You know what works.
You know that a warm lunch settles. That meditation clears the fog. That a short outdoor walk changes the shape of the afternoon.
But then the pressure hits. A deadline, a hard conversation, the inbox with a ghastly amount of unread emails.
And suddenly the practices that anchor you feel like luxuries.
So you skip lunch. You eat what’s cold and easy, standing up. You tell yourself you’ll meditate tomorrow. And you push through, because pushing through is what you do.
The question is why? Why do we throw the practices we know work out the window the moment we need them most?
That’s the question Dr. Jane Bormeister and I sat down with this week.
Jane is a speech scientist and rhetoric coach. She teaches you to be in the room, in your body, your authority, to listen well, and to speak in a way that resonates and creates the changes you want. I’ve been a part of her Rehearsal Room, which she offers here on Substack. It’s brilliant. The kind of work that changes how you show up. If you want to experience it, let her know. If there’s room, she’ll let you in.
Jane and I connect through a shared conviction: Internal Regulation as the groundwork. Without it, communication is performance, decisions are reactions, and boundaries are wishes.
Internal regulation helps move your brain and nervous system from defense mode to connected clarity. When this happens, you listen differently. You speak with kindness instead of edge. You set boundaries that hold. You stop running on borrowed urgency and start moving from your own authority.
And that, my friends, leads somewhere most people don’t believe is possible: inner peace. Which sounds big, but simply means you can meet pressure with calm. Because your body has learned, through practice, that it doesn’t have to panic.
What came up in our discussion was this: how do you eat on time when you’re already stressed, and you know that eating in a stressed state isn’t ideal?
Because the warm lunch is the anchor. Meditation is the anchor. The walk, the breath, the pause. Instead of being rewards for a calm day, they’re the things that make the it possible. When the pressure hits, the anchor isn’t the thing you abandon. It’s what holds you.
While I’ve been teaching meditation for over 20 years, the anchor I’ve practiced the longest is lunch. A warm, on-time, sit-down lunch without screens (or books). For 23 years, I did this with my kids. At the time, I didn’t know I was building their nervous systems. I just knew they needed to eat, and they needed steadiness. What I learned is that this one practice, done daily, can change your relationship to pressure. It proves to your body that rest is allowed. That you are allowed.
If you don’t know where to start, start here: take the Day in the Life Diagnostic to see where your signals are crossing, or jump straight in to the Fat + Fire Framework to start your own 5-day rhythm.
Jane and I will keep breaking this open. Our next live is on Wednesday, September 9. 12:30pm central (Chicago), 7:30pm Berlin.
We want to know: what have you observed about yourself under pressure? What do you want us to cover?
Comment below or reply to this email.
Eat warm, breathe slow, keep a rhythm.
— Savitree, with Dr. Jane Bormeister
