To become a savorer of life is a beautiful process and one worthy of your dedication.

 

Be a Pleasure Connoisseur

Hello Beautiful,

I want to explore the topic of intentional pleasure with you. So many people struggle to reconcile their desires with their goals. They feel there is a war between what they want and what they “should” do. They wish they were a robot who didn’t care or want…but they do care and they do want. Today, we are going to address this sticky issue and, I hope, provide a balanced and constructive approach to bringing more true pleasure into your life.

We are designed for pleasure. We light up when we see something beautiful. We enjoy the taste of food, the smell of an amazing fragrance, and the cozy warmth and weight of a throw blanket on a chilly evening makes our heart glow.

True pleasure is satisfying as you experience it and it expands your capacity for presence. It fuels you for your future and refreshes your enthusiasm for life. Pleasure bonds us to loved ones and revives our capacity to feel the delight of life rather than just the weight of our responsibilities.

Illusory pleasure promises satisfaction, but leaves us feeling empty. We feel guilty and off track afterwards. We feel we need to restrict our eating/downtime/spending/etc to balance the scales for having over indulged. We feel worse about ourselves and farther from our goals as a result.

The problem is that when we get in a cycle of indulging in unintentional, illusory pleasures, we lose self respect, may harm our health/relationships/career/finances/integrity and set ourselves back in life.

But, something inside us is still drawn to the behaviors and we persist. This creates a self destructive, self betraying cycle. We have a love/hate relationship with pleasure: alternately justifying it and feeling ashamed of the cost.

This is far from the beautiful potential we have to enjoy pleasure and have it move us forward in life. We are meant to enjoy our life deeply and to grow our capacity for pleasure in every area. When we enjoy our life more deeply, it is a sort of mindfulness practice. We dive into our senses, into the moment, into presence, and into gratitude.

To become a savorer of life is a beautiful process and one worthy of your dedication. To deeply enjoy the moment and create beauty and delight as often as possible is a skill and a gift to yourself and those around you.

Beauty inspires us, true pleasure refreshes us, and provides the replenishment that enables us to re-enter our work resourced and “full.”

A key to developing this healthy relationship with pleasure is…

Plan your pleasures well.

Don’t let them be an afterthought at the end of a period of over work.

Too often, people over work and over commit and then feel the strong need to balance the scales with overindulging afterwards.

Moderate, effective work that is balanced with thoughtful and deeply enjoyed pleasures keep your life balanced and delightful. I encourage my clients to plan for their pleasure. Create little delights you can look forward to throughout your day. Be especially committed to starting and ending your day with pleasures. Here are a few simple habits to inspire your journey:

Take 15 minutes of grounding on the lawn. Feel your feet connect to the earth and the ants dance across your toes as you take in the summer morning light and listen to the bird song.

Sip a cup of something vivifying and delightful on your porch step as you take 5 min to consider the day ahead and your plan for living it graciously.

When you dress, choose items that make you feel like the best version of yourself, even if you are simply at home all day.

Plate your food beautifully and take the time to sit and enjoy it well.

Single task and do each thing gently and with excellence.

Pause midday for a nature immersion and 5 minutes of deep, mindful breathing.

Find a playlist that uplifts you and another that soothes you. Feed your ears beauty rather than stressful news or excessive commentary.

Enjoy your grooming in the morning and evenings. Open a window or light a candle. Try something new weekly. Think loving and grateful thoughts as you care for your body.

Absorb silence and prioritize stillness each day. Begin with 5 minutes of stillness and silence. No music, nothing to read, and no writing. Allow your being to simply feel yourself in this moment and observe yourself and your surroundings. Let the waters of your soul settle and see what emerges out of the pause. Insights often make their way to the surface when we allow a deep pause.

In modern life, we have constant inputs. By design, we are meant to pause and digest and not be constantly consuming. Adding pockets of silence into your day is a fast track to re-regulating your nervous system.

Teach your kids to do this, too. At first, they may balk at 5 minutes of silence in the car or during a meal. But they too must learn to relax into the space of the now, rather then rush to fill every moment with more.

As parents, we are giving our children an immense gift by training them to pause and just be. It will also allow us to share a home environment that balance joy and activity with peace and refreshment. This creates a true refuge for us all.

As you learn to sprinkle  pleasures throughout your day— constructive, intentional, delightful pleasures— you will find that previous habits of reactive pleasures dissolve. Proactive pleasures are satisfying and life enhancing. They displace the lesser pleasures naturally.

I hope you find these reflections and suggestions inspiring and accessible. As you begin anew your pursuit of meaningful pleasures, you’ll enjoy the life enhancing results. As you embrace the regenerative effects of being more deeply present to your pleasure, and to your life, you will enhance your work and your delight in equal measure. And that is a life well lived.

Cheering you on,

Rachel

ps. If you would like to work with me to help you reach your goals, get more information here: Click here for details

 

During challenging times, people often find that their way of “doing life” just isn’t working anymore. They have come to the end of the old and they need a new path forward.I help them rebuild their “new normal”, their beautiful path forward with a balanced approach to living.

 

Balancing Ease & Effectiveness

Hello Beautiful,

Over the years, I have had the privilege of helping women grow through life transitions. I sometimes call myself a “spiritual midwife” because I am especially skilled at helping people when they are entering into a new season of life or making a big internal shift.

During challenging times, people often find that their way of “doing life” just isn’t working anymore. They have come to the end of the old and they need a new path forward.

I help them rebuild their “new normal”, their beautiful path forward with a balanced approach to living. I do this by mentoring them in…

The Five Components of a Well Lived Life

 

Presence

Presence is our capacity to be in the moment fully, connected to ourselves, our Spirit, God, and others. Without Presence we cannot connect to our purpose or the solutions on the other side of the challenge we are facing.

Presence is our lifeline to Peace. Peace facilitates our ability to hear God and know what to do next, not from a place of reactivity, habit, or fear-but from a place of centered clarity.

We must learn to cultivate Presence as a skill. It requires concentration, single mindedness, and self awareness. Distraction, projection, and a habituation to a life of speed all make it very difficult to come into Presence. As we train our capacities in these areas, we will begin to find the calm within the storm and be able to hold clarity in the midst of chaos.

This is the foundation of a well lived life. It is our capacity to correctly perceive ourselves and others that allows us to make wise decisions moving forward.

Our capacity for Presence determines how much of the Divine we can encounter and “hold”. The goal is to continue building this capacity indefinitely so that we can hold more and more of the Creator’s spark within us.

Purpose

Purpose is our direction, and with the help of our Creator we can find and understand how to live out our purpose. As we grow in our Presence, the clarity and depth of our purpose is revealed at greater and greater levels. With a deep understanding of our purpose, we can become what we were meant to be.

A unique quality of purpose is that it gives us the capacity to relate to everything correctly. If you don’t understand the purpose of a hammer, electrical voltage, or a medicinal herb, you can easily misuse it.

Bringing harm, instead of the intended good, from something is an indicator that you likely don’t understand the purpose of the thing. Often, people hurt themselves and others because they don’t know the purpose of things like anger, sex, food, and power. The more powerful something is, the more you must understand it’s nature and use it in alignment with it’s design.

Pleasure

Pleasure is hardwired into our brains and bodies to draw us towards the purpose of good things. A misuse of pleasure causes regret and harm after the “party is over” so to speak. True pleasure is delightful in the moment and builds something good afterwards.

Often people go to one of two extremes: fearing pleasure and being ruled by it. In truth, we are meant to align our pleasures with our purpose. Pleasure serves a purpose when it refreshes and delights, it bonds us to those we love, and it regenerates us.

Having a healthy relationship with pleasure is a key to a balanced and healthy life. It should be our servant, rather than our master. Pleasure is a beautiful tool when understood properly and wisely chosen.

Planning

When we regularly consider and refine our strategies, we are far more effective in our efforts. I like to create a morning review of my top 3 tasks to prioritize in the day and then brainstorm a list of my “bonus” tasks to fit in where peaceable.

Each evening, I review the coming day and make any necessary preparations to make the day flow better.

On a weekly basis, I love to review my 30 day goals and my seasonal priorities. I make sure both tie into my annual goals. Every month, I make concrete steps towards my transformative goals for the year. By approaching things in a sustainable, consistent way, I am able to stay on track without overload.

Long term (5-10 year) goals get revisited quarterly. Are they still feeling relevant? Does something need to be edited or deleted? Am I making consistent strides in the direction of these big goals? How might I consolidate them for simplicity?

Productivity

Productivity is not linked to proving your value. It is an expression of our alignment with our purpose. Design, creation, effort, and accomplishment give us a sense of satisfaction, move our world forward, and help us serve others in ways that change the world. We are most productive when we are truly focused; this flow state of productivity is called “deep work”.

“Deep Work” as Cal Newport’s book explains, is the key to productivity in the context of a life that balances doing and being. Our greatest contributions don’t have to come at the cost of our health, relationships, and enjoyment of life. We can have impact and balanced living.

These 5 components are all essential to a well lived life. Finding the balance between them will allow you to live the life you have longed for as you experience thriving and connection.

Cheering you on,

Rachel

ps. If you would like to work with me to help you reach your goals, get more information here: Click here for details

 

You are not spending more time to be healthy. You are spending time differently.

 

Be an Ageless Beauty Part 2

Hello Beautiful,

Growing older is a privilege. Aging is mostly optional. Our daily habits decide our experience of the passage of time. Most of aging is the cumulative result of neglecting to notice and respond to our body’s needs.

We can only go so long before the wine at night to relax + insufficiently restful sleep + coffee to get going + eating on the go + over packed schedule + the not enough energy to exercise cycle collapses into a health/mental crisis. And it also starts taking its toll on our appearance as well.

This usually begins in the 30’s, intensifies in the 40’s, and is undeniably frustrating in the 50’s. Healthy habits are the foundation of living well. Nothing you can buy, inject, or put on will effectively counter the results you create in your way of living.

Here are the foundational pieces of a healthy lifestyle:

We need 7-10 hours of sleep. During sleep, our body repairs and our nervous system regenerates. A pre-sleep routine and a consistent sleep and wake pattern all optimize the body’s ability to fall asleep quickly and rest well, so that you can wake up refreshed.

10,000 steps per day are needed. A sedentary lifestyle increases anxiety, depression, and slows metabolism. We need a minimum of 5,649 steps a day just to avoid feeling anxious, depressed, and dissatisfied with life! Walking is a low impact, free, and effective way to keep physically fit and mentally healthy. It is a terrific foundation on which to add other fitness activities.

3-4 Liters of water per day is optimal. Drinking purified water, not from plastic containers, and with electrolytes added, is essential for well being in every system of the body. Being dehydrated can cause multiple issues, including brain fog, reduced ability to focus, decreased endurance/strength, slowed elimination, and weight gain (resulting from confusing thirst cues for hunger cues).

7-10 servings of organic produce each day is essential for meeting your needs for fiber, enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. Nothing creates a youthful glow like a diet rich in fresh produce. Nothing. Aim for 3 servings per meal.

Clear purpose in life and spiritual vitality are the bedrock of the light in your eyes. Without a daily experience of God that vitalizes you and a clear sense that you are making steps each day towards fulfilling your purpose, your focus and fulfillment will dwindle.

Excess coffee is aging you. It’s dehydrating you, weakening your adrenal glands, and masking the overwhelm and lack of sleep that is begging you for a lifestyle overhaul. If you don’t drink coffee-don’t start. If you love it, drink it after you have hydrated and eaten a mineral and protein rich breakfast (rather than drinking it on an empty stomach). Have no more than one glass a day, and not after 2pm, so your sleep isn’t affected.

Alcohol is aging you by slowing your metabolism, damaging your liver, and hurting every system in the body.

Andrew Huberman’s podcast on the effects of alcohol on the body went viral a few years ago and many people are eschewing even “moderate” drinking. There is no upside to alcohol. And, as we age, the cost of imbibing goes up. Alcohol is the fuel that grows the middle age belly. It is not doing you any favors in the health or beauty categories.

Portion control is key. With age, many people find themselves less active and hungrier! When, in truth, we actually need to move more, not less, with age. We also need to watch our portion sizes and not go back for seconds.

Whether you choose to count macros or calories, it’s a good idea to start getting some objective measures of what your body needs (vs what you feel like eating). In America, portion sizes are skewed and norms are not normal for what a body does best with. Too much, too little, and just right are all real amounts. Find out what you need to thrive and create normative portions and proportions of the food groups to consume daily.

Moderation and routine are friends of the body aging well. Cheat days just cheat you of feeling well, and put you behind on your goals. Fasting must be practiced cautiously in the second half of life, where we are more prone to loose lean mass in extreme caloric deficit.

A moderate, constant approach to eating and moving will help you maintain your best weight and be free from injury over time. We want to protect our long term frame: prevent movement reducing injuries and build/sustain muscle and bone. These are both done with consistency, a solid strategy, and moderation.

Most women are healthiest when their BMI is 20-21. Maintaining a lean, muscular body is the goal for aging well. We need to prioritize building and maintaining muscle for metabolic health, bone health, and long term capacity. Furthermore, diet shifts and exercise refinements that help reduce visceral (abdominal) fat are key for optimal wellness.

In addition to getting in our steps each day, we need to stretch and practice mobility and balance enhancing exercises. Many injuries result from poor balance or restricted movements.  Preserving our healthy range of movement is essential to staying active and feeling great.

We need to add 20+ min of weight training 3-4x week. We also benefit from 1-2x week HIIT training to build and protect heart health. To loose weight, exercise sessions can be split into 2-3 x per day. A morning walk, an after-work strength session, and a pre-bed, wind down stretch allows the movement to boost metabolism several times and to prevent burnout from one long exercise session.

Oral health is also a key. Brushing after every meal is important! Flossing 1-2x per day is key to keeping your teeth and gums healthy. Tongue scraping in the morning and evening is a good way to improve digestive health since the digestive system begins in the mouth. Re-mineralizing mouth washes to prevent decay to the lower portions of teeth where gums are receding can prevent the loss of a tooth.

Oil pulling is another way to improve the health of the mouth and entire digestive system. Many people also would benefit from getting a retainer or Invisalign to wear a few times per week, to keep their teeth from moving with age.

Most people’s teeth become more crowded and move with the years. This is less attractive but it also changes the bite and can cause the loss of teeth (crowded teeth are harder to keep clean and more likely to decay/be lost). The cost of this preventative measure is significantly less than the cost of losing teeth and getting dental implants—and far less traumatic for the body.

With age our circulation often decreases; this is largely related to the common pattern of becoming more sedentary with age. In addition to getting your steps in and working out daily, massage becomes increasingly important with each year.

Learning massage is a very good skill. There are books, videos, and mentors that can help you learn the best way to do lymphatic drainage massage for yourself. It makes a big difference in reducing water retention, speeding recovery, and reducing cellulite.

Foam rolling can be an aid in this as well. It is less targeted than manual and skilled strokes, but provides many of the flushing benefits to the fascial tissues.

A key indicator of someone’s age is their posture and, particularly, how they hold their neck. Spinal alignment, muscular tension patterns, and emotional patterns all influence our posture.

Releasing areas of habitual tension with daily stretching is an important tool for maintaining a youthful way of holding yourself and moving. Putting the effort in, to become aware of your current patterns and to attentively change them to become in greater alignment, is a worthy endeavor.

You can move your head without pain or restrictions for driving, exercise, and in daily life. Few older individuals have this freedom. It is a freedom bought for about 15 minutes of stretching per day over the years.

For the face, deep tissue fascial sculpting is a key tool for slowing the passage of time. Just like our body has habitual postures, our eyes, forehead, mouth, and jaw all have patterns. We can identify the habits (mouth breathing, clenching the jaw, furrowing the brows, etc) that are holding tension in muscles, which pull the skin into wrinkles and changes the volume in our faces.

Our ability to manually release, and consciously re-pattern our facial posture is an opportunity to change the way our face and neck age. 10 minutes a day is a good start. 20 minutes will make you feel a change. 30 minutes a day will help you see a change. The benefits of the deep work extend beyond wrinkle abatement. Increased circulation improves how the skin ages.

Decreased tension can eliminate chronic headaches, improve sleep, and reduce the overall feel of tension in the body, adding to a sense of ease. A more relaxed, and beautiful face reveals itself over time. Since our face communicates our emotional state to others, it’s important we learn to neutralize unconscious patterns so that we aren’t sending the wrong messages by accident.

When our eye sight changes, there are effective exercises we can do to restore our full function. When our sexual health changes, there are practices that can restore our bladder control, our arousal response, our orgasmic intensity, etc. Many changes in the body can be minimized or reversed. I think you are noticing a theme here!

At the core, it’s a mindset shift: do we accept the gradual decline of every system in the body-how it looks, smells, and functions? Or do we see decreased function as a sign that the body needs something different to thrive? Is our body “malfunctioning” or is it sending us a message we would rather not deal with?

The truth is that your life will either revolve around healthy habits or around the decline of your health. They take the same amount of time and energy. You are not spending more to be healthy. You are spending differently. You can decide if you want your time and efforts spent to create desirable outcomes, or you want your time and efforts spent managing undesirable outcomes. Choose wisely.

If you feel overwhelmed and need help to remodel your current approach and create your ideal aging habits, reach out here.

Cheering you on,

Rachel

ps. If you would like to work with me to help you reach your goals, get more information here: Click here for details

 

We need to find a balance between accepting that our bodies are changing and investing in our radiance. I offer that we can take a both/and approach: 80% of “aging” can be side stepped through health supporting choices and 20% needs to be graciously embraced.

 

Be an Ageless Beauty Part 1

Hello Beautiful,

Right now, we have more options than ever about how we age. Plastic surgery, injectables, lasers, and high tech treatments are changing the way we look at what aging has to be. Now that we have so many choices, some people find themselves overwhelmed with the expectations for using all of these options.

You might feel torn between wanting to try some of these but hesitant because of the expense, the potential that they go poorly, or that they might be bad for your health.

Some people just long for the good old days when, it was expected that your face and body would change predictably and you could just relax into the last half of your life without as much concern for keeping up appearances and enjoy not caring so much.

All of these thoughts are understandable. It can be complicated to navigate the many issues that have arisen. The great expense of these interventions and “upkeep” are prohibitive for many people. Others recoil at the time and energy required to keep trying to look 35 years old indefinitely. And, more and more research suggest that there are health concerns associated with implants and injectables.

So, what to do….

As I have considered these things for myself, coached clients around these issues, and continued to study things from various angles, I have found a both/and approach that might be helpful for your consideration.

Firstly, health is the root of true beauty, and it is worthy of our prioritizing at any age. It takes more time and energy with each decade to protect and optimize your nutritional needs, your fitness needs, your rest & recovery, and your grooming.

It just does. And the alternative isn’t doing nothing and saving time. The alternative is spending the same (or likely more) time dealing with the consequences of not making healthy habits a priority.

In the second half of life, most of the population spends close to half their time dealing with chronic health issues and the effects of reduced energy. So, unless you are spending 5-6 hours each day working out, juicing, and in the sauna, you are winning, time wise!

We flourish when we choose to prioritize daily habits and choices that will help us flourish. In many ways, health is earned, and so is illness. Our habits, our thoughts, our schedules, our diets, our sleep patterns, and the things we put on (and into) our bodies have consequences.

And, unfortunately, these choices matter more than ever because the air/water/soil pollution we are exposed to isn’t possible to eliminate, only to mitigate.

Beyond the acceptance that giving daily priority to excellent nutrition, exercise/leading an active lifestyle, rest and recovery, purpose and community, and helping the body recover from chemical exposures, what else is worth your time and energy?

In part 2, I will be sharing many amazingly effective tools for being an Ageless Beauty. But, before I do, I want to address a key point. We need to find a balance between accepting that our bodies are changing and investing in our radiance.

I offer that we can take a both/and approach: 80% of “aging” can be side stepped through vitality promoting choices and 20% needs to be graciously embraced.

Beauty is present in a 2 year old, a 12 year old, a 32 year old, a 52 year old and an 82 year old. It looks different—not more or less— in each stage.

We need to broaden our definition of a beauty, so it includes the full spectrum of life.

While we aren’t looking to eliminate all changes, we are looking to age beautifully. We want to remain radiant, energetic, fit, and healthy throughout our lives.

It would be ridiculous to resist the change of the seasons in nature. Likewise, we are foolish to presume that we (as a part of nature) will not change.

How we change and how we relate to that change is up to us.

I invite you to embrace the truth of wherever your body is right now, and to lovingly and devotedly nurture it to it’s full potential at any age. I look forward to sharing my favorite ways to do that in the next blog.

Cheering you on,
Rachel

ps. If you would like to work with me to help you reach your goals, get more information here: Click here for details

 

Winter is a time to build wisdom, to listen, to discern the path forward, and to make a practical strategies to implement the plans in our heart.

 

Wonderful Winter

Hello Beautiful,

I hope your year is finishing up well and you have enjoyed time with family and friends over the holidays. I especially hope that you make the time to get extra rest and quietly ponder what you most desire for 2025. I would like to share some of my favorite ways to prepare for and enter the new year (and thrive this Winter)….

Replenish

Winter is a time for rest. Many animals hibernate. We make extra melatonin in the darker months and this encourages us to go to sleep earlier, to sleep more….and to heal! Rather than just pushing through use this season to downshift your pace and rest more. I find, I need 60-90 min more sleep in winter than in summer to feel my best. I embrace this rather than resent it. I see this time as a chance to do deep healing on every level, to quiet my soul, and to replenish.

Nurture

While I love salads and smoothies, in the colder months, I offer warmer foods as my fare. I savor teas, stir fry’s, soups, and warm veggie bowls. I enjoy healing baths or infrared saunas most days. I dress to be cozy. I light candles when the sun hasn’t risen or set. In short, I am making life a little extra warm and nurturing. When we treat our body with tenderness and intentionally foster an environment of healing, we calm our nervous system and open our hearts.

Listen

Winter is a time to build wisdom, to listen, to discern the path forward, and to make a practical strategies to implement the plans in our heart. Spring is a better time to begin rigorous endeavors and projects. The first part of the year is about building up our energy through conscious rest and discerning, refining, and creating an actionable plan.

Inspiration

This is a perfect season to begin a new course, book, or artistic endeavor. We are partnering with the Divine design in building the magic “underground.” We can also edit our goals into categories. I like to find 3 words/phrases that encapsulate areas I want to grow in/embody and then I organize daily/weekly/monthly actions in each category.

Strategy

Every year I choose three words (themes) to help focus my growth. “Simplicity” was one of my 3 words last year. Each month, I create habits or take actions to support growth in those three annual points of focus. With daily embodiment practices, a year can provide significant opportunities for growth and change.

A monthly action I took to embody Simplicity was to de-clutter and re-organize a room each month. A weekly action was to spend 30 minutes on Saturdays going through saved notes/journals/cards/papers and decide what to keep and what to toss. A daily action was to reduce my to-do’s to a shorter list (building an hour of unscheduled time so I could have more leeway and free time.

By taking my area of desired growth (Simplicity) and building daily, weekly, and monthly actions, I made fantastic progress in simplifying my environment and time management. This is a great tool you can use to transform your goals into actual change.

I hope these strategies help you create a “Wonderful Winter” of your own. Doing less, resting more, and gaining mental & spiritual clarity are some of the gifts we can draw out of this season. Wishing you a wonderful 2025!

Cheering you on,

Rachel

ps. If you would like to work with me to help you reach your goals, get more information here: Click here for details