Shaping Our New Rhythms

Routines can give our day shape, and they can give us the feeling of control. Routines are, without question, helpful on many levels. But I do have one question for you: do you own and define your routines, or do your routines own and define you?

What Do you Do When Nothing is Working

We will all face moments where we feel tested, depleted, or stagnant. We have to learn how to sit with these moments and go through the stillness instead of trying to avoid or escape them. Our response to these moments defines and shapes our future trajectory.

Gratitude: More Than A Feeling

We can choose to embody gratitude as a state of being rather than having moments where we feel grateful. When we embody gratitude we allow it to sink into the core of who we are.

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In the Middle of it All, Pause

Learning when to pause is an art and a skill, but it’s simple and needs nothing added. If you spend all your days searching for something, you’ll miss out on what’s already right in front of you.

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How Our Beliefs Can Fuel Illness

The placebo and the nocebo effects show us that the mind is far more powerful than we can ever comprehend, and our brain has a powerful influence on the physiology of the human body.

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How to Find Your Authentic Self

It’s interesting that we’re wired for connection and belonging, things that arise more strongly out of showing up as our true self, but yet it is easy to choose to live an ideal or an image in order to gain the approval and belonging we so desperately crave. Living with a mask may seem safer, but it isn’t sustainable, and it’s often more lonely than living a life of authentic expression. Living with a mask can leave us feeling empty, inadequate, and sometimes even ashamed.

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Growing Down

So much of the world and self-development revolves around growing up into better and different versions of who we can or should be, but what we really need is to grow DOWN into the roots of who we authentically are. The world needs who we were made to be. The world needs who we already are.

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The Energetic Landscape of Motherhood

Have you ever stopped to consider that there is an emotional and energetic landscape surrounding pregnancy? Women should be given time to prepare – both physically and emotionally – for the journey that lies ahead. There is a lot going on during this journey, and so much of it begins with conception. Unfortunately, women aren’t always given the time or freedom to fully prepare for the mental, emotional, and energetic demands of pregnancy, labor, and early motherhood. So many of us walk into motherhood blind to the changes and challenges of the energetic landscape within and around us, which can send us into a tailspin of anxiety and disconnection.

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4 Ways To Build Inner Resilience

Now more than ever we need a resilient nervous system. We need resilience in order to function in today’s world. And in order to build that resilience we need to learn how and when to relax and decompress, as well as how to proactively take more ownership over our health.

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Soften Into Resistance

We all crave a level of certainty, routine, and predictability in life, but life isn’t going to be all of those things all of the time. Even if the current moment appears to have certainty embedded within it, anything can happen at any moment (or everything can pile up at once). The trajectory of our life can change in an instant. It doesn’t have to be good or bad. It just is. When we can accept this without fear, resistance, or attachment, we open ourselves up to new possibilities and discoveries.

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A Call for Belonging

There is hardly any way to do life anymore without technology. It is in many ways a blessing, but in other ways it harms our well-being. It robs us of being able to fully honor the intrinsic need for connection and love we all have. At our deepest physiological level, we are all wired for touch, connection, and community; we’re wired this way from birth, from the moment we meet our mother or father’s arms and soak up the comfort of their touch. It’s a need that is fundamental to our human nature. It is one of the deepest needs we have – the need for belonging; the need to be seen and to be loved.

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4 Agreements: A Perspective From the Mat

Each day we come to the mat will be a new experience. Each day we’ll show up with different energy, different emotions, more or less stamina, etc. We have to allow ourselves to detach from past performance as well as future expectations and simply be in the moment. As we allow that detachment to occur and as we fully embrace our practice in the unfolding of the present, each posture offers a new lesson.

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New Year... New Me?

For many of us, the unfortunate messaging behind the resolutions we choose to set is that we aren’t good enough (yet) to deserve the happiness, health, success, and community we desire. Our resolutions direct our mindset to a tone of self-consciousness and a de-valuing of our inherent worth.

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Nursing Posture and Its Role in Sympathetic Dominance

Motherhood is stressful, and getting used to life as a mom takes a major adjustment, no matter if it’s the first baby or the fifth. Between the family demands, work demands, financial concerns, endless to-do lists, and the influx of new hormones into the body, it’s all too easy to enter into a state of stress dominance. In this state, the fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system of the body dominates for long periods of time and we begin to feel the effects on our emotional and physical health. This problem can extend well beyond the physical side of life, spilling over into our relationships, especially with those closest to us.

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Chronic Stress in Pregnancy

Most of us know that long standing, chronic stress can have negative effects on our own health, and many are aware of the negative impact stress has on birth, but the problem goes even deeper during pregnancy. The problem of longstanding, chronic stress during this stage of life is that it doesn’t start and end with just those who are pregnant. Research is now discovering that it can have a longstanding impact on the developing fetus well into adolescence and adulthood – it’s called the Fetal Programming Theory.

What research is finding is that environmental exposures in the womb, including chronic exposure to maternal stress hormones, can and do impact fetal brain development, and this has an impact on not only future health, but also future behavior.

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Discovering the Elusive Truth and Falling in Love with Yourself

The more I allowed myself to feel, the freer I became, and I was soon able to start countering my reflexive thoughts with positive affirmations, words that honored me and showered me with self-love and self-respect.

As I began to make the transition toward my own inner truth, I stopped seeing myself as the world told me I should be, and instead saw myself in the light of who I was made to be. I began to feel whole.

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