TAMARA COUGHLAN

People ask me this constantly: what exactly do you do? Fair question. I'm an OT. I'm also a psychotherapist. For a stretch of years I was teaching yoga most evenings too, after spending the day in a hospital ward. Three different rooms, three different versions of how I talked, how I dressed, what I let myself say out loud. I used to answer the question by picking whichever one seemed safest for the room I was in. If I was at a clinical handover, I led with OT. If I was talki

I wasn't drawn to meditation to find calm. I was drawn because something in me was hungry. Not for answers exactly, but for a kind of intimacy I couldn’t name yet. I was seeking the answer to the question, "Who Am I?" Meditation became a love affair slowly, then all at once. At first, it was discipline. Structure. Cushions, bells, long sits where my knees hurt and my mind ran riot. And if I’m honest, it was peak experiences. Waves of love so intoxicating. States of bliss that

The Heart of Awareness There’s a place inside us that’s always here, even when we don’t notice it. It’s not the part that plans, worries, or tries to fix everything. It’s not even the part that loves, grieves, or longs. This part is quieter and wider. It simply sees. It watches the thoughts, the feelings, the body trembling—and it doesn’t interfere. There’s no agenda. There’s no judgement. Ramana Maharshi called it awareness. In Internal Family Systems, it’s known as Self or

In the hum of everyday life, there exists a silent weight that often goes unnoticed until it becomes too heavy to bear. Burnout, a silent...

Grief, like an anchor, grasps our hearts, grounding us in the present moment. It is a powerful force that holds us still, demanding our...

I have fallen down to earth into my body. Here like I've never been here before. Traversing every cell in my being and what I find is...