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How We Can Heal
A podcast to share deep conversations about How We Can Heal from life’s toughest circumstances.
How We Can Heal
Nurturing Softness through Meditation with Cara Lai
What if the moment you stop trying to fix yourself is the moment real relief begins? That’s the surprising turn in our conversation with meditation teacher and parent Cara Lai—authorized in the Theravada lineage (IMS, Spirit Rock) and known for an approach that’s honest, funny, and deeply humane. Cara traces her path from art school and a “soul-sucking” office to early retreats that opened a brighter world, then a year-long retreat that didn’t go to plan. Living with Lyme disease, she discovered that discipline without tenderness can harden into harm, and that the path must be larger than the cushion.
We dig into collective pain, intuition, and the limits of control—how Western culture overvalues productivity while dismissing the “soft” skills that stabilize families and communities. Parenting reframes practice: interruptions became invitations, metta becomes embodied, and desire connect us with life-giving intuition. Cara shares how micro-mindfulness moments—feeling joy fully, pausing in a trigger, relaxing the urge to fix—can change a day. She offers practical on-ramps: start with 8 minutes, consider a short retreat if appropriate, and let nature, humor, and community widen your capacity.
This is a story about the middle way reimagined for modern life: less about perfect posture, more about real presence; less about control, more about trust. If you’ve ever tried to meditate your pain away, if parenting has blown up your schedule, or if softness feels “inefficient,” this conversation offers clarity, compassion, and tools you can use today.
If this resonates, follow and share the show, leave a quick review, and tell us: what will you soften around this week?
Welcome back to the How We Can Heal podcast. Today our guest is Cara Lai. Cara Lai once worked as an artist, wilderness guide, social worker, and psychotherapist, but she traded it all in for an all-out mindfulness rampage. She's a working mom whose teaching is relatable, authentic, funny, and sometimes crass, and her teachings are accessible for many people. She's authorized to teach in the Theravada Buddhist lineage through Insight, Meditation, Society, and Spirit Rock. She teaches at centers across the country and has been featured on 10% Happier, Patch Sleep, The Happier app, and now here on the How We Can Heal podcast. She lives with her husband and toddler in northern Vermont, ultimately hoping to get woke enough to bend spoons with her mind in front of large audiences and to help us all get free. Please join me in welcoming Carl Eye to the show. Caraai, welcome to the How We Can Heal Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today and talk about meditation.
Cara Lai:Yeah, thanks for having me.
Lisa Danylchuk:We'll talk about meditation, but we'll talk probably more about life because that's I think where the rubber meets the road and a lot of what you teach and talk about. I'm curious though, how your meditation journey began. How did you start sniffing in the direction of sitting for hours on end and studying insight meditation, which I think is your focus, Vipassana?
Cara Lai:Yeah, I had been just on the standard prescribed track of going to college and getting a job, mostly just for lack of a better idea of what to do, and was fairly unhappy after I finished college and was I was working as an animator because I went to an art school and went to school for illustration. So I was doing this animation job after school, and it was, you know, it sounded probably sounds cooler than most post-college jobs to animate for a cartoon that was actually on TV at the time. But I was in a climate-controlled office, and it felt very soul-sucking, and I could not foresee a future of just like climbing that ladder to wherever it might take me because it felt meaningless. Which was I spent a lot of time working in outdoor ed, outdoor education, yes, being outside, being with young people. And I was kind of on this quest, although I probably wouldn't have been able to name that at the time, to find something that felt more meaningful to me. And so I met a lot of people who just had lots of different life experiences. And somebody who I worked with at one of the outdoor art centers taught me how to meditate because he was like, I think you would really like this. And I did really like it, and I'm kind of hardcore, so I went all into it very quickly and just started reading a lot about meditation and Buddhism and started doing more and more of it. And I was really quickly having a lot of profound experiences that were fairly trippy, and so I knew there was something to it, and eventually I had a very, very profound experience with it just from I think I was only sitting like 10 minutes a day or something at the time, and the whole world just like opened up to me, and a lot of this anxiety that I had just kind of disappeared all at once, and I felt more at ease and more happy than I had since I could remember. And it didn't last, it lasted for a few days, which was pretty amazing, but it didn't last beyond that. In fact, it kind of plummeted into despair. And then I really wanted to know how to get it back and what I actually did to make that happen. And so I went and looked for meditation retreats, and I happened to be living just like an hour away from a pretty big retreat center, and so that was the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, and so I went there and I sat a retreat, and then a few weeks later I did another one. This was back when meditation retreats were not expensive, yeah, or donation or something. Yeah, yeah, it was really cheap. So I just kept sitting these meditation retreats, and because I worked seasonally, my lifestyle was made that possible. And that same year I sat a three-month meditation retreat at that same place and just decided that this is the most meaning that I had ever been able to find in life, and it sort of felt like all of the problems that I had were being addressed by meditation. Wow. So it was kind of like, well, I what else? What else would one do with their time than this?
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. Yeah, you're feeling so much benefit from it. It's like a natural choice. Yeah. I know you've sat longer than three months since then, but early in my life I did a 10-day vipassana, and I remember just trying to clear that time seemed so challenging because I wasn't working seasonally. I was like, oh, then I'll have to get subs for my yoga class and coverage for my clients. And it seems so hard to get that time. And after I did the 10-day, oh, I want to do a month, and I never, I never did. But I do coming back from the 10-day sit, and I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and just seeing how much information was coming into my eyes. And this was in this must have been 2003 or four, it was a while ago. And just driving to work and all the billboards, right? I mean, it's probably even more now with the technology. I mean, we didn't at that point in time have like billboards that changed that were digital, right? They were just fixed at least. But I just remember all this felt like an assault of other things coming in, having just been in this space of filtering that, right? Of not having that. And and then the first yoga class taught after. I remember like, am I talking loud? Is this weird? Is there an echo? Like I wish that had been silent for 10 days and came back to like, this is weird. So so I can only imagine the impact of three months, and then especially you're getting all those benefits. What made you want to do a year-long retreat?
Cara Lai:Well, it had been something that had been on my mind for a while after I had been practicing for a few years, just from my I I had heard about other people who had done one. And it, I don't know. I just am the kind of person who's like, I'm gonna go for a run. Oh, that means eventually I'm gonna go for a marathon.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah, yeah.
Cara Lai:You know, so that was just something that I had thought about doing every time I sat a retreat. The first I remember the first three-month retreat, I sat thinking, wow, what if I just did this three more times afterwards?
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah.
Cara Lai:And and then so it had been just on my mind, and I was talking to a good friend of mine, Dennis, who was also a really serious meditator, and he asked me what my ideal retreat length was. And I said, Well, I really want to sit a year, but I probably won't be able to until because I really want to have kids, and so I I probably should wait until they grow up and then I can do that. And he had kids who were in their teens and twenties, and he's like, Uh, you should do that now. Yeah, you should not do that afterwards because you're gonna want to be around for their lives, and it's just really hard to peel yourself away, even for shorter periods of time as a parent, even with adult kids, and uh, it just kind of flooded into me, like, oh my god, yeah, you're right. I I do need to do that now. And then it just it all kind of fell together fairly easily after a really, really tender conversation with my husband, who is extremely supportive.
Lisa Danylchuk:Wow, yeah, because that's a long time to be apart, yeah.
Cara Lai:And we had just gotten married too.
Lisa Danylchuk:Wow.
Cara Lai:Yeah, he's he's great. He's he's an amazing person, always been really supportive of this.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah, that's awesome.
Cara Lai:Yeah.
Lisa Danylchuk:So how was that? I I know it's a big question. Uh how was that year-long retreat for you? You know, and I know you've done entire interviews focused on that. Um what what would you say about it now looking back?
Cara Lai:Well, it was the hardest thing that I've ever done. And not in the ways that I was expecting it to be hard. I think I was just expecting it to be a longer version of all of the other meditation retreats I had ever sat, which you know, I knew that there was a variety of ways a meditation retreat could go. But what ended up happening on the year-long retreat was leagues different from any other retreat that I ever experienced. Partly, I think, because I was alone and I hadn't done one alone before, yeah, and partly because I was feeling really sick the entire time and just totally uncomfortable and brain fog. So I had Lyme disease, and I only found out a few months before the retreat that I had been living with it for seven or eight years. Wow. And so I tried to do what I could to address it before going into the retreat, but it ended up, and then I thought, you know, well, I'll just meditate and that'll make it better.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah, I'll get relief, right? All these good things that meditation brings, it'll help.
Cara Lai:Yeah, because like I had said uh meditation felt like it was the answer to all my problems, yeah, including health problems. And I had had retreats where I was feeling the Lyme symptoms before they I knew they were Lyme. And going into these really deep states of concentration felt extremely healing, like very, very nourishing and transformative, and was like pushing the toxins out of my body. And so I figured, well, no big deal, Lyme disease. It'll just get destroyed by all the meditating we're gonna do. Yeah. And that just wasn't it wasn't what happened at all. In fact, it felt like I couldn't even meditate because there was so much, there was just so much brain fog, and there was so much discomfort in the body, yeah, and not enough capacity to hold it all and to sit with it. And being alone and looking directly into the pain was not helpful at all. What I learned was this really important lesson about expanding one's notion of what it means to be on the path, and that it's not just about meditating and it and that you don't have to do it by yourself, and you don't have to push so hard to fix yourself, which was apparently the mentality that I had been holding about it without realizing it. Yeah, and the universe was kind of telling me, Kari, you don't have to do this, yeah. You don't have to, the path doesn't need to look like this, you don't have to be a renunciate who lives in a cave and doesn't have human contact. Actually, that's not serving you at all, and you would be better served by being around people who love you and comfort and safety, and actually not meditating so much, and maybe not even meditating at all sometimes, because you can't anyway.
Lisa Danylchuk:What a lesson, right? I mean, that's probably not what you expected to take away from that experience.
Cara Lai:Not at all, but it was a really, really valuable lesson to learn, and there's no part of that experience that I regret just because I learned so that wasn't the only thing I learned. I learned a lot about compassion, a lot about patience, and a lot about listening to myself and trusting myself, and I probably wouldn't do it again. Yeah, you know, like well, at least I wouldn't do it again that way. Yeah, you know, if if if I started doing it again and it was going like that, I would stop. But I um for whatever reason that had to happen for me to to under to really understand and break out of this strong conditioning that I had to just push and to feel like I had to be responsible for all of my well-being and all of my path, and that it was me all alone having to walk it, which it's so freeing to not have to think about it that way anymore.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. And I've heard you talk about feeling like some of what you felt, some was the Lyme disease, some was being alone, but there's also this element of tapping into more collective experiences, human experiences, and feeling things that might not just be yours, but are of the world in the moment or of the world in general. And so it's such a contrast, right? If you're feeling things that aren't just you, then why does it need to just be you? Right. Maybe having that larger field of people together in a room or outdoors or wherever it is does you know do something in that way too, of holding the collective, holding the individual in a different way.
Cara Lai:Definitely. And that was something that was another important feature of my retreat was that because it didn't actually really feel like my meditation teachers could could really relate to my experience that well because it was a very unique one. I just did a ton of branching out into other things. And I was meeting regularly with an intuitive who I had had a long relationship with her. Her name is Karen Benevento, she's really incredible. And she started, I mean, actually, the whole time, even before the retreat started, she was telling me that this is what the retreat was going to be about for me, it was gonna be about feeling the pain of the world. And it was almost like she wanted to reach through the phone and like shake me and be like, this is not yours, this is not about you. You climbed down into this hole that nobody else wanted to explore, and it's the whole hole full of everyone's baggage that no one wanted to look at. And you're you're in there right now, and you're reporting back to the world what you're finding, and it's all this shame and all this anger, and you feeling that is a service to the world. Wow. And you know, she wasn't giving me like a meditation technique, she was just helping me understand it from a perspective that wasn't so personal, yeah. And that's something that feels really, really valuable to me when it comes to practice is not thinking that we're just working on ourselves.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah.
Cara Lai:Because it's so much easier to do it if you're you can directly see the relationship between watching your own mind and helping other people.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah, and I don't have them in front of me, but I've read of studies where people gather and meditate and the crime rates go down and things like that, and like tapping into this larger field, it does seem like the connection piece on both sides, whether you're exploring the depths of a dark hole of shame and or you're focused and concentrated and uplifted or immersed, like if it's a you know, whatever experience it is on the spectrum, that having that happen together is different than having it happen alone, right? There's again like a larger energetic field or more nervous systems co-regulating, or however you want to describe it. There's just more energy there to move through or experience what's happening.
Cara Lai:Yeah. And I think we kind of as a culture hesitate to talk like that too much because it feels a little too magical for us. But I love that kind of thing. And I have a hard time imagining that that's not true.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have definitely here in the states and a lot of places in the world more of an individualistic bend on a lot of things, right? It's we see the individual things first and we want it to be, oh, it's within my control if I just take this step, if I just make this action. And collectively in the US right now, at least we're sort of starting to, or in some ways, reckoning with larger sociological connections, at least.
Cara Lai:I think the word control is exactly it. It's like we don't feel the same sense of control that we might feel if something is approved by science or backed by some studies. Yeah. And so if it's not, then we're kind of like giving our control over to the universe. But it's all just illusory. Our that sense of control isn't really real. And if we can actually relinquish it, there's there's immediate freedom to be found because there's so much more possibility that gets opened up to us when we're not in charge of everything. And we can make mistakes, we can try something and fail, and uh, we can just start listening to more different kinds of truth and different parts of our body than just our brain. There's just a lot more information that can come in, and that's where that's where intuition lives.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like you had such a deep experience taking that time on your own and diving into the hole where the anger and the shame live. And then also I heard you talk about accommodating just your body, right? Because you were in so much physical pain to maybe lie down or walk more than sitting. Yeah. Any other changes that felt important that came to you or have come to you in general, just being a meditator or living with Limes?
Cara Lai:Well, I do a lot less formal practice in general now, but a lot more all the time practice. In fact, it feels like because of that retreat, I can practice in almost any situation, and it's very readily available because maybe because of the fact that I couldn't, I really had a hard time doing sitting meditation at all. Yeah. So it was like, well, I guess everything else has to be meditation. Yeah. And also because my body was just so in so much agony and it was so in my face that now it's almost like I can't not be in my body anymore because it's been something that I've been tending to with care so habitually for so long. So I just feel very in my body in a way that makes mindfulness way more accessible.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. That relates, I think, to parenting. How has your practice changed becoming a parent?
Cara Lai:Yeah, that totally relates to parenting. It's like who has time to practice when they become a parent? Who has time to see an hour thing?
Lisa Danylchuk:What's the thing? I'm like, just let me finish this thought, please.
Cara Lai:I know. Everything's an interrupt. Everything gets interrupted.
Lisa Danylchuk:Everything, everything.
Cara Lai:And yeah, so I mean, it's just about embracing all of that for me. It's I think my goal when I really set out to on this path was to make sure that I remained really flexible in in my ideas about life and my ideas about the path and my ideas about myself. And parenting is making people hella flexible, you know, like the most flexible, most patient people in the world are parents, not meditators. I know a lot of meditators who are not flexible.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. Have to sit at this time every day.
Cara Lai:Yeah. And uh we we kind of have to expand our ideas of the path when we're always getting interrupted. And I've really come to embrace interruption as a sign that the the universe is just telling me that it's time to pay attention to something different now. You know, it's like, okay, I know you thought that that was the thing that you were supposed to be doing, but right now it's not. And if you don't move with that, then you miss you miss your kid growing up, you know. If you just stay like, no, I can't, I just gotta finish, you know, reading this news article right now, or I just gotta finish folding all the slandry before I can turn and my attention to you, then you miss out on a lot of beautiful moments with your kid. And I don't want I don't want to miss any of that. I don't want to have any sense of like, wow, I could have loved you harder.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah.
Cara Lai:And and that's the other thing to me, is there's so much love.
Lisa Danylchuk:Oh, yeah.
Cara Lai:And I know everyone's experience with parenting is different and complicated and comes with our own baggage around our own childhood and our own senses of insecurity, but it's it's hard to avoid love when you become a parent. And to me, mindfulness is kind of interchangeable with love. And so it's really a full on, full body, full contact experience with love to be a parent, and all of the things that come with falling in love and feeling attached, and we really get to have that accessible all the time. You know, there's just always this being that's there beckoning you in to love over and over and over again, and talk about metta practice, that loving kindness practice in Buddhism. It's like the way that you're often taught to practice loving kindness is to repeat these phrases like, may you be safe, may you be happy, may you be at ease, and think of a being that makes you five cents into this the feeling of kindness while you repeat those phrases. And that was helpful for me to some degree, but it's almost like there's nothing, it doesn't even come close to the level of open-heartedness that I've experienced so easily with my son.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yes.
Cara Lai:And and then, but because I've done that other formal version of the practice, I can intentionally make that love bleed past the moment that I'm with my son and into other things. And so there's this way in which that those two have merged in a beautiful way, like, okay, this he is my excuse right now to love. It's not about him. And so I can just take this open-heartedness, this love, and keep it going past the moment that I'm looking at him, and just now what am I looking at? And now where can I love? And what else can be included in my heart in this expansive feeling?
Lisa Danylchuk:Yes. I was listening to a meditation once. You are enough was the message. And within a few minutes after I probably got interrupted doing it. And I look at my daughter, yeah, right. I look at my daughter and I'm like, what is this enough crap? Like, enough what? Like you are magnificent, brilliant, overflowing with energy and spirit, and like enough what? Like it just felt like even the the meditation that, you know, it's a helpful meditation, it's positive, but it once I turn my attention, like you're saying, to this being, and you know, I think your son's a half a year older or something, the daughter, it's like that doesn't even begin to describe what you're trying to communicate here. It's like this this little scribble of writing when there's this whole alive, dynamic presence there. And so I so relate to that and to the the interruptions and going with the interruptions. I mean, you just described my morning. I was trying to file an insurance claim, and I'm like, I have to get this done. I have to get this done. I have to get this done. It's time I have to get this done. And mama, can we play dinosaur puzzles? Mama, like tugging my leg help, and I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get this done. I'm almost done. Let me finish it. And then I'm just like, okay, no, I'm not gonna finish it right now. I'm gonna do some dinosaur puzzles. Yeah, you know, and I'm gonna like fully, I'm gonna fully do dinosaur puzzles with you until you say again for the eighth time.
Cara Lai:And I'm like, Which, like, I think for for a lot of us, that's why we had kids, is so that we could we could stop doing so much insurance claim stuff and start doing more dinosaur puzzles. Yeah, it's like, oh, right, there's an immediate perspective offering that that happens with that. It's like, oh, okay. This felt really important, yeah. But actually, in the grand scheme of things, doing dinosaur puzzles with my daughter is way more important.
Lisa Danylchuk:So much more important. And I really struggle with maintaining those, you know, life practices that aren't the most fun. I don't think most people would sign up for insurance claims, you know, filling out forms as their top activity. But then I'm like, well, I gotta do it at some point. Like, I just want to play dinosaur puzzles all day. That's like more fun, yeah.
Cara Lai:And yeah, and it's like you can still do it, but it just doesn't have to feel as heavy and because it the an important piece of this for me is just holding the question of what do I want to be doing right now? And it's usually dinosaur puzzles, but it's sometimes I do want to do the thing that needs to be done because there is a part of me that understands the importance of it. Yeah, but without the question of what do you want to do, we're kind of excluding this really important part of ourselves that has our life force in it, you know, that that really has a sense of perspective that has that's like our our child, because our children, that's like kind of all they're ever doing is what they want to be doing. And they're not doing stuff out of obligation, right? And I think especially in in meditation spaces in Buddhism, what we want gets kind of uh you know put into this category of not great, like not preferences aren't a great thing to have, they kind of get in the way of doing of really making strong progress on the path. But I think that's gotten kind of conflated a little too much with greed. And it's it's not always greed when you want something, it's it's often intuition, it's often love.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yes. And I feel like that word desire lives in the middle there, where desire could be a positive intuitive draw, right? Or it could be greed and distraction and right, this thing that's gonna take us away from. ourselves, but I love that you're centering our energy, our internal knowing and our intuition that doesn't so easily fall into maybe a schedule through the day of like 8 a.m. I'll do this and 10 a.m. I'll do that. It's more follow what you're feeling in the moment, right? Exactly. Exactly. Which also a meditation practice can bring us much closer to, and also isn't the way that general Western culture is. General Western culture isn't supportive of that. Oh, what do you want to do now? How about now?
Cara Lai:Yeah, it feels too inefficient and kind of wishy-washy, and like there's too much space for your emotions to get in the way. And we like to be really in our heads about stuff and caffeinated about stuff, not feeling our way slowly through life and just letting the wind blow us wherever it might blow us. That feels too soft.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. And soft is often used in a pejorative way, right? Soft skills. I'm like relationship skills, those seem pretty important. Soft skills. I'm like everyone could use some soft skills in this world.
Cara Lai:Dude, and if you look at the problems in the world, it's too much hardness. It's all because of too much hardness, you know, war and all the fighting that goes on politically and in within our country and between boundaries of countries. It's all there's too much hardness and not enough softness. And we it's not that we only need softness because then nothing would happen, but we need a balance.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. In yoga, the terms are um stira and sukha. Is there a similar concept in Buddhism that you're familiar with? Of the like, and some people will say just in psychological terms, like chaos and rigidity, or like these there are these extremes we can get to where there's no structure or there's too much structure. And in yoga, it's sthira is the structure and sukha is the ease.
Cara Lai:Yeah. I don't know if there are well, it's yin-yang, but that's not Buddhism. Yeah. But you know, when people instruct meditation at early on, it's like sit with a posture that is both relaxed and alert. Yes. So that's like the immediate invitation into balance. And you could also say that the whole concept of the middle way from Buddhism is about this balance. You know, it's you don't want to be too hard. The story of the Buddha is that he started off just kind of wallowing in pleasure when he was young as a prince and just had all of his needs met instantly and experienced no pain, didn't even know about sickness and death, and then found out about it, and then went really hardcore into pain land and was trying to beat his way out of life by beating down his sense of desire, depriving himself of pleasure. So he would sleep on a bed of nails and he starved himself, and he would hold his breath until he almost died, and it didn't work. So that was when he discovered the middle way was like, Oh, what if there's a balance between these two things? Where what if there's a kind of pleasure that's not dangerous that I can actually open to? And that was the pleasure of mindfulness, of love, actually, and and of caring for oneself with compassion from a place not of not a place of believing that having that pleasure was going to make you happy for the rest of your life, but just from a simple place of taking care of yourself with compassion. And so that was how the Buddha discovered mindfulness and the middle way in this path. So basically the the whole of Buddhism is about that balance, yeah. It's about finding that sweet spot between hardness and softness.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. Yeah, finding the middle, finding the balance. And you can invoke the yin and yang, you can invoke, you know, other words or concepts, but it's essentially that same thing. And part of what you found on your retreat too was like, this is too hard. This is I I would do it differently next time. Would bring in more care for me or more supports or more people or something different. Yeah, yeah.
Cara Lai:And I think the tricky thing about it is that because we're so conditioned to not trust that that kind of softness because it feels so unstructured and unregulated, and there aren't a lot of models of how to live a life that way. We just get really scared to do it and we feel lost and confused and alone. And uh it's been it's it's very, very important for me to sit in those feelings because I don't need the idea that I should be doing more just for the sake of doing more to be running my life, which is what a lot of us are doing. You know, I just feel like I have to be efficient. I don't know why. I need to be productive and I need to be efficient for some reason. But a lot, so much of what we're doing because there hasn't been the soft attunement to what we really want and need and what feels important to us, a lot of what we're doing isn't going in a direction that's truly productive. It's just kind of business as usual.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah.
Cara Lai:But we're not, there's no no real deep transformation taking place.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah, there's not a lot of soul in that. Like maybe there's widgets being made, but there's not the experience is dry. Yeah. It makes me think about parenting too. And you talked about that love that comes from being, you know, being with your child, and then the fear that comes with the softness. I mean, even in terms of parental leave, people taking time off of work, you know, that's that's a whole can of worms in terms of how much time people get, how much time does it take for a body to heal after birth, right? What supports are there in process? And I took three months off when after had my daughter, which felt like the bare minimum, and then slowly ramp back to work over like three more months in the next even year, still, right? Like slow, slow, slow, re-engaging and tried to be really intuitive with it, but had to also be practical, you know, running a business. But there's something about being able to be in that unstructured space, being able to be in that love without the fear coming in. Like it's like it's not possible, right? It's kind of like if yin and yang are they're sitting there side by side, like there's that overwhelming love, and then there's, oh, well, if I'm stepping out of this rhythm and really being in what's happening now with my very young child, well, then I'm I'm not connected to the economy and these other things. I feel like it's a natural place for people to feel a lot of love and a lot of fear, right? Or even just the fear of are they okay? Are they still breathing? Right. Like, okay, they rolled over while they're sleeping. They're still okay.
Cara Lai:Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, I feel like parenting just brings up all of our stuff in a way that's magnified like a thousand times. And there's something too here about how since most of the society that we live in isn't really doing the yin thing so much, there's a loneliness there, you know, and and there isn't really a a sense of community or even approval for that way of being. It's just seen as lazy. And in some ways, also even just being a person who wants to find deeper meaning or deeper freedom in life is also lonely because you're going against the grain of what most people are doing, and you are actually trying to that's the whole point of the path is to go against the grain of habit to transform everything. So you encounter some places that feel pretty lonely because most people aren't doing that or don't know how to do that, and that also harkens back to the whole piece of you know, going into the hole.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah.
Cara Lai:It's gonna be lonely in the hole. But when you're doing something to help everybody, you have to not be drowning in the water like everybody else. You have to be on higher ground, and there aren't as many people on higher ground.
Lisa Danylchuk:So, what would you say supports you as a parent? I'm assuming you're taking this more yin slow approach to life and work. You left that climate-controlled environment a long time ago, right? And you're expecting another baby in a few months. So that's a whole you know, precipice of newness and growth and expansion in so many ways. What do you feel like supports you in having this type of life that's softer?
Cara Lai:Yeah. Um good question. Well, in some ways we've talked about some of it already, you know, just having a kid who's interrupting any kind of schedule that you try to make is forcing more softness in. And I think kids are naturally way more balanced than adults are, so they're just demonstrating softness and inviting us into softness. So that's that's part of what supports me. Another thing is just remembering and looking intentionally at the ways that my life is functioning without me having to do it all. There are so many things that have happened in my life that aren't because I made them happen or planned on them happening, but they're great. They're this these blessings that I didn't create, or maybe I did in like some manifesty way, but not in the the way of opening a 401k kind of planning.
Lisa Danylchuk:Right. Or even making a vision board, right? Like some sometimes there's that middle ground where people are like, I'm gonna visualize this and intend it. And sometimes things just come into your life as a result of a myriad of choices we couldn't even count, but and of opportunity and of something beyond us.
Cara Lai:Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so just intentionally remembering the ways that I'm being held already and carried through life, and it's not just me orchestrating the whole thing, it's so relieving and it's so helpful. And when I meditate, when I do formal meditation practice, that it tends to be the consistent lesson is you don't have to be in charge of this. It's it's it's very live for me right now when I because my body is still in a lot of pain. And so I can't help but notice when I meditate that the only real relief I get is the relief of relinquishing control and needing the pain to go away or needing to use my meditation powers to try to get rid of it. It's only when that strain and struggle is put down that there's actual relief. And it's not the relief of the pain going away, it's the relief of feeling unburdened from this pressure that I was putting on myself to heal it or make it make it go away. And then all of a sudden it's not a problem. Oh, I can just have this feeling. That's okay, it's unpleasant, but it's way more tolerable if my mind isn't viewing it as a problem and my responsibility to fix and change. So formal practice really helps me with that. And when I say formal practice, I basically just mean when I'm lying in bed, in bed awake in the middle of the night, and I can't sleep because I got woken up by a toddler. And so now I'm awake and I'm lying in bed and I'm feeling my body. Yeah. And so it's not even like I have to set aside extra time to do that. It's just something that happens naturally. And granted, I have had a lot of hours of practice to help my to help support my mind in being able to get into that kind of state in the middle of the night. But that's not to say that other people can't do that too. In fact, I think everyone could do that. We just don't realize we can do it.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah, it's a habit and it's a choice, and all the experience builds on the habit, makes it feel maybe more accessible, right? Yeah, we can all build in that direction. Yeah. Do you have a formal in quotes practice these days? Uh, or do you feel like it's just, I know you use the term parenting as the path, life as the path? Is there any formal practice element that feels important to you right now?
Cara Lai:Actually, what I just said that I do in the middle of the night, that's it. Yeah. I don't know about you, but I stopped sleeping well in the middle of the night. So at some point, maybe that actually was during my year-long retreat at 2 or 3 a.m. every morning, I would just be awake. And it's just I've never had a hard time sleeping, and it's just continued since then. But now that's going on for me, I've discovered that it's very common. There's so many people, and it's that time, it's always like 2 or 3 a.m. Yeah. And so I'm not actually really complaining about it because that's when I practice. Yeah. You know, it's like, oh, cool. And it almost kind of feels like my body is like, well, you haven't done any of this all day. So like we need it. We I like we're waking you up right now so that you can do that.
Lisa Danylchuk:Here's your time and space to yourself that you were asking for.
Cara Lai:Yeah. So that's my formal practice, really, and it's not planned. It's just, oh, I'm awake, and it doesn't happen every night, but it actually feels like it just kind of comes to me when I need it. And something that I I like to think and that I try to teach about is that your practice can come to you when you need it, but it's it you only really notice it if there's some soft receptivity that you're already undertaking because you won't be open to the invitation if you're just pushing hardcore into your agenda for your day.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah.
Cara Lai:Yeah.
Lisa Danylchuk:It makes me think too of parenting and how we approach parenting as a whole. We can read development books and check for what stage is happening and get the educational tools for every stage, or we can just like let our kid play and see what they do, right? And maybe there's a both hand in there somewhere, but I feel like the way that American culture tends to approach has that sense of pressure and control in it. And I've seen I used to work with teens too in the outdoors and in therapeutic programs, and you see how that pressure that's put on young people to be a certain way or develop in a certain direction or make a certain choice tends to be counterproductive, right? Like, yeah, we want to have conversations and guidance and support as they're developing and making choices. But when there's that sense of control or force or pressure, you see this every force has an equal opposing force, right? So when we come with that, we tend to have problems, right? And and that intuitive nature of the child that's learning and growing in this environment and trying to express is like, no, I want to go this way, I want to do that. And a lot of that to me ends up feeling like wasted energy. I mean, I know a lot of the families I've worked with who be like, well, let's like get down to where we're on the same page. The the young person wants to be happy and parents want them to be happy. You just have very different pictures of how that manifests, right? Different strategies. You think that's law school. And like this this person is exploring art or something different, you know, that maybe brings up fear and unknown. And so it's just such an interesting sort of meta of what we're talking about in terms of parenting that we can have that pressure on ourselves for our day to day. And when we take a moment to soften that and be with our children, we get the benefit of that experience of that love and even carrying it into other places. They get the experience of that connection and that love and that attunement. They get support. And it's not even like my daughter doesn't want me there all the time. Like she'll start singing a song, I'll sing it with her. She goes, Mama, no. Like this one's for me. I'm like, okay, you do you. I'll have to do everything with you. But I'm here. And if you can't find the puzzle piece, like you put the middle piece of the dinosaur's belly upside down and it's really getting to you because the rest of the puzzle is not coming together, and you start to get a little bit stressed, and you need me, I'm I'm here, and I can help flip that puzzle piece around. I can help coach you and getting it going, right? And so I feel like there's very immediate benefits to this softness for all of us, right? It's just a more enjoyable day to put the insurance claim down and do the dinosaur puzzles and get to it. I did get it done, you know. I got it done. Yeah, yeah. And then to also just, you know, take that pressure off um off our children, off ourselves, and and like let it be. I think that's kind of the phrase that's coming to me is like, can we just let things be a little more? That's what I'm gathering from from what you're expressing.
Cara Lai:Yeah, yeah. And the more that we practice and look in our own minds about our ideas about what is best for our kids, it's it starts to be easier to see that those are just our conditioned ideas about what happiness is. And we're very conditioned to believe that happiness is based on our outside circumstances, and partly because that's what we feel like we can control. And so we try to make sure that our kids have the proper quote unquote outside circumstances and that they're in control of the things that they can control, and often that's a good education and good grades, and then getting the job and having financial security, and it's a lot of what school is focused on is ultimately getting a job that makes money, yeah. And we're not really thinking about if that is actually correlated with happiness. And even though we all would probably say that money doesn't buy happiness, that's not how we're behaving. And we don't teach about kindness in school, we don't teach about softness in school, we don't we've stopped funding arts programs, and those are really, really important. Yeah, and so we're sending this message to our kids that there's a particular way that one can be happy in life, yeah, and not leaving a lot of space for the kid to figure it out on their own or explore what happiness looks like for them. And granted, this is kind of like a privileged, it's like a thing that one gets to do when they have enough security.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah.
Cara Lai:But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. Yeah. You know, what's the point of having security if you're not going to use it to find a deeper kind of freedom for yourself and for the world?
Lisa Danylchuk:And I think something you said earlier about in your long retreat, trusting yourself, right? Can we trust ourselves and can we support our children in learning to trust themselves to make decisions? Yes, wanting them to have security, wanting them to have healthcare or whatever those like everyday, you know, world things are that are important, but also not prioritizing that at the sacrifice of intuition or connection to your your own inner world or your energy, right? It's so interesting because we're very individually focused and very externally focused at the same time, right? It's like individual, but not too deep and collective, but only in the outside way, right? Like it's mental. It's just funny. That contrast is becoming aware to me, is right. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Right. And so I feel like a lot of what you're describing is this space to meditate brings you in contact with a deep sense of self in a way that reminds you of your own agency and power, right, in your life. Yeah, and probably, I mean, I'm not a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner. I took a course in Italy in the year 2000. I never like got certified, but I'm always interested in that level of it too, like just the qi or the energy or like the what's up in here that's maybe a little bit beyond our our scientific comprehension and mapping in this culture or in Western medicine, or you know, maybe we don't quite have the full body scanner that can read all your energy lines and predict things. But I feel like there's something about that, yeah, just that that energy, I'll just call it, uh, that's important too. I mean, I feel that with my daughter, like she just has, she has energy. Like, yeah, she'll run around circles, she'll run circles around me, literally. But there's also just this life and this curiosity and this like it just self-evolving thing that you know, I can introduce concepts or I can play with this toy, or I can take her to the library or the zoo. But ultimately, there's so much coming from her. And I feel like there's something in this that you're describing of a reconnection with something positive internally, also not being afraid of other things that are happening internally, also being connected to other people, and then releasing the pressure, like taking off the weight. I know some of the words you use to describe after your year-long was like acceptance, ease, lightness. There was this presence with hard things that you're describing throughout, even meditating now in the middle of the night with a pregnant body that's not always comfortable with limes, right? Like there's a lot of factors there, but when you release that, oh, I have to fix my pain with my meditation thought, something softens.
Cara Lai:Yeah. And to me, it opens up so much more possibility that wasn't there before. When we move from being really caught in our sense of control and our ideas about what should happen or what we need to make happen, then the possibility for anything else happening opens up. What actually is happening, what might happen if I don't control this? Yeah. And it's it can feel scary, but it can also be really beautiful and the opposite of boring.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. So what might you say to someone listening who wants to explore meditation or is just getting started? I know you have some resources too on your website. You lead classes. What advice might you give them as well?
Cara Lai:Yeah, I wouldn't not recommend doing what I did at first, which is just sit for a few minutes a day. I sat for eight minutes a day when I first started meditating. And there's tons of there's tons of guided meditations out there that you could use to kind of get us feel for the basic instructions and the 10% happier. Oh, it's now it's called the happier app has has really good basic meditation instructions. So that's the one I would recommend. And it doesn't have to be, I would say set the bar low for the amount of time that you do it. And don't worry if it feels like not a lot, because it doesn't have to be a lot. And I would also say, I know this might feel like a leap, but I would also say that it's probably for not for everyone, but for a lot of people, it might be really interesting to try a meditation retreat, even if it's a short one, like a weekend or something. And part if you're a parent, I think it's important just to name that it's not a vacation, like you don't have to feel guilty about doing something like that. It's actually something it's hard. They're hard to do. And there's something that you do not just for yourself, but for everyone in your family's benefit. And a lot of the times parents will say, Well, I can't, I couldn't possibly go on a meditation retreat. But actually, you actually probably could if you really wanted to. But what's holding you back is often a sense of guilt. Yeah. Like, uh, I can't, like, they're gonna think I'm at a spa and it looks bad. And but logistically, for most people, it's possible. I even know someone who he's got this kid with who's in a wheelchair with needs round the clock care, and they have very few resources. And he, the dad, he knows how important it is to go on retreat and he makes it happen, even though it's really expensive and it costs the family money more money than they sometimes can afford, but he still makes it happen. And so I think a lot of us can make something like that happen. And again, it's not necessarily recommended for everybody. If you have PTSD, for example, it might not be great to do that much meditation, but you could talk to your therapist about it and see if you think they might be a good fit. And I think it's in terms of really understanding what meditation is about, meditation retreats are very helpful.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah, it makes me think too of even Spirit Rock here in the Bay Area and daylongs or virtual offerings, even bringing things into the family. I mean, I I know that my two-year-old's not gonna sit for hours at a time, but there's the mindfulness books, and we teach her to sniff the flowers and blow out the candles and connect to her breath. And there's there's something to be had for everyone in it.
Cara Lai:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's I guess that's the last piece of it. You know, there's a formal, the formal daily practice, then there's the meditation retreat, extreme, but then on the other end of it is just moments of mindfulness all day. And sometimes I get cued by life into a moment of mindfulness. If I'm having a moment of either extreme joy or extreme displeasure, it's usually a mindfulness spell for me. Like Something really good is happening. Oh my gosh, okay. What's going on in my body right now? Can I really absorb this feeling and feel it fully and delight in it and enjoy it and be here for it? And also be here for when it leaves to stay with my body and my breath. And then when something really triggering is happening, just pausing. What is it that I'm not wanting to feel right now? Can I just be with those feelings physically, emotionally, and just touch into them? And it doesn't have to be for a long time, but just briefly, can I just hang with myself instead of reaching for distraction or lashing out or whatever it is that the trigger is making us want to do?
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. And those are the moments, right, of just being with life and having even a little bit of space to experience or connect with or process something rather than distracting and saving it for later or you know, responding in a way that's harmful that then we need to hopefully repair later.
Cara Lai:There's a lot of benefit just to those moments in a yeah, those are moments that we can actually really transform because of bringing mindful attention to a moment like that.
Lisa Danylchuk:So what's coming next for you? I know there's a baby coming next. Are there any other things you want to share, projects?
Cara Lai:In terms of in-person stuff, there's really not much because of the baby, the the impending baby. But I do teach these online classes really regularly, and you can find them on my website, which is carali.org. And they're just drop-in classes that anyone can come to. They're donation-based, so anyone can attend. And then the other thing that I do is I have a Substack and I regularly put out guided meditations on it and little articles about mindfulness. Sometimes ones about parenting. There's a whole section for parents that that they can subscribe to, and it's a sweet little community. So that's carali.substack.com, I think.
Lisa Danylchuk:You have meditate your face off.
Cara Lai:Yes, that's the name of my online class, Meditate Your Face Off.
Lisa Danylchuk:There was a meditation I found that you had led, and at the end your baby cried in the background, and you said, That's my baby, not yours. And I was like, Oh, thank you. Every time I hear a baby cry, even in a movie, you know, I'm like, uh what's happening?
Cara Lai:I know. Yeah, it's like hearing sirens. You're like, oh, that's they're pulling me over.
Lisa Danylchuk:Right? Exactly. It must be me. Oh wow, they're going fast. It's not me. So people can connect with you at Caraai.org and to follow your Substack as well. Uh last question, I'm just curious. What brings you, well, I always ask, like, what brings you hope or what brings you joy? But I want to ask you, what brings you softness these days?
Cara Lai:What brings me softness? Animals and nature. Yeah. And especially looking at animals and nature with my son. Yes. So it's like next level appreciation. Yes. And yeah, there's just this immediate way that looking at nature kind of absorbs a lot of that stress and effort and emotion that might be kind of obscuring my ability to be completely present. And so even just looking out a window, which I'm doing right now, gives us this invitation into softness.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yes. Yeah. We took my daughter out on a car ride intending for her to fall asleep the other day. And we saw a pig and deer and a raccoon. And she still talks about it. And this is actually a couple of weeks ago, and she's like, the pig and the deer and the raccoon. So there's something really special about nature always for me too. And also just the magic of animals in general. We have dogs, but animals in nature when there's a sighting, right? I just noticed for her it like lit something up. The pig. We saw the pig. We did. We saw the pig.
Cara Lai:The other thing actually that this reminds me of, because that's we're both smiling so much when we're talking about these things, is humor. It's such a helpful uh way to access softness. And then for some reason, the example I'm thinking of right now is how my son started saying the F-word, and my husband and I are huge jokers. But we taught him instead of saying the F-word to say Brandsilver, which is the name of our friend who's a meditation teacher, Matthew Brandsilver. So instead of swearing, he just goes, Brunsilver.
Lisa Danylchuk:That's amazing. That's amazing.
Cara Lai:Yeah, I mean, if you are at all familiar with Matthew Brandsilver, he's a perfect person to replace a swear word with because he's just he's just a delightful nerd.
Lisa Danylchuk:That's amazing. That's a perfect match. It makes me think of my daughter's favorite book right now, which is The Stinky Wonky Donkey. Have you read it?
Cara Lai:No.
Lisa Danylchuk:I almost want to send you a copy and just have favorite juice.
Cara Lai:That sounds great.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah. Yeah. It has to do with loving hoobed animals. And then there's a little inflection on the words and the tone that makes it one big fart joke.
Cara Lai:Oh my god, my son would love that.
Lisa Danylchuk:Yeah, seriously. Send me your send me your best address. I'll ship you a copy.
Cara Lai:Okay.
Lisa Danylchuk:It'll be a happy.
Cara Lai:I know.
Lisa Danylchuk:Daughter laughs. I'm like, is she laughing at parts? Because I'm laughing at parts, or is she just get it too?
Cara Lai:Yeah, or is it just universally funny? Like, do they come out of the womb thinking farts are funny?
Lisa Danylchuk:It feels like it, right? Could I model that? I don't know, but she thinks they're hilarious. So we're going. All right, Cara, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for all the love and insight you share with everyone through your work. And it's just been a pleasure to connect with you.
Cara Lai:Yeah, thanks so much, Lisa, for having me. It's been really fun.
Lisa Danylchuk:Thank you so much for listening. Now, I'd really love to hear from you. What resonated with you in this episode and what's on your mind and in your heart as we bring this conversation to a close? Email me at info at how we can heal.com or share your answers and what's been healing for you in the comments on Instagram, or you'll find me at How We Can Heal. Don't forget to go to howwecanheal.com to sign up for email updates as well. You'll also find additional trainings, tons of free resources, and the full transcript of each and every show. If you love the show, please leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, Audible, or wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe and keep sharing the show that you love the most with all your friends. Visit how we can heal.com forward slash podcast to share your thoughts and ideas for the show. I always, always love hearing from you. Before we wrap up for today, I want to be super clear that this podcast isn't offering prescriptions. It's not advice, nor is it any kind of mental health treatment or diagnosis. Your decisions are in your hands, and I encourage you to consult with any healthcare professionals you may need to support you through your unique path of healing. In addition, everyone's opinion here is their own, and opinions can change. Guests share their thoughts, not that of the host or sponsors. I'd like to thank our guests today and everyone who helped support this podcast directly and indirectly. Alex, thanks for taking care of the babe and taking the fur babies out while I record. Last and never least, I'd like to give a special shout out to my big brother Matt, who passed away in 2002. He wrote this music and it makes my heart so very happy to share it with you here.