Written by Constanze Zientek, Women's Coach Constanze Zientek is a women's coach who works with highly sensitive women in their thirties, helping them to cultivate inner strength, embrace embodied leadership, and build an authentic, aligned life. Her approach blends emotional depth, clarity, and self-trust. In Part 1 of this article, I spoke about different reasons why optimism is actually an act of defiance. If you haven’t read it, check it out right here. So, with all the outside influences, as well as our thoughts being programmed to notice negativity over everything else, how do you actually get to practice more optimism? It can surely be a workout for your thoughts, and it may come more easily to some people than to others. It can also highly depend on the phase of life you are in and on the happenings around you, as well as how directly you can apply the following steps. But if you feel like you really want to apply more optimism in your life, yet you are struggling with it, there are ways to practice it that will significantly increase your ability to do so. Most of the time, these tools don’t work miracles overnight. They need to be applied, internalized, and practiced on a regular basis. They are not meant to bypass the negativity that is inherent in many situations. But continuously training your mind to apply them will make it a lot easier to get out of negative thought spirals. They can also help you open up to inviting more and more reasons into your life to experience goodness and to actually allow yourself to feel it without downplaying or second-guessing it. 1. Acknowledge what hurts Since optimism isn’t supposed to override negative emotions, it is important to take the time to acknowledge what hurts and why. Not bypassing what the first step to standing in your own power is. If you feel hurt by a situation, that matters, and so do the reasons that cause it. In some situations of deep grief, the loss of a loved one being one of them, it seems simply impossible to force a positive thought about the situation. In these cases, let it be and let it sit. Give yourself as much time to heal as you need. As you do so, slowly start opening yourself up to the possibility of feeling uplifted again and know that this process will take time. 2. Look for what works to build optimism Take a few moments every day to remind yourself of what actually works very well right now. If there’s nothing big, think of something small. No matter how dark a situation looks, there will most certainly be things to appreciate in another part of life, whether these things might be big or small. If a situation seems to be exclusively bad without room for anything else, try to think about at least three things that could become positive outcomes of that situation. Write them out and, if possible, read them out as often as possible. Let yourself feel the words. If you absolutely do not believe there is anything positive to see at all, try to check in with yourself to see if you would actually tell the same thing to your friends if they were in the same situation. Many times, we tend to be meaner and darker toward ourselves than we would ever be toward any other person. Checking in with your situation from an outside perspective can help you gain a different perspective on something that feels stuck. 3. Don’t downplay what’s good Many times, when we actually see something that has good in it, we just don’t acknowledge its existence as “Yes, this is good.” We start downplaying it, taking it as beginner’s luck, an exception to the rule that we’re not lucky, or simply as not that big of a deal. If someone compliments us, we downplay our being or abilities. When we speak about things we love, we try not to brag about them. As a practice, try to observe and adjust your speech as much as you possibly can. When someone compliments you on an achievement, instead of saying, “That was just luck,” say, “Yes, I’m glad that happened.” Speech is an incredibly powerful tool in bringing power or disempowerment to yourself, as well as negativity and positivity. The more you realize how your words actually shape your outlook on things, the more carefully you are going to choose them. 4. Decide that you bring in good things Decide that you are a person who deserves to have and experience great things. Just because you are. If that concept does not resonate at all on the inside, claim it with authority. Imagine you are a boss giving orders and commanding your life to deliver better outcomes to you. You can even say that out loud all by yourself and make it sound slightly bossy, which might feel weird but can be effective. Leave room for how that outcome should exactly look. It can be as simple as, “Whatever is the best and highest for me and my surroundings.” It might seem like a completely new concept to your brain and nervous system and can therefore feel distant and pretty cringe. But the more often you practice authority, the easier it gets to actually build it and attract goodness from life. Because sometimes, improvement just needs a little energetic push, and authority builds just that. 5. Ask for more good things out loud This brings us to another important step. Do you remember the saying, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease?” Many times, we feel like we would really like something, but we feel way too shy to ask for it, especially loudly. Many times, we can even feel anxious to ask in the first place because we fear rejection. But the thing is, people are not mind readers. So expressing your needs out loud, not in an offensive way but clearly (“This is very important to me,” or “I really want this to happen”), often brings something to other people’s awareness. Even just mentioning something (“I like volleyball”) might have someone think of you, and before you know it, they invite you to a gathering. Expressing your wants and needs out loud to others more often can certainly increase the chances of more of them coming your way. 6. Become more versatile As someone who pretty much loves comfort, this isn’t always easy for me to follow. But I find it pretty necessary to balance my mood and overall inner state of being. That is being active. Not only through sports and body movement, though that is one way. I’m talking about becoming more versatile in general. The more new things you try out, the more variety comes into your life, and the more new connections your brain makes. It is not necessary that you stick to all of them, as it might be pretty much impossible. Also, be careful not to overdo it if you already live a pretty full life. But trying out new things on a regular basis brings you together with possibly very different people, habits, and perspectives. 7. Shorten the timespan of annoyance It’s normal to be upset or anxious when things go wrong or not as planned. The problem is not that we feel that way, but how long we stay in these states sometimes. Take a moment for the feeling. Then ask yourself what the thing that has just occurred really means to you. What do you want to make it mean? What will your next steps be, now that this has happened? Getting into active mode helps you to get out of the feeling quicker and to create positive results. 8. Look for the advantages of a situation Sometimes, we think we want a person, a place or a circumstance to work out in a certain way and we become really jaded if that doesn’t work out. Only in hindsight, we get why it wasn’t supposed to work out or how going through a certain phase actually brought us so much further. Many times, we come out in a way better place, because something has, in fact, not worked out how we wanted it to. By asking yourself „What advantages can this bring?“, you allow yourself to open up for positive change, even if you can’t make sense of a situation yet. 9. Trust in a higher power This might be a bit controversial for some readers and also goes into a deeply personal sphere, but I’ve found people who believe in a higher power to be open to the idea of getting help from the outside as they move along in their lives. This is not aimed at any particular religion or religion itself. In fact, even people who don’t consider themselves religious at all but still believe in a higher power of some kind experience the same openness when it comes to receiving help from outside. This is not a call for you to start believing in something if you don’t. However, if you somehow do, you can definitely use that as a way to affirm that a higher power will sustain your growth in the most aligned way. 10. Seek mentorship and coaching Since optimism isn’t equally easy for everyone and can require continuous practice, good coaching can have a long-lasting effect on your ability to build and maintain it, despite whatever challenges you are confronted with and despite the opinions of those around you or society at large. Reach out to me here to learn more about my coaching program, where you can work on that with me one-on-one over a longer period. Follow me on Instagram for more info! Read more from Constanze Zientek Constanze Zientek, Women's Coach Constanze Zientek is a women's coach working with highly sensitive women in their thirties. She supports them in cultivating inner strength, embodied leadership, and an authentic, aligned life. Her approach blends emotional depth, clarity, and self-trust. She furthermore practices as a lawyer with over ten years of work experience, specializing in inheritance law. Her work with clients in emotionally complex transitions, combined with her own journey through her thirties, led her to coaching. Today, she integrates structure and intuition to offer clear, deeply human guidance.

Sarah Maynard is a Beroepsvereniging Gewichtsconsulenten Nederland-certified lifestyle coach and the founder of Body & Mind in Harmony, a coaching practice built around one core belief: mothers need to feel regulated and safe in their own bodies before any other change, in diet, fitness, or daily habits, can truly stick. Drawing on her own experience of losing herself across two pregnancies and eight years working as a youth care facilitator, Sarah has built a practice, and a growing community, around helping overwhelmed mothers regulate their nervous system first. In this interview, Sarah shares what led her to this work, why she believes conversations about maternal wellbeing still miss the mark, and one simple way any mother can begin regulating today, without adding another task to her plate. Sarah Maynard, Wellness & Health Coach for Moms What inspired you to build Body & Mind in Harmony around the belief that mothers need to feel safe before they can truly thrive? The belief came from two parts of my life meeting in the same place. Growing up, I was adopted, and that early experience taught me what it feels like to not feel fully safe or settled, and how much that unsettledness can shape a person underneath the surface. Later, I spent eight years as a youth care facilitator, working directly with young people and families in crisis, and I saw the same pattern again and again. When someone's nervous system is in survival mode, nothing else works: not better decisions, not new habits, not even good intentions. Then I became a mother myself, and I lost myself completely, twice, across two pregnancies. I finally understood that same truth from the inside. Body & Mind in Harmony exists because I know, personally and professionally, that safety in your own body has to come first. Everything else mothers are told to fix – their diet, their fitness, their routines – only works once that foundation is there. You often say that nervous system regulation comes before habit change. What led you to challenge the traditional wellness approach? I noticed the same gap over and over, both in my own life and in the mothers I worked with. Most wellness advice tells tired moms to eat better, move more, sleep earlier, and build better routines, as if the missing ingredient were simply more discipline. But after my own two pregnancies left me feeling completely disconnected from myself, I found that none of that advice held until I addressed something underneath it. What actually helped me come back to myself was regulating my nervous system first, through movement, through breath, through small repeatable moments of calm. Once I started coaching other mothers, I saw the exact same pattern. A meal plan or a workout schedule cannot hold if a mother's body is still stuck in survival mode. That is the traditional approach I wanted to challenge. Regulation is not one more item on the wellness checklist. It is the floor everything else has to be built on, and skipping it is why so much well-meaning advice fails overwhelmed mothers. How did your years as a youth care facilitator shape the way you now support mothers through stress and overwhelm? Working as a youth care facilitator for eight years, with more than two hundred families, taught me to read what a nervous system in distress actually looks like, long before I ever coached a mother. I sat with young people in some of the most overwhelming moments of their lives, and I learned that when someone is in survival mode, you cannot reason, plan, or motivate your way through it. Regulation has to come first, every time. That lesson shaped everything about how I coach mothers today. I do not start with a meal plan or a fitness goal. I start by helping a mother recognize when her own nervous system is activated, and by giving her simple, realistic ways to come back to calm. It also shaped how I show up in sessions. I learned in youth care to sit with people without judgment, to ask questions rather than give instructions, and to let someone find their own way back to themselves. That is exactly how I coach mothers now, as a guide who walks beside them, not above them. Why do you think conversations about maternal wellbeing still focus more on productivity than on emotional regulation and identity? I think it comes down to what gets measured and praised. Productivity is visible. A clean house, a packed lunch, a full calendar – these are things other people can see and comment on, so they become the unspoken scorecard for whether a mother is doing well. Emotional regulation and identity are invisible by comparison. No one applauds a mother for noticing she is dysregulated and pausing to breathe before she reacts. So the conversation keeps defaulting to the visible metric, more habits, more routines, more output, because that is what culture rewards and what wellness content is easiest to sell. The deeper issue is that a mother can be highly productive and still be completely dysregulated underneath it, running on adrenaline and guilt rather than genuine capacity. I think maternal wellbeing conversations need to catch up to what mothers already sense in their bodies: that how they feel and who they still are underneath the role matters just as much as what they get done. More coaches are talking about nervous system health today. What do you think is still missing from the conversation? Nervous system language has become much more mainstream, and that is a genuinely good shift. What I still see missing is the specific context of motherhood itself. A lot of nervous system content is written for a general audience, and it assumes a level of time, quiet, and control over your environment that most mothers simply do not have. You cannot always step away for twenty minutes, and telling an overwhelmed mother to do a full breathing practice she has no time for just becomes one more thing she feels guilty about not doing. What is missing is the translation of nervous system science into moments that actually fit inside motherhood: a few seconds between tasks, a breath before responding to a meltdown, a boundary held in the middle of a busy day. I also think identity is still underdiscussed. Regulation is not only about calming your body. For many mothers, it is tied to grieving and rebuilding a sense of self that motherhood reshaped, and that piece rarely gets named directly. For a mother who constantly feels overwhelmed, what is one simple way to begin regulating her nervous system without adding another task to her day? Use your breath as an on-off switch, right in the middle of whatever you are already doing. You do not need a separate block of time or a quiet room. The next time you feel your body tense up, during a meltdown, a school run, or a moment right before you walk back into the house, try four seconds in, hold for four, and six seconds out, repeated for about a minute. It takes less time than scrolling your phone, and research on breathwork shows that slow, regulated breathing calms the very system responsible for your stress response. The reason this works so well for overwhelmed mothers is that it does not ask you to change your schedule. It asks you to change what you do inside the moments you are already living through. Once that becomes a habit, you start noticing your own activation earlier, and that awareness alone gives you far more choice in how you respond. Your group program helps women reconnect with themselves. What shifts do participants often experience first? The program helps mothers reconnect with themselves rather than only fixing outward habits. In the earliest group I ran, the first shift participants noticed was rarely about a specific habit changing. It was more that they finally had language for what they were feeling, and permission to name it without guilt. From there, mothers consistently reported more energy and more calm within just a few sessions, along with a noticeable drop in exhaustion, even before any major lifestyle changes were in place. Several described feeling steadier in daily moments that used to set them off completely. What tends to happen is that regulation creates a kind of relief valve first, mothers stop feeling like they are constantly reacting, and only once that settles does the deeper identity work, remembering who they are outside of the mom role, really begin. A new cohort of the group program, How to Mom – Guilt Free, will start on the 21st of October, and you can find all the details here. Your message, "You matter too," has become the heart of your work. What does that phrase mean to you today? It means that a mother's needs are not something to address once everyone else's are handled. For a long time, I lived as if my own well-being was optional, something to get to later, if there was time left over. There rarely was. "You matter too" is my way of interrupting that pattern, both in myself and in the mothers I coach. It is not about choosing yourself over your family. It is about recognizing that you are part of the family too, and that your regulation, your rest, and your sense of self directly affect everyone around you. Today, the phrase feels less like a tagline and more like a daily practice. It shows up in the smallest moments, taking five minutes before responding to something that upset me, or letting myself rest without justifying it first. Every time I say it to a mother I am coaching, I am really reminding both of us of the same thing. If every mother reading this interview remembered just one thing about caring for herself, what would you hope it would be? That regulation comes first, always. Not after the laundry is done, not after the kids are settled, not once you have earned a break. Your nervous system is not a background detail in your day; it is the foundation everything else stands on: your patience, your energy, your ability to actually enjoy the motherhood you are working so hard to hold together. You do not need a perfect routine or a free afternoon to start. You need a few honest minutes, a breath, a pause, a boundary held, repeated consistently. If there is one thing I hope every mother takes from this, it is that caring for yourself is not selfish and it is not optional. It is maintenance, and you are allowed to give it to yourself before you run out completely. You matter too. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sarah Maynard

Written by Sukhdev Benning, Founder of Learn Flow Mastery, Teacher & Mentor Sukhdev Benning is a flow-state mentor and the founder of Flow Mastery, where he teaches heart coherence and presence-based practices that help people return to their best state in everyday life. He brings more than 14 years of mentoring experience, along with careers as an AI systems architect and recording artist. You know the feeling. The work moves through you, time disappears, and everything you touch seems to click. Then a notification lands, a doubt creeps in, or the day simply gets loud, and the feeling is gone. Most advice on flow is about how to get there. In more than 14 years of mentoring people in flow states and heart coherence, I have found that getting there is rarely the hard part. Coming back is. In this article, you will learn why flow slips away, how to notice when it has, and nine practical ways to return to it, again and again, in the middle of real life. What is a flow state? Flow is a state of complete absorption in what you are doing. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the term, described it as the experience of being so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. Self-consciousness fades, attention narrows to the task, and action and awareness merge. Athletes call it being in the zone. Musicians talk about the music playing itself. Writers, engineers, parents, and surgeons all know versions of it. What is often missed is that flow is not a rare gift reserved for elite performers. It is a natural state of the nervous system, one we all move in and out of every day. The question is not whether you can reach it, but whether you can recognize the way back when you drift. Flow as a return, not an achievement Much of the popular conversation treats flow like a summit, something to conquer, optimize, and hack. That framing quietly sets people up to fail. If flow is an achievement, then every time you lose it, you have failed at something. The pressure to get back into flow becomes one more thing pulling you out of it. A more useful way to see it is as a return. Flow is closer to your baseline than you think. It is what remains when the noise of self-judgment, overstimulation, and stress settles down. You do not have to build it from nothing each time. You have to remember the way home. This shift sounds small, but it changes everything about how you practice. Why we lose our flow state Flow tends to break for a handful of predictable reasons: Fragmented attention. Every switch between tasks, tabs, and devices leaves part of your attention behind. Flow needs a single point of focus, and modern life is designed to split it. A stressed nervous system. When the body is in a state of threat, whether from deadlines, conflict, or poor sleep, it prioritizes vigilance over absorption. It is very hard to lose yourself in the work when part of you is scanning for danger. The inner critic. The moment you start watching yourself perform, asking whether this is good enough, you step outside the experience. Self-consciousness is the opposite of flow. The wrong level of challenge. Csikszentmihalyi observed that flow tends to appear when the challenge is well matched to your skill. Too easy and you get bored. Too hard and you get anxious. Chasing the feeling. Ironically, trying hard to get back into flow is one of the most reliable ways to stay out of it. Striving creates tension, and tension narrows the very openness flow depends on. Signs you have drifted out of flow Drifting is usually gradual, which is why it goes unnoticed. Common signs include rereading the same paragraph several times, reaching for your phone without deciding to, a tightness in the chest or jaw, shallow breathing, a running commentary in your head about how the work is going, and a sense that time is dragging. None of these mean something is wrong with you. They are simply signals. The sooner you notice them, the shorter and easier the return. 9 ways to return to your flow state Notice the drift without judging it: The first step back is simply noticing you have left. Name it quietly to yourself: I have drifted. Skip the story about why you should not have. Judgment adds a second layer of disruption on top of the first. Noticing is not a failure. It is the moment the return begins. Come back to your breath: The breath is the fastest bridge between your mind and your nervous system. Slow it down. Try breathing in for about five seconds and out for about five seconds, letting the exhale be soft and unhurried. A minute or two of slower, even breathing is often enough to shift the body out of threat mode and make absorption possible again. Drop your attention into your heart: Heart coherence practice pairs slow breathing with a simple shift of attention. As you breathe, imagine the breath moving in and out through the center of your chest. Then gently recall a genuine feeling of appreciation or care, for a person, a place, or a moment. Many people find this settles the body and clears the mind more reliably than trying to think their way to calm. For me, it is the core of the return: the mind follows once the heart settles. Feel your body before you think: Flow is an embodied state, not only a mental one. Before diving back into a task, take ten seconds to feel your feet on the floor, your weight in the chair, and your hands. This brings you out of the loop of thought and into the present moment, which is where flow lives. Shrink the task to one clear next step: Overwhelm is a flow killer. When a project feels too big, the challenge-skill balance tips toward anxiety. Ask yourself: What is the single next action I can take right now? Write one sentence. Fix one bug. Play one passage. Clear, immediate goals give attention somewhere to land. Protect a single channel of attention: Close what you do not need. Put the phone in another room, silence notifications, and keep only the window you are working in open. You are not trying to force focus, you are removing the things that keep pulling it apart. Flow is much easier to return to when there is only one place to return to. Adjust the challenge: If you feel bored, raise the stakes slightly: set a time limit, add a constraint, or aim for a higher standard on one small element. If you feel anxious, lower them: simplify, break the task down, or give yourself permission to make a rough first version. Small adjustments to the challenge can bring you back into the zone surprisingly quickly. Create a return ritual: Athletes and performers often use pre-performance routines, and you can use the same idea for everyday life. Choose a short sequence you repeat every time you want to come back: three slow breaths, a hand on the chest, one moment of appreciation, and then the next step. Over time, the ritual itself becomes a cue that tells your nervous system it is safe to settle in. Practice returning, not staying: Here is the most important shift. Stop measuring yourself by how long you stay in flow, and start measuring how quickly and gently you can come back. Every return strengthens the pathway, much like a muscle. A day with twenty small returns is a day of real practice, even if it never felt effortless. Over weeks, the gaps get shorter, and the state starts to feel less like a visit and more like home. Bringing flow into real life It is one thing to find flow on a meditation cushion or during a good work session. It is another to carry it into a difficult conversation, a busy morning with the kids, or a high-pressure moment on the field or the stage. That is where the practice of returning pays off. The more familiar the way back becomes, the less any single disruption can knock you off course. You stop needing perfect conditions, because you know how to find your footing in imperfect ones. Start your practice today Flow is not something you have to earn or chase. It is a state you can learn to come back to, one breath and one step at a time. Try one of these practices today and notice what changes. If you would like guidance building a daily practice that carries into your work, relationships, and creative life, book a 1:1 flow mentoring session and let's find your way back together. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sukhdev Benning Sukhdev Benning, Founder of Learn Flow Mastery, Teacher & Mentor Sukhdev Benning is a mentor and teacher of flow states, heart coherence, and presence-based personal development. Over more than 14 years of mentoring, he has come to see flow not as a peak to chase but as a state people can learn to return to. As the founder of Flow Mastery, he guides clients through 1:1 mentoring and a 30-day meditation program designed to make inner work land in real life. He also works as an AI systems architect and records music as Sookz, giving him a first-hand view of flow in both technical and creative work. His message: the state isn't the hard part; coming back to it is. Related articles: Mindfulness To The State Of Flow Getting In Flow State – The Key To Extreme Productivity How Do You Get Into Flow and Stay There? – 7 Tips for Maintaining Your Flow in Life

Written by Daniela Aneva, Executive and Team Coach Daniela Aneva is widely recognized for helping leaders and teams perform at their best. She’s an executive and team coach, an OD consultant, and a small business owner, known for practical, people-centered work that drives real behavior change and measurable results. Every coaching engagement eventually faces the same question: did it work? In individual coaching, the question is hard enough, change at the level of behavior and belief is rarely linear, and the conditions that enable performance are rarely under any single person's control. In systemic team coaching, the question becomes considerably more complex. The unit of change is a system, an interconnected set of teams, relationships, structures, and cultural patterns, and systems do not change on the timescales or in the ways that quarterly business reviews are designed to detect. Yet the question must be answered. Organizations invest in systemic team coaching because they believe it will produce better outcomes, not just better conversations. The discipline of evaluation is not a bureaucratic afterthought. It is the practice that keeps coaching honest, grounds the work in what actually changes, and builds the organizational case for sustained investment. This final article in the series offers a practical framework for measuring what actually matters in systemic team coaching, and a clear account of why so many conventional measurement approaches fall short. Why standard metrics miss the point The most common approach to evaluating team coaching is to measure what is easiest to measure: engagement scores, 360-degree feedback results, and team climate surveys administered before and after an intervention. These instruments have value. They are not, however, designed to capture systemic change. The problem is one of scope. Standard team metrics measure what is happening inside the team. Systemic team coaching is designed to change what is happening between teams and between the team and its broader organizational environment. Measuring only internal team health is analogous to evaluating an organizational restructure by asking whether the people in each new unit like their colleagues. The question is not irrelevant, but it misses the level at which the intervention was actually intended to operate. A systemic evaluation framework must measure across multiple levels, over meaningful time horizons, and with methods that can detect the slow, nonlinear changes that characterize genuine systemic shift. A 5-level measurement framework This framework draws on Kirkpatrick's evaluation levels, the work of Hawkins, the Systemic Team Coaching methodology, and the practical realities of organizational measurement. It is designed to be proportionate. Not every engagement requires all five levels. It is also progressive, with each level building on the last. Reaction Did participants experience the coaching as relevant, credible, and valuable? Gathered through structured reflection at the close of each coaching cycle. Necessary for quality assurance but insufficient as a stand-alone measure of impact. Learning Has the team developed new capabilities in systemic thinking, stakeholder engagement, schema awareness, or psychological safety practice? Assessed through behavioral observation, leader self-report, and structured team reflection on specific capability domains. Behavior Are the new capabilities being applied? Are team members behaving differently in real interactions, in cross-functional meetings, in escalation conversations, in how they engage their stakeholders? This level requires observation over time, not just self-report. System results Is the wider system changing? This level is most relevant to systemic team coaching and the hardest to measure. Indicators include the quality of cross-functional collaboration, the speed of cross-boundary decision-making, the frequency and quality of proactive stakeholder engagement, reductions in inter-team conflicts that require escalation, and improvements in organizational learning cycles. Stakeholder value Are the team's primary stakeholders, customers, commissioners, partners experiencing a difference? This is the ultimate test of systemic effectiveness. It requires direct stakeholder feedback, gathered with enough regularity and rigor to distinguish signal from noise. Practical measurement approaches Baseline the system, not just the team: Before any coaching intervention begins, invest time in understanding the systemic baseline. How are cross-functional relationships currently functioning? What are the patterns of escalation, conflict, and collaboration across team boundaries? What do key stakeholders currently experience? This baseline need not be exhaustive. A structured set of conversations with ten to fifteen people across the system will often reveal the most important patterns. It must exist. Without it, post-intervention assessment has nothing meaningful to compare against. Use qualitative and quantitative measures together: Systemic change is often most visible in the quality of conversations before it becomes visible in operational metrics. A team that has developed genuine schema awareness will handle a crisis differently, more honestly, more collaboratively, more adaptively, months before that adaptiveness shows up in revenue figures or employee retention rates. Qualitative evidence, structured narrative interviews, observed changes in meeting dynamics, and the quality of cross-functional dialogue are not soft data. It is often the most sensitive leading indicator available. Measure at six-month intervals, not immediately: One of the most common measurement errors in coaching evaluation is the post-intervention survey administered immediately after the engagement closes. Participants are energized. Goodwill is high. Scores are positive. Three months later, the old patterns have quietly reasserted themselves. Systemic change requires time to consolidate. The realistic measurement horizon for meaningful behavioral and systemic change is six to eighteen months post-intervention. Building this horizon into the evaluation design from the start is essential for capturing genuine rather than transient impact. Involve stakeholders in the evaluation: If the goal of systemic team coaching is to improve how the team serves its broader ecosystem, then the people best positioned to evaluate that improvement are the stakeholders themselves. Building structured stakeholder feedback into the evaluation process, asking commissioners, partners, and customers whether and how their experience of the team has changed, produces the most credible evidence of systemic impact and reinforces the outward orientation that is itself one of the core outcomes of the work. Track leading indicators alongside outcomes: Outcome metrics, business performance, customer satisfaction, and organizational health scores are subject to too many confounding variables to be reliable sole measures of coaching impact. Leading indicators, the observable behaviors and system conditions that predict better outcomes, are both more attributable and more actionable. They include frequency of proactive cross-boundary conversations initiated by team members, time from problem identification to escalation, diversity of voices in key decision-making forums, and the presence or absence of regular structured stakeholder engagement activity. The discipline of honest evaluation Good evaluation requires something most organizations find difficult: willingness to discover that an intervention did not work as hoped, or worked in ways that were not anticipated. A coaching program that produced strong individual team performance but worsened cross-functional collaboration has not succeeded systemically, even if internal scores improved. Honest evaluation names this, and uses it to redesign the intervention rather than declare victory on partial evidence. The organizations that get the most from systemic team coaching are the ones that treat evaluation not as a final judgment but as a continuous learning loop. One that feeds back into the coaching design, the development of leaders and teams, and the organization's growing understanding of what it actually takes to perform as a coherent system rather than a collection of well-intentioned parts. This series has covered: Article 1: The systemic landscape, why the system, not the team, is the unit of change. Article 2: Schemas in leadership, the invisible patterns driving systemic dysfunction, and how to work with them. Article 3: Psychological safety as a systemic practice, building candor across teams and hierarchies. Article 4: The stakeholder conversation, how teams co-create their mandate with the world beyond their boundaries. Article 5: Measuring what matters, evaluating systemic coaching impact with rigor and honesty. To explore how systemic team coaching can support your organization's leadership system, connect with Daniela Aneva here or through EMCC USA. Follow me on Facebook and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Daniela Aneva Daniela Aneva, Executive and Team Coach Daniela Aneva is an international executive and team coach, coaching supervisor, professional speaker, and author. With over 25 years of executive experience in multinational organizations, Daniela has supported the growth of more than 5,000 leaders and teams across the globe. She is a council member at Forbes, a mentor at Rice University’s Doerr Institute, and has co-authored books with Brian Tracy and Jonathan Passmore, and contributed to Team of Teams by Peter Hawkins and Catherine Carr.

Written by Stanislav Chufus, Personal Trainer & Rehabilitation Coach Stanislav Chufus is an International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA) certified and European-certified Personal Trainer and Nutritionist with international experience in fitness, coaching, rehabilitation, and wellness. He helps clients improve their health, strength, nutrition, and confidence through personalized, goal-focused guidance. You are unique! This is what you have to know in the first place! It might sound cliché, but you were created for something bigger, something greater, and you cannot neglect gifts like your time, talents, abilities, and your body. Yes, I will repeat it again. Your body is a gift. Just realize one hard truth: God took 6 days to create the heavens and the Earth, shape it, put trees, make rivers, lakes, and oceans, and create and bring living organisms, fish, birds, reptiles, animals, and everything that you can see, or even things you will not be able to experience during your lifetime, but to create you, He needed 9 months. How special you and your body are. But yes, maybe someone who is reading this article right now is fighting an illness, was born with a disability, or became disabled, and is questioning, “How is it fair?” I have an answer for those people: it is not fair, and the whole world is unfair. Fairness exists only in your mind if you are willing. But nowhere else. You do your best and still have not reached the level of someone who has done not even a drop of what you have done for it and has much more. Court cases have different results because someone has a different colour of skin, religious beliefs, or was “playing” in the courtroom better than others. The world is not the place to go looking for what is fair and what is not. All you can do is make yourself better: physically, spiritually, mentally, and materially. Before I came to the United States of America, I had never seen such a gigantic number of obese, overweight, and unhealthy individuals, but also people who were physically ill and refused to give up. How huge is the power of persistence. People who were born healthy, because of their negligence or lukewarm behaviour, decided to become disabled, but people who are in special need, in unfair situations in life, use this “gift” and refuse to be treated unfairly. It was never about fairness, but rather about your desire to make your life better, to believe in yourself, and in the goodness of God who has brought you into this world. I want to share one of the best quotes I have ever heard in my lifetime: “Take care of your body as if you were going to live forever, and take care of your soul as if you were going to die tomorrow.” – Saint Augustine of Hippo (St. Aurelius Augustine). I am not trying to push my beliefs and religious practices to either convince you to believe or not believe, but I will be honest: one day you and I will stand in front of the Judge, and we will go to the place where we have chosen to be. The same applies to your life and your body. You are where you have chosen to be. This is the story of Margaret, one of my clients. She came to me with a request to help her lose some weight, but I saw that she had more needs than just that. Marge was 70 years old when we started. She had not had an easy life, losing her son and her beloved partner, but she did not lose her faith in her God and Savior, Jesus Christ. She is lonely and has gone through loss and betrayal in her life. Her only decision to fight stress and depression was to turn to food, until she reached over 400 pounds. One day, Margaret said to herself, “This is not who I want people to see and, definitely, not the person I want to see in the mirror.” So, she started her journey of losing weight. To be honest, I was shocked when she told me that she was over 400 pounds. When she came to me for the first time. Every session and every week was a challenge. There was a lot of work and a lot of conversations because she needed, and still needs, support. As I said before, she came not only for weight reduction but also because she needed spiritual support and psychological encouragement. Margaret hated herself and called herself different, disrespectful, and rude names because of how she looked. We did a lot of work on her inner world first because, maybe, a lot of you would not agree with me, but as a personal trainer, I pursue three things: first, healthy well-being, second, mental health, and third, results. Why did I tell you about Marge? Because we went through a tremendous amount of work on her inner world during our sessions. We did not work only on her body but also on her mind and mentality. I will never forget two things that she told me, and we worked through them together: “Stas, it is easy for you to talk and live when you look like that.” I explained to her that this physique I have was not given but earned through more than 15 years of training, more than 25 years of participating in different kinds of sports, discipline, dieting, a huge number of hours in the gym, thousands of kilometres of walking, running, and hiking, etc. “I do not have self-esteem!” The truth is, you have as much self-esteem as you decide to have. The same applies to discipline, self-control, confidence, and everything else in your life. Everything that is inside of you is your decision, your choice, and the place you are in is where you choose to be. Although Margaret started only a couple of months ago, she has gone from complete self-hatred to loving herself, gaining the desire to get better every day, and becoming the best version of herself. Nevertheless, she still needs encouragement to keep going and do better every day. Because Margaret, and every single one of us, has encouragement from God: Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Follow me on Facebook and Instagram for more info! Read more from Stanislav Chufus Stanislav Chufus, Personal Trainer & Rehabilitation Coach Stanislav Chufus is a European and ISSA-certified Personal Trainer and Nutritionist and a sports academy alumnus whose career in fitness spans multiple countries. His education includes specialized training in sports anatomy, physical therapy, stretching, kettlebell training, and nutrition. Stanislav approaches fitness as more than physical transformation, combining training, nutrition, discipline, and mindset to create lasting change. Having built his own journey around continuous self-development, he leads by example and encourages others to discover what their bodies and minds are truly capable of. His purpose is to help people become stronger, healthier, more confident, and ultimately build a lifestyle they are proud to live.

Written by Shantana Telise, Quantum Channel & Multidimensional Healer Shantana Telise is a quantum channel and multidimensional healer specializing in divine channeling and soul remembrance. She is the creator of The Art of Divine Channeling Masterclass, the founder of The Portal of the Gods, and the host of The Goddess Evolution Summit. For many people, the spiritual path begins with healing. We learn to meditate because we feel overwhelmed, seek intuitive guidance because we feel lost, or begin developing spiritual gifts because something in our lives has forced us to look beyond what we can see. But eventually, spirituality has to become more than recovery. There comes a point when the question changes from “What else do I need to heal?” to “What am I here to create with who I have become?” Why do spiritual gifts often awaken through healing? For many people, spiritual awakening does not begin when life is comfortable. It begins during a breakup, a loss, burnout, an identity crisis, a health challenge, or the quiet realization that the life they have built no longer feels like their own. Pain has a way of disrupting what we thought we knew and pushing us toward deeper questions about who we are, why we are here, and whether there is more available to us than the reality we have been living. This is often where people first begin exploring meditation, energy work, intuition, channeling, manifestation, or other forms of spiritual development. We are trying to understand what is happening, reconnect with ourselves, and find a way through whatever brought us to that point. In those seasons, spirituality can become incredibly healing because it gives us a new language for our experience and invites us back into a relationship with our inner knowing. Healing can help us reconnect with parts of ourselves we once shut down. It can help us recognize the survival identities we have carried for so long that they began to feel like personality. It can show us where old patterns are still influencing the choices we make today. Related: The Survival Identities We Mistake for Personality That work matters. But there is another stage of spiritual growth that receives far less attention: the stage where healing is no longer the centre of your identity. Eventually, awareness has to become something we use, not something we endlessly analyze. When healing becomes your spiritual identity There is a subtle trap that can appear after years of personal and spiritual development. You can become incredibly skilled at finding what is wrong. Every emotional reaction becomes a block. Every difficult experience becomes a wound. Every moment of uncertainty becomes something to clear. Every desire seems to require another layer of healing before you are allowed to move toward it. Self-awareness can quietly turn into self-surveillance. This does not mean ignoring what genuinely needs your attention. It means no longer assuming that every uncomfortable experience is evidence that something inside you is broken. Sometimes you are not blocked. Sometimes you are being stretched. Sometimes you are learning something new. Sometimes you are standing at the edge of an unfamiliar reality and adjusting to a version of life you have never experienced before. Sometimes, nothing urgently needs to be healed at all. Sometimes you are simply ready to create. The identity of “the person who is always healing” can become just as limiting as any other identity because it keeps your attention fixed on what needs to be repaired. If you are constantly scanning yourself for another wound, you may fail to notice how much power is already available to you. The same pattern can appear in business, relationships, leadership, and personal growth when we become so focused on understanding the old version of ourselves that we continue building our lives around it. Related: How Your Entrepreneur Identity Can Keep Your Business Stuck in the Past Healing can open the door to your power, but it was never meant to become the room you live in forever. Your intuition is more than a warning system Intuition is often spoken about as something that protects us. We use it to ask whether a relationship is right, whether an opportunity feels safe, whether we should trust someone, or whether we should stay, leave, move, invest, speak, or wait. That is one expression of intuition, and discernment matters. Learning to differentiate intuition from fear is an important part of developing trust in ourselves and a healthier relationship with our inner guidance. Related: How to Reconnect With Your Intuition and Trust Yourself Again But intuition was never meant to function only as an alarm system. It can also be creative. Intuition can be the idea that will not leave you alone. It can be the sudden urge to write, teach, create, reach out, launch, travel, speak, study, build, or change direction. It can be the feeling that your work is ready to evolve, that a relationship is capable of deeper intimacy, or that your life has expanded beyond the identity you have been living from. What if your intuition is not only trying to tell you what to avoid? What if it is also trying to introduce you to what is possible? That changes our relationship with spiritual guidance completely. Instead of turning inward only when something feels wrong, we begin allowing intuition to participate in the way we create our lives. It becomes less about protection and more about possibility. Channeling is about more than getting answers The same pattern can happen with channeling. Many people first become interested in channeling because they want answers. They want to know whether a relationship will work, whether they should take the job, what their purpose is, when the money will come, which path they should choose, or what will happen next. In other words, we can begin treating the Divine like Google. Tell me what to do. Tell me what happens next. Remove the uncertainty. Show me the correct path. But in my experience, the deepest value of channeling is not that it eliminates uncertainty. It expands perception. True guidance does not always hand you a neat instruction. Sometimes it helps you see the situation from an entirely different level of awareness. Instead of telling you which decision to make, it may reveal the fear influencing the decision. Instead of predicting exactly what will happen, it may show you a possibility your current identity could not perceive. Instead of giving you permission, it may remind you that you already possess the authority to choose. This is where channeling becomes far more powerful than simply getting answers. It becomes a way of expanding your relationship with consciousness rather than outsourcing your power to it. There is a significant difference between asking, “Tell me my future,” and asking, “Help me perceive beyond the limitations of my current reality.” The first looks for certainty. The second creates expansion. Your spiritual gifts can become creative tools Imagine what changes when your spiritual gifts stop being used exclusively to manage pain. Your intuition can guide the creation of a business or project. Your channel can bring through an idea you would never have reached through logic alone. Your sensitivity can make you a more perceptive leader. Your energetic awareness can help you recognize when something feels expansive, contracted, premature, complete, or deeply aligned. Your spiritual gifts can influence how you communicate, lead, create, parent, love, make decisions, receive opportunities, and contribute to the lives of others. They become part of the architecture of your life rather than something you visit only when life becomes difficult. This is where spirituality becomes less about fixing yourself and more about expressing yourself. We have spent enormous amounts of time learning how to identify what hurts. The next evolution is learning what to do with the energy that becomes available when hurt no longer consumes the majority of it. Creativity is part of how we experience life There is research suggesting that creativity and well-being may be connected. One study involving undergraduate students and working adults found a positive relationship between self-reported creativity and subjective well-being after accounting for factors including perceived stress. A separate experimental component of the research also found higher reported subjective well-being among participants who completed an activity designed to prime creativity compared with a control group after stress was taken into account. That does not mean creativity is a cure for everything, nor does this research prove a spiritual mechanism. What it does reinforce is something worth considering: human beings are not designed only to process life. We also participate in life by creating. Creativity is much broader than painting a canvas or writing a book. Building a company is creative. Changing the culture within a family is creative. Creating a loving relationship is creative. Designing a new way of working is creative. Building a body of work is creative. Generating wealth in a way that reflects your values is creative. Leadership is creative. Community is creative. Legacy is creative. Your life itself can become an act of creation. You are allowed to want more when nothing is wrong One of the strangest things we have normalized in personal development is the idea that we need a painful enough reason to change. The relationship has to become unbearable. The career has to burn us out. The finances have to become frightening. The business has to fail. The body has to crash. We often wait until the contrast becomes painful enough to justify choosing something different. But what if nothing is wrong? Are you still allowed to want more? You can love your life and want to experience more of it. You can be grateful for your income and desire greater wealth. You can have a beautiful relationship and desire deeper intimacy. You can be proud of what you have created and still know there is more you want to express. You can love who you are and still feel another version of yourself emerging. You can already feel spiritually connected and become curious about how expansive that connection can become. Desire does not automatically mean dissatisfaction. Sometimes desire is information. Sometimes it is an awareness that another experience is available. Sometimes it is your consciousness stretching toward a life you have not yet fully allowed yourself to occupy. Expansion does not always have to begin with suffering. Sometimes there is simply more life available. Stop keeping your future self in the future Another pattern often appears in spiritual and personal development: we become so focused on becoming the future self that we fail to notice evidence that this version of us is already here. We visualize that version. We journal about them. We ask what our future self would do. We imagine how that version of ourselves would speak, lead, love, receive, or make decisions. There can be genuine value in developing a stronger connection with our future selves. Research into continuity between our present and future selves has explored how feeling more psychologically connected with the person we are becoming can relate to motivation, behaviour, and decisions made in the present. Related: The Benefits of Connecting With Your Future Self and What Research Says But eventually, we have to stop treating our next self like a stranger living somewhere in the future. Look at your life now. Where are you already responding differently? What used to trigger you but no longer has the same hold over you? Where are you setting a boundary without explaining too much? Where are you receiving something the old version of you might have rejected or sabotaged? Where are you trusting what you know, making decisions more clearly, or allowing yourself to be seen? Those moments matter because they are evidence of integration. Instead of immediately asking, “What still needs work?” pause long enough to recognize what has already changed. Sometimes the transformation has already happened. You simply have not updated your identity to match it. What are you here to create now? Eventually, spiritual development has to move outward. Not because inner work stops mattering, but because there comes a point when the transformation within you begins asking for expression. The business you build. The art you make. The family culture you create. The conversations you initiate. The people you mentor. The relationships you deepen. The wealth you generate and circulate. The standards you normalize. The ideas you introduce into the world. The spaces you lead. That is where personal transformation becomes contribution. Contribution is where healing can begin becoming legacy. Your spiritual gifts may have first awakened because you needed them to help you survive, understand yourself, or heal. But survival and healing do not have to be the highest purpose those gifts will ever serve. Perhaps the next season of your spiritual life is not asking you to look deeper into what is wrong. Perhaps it is asking you to look outward at what is possible. What are you ready to create now? What desire have you been analyzing instead of honouring? What idea keeps returning? Where are you still using intuition primarily for protection rather than expansion? What would you explore spiritually if you were motivated by curiosity instead of crisis? What becomes possible when you stop assuming that the next version of your life requires another version of you to be broken first? Your spiritual gifts were never meant only to help you heal. They are also here to help you live, create, receive, express, lead, and contribute something that could only exist because you finally chose to use them. Ready to move from healing into creation? If you have spent years doing the inner work and can feel that your next chapter is no longer about endlessly searching for another thing to fix, honour that. Choose one gift, idea, desire, or intuitive nudge that has been asking for your attention and ask yourself a different question: instead of wondering what else you need to heal before you can follow it, what would happen if you began creating with what you already know? Your next evolution may be about developing your gifts, expanding your capacity to receive, trusting what moves through you, and allowing your spiritual growth to become something you actually live. Your gifts do not end where your healing ends. That may be exactly where their next purpose begins. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Shantana Telise Shantana Telise, Quantum Channel & Multidimensional Healer Shantana Telise is a quantum channel and multidimensional healer specializing in divine channeling and soul remembrance. She is the creator of The Art of Divine Channeling Masterclass, where she teaches safe, embodied channeling practices. Shantana is also the founder of The Portal of the Gods, a high-level multidimensional initiation into divine love, wealth, and leadership. She hosts The Goddess Evolution Summit, bringing together spiritual leaders to explore ascension and embodied living.

Written by Dr. Kali Foster, Somatic Therapist & Chinese Medicine Practitioner Dr. Kali Foster is a Chinese Medicine Practitioner and Somatic Trauma Therapist with over 25 years of experience in body-based healing. Her work weaves together Somatic Experiencing, parts work, Tantra yoga, and embodied practices, supporting deeper connection, nervous system regulation, and well-being. Imagine being able to look beneath the skin and see the body not as a collection of separate muscles, bones and organs, but as one continuous, living network. We once tended to think of fascia as little more than the body's version of Glad Wrap, something that wrapped around our muscles and organs, largely unnoticed until it became a problem. But when we look more closely, something much more extraordinary appears: a translucent web of connective tissue rich in fluid, layers that glide and slide over one another, collagen fibres arranged in complex patterns, tissue that responds to pressure, movement and tension, and a sensory network woven throughout the body. What if this living network offers us a new way to understand something Chinese medicine has described for thousands of years: the interconnectedness of the human body? What is fascia? Fascia is connective tissue that surrounds, supports and connects structures throughout the body. It forms sheets and layers around muscles and organs, accompanies nerves and blood vessels, and creates planes through which tissues can move in relation to one another. Rather than being one single structure, fascia is a complex family of connective tissues extending throughout the body. For a long time, fascia received relatively little attention in mainstream anatomy. It was often treated as something to cut through or move aside to get to the structures underneath. But the more closely researchers look, the harder it becomes to think of fascia as merely packaging. It is dynamic tissue, and it is deeply connected to how we sense and move through our bodies. Research into fascia and its role in force transmission continues to expand our understanding of this complex connective tissue network. A living, moving network Imagine looking beneath the skin and seeing layers of tissue gently sliding over one another as you breathe. Imagine a shoulder moving and seeing the movement ripple through neighbouring tissues. Imagine the subtle changes that happen when you reach, twist, walk, dance or simply shift your weight from one foot to the other. This is not quite as simple as dropping a pebble into still water and watching the ripples travel. The human body is far more complex than that, but the image is useful. Fascial tissues are mechanically connected, and research suggests that forces can be transmitted through interconnected muscle and connective tissue structures. Exactly how much force is transmitted, over what distance, and how clinically important these effects are is still being investigated. What we do know is that fascia is not inert. It contains collagen and other components of the extracellular matrix, fluid, cells and sensory nerve endings. Different fascial tissues have different patterns and densities of innervation, including receptors involved in sensing mechanical changes and pain. This gives us a very different picture of the body. The place where we feel a problem isn't necessarily the only place we need to look. A painful hip may exist within a larger pattern of movement. A tight neck may be influenced by how we breathe, stand or use our shoulders. The way we walk can change how forces are distributed through the body. We are not a collection of isolated parts. We are a system of relationships. Fascia as an information network This is where fascia becomes particularly fascinating. The body is constantly receiving information about pressure, stretch, movement and position. Mechanical forces can influence cells and tissues through processes collectively described as mechanotransduction, the conversion of mechanical stimuli into cellular responses. In other words, movement creates information. Not information in the sense of a thought or a message travelling down a wire, but information in the sense that the cells and tissues of the body respond to changes in their mechanical environment. Stretch a tissue, compress it, load it or move it, and the tissue changes and cells respond. This is part of the extraordinary intelligence of the living body. It gives us another way of thinking about ourselves, not as machines made from separate components, but as continuously interacting systems in which movement, sensation, pressure and adaptation are intimately related. This is where, for me, the conversation with Chinese medicine becomes particularly interesting. Long before we had microscopes, imaging technology or the language of mechanotransduction, Chinese medicine was working with a map of the body based on connection and relationship. Another map of the body For thousands of years, Chinese medicine has understood the body through a network of pathways known as meridians. The meridians are not anatomical structures in the conventional Western sense. You won't find a physical tube or cord beneath the skin that corresponds neatly to a particular meridian. They belong to a different system of mapping the body, a traditional framework for understanding relationships between different regions, functions, symptoms and patterns. What fascinates me is that this map doesn't divide the body into isolated parts. A practitioner may treat the feet when someone presents with a problem elsewhere. Points on the lower leg may be selected according to patterns involving digestion. Points on the hands or arms may be used when working with the chest or breathing. The treatment makes sense within the relationships of the whole body rather than simply the location of the symptom. After more than 20 years of practising Chinese medicine, I have watched these relationships play out again and again in the treatment room. This is where the conversation between fascia and meridians becomes intriguing. We need to be careful not to say that fascia has somehow proven that meridians exist. It hasn't. Fascia is a physical, observable system of connective tissue. Meridians belong to a traditional Chinese medical framework. They are not simply two names for the same anatomical structure. But perhaps we can ask a more interesting question: could our growing understanding of the body's connective and sensory networks give us a new physiological lens through which to explore some of the relationships described by Chinese medicine? Acupuncture: Working with the network An acupuncture needle is tiny. Yet when it enters the body, it doesn't encounter empty space. It passes through skin and connective tissue and interacts with the complex mechanical and sensory environment beneath the surface. When a needle is inserted and manipulated, the surrounding tissue can deform and move with it. Research has demonstrated measurable tissue displacement during acupuncture needling, and laboratory studies have found changes in connective tissue cells following needle rotation. Researchers have proposed that this mechanical interaction may be one component of how acupuncture produces effects in the body, although the mechanisms of acupuncture are complex and remain an active area of research. From the perspective of Chinese medicine, however, we are working with something much larger than the small area where the needle enters. We select acupuncture points according to their relationship to the meridian system, the person's symptoms and the pattern we see throughout the body. The needle is local. The intention is systemic. This is one of the things that has fascinated me throughout more than 20 years of practising acupuncture: the body rarely behaves as though its parts are completely separate. Perhaps this is one place where our ancient and modern maps can begin a meaningful conversation. The meridian system gives us a map of relationships. Fascia gives us a physical network of connective tissue that participates in movement, force transmission and sensation. They are not necessarily the same thing. But both invite us to look beyond the isolated symptom and ask a larger question: What is happening in the whole body? Where the two maps meet Perhaps the most interesting place to explore this question is through movement. When we move, we don't move one muscle in isolation. Reach an arm overhead and the movement involves the shoulder, ribs, spine, pelvis and feet. Turn your torso and the movement travels through layers of muscle and connective tissue. Walk across a room and every step becomes a conversation between gravity, bones, joints, muscles, fascia, balance and the nervous system. The body is constantly reorganising itself. Chinese medicine has a language for this too. In Chinese medicine, health is understood in terms of the smooth flow and circulation of Qi throughout the body. When Qi becomes stagnant or its movement is disrupted over time, this is understood as contributing to pain, dysfunction and eventually disease. When Qi moves freely, we experience vitality, ease and a sense of being at home in our body. There is also something profoundly experiential about this idea. When the body is moving freely, we feel more connected to ourselves and more able to sense what is happening in the present moment. We are not simply thinking about the body. We are inhabiting it. The relationship between fascia and the nervous system is also part of this picture. Fascia contains sensory nerve endings, while the nervous system continually influences muscle tone, breathing, movement and how we experience sensation. The relationship works in both directions: the way we move and sense our bodies can influence the nervous system, while the state of our nervous system can influence how we hold, move and experience the body. As a practitioner, I find this way of thinking incredibly useful. Rather than asking only, Where does it hurt?, I can also ask: How is this whole body organising itself around the problem? Sometimes the answer is surprising. A restriction in one place may be accompanied by tension somewhere quite distant. A person's breathing pattern may influence the way they hold their shoulders. Changing the way someone moves, breathes or relates to a particular part of their body can sometimes create a shift somewhere else entirely. The body continually reminds us that connection is not merely a metaphor. Western fascia research and the Eastern meridian tradition don't have to be declared identical for them to be placed in conversation with one another. They come from very different histories and use very different languages. But both invite us to move beyond the idea of the body as a collection of disconnected parts. When you inhabit the body Perhaps you don't need to see a meridian to experience one. Spend time practising Tai Chi, yoga, dance or any form of embodied movement and the body begins to reveal itself differently. Movement travels. A spiral initiated in the foot can wind through the pelvis and spine. The movement of the ribs changes the shoulder. The position of the head changes the relationship of the whole spine. A subtle shift in the pelvis can change how you stand on your feet. You begin to feel pathways of connection that aren't represented on a conventional anatomical diagram. This is where my experience of fascia and meridians begins to converge. One is described through the language of Western anatomy and physiology, the other through the traditional language of Chinese medicine. The language is different. The maps are different. But the living body we are experiencing is the same body. Perhaps this is where we can begin to appreciate something even more interesting about being human. We often talk about the brain as neuroplastic, capable of changing in response to experience, learning and use. I think of this as a useful metaphor for the living body as well. Not because fascia is literally neuroplastic, but because the body is continually responding and adapting to how we move, breathe, sense, protect ourselves, connect and inhabit our experience. The body is not a fixed structure that we simply carry around. It is responsive and alive. Our patterns of movement, sensation and relationship with ourselves are not necessarily set in stone. This is one of the reasons embodied practice can be so powerful. Seeing the body differently When we stop seeing ourselves as a collection of separate parts, we can become curious about the relationships between them. A tight jaw might not be just a tight jaw. A painful hip may not exist in isolation. The way we breathe, stand, move or protect ourselves can become part of a much larger pattern. This is where fascia, Chinese medicine and somatic work begin to meet for me. Somatic work asks us to listen to the body rather than treating it as something that needs to be fixed, overridden or conquered. Instead of immediately trying to change a sensation, we can become curious about it. This kind of embodied awareness is also at the heart of contemporary somatic practice. Where do I feel it? What happens when I breathe? What changes when I slow down? What happens if I move differently? What am I noticing now that I couldn't notice a moment ago? The integration of talk therapy and somatic approaches is another way of understanding this relationship between mind and body. The body is constantly giving us information through sensation, tension, movement, breath and subtle shifts in awareness. We don't always need to understand that information intellectually before we can begin to work with it. Sometimes, we simply need to slow down enough to listen. This is ultimately what interests me more than deciding whether fascia or meridians provide the “right” map. Both perspectives invite us to look again at something we can never fully separate ourselves from: the extraordinary living body. A body that senses, adapts, reorganises and responds. A body that is continually changing in relationship with the world around it and with the way we inhabit it. Perhaps the living web beneath our skin has been speaking to us all along. Listening to the body If you’re curious about developing a deeper relationship with your body, I invite you to explore Somatic Therapy with Kali Foster, where body awareness, regulation of the nervous system and practice informed by trauma come together. If you’d like to begin by simply experiencing the work, you can access my free guided somatic practice, Awaken the Spine, a gentle practice lasting 22 minutes for releasing tension, settling the nervous system and reconnecting with the body. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dr. Kali Foster Dr. Kali Foster, Somatic Therapist & Chinese Medicine Practitioner Dr. Kali Foster is a Chinese Medicine Practitioner and Somatic Trauma Therapist with over 25 years of experience supporting people to reconnect with their bodies and innate capacity for healing. Her work integrates Somatic Experiencing, parts work, Chinese medicine, Tantra yoga, and embodied practices. She is passionate about helping people move beyond surviving into greater connection, vitality, and embodied self-awareness.

Written by Kate Taylor, Registered Nutritionist Kate is a Registered Nutritionist and the founder of Eat Drink Think Nutrition Limited. Kate supports systemic health & wellness through personalised nutrition, diet and lifestyle strategies & recommendations, and particularly specialises in Brain health, cognitive function and Dementia risk-avoidance. As a nutritionist specialising in brain health and cognitive function, the question I am, logically, asked is, “What is the best food we can feed our brain?” In reality, this question is slightly moot; cognitive function and brainspan are far more complex than just food or the best food. That said, diet is a notable contributing factor to our brain health and cognitive function because what we feed our body and brain can have direct implications for our short-term and long-term healthspan. So, here are ten Nutr’isms I have gleaned and frequently cite to support brainspan. 1. Incorporate beneficial omega-3 fats into at least two-thirds of your daily meals As your brain ages, it becomes less receptive to glucose (glucose, derived from carbohydrates, being the quickest macronutrient source to fuel our brain). Instead, the maturing brain enjoys being structurally and functionally nurtured by essential beneficial fats, omega fats. These are classed as essential because they are only available through food. 2. Keep listening Hearing decline is emerging in research as a major risk factor for cognitive decline. The mechanics of the ear are closely positioned and linked to the brain, so hearing decline may be an early indicator that all is not functioning quite optimally. Losing the ability to hear (if you have always been able to hear; the profoundly deaf community is different) somewhat distances you from society, withdraws you from socialising and may lead to loneliness, another risk factor for potentially developing cognitive decline. So, try to arrange an annual hearing check, and if others start to notice aural decline, seek advice and care from a professional audiologist on how to safely and effectively manage and support hearing. 3. Hydration, but be mindful of the water you drink Many countries of the world are lucky enough to have access to fresh water simply by turning or pressing a tap. However, with increasing chemical input in agriculture, heavy infrastructure, and commercial waste being generated and ecologically navigated through our waterways, our access to fresh water free of toxins may start to need extra attention. Adequate hydration is key to cognitive function. Therefore, wherever possible, filter your drinking water to get the most healthful benefits of natural hydration. 4. To paraphrase Lao Tzu, "begin with a single step" So it is for brainspan, too. Exercise is a crucial component of generating brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), colloquially known as ‘fertiliser for the brain’. BDNF supports the brain’s neuroplasticity, its ability to adapt and learn, and movement is amongst the most effective ways to encourage the body to synthesise BDNF. A lot of movement can be accomplished at no cost, so strive to keep active for as long as you can in a manageable way for your body and brain. 5. Embrace colours galore to adorn your plates of food By this, I principally mean try to include plentiful green leafy vegetables and colourful berries in your daily diet. These colourful foods are full of antioxidant vitamins, neuroprotective B-complex vitamins, minerals, polyphenols that help counter inflammation, and fibre, which are highly supportive of brain health and brainspan. They are also delicious and easy to combine adventurously, too. 6. Sleep For brain health, the value of a good night’s sleep cannot be underestimated. I once asked two neurologists, “If you were to recommend just one thing to your patients, what would it be?” Their answer was, “Prioritise sleep.” The brain’s innate detoxification system, the glymphatic system, can only embark upon detoxification processes during sleep. Therefore, compromised sleep often equates to compromised cognitive function (and a gradual, insidious buildup of uncleared toxins in the brain) upon waking. It is also important to ensure snoring (sleep apnoea) is not experienced. Research identifies snoring as a signal that the brain is deprived of sufficient oxygen at the precise moment it needs detoxifying. The two cannot coexist; snoring is an antagonist to sleep quality, so if you or someone you know snores, try to seek support to upgrade your sleep and protect your brainspan. 7. Consciously try to minimise exposure to air pollution, microplastics and mould Research is increasingly enlightening us about the detrimental impact environmental factors can have on our brainspan (and indeed whole body health). Microplastics, moulds and mycotoxins may be able to cross the blood-brain barrier and potentially trigger a heightened immune and inflammatory response in the brain – hence, beta-amyloid plaque builds as a defensive mechanism. These microparticles are not supposed to be in the brain space, so the brain tries to defend against them with plaque, which is one of the physiological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s dementia. Filtering your indoor air and removing heavy outdoor clothing and shoes when in your living and cooking environments are small steps you can proactively take to minimise this environmental risk. 8. Add extra virgin olive oil to your daily diet Full of polyphenols that help counter inflammation and essential beneficial omega fats, and offering a rich diversity of flavour on its own or as a condiment to almost any food, extra virgin olive oil is my professional favourite addition to a meal for brain health. A couple of words of nutritional caution about your product choice: buy extra virgin olive oil in a bottle that is not plastic (as a fat, it is good at leaching microplastics from its environment), and store it in a cool, dark place to maximise the health benefits when you come to drizzle it atop your food. 9. “Disce quasi semper victurus”, “learn as if you were to live forever” Quote credited to Isidore of Seville and Mahatma Gandhi. Cognitive stimulation is vital for reducing the risk of cognitive decline. In literature, this is often referred to as ‘education’, but this does not strictly refer to the duration of one’s formal academic education. Another strategy is simply never to lose curiosity for learning new things, be that another language, a new skill, new lyrics, new navigation, a new story, a new area of study, or new activity groups. Learning supports cognitive reserve, the ability to adapt and reshape the brain (particularly in the event of trauma to the brain). So, try to keep your brain active and your soul inspired as you cognitively age in years and wisdom. 10. Dietary fibre is a useful feature on every plate of food This is perhaps easier than it sounds because fibre is present in vegetables, fruit, wholegrains, legumes, and foods containing beneficial fats, such as avocado, nuts and seeds. Although fibre is most closely associated with gut health, there is significant cross-talk along the gut-brain axis. When fibrous foods are digested in the gut, short-chain fatty acids are produced as byproducts, which prompt beneficial cognitive health repercussions, for example, regulating inflammation, supporting neurocommunication pathways and stabilising the vagus nerve. However, there’s no need to exaggerate your portions if your gut microbiome is not already familiar with fibre. This has recently been termed fibre maxxing and is not suitable for everyone. Gently phasing in foods rich in fibre alongside each meal helps acclimatise your gut microbiome and will gradually begin to serve brain health, too. To conclude, what I have learned, and indeed keep learning, about nutrition for the brain is that it is dynamic and relevant. Although consistency is key, it does not demand ‘perfection’, which may be highly stressful and subsequently potentially detrimental to brain health and brainspan. Incremental modifications and inclusions are the starting points of brainspan habit stacking, so pick your favourites and go forth with healthspan optimism. Nutrition and diet are the benchmarks and the starting points that have been recognised since 1903, when Thomas Edison commented in The Newark Advocate, “The doctor of the future will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” Our medical sciences are advancing with phenomenal alacrity, but it is important not to forget that underpinning health (especially brain health) is a healthy respect for fresh, nourishing food, a balanced diet and a wholesome lifestyle. If a functional medicine perspective on nurturing, nourishing and supporting your brain health and cognitive function is of interest, the time to act is now. Why postpone what could be actioned today? Investing in your brain health and brainspan could just be the wisest decision you will ever make. Please note that these are general nutritional statements. They are not personalised or tailored to account for any existing health imbalances or medical conditions. In these cases, please consult a medical professional or an expert nutritionist or dietitian if you have a particular health or dietary requirement. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Kate Taylor Kate Taylor, Registered Nutritionist Kate is an advocate of proactive and preventative healthcare through optimising and personalising the basics: nutrition, diet, and lifestyle. Kate's experiences watching those around her develop and decline from Dementia instilled in her a mindset of 'prevention is better than cure' and that, particularly when it comes to Brain health and Dementia risk-avoidance, the perception of 'false hopelessness' should not triumph over health optimism. Whilst sensitive to the fact that Brain health and dementia risk avoidance are multifaceted and cannot be solely addressed by nutrition, Kate's professional nutritional aspiration is to empower & inspire people that diet and lifestyle are integral foundations to health, healthspan, and importantly, Brainspan. References: Wei, B-Z., Li, L., Dong, C-W., et al. (2023). The Relationship of Omega-3 Fatty Acids with Dementia and Cognitive Decline: Evidence from Prospective Cohort Studies of Supplementation, Dietary Intake, and Blood Markers. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Sala-Vila, A., Tintle, N.L., Westra, J., et al. (2026). Blood omega-3 is inversely related to risk of early-onset dementia. Clinical Nutrition. DOI: 10.1016/j.clnu.2025.106559 Dighriri, I.M., Alsubaie, A.M., Hakami, F.M., et al. (2022). Effects of Omega-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids on Brain Functions: A Systematic Review. Cureus. DOI: 10.7759/cureus.30091 Kolo, F.B., Lu, S., Beiser, A.S., et al. (2025). Hearing Loss, Brain Structure, Cognition, and Dementia Risk in the Framingham Heart Study. JAMA Network Open. DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.39209 Yu, R-C., Proctor, D., Soni, J., et al. (2024). Adult-onset hearing loss and incident cognitive impairment and dementia: A systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies. Aging Research Reviews. Yeo, B.S.Y., Song, H.J.J.M.D., Toh, E.M.S., et al. (2023). Association of Hearing Aids and Cochlear Implants With Cognitive Decline and Dementia: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JAMA Neurology. DOI: 10.1001/jamaneurol.2022.4427 Wasick, A., and Kim, Y. (2024). Association between the Composition of Drinking Water and Cognitive Function in the Elderly: A Systematic Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph21030362 Cook, G.A., Hodgson, P., and Deary, V. (2024). Think Drink: Feasibility trial of a multicomponent hydration care intervention for people living with dementia in care homes. Clinical Nutrition Open Science. Yegambaram, M., Manivannan, B., Beach, T.G., et al. (2015). Role of environmental contaminants in the etiology of Alzheimer's disease: a review. Current Alzheimer Research. DOI: 10.2174/1567205012666150204121719 Miranda, M., Morici, J.F., Zanoni, M.B., et al. (2019). Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor: A Key Molecule for Memory in the Healthy and the Pathological Brain. Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience. DOI: 10.3389/fncel.2019.00363 Jaberi, S., and Fahnestock, M. (2023). Mechanisms of the Beneficial Effects of Exercise on Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Expression in Alzheimer’s Disease. Biomolecules. Romero Garavito, A., Díaz Martínez, V., Juárez Cortés, E., et al. (2025). Impact of physical exercise on the regulation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in people with neurodegenerative diseases. Frontiers in Neurology. DOI: 10.3389/fneur.2024.1505879 Norouzkhani, N., Afshari, S., Sadatmadani, S.F., et al. (2024). Therapeutic potential of berries in age-related neurological disorders. Frontiers in Pharmacology. DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1348127 Morris, M.C., Wang, Y., Barnes, L.L., et al. (2018). Nutrients and bioactives in green leafy vegetables and cognitive decline: Prospective study. Neurology. DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000004815 Shen, J., Chen, H., Gong, Y., et al. (2026). Association between plant-based diets and incident dementia: results from prospective cohort studies and a meta-analysis. Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease. DOI: 10.1016/j.tjpad.2025.100457 Simmonds, E., Levine, K.S., Han, J., et al. (2025). Sleep disturbances as risk factors for neurodegeneration later in life. npj Dementia. Jiang, K., Callow, D.D., and Spira, A.P. (2026). The role of sleep in dementia prevention: building the case for causality. Sleep. Wang, J., Subramanian, A., Cockburn, N., et al. (2025). Obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome and future risk of dementia among individuals managed in UK general practice. Thorax. Best Rogowski, C.B., Bredell, C., Shi, Y., et al. (2025). Long-term air pollution exposure and incident dementia: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Planetary Health. Liu, X., Sun, X., Wang, X., et al. (2025). Association between indoor musty odors and cognitive impairment among older adults. Scientific Reports. Rivera-Carvajal, R., Tiga-Loza, D.C., Roncancio, D.J., et al. (2026). Association between environmental mold exposure and mild cognitive impairment in older adults: a case–control study. Frontiers in Public Health. DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2026.1877177 Ehsanifar, M., Rajati, R., Gholami, A., et al. (2023). Mold and Mycotoxin Exposure and Brain Disorders. Journal of Integrative Neuroscience. Wei, L., Li, Z., Shi, M., et al. (2025). Neuroprotective properties of extra virgin olive oil polyphenols in Alzheimer’s disease: a multi-target mechanistic review. Frontiers in Nutrition. DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1736633 Cordeiro Simão, V., Paiva Prudente, T., De Prado Lopes Oliveira, A., et al. (2026). Effect of extra virgin olive oil on mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials. Clinical Nutrition ESPEN. Gargouri, B., Zribi, A., and Bouaziz, M. (2015). Effect of containers on the quality of Chemlali olive oil during storage. Journal of Food Science and Technology. DOI: 10.1007/s13197-014-1273-2 Zammit, A.R., Yu, L., Poole, V.N., et al. (2026). Associations of Lifetime Cognitive Enrichment With Incident Alzheimer Disease Dementia, Cognitive Aging, and Cognitive Resilience. Neurology. DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0000000000214677 Almeida-Meza, P., Steptoe, A., and Cadar, D. (2021). Markers of cognitive reserve and dementia incidence in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. The British Journal of Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.2020.54 Zheng, F. (2025). Lifelong learning dimensions and their associations with late-life cognitive decline: moderating roles of socioeconomic status and early life education. Frontiers in Psychology. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1729306 Takeuchi, H., and Kawashima, R. (2023). Effects of adult education on cognitive function and risk of dementia in older adults: a longitudinal analysis. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. DOI: 10.3389/fnagi.2023.1212623 Pettigrew, C., and Soldan, A. (2019). Defining Cognitive Reserve and Implications for Cognitive Aging. Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports, 19(1), 1. DOI: 10.1007/s11910-019-0917-z Choe, U. (2025). Role of dietary fiber and short-chain fatty acids in preventing neurodegenerative diseases through the gut-brain axis. Journal of Functional Foods. De Paiva, I.H.R., Duarte-Silva, E., and Peixoto, C.A. (2025). Remember the gut: The emerging role of microbial SCFAs in cognitive health. Food Bioscience. Huang, Y., Wang, Y.F., Miao, J., et al. (2024). Short-chain fatty acids: Important components of the gut-brain axis against AD. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.

Written by Alissandra Moon, Priestess, Spiritual Alchemist & Soul Coach Priestess Alissandra Moon is a Spiritual Alchemist, Soul Coach & Mentor for Witches. She has co-authored an international bestseller and is a regular guest on Radio, TV, and Podcasts. Founder of Raven Moon Academy of Magick, she is on a mission to heal the world. Someone posts a photo of their new kitten with the caption “Meet my new familiar. Share yours,” and a hundred other people start posting photos of every animal in their family, plus the stray cat, wild bird and occasional rat they leave treats out for. The animal connections we have, especially as Witches, are a beautiful and very special thing. I would never mock them or discourage connecting with our animal kin, especially considering my own deep spiritual connection with birds and other nonhuman people. But the word ‘familiar’ has been stretched so far from its meaning that it now mostly just means a pet “owned” by a Witch. In losing the word’s true meaning, we are also losing one of the oldest and most serious working relationships in the entire craft. A familiar is a spirit. It is an otherworldly intelligence that enters into a working relationship with a practitioner, assists their magick, and acts as an intermediary between the worlds. Sometimes that spirit works through or incarnates into a physical animal, but the spirit is always the familiar, and an animal carrying one is present for the work. The dog asleep on your feet while you cast or meditate is something precious in its own right, but the difference between the two matters far more than the modern community realises. What did a familiar spirit actually mean in the old craft? Go back to the trial records and folk accounts of the early modern period, the closest thing we have to the working craft of ordinary practitioners, and the familiar is unmistakably a spirit. “A Familiar Spirit”. Cunning folk and accused Witches across Britain and Europe described entities that came to them, often at a moment of hardship or need, and entered into ongoing relationships with them. They were there to assist in Magick and what we now call mediumship, kind of like a type of more involved Spirit Guide. These beings appeared in many forms. Frequently as animals: cats, dogs, toads, hares, birds. Sometimes as human figures, and in several famous accounts, as the beloved dead or as beings of the fairy realm. Witnesses described vivid, clearly defined presences, and the relationships had structure: the spirit was met, an agreement was formed, and the relationship was tended over years. The Scottish cunning woman Bessie Dunlop (tried in 1576) described her Familiar as the spirit of a man who’d been dead for decades and had been sent to her from the court of Elfhame (a Faery court). The familiar was not just a companion, it worked! That is one of the bigger defining features across all accounts. Familiars diagnosed illness, located lost things, carried Magick to its target or taught Magick. They gathered information their practitioners could not reach alone, guided them between the worlds, and perhaps most importantly, protected them. Modern scholars like Emma Wilby, in her research into cunning folk and familiar spirits, argue that these accounts reflect a genuine, ancient tradition of spirit alliance rather than an invention of prosecutors, as many of the claims were. The Familiar Spirit is a tradition with deep Shamanic roots in which the practitioner's power was substantially amplified by, or even originated through, the relationship with their spirits. Ultimately, working with a Familiar was close to the very definition of what it meant to be a Witch, yet somehow today that has been forgotten. (Thank you, social media.) There is some dark irony in that history, and it explains a lot about the present confusion. "Witch hunters" treated ordinary animals as familiars. Under laws like the 1604 Witchcraft Act, keeping a familiar spirit was a felony, and any animal living near an accused woman could be presented as evidence against her. Pets were killed alongside their humans, wild animals that lived nearby or had a friendship with a human were slaughtered, and there were even dogs executed around the Salem trials. So the messed-up irony? When we point at a beloved animal and call it a familiar, we are, strangely, closer to the prosecutors' logic than to the practitioners' reality. The big difference is that we do it out of love, though, not cruelty and hysteria. So can an animal ever be a familiar? Yes, and this is where we need to go a little deeper. A familiar spirit can work through a physical animal and, in some cases, fully incarnate into one. It happens. What is actually occurring in those rare cases is that the "spirit" is the Familiar, while the animal is the vessel and intermediary it is working through. That animal has incarnated for that purpose and knows the job they are coming to do. Practitioners who have known a true incarnate familiar describe the same things: an animal that sought them out in circumstances too synchronistic to dismiss, an animal that is unmistakably present and participatory in ritual of its own accord, adding to the ritual and even guiding the Witch. These animals behave in ways ordinary animals simply do not when it comes to Magickal work, and their presence tangibly changes the magick. A physical familiar is basically a magickal working partner wearing feathers, scales or fur. What you cannot do is just appoint one. You can "invite" a deceased pet to work with you as a Familiar spirit and to be bound to you moving forward, but adopting a black cat because you want a familiar and trying to appoint it as one? All that produces is a black cat that is being forced into a role it can’t and shouldn’t have to fill. The role is initiated from the other side, through spirit, and no amount of wishing, naming or aesthetic loads it onto an animal that came into your home to love and be loved. However, they "can" agree to take on more of a protective role than they should. Most animals in practitioners' homes, including the ones that sit with us at the altar, are just family members, and every single one of them deserves to be exactly that. They are attracted to the nice energy that we raise and emit during spiritual practice and like to snuggle with us when we are super calm and relaxed during meditation. Sometimes they will help to heal and protect us energetically and spiritually, but that’s not the same thing. Why should you never want your pet in this role? The biggest reason I felt called to write this is that I’m seeing an increase in people assigning their pets this role and asking the universe for a Familiar in animal form. Although it doesn’t exactly work that way, you need to be aware of the other side of the job, because it’s not pretty. A working familiar stands between its practitioner and what comes to get them. Protection is one of its oldest recorded functions, and any spirit or creature genuinely holding that post takes the hits meant for you. It intercepts harmful energies, absorbs what was aimed at your field, and puts itself in the path of attack, because that is the job. A spirit can hold that. A small animal body cannot, at least not for very long. An animal pressed into genuine protective spiritual service pays for it with their own body, absorbing again and again what was directed at the Witch. In simple terms, taking bullet after bullet for you. Practitioners who work with an animal Familiar have long observed the same grim pattern: the beloved animal cast in the Familiar's role weakens, gets sick, and eventually dies. Often suddenly, well before their time. It’s devastating! Although they knew and chose to take on the role, it doesn’t mean they don’t suffer, and it doesn’t make it any less agonising for us when that time comes. So, when I see someone proudly declaring their darling cat to be their familiar and protector, I do not see a harmless bit of misnaming. I see a person unknowingly asking the creature they love most to stand up and take energetic bullets for them. Love your pet as a pet, a member of your family. Keep it out of the line of fire. If you want protection, learn to protect yourself properly, build your own wards and train your own field. You can also birth a Servitor and work with your other spirit allies. If you want a Familiar, seek one where familiars actually live and are strongest, in the spirit realm. So, how do you get a familiar spirit? Slowly, through dedication and practice, which is exactly why the idea of a shortcut version became so popular. In most cases, Familiars arrive through a good relationship with the otherworld, and it’s mostly "them" who initiate. What you can do is become the kind of Witch a Familiar will want to work with. Dedicated to growth, practice, continued learning and solid virtues. Develop your energetic perception skills and continue to work on them. ’Cause frankly you can’t work with a spirit you can’t perceive, and you certainly can’t tell a beneficial one from a parasite without trained discernment (which is its own essential skill and the reason spirit work sits further along the path, rather than at the start). Learn to make contact safely, in proper containers, with protocols for testing what you meet. Tend any relationship that forms the way the old practitioners did, with respect, offerings, and a commitment to upholding your end of the agreements. Essentially, just build an honest, reciprocal relationship over years. It’s not like rubbing a magic lamp and getting all your wishes granted. It’s a two-way street. A familiar earned that way is one of the most powerful alliances a Witch can have, second only to her Ancestors and Matron/Patron Deity. Yes, you can do spells and rituals to petition for one, but it’s nowhere near as powerful or rewarding. It’s like earning an award versus begging for one to be given to you or, worse still, stealing one. "Big" difference. So, for those who like to skim and skip to the end, here’s the summary: the precious animal on your lap is family. The Familiar is a powerful spirit who is bound to the Witch, and begging, cutting corners or trying to force the job upon your beloved animal companion is not the way to go about getting one. Busting myths, undoing the damage caused by the “InstaWitch ademic”, along with teaching the discernment and skills required to navigate the marvellous world of magick safely, is exactly the kind of deep, structured craft training Raven Moon Academy was built for. If you want to take a peek into our world, check out our virtual Coven: The Wise Witch Society. Follow me on Facebook or visit my website! Read more from Alissandra Moon Alissandra Moon, Priestess, Spiritual Alchemist & Soul Coach Priestess Alissandra Moon is a world-renowned Healer, Coach, and witch who specialises in Shadow Work, Magickal Mentorship, and transformational Coaching. Obsessed with personal and spiritual development, she has more qualifications than any one human needs. Alissandra is extremely passionate about animal welfare, and Raven Moon Academy is the official Supporter of Animals in Australia. Determined to make Magick & Paganism mainstream, with self-awareness, empowerment, healing, and compassion becoming the new normal. Alissandra calls for the lightworkers to unite for a common cause to make the world a better place!

Written by Sandra Merula, Mental Health Coach & Neurodiversity Mentor Sandra Merula is a Mental Health & Life Coach, author of “ADHD and Autism: The ‘Together’ People,” working as a mentor with autism, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and co-occurring autism and ADHD (AuDHD), as well as trauma and narcissistic abuse recovery. She is known for her direct, unique approach with a cat-assisted philosophy. Abuse can reshape our understanding of love, safety, identity, and even ourselves, making chaos feel familiar and peace feel foreign. This deeply personal journey explores the hidden patterns of trauma, coercion, addiction to familiar pain, and the slow, difficult process of reclaiming a life beyond abuse. Part I: I couldn’t just leave, I was looking for a ‘why?’ Before an abuser can successfully cross your boundaries, someone else has to convince you that you do not deserve to have any. For those of us raised by a "Shadow Puppeteer," we grow up performing for a phantom audience. You spend your life feeling watched, criticized, and relentlessly measured against an impossible standard, scrubbing a museum-clean house to appease a ghost with a permanent cringe on her face. When your identity is systematically dismantled before it can even bloom, it leaves a very specific kind of void. As Evan Rachel Wood, whose story I resonate with so profoundly, highlighted in her own survival story, “That piece of me that was stolen. I felt a piece of me disappear, a piece that has never returned.” But the tragedy of the original abuser is that they set the baseline for what feels like home. They wire your nervous system to equate anxiety with connection and danger with love. When you are raised in a psychological warzone, silence feels like sensory deprivation, peace equals painful boredom, and being alone is like a punishment you once more did nothing to get. That is exactly how predators bypass the gates. Part II: Filthy shades of red flags Predators rarely announce themselves as a threat, they introduce themselves as a manufactured coincidence. “Do you know what they actually say A Miracle is? The Gods' Mistake.” After a lifetime of baseline chaos, I experienced genuine, unprompted peace. Yes, I was stupid enough to announce it. I still got it popping out each year on Facebook as a memory, “Happy With No Reason,” headline of a simple selfie, simple, that felt like a miracle. Two days later, he appeared. He didn't overpower my threat-detection system, he disarmed it by playing the safe, sweet, slightly awkward confidant. What I didn't realize was that he was running a diagnostic on my vulnerabilities. He waited for the trauma bond to cement, waited until I was completely psychologically dependent on his presence, before he changed the rules of engagement. I call him the “Aristocratic Abuser.” He never raised his voice. He never threw a punch in the living room. He didn’t have to. He found a socially acceptable, easily disguised arena–intimacy–to release his rage and his need for absolute domination. He weaponized my own history of trauma, recreating it under the guise of "upgraded exploration," and issued an ultimatum: Are you in, or are you out? When you are deeply hooked to an abuser, 'out' feels like death. Because there were no accidental bruises to cover up, I lived in a paralyzing cognitive dissonance. “He took and took from me until I no longer existed. That's murder.” There will be a separate manifesto and a book dedicated to this story, my story, my side of it, as unfortunately it is the only real one, with witnesses and proof. So I will not get into it much this time, as this manifesto is about how we get into messes like this and what is fundamentally wrong from the very beginning. When I finally left, I was–I wasn’t. There was no one there. No identity, no character, no color in my eyes–a robotic avatar that decided to run away into work and another addiction instead of dealing with that one. One day, I saw that Vilnius University was inviting women who had survived physical and psychological abuse for a clinical interview. I reached out. They initially rejected me. "You weren't physically beaten," they said. "It's not physical violence." I asked them if they were out of their minds. I fought to make them understand that sexual coercion and hijacked trauma are even more than physical abuse. They finally agreed to sit down with me for a four-hour interview. On April 27, 2021, the Psychotraumatology Center handed me their official clinical conclusion: Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), severe depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. The scientific instruments (ITQ, PHQ-9, GAD-7) didn't care that I didn't have black eyes to photograph. The clinical data proved exactly what my body already knew: covert abuse shatters the nervous system way more violently than a fist, and the consequences–well, can you fix something so broken that not only are there scratches and bruises in places no one can reach, the parts are missing, and you can’t buy them anywhere as they're out of stock for a good while now, but even the best handyman said I need a miracle. Part III: Something like Dolce L'Imperatore, Eau de Toilette When you finally break the bond with profound abusers, the withdrawal is agonizing. You don't know how to exist in the quiet. You crave the pain, the familiar pinch of chaos even though you were praying for peace and safety. In my case, I thought I was already more than well. It’s been years since I left the aristocratic cell, which I now know isn't even enough time to start properly forgetting. This summer, I was only months after I realized who my primary abuser was, the "Shadow Puppeteer." It felt like the wound had opened much wider than it ever had, so the addiction to pain was back. I started to feel cravings again. The worst part, I had no idea. If my primary abuser was an exquisite, ruinous boutique perfume, and my second was an outdated, heavy classic you tolerate out of habit that reminds you of home, the third was something like Dolce Toilet Water: easy to find, plays by the regular book, so expect nothing special, a quick dopamine hit that fades away too fast. He was not a mastermind or a terrifying monster, he was a mix of a coward and a child, afraid of the dark, playing the villain to hide his own insecurities and weakness. Like a fishbone stuck in the throat, he wasn't lethal, just a constant, nagging “hot’n’cold.” I call him Puddin because Joker became like that at first, around Harley, after she turned into an unstoppable bad guy and a queen of the Joker himself. Besides, and this is useful, we often look at the Harley Quinn dynamic and wonder why a brilliant, highly educated professional would knowingly run toward glaring red flags. The answer lies in the neurobiology of trauma. That was the first thing no one saw about Dr. Harleen Quinzel (Suicide Squad 2016). A healthy nervous system would never allow someone to act or speak with such blatant toxicity, but I did. My nervous system allowed it because his brand of chaos reminded me of the cell. He was a substitute drug to take the edge off the withdrawal that was much stronger than I ever felt. I was a few months into No Contact with the primary abuser. But you cannot fix someone else's brokenness by using it to feed your own addiction. When I stopped needing the “dose,” the illusion of his power evaporated. But I do care for that wounded child, no one takes care of him, and that is closer to home. P.S. While writing this part, I realized I must add something. There was one attempt to trust a Puddin after decoding my mother, but after leaving the Aristocratic circus and before the "Shadow Puppeteer," there were a few attempts too, and yes, all the endings were a copy-paste. That is how drawn I was to one more dose. Part IV: “Look what you made me do!” When your mind refuses to stop seeking validation from a void, your body has to intervene. For years, I tried to outwork my original abuser's erasure of my existence. I worked relentless hours, bought a house, traveled every weekend, wrote a book on neurodiversity, and built an entire psychological methodology, only to watch her use my unread book as a prop for her friends while simultaneously telling me my AuDHD was made up. No matter what I did, it never was enough. Even when I managed to do well, she had one card to use on me to remind me I was far from perfect, using it each time she needed to shut me up or knew I would get upset over it, over and over again so she could get her pleasure if she mentioned my appearance. The thing is, I was never happy with how I looked. I had her as a reminder of what could always be better. Right after I left the Aristocratic Funhouse, my body realized that my mind was going to starve it to death by all means, so it built literal physical armor, holding onto weight as a psychological shield. When I still wouldn't stop, my nervous system pulled the ultimate emergency brake, the chronic, underlying terror of never being enough accelerated into Type 1 Narcolepsy. I was passing out mid-bite and sleeping for seventeen hours straight in a hospital because my body was desperately trying to force me to do the one thing my abuser would guilt-trip and shame me for: rest. If it wasn’t enough, I started to start healing, so I wanted to leave the house less and less, and after getting a Narcolepsy diagnosis, here I am. So far, I haven't left the house in almost a year. To the outside world, the aftermath of C-PTSD can look like Agoraphobia. But what looks like a prison is actually the body’s ultimate fortress. I didn't lock myself away, I shut the drawbridge. I provided my nervous system an airtight, biologically undeniable reason to keep the beasts outside the fences. But only these results of such self-sabotaging behaviour and actual fear for my own life made me realise something everybody saw for decades. I was told for years and years by, well, every person not fully affected by her poison, that our ‘relationship’ is something sick and impossible to understand. So now, proving its point of saving itself, my body started to relax. I’m losing weight, my health is getting better, learning to live with and control narcolepsy. But even so, without leaving the house, the ability to travel, working much less, I am again, in my own way, on my own level and speed, “Happy with no reason,” even though there is a reason that is very hard to explain. Part V: "You wouldn't last a second in the asylum where they raised me"? So I might as well own it. Six years after the Aristocratic Predator, and nearly a year after deleting the “Shadow Puppeteer” from my life, the poison is finally draining out. Slowly, very resistantly, but I can feel the memories of happiness again. There is the grief, of course. That one never leaves. There is a lot of frustration in the Narcolepsy: daytime exhaustion, mistakes at work, the missed appointments, the nighttime insomnia and hallucinations, robotic, pretty insane-looking behavior, and the attacks, the Cataplexy. But in the quiet of a house that no longer has to be a museum for a phantom audience, there is also absolute, undeniable liberation. I was so smashed all over the place at first, relieved, happy, sad, mad, angry, tired. I finally felt I could be tired, and then so many things hit at once I couldn’t separate them. I realized I not only was raised by the abuser, but she took away my mother. I would always say I never had a proper father. Now I understood it all: no man stays a man with someone like that, let alone being a father, grandfather, friend, or a human. Now, we talk, he visits, we even have an actual dialogue. I know it can be hard to understand, but we cherish these realizations deeply. Another thing that hit me was understanding that being a piece of shit forever, being reminded of how bad of an everything I am, all those emotions I was allowed and not allowed to feel, the persona I would become to please her–all of that was the reason for me being addicted to addictions. I would blame my AuDHD for that. Before the diagnosis, all the blame would go to me for being a fuck up and to my father for the genetics of addiction, even though she has them plenty too, but who would ever blame the queen. Even now, when most of the family members know the whole story, she still is that queen, holding the whole family by the balls of fear. But I don’t have to watch it anymore, and it is a sense of freedom impossible to describe. I can finally breathe with full lungs. I never knew air tasted so good! “Then say they didn't do it to hurt me. But what if they did?” I know I have a path to cross and so many more lessons to learn, but also knowledge to gain and pass along. The fact that I can help survivors or wanna-be-survivors now is extreme, it’s precious and priceless. To get a message from a client years later that they are doing great, healing, being in a loving and healthy relationship, a trauma that becomes a tool, an inspiration to find more tools, it puts sense into that suffering. A note about monsters and labels A diagnosis is not a prerequisite for recognising abuse. You do not need to know whether someone has NPD, antisocial personality disorder, childhood trauma, attachment issues, insecurity, abandonment wounds, or an impressive collection of psychological explanations to know that coercion is coercion, manipulation is manipulation, cruelty is cruelty, and abuse is abuse. Yes, sometimes the person really is a monster. Not because they have been given the correct psychiatric label. Not because a DSM page says so. But because of what they repeatedly choose to do to another human being. I am not interested in teaching people to diagnose strangers. I am interested in teaching them to recognise what happens when somebody repeatedly makes you smaller, quieter, frightened, confused, dependent, ashamed, or responsible for their behaviour. You can understand why somebody became what they became without volunteering to become their next victim. That distinction matters. Because explanations can be useful. Excuses are not. I have rebuilt myself so many times from the ashes of other people's wars. I am going to do it again. Let's see what version of the Phoenix we get out of this one! Love, S. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Sandra Merula Sandra Merula, Mental Health Coach & Neurodiversity Mentor Sandra Merula is a Mental Health & Life Coach, author of “ADHD and Autism. The ‘Together’ People,” working as a mentor at the intersection of autism, ADHD, trauma, and power dynamics. A neurodivergent thinker herself, she challenges rigid diagnostic narratives and explores identity beyond labels. Her work blends structure with intuition, psychology with depth, and clarity with unapologetic honesty. Through her writing and cat-assisted philosophy, she invites individuals to rebuild identity consciously, not obediently.

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". Some of the most confusing passages in the biblical creation account appear in Genesis 2:1-8, leading some scholars to propose that it is a second creation account.[1] However, as I propose in The Magnificence of the 3, these verses may instead preserve, parabolically, profound insights into brain development.[2] Behind these verses, I found three significant elements of neurological design: The first example of neurological epigenetic design. A neurological safeguard: sleep or rest. A symbolic representation of the Bible’s first scientific expression of “memory.” These three elements led me to a deeper question: How could a biblical practice preserve a memory across generations without being encoded directly in DNA? To explore that possibility, I turned to the relatively new field of epigenetics. What is epigenetics? Epigenetics is a relatively new field of science. Although complex, its basic principles helped me develop a claim about the scientific meaning of one controversial biblical commandment. It is well established that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) carries inherited genetic information, including traits such as eye and hair color and aspects of facial development, and passes it forward. Epigenetics, however, examines how environmental and behavioral factors can influence gene expression without altering the underlying DNA sequence.[3] For example, researchers studying C. elegans exposed the worms to harmful bacteria. Their descendants later avoided the bacteria despite never being exposed to it, suggesting that an environmentally induced response can be transmitted across generations through what is now known as epigenetics, without altering the underlying DNA.[4] Beyond the worm studies, researchers have found that descendants of people exposed to severe trauma, including genocide, can exhibit altered stress and anxiety responses associated with their ancestors’ experiences.[5] Stress and anxiety may affect descendants who have never experienced a genocide themselves. In simple terms, it appears that repeated experiences connected to survival may influence the brain and, in some circumstances, potentially affect biological responses across generations through epigenetic mechanisms. Coming across this field helped me understand one of the Bible’s most controversial commandments. In the Second Commandment, God warns that He would punish descendants of an idol-worshipping parent to the third and fourth generations.[6] This raises a legitimate question: Why would a fair, merciful, and loving God punish innocent children for their fathers’ sins? Epigenetics offers a possible way to understand the commandment’s parabolic meaning. Rather than a display of authoritarian power, it preserves a warning about another aspect of brain design: repeated behaviors can strengthen neural pathways associated with survival and influence subsequent generations. If idol worship became a repeated cultural behavior, its effects could potentially be carried forward for generations. What the Bible presented as a generational consequence, science now gives us a possible framework for examining through epigenetics. The epigenetic memory of God in the Sabbath law This brings us to the Law of the Sabbath. After the six days of creation, God rested on the seventh day, blessed it, and made it holy.[7] When the Ten Commandments (Tree of Life) were issued later, God mandated the seventh day as the Sabbath, a day of rest for parents, children, servants, animals, and strangers living among us.[8] While searching for clues as to whether God left an imprint in the DNA of His Image and Likeness as He did with the atom, I came across several scholarly works, such as Dr. Dean Hamer’s "The God Gene", which claims that an inclination to religious faith is due to our genetic makeup. However, I propose that our inability to find irrefutable scientific evidence of God embedded in human DNA may be explained by epigenetic design. This may have been the purpose behind the Law of the Sabbath. It was meant to keep the memory of God alive through cultural practice and potentially pass that memory forward epigenetically. The more frequently a behavior is practiced, the more its neural pathways are reinforced. It is the same for the idol-worshipping parent, and God warned of the danger to descendants because He designed the brain to pass memories accepted by the brain as useful for survival. The law of the Sabbath and free will Understanding this design suggests that perhaps a “God gene” has not been found because God’s memory was never meant to be genetically hardwired. God does want us to know Him, but there is an element of free will attached to the plan. If the Law of the Sabbath was designed to preserve memories of the Creator, then it also preserves the freedom to choose, unlike a hypothetical God-DNA sequence that would biologically link everyone to God. In my view, the epigenetic design leaves each person free to choose whether to follow the Creator by honoring the Sabbath. The same applies to the idol worshipper, which is why God left the warning in the Commandment. The design seems to suggest that knowing God is not a fundamental right per se, but a privilege earned for survival purposes. By dedicating one day of rest to honor God, we keep His memory alive. Since God designed the brain with plasticity to adapt through experiences, this enables descendants of idol worshippers to adjust and return to God of their own free will.[9] I propose that the Law of the Sabbath was designed to strengthen memories epigenetically, rather than as a case about honoring God alone. Brain rest and memory formation To be clear, there was only one creation. Genesis 2:1-4 establishes that creation was done, and God rested on the seventh day. However, verses 5-6 record something that was not included in the first six days of creation: a mist that first watered the ground. “No shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground; but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.”[10] These verses have contributed to claims that Genesis contains two creation accounts. I propose, however, that placing the “mist” immediately after God rested was intentional and denoted three things: The first biblical expression of what we now associate with memory. The connection between rest and memory. The importance of the “mist” in the design of Earth. Genesis is a record of first instances. Therefore, I propose that Genesis 2:1-6 preserves the Bible’s first symbolic connection between rest and memory. Although the “mist” might seem more appropriate in the first chapter, its appearance immediately after God rested may be precisely what gives the passage its significance. Here are a few reasons rest and sleep act as safeguards in maintaining the brain: Sleep supports the formation and storage of long-term memory. A lack of sleep impairs cognition, especially memory.[11] Furthermore, sleep gives the brain a chance to clean itself by flushing away waste products built up during the day.[12] After three days without sleep, a person may experience delusions, paranoia, psychosis, and cognitive impairments.[13] These are just a few examples of what I suggest was behind the inclusion of the Sabbath in the overall design of the human brain. Sleep allows the brain to maintain and restore its structure by cleaning it. The Sabbath was not simply about honoring God, but about ensuring that people rest so the brain can clean itself and, while doing so, create a memory of the Creator and pass it forward. The key, for me, is the connection between God’s rest and remembrance of the “mist.” He was so busy that He forgot to add it in the first chapter. By remembering after He rested, the passage symbolically connects “rest” to the formation and preservation of long-term “memory.” The fact that even God had to rest reinforces the principle’s importance. This was the first case of scientific/biblical memory recorded and of epigenetic design.[14] “… Overall, this book is more than a philosophical treatise; it challenges readers to reconsider the links between knowledge, morality, and existence, making it an enlightening read for anyone interested in the fusion of science and spirituality. Very highly recommended.” – Readers' Favorite Editorial Review: 5 STARS 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] Halvorson-Taylor, n.d. [2] Taumua, 2023, pp. 500-07 [3] Associates, 2019 [4] Duddy, 2020 [5] Curry, 2005 [6] Exodus 20:5-6 (NKJV) [7] Genesis 2:2-3 (NKJV) [8] Exodus 20:8-11 (NKJV) [9] Taumua, 2023, pp. 500-508 [10] Genesis 2:5-6 (Hebrew English Version (HEV)) [11] Blumberg, Dragoi, & Mazure, 2022 [12] Team N. E., 2026 [13] Vandergriendt, 2018 [14] However, the significance of the “mist” will be explored in the third book of the series.

Written by Nadija Bajrami, Strategic Hypnotherapist & Mind Coach Nadija is a multi-award-winning trauma and empowerment specialist with a double diploma in hypnotherapy, mind coaching, and online therapy. She is also a Reiki Master and a grief educator, and she has been trained by international grief specialist and best-selling author David Kessler. Nadija is also an end-of-life doula. What if I told you that one of the most powerful tools you will ever have is something you already possess, costs nothing and goes everywhere with you? Your breath. We breathe thousands of times every day, yet most of us rarely stop to notice how we are breathing. We take this incredible resource for granted because it happens automatically. But when we become conscious of our breath, it can become far more than a biological necessity. It can become an anchor, a pause, a reset and a powerful tool for navigating life's challenges. The best part? It is completely free. Your breath is always available We often look outside ourselves for tools to help us feel calmer, more grounded or more in control. We download apps, buy gadgets, search for solutions and wait for the perfect circumstances. Yet one of our most accessible resources is already within us. Your breath is available when you're stuck in traffic, preparing for an important meeting, walking into a difficult conversation, feeling overwhelmed or lying awake with a mind that refuses to switch off. Breathing on its own is not a magic cure, and it does not replace appropriate medical or psychological support. But conscious breathing can be a wonderfully simple complementary practice that helps us reconnect with ourselves and create space before we respond. Sometimes, that space is exactly what we need. When life speeds up, slow your breath down Have you noticed what happens to your breathing when you are stressed? It may become quicker and shallower. Your shoulders rise, your jaw tightens and your whole body can feel as though it is preparing for something. This is where conscious breathing can become a valuable tool. Try gently breathing in through your nose for four counts and slowly breathing out for six. Repeat five times. Do not force the breath. Do not try to take the biggest breath possible. Simply make the exhale slightly longer and allow your breathing to become slower and more comfortable. As you breathe, remind yourself: “I can pause. I can breathe. I can choose how I respond.” Use your breath before you react Imagine receiving a message that immediately triggers you. Your first instinct might be to respond immediately. Instead, create a new habit: Read. Pause. Breathe. Choose. Then respond. Taking three conscious breaths can create a tiny gap between the event and your reaction. That gap matters. It does not mean ignoring your emotions or pretending everything is fine. It simply gives you an opportunity to respond from a more grounded place instead of allowing an automatic reaction to take the wheel. That is empowerment. A breath for confidence Breathing can also become part of your preparation for situations that make you nervous. Before an interview, presentation, examination, difficult conversation or public speaking engagement, take a few moments for yourself. Try this: Inhale for four counts. Exhale for six counts. Repeat five times. Then tell yourself: “I can feel nervous and still move forward.” You do not have to eliminate nerves to be confident. Sometimes confidence is simply knowing that you can experience an uncomfortable feeling without allowing it to stop you. Your breath can become part of your personal toolbox. A breath for overwhelm When life feels overwhelming, our instinct can be to try to solve everything immediately. But sometimes we do not need another solution. We need a pause. Place one hand gently on your abdomen and notice your breathing. Then breathe in comfortably through your nose and slowly breathe out. With each exhale, imagine releasing a little of the tension you are carrying. You might silently say: “Inhale: I receive. Exhale: I release.” Repeat for several breaths. You are not trying to make every problem disappear. You are simply giving yourself room to breathe while you navigate it. A breath for rest How many times have you gone to bed exhausted, only for your brain to suddenly remember every conversation, responsibility and random thought it possibly can? Instead of fighting your thoughts, bring your attention gently back to your breath. Allow your breathing to become slow and comfortable. Focus on the sensation of each inhale and exhale. If your thoughts wander, that is absolutely fine. Simply return to your breath. There is no need to perform this perfectly. Your only job is to notice and breathe. Make breathing part of your everyday toolbox Do not wait until you are overwhelmed to discover the power of your breath. Practise when you already feel relatively calm. Take three minutes each morning or evening. Sit comfortably. Relax your shoulders. Unclench your jaw. Notice your natural breathing. Then gently breathe in and slowly breathe out. That is it. Three minutes. No equipment. No subscription. No complicated routine. Just you and your breath. The more familiar you become with conscious breathing when life is calm, the easier it can be to remember it when life becomes challenging. You already have the tool We cannot control everything that happens around us. Life will still surprise us. Plans will change. Difficult conversations will happen. Challenges will appear. But we can build resources that help us meet those moments differently. Our breath is one of them. It can remind us to pause when we want to rush, soften when we are tense, reconnect when we feel disconnected and create space when everything feels too much. So, the next time life feels as though it is moving at a hundred miles an hour, stop. Take a breath. Then another. Feel your feet on the ground. Remember that you don't need to have everything figured out before taking your next step. Sometimes the most powerful tool isn't something you need to find. Sometimes, it is something you have been carrying with you all along. Your breath is free. Your breath is yours. You can start using its power today. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info. Read more from Nadija Bajrami Nadija Bajrami, Strategic Hypnotherapist & Mind Coach French by birth, Nadija lived in Scotland for seven years and travelled the world. After recovering from some serious health issues, Nadija had a wake-up call and came to Ireland to find her path. She has been living in Dublin since 2017. Nadija works mostly online worldwide and shares her time between Ireland, France, and Switzerland. Nadija is a multi-award-winning trauma and empowerment specialist with a double diploma in hypnotherapy, mind coaching, and online therapy. She is also a Reiki Master and a grief educator, and she has been trained by international grief specialist and best-selling author David Kessler. Nadija is also an end-of-life doula. She is dedicated to helping her clients get empowered, supercharge their confidence and self-esteem, overcome their limiting beliefs, and manage anxiety and trauma responses. She also helps people on their grief and healing journeys through her therapy, coaching, grief education and support programmes, and spiritual work.