Dear Sama friends,
Sometime last August, I opened Sama Life for subscriptions, and many of you supported this work. I am grateful for your support, your practice, the time you take to read, and the insights you share. Through these words, we connect across time and space.
With AI and other advances in technology, we can do more, write more clearly, and make things we couldn’t have imagined making. (For example, I used Claude to build a wheel to pick a skill you need and for drawing names from the most active commenters who joined our conversations this year.)
But the same tools that let us do more also feed the desire for more because we can do more. And doing more creates a striving for still more. The more we create, the more expectations we have from all the time and energy we are putting out there.
Discernment is becoming an increasingly essential skill, helping us consume, create, and connect intentionally, for our own benefit and the benefit of all in our world.
This is where the practice comes in. Beyond reading, writing, and creating, there is the practice of non-doing. Of just being. Listening to what is important and allowing what is possible.
My offering of Daily Sama is an invitation to take that pause in your day—to return to your own knowing, to listen within, and then begin your actions and interactions with intention and care.
No amount of reading can replace the practice and play of mindfulness.
I say play because even though mindfulness is a serious practice, one that connects us with the deepest truths of our embodied being, it also connects us with all that is beautiful and good, and it brings joy. Being in nature. Walking, dancing, singing. All of these are ways to play with mindfulness, ways into joy.
And so I am celebrating this one-year mark of connection and real-world mindfulness with you.
Some days it can feel like I’m writing into a quiet room. But I do it anyway, trusting that someone, in their own time, will find these words when they need them most.
As I was reflecting on the past year, I decided to look at the data from substack. That quiet room, it turns out, reaches around the world.
Since I began writing last January, these letters have been opened and read more than 51,000 times, by people in 34 countries—from India to Ireland, Kuwait to New Zealand. More than 2,100 of you opened something just last month. Nearly 4,400 of us now practice together in this space.
So thank you for reading and most of all for your practice 🪷
A small celebration
To mark the year, I wanted to thank a few of you by name.
Christine McCroskey — for returning to Daily Sama almost every day. Your practice inspires me to keep returning too, day after day. That steady return is the heart of it.
UpsideDownWorld — for showing up so fully all year: in the comments, on the page, and in our Circles. Your presence supports us more than you know.
And from our most active commenters this year, the wheel drew three names: Colleen , Robert W, and Nathalie Guilbeault. A Sama Life mug is on its way to each of you—a small daily reminder to return to mindfulness.
Each Sama Life mug carries a QR code to a micro-practice. Let it become a small morning ritual. Before your day begins, enjoy your mug beverage, scan the code, and take a few minutes to return, listen, and then begin your day with intention and clarity.
Choose the practice that speaks to you from one of the mugs below, at gifts.asamalife.com, or share your favorite Daily Sama and I will send you a mug with that.
To claim your mug, message me your address. And needless to say, your information will never be shared with anyone other than Shopify, to make the delivery.
Thank you, all of you, for making a Sama Life a conversation and a practice, together. Looking forward to another year of real-world mindfulness practices with you.
Return. Listen. Begin. Stay Sama. 🪷
Shalini
