal nourishing in a way I hadn’t experienced before. Not indulgent, not sparse, just clean. I began to feel that in my joints, in my energy, in my sleep. Not because I slept more, but because I finally became aware of what it felt like to feel rested, instead of exhausted and crashing into unconsciousness each night.

My partner and I shared a room. We’d made the decision to come together, and it added a dimension I hadn’t expected. The vulnerability of sharing everything, including bodily discomforts, emotional waves, fears, and fatigue, brought us closer than many conversations ever could. Small acts emerged from that closeness without needing to be asked. Those gestures became part of our language for the three weeks.

There were moments when discomfort rose quickly. The treatments can be intense. They involve purging, not just metaphorically. Liquids going in and and coming out of most holes in our body. I didn’t need to react. I just needed to be still.

Something about being cared for so completely, without needing to solve, manage, or even understand everything, was deeply emotional. There was a tenderness I didn’t realize I had been craving: someone asking the right questions, placing their hands with trust, making food not to impress or entertain, but simply to help me feel whole.

After a few days, I stopped thinking about what day it was. Not in a relieved, vacation kind of way, but in a different way altogether. A slow dissolving of my sense of urgency. I began to use energy only when it was needed. And saved the rest for detoxing and healing.

The transformation wasn’t dramatic. It was gradual. Physical signs came first. A leaner body, lighter limbs, clearer skin, less tension in my shoulders. But the deeper shifts continued unfolding afterwards. A quieter mind. A softer heart. A feeling of being safe, of being held. Not by any one person, but by myself.

Last year, after my first time, I was so inspired by the experience that I wrote a short book detailing each day. I shared a draft with my parents, and they were curious enough to go later in the year. They still feel the benefits more than one year later to this day.

Not everyone will find their feet arriving at a place like this. The time, the cost, the logistics, are not always accessible. This is also why I wrote a book as I believe that many of the practices and philosophies, despite being ancient, are as applicable to this day and even more needed in a modern lifestyle.

The idea that silence can be healing. That food can be slow. That surrender is not abandoning ourselves but coming closer to who we really are beneath the choices and habits and preferences that usually define us.

Wearing white pajamas was required. But over time, it began to feel like a gift. A way to disappear and unearth oneself in the same breath.

And that is how I learned to white pajamas.

White Pajamas: 17 Days at an Ayurveda Luxury Wellness Retreat is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Most days, it's easy to focus on the surface. The task in front of me, the commitment in my calendar, the decision needing to be made. And so I go ahead. I move, I speak, I act. But lately, I’ve been pausing more often to consider what I’m actually bringing to those actions. What sits underneath them, influencing the action.

There’s the action I take. And then there’s the energy behind that action. I've begun to notice just how different the experience can be when the energy shifts, even when the action looks exactly the same.

Going to the gym has been a regular part of my routine for years. But recently, I’ve started to notice the quiet but powerful force that determines whether I leave feeling full or depleted. Some days, the energy is light, even excited. I'm curious to move, curious to see what my body can do, glad to have music in my ears and time to myself. Those days, I exert a lot of energy, yet somehow leave even more energized.

Other days, I show up from a place that feels heavier. The motivation is fear. Fear of what might happen if I don’t go, fear of losing momentum, of not being enough. And while the workout may look the same from the outside, when I leave, I feel drained. Like something was taken, not given. Same action. Different energy.

I’ve started to see this pattern show up in other places.

In conversations, in decisions, in everyday interactions. Whether I’m responding to an email, moving through a crowded airport, or offering support to someone else, there’s always something humming underneath. I didn’t used to pay attention to this. But now I am starting to.

A few weeks ago, I watched a young child being asked to clean up their toys. The parent’s words were kind, but the energy behind them wasn’t. There was stress, frustration, and impatience barely hidden beneath the surface. The child pushed back. Not against the request, but, as I sensed it, against the energy. It reminded me of moments in my own life when I’ve said all the right things but felt none of the alignment. And wondered later why it didn’t land.

Behind every decision is a reason, but behind every reason is a tone. That tone isn’t always logical. It’s emotional, intuitive, wordless. It doesn’t always emerge in a coherent sentence, but it’s always there, like background music I didn’t know was playing until I leave the room.

Lately, I’ve begun asking myself: what is my real intention here? Not the stated reason, or the justification, but the quiet motivation beneath the surface. Am I writing this because I want to share, or because I need to be seen? Am I saying yes from generosity or from fear of missing out? Am I praying out of surrender or out of panic?

Sometimes the answers surprise me. And the simple act of noticing often shifts something. It’s not about correcting or editing the intention, not in a performative sense. It’s more like an unconscious pattern stepping into the light. The intention softens. Clarifies. Comes into alignment on its own.

I used to think an action was enough. That doing the thing carried its own virtue. But now I’m starting to see that action is only part of the experience. The intention shapes the weight of it, its reception, its echo.

There have been moments when I paused long enough to sense that I was about to act from fear. A speaking engagement accepted out of anxiety rather than joy. A message composed from insecurity rather than care. And I’ve found that bringing attention to this intention sometimes changes the action itself. At the very least, it changes how I feel about it.

Even silence can carry intention. Not speaking out of restraint is different than not speaking out of indifference. And I think others feel that, just as I do.

This reflection hasn’t made me perfect or consistent. But it’s made me more aware. And with awareness comes choice. Not a forced choice, but a natural one. When the action aligns with a true intention, it feels quieter. Lighter. Whole.

It’s not about doing better. It’s about being honest. About noticing what I’m truly bringing to each moment. When I don’t, then fear, habit, or ego will decide for me.

And that is how I learned to Action.

It was a simple cue. To fold forward, lengthening the spine. One I’ve followed hundreds, maybe thousands of times before. But this time, my hamstrings resisted. The stretch stopped short of where I remember it landing. And without warning, a wave of frustration rolled in.

Class had only just begun, but already my mind was somewhere else. Comparing, judging, remembering what once was. The awareness came with a slight sting. Not just in the body, but deeper. Something closer to grief.

I’ve practiced yoga for more than ten years. I practically lived at the studio in New York for a season, completed my teacher training, found my people, my rhythm, and for a while, my purpose. It wasn't just a habit, it was home. I remember being able to glide into postures that now feel distant. Back then, showing up to the mat was effortless. Natural.

Over time, things changed. I started going less often. At first, I explained it away. New gym routines, changing goals, shifting interests. There was some truth to that. And still, a deeper truth lingered: that maybe I had been avoiding the practice because in it, I could no longer hide from what had changed. My body, my limits, myself.

It’s far easier to gravitate toward the things that feel good, that feed the parts of identity we’re proud of. Easier to convince myself that I’m still that person from before, somewhere underneath. That I’m simply choosing differently now. But sitting in that yoga class, I began to wonder if some choices have more to do with protection than preference.

Avoidance is clever that way. It can wear the mask of mindfulness. Of strategy. Of maturity even. But sometimes, it's just fear, dressed up and given a name that makes it easier to live with.

That class became a mirror. Not just for my body, but for other areas where I’ve noticed a similar softening. Mental focus that doesn’t stretch quite as far as it used to. A conversation that tires me faster than expected. A book I want to read that sits untouched. Long flights I now hesitate to take. Languages, Portuguese, Hindi, French, that once lived easily in me, now peeking out only in small fragments.

Seeing this changing landscape within myself has been humbling. At one time, any limit was a challenge. Something to work with. Push through. Solve. The drive to overcome was a source of motivation, and, in some ways, identity.

But something has shifted. The instinct to push has grown quieter. In its place, a new kind of response is emerging. Softer. Slower. Less about returning to what was, and more about meeting what is.

Maturity, perhaps, isn't marked by how many limits are overcome, but by how many are recognized and embraced. By the subtle courage it takes to sit with the truth of one's capacity, without recoiling in shame or rushing to fix.

Midway through that yoga class, my internal narrative began to change. The judgment softened. The comparison receded. I was still folding forward, still not reaching where I used to. But something in how I met the moment changed. The resistance wasn’t gone, but it no longer defined the experience.

I began to see the limitation not as a wall, but as a doorway. An invitation into a different kind of relationship with myself. One where the body need not perform to be accepted. One where effort does not need to be proven.

In that practice, a shift: from fighting to holding. Holding the limitation closer, not as a flaw to correct but as a shape to understand. The same body, the same breath, but a different awareness.

Over time, what once felt like a limit becomes something else entirely. Not a boundary, just a shape. Not a failure, just a fact. And in seeing it without resistance, something else opens. Not wider, but deeper.

I used to think growth was about getting stronger, faster, better. Now I wonder if it's about getting quieter, softer, truer. Learningnot to give up, but to give in to what is.

The mat is rolled up. The postures are forgotten. What remains is a presence that wasn't there at the start.

And that is how I learned to stretch.

A friend was reflecting with me after a few weeks of travel that he felt depleted and worn out. I had also been traveling for a few weeks, yet I didn’t feel the same. I didn’t feel drained, I felt energized.

We began tracing the shape of our experiences. Where had he been? Who had he been with? What had his days looked like? His voice softened as he spoke. Beneath the words, a quiet disengagement. It was clear the places hadn’t really felt like his, and the people, though familiar, weren’t those who met him where he was.

Then he asked me the same questions. And as I described the past few weeks, I found myself smiling. I had been in settings that sparked something, new friendships, different perspectives. Even when tired, I wasn’t tired in a hollow way. I was tired in the full way, like after a good workout.

It made me pause. How could two apparently similar circumstances leave us with such different experiences?

We often speak about time. We often think about money. But rarely do we give much attention to energy. And yet, energy seems to quietly guide far more than either of the other two.

Money is easy to measure. Trackable in numbers and statements, visible in balance sheets and budgets. Time can be organized, capacity calculated by blocks in a calendar. But energy, what is that? It doesn’t follow the same rules. It doesn’t sit still long enough to be charted.

And yet, it has been becoming more important. Perhaps that's what begins to change as some of the other questions around money or time become more settled. Energy becomes the third resource. Invisible, unmeasurable, but unmistakably felt.

I notice how much more I reflect on where it comes from and where it leaks. There are no tools for this. Only patterns. Sensations. Recollections. A sense of brightness after a conversation. A subtle exhaustion after another. A sudden alertness when starting a new project. A mysterious fatigue when continuing an old one.

There seem to be three places I look when I try to notice my energy: people, places, projects.

People are often the most unpredictable source. Sometimes, sitting with a friend I’ve known for years feels nourishing, effortless. We don’t even need to say much. Other times, the same connection feels strained, like something between us is misaligned. Often it has less to do with the other and more to do with me. My state, my openness, my capacity to be with whatever shows up. Meeting new people can be thrilling or tiring. It depends not just on who they are, but on who I am when I meet them.

Places hold their own charge as well. Some cities pull something out from within, make a mind race, a spirit stretch. New York did that for me for years. But the same city that once lit me up began to wear me down. Everything required more energy than I realized I was spending. Lisbon, in recent years, offers a different rhythm. A slowness that feels restorative. But even peaceful places can become dull if momentum fades. Sometimes too much calm begins to press into stagnantly.

Projects are perhaps where this exchange becomes most vivid. The joy of starting something new. The spark of excitement when an idea lands and begins to find form. I feel that often these days, particularly exploring things with AI. That current of curiosity that energizes. But projects are not immune to becoming heavy, when they ask for skills I haven’t yet developed, or when the purpose behind them dims. Administrative work, repetitive tasks, uninteresting priorities, all these feel like small but steady leaks of energy.

What makes it more complex is how none of these areas are static. What gives energy today might ask for it tomorrow. The same person, the same city, the same work. Everything shifts in relationship to the season of life I find myself in. The same conversation that yesterday lifted me, today lands differently.

And so I’ve stopped trying to manage my energy. Not because it can’t be done, but because management implies control. And control isn’t what energy seems to need. What I’ve started doing, instead, is listening.

Just noticing. After a day ends, quietly asking: what gave something back? What quietly took something away?

Not always acting on that noticing. Sometimes there are things that require showing up to regardless of the energy they demand. But in the awareness, I find something subtle recalibrates on its own. No need to optimize or restructure or intervene. Just attention. And attention, I’ve found, opens something far better than a plan.

In the end, it was that conversation with my friend that brought all of this to the surface.

There is no spreadsheet for this. No formula, no metric. Just a quiet question that rides beneath experience: does this give energy, or does it take my energy?

And that is how I learned to listen.