#181 The Word of the Year
What's Your Word?
I can hardly believe it’s the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026 in just a few days.
At the end of every calendar year for the past six years, I’ve hosted a New Year’s Eve Zoom yoga gathering where we choose a word of the year. One word to describe the year that’s ending, and one word to call in the year ahead. It’s a ritual I love, and somehow, every single year, I forget what my word was. I always tell myself I’ll write it down. I never do. And by the time December rolls around, I have to think hard about what it was to try to remember! (By the way, if you want to join our word of the year Zoom Yoga, you can do it here!)
So here I am again, asking myself: what was my word to define 2025? And is it the same word now or something different?
When I reflect back on 2025, the first thing that arises is the thing that happened to me in February. The recovery from it. The way my life changed. The way I now perceive the world. The safety I feel (or don’t feel) around men. The ease, or lack of ease, with which I now welcome new people into my life. The feeling of my soul leaving my body. The practice of supporting its return.
In many ways, that event defined my year.
So maybe my word was Recovery.
But I’ve noticed something else. I’ve stopped talking about what happened to me so much. Now I barely talk about it at all. Not because I don’t want to, but because I’ve become deeply cautious about how and where I share. This year I realized that my openness, which has always been a bridge to connection to others, especially in my sobriety, also made me very vulnerable in many ways which caused a lot of rupture in my life.
I’ve lived vulnerably for a long time. It used to feel safe. This year, it often didn’t.
As the year progressed I was more and more discerning with whom and what I shared. Through doing this, I protected myself.
So maybe my word was Discernment.
When I zoom out beyond recovery, there are so many other threads that defined this year too.
For the first time in my life, I committed to a truly disciplined meditation practice. I meditated every single day for at least forty minutes for an entire calendar year. Sometimes that still shocks me.
Yoga Sutra 1.14 says: Practice becomes firmly grounded when it is done for a long time, without interruption, and with sincere devotion.
That meditation practice changed my life. It grounded me. It held me while I processed things I didn’t know if I’d survive.
So maybe my word was Discipline.
And then there was advocacy.
I spoke up about drug-facilitated SA.
I walked away from a very unhealthy situation.
I left a job that wasn’t paying me fairly.
I began speaking directly to individuals about unpaid labor for women in the spiritual and sober worlds and saying no to it, and deciding to eliminate this from my community as a result.
I started advocating for myself, and trusting my intuition in ways I never had before.
So maybe my word was Advocacy.
One of the most unexpected impacts of the SA was how completely it flipped my life upside down, in a way that ultimately forced everything to change.
Before it happened, I was living in a way that now feels insane. For the entire six years I’ve been running my business, I have been doing things that feel unbelievable to me now. I would take private clients at 10pm at night. I would be on Zoom calls as late as 10pm, regularly, sometimes later, when timezones didn’t work for everyone involved. People would request a cohort of a class for their timezone and I would launch it, even if it didn’t earn enough revenue to be sustainable. I was traveling around half of every year, running trainings and events across multiple countries. Money was bleeding out of me into projects that showed absolutely no revenue or return. I also didn’t have a permanent home for the last four years, partly because I really didn’t have the ability to settle into one.
I didn’t realize how dysregulating it was to constantly not have a regular sleep schedule, to constantly reorient to a new neighbourhood, to constantly find a new grocery store, new doctor, new laundromat, new rhythm - over and over again.
My life has changed massively. I don’t work before 7am, and I don’t really run work related Zoom calls on a regular basis after afternoon. If I need to take a personal call, I take it at the latest 8pm, but that’s rare, and only if no other time can be arranged.
So maybe my word is structure. Or simplicity. Or grounded.
This year, something else shifted too: I stopped identifying so strongly with my own stories. I think that’s one reason my daily Substack writing slowly fell away. What used to feel essential began to feel less necessary.
The other night, I picked up my book Sober Yoga Girl because some of my yoga students who came for a kirtan wanted to look at it. As I read it, I was struck by how little I identify with that story now. It defined my life for so many years - and now it feels almost like a character in a book. A version of me I no longer inhabit.
So maybe my word is disidentification.
After the assault, my tolerance for stress also dropped dramatically. Things I used to push through, I simply couldn’t anymore. I led four international trips, Abu Dhabi, India, Canada, Arizona - and then I hit pause for a long time. Since I returned to Bali at the end of May, I haven’t left Indonesia. I don’t plan to leave again until the retreat in February to India. After that I still have no plans to leave.
So maybe my word was home.
I built a yoga shala on the roof of my villa. I started hosting events at home.
I bought a harmonium. I started leading kirtans at my house. I was invited to sing alongside wonderful kirtan leaders here in Bali. I carried that harmonium around the world and chanted in different places. And the love, joy, and peace it brought into my life is hard to put into words.
So maybe my word was Bhakti?
Was that my word for 2025?
As I was writing this, something clicked. I was pretty sure my word last year was bhakti. I searched my Notes app, and there it was.
Bhakti.
On December 31st, 2024, I had written:
I think my word for 2025 is Bhakti, devotion. Bhakti Yoga is the path of loving devotion. After discovering kirtan, the harmonium, and devotional practice, I want to devote this year to Bhakti. When you train with me in Bali or join me on retreat, expect to experience Bhakti Yoga.
Bhakti was my word this year. Without question. And what a beautiful word it was.
Now that I know my word for 2025 - what is my word for 2026??
I don’t have a word yet. I have possibilities:
Structure - I continue to step into structure, for my business and for my life.
Weekends - starting in 2026 I will have weekends! Rest I’ve never allowed myself before. After working seven days a week for nearly a decade - teaching yoga, spin, barre, school - weekends and weekdays alike - I will have my first true weekends off in 2026. Saturday and Sunday. Completely booked off. I almost don’t even know what to do with myself!
Bahasa Indonesian Language - deepening language and belonging, including a trip to Yogyakarta to study.
My chair - yes, my chair. This year I bought a chair with arm rests and a foot rest. I am obsessed with the chair. I find it represents grounding, safety, being held. Home.
Sutras - While I plan to have fewer cohorts of the yoga sutra study, I plan to finish writing my first Yoga Sutra Book about the first chapter of the sutras.
Mostly, I want to release the energy of striving.
Rest more.
Learn Bahasa Indonesian Language.
Write more, without urgency.
Live with less force.
So I’m letting the word come when it’s ready.
And maybe that’s the word.
Receptivity.
What was your word for 2025?
And what word are you calling in for 2026?
🌸 Online Courses
🎉The 6th Annual New Years Eve Flow + “Word of the Year” 🎉 class will be on December 31st at 9:30am Bali Time (December 30th at 8:30pm New York). Save your spot here.
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