Written by Sarah Frustié, Ecotherapist, Forest Guide, Nature Retreat Facilitator and Holistic Counselor Sarah Frustié is an ecotherapist, forest guide, nature retreat facilitator, and holistic counselor working between Australia and France. Through nature-based practices, she supports people in caring professions to navigate burnout, ease chronic stress, and reconnect with the Earth. What if healing begins not by escaping life’s challenges, but by reconnecting with the natural world and ourselves? This article explores ecotherapy as a journey of mindfulness, self-discovery, and renewal, revealing how nature can guide us toward deeper connection, emotional balance, and personal growth. Through the rhythms of nature, we are invited to slow down, listen, and remember that we are not separate from the Earth, but an essential part of it. Nature: You are intrinsically connected to nature. The wisdom of Mother Earth guides you towards exploring, healing, and growing. You are nature. Mindfulness: Ecotherapy is a slow and intentional process that calls on deep grounding, care, and nervous system regulation. It involves being in the here and now, active listening, stillness, contemplation, and the art of noticing. Cycles: Nature teaches us to embrace rhythms and cycles. We learn to accept chaos, disorder, and discomfort as essential aspects of being. We learn to embrace both destruction and renewal, which are necessary for rebuilding. Reconnection: Ecotherapy is a profound invitation to reconnection. One that brings you back to yourself, exploring all the parts and layers of who you are. It involves deepening and discovering your connection with your sacred, wilder self through your bond with the natural world. Soul work: Therapy can support you in reconnecting with your deeper, darker, wild, sacred, and brighter Self. We learn how to embrace the unknown, the invisible, and the intangible. Therapy is soul work and can also be a spiritual quest. Discomfort: Therapy can be a challenging, deep, occasionally painful, and uncomfortable process. Reorganising the mind and reconnecting humans with themselves and nature can be a slow and confusing process. Balance: The idea of finding the perfect balance is a myth. Realistic balance comes from experiencing and embracing inevitable challenges and imperfections while also cultivating inner peace. Relationships: Therapy is also about learning to master relationships and communication. We focus on forming, maintaining, and enriching relationships with yourself, others, animals, and the more-than-human world. Change: Change is inevitable. We learn to navigate and integrate change with acceptance, openness, and awareness, stepping into a more authentic and empowered version of yourself. In essence, ecotherapy is an invitation to come home: Come home to yourself Come home to nature Come home to the deeper rhythms of life. To summarise, ecotherapy includes, nature, mindfulness, cycles, reconnection, soul, discomfort, balance, relationships, change, and coming home. Ecotherapy is a homecoming. It is not about fixing or escaping what is difficult, but about learning to listen, feel, reconnect, and grow through it. Through nature, mindfulness, relationship, discomfort, cycles, and change, we begin to remember something we may have forgotten, we are not separate from nature. We are part of it. Sometimes, healing begins when we slow down enough to remember. If you’re ready to slow down, reconnect with your wild self, and explore the healing benefits of nature, I offer a free 20-minute phone call to start your path. You can visit my website or email me here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Sarah Frustié Sarah Frustié, Ecotherapist, Forest Guide, Nature Retreat Facilitator, and Holistic Counselor Sarah Frustié is a bilingual ecotherapist, holistic counselor, and forest guide based in the Adelaide Hills and France. She supports people in caring professions to navigate burnout, release chronic stress and anxiety, and reconnect with themselves through nature-based practices, forest bathing, and guided nature and meditation retreats. With a deep belief in the healing power of the natural world, Sarah blends mindfulness, eco-psychology, trauma-informed, and whole-person approaches to create safe and sacred experiences. She is the founder of Sarah Frustié Therapy, where every session is an invitation to slow down, breathe, and connect with the living world.

Written by Disha Modi, Health and Wellness Coach Disha Modi is a Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach, NBC-HWC, Menopause Specialist, and Clarity Catalyst Coach with a Master's degree in Biochemical Engineering. She helps individuals create sustainable habits, navigate life transitions, and improve their health through evidence-based coaching that bridges science and intentional living. We plan our lives around certainty. We map careers, relationships, families, health goals, and routines with the belief that if we do enough right, life will unfold in a way that feels relatively orderly. Then perimenopause begins, and suddenly some of that certainty starts to unravel. Your sleep changes. Your energy feels unpredictable. Your body responds differently to food and exercise. You may feel anxious when you have never considered yourself an anxious person. Your concentration shifts. Your patience feels thinner. You look at a life that is still recognizably yours and wonder why you don't quite feel like yourself inside it. One of the hardest parts is that there is rarely a clear announcement that says, this is perimenopause. There is no exact date on the calendar, no universal checklist, and no single way the transition appears. Most women experience menopause between the ages of 45 and 55, but the transition can begin years earlier and affect physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being. Menopause rarely arrives into an otherwise empty life. It often comes during a period when women are already navigating enormous change, children growing up or leaving home, aging parents, changing relationships, career transitions, shifting identities, grief, health challenges, reproductive loss, or simply the realization that the way they have been living for the past 20 years may no longer work for the next 20. So perhaps the conversation we need to have about menopause is bigger than hormones. Menopause is not a diagnosis. It is a life transition. Before we rush to optimize, correct, supplement, track, or fix everything that feels different, perhaps we need to do something we are rarely encouraged to do, pause long enough to process what is changing. Why processing has to come before action When something changes in our bodies, our instinct is often to react. We search symptoms. We buy supplements. We change diets. We push harder at the gym. We book appointments. We listen to podcasts. We scroll through conflicting advice telling us what to eat, when to fast, how to exercise, which hormones to test, and which habits we need to overhaul. Information can be incredibly valuable. But information without clarity can also become more noise. In my work as a Health and Wellness Coach and Clarity Catalyst Coach, I often see women who already know a remarkable amount about health. Their problem is not always a lack of information. Sometimes they need space to understand what is actually happening in their lives. Processing means slowing down enough to notice what has changed. It means becoming aware of patterns, acknowledging what is true without immediately judging it, and then deciding what support is actually needed. That might include medical care. It might include nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, or community. It may mean changing expectations, asking for help, setting a boundary, grieving something that has ended, or deciding what you want the next stage of your life to look like. Clarity changes the question from “What is wrong with me?” to “What is happening, what do I need, and what is one intentional step I can take next?” That is a very different place from which to make decisions. The life around the hormones matters None of this minimizes biology. Hormonal changes during perimenopause and menopause are real. Hot flashes, night sweats, sleep disruption, mood changes, brain fog, vaginal dryness, joint discomfort, and changes in sexual health can significantly affect quality of life. These symptoms deserve to be taken seriously. But hormones do not exist separately from the rest of our lives. The World Health Organization recognizes menopause as a natural stage of the life course and notes that women's experiences can be influenced by physical, psychological, social, cultural, and environmental factors. This is why lifestyle matters. Nutrition, movement, sleep, stress management, relationships, and community are not simply wellness trends to layer onto menopause. They are fundamental components of health throughout midlife and beyond. Sleep is a particularly important example. Sleep disturbances become common during the menopause transition, while inadequate sleep can influence mood, metabolic health, energy, and our ability to manage stress. Stress matters too. Research into mindfulness-based interventions suggests that practices designed to improve awareness and stress regulation may help some women with anxiety, depressive symptoms, sleep, and overall well-being during the menopause transition. This does not mean women can meditate their way out of menopause, nor does eating well replace appropriate medical treatment. Hormonal and non-hormonal therapies can be valuable options for many women, and persistent, new, or concerning symptoms should always be evaluated appropriately. But lifestyle and medical care do not need to compete. The more useful question is, "What combination of support does this woman need at this point in her life?" What longevity cultures can teach us This is one reason I find the Blue Zones so interesting. These regions associated with exceptional longevity are not following a special “menopause protocol.” Yet many of the patterns observed within them reflect behaviors associated with healthier aging, plant-forward eating, regular natural movement, strong social connection, routines that reduce chronic stress, and a sense of purpose. There is an important lesson here. We have become very good at turning wellness into individual interventions, a supplement, a diet, a workout, a morning routine. But health is also the environment we create around ourselves every day. Research across different populations also reminds us that menopause is not experienced identically everywhere. Biology is central, but cultural expectations, diet, lifestyle, social structures, attitudes toward aging, and environment can influence how symptoms are perceived, reported, and experienced. In other words, hormones are part of the story. The life surrounding those hormones is another part of the story. A woman navigating menopause while chronically overextended, sleep-deprived, stressed, isolated, and undernourished may require a very different kind of support from a woman whose life allows room for nourishment, movement, recovery, medical care, purpose, and connection. We should be talking about both. My own health crisis changed this conversation for me I understand the limits of optimization because I had to confront them myself. A year ago, I was at my fittest. I was eating well, exercising consistently, and doing most of the things we associate with taking care of ourselves. Then my life changed. I fractured my lower back. Soon afterward, following treatment for bone loss, I experienced a severe reaction and subsequently developed Mucha-Habermann disease, a rare inflammatory skin disorder that, in severe forms, can become life-threatening. At the same time, I was navigating perimenopause. Like many women, I also carried the experience of miscarriage. What I thought would be a season of optimization became a season of survival. Suddenly, the habits that had worked for my old body did not necessarily work for the body I was living in now. I had to process injury, fear, inflammation, hormonal change, reproductive loss, changes in my physical capacity, and a complete redesign of my lifestyle. For someone accustomed to doing, solving, planning, and moving forward, one of the hardest lessons was realizing that I could not simply work harder and force my way back to who I had been. Eventually, I stopped asking, “How do I get back to where I was?” and started asking, “What does my body need from me now?” That distinction changed how I approached my own recovery and how I think about menopause. Because perhaps the goal is not always to get back to the woman you were. Sometimes the work is understanding the woman you are becoming. Menopause rarely happens in isolation This is the part of the menopause conversation I believe we need to explore more deeply. Midlife can hold many transitions simultaneously. A woman may be navigating menopause while caring for aging parents. She may be watching children leave home. She may be questioning a marriage or rebuilding one. She may be grieving a parent, a pregnancy, a friendship, her fertility, her younger body, or an identity she has outgrown. She may be reaching the height of her career while quietly wondering whether she wants to continue doing the same work. She may simply be exhausted from decades of taking care of everyone else. Then her hormones begin changing too. It becomes tempting to blame menopause for everything. But that can be just as limiting as ignoring menopause altogether. Not every difficult emotion is hormonal. Not every exhausted woman needs to push through. Not every new symptom should automatically be attributed to menopause. Sometimes what we are experiencing is menopause layered onto chronic stress, grief, inadequate sleep, loneliness, overwork, underfueling, another health condition, or years of living in overdrive. The question is not whether hormones matter. They do. The question is whether we are curious enough to look at the whole woman. We need better conversations, not more silence Women should not have to figure this out alone. Menopause is still not discussed openly enough in families, relationships, communities, workplaces, and even some healthcare settings. Silence creates unnecessary confusion. Women question themselves. Partners may misinterpret changes in mood, energy, intimacy, or emotional capacity. Families can personalize behavior they do not understand. Workplaces may overlook how disrupted sleep, hot flashes, concentration difficulties, or other symptoms can affect confidence, comfort, and performance. The same silence has historically surrounded reproductive loss. An estimated 23 million miscarriages occur worldwide each year, yet pregnancy loss is still frequently experienced privately. These experiences are different, but they share something important, women's major biological and emotional transitions have too often been carried quietly. We can change that. A woman being able to say, “I think I'm in perimenopause and I'm struggling with sleep,” should not feel embarrassing. A woman being able to tell her partner, “My body feels different and I need you to understand what I'm experiencing,” should not feel unusual. Asking a workplace for reasonable support should not require a woman to pretend nothing is happening first. Conversation does not solve every symptom, but it removes some of the isolation around them. Three gentle first steps The temptation when we realize something needs to change is to change everything. I encourage women to start smaller. 1. Become aware before you act Instead of immediately asking, “What's wrong with me?” begin by observing. What has changed? When did you first notice it? What patterns are emerging in your sleep, energy, mood, cycle, movement, appetite, stress, or symptoms? What else is happening in your life right now? Awareness gives you information. It can also help you have a more productive conversation with your healthcare provider. 2. Stabilize one lifestyle pillar Do not overhaul your entire life in one weekend. Choose one area. Perhaps it is sleep: Creating a consistent bedtime, reducing late caffeine or alcohol, and protecting your wind-down routine. Perhaps it is nutrition: Building more balanced meals around protein, fiber-rich plants, and minimally processed foods. Perhaps it is movement: Adding strength training, walking, mobility, or appropriate recovery rather than assuming harder is always better. Or perhaps what you need most is not another health behavior. Perhaps you need rest. Start where the greatest need is. 3. Start one honest conversation Choose one person, a partner, a friend, a colleague, or a healthcare professional. Tell them what is changing. Rather than simply saying, “I'm struggling,” identify one way they could support you. Maybe you need help carrying more of the household load. Maybe you need a cooler bedroom. Maybe you need protected time for movement. Maybe you need flexibility at work. Maybe you need someone to listen without immediately trying to fix you. Small conversations can create meaningful change. A different definition of strength For much of our lives, women are rewarded for endurance. Keep going. Handle it. Take care of everyone. Push through. Be productive. Do not complain. Then menopause arrives during a stage of life when that strategy may no longer serve us. Perhaps strength begins to look different. Strength can be paying attention. Strength can be changing a habit that no longer serves you. Strength can be asking for help. Strength can be making a medical appointment. Strength can be protecting your sleep. Strength can be saying no. Strength can even be admitting that the version of you who handled everything for everyone is tired. This is why I resist framing menopause solely as a problem that needs to be solved. Menopause is not proof that the body is failing. It is not evidence that a woman is becoming less capable or less relevant. It is a biological transition, but it can also become an invitation to examine the way we are living. What still serves me? What no longer does? What does my body need now? What am I carrying that I no longer need to carry? Perhaps most importantly, "Who do I want to be in the next chapter of my life?" A kinder way forward Kindness during menopause does not mean passivity. It does not mean ignoring symptoms or avoiding medical care. It means meeting change with awareness rather than judgment. Seek appropriate medical support. Learn about your options. Nourish yourself intentionally. Protect your sleep. Move in ways that support the body you have today. Build and protect meaningful relationships. Create space for recovery. Ask for help. Recognize that you do not have to transform everything at once. Sometimes sustainable change begins with one small, intentional decision. Perhaps the invitation of menopause is not to identify the exact day it begins, fear every symptom, or desperately try to become the woman we were before it started. Perhaps it is to pause long enough to understand what is changing, to acknowledge what we need, to decide what we want to carry forward, and then to move into the next stage of our lives with greater clarity and intention. Because menopause does not have to be the moment we lose ourselves. It can be the moment we begin to return to ourselves. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Disha Modi Disha Modi, Health and Wellness Coach Disha Modi is a Board-Certified Health & Wellness Coach, Menopause Specialist, and Clarity Catalyst Coach passionate about helping people create sustainable habits for lasting health and well-being. She combines evidence-based coaching with practical strategies to help clients improve nutrition, manage stress, navigate life transitions, and live with greater clarity and purpose. After overcoming a life-changing health crisis, Disha brings both professional expertise and personal experience to her work, empowering others to create meaningful, lasting change. She is the founder of DM Health Coaching and co-founder of The Terra Sana Experience, where she helps individuals reconnect with themselves and build healthier, more intentional lives.

Written by Florentina Gionea, Spiritual Mentor for Leaders Florentina Gionea is a spiritual mentor for leaders, featured on Fox TV USA, Forbes, and the TEDx stage. Author of The Blissful Leader book and backed by 16 years of intense practice, she blends business with spirituality to help leaders clear blocks and build their next legacy. Access her Blissful Leader Toolkit. If you freeze every time you try to record a reel, or your fingers hesitate over the “Publish” button, it is not because of a lack of discipline. Your social media influence is not failing because of a bad algorithm or a weak strategy, it is being held hostage by your past. For entrepreneurs, a failed launch, a messy client breakup, or a sudden financial dip can leave deep energetic scars. This invisible block is business trauma. When left unaddressed, it silently erodes your confidence and destroys your online presence. In this article, you will discover exactly how business trauma cripples your social media influence, along with five trauma-informed energetic tips to break the loop, claim your authority, and confidently grow your personal brand. What is business trauma? Business trauma is an energetic and psychological block that occurs after an entrepreneur experiences a significant professional failure, betrayal, or financial collapse. Unlike standard strategic setbacks, business trauma embeds itself deep within your nervous system and subconscious mind. It creates a state of perpetual fight or flight, making your energetic body associate expansion, visibility, and business growth with danger. Even if you have a perfect strategy on paper, business trauma will cause you to unconsciously stall your own progress to keep yourself safe from being hurt or judged again. What causes business trauma? Business trauma is caused by sudden, deeply painful professional experiences that catch your nervous system off guard. Key causes include: Public business failure: Losing a company or filing for bankruptcy under the watchful eyes of family, peers, or competitors. Professional betrayal: Having a trusted business partner, investor, or client break a contract or steal your intellectual property. Severe financial loss: Experiencing a sudden cash flow crash that threatens your personal stability and peace of mind. Massive public criticism: Receiving harsh judgment, viral negative feedback, or public rejection after putting your heart into a project. The five energetic types of business trauma Business trauma manifests in various energetic archetypes, each altering how you show up in your current venture: The Ghost: This entrepreneur completely hides behind their brand. They refuse to put their face on video or write personal captions due to an intense, cellular fear of being seen and judged. The Hypervigilant Controller: Traumatized by a past betrayal, this leader micromanages every contract, email, and metric, unable to trust anyone else to help them scale. The Underpricer: Haunted by past financial scarcity, this type drastically discounts their services and tolerates toxic clients because they energetically fear that money will run out if they say no. The Serial Pivoter: To avoid the potential failure of a fully finished launch, this entrepreneur constantly changes their niche, offers, and branding right before hitting the market. The Overworker: They wear burnout like a badge of honor, energetically believing that massive struggle is the only path to safety, which prevents them from receiving effortless abundance. Signs and symptoms of business trauma The symptoms of business trauma rarely look like a lack of skill. Instead, they show up as severe energetic resistance. The most prominent symptom is a paralyzing fear of posting on social media, where creating content feels like exposing yourself to a firing squad. You might write a post, only to leave it in your drafts for weeks. Other symptoms include dynamic self sabotage, procrastination on high leverage tasks, physical anxiety or stomach knots before client enrollment calls, downplaying your current wins, and a persistent, lingering dread that your current success will suddenly vanish. Five tips on how to heal business trauma Identify the hidden financial or professional wound: You cannot heal what you refuse to look at. Take a moment to sit quietly and map out your past professional timeline. Locate the exact moment you felt betrayed, humiliated, or financially broken in your career. Acknowledge that your current nervous system is still trying to protect you from that past event. To easily unearth these hidden energetic blocks, you can use the Business Trauma Tracker inside The Blissful Leader Toolkit, which is specifically designed to isolate and release the emotional patterns keeping your visibility stuck. Separate your personal worth from past business metrics: Your business is an entity you create, but it is not who you are. Business trauma tricks your ego into believing that a failed launch equals a failed identity. Energetically decouple your self worth from your revenue numbers or social media engagement. Remind yourself that past failures were simply data points on your evolutionary journey, not definitions of your value as a leader. Regulate your nervous system before posting: When your body associates social media visibility with danger, opening an app triggers a trauma response. Before you write a caption or record a video, ground your energy. Place your hand on your heart, take three deep belly breaths, and remind your body that you are completely safe in the present moment. By shifting your state out of fight or flight before hitting “Publish,” you change the energetic frequency of your content and attract aligned clients. Practice microdoses of visibility: Do not force yourself to go live for an hour if your nervous system is screaming in fear. Instead, build your energetic capacity using small, safe steps. Post a simple behind the scenes photograph today. Share a short written thought tomorrow. By taking small, consistent actions, you gradually prove to your subconscious mind that being visible on social media is safe, allowing your confidence to expand organically. Reprogram your mindset for impact, not pressure: Shift your daily entrepreneurial focus away from the desperate need to survive and realign it with the pure intention to serve. When you create from a space of pressure, your trauma runs the show. When you create from a space of soul aligned impact, your energetic field clears, allowing opportunities to flow effortlessly to you. Reclaim your power as a blissful leader Healing business trauma requires deep, intentional energetic work that traditional business coaching simply does not provide. If you are ready to break the loop of self sabotage, erase the fear of being seen, and confidently share your true magic on social media, it is time to recalibrate your leadership energy. Florentina Gionea has compiled a powerful digital sanctuary featuring 28 full daily alignment tools, meditations, and coaching processes worth over $3,000, now fully accessible for a single investment of just $28. Inside The Blissful Leader Toolkit, you will immediately unlock: The Business Trauma Tracker, Tool 19: To pinpoint and clear the hidden emotional patterns keeping you hidden and stuck. The 5 Minute Productivity Ritual, Tool 8: To gain instant mental clarity and fast prioritization without overwhelm. Reprogram Yourself for Success, Tool 26: A powerful Gamma Waves reprogramming audio to safely release limiting beliefs and wire your mind for impact. Do not let past professional ghosts dictate your future success. Reclaim your voice, heal your nervous system, and step into your next level of impact today. Click here to claim your complete Blissful Leader Toolkit for just $28! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Florentina Gionea Florentina Gionea, Spiritual Mentor for Leaders Florentina is the Spiritual Mentor for Leaders, featured on Fox TV USA, Euronews, Forbes, and the TEDx stage. Author of The Blissful Leader Book and backed by 15,000 hours of intense practice, she blends business with spirituality to help leaders clear blocks and build their next legacy. She is the creator of The BLISSFUL Leaders Program, The Spiritual Studies Academy, The Gentleman Code Program, and a series of courses on abundance, wealth, and spirituality.

A'FERREIRA is delighted to announce that it will be exhibiting at the National Beauty Show 2026, taking place at BOXPARK Liverpool on 19 September 2026. Founded by Sandra Mihailova, A'FERREIRA was born from a personal journey with psoriasis and a desire to create skincare that truly supports the skin. Inspired by time spent living in Brazil and the remarkable potential of its botanical ingredients, the brand combines carefully selected Brazilian botanicals with evidence-informed skincare formulation to support stressed, sensitive and mature skin. The National Beauty Show brings together beauty professionals, brands and consumers to discover new ideas, innovations and products within the industry. For A'FERREIRA, the event is an opportunity to introduce a philosophy that goes beyond skincare products – one that encourages a healthier relationship with our skin through understanding, resilience and thoughtful care. Visitors to the A'FERREIRA stand will have the opportunity to learn more about the brand's story, discover its collection and meet founder Sandra Mihailova, who will be available throughout the event to share the inspiration behind the brand and its approach to skin health. Sandra Mihailova said: "Creating A'FERREIRA has been a deeply personal journey, inspired by my own experiences with sensitive skin and psoriasis. I'm looking forward to meeting people at the National Beauty Show, sharing the story behind the brand and having conversations about healthy skin that go beyond the pursuit of perfection." Event details Event: National Beauty Show 2026
 Date: 19 September 2026
 Venue: BOXPARK Liverpool

Written by Erika Allison, Founder of NuFeet Medical Pedicures® Erika Allison is the founder of NuFeet Medical Pedicures® and creator of the medical pedicure business model, pioneering a private, condition-based approach to pedicures that incorporates physician collaboration. Through education, consulting, and live events, she has trained professionals worldwide and helped transform the pedicure industry. When I entered the nail industry in 2012, I had no idea that my career would eventually become about much more than performing pedicures. I saw an opportunity to change the way we thought about them. My career began in Atlanta, where I trained as a nail professional and soon found myself working inside a podiatry practice. That experience changed the trajectory of my career. I was exposed to clients with complex foot and toenail concerns and began to understand both the importance of advanced education and the very clear distinction between the role of a licensed nail professional and the role of a medical provider. That distinction would eventually become one of the foundations of my work. Helping advance an industry In 2012, I founded NuFeet Medical Pedicures®, building my work around a more advanced approach to professional pedicure care. Long before “advanced pedicures” became the growing segment of the nail industry that we see today, I was advocating for waterless services, higher sanitation and sterilization standards, advanced toenail care education, professional referral relationships, and additional education for nail professionals who wanted to work with more complex feet. Over the years, NuFeet evolved from hands-on services into education, professional training, consulting, and product development. I developed educational programs around Medical Pedicures®, waterless pedicures, toenail reduction, and toenail restoration. I wrote about the industry, spoke publicly about it, educated other professionals, collaborated with professionals across foot care, and consistently pushed conversations that were not always comfortable, but were necessary. My work has also been featured through industry and media platforms, and I have had opportunities to contribute my perspective as an educator, writer, entrepreneur, and longtime advocate for advancing professional pedicure education. But one of the contributions I am most proud of cannot be measured by a title or an article. It is seeing how much the conversation has changed. Today, professionals openly discuss advanced pedicures, waterless techniques, toenail restoration, e-file education, sterilization, referral relationships, working alongside podiatrists, and the importance of continuing education. Those conversations were far less common when I started. I have spent more than a decade helping push this part of the nail industry forward, even when doing so meant challenging longstanding ideas about what a pedicure professional could learn, how we could elevate our services, and where our professional boundaries should remain. After years of doing that work, I realized something else: The industry didn't just need more education. We needed more unity. Why I created Pedi Pro United Advanced pedicure education has grown tremendously, but growth has also brought division. There are different certifications, techniques, philosophies, educators, brands, and opinions about what advanced pedicure care should look like. At times, we have become so focused on defending the individual approaches that we have forgotten how much we can learn from one another. I didn't want to create another organization that told everyone there was only one correct way. I wanted to create a room big enough for the industry. That is why I created Pedi Pro United. Pedi Pro United was built under a simple message, "By the Industry. For the Industry." It is a place where nail technicians, advanced pedicure professionals, educators, foot care nurses, podiatrists, brands, and other professionals connected to foot care can come together to learn, build relationships, and exchange knowledge. It isn't about one certification. It isn't about one educator. It isn't about one company. It isn't about creating another title for nail professionals to put behind their names. It is about education. Education without overstepping One of the most important conversations we need to have as advanced pedicure education continues to grow is about scope of practice. I strongly believe nail professionals deserve access to better education. I also believe education does not expand our legal scope of practice. Those two ideas can exist together. We can learn more about the feet in front of us without diagnosing disease. We can become better at recognizing when something may be outside our scope without attempting to treat a medical condition. We can master our craft while understanding when it is time to refer a client to a podiatrist or another qualified healthcare professional. In fact, I believe the more advanced our education becomes, the more important understanding our boundaries becomes. That philosophy is at the heart of Pedi Pro United. Our goal isn't to turn nail professionals into medical professionals. Our goal is to help create exceptionally educated nail professionals. Bringing the right people into the same room That is also why I believe podiatrists, foot care nurses, and other professionals have a place at Pedi Pro United. For years, I have advocated for stronger relationships between nail professionals and medical providers. We don't have to compete with one another when our roles are different. A knowledgeable nail professional who understands scope can become an incredible referral partner. A podiatrist who understands what a properly trained advanced pedicure professional does can feel more confident referring patients who need routine cosmetic foot and nail maintenance that falls within that professional's scope. Those relationships ultimately benefit the people sitting in our chairs. Pedi Pro United creates an opportunity for those conversations to happen in person. October 4 is bigger than a conference On October 4, 2026, Pedi Pro United will bring the advanced pedicure community together in Atlanta for a full day of education and connection. Attendees will learn from professionals representing different areas of the industry, with education covering advanced pedicuring, toenail reconstruction, toenail bracing, professional safety, emergency preparedness, client communication, and more. They will meet educators. They will discover brands. They will meet professionals who may approach advanced pedicure care differently than they do. Hopefully, they will leave with more knowledge and a larger professional community than they had when they arrived. For me, that is the point. The next chapter I have spent more than a decade contributing to the evolution of advanced pedicure education. I've watched ideas that once required constant explanation become conversations happening throughout our industry. I've also watched the advanced pedicure community grow beyond any one person, company, certification, or methodology. That's a good thing. Because real change is bigger than the person who helped start the conversation. Pedi Pro United represents the next chapter of my contribution to this industry. Earlier in my career, much of my work was about showing nail professionals that pedicure services could be approached differently, that we could pursue more education, raise our standards, build relationships with medical professionals, and create careers centered specifically around advanced foot care. Today, my focus has expanded. Now I want to help bring the people doing that work together. There is room for different educators. There is room for different techniques. There is room for nail professionals, nurses, podiatrists, manufacturers, and brands. There is room to disagree. There is also room to learn from each other. What matters is that we continue moving toward an industry that values education, safety, professionalism, collaboration, and respect for scope. That is why I created Pedi Pro United. Not to own the advanced pedicure industry. To unite it. Follow me on Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Erika Allison Erika Allison, Founder of NuFeet Medical Pedicures® Erika Allison is the founder of NuFeet Medical Pedicures® and creator of the medical pedicure business model. In 2012, she introduced a private, condition-based approach to pedicures that helped bridge the gap between the beauty and medical industries through physician collaboration and specialized foot care services. As an educator, speaker, inventor, and entrepreneur, she has trained professionals worldwide and developed innovative programs and products that have helped reshape the pedicure industry. Through her courses, consulting, and live events, Erika continues to advance professional standards and elevate the way pedicures are delivered around the world.

Written by Marianna Penna, CEO & Founder WOW Women Of Worth Ltd Marianna Penna is Human Brand Creator, CEO of WOW Women Of Worth, marketing Strategist, speaker, and co-author of the Amazon bestselling anthology "Changemaker" in 2025. She helps entrepreneurs and professionals build authenticpersonal brands through her signature Slow Marketing approach, where identity becomes the foundation of lasting impact. One of the most interesting shifts taking place in marketing today is not simply that artificial intelligence allows us to create more. It is that it is changing the value of creation itself. For much of my career, producing high-quality communication required considerable time and resources. A professional campaign might involve copywriters, designers, photographers, editors, and agencies. Even a well-researched article required hours of concentration, and translating one idea into multiple formats was a substantial piece of work. That landscape has changed very quickly. Today, one person with a laptop can research a topic, structure an article, generate ideas, create images, analyse an audience, and adapt one message into several formats in a fraction of the time such tasks once required. AI is not simply another marketing tool, it represents a fundamental change in the economics of production. As somebody who has spent around twenty-five years working in marketing, I find this genuinely exciting. I do not approach artificial intelligence with nostalgia for the way things used to be, nor do I believe that resisting technological development is a viable strategy. The possibilities are extraordinary, particularly for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and experts who previously lacked the resources required to communicate at scale. However, the speed of this transformation leads me to a different question. If everybody can create, what becomes valuable? That question, I believe, will define the next phase of Personal Branding. When production becomes abundant There is a simple economic principle behind much of what we value, when something becomes abundant, scarcity moves elsewhere. For years, professional production itself represented a barrier. Creating high-quality communication required specialist skills, significant time, or financial investment. AI is reducing many of those barriers. As a result, we are approaching a world in which technically competent content will be available in enormous quantities. Articles will be easy to produce. Images will be easy to create. Presentations will be faster to design. Social media posts will be generated almost instantly. Professional polish, once a sign of significant effort, will become increasingly accessible. This is not a negative development. On the contrary, it will allow many people to express ideas that might otherwise have remained invisible. But it will also change what makes one professional distinguishable from another. If polished production becomes common, polish alone will no longer be enough. The value will move towards interpretation, judgment, and point of view. It will lie in knowing what deserves to be said, why it matters, and what perspective you bring to it that somebody else cannot simply reproduce. That is why I believe discernment will become one of the most important professional skills of the AI era. Artificial intelligence can generate possibilities at remarkable speed. Human beings still need to decide which possibilities are worth pursuing. Experience cannot be prompted into existence At 52, I do not think about marketing in the same way I did when I was 30. That difference is not simply the result of having acquired more information. It comes from having lived another two decades. I have seen ideas become fashionable and disappear. I have watched businesses grow and struggle. I have experienced different markets, people, personalities, and professional environments. I have changed my mind about things I once believed strongly. I have made mistakes, recognised patterns, and learned lessons that are difficult to explain because they gradually became part of the way I think. This is where I believe the conversation around AI often becomes too narrow. We talk extensively about what artificial intelligence knows, but less about how human judgment is formed. AI can organise information, compare data, and help articulate an idea. What it cannot do is live the sequence of events that causes a person to understand why one idea matters more than another. It has not sat in a meeting and realised halfway through that the strategy was wrong. It has not experienced the consequences of trusting the wrong instinct and learned from the result. It has not built professional relationships over decades, watched human behaviour under pressure, or recognised the subtle signs that tell an experienced practitioner that a client is asking for one thing but actually needs something else. It has not moved country and learned how culture changes communication. It has not balanced ambition with family life, rebuilt confidence after disappointment, or reached midlife and discovered that the professional identity that once felt completely right no longer represents the person you have become. These experiences are not simply stories we attach to our biographies. They shape judgment. They create pattern recognition. They influence taste, intuition, and decision-making. They form what I think of as a kind of intellectual and emotional capital. In an environment where access to information becomes increasingly democratised, that capital becomes extremely valuable. The role of authentic identity This is why I have become increasingly interested in the concept of Authentic Identity in personal branding. Authenticity is an overused word, and it is sometimes reduced to a style of communication. We are encouraged to “be authentic” by showing more vulnerability, sharing personal stories, or speaking informally online. Those things may occasionally be appropriate, but Authentic Identity goes much deeper. For me, it is the alignment between who you are, what you know, what you believe, what you communicate, and how other people experience you. It is not about saying everything. It is about ensuring that what you do choose to say has a recognisable source. That distinction will become increasingly important in the age of AI because technology is extraordinarily good at producing competent language. It can construct persuasive arguments, create elegant structure, and emulate professional tone. What it cannot determine for you is whether the conclusion actually belongs to you. That remains a human responsibility. Before publishing something, we may need to become much more disciplined about asking ourselves whether we genuinely believe it, whether we would express the idea in the same way during a real conversation, and whether there is anything in the piece that carries the weight of our own experience. The danger of AI is not necessarily that it will replace human creativity. The more immediate danger is that we may use it so extensively that we begin to remove ourselves from our own communication. If every professional adopts the same language, follows the same structures, and repeats the same safe conclusions, the result may be an extraordinary volume of competent content with very little identity. That is why the ability to remain recognisable inside technology-assisted communication will become a major personal-brand advantage. Midlife expertise may become more valuable, not less I feel particularly strongly about this in relation to women in their forties, fifties and sixties. There is an uncomfortable assumption in rapidly changing industries that experience and technological agility exist in opposition to each other. Older professionals are sometimes described as needing to “catch up,” while younger generations are assumed to possess an automatic advantage because they have grown up closer to the tools. Of course, new skills need to be learned. That has always been true. Every generation of professionals has had to adapt to technological change. But the idea that experience becomes less relevant because a new tool has arrived misses something fundamental. A woman with twenty-five or thirty years of professional experience possesses a form of pattern recognition that cannot be acquired by simply learning how to use software. She has seen cycles. She understands consequences. She can often distinguish between an exciting new idea and an old problem wearing new language. She has developed professional instincts that may be difficult to articulate precisely because they were formed through repetition. The challenge is not that this experience lacks value. The challenge is that experienced professionals often fail to recognise their own accumulated knowledge as a source of differentiation. What feels obvious after twenty years of doing something is not obvious to the person encountering the problem for the first time. That is why personal branding at this stage of life should not be about manufacturing a new identity in order to appear current. It should be about translating depth into relevance. Technology can help enormously with that translation. Artificial intelligence (AI) can assist with research, organise ideas, accelerate production and make it easier to turn experience into articles, books, courses, presentations and other forms of thought leadership. Used well, it can give experienced professionals more leverage than they have ever had before. But the technology is most powerful when it amplifies something that already has substance underneath it. The personal brands that endure will have a centre As AI becomes embedded in everyday professional life, I suspect we will become much more sensitive to communication that feels technically perfect but emotionally anonymous. The brands that remain memorable will be the ones that have a centre. That centre might be a strongly held point of view, a distinctive way of solving problems, a particular philosophy of leadership or a body of experience that gives someone an unusual perspective. Whatever form it takes, there will be something recognisable beneath the output. This is important because personal branding is not ultimately about content production. It is about reputation. A personal brand is the interpretation that forms in other people's minds over time. It is the ideas they associate with your name, the expectations they have of your work and the confidence they place in your judgment. AI can help distribute that reputation. It can help express it more clearly, adapt it to different platforms and increase the efficiency with which it reaches other people. But AI cannot decide what your reputation should stand for. That remains entirely yours. This, I believe, is where the future of personal branding becomes particularly interesting. The most successful professionals will not necessarily be those who use the most technology or those who reject it in favour of a supposedly more human past. They will be the ones capable of integrating both. They will use artificial intelligence to extend human intelligence, rather than allowing one to replace the other. They will recognise where automation creates genuine value and where a human decision is still necessary. They will know when data is useful and when experience should challenge it. They will use AI to increase speed where speed matters while protecting the parts of their work where depth, empathy and judgment create differentiation. In other words, the future will demand not less humanity, but more conscious humanity. Perhaps AI will make us more aware of what cannot be automated There is an interesting irony in all of this. The arrival of artificial intelligence may ultimately force us to become much more precise about what human value actually means. For years, we have spoken about expertise largely in terms of knowledge. Yet knowledge is becoming easier to access. Information that once required hours of research can now be retrieved and synthesised almost instantly. What remains harder to automate are qualities such as judgment, curiosity, emotional intelligence, courage, taste, context and self-awareness. These qualities have always mattered, but they may become much easier to recognise once production itself is no longer scarce. This is why I believe Authentic Identity will become central to the next era of personal branding. The more sophisticated artificial intelligence becomes, the more important it will be to understand which parts of your professional identity are genuinely yours. What do you believe because you have lived enough to believe it? Which ideas have been shaped by your particular career and experiences? What can somebody learn from you that cannot be obtained simply by reading the same information? What is your way of seeing? These questions do not belong to the past. They are profoundly future-facing. I am optimistic about the role AI can play in our professional lives. I believe it will enable experts to share knowledge more widely, allow small businesses to compete with larger organisations and give individuals creative capabilities that would previously have required significant resources. But I also believe we should resist the temptation to confuse capability with identity. Technology can help us create more. It cannot decide what makes us worth listening to. That part comes from somewhere much more human, our experiences, the conclusions we have drawn from them and the courage to express those conclusions in a way that is recognisably our own. Perhaps, then, the most important question of the AI era is not whether machines can become more like us. It may be whether we can become more conscious of what makes each of us impossible to replicate. In personal branding, that may prove to be the greatest competitive advantage of all. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Marianna Penna Marianna Penna, CEO & Founder WOW Women Of Worth Ltd Marianna Penna is a Human Personal Brand Creator, Strategic Marketing Expert, and the Founder & CEO of WOW Women Of Worth London, a platform empowering women entrepreneurs to build authentic purpose-driven brands. Wth more than 25 years of International Experience across Italy and the UK, she developed the Slow Marketing philosophy, helping professionals transform authenticity into visibility, influence, and sustainable business growth. She is the creator of the Marketing SPA, Natural Marketing Cycle Guide, and Brand YOU Gemscraft Journey frameworks. As a speaker, podcaster, and G100 Italy Chair for Brand Creation and Marketing, Marianna explores marketing, identity, and leadership to help women build brands with commercial and social impact

Written by Timeout Taumua, Award-Winning Author On behalf of Brainz Magazine, let us introduce Timeout A. Taumua, a multi-award-winning author of The Magnificence of the 3, an expository book about the scientific nature of the Bible. The book and the author had been dubbed by some prominent editorial reviewers as "a rare work constructed by a rare being" and "a rare book by a rare person". The presence of “waters” in the universe before the seven days of biblical creation may offer intriguing probabilities and mysteries that are beyond the scope of a faith-based belief system. Genesis 1:2 describes the Earth as “without form, and void,” with darkness over “the deep,” while the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. That has been one of my unresolved quests since my youth, as it is the only ordinary matter in Genesis that God did not claim He created. Debates are normally about what these “waters” were, but not where they came from. I believe this could be one of the most important clues in the entire biblical creation narrative. The presence of these “waters” raises questions under the universal causation theory in that, for the universe to be, it must follow the Law of Cause and Effect.[1] Therefore, the “waters” of Genesis had to be a byproduct of a cause. The exact cause needs to be determined, but cosmologists might have revealed the reasons behind the out-of-sequence biblical creation. Under the “cause and effect” law, “waters” had to be produced by an event. That event could have been the Big Bang, as generally accepted today, or something similar. I explored the idea that once the “waters” of Genesis are placed alongside modern discoveries about cosmic water and planetary formation, a series of biblical stories appear to parallel and complement these discoveries. The question is no longer, “What were the waters?” It is, "Why were the waters there before the Earth was formed?" Modern science may offer new insights into this mystery. Here are some points for review.[2] Where did the waters of Genesis 1:2 come from before creation began? First: The universal law of causation and the mystery of the waters in Genesis I propose that the presence of “waters” before biblical creation was deliberate. It was meant to convey the idea that when God appeared, an event had occurred that produced these “waters.” To explore the mystery, I had to consider the Big Bang theory. However, I am not sure whether this theory is the correct version of creation, but based on the presentation, it is reasonable to assume that the reason God did not specifically claim that He created the “waters” was because they were the result of an event that He had nothing to do with. With modern discoveries, the biblical creation sequence no longer appears to violate the universal Law of Cause and Effect.[1] The mystery left, however, was the nature of that cause. How it got there may have a foundation for seekers, based on recent discoveries discussed below. Second: Why are the “waters” of Genesis in plural form? This clue defines biblical deliberateness. Recent discoveries identified dust particles in the heavens about 600 million years after the Big Bang.[3] Hydrogen gas also appeared as a result, and oxygen was produced later through stellar processes. Both elements can combine to form water molecules. These water molecules can exist as vapor, but under freezing conditions in the cosmos, they can form ice.[4] Water molecules can also freeze onto trillions of dust particles floating in the cosmos.[5] These trillions of icy dust particles may offer one interpretation of why Genesis uses the plural “waters.” It is my claim that God was hovering over trillions of these icy particles, accounting for the presence of “waters” before Earth was formed. Third: The orderly design of creation and the “waters” as divine superglue As it turned out, icy dust particles eventually became part of the building materials of stars, planets, moons, asteroids, and other celestial bodies. Drifting through the cosmos, these materials met and began sticking together. Tiny dust particles turned into larger grains, then pebbles, which became rocks and eventually grew large enough to contribute to the formation of planets.[6] These icy coatings can act like glue, helping dust particles stick together.[4] So the timing of the appearance of “waters” in biblical creation is important in both biblical and scientific design. A reasonable deduction can be made that God introduced two materials for the later creation of Earth, dust and water, by simply citing “waters” in plural form. It adds another piece of evidence denoting the orderly sequence of creation. Fourth: The discovery of a 12 billion year old water reservoir in the cosmos Researchers also discovered a water vapor reservoir more than 12 billion light years away in the cosmos that contains roughly 140 trillion times the amount of water in Earth's oceans (Staff, 2011). The age and distance of this reservoir are important, as they demonstrate that water existed in the cosmos billions of years before Earth formed. I believe this parallels the placement of the biblical “waters” before the formation of Earth and denotes God’s full awareness of the universe thousands of years before mankind understood it. Fifth: Water as the magnificence of three, H2O As I proposed, water was the very first ordinary matter of the biblical universe. Water, as you may know, is a compound made of two separate elements: two atoms of hydrogen (H) and one of oxygen (O), for a total of three atoms (H2O). Before the atom was discovered, “waters” appeared as the first ordinary matter in biblical creation. I claim that its placement in Genesis was intentional, preserving circumstantial evidence of God’s awareness of atomic structure and the three atoms within a water molecule. Though the atom was invisible, water was visible, and its molecule contains three atoms. This makes “waters” the first example of what I interpret as a scientific parable presented in a biblical story, as its structural design evolved around the magnificence of three. “Waters” acted as a witness for the invisible atom.[2] Sixth: Water hidden in Earth’s mantle Another fascinating scientific discovery involves water deep beneath Earth's surface. Researchers have found evidence of enormous quantities of water stored within minerals hundreds of miles into Earth’s mantle. This water is not found in underground oceans or liquid reservoirs. Instead, hydrogen and oxygen can be chemically bound within minerals under the extreme pressures and temperatures found deep inside Earth.[7] This discovery adds another dimension to the biblical association between “waters” and dust. If planets began forming from icy cosmic dust and water acted as glue, it is reasonable to consider whether this could help explain why water has been incorporated into rocks in Earth’s mantle. These rocks ultimately developed from materials that once existed in the cosmos. Seventh: The Rock of Horeb In Exodus 17:1 to 7, the Israelites complained to Moses about their thirst in the wilderness. God instructed Moses to strike a rock, and water came forth. Since the discovery of water related compounds within rocks and minerals, this biblical account has gained another layer of interest. What appears to be solid rock can contain chemical components associated with water. If God was the Creator, then He would have been fully aware of these hidden “waters” within the rocks, the “waters” of Genesis. Eighth: Water baptism for survival purposes One of the coincidental parallels between God and science is the conclusion by our experts that “water means life”.[8] God presented water in the same way throughout the scriptures, culminating in its final purpose in the New Testament. Here are three events that linked the “waters” of Genesis to “water as life” for the developing modern world. First, it is my claim that God returned as the Son, Jesus, in human form. He adopted a new culture of “water baptism” as a means for violators of the laws to publicly display remorse and reconnect with God for survival purposes. When Jesus was asked how a man could be born again to enter heaven, Jesus said: “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” John 3:5 (NKJV). Second, one day, Jesus warned His disciples of the upcoming destruction of Israel’s Second Temple, Matthew 24:2 to 4 (NKJV). The Romans burned it in 70 AD. Under the Old Covenant, the Temple provided a place for those who violated God's laws to offer burnt sacrifices and peace offerings as expressions of remorse and repentance, restoring their relationship with God through atonement and reconciliation. Since the Temple would eventually be destroyed, I believe this helps explain why water baptism was adopted as an alternative to the blood sacrifices of the past. Third was the Great Commission. Jesus reassigned the task of priests, which was once assigned to Israel exclusively, to include Gentiles. As I interpret it, Israel did not understand its priestly task of blessing “all families of the earth” by teaching Gentiles about God and the Commandments (Genesis 12:3). The Temple was destroyed twice, and the Jewish people experienced repeated displacement from the land. The plan, in my interpretation, was always to expand God’s tribe beyond the once promised land to include all of mankind. Israel was chosen to learn about God and the law, then go out and “bless all families of the earth” by teaching them about God. This, I believe, was why they were chosen. So God returned as the Son for this very purpose. For the Garden of Eden to be fully developed, God’s tribe had to expand, tied together by the Commandments. So Jesus reassigned the task of priests to include Gentiles with the Great Commission, Matthew 28:18 to 20 (NKJV). Instead of temples and sacrifices to sustain relationships with God, the apostles were commanded to “go out and expand the tribe” by making “disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” using water. Water first appears in Genesis as a fundamental tool of creation. It gave life to the universe and is now classified as essential to life for humans. Developing water baptism to expand God’s tribe is consistent with the role water played in creation and continues to play in sustaining life. To use water as a means of spiritual renewal and tribal expansion suggests a deeper continuity with the biblical creation story. Water served as “glue” in the birth of the universe and, symbolically, serves the same purpose for the modern world, rebuilding sinners and gluing Gentiles to His tribe. "Taumua's insights are as bold as they are thought-provoking, revealing a divine blueprint that seems to hum beneath the surface of science and spirituality alike, a reminder that these two worlds, so often seen as opposing forces, might actually be pieces of the same puzzle…" – Literary Global Book Review (2025) Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Timeout Taumua Timeout Taumua, Award-Winning Author Timeout decided to join our community to share the scientific meaning of biblical stories that God revealed to him, such as the identities of the Ark of the Covenant, the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge, and the Tree of Life, including parabolic tales depicting the splitting of the atom. In light of the 26 book awards, a Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award, and the nature of our community, these discoveries should be of interest to some of us, if not all. References: [1] (Miller, 2011) [2] Taumua (2023), ppg. 290-314 [3] (Clery, 2017) [4] (Water Vapor in Space, 2011) [5] (Friedreich Schiller, 2020) [6] (How Do Planets Form?, n.d.) [7] (Walsh & Genzer, 2014) [8] (Choi, 2016)

Candice Sturtevant is the founder and integrative life coach of Clearly Connected in Whitesboro, N.Y. She brings her expertise and direct experience into every aspect of her life coaching practice and her business overall. In this interview, Candice shares insights into the history, vision, mission, and process of creating Clearly Connected, as well as how it has evolved over the years. Rooted in her personal journey of healing, personal growth, and professional development, she helps you discover and create your most Clearly Connected life on a number of different levels. Candice Sturtevant, Founder, Owner and CEO of Clearly Connected How did you come up with the name “Clearly Connected” for your life coaching practice and how has the meaning evolved since first opening? Being Clearly Connected to myself and my life was a dream. Being Clearly Connected to my purpose and my dreams was a dream. No matter the focus, all of the work that I do with my clients in my life coaching practice is rooted in my personal journey first. I was born into the world with the gift of being able to process information around me very clearly and very deeply, but I had nobody to turn to who wanted to listen, understand, or really get to know me. Emotional neglect and trauma had a tremendous negative impact on my development and life overall. For many years, I felt lost, stuck, hopeless, and was just coasting through on autopilot. I knew that I was disconnected from myself and what was truly possible for my life. Getting to that “I can’t take this anymore” moment was a pivotal turning point for me. Like so many people that I meet and now work with, I tried everything, including traditional therapy when I was in my early 20’s. It was a great starting point for me to talk about the things that I was never allowed to talk about, but it didn’t actually help me to move forward and grow. Years later, I connected with a former local life coach in my area who introduced processes that did, and it was history from there. I made a commitment to myself and my family that I would continue to do whatever it takes. I now have the honor of helping people, in my community and beyond, to get Clearly Connected to their life’s true potential on a number of different levels, and there is nothing that I am more passionate about. What does integrative life coaching look like in your day-to-day work with clients? My day-to-day work with clients varies since it is tailored to each individual and based on the focus of our work together. People reach out to me for a variety of reasons, both personally and professionally. Although I do not plan my sessions in advance, there are a series of realizations that I work through with each client. Each session is designed to build upon the next, and there is also work that we do together in between sessions, all with the intention of supporting the process of getting Clearly Connected and discovering what is truly possible for our lives. How do you help your clients gain clarity in a way that actually creates lasting change, healing, and sustainable growth? Although we live in a very urgent culture, what I know about the journey is that it is ongoing and unique to each individual-the unlearning, learning, unraveling, healing, growth, whatever the focus may be. I am very honest and direct with each person that I work with because I understand what it takes and what their inner world may feel like in the process. There is no “quick fix” or surface-level approach that leads to anything sustainable. The realizations that I take my clients through dive deep into the subconscious part of ourselves, which is what runs our lives on autopilot on a number of different levels. When we start digging into those layers and my clients are committed to their work, this is when they start to experience results. I can meet people very deeply because I have met myself there first. It’s one step at a time, and each of those steps is what ultimately leads to lasting change, healing, and sustainable growth. How do you personally define “connection” in this process? Connection is when people feel heard, seen, and understood in a way that they never have before, often for the first time in their lives. It transcends beyond the superficiality and masking that we are so accustomed to in our daily lives. When this happens, it leads to a new level of awareness that is life-changing and has a huge impact. It leads to more meaning and fulfillment. It opens the doors to an expansive connection to oneself and life’s possibilities overall. What made you commit to building a physical space instead of scaling purely online? In-person sessions have always been my favorite as I feel they are the most effective, but I have equally as many virtual clients that I connect with just as well. I know that I can pivot at any time, but I love my physical space and the personal history behind it all. When I first opened my practice in 2017, I started working out of my home office. I moved into my first commercial location in the summer of 2018, and then in the spring of 2019, I expanded and relocated to another facility in the same village and have been there ever since. My office is actually the same office that I worked with the therapist in a full circle moment. In the fall of 2022, I opened my second location, which is the Studio for my dance-fitness classes. Why did you decide to expand and create a multi-service model with other businesses in both of your locations? The vision for the multi-service business plan is also rooted in my personal journey, an evolution of services, so to speak. After I moved into my first commercial location in 2018, I knew shortly after that I wanted to expand and create that same mirror, and as I continued my inner work, which takes the lead in everything that I do, an opportunity for a larger facility presented itself later that year. Both locations have their own unique vibe and incorporate my life coaching practice, other non-traditional and traditional practices, dance, movement, and many other opportunities that support overall growth for my community on a number of different levels. It is not something that I have to do; it is something that I chose to create, and it continues to evolve as I do. What have you learned about creating spaces where both practitioners and instructors can grow side by side? The business model I created and operate definitely has its challenges, and it’s only a small fraction of my work overall. Although there are many people under the umbrella of Clearly Connected, everyone is their own separate entity and is responsible for their own work and growth, while simultaneously having the opportunity to be a part of the community and collaborate. It’s been a beautiful thing to slowly watch the crossover of services unfold over the years, which was my intention from the beginning. It requires a lot of hard work and balance on my part. I am leading people who are a part of my vision, but they are not my employees. Everyone has business contracts that outline the agreements for running their practices in my facilities and for being a part of everything that I offer. I want everyone to succeed, and my services and support are available to help them do so if needed, but it isn’t my weight to carry if they don’t. I have learned many hard lessons over the years, but each lesson has given me more clarity, both personally and professionally, and has contributed to continued growth. What opportunities are available with you for people to start living their most Clearly Connected lives? For people who are interested in life coaching, my primary focus is on my work in individual sessions. There are also options available for couples, families, corporate events, and speaking engagements. I am going to be launching a new program in the near future, with details coming soon! For people who are interested in business partnerships, I have space available to rent at both of my locations and am actively looking for established doctors, practitioners, and instructors to join our community. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Candice Sturtevant

Written by Myra Swan Kotze, Quantum Wealth & Energetic Business Mentor Myra Swan Kotze is a Quantum Wealth & Energetic Business Mentor, subconscious reprogramming expert, and host of the Elevated Woman podcast. She helps female entrepreneurs scale to $20K–$100K+ months through energetics, strategy, and identity mastery. Women-owned businesses generate $1.8 trillion a year in the US alone. According to Fundera.com, women started 1,821 new businesses every day in 2019, and women own 40% of US businesses. I think it's safe to say that women are taking over the world of business. We are also far more likely to do business internationally than our male counterparts. Yet, I still read comments on social media and talk to women daily who do not stand in the truth of their value. Fear and doubt bringing them down no matter how much they enjoy doing what they do. To be totally aligned, you need to stand in your value, and there are 3 areas you need to work on to find true success. 1. Value your worth to your clients If you don’t value your worth, how can they? I often hear, “But how do they know?” Your prospects unknowingly feel the energy in which you value yourself. If that value is low or comes from a place of uncertainty, they will never work with you. I see so many brilliant women at what they do, but they do not stand in the truth of their value, so they struggle to find clients. They lose clients to someone far less brilliant, and that has a negative impact on both sides. They don’t get the clients they deserve, and the client doesn’t get the result they deserve. “Don’t waste time downgrading your value. Know your worth” — Elena Lipson Ask yourself, do I stand in the truth of my value? If that answer is not an overwhelming yes, then sadly, you are not. Do this exercise, write down how your programs, products, or services impact your clients' lives. Next, answer in which way do these results impact my clients in each of these key areas. Finances/money Health/well being Family/relationships Business/career Future purpose Depending on your niche, you might not have answers for each area, and I want you to really think about it before you discard one or more areas. This exercise will help you get clearer on your value to your clients. “Be a living example of your value, and success will be yours,” — Myra Kotze. 2. Value your programs, products, or services You’re brilliant at what you do, you get your clients amazing results, and your programs, products, and/or services reflect that. So women, why do you still question your value? Why do I see you write on social media how scared you are to put your work out there? If you let the fears and doubts hold you back from putting your work out into the world with pride, knowing the value they have, you are doing the people who need you in their life a huge injustice. Your business ends up going nowhere fast. 3. Value your pricing Most women struggle with this. I read a post on social media again today of a female coach talking about her program and how much work she has put into it and its value. She talks about how much it’s worth financially, and she’s selling it for $297 when she knows it’s worth at least $4000. Knowing it’s worth more but not standing in the truth of its value are two hugely different things. If she fully stood in the power of the program's value and were totally aligned with it, she would charge what it’s worth. She isn’t because, again, she has doubts and fears holding her back. Can you see the financial impact this has on her business? I’m so grateful to be able to guide women through these doubts and fears they have to be able to stand in the truth of their value. To show them what’s possible and how their business can become hugely profitable once they are fully aligned in their value. Reach out if you need support in finding your value. Book a call, and let’s chat. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Myra Swan Kotze Myra Kotze, Quantum Wealth & Energetic Business Mentor Myra Kotze is a Money Breakthrough Business Coach, NLP and Timeline Therapy Master Coach. She is an 8-Figure Business builder both offline and online and have 20+ years hands-on experience in building successful businesses. Myra specializes in helping women entrepreneurs scale their business to multiple 6 and 7-figures. She knows what it feels like to be at the top and burned out. Without the freedom to make empowering choices. After recovering from working 18-hour days she built a highly successful coaching business. Using her personal experience, knowledge, and leadership skills, she’ll teach you to build and scale a lucrative business, creating Impact and Freedom while making Fabulous Money. Her mission is to help 10,000 women create a 6-figure business and 1,000 women to build a 7-Figure Empire.

Written by Myra Swan Kotze, Executive Pressure Specialist Myra Swan Kotze is an Executive Pressure Specialist, author, Industrial Psychology graduate and former Group Managing Director. Drawing on decades of leadership experience, she created Accumulated Executive Pressure™ and now works privately with women in senior corporate leadership. How many times have you told yourself that life will feel different once this quarter is over? Once the restructuring is complete. Once the new executive is appointed. Once the acquisition is signed, the board settles down, or the crisis finally passes. The promise sounds reasonable because the pressure in front of you is real. You are not imagining the consequences, the deadlines, or the people depending on you. Giving more of yourself for a limited period may even be the right leadership decision. The difficulty begins when one limited period quietly hands you over to the next. Months become years, and the life you keep planning to return to remains just beyond the next finish line. You are still succeeding, but too much of your actual life is being lived in waiting. The promise sounds sensible Senior leadership often demands seasons of unusual intensity. There are moments when you cannot give equal attention to everything. A major transaction may require long days. A crisis may need your availability. A difficult organisational change may temporarily take more from you than an ordinary working week. There is nothing inherently wrong with choosing to stretch for something that matters. Ambition is not the enemy, and responsibility cannot always be fitted neatly between comfortable hours. The problem is not the demanding season. The problem is allowing every season to declare itself exceptional. When that happens, you keep making agreements with yourself. You will take care of the appointment later. You will call the friend next week. You will be more present with your partner when this project is finished. You will return to the part of yourself that laughs, travels, reads, creates, moves, or simply sits without solving anything. Each individual decision may seem small. Together, they can become the way you live. The finish line moves The finish line keeps moving because organisations are living systems. The quarter closes, but the next one has already started. One appointment is made, and another person resigns. The crisis passes, but the decisions made during it create a new set of consequences. This is particularly dangerous for capable women because you know how to keep going. You can reorganise, absorb another responsibility, and find enough capacity to meet the next demand. Your ability to adapt makes the postponement feel possible. You believe you are borrowing from your life temporarily and will repay it when work becomes quieter. But senior leadership may never provide the kind of permanent quiet you are waiting for. The role changes shape, but responsibility remains. If your life can only begin when nothing urgent is happening, it may remain postponed indefinitely. Pressure narrows life Researchers use the term ‘recovery paradox’ to describe an uncomfortable pattern: the more demanding work becomes, the more recovery is needed, yet the harder it can become to recover. High pressure can leave people with less energy and fewer opportunities to do the very things that might help them feel restored. This does not mean you need to turn your life into another recovery programme. It means pressure can narrow your world without asking permission. You begin choosing the fastest dinner, cancelling the easiest plan, and protecting the meeting before you protect the person who will attend it. Research also connects work interfering with family life to poorer wellbeing over time. The research is useful, but most executive women do not need a study to tell them when work has occupied too much space. They recognise it in the conversation they were only half present for, the weekend they spent mentally in the boardroom, or the moment someone they love stopped expecting them to be available. The cost is not always a dramatic collapse. Sometimes it is the gradual disappearance of everything that is not required, measured, or urgent. What keeps waiting? If work has been unusually demanding for a long time, asking yourself to ‘find balance’ may feel insulting. Balance is too simple a word for the reality of carrying significant responsibility. A more useful question is: What part of my life have I repeatedly placed on hold until work changes? Do not look for the most impressive answer. Look for the honest one. Perhaps it is your health, your marriage, time with your children, friendship, creativity, intimacy, faith, travel, or the ability to enjoy a day without anticipating what could go wrong. Perhaps it is simply the experience of being a woman in her own life rather than an executive moving between responsibilities. Then ask how long it has been waiting. Was this genuinely a temporary decision, or has postponement become your normal response whenever work asks for more? This is where I believe Accumulated Executive Pressure™ matters. The pressure of leadership does not only accumulate through difficult decisions and sustained responsibility. It can also accumulate through everything you continually override in order to keep carrying them. The woman does not disappear in one dramatic moment. She is crowded out gradually. Recognition is the beginning Recognising what you have continually postponed matters, but recognition alone does not remove years of accumulated pressure. You may protect an evening, take a holiday, or make more time for the people you love and still find that part of you remains at work. This is why my work with women in senior corporate leadership goes deeper than helping them rearrange their calendars or become more disciplined about boundaries. I help them recognise what they have accumulated, release the pressure they have continued carrying, and recover their capacity to experience their lives without needing to walk away from the careers they have worked so hard to build. Recognition, Release, Recovery™ is not about reducing ambition. It is about protecting the woman carrying it. When the accumulated pressure begins to change, she no longer has to wait for work to calm down before she can feel present in her own life. Stop requiring permission Many women are waiting for work to give them permission to live differently. They are waiting for a quieter calendar, a more settled team, a supportive board, or a point at which nobody needs anything urgently. That permission may never arrive. Organisations take the capacity that remains available to them. If you continually make your life the most negotiable item in the room, work will continue winning the negotiation. This does not mean booking an extravagant holiday or making a dramatic career decision. It begins by choosing one part of your life that will no longer depend on work becoming calm. The choice should be specific enough to live, not simply something admirable to write in a journal. Perhaps you stop cancelling one commitment that matters to you. Perhaps you protect a medical appointment with the same seriousness as a board meeting. Perhaps you decide that one evening belongs to your relationship, or that you will no longer take every unresolved conversation into your home. The action itself may look small. What matters is the new agreement beneath it: my life is not what happens after leadership is finished. Let life begin now You do not have to step away from ambition to stop postponing yourself. You do not need to care less about your organisation, lower your standards, or pretend that your responsibilities are unimportant. You may, however, need to stop treating your life as the reserve from which every leadership demand can borrow. Protecting something that matters outside work is not a reward you earn after performing well enough. It is part of remaining able to experience the success you have worked so hard to create. If you recognise yourself in this pattern, this is the work I do privately with women in senior corporate leadership. I partner with a deliberately small number of executive women, helping them recognise, release, and recover from the pressure accumulated through years of leadership responsibility. There will always be another quarter, decision, project, or person who needs you. The question is whether you will continue waiting for all of it to become quiet before you allow yourself to be fully here. Work may not calm down, but your life does not have to wait for it. You can learn more about Accumulated Executive Pressure™ and my private work here. Follow me on Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Myra Swan Kotze Myra Kotze, Executive Pressure Specialist Myra Swan Kotze is an Executive Pressure Specialist, author, Industrial Psychology graduate and former Group Managing Director. Her work is grounded in decades of leadership experience and a deeply personal understanding of what it takes to keep carrying responsibility when everyone assumes you are coping. She created Accumulated Executive Pressure™ to give language to the often-invisible pressure that builds while accomplished women continue to lead, deliver and hold everything together. Through Elevated Woman, her deliberately intimate private practice, Myra helps women in senior corporate leadership recognise what years of responsibility have asked of them and release the pressure their bodies have been carrying. She is also the host of the Elevated Woman™ Podcast, where she opens honest conversations about the woman behind the leadership role.

Dr. Reetu Verma’s journey of personal healing and transformation led to the creation of Healing, Health & Happiness. Through her transformational coaching, she guides clients in reconnecting with their true nature, rebalancing energy centers, and finding clarity and emotional balance. This deeply personal approach helps individuals shift from mere survival to thriving, bringing profound changes to both their inner and outer worlds. Dr. Reetu Verma, Transformational Life Coach Who is Dr. Reetu Verma? Reetu is a thoughtful, grounded person with a deep passion for helping people better understand themselves, heal, and reconnect. Her work focuses on guiding individuals to improve their health, restore balance, and return to their true nature. At home, she values mindfulness and reflection – savoring quiet moments and nurturing meaningful connections. Awareness sits at the heart of her personal practice, often supported by visualization and meditation to explore her inner world, release what no longer serves her, and reconnect with her truest self. Reetu also finds joy in walking in nature and staying active through sports. In her professional work, Reetu brings intention, care, and purpose to everything she does. She weaves together ancient wisdom with modern, evidence-based practices, with a focus on the nervous system, energy centers (chakras), and whole-person wellbeing – supporting others on their path toward healing, balance, and alignment. This work is deeply personal. Several years ago, a severe brain illness brought Reetu to the brink of death. In that liminal space, she had a near-death experience that changed everything. Being given a second chance didn’t just reshape her understanding of health, happiness, and life – it awakened a profound commitment to live and work with intention. It is a path she has lived herself. Today, Reetu lives and works guided by the knowing that caring for ourselves creates a ripple effect. When we nurture our inner growth, energy, and light, we not only transform our own lives – we naturally extend care, consciousness, and connection into the world around us. What inspired you to start Healing, Health & Happiness and focus on transformational coaching? Healing, Health & Happiness was born from my own journey of recovery, realisations and deep inner transformation. What began as a process of physical healing slowly unfolded into a journey of self-rediscovery. Along the way, I came to understand that true healing isn’t about fixing what’s broken – it’s about reconnecting with who we truly are at our core. Through years of self-exploration, and by weaving together ancient wisdom with modern, evidence-based practices, I found my way back to balance, harmony, and a deep sense of coming home – to myself and to something greater. Living from the core has become my guiding principle. By learning to listen inward, cultivating self-care, and nurturing my body, mind, and spirit, I experienced a powerful shift toward clarity, peace, and wholeness. This heart-led way of living revealed my purpose and showed me that lasting transformation happens when our inner work shapes how we move through everyday life. Through this journey, a simple yet profound truth became clear: healing, health, and happiness are inseparable. When we care for our inner world, we don’t just change our own lives – we naturally contribute to a more caring, conscious, and connected world. Transformational Coaching is how I now share this work. I walk alongside people who are ready for meaningful change, supporting them to regulate their nervous system, rebalance their energy centers, access deeper levels of healing, and reconnect with their true nature – so they can live with greater ease, purpose, and alignment. Can you explain what transformational coaching is and how it can change someone’s life? Unlike traditional coaching, which often focuses solely on goals or behaviours, transformational coaching is a different kind of journey. It’s a deeply personal, heart-led approach that invites you to integrate your entire being – your body, mind, energy, and inner wisdom. This isn't about quick fixes or striving to be someone you're not; it's about diving deep within to release stress, rebalance your energy centres, and truly reconnect with who you're genuinely meant to be. In essence, it’s about coming home to your true self. The impact of this approach is pretty profound. By working at this deeper level, many people experience meaningful shifts in clarity, energy, and emotional balance. They move beyond just coping to be in the flow, discovering a sense of purpose and alignment that naturally ripples into every corner of their lives. As you begin to feel genuinely safe and connected within yourself, something truly magical unfolds: your health and energy improve, your relationships deepen and become more harmonious, and your daily choices align with what truly nourishes you. Life starts to feel clearer, more balanced, and more alive. Ultimately, this inner alignment doesn’t just change one part of your life – it completely transforms the way you experience all of it. What are the most common challenges your clients come to you with, and how do you help them overcome those? Most people come to me feeling stuck, stressed, or disconnected from themselves, their energy, or the direction of their lives. They often struggle with overwhelm, low energy, emotional imbalance, or a quiet uncertainty about their purpose. Through transformational coaching, I work with the whole person – body, mind, energy and soul. Together, we cultivate self-awareness, regulate the nervous system, and rebalance energy centers. Clients learn to release what no longer serves them, reconnect with their true nature, and make choices that feel aligned. The transformation can be profound. Clients experience deeper healing, improved health, greater clarity and vitality, emotional balance, and a renewed sense of joy that naturally flows into every area of life. Transformational coaching becomes a way of coming home to oneself – and that inner shift ripples outward, positively shaping relationships, work, and daily living. How does your own personal healing journey influence the way you coach others? My own healing journey is at the heart of how I coach. I have walked the path of deep healing, self-discovery, and inner transformation. A severe brain illness and a near-death experience brought me to a place of total disconnection – and yet, it was in that vulnerable space that I discovered the incredible power of turning inward, tending to your inner world, and reconnecting with who you truly are. Because I have lived this journey myself, I guide others with empathy, honesty, and practical insight. I don’t just share theory – I share a process I have tested, experienced, and seen lives transform. This shapes how I help people navigate stress, rebalance their energy, cultivate awareness, and reconnect with their true selves. What I have learned is that transformation is possible for everyone. My coaching is heart-led, meeting you where you are and supporting you to heal, thrive, and live with greater clarity, alignment, and ease. What results can someone expect when they start working with you one-on-one? When you work with me one-on-one, you will experience more than surface-level change. Many people notice a shift in clarity, energy, and emotional balance. Over time, they move beyond simply coping with life to feeling more grounded, energized, and connected – to themselves and the world around them. These changes ripple outward, enhancing your health, creating ease in daily life, experiencing greater joy, and nurturing a renewed sense of purpose. How do your group workshops support people’s healing and growth differently than individual coaching? Group workshops offer a different kind of growth than one-on-one coaching by tapping into the power of shared experience. Participants receive guidance and practical tools while also benefiting from the energy, insights, and support of the group. This sense of connection can accelerate self-awareness, emotional balance, and inner transformation. While individual coaching is deeply personal, workshops create a collective space where people can learn, grow, and evolve together. What are some simple tools or practices you recommend for reducing stress and improving well-being every day? Pranayama: controlling your breath to help manage your life force, or “prana.” Nature imagery visualization: this taps into the mind-body connection. Rainbow meditation: a practice that works with your internal energy system. How do your online courses help someone who is just beginning their self-healing or personal development journey? Our online courses are designed for anyone beginning their self-healing journey. They break the process into small, approachable steps, so you can start without feeling overwhelmed. Each lesson is created to educate, empower, and inspire, giving you insights and tools to better understand yourself. You’ll build awareness, discover practical daily practices, and gradually create meaningful, lasting change. There’s no need to do everything at once – consistency, not intensity, is what truly transforms your life over time. What would you say to someone who’s curious but unsure if coaching with you is right for them? If you are curious but unsure, that already tells me something important: a part of you knows that something wants to shift, even if you don’t yet know exactly what or how. You don’t need to be ready, fixed or have it all figured out to begin. You just need to be willing to be honest with yourself about where you are right now. Coaching with me isn’t about pushing you, judging you, or trying to turn you into someone else. It’s about creating a safe, grounded space where you can slow down, listen to yourself, and start reconnecting with who you truly are beneath the noise, the patterns, and the expectations. We move at your pace and work with what’s present in your life. If you are feeling stuck, tired of carrying the same burdens, or simply longing to feel more like yourself again, you’re not broken, and you don’t have to do it alone. You can come exactly as you are. We’ll figure out the rest together. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Reetu Verma

Written by Vicki Yap-Khaw, Energy Coach & Facilitator Vicki YK is an intuitive transformational coach, Kinesiologist and Sound Healer who has guided hundreds toward greater clarity and alignment. Founder of Quantum iLuminate and creator of Quantum Alchemy, she weaves ancient wisdom with a modern energetic approach to help people release limiting patterns, restore balance and transform their lives. You know those days when you feel like your head is about to explode? The noise inside gets so loud that you wish there were a mute button, but you can't seem to find it. Your mind is constantly analysing, judging, planning and trying to solve problems. Then you finally go to bed, hoping for some peace, only to notice your body aching, hurting or itching. What if, underneath all that noise, your body is quietly communicating with you? What if the aches, sensations and feelings are whispers that your conscious mind is too busy to hear? And what might you discover if you became quiet enough to listen? Perhaps even a wound your conscious mind doesn't yet recognise. “Tara” booked in two weeks ago for her first appointment. “How can I help?” I asked. “Where do I start? Gosh!” she replied. As she spoke and gave me a detailed rundown of her background and symptoms, I nodded, acknowledging her experiences and feelings. Throughout our conversation, she spoke a lot about her achievements, her duties, her responsibilities and how tired she was. She told me she seemed to snap at her kids and her partner more than she wanted to. I listened to her words, but at the same time, I picked up on the messages coming from her body. I could sense an anxious energy within her. Her legs were tightly crossed, and she was fidgeting quite a bit with her hands. During my training as a kinesiologist, I developed an ability to perceive the messages I observe and sense through the body. Over time, as more of the energy was discharged through her words, her body became louder. “Ask her about her dad,” was what her body whispered to my consciousness. So I followed the invitation. “Tell me about your relationship with your father.” Tara froze for a moment. Tears began to form in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said, reaching for the tissue box. “This is so silly,” she continued. There it was. Lying dormant beneath the achievements, accolades, job titles, picture-perfect family and picket fence was something that hadn't yet been healed. The hurt. The longing. The grief. Tara began to massage her left shoulder. “Oh, this shoulder of mine, I spend too much time in front of the computer. Actually, I think I made it worse at the gym earlier in the week. It’s just so sore,” she explained. Please know that her real name isn’t Tara. I have changed it to protect her privacy. But I have heard hundreds of very similar stories, and this is what fascinates me about the body. The body speaks a different language What I went on to explain to Tara was that our physical bodies communicate in a very different language from our minds. We are very familiar with our minds. Our minds speak in thoughts and words. Our bodies communicate differently. They may communicate through sensations such as aches, pain, tightness, itching, changes in temperature, heaviness, or other physical sensations. Yet what do we usually do when our body gives us a signal? We judge it. “What did I do wrong?” “What is wrong with my body?” “I must have overstretched.” “I didn't sleep properly.” “It must be my posture.” “It's just part of getting older.” We often look for the problem before we become curious about the message. “But I don’t know what my body is trying to tell me,” Tara said worriedly. That is understandable. Most of us have been conditioned to listen to our minds and judge our bodies. We are taught to fix the symptom, suppress the discomfort and get on with our day. But what if, sometimes, there is another question worth asking? “I wonder what my body is trying to tell me?” What happens when we stop judging the body? When we judge what our body is experiencing, we can shut down our curiosity. From my energetic perspective, when an emotion or experience isn't fully acknowledged, it can feel as though something remains held within us. I think of it as a form of stuck energy. Not because every physical symptom has an emotional or energetic cause. Our bodies are complex, and physical symptoms can have many causes that require appropriate medical assessment. But sometimes, there is more to explore. This is why I don't want people to automatically dismiss what their bodies are communicating. I want them to become curious. So I gently guided Tara back to the question, “Tell me about your father. Tell me about your relationship with him.” Her body began to soften, and then the sadness came through. “I didn’t see much of him after my parents separated. I was about 10, I think, when they separated. I remember he was an angry man. He didn’t say much. But whenever I showed him my school test results, he would smile. He would give me a candy from his office drawer and tell me not to tell Mum because she didn’t want us to have sweets.” Tara began to weep again. “Do you miss your father?” I asked quietly. “Yes,” she whispered. Then she quickly covered her mouth, as though trying to stop herself from speaking. “Were you allowed to express that you missed your father?” I asked. “Mum didn’t want us to talk about him,” she replied quickly. Suddenly, the story became clearer. The shoulder discomfort had led us into a much deeper conversation about her father and the grief she had never really had the opportunity to express. Perhaps the biggest sweetness hadn't come from the candy at all. Perhaps it came from his smile, the smile she had brought to his face. Perhaps that little moment of connection had meant far more to her than she had ever realised. Your body may be communicating what your mind hasn't put into words yet Our bodies are constantly communicating with us, sending us little signals, little nudges and little invitations to pay attention. But we often ignore them. “It’s nothing.” “I must have overstretched.” “I didn't sleep properly.” “I have poor posture.” “It's just part of getting older.” I hear these interpretations from clients all the time. Sometimes people have experienced the same sensation for years. They have become so accustomed to it that they barely notice it anymore. It has become their normal. But what if normal doesn't necessarily mean optimal? What if your body has been trying to get your attention? This doesn't mean every headache, rash, pain or physical symptom has an emotional or energetic explanation. Please don't use an energetic interpretation as a substitute for appropriate medical assessment. But when you've had the appropriate medical checks and something still doesn't feel right, perhaps there is another layer worth becoming curious about. Do you need to become a kinesiologist to listen to your body? No, you don't. Kinesiology is one modality I use in my work to explore what the body may be communicating. Still, you don't need to become a kinesiologist to begin developing a relationship with your own body. You can start much more simply. You can start by listening. These articles aim to leave you with something practical that you can begin applying after you've read them. So here is something you can try. The next time your body speaks, try this The next time you notice a physical sensation or your body gives you a little nudge, pause. Say, “Thank you, body. I am listening.” You don't need to know the answer. Just acknowledge that you have noticed. Relax and resist the urge to immediately work it out. This is the tricky part. Our logical minds want an answer right now. “What does this mean?” “Why is this happening?” “What do I need to do?” Take a breath. You don't have to solve it immediately. Listen deeply. Ask, “What are you trying to tell me?” Then become curious about what comes up. It may be a thought, a memory, an emotion, an image, a sensation, or perhaps nothing comes at all. That's okay too. The practice is not about forcing an answer. It is about developing the muscle of listening. Your body is not your enemy For many years, I didn't have this relationship with my own body. I spent a good 45 years of my life thinking and, frankly, bullying my body into submission. I wanted it to behave. I wanted it to look a certain way. I wanted it to perform. I wanted it to stop giving me problems. I didn't realise I could have a relationship with it. So if you are new to this, don't expect to become an expert in three attempts. Your body is a little like a puppy or kitten. If you are stressed, impatient and demanding, “Come here! Tell me what's wrong! Now!” it probably isn't going to come out and play. But if you become still, gentle and curious, something different happens. You create a space where listening becomes possible. Perhaps that is the beginning of a completely different relationship with your body. Because your body has been with you through every experience you've ever had. Perhaps it is time we stopped treating it as something to control and started treating it as something worth listening to. Your body may know something your conscious mind hasn't found the words for yet. So the next time your body speaks, try saying, “Body, I am listening.” Then listen. In a future article, I will explore the energetic patterns that can sit beneath what we experience, and why understanding the pattern intellectually doesn't always mean we have released what is holding it in place. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Vicki Yap-Khaw Vicki Yap-Khaw, Energy Coach & Facilitator Vicki YK is the founder of Quantum iLuminate and creator of Quantum Alchemy, a unique approach that blends ancient wisdom, intuitive guidance, and modern energetic practices to support personal transformation. As an intuitive transformational coach, Kinesiologist and Sound Healer, Vicki guides individuals to reconnect with their innate wisdom, helping them release limiting patterns and create greater alignment in their physical, emotional, mental, and energetic well-being. Vicki believes that true transformation begins with compassionate self-inquiry and the willingness to explore the deeper truth of who we are. She is passionate about supporting and empowering individuals to connect with their gifts, purpose, and true essence.