Namaste, Reader.
Taylor here. Welcome back to Heart2Brain Yoga.
I’m a yoga teacher, a mom, and a lifelong student of what it means to be human. I believe our practice extends far beyond the yoga mat. It lives in how we care for ourselves, how we connect with others, and how we move through the messy, beautiful experience of being alive.
My family and I recently spent time in Japan. We explored new places, rode the Shinkansen, ate our way through Fukuoka, experienced art, shared family traditions, and found moments of quiet in between.
But the most meaningful souvenirs weren’t things I could pack in a suitcase. They were the questions, observations, and reminders I collected along the way—about belonging, energy, honesty, creativity, and space.
So I’m turning my journal into a little series for the Heart2Brain Yoga community: a collection of personal reflections on the five values that kept finding their way into my thoughts. These are five ways of looking at our experiences, our relationships, and the ways we care for ourselves and one another.
These aren’t lessons I’ve mastered. They’re practices I’m still learning. I hope these letters offer you a moment to pause, a new perspective to consider, or a little more compassion for wherever you find yourself today.
I’m glad you’re here. Welcome to Letters from Japan: a Heart2Brain Yoga series.
Let’s keep learning how to be human together. Follow along here, and join the Heart2Brain Yoga newsletter for more reflections.
From My Heart 2 Yours,
Taylor Lee Hitaffer, RYT-500, CYMC
Heart2Brain Yoga
Letters from Japan: a Heart2Brain Yoga series.
Introduction
I wake up right at sunrise. The sky has that morning blush, and the cool light signals that it’s going to be another gorgeous fall day. The air smells colder, crisper. I could get up and start cleaning the kitchen, but instead, I snuggle deeper into the warm covers. Five more minutes.
My husband is already out of bed and probably has been for hours. It’s been a week since we flew home from Japan. The 14-hour time difference has left us all jet-lagged, and for the first couple of days, it was impossible to get through the day without napping. At least sunrise is a normal—albeit still really early—time to be awake.
The trouble with being awake before anyone else is figuring out what to do with all the extra hours you suddenly have. When my 9-year-old daughter and I were up at 3 a.m., there was no falling back asleep. “Do you want to pop some popcorn and watch a movie?” I asked. Meanwhile, back in Japan, it was 4:00 in the afternoon. So we sat on our couch, watching TV and waiting for the sun to catch up with us.
I’m grateful for how well my daughter is able to cope. Just as she did when we visited Japan in 2025, she managed the airplane travel, the disruption to her sleep cycle, and being dropped into a completely new culture with grace. Perhaps having a second trip under our belts gave us more confidence because we knew what to expect.
This time, however, we had an extra member of our travel party: my mother-in-law, who was born in Fukuoka, Japan. Since moving to America in the early ’70s, she has made the pilgrimage back to Japan every few years to see her family. Sometimes she traveled with her own family—my husband and his brothers have memories of Japan from when they were kids—but in more recent years, she has often made the trip solo.
Now, as she approaches 80, she needs a wheelchair to cover long distances. So we all agreed to help get Mom home to see her family, for what might be the last time.
I think back to the tiny apartment in Jigyo six weeks ago, when the four of us were jet-lagged from our flight to Fukuoka. We were physically exhausted but wide awake. And hungry.
Most places didn’t open until 10 a.m., but luckily, just down the street was a Gusto—think Denny’s, if Denny’s also served Japanese food—that offered breakfast starting at 7 a.m. We pored over the menu on my iPhone, getting excited about fluffy pancakes and unlimited coffee.
As the sun rose over the city, we walked together along the Hiigawa River to the restaurant, setting off on what would be our first adventure in this meaningful, immersive trip to Japan.
In the weeks to come, countless moments would connect us and bring us closer as a family. There would be plenty of moments that tested those bonds, too. Moments that taught me about the meaning of obligation and responsibility, safety and self-care. And moments when I found myself marveling at my daughter, so proud to witness the amazing, brilliant person she is becoming.
Now, back home, there’s still loads of laundry to be done and souvenirs that need to find their homes. I pour myself a cup of coffee, thankful to my husband for taking care of the grocery shopping. I think about opening my inbox, reaching out to clients, and easing back into our usual routines of homeschooling and running my yoga business.
But first, I want to take the time to explore what I’ve brought home with me from Japan. The things you can’t pack in a suitcase or buy in a gift shop. The values I’ve carried with me through years of self-study as a yoga teacher—values that supported me throughout the trip and remained consistent even as the landscape around me changed.
I learned about inclusion and hospitality: what it means to make room for another person without asking either of us to become someone we’re not.
I learned how to manage my energy, how to distinguish between the life I want to experience and the pace I can sustainably maintain.
I confronted myself with emotional honesty, challenging myself to stop treating my feelings as problems to solve and start listening to them as information.
When communication faltered, I leaned into my creativity and discovered what might be possible when you stop demanding an answer and give yourself permission to experiment.
And then there was space—the absolute luxury of it. I began to understand how boundaries don’t always separate us; sometimes, they become bridges to healthier relationships.
I want to capture some of what this journey taught me, and reflect on what remains when the vacation is over.
I’m hoping to preserve these memories so that one day, my daughter can read this journal and remember just how significant this journey with her was for me. And perhaps, in reading it, she’ll discover something about herself, too.
Coming next week - Value One: Inclusion.
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