A note from Sar
I’m just curious about what bodies do.
Sighing. Yawning. Blushing. Fidgeting. Trembling. Crying when you’d rather not. The things a body does before you’ve had a chance to decide whether you agree.
Once, on a cruise, I yawned while talking with a British man at the table. He was offended. I thought he was interesting.
I apologised, the way you do. But I didn’t really feel bad about the yawn itself. My body is just my body.
That’s the kind of moment I write about.
I fall down rabbit holes. It starts with a question like why do I yawn so much? I look it up. That answer leads to another question: then why do I sigh? And another.
I search, I read, and I use AI as a thinking partner to help me find the next question worth asking. I keep going until I feel I’ve understood enough. Then I wonder what else the body does that I’ve barely thought about.
The body is sacred.
This is the body I’m bound to for this lifetime, and I want to understand it. I’d rather live in sync with it than spend my energy trying to command it.
That does not make every bodily event a message or a problem. It makes it worth looking at closely.
Not a fix. A closer look.
So much of the wellness world sells the gap: the distance between the body you have and the perfected one you’re told you could have, if you just found the right fix.
Perfectly calm. Perfectly regulated. Properly healed. Apparently never annoyed in traffic.
That’s a great many ways to fail before breakfast.
I don’t think that gap ever fully closes. A human body comes with limitations. Some of what it does will never be tidy, and not every imperfection is a problem to solve.
Understanding hasn’t made me yawn less. I still catch myself breathing shallowly. But I notice these things now, and I feel much less bad about them.
That’s what I’d like to offer you. Not control. Not a cure. Just a closer look, and a little less judgment.
The books
Each book comes at the same question from a different direction: what might be happening here, before I decide this is a defect?
The books can be read in any order. They’re available in Kindle and paperback.
What I am, and what I’m not.
I’m not a doctor, therapist, or scientist. My books aren’t a substitute for medical or psychological care. If something your body is doing worries you, that’s a conversation for a professional, and getting help is never a failure.
What I do is gather what I find from science, from spiritual traditions, and from ordinary life, and try to make it readable. I try to be clear about the difference between what’s known and what’s my own interpretation.
Knowing how a sigh works doesn’t make it less intimate. Not every bodily event needs a cosmic subplot. Sometimes you yawned because you were tired. But ordinary doesn’t mean meaningless.
You don’t need to believe anything first. Start with something your body already does.
Sar Iana · Author