travel

Spoiler alert: I got on the plane.

Hypnosis is something I had always wanted to try. But I’ll be honest: as a person who has struggled with anxiety, the idea of giving up “control” was, well, terrifying. But an upcoming family event in New York (all the way from rural Colorado?!) had me revisiting my preconceived notions of hypnosis to overcome my fear of flying. I had to go. I no longer found not traveling to important family functions – because of my crippling fear of having a panic attack on a plane –  to be an option.

Last summer, I spent my 26th birthday at a glamping resort in Lake Bled, Slovenia. We slept in a tent, sure, but this tent sat on a deck above a glimmering stream with bright red fish; to reach it, we crossed a hanging bridge.

My husband and I have perfected the art of road tripping—at least from our perspective. Over the course of several years and dozens of week-long trips around the United States and Canada, we figured out exactly how not to car camp by experiencing it once and vowing never to go back. Sleeping in cramped cars, forgoing fresh food for convenience, and failing to plan ahead are quick ways to make enemies of your traveling partner and your vehicle of choice.

Traveling can be a popular and much-needed way to destress, especially as the days start to turn warmer in southern locales and spring breaks come around—but vacation time can conflict with those recently set New Year’s resolutions.

Having a fear of flying isn’t fun. I can tell you this firsthand as it’s something I’ve struggled with for the past 12 years. I don’t know exactly when or why I started to panic during takeoff or turbulence, my hands gripping the armrests, my palms sweaty.

Gardens are a peaceful place to enjoy all the colors, scents, and serenity that life has to offer. There’s nothing quite like the freedom of strolling through a lush and peaceful place where plants flourish all around you.

Travel is a beautiful mix of exhilarating and exhausting. Our curiosity guides us to faraway places, foreign lands, new relationships, rituals unknown, food we’ve never tasted, novelty experiences…you name it.

If you’re like most of us, you probably feel that your work habits and productivity are not near their full potential. Whether it’s a lack of motivation, boredom with your tasks, a feeling of mental/emotional depletion, or just struggling with time management—we all get to a place in our work lives where we feel somewhat stuck. Many successful people have overcome this—or avoided it completely in the first place—by moving to another country…preferably as far away as possible.

I spent four months in a yogic immersion course in India. We chanted mantras for an hour every evening and then twice per month we chanted the entire Bhagavad Gita—which took 6 hours to complete. There were well over 100 people chanting together at any given time, and during the final month of the course we had the entire village assembled, chanting together for 8+ hours per day. I’ll tell you: the result of all this chanting was transformative to say the least.

A Challenging Dichotomy

A pale hand, unseasoned by sun or the wild, sat in awkward juxtaposition next to that of a tan, rough version belonging to a man from Belgium—a desperately telling picture in the consideration of the curious existence of Costa Rica’s ecotourism economy. My hand gripped the edge of a mosaic-crusted table, roughly 8 inches from the relaxed palm of Thijs Claes (pronounced Tess Class), The biologist leading the bird conservation project for Global Vision International in Tortuguero National Park.