I’m writing this on a beautiful sunny morning on the Mornington Peninsula (the “ninch” as the cool kids call it), just south of Melbourne.
The mind has been restless this last week and diving back into some old media consumption patterns. I notice myself walk to my phone like someone watches a car wreck happening in slow motion. I want to stop it, I want to warn the passenger, but it just seems to happen anyways.
I’m trusting that the habit will get broken once I unplug for bookwriting for a few months. Until then, I am just doggy paddling trying to keep my phone addiction in check. What’s new?
Another thing: starting in July 2026-ish, a soul brother and I are going on a “world tour,” putting on yoga workshops and trainings around the globe. Would your city be interested in something like this? If so, let me know where you are and we’ll consider adding it to the itinerary.
If you feel called to support this work, please consider pre-ordering my book. This will help me afford an editor, agent, and will show publishers that I have proven interest in this topic. The website includes a preface that will better help you understand the thesis.
I hope you enjoy this week's {Body} • {Mind} • {Soul} Newsletter and have a beautiful Sunday, - Ethan ॐ
Ethan Hill Owner, Yoga with Ethan
Fascia as armor
When you constantly anticipate disaster—replaying worst-case scenarios, catastrophizing potential outcomes, bracing for imagined threats—your body responds as though the danger is real. Your muscles contract reflexively to protect against impacts that never come.
Your body can't afford to keep muscles actively contracted 24/7—that requires enormous energy. So it develops a more efficient solution: it restructures its fascia (webbing that wraps around every muscle, organ, nerve, and blood vessel in your body—a three-dimensional net permeating your entire structure) to build semi-permanent armor around your chronically tense areas.
This is why people carry tension in remarkably consistent patterns—raised shoulders, forward head posture, compressed chest, tight hips. These aren't just muscular habits; they're fascial adaptations that have solidified over years of unconscious bracing against perceived danger from the mind.
Below are some practices that will help you de-armor this fascia.
Practice Step-by-step instructions to turn theory into healing.
Fascial hydration: Drink 16-20 ounces of water with lemon upon waking. Fascia is 70% water—dehydration makes it brittle and adhesive. Follow with gentle full-body stretching.
Self-myofascial release: Use a foam roller or massage balls with sustained pressure (60-90 seconds) on tense areas. Move slowly, breathing deeply, signaling your nervous system it's safe to release. For more comprehensive fascial unwinding, consider joining my gravity yoga class, where we use deep stretching protocols specifically designed to release years of accumulated tension and reorganize fascial patterns.
Heat and movement: After hot baths or showers, practice gentle movement—yoga, dance, tai chi. Heat makes fascia pliable; movement while warm allows healthier reorganization.
Conscious body scan: Lie down and mentally scan for armored or dense areas. Breathe into them without forcing change. Acknowledgment alone often permits release.
Address catastrophic thinking: Notice when your mind generates worst-case scenarios. Each time you catch yourself anticipating disaster that hasn't happened, you interrupt the signal telling your body to build more armor. The fascial work is physical, but very often the root is mental.
Why do I keep thinking the same thoughts over and over again?
In my saner moments, when I see clearly the ideas populating in my mind, I am flabbergasted at how maniacal and rampant my ego is on particular topics.
For instance: women. The mind will not stop talking about them and making plans to achieve certain outcomes with them. Layers upon layers upon layers of these fantasies are laid so thick as to be effectively impossible to see through.
It’s like…I realize these thought patterns are creating unnecessary suffering (for everyone involved). And I see they are just conditioned responses based on conditioned preferences. And I even pray fervently to Spirit to correct my perception, stating repeatedly ‘I want to be free from this madness. Please…I want to be free from this madness.‘
And yet, I can’t stop thinking about it! It won’t shut the f*ck up! The same thoughts just keep bulldozing in again and again, despite my wisdom.
Allow me to turn this into a therapy session for myself:
Ethan, my brother. Relax. Compulsive thinking is natural—the mind evolved to cognize just as the heart evolved to thump. It’s not personal. What you are experiencing is the karmic fruits of having consumed a lot of content growing up, that’s all.
Keep in mind that these patterns are woven in deep, too; billions of years of survival mindset are sculpted into your genome. They aren’t designed to be released in a day. Just keep doing everything you’re doing—meditating, praying, being honest with what’s present. It will lift as all things do.
Oh, and word of advice: continue separating yourself from social media and podcasts. The landscape is too toxic, the algorithm too inchoate, the mind too fragile, the creators too immature. You would be better off just reading the ancient texts and pouring yourself into more stillness.
If this is something you struggle with, too, consider meditating with me below…
Meditate Bite-sized audios to help you become the master of your mind.
“It’s not that you are not real. You are real. But you think you are really real! You exaggerate it.” — anonymous Tibetan teacher
You feel a vibration in your pocket from your phone, but when you pick it up you find that no notifications actually occurred. Was that vibration real or not real?
You have a shockingly vivid nightmare about your partner dying, but wake up with them by your side. Was that dream real or not real?
Anything that the mind conjures up—objectively accurate or laughably delusional—can be considered real because the body reacts to it. Fantasies produce “real” world consequences: adrenaline dumps, behavior changes, emotional turbulence.
But reactions to thoughts don’t make those things really real. They just make them persuasive.
The next logical question is obvious: if I'm having constant thoughts about myself, does that mean I am really real? Or am I real in the same way a coiled rope appears to be a snake—a convincing illusion that dissolves upon closer examination?
Journal Contemplative questions on the nature of inner freedom.
Take a thought pattern that’s been dominating your subconscious over the last week, and ask yourself: is anything about this really real? Said differently, what exists beyond my stories of what exists?