The Return
Beneath all of the distractions, you are here.
What is a Return?
A Return® is a somatic practice of existence.
They are not a shiny new innovation. Returns are meditations and mindfulness practices, much like ones you may already know. What makes them different is that the intention is explicit: each one is an invitation to move from knowing you exist to sensing that you do.
For millennia, many people and cultures have valued and drawn on the body’s innate wisdom and capacity to heal. We have been systematically disconnected from that wisdom. In recent decades, somatic and other experiential therapies have begun returning to it.
Return® practices grow from that knowing. Designed to be simple, brief, and accessible to anyone, they offer a doorway into your own interior world, no prior experience necessary, no particular belief required.
Just a willingness to pause and notice.
Why Return?
Most of us were taught (implicitly, explicitly, and repeatedly) to only look outward.
For validation. For direction. For assurance. For knowing. For proof of our worth.
But anything that lives outside of us can be withheld or manipulated. What we find within is steadier.
Day to day, many of us move on autopilot, reacting and pushing through. A Return is a short pause to notice what is actually happening in your body. That moment of noticing can help you settle, and it gives you a little room to choose what you do next. That is where agency begins.
Return® practices are a simple shift in direction.
Look inward.
The Return Practices
The only "right" Return® practice is the one that meets you exactly where you are.
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Micro Return® 1 - 2 minutes. A brief somatic pause. An invitation to interrupt the automatic, mindless scrolling, intense reactions, the pull of an old pattern, and come back into contact with yourself. You don't need more information. You just need a moment of presence.
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Brief Return® 3 to 5 minutes A gentle settling. A few quiet minutes of checking in, of simple curiosity about what is happening inside you. Nothing to fix. Nothing to achieve. Just you, listening.
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Deep Return® 10 minutes Spaciousness. Deeper settling. Deeper listening. Deeper exploration and curiosity. Simply more time for the stars to come out.
Here is a Brief Return® practice.
For some, a Return practice may feel like looking at the night sky right after the flood lights have been turned off.
Nothing. Just a blank sky.
But if you are patient and keep looking, the sky will slowly begin to sparkle with more and more stars, millions of them. Those stars were there all along. It just took some time for you to be able to see them.
Be patient. Keep returning to you.
One day, you just might feel the entire cosmos inside of you.
The Return Library
Practices are organized into three categories, Resource, Curiosity, and Engage, with a Micro Return® (1 to 2 minutes) and a Brief Return® (3 to 5 minutes) for each. New practices are added regularly. Your free account also includes Letters from Michelle, my monthly email. Each letter brings a subscriber-only Deep Return® practice and lets you know when new Returns arrive in the library. You can unsubscribe anytime.