basketball stadium. Everywhere you looked, there were scarves tied loosely, draped over shoulders, wrapped and looped and folded. Pink, purple, black, white, brown, blue, green, patterned and plain. I was doing my part to represent by wearing three scarves: different shades of purple and pink, layered.

From the perspective of Ayurveda, scarves are a great way to calm vata, the elements of air and ether or empty space. When we are exposed to the cold, the wind, the air, the air within us blows even more. One of the ways to keep the winds that stir up too much calmed down and in a pattern is to warm, contain, soothe and nurture. Wrapping a scarf around ourselves contains what could be a potential hurricane when the winds pick up.

Packing a scarf is one of the most important things I do as I get ready to go on a trip. On an airplane, in a car, riding a boat or pedaling a bicycle, a scarf is one of the most important items of clothing I can wear. It keeps me from feeling cold in shifting temperatures and climates, breathing the canned air of a plane or cutting through the windy air on a bike. It keeps my core temperature warmer; it even makes me feel more grounded. For a group of people coming from the high windy steppes of Tibet, what better gift is there than a scarf?

Waking up and going to sleep are the in-between times, the times when our malleable consciousness has the opportunity to shift and change and adjust. What we think and repeat and process and do in these moments can set up the tone of our day, or even reprogram our mind and our state of being.

I love the early morning hours before dawn, before sunrise, when quiet envelopes the earth, when quiet is like a soothing blanket. This is the time when there is the promise of renewal, new beginnings. These are the hours of vata in the Ayurvedic system, of emptiness and movement, of potentiality and possibility. If we can take the opportunity to set the tone of the day in these moments, we can build a momentum that sees us through the day. We can fill ourselves with the joy, the love, the peace, the birdsong, the vibration of the universe and the intention and that is what we can wake up with, that is what we can walk with when we set our feet on the earth.

As I write this, the sky is slowly becoming brighter. I hear the harmony of chirping that is a sound more profound and more delightful than any alarm clock. To accompany this, lately I’ve been chanting, either out loud, or in my mind each morning when I wake up. It is a great gift, this life, and how we begin each day every day prepares us for our ability to give our greatest gifts and receive our greatest love.