I’m speeding down Sir Francis Drake Boulevard on a glorious fall day, running through yellow lights, completely stressed out, trying to get to the meditation hall on time. I’m teaching the daily yoga classes at a women’s meditation retreat at Spirit Rock, a Buddhist retreat center in a rural valley north of San Francisco.

Here are just a few of the reasons that grounding your attention in your body is vital to the practice of awakening. Your body is always right here, right now. This transient, mysterious body anchors you in the beauty or sorrow of each unfolding moment: the smell of pinon logs blazing in a woodstove, your grandmother's frail hand in yours as you say goodbye. And it's only when you're present for these moments that it's possible to be intimate with your life.

Here’s the one thing I know for sure about moving into meditation: The only time you can do it is now. I mean, right now. Even if you haven’t answered your e-mail or paid the IRS or thrown out the three-week-old pasta that’s festering at the back of your fridge, or fixed the broken screen door that’s banging in the rising wind of an incoming storm. Even if the person you’re in love with just fell in love with someone else.

For the first few weeks of my son Skye's life, he would only sleep if he could hear my heartbeat. From midnight to dawn he lay on my chest, his head tucked into the hollow of my throat, awakening every two hours to nurse. In the day, he'd nap in my arms as I rocked, a slideshow of emotions—joy, exasperation, amusement, angst, astonishment--flickering across his dreaming face, as if he were rehearsing every expression he would need for the rest of his life.