#254: Notes on spirit

+ a call for questions

In a yoga class yesterday morning, the instructor gave us a breathing exercise. When we inhaled, we were to think, I am not the body, and when we exhaled, I am not even the mind. It has a great rhythm to it: Inhale, I am not the body; exhale, I am not even the mind. After class, I couldn’t get the music of it out of my head, which is of course ironic (I am the mind), but something about it struck me as amusing, too—this total abnegation of what we consider “ourselves” to be. A stoner’s thought. If we aren’t body or mind, what are we? I texted it to Michelle as I walked out of the studio. “Whoa,” she replied, “that slaps.”

One answer to what we are outside of the body and the mind is, of course, the spirit. I assume this is what the instructor was getting at, given yoga’s roots in Hindu philosophy (which, kudos, she seemed very knowledgeable about). And it was well-timed, as I’ve been thinking about the spirit a lot lately, and have had a related essay idea lingering in my Notes app for a while now. The initial inspiration was editorial: In 2025, my overuse of the terms spirit and spiritual in my writing tipped into flagrant. Every time I wanted to emphasize that something defied ordinary material frameworks, I deemed it spiritual. I could think of no other word!

Some examples. Regarding domestic life, I called “picking what to cook” a question of “both nutritional and spiritual import.” I described care work as “very sweet and pure. Almost spiritual.” (Why almost?) I referred to putting my home in order as a kind of “spiritual offense” and purging my closet as “spiritually restorative.” I contrasted my everyday aims, like maintaining my health and hitting my deadlines, with “my spiritual aims,” which included things like “being honest about complicated feelings.”

In my cultural criticism, I wrote that fully checking out of work for long periods of time is not “good for the human spirit.” That early career success may bestow accolades but offers “few spiritual rewards.” That overstuffed social media bookmark folders might symbolize “spiritual atrophy.” And that most cultural reporters mistake bedrotting as a kind of physical decay (i.e. staying in bed too long) when in fact the decay “is spiritual.”

On the topic of parenting, I wrote that I’d forgotten my pregnancy—not practically, but “spiritually.” That my rules for sharing Sunny’s photo online concerns “my spiritual intent.” When I ran an advice column about my theory of parental readiness, it took much restraint not to name one of the core factors “spiritual readiness” (I went with attitudinal), but did eventually refer to the questioner as “ready on a spiritual level.” I wrote that during busy periods of parenthood, “Everything gets done, but just barely, and at a spiritual cost.”

I’ve noticed my use ticking up in casual conversation as well. “How’s your spirit?” is something I often ask my friends, whether following a period of ennui or illness or grief. As a question, it feels more pointed than “how are you” (offensively vague), but more open to interpretation than “how are you feeling” (emotional) or “where’s your head at” (intellectual) or “how are things going” (practical). I find that the spirit, despite representing something wholly abstract, is fairly easy to read in yourself: You know if your spirits are up or if they’re down. Sometimes this is entirely isolated from the rest of the details of your current reality.

I’m positive that I picked this up from my mom, who, throughout my childhood, constantly referred to my and my siblings’ spirits. Particular movies, activities, friendships, etc.—they were all either good or bad for our spirit. Long walks after dinner were good for our spirit. Violent video games were bad for our spirit. Her preoccupation stuck with me and only becomes more relevant as I age: What could be more important to tend than the spirit? It transcends body, mood, logic, or circumstance, and somehow determines everything. I am not the body…I am not even the mind! (Trying to earn my A in yoga.)

Unlike an impulse or a feeling, the spirit suggests something more sustaining and steady, something we continually nurture or allow to be nurtured. Our spirit might be compared to our morale, our enthusiasm, although I suspect the spirit simply drives those things. When someone is spiritually corrupt, they have no moral center. When a person or system crushes our spirit, they might crush our resolve, our desire to self-determine, our capacity for love, compassion, solidarity, meaning-making. Our inner freedom. Our will to live. Our spark. So maybe our spirit comprises those things.

Certainly our spirits know things we can’t explain, like when someone tells us something and, on paper, it makes sense, but spiritually it feels wrong. Or when we tell ourselves something—some justification for why we did this or that thing—and despite it holding up in a technical sense, we understand on a spiritual level that we’ve betrayed ourselves. The other day, Avi told me that someone had cracked Wordle: If you used these specific three words first, your chance of getting the answer in four turns was almost guaranteed. My answer, of course: That’s not in the spirit of the game! The spirit rejects technicalities and plausible deniabilities in favor of more substantial pleasures. When we’re willing to accept answers without explanations, or trust that questions can rank above answers, it can be a kind of compass.

The trouble with defining the spirit is obviously its value. The reason I’ve come to rely on it in my writing is that it fills a divine gap: It’s everything left over after you remove the stuff we can name and define. It sounds a little slippery and unsatisfying—reminiscent of the lazy work of modern slang like vibe, aura, mood—but I think spirit is more appropriately vague. It’s not a stand-in for more specific language I’m not bothering to locate, but a gesture at that which can’t be specified. I think it makes sense that as I age out of my predilection for rationality that I’d move toward this kind of squishy idea. In fairness, this is just my modern, secular impression of the spirit, which I’ve inherited from ancient traditions and cultures I can’t claim to fully understand. And yet it follows, in times of poly-crisis and mass disinformation and postmodern alienation, that the spirit, in its sacred heft, would reclaim its resonance for many of us. Your spirit cannot be bought or sold.

I’ve seen many people commend the spirits of the Minnesotans defending their neighbors against ICE and Border Patrol. What could be better evidence of the human spirit prevailing in the face of tyranny? As Adam Serwer reported for The Atlantic, “Tens of thousands of volunteers—at the very least—are risking their safety to defend their neighbors and their freedom. … The number of Minnesotans resisting the federal occupation is so large that relatively few could be characterized as career activists. They are ordinary Americans—people with jobs, moms and dads, friends and neighbors.” Amazingly, they’re doing it in sub-zero temperatures and with a sense of humor too, which feels very Minnesota (dare I say, the Minnesotan spirit?).

A few of the anecdotes I’ve heard: Networks of neighbors doing grocery-runs for those who don’t feel safe going outside. Cafes repurposed as warming houses. Social workers taking in kids whose parents have been disappeared. People pouring water on the roads to make it harder for ICE vehicles to drive. People standing watch with whistles at bus stops and on street corners, others bringing them homemade coffee and pastries. As Sewer put it, “No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors.”

As a country, we owe these Minnesotans a debt of gratitude for showing us that we still have it in us to resist what feels unstoppable. One of the core tenets of fascism is breaking the spirit of the people by robbing them of a stable reality, of rootedness, of their voice, of their dignity, hope, and interdependence. The stories coming out of the Twin Cities are horrifying but also, when you shift your focus to the people rather than the State, deeply inspiring and galvanizing. The photos leave me speechless. No amount of logical pontificating could ever compete with what my spirit knows is right.

Federal agents remove a protester they arrested in south Minneapolis after Alex Pretti was fatally shot by federal agents in the area early Saturday morning (via Star Tribune via Getty Images)

Most of the leftwing thinkers I admire are focused on materialism. They’re sick of politicians promising good vibes and gesturing at patriotism, as if Americans can’t tell that life here is getting worse, more expensive, less tenable. Largely I agree with this. But something in me strains against the idea that the intangible doesn’t also belong in this conversation about how to make life better for all of us. Solidarity, optimism, refusal—the spirit is where so much of this starts. Vulnerable as our spirits are to getting beaten down, they’re amazingly resilient.

While unpacking the not-body-not-mind mantra with Michelle, she told me about a somatic exercise she sometimes does in her movement classes. It’s about exploring the layers of the body: moving from the skin, then from muscle, then bone, then spirit. She said skin inspires a kind of elastic motion, then muscle a more rigorous movement, and bone a sturdy kind of gesticulation, and when they get to spirit, the energy in the room palpably shifts, the movements becoming bigger and wilder, the exercise ending in a crescendo of presence and playfulness, with the sudden arrival of individual quirks, less studied and self-conscious. Like logic and hard facts, our skin, muscles, and bones may feel like the safest instruments for movement, but the spirit is where we truly meet each other.

Thank you for all your helpful advice last week for the reader looking to escape the career doldrums! I’m going to refer back to that one myself.

A call for questions

Tomorrow, Harling, Crystal, and I are recording another episode for the podcast. In case you’re unaware, the three of us have been checking in with each other periodically about how parenthood is going. Here are the first three episodes: Baby Gossip Part 1, Baby Gossip Part 2, and Toddler Gossip. It’s been a year since our last episode, so we have a lot to cover! If you have questions you’d be interested in us answering, feel free to drop them in the comments.

Take care everyone,
Haley