Breathing. Want a reminder of how important it is? Hold your breath for 3 minutes…if you can. Want to a reminder of how boring it can be? Try to focus on breathing for a few minutes. Because of this, focusing on it in mindfulness meditation (a significant part of Kindness for a Change) not only helps with ventral vagal connection but also highlights all the other stuff going on that we don’t pay attention to (because almost anything is more interesting than the breath). But, I digress. “I cannot breathe” is from my second album, Sometimes Good Things Happen, and the entire album was recorded during my son’s 3 years of cancer treatment. There’s a line in it: “my favorite tea is acid in my belly” – it’s true. Taylors of Harrogate Scottish Breakfast Tea. So yum. Until it wasn’t. That’s when I switched to espresso (Gaggia Classic is a totally legit espresso machine recommendation by the way). And a note about that: that little luxury every day was so important – a bit of light in a dark time. I think about that now when people criticize others for spending too much money on some small luxury when they can’t pay their rent or something like that. Those little luxuries can make us feel like there’s a life in here somewhere…at least for me.