Written by Cristina Max, Founder of 110 Yoga & Creator of the 110 Method Cristina Max is the founder of 110 Yoga and creator of the 110 Method, a movement re-education approach challenging the outdated belief that stretching is the answer to tightness and pain. She teaches people to restore the relationship between their ribs and pelvis to address the root cause of movement dysfunction, not simply chase the symptoms. Your ribcage and pelvis do not work in isolation. Understanding how they interact can improve your posture, breathing, stability, and movement while helping you address the underlying causes of recurring tightness. Your ribcage and pelvis are connected When people think about posture or alignment, they often focus on individual body parts. “Pull your shoulders back.” “Tuck your pelvis.” “Lengthen your spine.” But your body doesn’t work in isolated pieces. One of the most important relationships I teach is the relationship between your ribcage and your pelvis. These two areas influence how your spine, hips, shoulders, core, and breath work together. When they are organized well, movement becomes more efficient. When they are disconnected, other areas of the body often have to pick up the slack. This is one reason I stopped looking at tightness as simply a flexibility problem. What does it mean to stack your ribs over your pelvis? You’ve probably heard the cue, “Stack your ribs over your pelvis.” But what does that actually mean? It doesn’t mean forcing your ribs down, tucking your pelvis under, or holding your body in one rigid position. It means creating a relationship between your ribcage and pelvis in which your body can move, breathe, and create stability without constantly fighting itself. Think of your ribcage and pelvis as two major points of organization. When they are excessively shifted away from each other, the rest of your body has to adapt. Your lower back might extend more. Your hip flexors might work harder. Your shoulders might become more involved. Your abdominal muscles might brace. Your breathing can change. The body finds a way to keep moving, but that doesn’t mean every part is contributing equally. Why does this relationship matter so much? Your ribcage houses your lungs and plays a major role in breathing. Your pelvis is the foundation for your hips and connects your lower body to your spine. They are constantly interacting. When you change the position of your pelvis, you change the position of your spine and ribcage. When your ribcage shifts, your spine and pelvis have to respond. This relationship affects how you stand, walk, bend, balance, reach, and practice yoga. That’s why I don’t want people to think about alignment as simply making a pose look “right.” Alignment is about how the body is organized so it can actually do something. What happens when your ribcage and pelvis aren’t working together? Your body will always find a way to accomplish the movement. You can still touch your toes. You can still lift your arms. You can still do a deep lunge or a backbend. But if your ribcage and pelvis aren’t working together, you might rely on other areas to create the stability you need. This is where people often start chasing the wrong problem. Your hamstrings feel tight, so you stretch them. Your lower back feels tight, so you stretch your hips. Your shoulders feel restricted, so you stretch your chest. But if the underlying organization of your body hasn’t changed, the same sensations can keep showing up. Your breath is part of the equation This is also where breathing becomes important. Your diaphragm sits beneath your lungs, attaches to the lower part of your ribcage, and works with the muscles around your trunk to help manage pressure and support movement. Your breathing isn’t separate from your posture. Your ribcage has to move for you to breathe, and the way your body is positioned influences how that movement happens. When you constantly remain in a position where your ribcage is lifted or your pelvis is disconnected beneath it, breathing can become part of the compensation. This doesn’t mean every posture problem is a breathing problem. It means breathing is part of the system, and it deserves to be considered when we talk about alignment and stability. We’ll go much deeper into that in the next article. Stop thinking about alignment as “perfect posture” One of the biggest misconceptions about alignment is that there is one perfect position you should hold all day. That isn’t what I teach. Your body needs to move. Your ribs need to move. Your pelvis needs to move. Your spine needs to move. The goal is not to freeze yourself into perfect alignment. The goal is to understand how your body organizes itself and develop the ability to move from a more supported position. That’s a very different approach from constantly correcting individual body parts. Start paying attention to your ribcage and pelvis The next time you practice yoga, stand, or move through your day, notice the relationship between your ribs and pelvis. Are your ribs constantly lifted forward? Does your pelvis feel like it is tucked underneath you? Do you hold your breath when you are trying to create stability? Do you feel like certain muscles have to grip to keep you in a position? You don’t need to immediately fix anything. Start by noticing. Once you understand the relationship between your ribcage and pelvis, you have a completely different lens through which to look at movement. That's the foundation of the 110 Method. The way you move matters At 110 Yoga, we look beyond the shape of a pose and focus on how the body is actually organizing itself within the movement. Because when you understand the relationship between your ribcage, pelvis, breath, and stability, you stop chasing symptoms and start understanding the system. The way you move matters. Follow me on Instagram and visit my website for more info! Read more from Cristina Max Cristina Max, Founder of 110 Yoga & Creator of the 110 Method Cristina Max is the founder of 110 Yoga and creator of the 110 Method, an alignment-based approach to movement re-education. After years of teaching and personally experiencing the cycle of stretching, injuries, and recurring tightness, Cristina began questioning the conventional approach to tightness and pain. Her work focuses on restoring the relationship between the ribs and the pelvis, building stability, and improving breathing mechanics rather than stretching tight areas. Through the 110 Method, she helps people understand the root causes of tightness and pain rather than chasing symptoms. She wants to help change how people understand their bodies so they can perform better and feel their best. Reference: Stretching Is an Outdated Band-Aid for Chronic Tightness and Pain: What Your Body Actually Needs to Change

Shannon Kenrick-Rochon is a Canadian nurse practitioner, healthcare founder, researcher, and academic leader whose work focuses on rethinking how healthcare uses its people, technology, and clinical resources. Through Prosper Health, Move Medicine, and her academic work, she has built and tested care models that challenge traditional assumptions about professional roles, team-based care, and how capacity is created. In this interview, she explores why healthcare's capacity crisis cannot be solved through recruitment alone and why meaningful reform requires health systems to rethink how care is actually designed. Shannon Kenrick-Rochon, Healthcare Systems Innovator & Entrepreneur What first made you realize that healthcare's capacity problem was also a systems design problem? For me, it came from watching the same problem repeat itself in different parts of healthcare. We would identify a capacity issue, and the solution was almost always some version of "we need more people." More physicians, more nurses, more funding for another position. At the same time, I was watching highly trained clinicians spend huge amounts of time doing work that did not require their level of training, while other healthcare professionals were not being used anywhere near the full extent of their skills. That disconnect became very hard to ignore. Healthcare absolutely has real workforce shortages, particularly in rural, remote, and underserved regions like Northern Ontario, but this is not uniquely a Canadian problem. Hiring more people into a poorly designed system does not automatically create better access. Sometimes, it simply makes an inefficient system larger and more expensive. I started asking different questions: What actually needs to happen for this patient? Who is qualified to do each part? What can be standardized or automated? Where is advanced clinical judgment genuinely required? Those questions led me away from thinking only about workforce numbers and toward system design. What have Prosper Health and Move Medicine taught you about building care models differently from the ground up? The biggest lesson has been not to start with traditional job descriptions. Start with the patient journey and work backward. What information do we need? What requires clinical assessment? What requires prescribing? What can be addressed through education, monitoring, rehabilitation, or follow-up? Then decide who on the team is best positioned to do each part. In healthcare, we often do the opposite. We inherit a structure, usually one built around historic funding models and professional roles, and then try to fit patients into it. With Prosper Health and Move Medicine, I have had the opportunity to test what happens when you design the workflow first and then build the team around it. That means creating systems where healthcare professionals are working within their competence and authorized scope, with clear pathways for escalation when a patient requires a different level of expertise. It has also taught me that a model is not innovative if it only works because everyone is overfunctioning. Better care should improve access for patients while also making the work more sustainable for the people delivering it. How has working as a clinician, founder, researcher, and academic changed the way you approach healthcare reform? Those roles make it almost impossible for me to look at healthcare reform from only one perspective. As a clinician, I ask whether something will work with a real patient. As a founder, I ask whether it is sustainable. Research forces me to separate evidence from enthusiasm, and academia makes me think about preparing future clinicians for a very different system. Some of my most important leadership lessons have also come from outside healthcare. The Homeward Bound STEMM leadership expedition to Antarctica reinforced the value of diverse expertise and perspectives, as well as challenging assumptions. Volunteering in youth sport through coaching, team roles, and board governance in hockey and fastball has shown me how strongly systems determine who gets opportunities, whose voice is heard, and whether good people can succeed. Across those settings, I have become skeptical of models that depend on committed people compensating for poor design. We often call that resilience. I am more interested in building systems where people can do excellent work without extraordinary personal sacrifice because if a model is not sustainable for the people delivering it, eventually it fails the people it is meant to serve. Where do you see healthcare professionals being most underused because of outdated roles or workflows? I think we underuse people throughout the system because we still organize care around rigid ideas about professional roles. Nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, physiotherapists, chiropractors, social workers, and other healthcare professionals often have more capability than the workflows around them allow them to use. At the same time, physicians and advanced practice clinicians spend significant time on routine information gathering, repetitive education, administrative work, or follow-up that could safely happen elsewhere in a well-designed team. Using people to their full capability also requires genuine knowledge of and respect for our colleagues' expertise. It cannot become a conversation about replacing one profession with a cheaper one. I do not believe a nurse practitioner should be viewed as a discounted version of a physician. If I competently perform the same defined clinical task, an injection, for example, the value of that service does not decrease because a nurse practitioner performed it. Where appropriately qualified clinicians deliver the same service to the same standard and carry comparable responsibility, the work should not be artificially discounted because of professional title. Once scope discussions become professional turf wars, objectivity disappears. The focus has to remain on competence, accountability, patient need, and the value of the work. Which parts of healthcare should artificial intelligence handle so clinicians can focus more on judgment and human connection? I want artificial intelligence (AI) handling the work around the clinical encounter that does not require a clinician to be the one doing it. Healthcare professionals spend an enormous amount of time finding information, organizing it, documenting it, transferring it between systems, and recreating work that has already been done somewhere else. That is a very expensive use of clinical time. There is real opportunity in chart preparation, documentation support, routine patient education, data extraction, quality improvement, workflow tracking, summarizing information, and administrative triage. I use AI heavily in my own work, but I am very clear about where I think the boundary needs to be. Clinical judgment, uncertainty, consent, complex risk-benefit discussions, and the human parts of care still matter enormously. A patient does not only need information. Sometimes they need someone to notice that the story does not quite fit, to ask another question, or to understand what is not being said. AI should create more room for that. I am not interested in using technology to remove clinicians from care. I am interested in removing work that keeps clinicians from actually practising. What is the first workflow problem you look for when a clinic is struggling with capacity? I usually look at what the clinician is doing before I assume the clinic needs another clinician. If the most highly trained person in the workflow is spending the first ten minutes of every appointment searching for records, confirming medications, collecting information that could have been gathered earlier, or arranging routine next steps, there is probably a design problem before there is a staffing problem. I also look at how often the same information is being collected and how many handoffs a task goes through. Healthcare creates a surprising amount of work by making the same patient tell the same story multiple times or by having several people touch a task before anyone actually completes it. Most struggling clinics are not short on busy people. Everyone is already busy. The question is whether the work is happening at the right point in the pathway and with the right person. Sometimes, the fastest way to create capacity is to redesign everything that happens before and after the clinician enters the encounter. That protects clinical time for the decisions that actually require that level of expertise. How can interdisciplinary teams expand access without simply adding more people to the system? Putting several professions in the same building does not automatically create interdisciplinary care. I have seen plenty of "teams" where everyone is still working in parallel. The opportunity comes when you design the pathway as a team and decide where each person adds the most value. That requires knowing and respecting what our colleagues are trained and authorized to do. Who gathers the history? Who provides education? Who manages rehabilitation? What follow-up can happen using a protocol? When does someone need a prescriber or advanced diagnostic expertise? When should care be escalated? When those expectations are clear, people can practise with more autonomy, and patients move through care more efficiently. The harder part is that this only works if we move beyond professional protectionism. If expanding one profession's contribution is automatically seen as a threat to another, the discussion is no longer centred on designing the best care. Scope expansion also cannot become a mechanism for obtaining the same clinical work at a lower price. If healthcare professionals take on greater responsibility and use more of their expertise, remuneration should reflect the skill, accountability, and value of that work. Respect for scope and respect for value have to move together. What does your principle of "evidence over hype" require from you when healthcare trends move faster than the research? It requires being willing to say, "We do not know yet," which is not always a popular answer. Healthcare trends now move incredibly quickly. Patients can hear about a new treatment online long before there is good clinical evidence, and clinicians are often expected to give a definitive yes or no answer when the real answer is much more nuanced. For me, evidence over hype means being clear about the difference between what has been demonstrated, what looks promising, what is biologically plausible, and what is still largely anecdotal. Those are not the same thing. It also means not dismissing new ideas simply because the evidence base is immature. Some worthwhile innovations begin before we have years of data. The responsibility is to be transparent about that uncertainty and to understand the potential risks. I also think expertise requires a willingness to change your mind. If better evidence comes along, my practice should change with it. I am very interested in innovation, but innovation still has to tolerate scrutiny. New does not automatically mean better, and traditional does not automatically mean correct. If healthcare leaders changed one assumption about how care should be delivered, which would make the greatest difference? I would change the assumption that healthcare should be organized around the professional hierarchies, funding models, and workflows we inherited. I would rather start with the work that needs to be done. What does this patient population need? Which parts require advanced clinical judgment? Which can be standardized? Which can be handled by another appropriately qualified healthcare professional? Where can technology help? What level of skill, complexity, and responsibility does each task require, and what is that work worth? Once you answer those questions, you can design the workforce around the care rather than forcing care into a structure that may no longer make sense. That also means questioning remuneration models. Where appropriately qualified professionals deliver the same defined service to the same standard and with comparable responsibility, we should be able to explain why the value assigned to that work would differ based primarily on professional title. I do not think healthcare has a shortage of committed people. We have spent years depending on committed people to compensate for poor design. The next step is to value expertise, reduce professional silos, use technology intelligently, and design systems around the best interests of patients and the people providing their care. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Shannon Kenrick-Rochon

Written by Bryan McColgan, Physician Journalist Dr. Bryan McColgan is an international authority on IVF and surrogacy for gay men. He is the founder of the Gay Dad Reporter, the world’s first online platform dedicated to news about surrogacy and rainbow families with a focus on gay men. The desire to become a parent is at a new stage in human history. More straight couples than ever are celebrating a life without children, while gay men are increasingly building rainbow families. In my opinion, this is an inflection point, and one that can lead to amazing changes in places where gay-led families are allowed to flourish. In this article, I want to discuss the changing landscape of parenthood and the potential impact this could have on the world for generations to come. Even though Elon Musk has written that ‘Italy is disappearing’ due to declining birth rates, straight couples, in Italy and throughout the world, do not seem to be bothered. In fact, social media movements have developed, with the hashtags ‘childfree’ and ‘childfreebychoice’ each having over 400 million TikTok views. On Instagram, the hashtags collectively have over 500,000 posts. Further investigation of these influencers finds that they share common rationales for not wanting to have children. Climate change, the state of the world, the cost of living, and prioritizing other things like travel and quiet time are a few of the most common reasons. In the U.S., a 2021 Pew Research Center study showed that some 44% of non-parents aged 18 to 49 didn’t think they would have children, up from 37% in 2018. In England and Wales, a 2020 YouGov study suggested that more than half of British 35-to-44-year-olds who hadn’t had kids never planned on doing so. Unlike previous generations, Millennials and Gen Z are questioning the sacrifices needed to have children. They are choosing to be happy rather than do what is expected of them. This is exemplified in a quote from the influencer Marcela Munoz, who runs child-free social media accounts: “The number-one thing that I always say when people ask me why I’m child-free is because I don’t have a desire to have children… If you have baby fever, take a nap. If you enjoyed that nap, don’t have kids. I can’t tell you how many times my [parent] friends are like, ‘Oh my gosh, I only got two hours of sleep last night, my kids were throwing up, and I had to take care of that.’ That doesn’t sound appealing to me at all!” I think this perspective has historically been heavily criticized and judged. I can hear previous generations saying it is ‘immature’ not to want kids or that ‘you will change your mind’ when you get older. This type of social pressure doesn’t exist in the same way today (e.g., ‘OK, Boomer’). Thanks to the internet and social media, we have access to a global public, and our unique perspectives can often be shared in ways that were previously limited by the small number of channels available for public opinion. Child-free straight couples have found each other, and they are celebrating their lives in a way that shows other, younger couples that it not only can be done, but should be done if that is the life they want. As for gay couples, I wrote a previous article that detailed the increasing trend of rainbow families. More gay couples than ever are embarking on surrogacy as their path towards fatherhood, and this comes with a great deal of intent, planning, and desire on their part to become parents. Unlike straight people, there are no ‘accidents’ for gay people. For gay men pursuing surrogacy, they need to find an egg donor, work with a gestational carrier (GC) or surrogate, and navigate the legal complexities of these arrangements, as well as potential immigration and international laws. What does all this mean? It means these children are exceptionally wanted, and being this wanted can only have a positive impact on these children and who they will become. I can speak personally to what it feels like to be an unwanted child. I was disowned by my mother, and so I know how traumatic that can be. Through intensive work in therapy, I came to accept my mom and her limitations, and I have been able to continue to grow and develop emotionally, in large part due to my loving husband. However, I am not without scars, and this type of wound has even been described as ‘primal,’ meaning that rejection from one’s parents is the ultimate wound that can alter a person’s entire life course. However, imagine children of gay parents who are so wanted, so loved, and so cared for. While I do not naively assume these children will have lives free of any injury or trauma, I do believe they will have love and a relationship with their parents that provides the foundation for a lifetime of successful relationships. The things their parents went through to have them, the process my husband and I are going through right now, will always ground them and the rainbow family in a place of belonging and commitment to each other. I will say that not all gay people are pursuing parenthood for the right reasons because, surprise, even gay people are not perfect. Recent articles have called out the phenomenon of gay parenting as the new ‘status symbol,’ given the financial investment required for gay men to become parents. Some claim there is even a new ‘expectation’ for gay men to welcome children. Some in the community state that this pressure has been exacerbated by gay celebrity couples. While ‘celebrity’ can be a double-edged sword, I have previously written about the positive impact of gay celebrities on the process of surrogacy and rainbow family formation, and I believe this outweighs any potential ‘status pressure.’ The point remains that even though the time and commitment required for gay people to become parents are significant, this does not always equate to a similar motivation for having children throughout the gay community. Sadly, some children of gay parents will suffer the same fate as those of straight parents who felt societal pressure to become parents rather than an individual desire. However, I believe that the vast majority of gay parents are pursuing parenthood for the right reasons, and so these children will be immensely enjoyed and celebrated. I hypothesize that this new era of rainbow families will have effects similar to those attributed to Roe v. Wade (RIP). One major, albeit debated, proposed consequence of Roe v. Wade was a dramatic decrease in crime. According to research supporting this theory, as the children born after the Supreme Court decision came of age, they were more likely than previous generations to lead peaceful, law-abiding lives. Studies estimate that U.S. crime fell roughly 20% between 1997 and 2014 due to legalized abortion. The estimated cumulative impact of legalized abortion on crime is roughly 45%, accounting for a substantial portion of the roughly 50% to 55% overall decline from the peak of crime in the early 1990s. Why was there this significant decrease in crime? According to this theory, more of the children born after Roe v. Wade were wanted. They were not ‘accidents’ that took their parents away from the lives they had planned. This is the same for gay parents and their children. For the vast majority of rainbow children, they are wanted and very much planned. They are not only part of the plan, but in some cases, they require all the financial resources that a person or couple has in order to come into this world. Therefore, I believe areas like California that embrace rainbow families will see a similar trend in crime or societal improvements in general to those associated with Roe v. Wade. Given that the percentage of the population who identify as gay is much smaller than the total straight population, the impact will be numerically smaller, but no less significant in terms of communal improvement. On a final note, I believe that the children of gay parents are not only very much wanted, but that there is also another special element of gay culture that will further help these children develop into good humans. For generations, gay people have been forced to form ‘chosen families’ because they have been kicked out of their biological families. Gay people have been able to form relationships that are more than just friendships. Given the role the ‘chosen family’ plays in gay life and community, we know how to value relationships. I believe we will show our children not only how to have a great relationship with us as parents, but also how to have deep and profound connections with other people, including their friends, colleagues, and future partners and children. They will not only start out with a family unit that loves, values, and cherishes them, but they will also be shown that a diversity of relationships and support only further enriches their lives. There is no such thing as too much love, and I believe rainbow families have the ability to provide this to a new generation. The next generation will have to combat climate change, colonize space, and handle artificial intelligence (AI), just to name a few topical issues of the moment. These problems can only be solved by working together. I believe that the children of gay parents will be a great addition to society and offer a variety of perspectives, as well as a strength of relationship and community that will make the world a better place. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Bryan McColgan Bryan McColgan, Physician Journalist Dr. Bryan McColgan is a Stanford and Columbia University-trained physician who is currently on his first journey to fatherhood through surrogacy. Navigating IVF and surrogacy in the United States from his current home in Sweden led Bryan to start the Gay Dad Reporter, the leading online platform dedicated to assisted reproduction for gay intended fathers. His mission is ethical surrogacy for gay intended dads everywhere.

Written by Richard Schmelke, Transformational Wellness Services LLC Linda Lee Smith and Richard Schmelke are authors and transformational coaches who believe the most meaningful chapter of life can begin at any age. Through their writing and teaching, they empower others to reconnect with themselves, embrace new possibilities, and live with greater purpose and vitality. In a world filled with expectations, responsibilities, and constant noise, it can be surprisingly difficult to hear the quiet wisdom within us. Yet sometimes, particularly when life brings us to an unexpected crossroads, that inner voice may be exactly what we need to hear. This is a story about learning to listen, and finding the courage to follow where that voice leads. “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.” – Carl Jung There often comes a moment in life when the noise of the outside world quiets enough for something deeper to be heard. It rarely arrives with fanfare. More often, it begins as a whisper, a gentle nudge, or a quiet knowing, a sense that something within us is trying to get our attention. It’s called many things: intuition, conscience, inner wisdom, spirit, God, or the voice of the soul. I have come to think of it as the still, small voice, and I believe most of us have experienced it. I believe the challenge is learning to hear it. We are taught to listen outwardly From an early age, many of us learn to pay close attention to the world around us. What do others expect of me? What does success look like? What will people think? We learn to fulfill responsibilities and measure ourselves against cultural definitions of achievement. None of those things is necessarily wrong. But over time, the voices outside us can become so loud that we lose touch with the quieter wisdom within us. Life gets busy. Responsibilities take over. Other people's expectations grow louder. Before long, we can become so accustomed to listening outwardly that we forget to ask a simple question: What is happening within me? Sometimes it takes a major interruption in life before we finally become quiet enough to listen. That is what happened to me. The year that changed everything A little more than a year after my wife died, I was still trying to understand what life looked like without the woman with whom I had shared forty-three years. Anyone who has experienced deep loss knows that grief changes the landscape of life. The routines you once relied upon disappear. The future you assumed would unfold in a particular way no longer exists. Even ordinary moments can suddenly feel heavy with absence. When you cannot imagine how you'll make it through the next year, you make it through today. Sometimes, you simply make it through the next hour. I experienced sadness, confusion, loneliness, and moments of emotional numbness. I also experienced waves of grief that could seemingly come from nowhere. Somewhere along the way, however, a question began to emerge: What happens now? It wasn't a question about what I was going to do tomorrow. It was a question about the rest of my life. Two signs, two possibilities, one choice One day, during a quiet moment between the pain and sorrow, I experienced something that has stayed with me ever since. In my mind's eye, I saw a path stretching before me. At the end of that path were two signs. One pointed toward a future that felt painfully familiar. It represented a life shaped by grief, bitterness, resentment, and emotional withdrawal. I could see a version of myself becoming a bitter, angry old man, allowing grief and self-pity to define the rest of my life. Loss can change us. Pain can harden us. If we are not careful, what happened to us can slowly become the story through which we interpret everything that follows. Then I saw the other sign. It contained only one word: Life. I couldn't see what was waiting beyond it. There were no pictures of a wonderful future. No promises that everything would work out. No guarantee that I wouldn't experience pain again. There was only the invitation. Life. Somehow, without understanding what was happening or how significant that moment would become, I knew which direction I needed to choose. Learning to recognize the voice Looking back, I understand that experience differently today. I believe I was listening to my still, small voice. It wasn't the voice of fear, ego, or self-protection. Those voices could have offered plenty of reasons to stay exactly where I was, and there was evidence to support each of their arguments. But the quieter voice didn't argue or explain or promise. It simply pointed to life. The ego often reacts quickly. It defends, justifies, blames, worries, and searches for evidence to support what it already believes. The inner voice seems different. It doesn't usually shout or demand that we listen. It invites. It may be pointing toward a conversation you know you need to have. A dream you have quietly abandoned. A relationship that needs healing. A change you have been afraid to make. Or perhaps simply a different way of showing up in your own life. You may not know where the invitation will lead. Neither did I. Creating enough quiet to hear Perhaps we struggle to hear our inner voice not because it has stopped speaking but because our lives have simply become too noisy. There is the noise of responsibility, expectations, fear, and self-doubt. The constant pressure to accomplish something, solve something, respond to someone, or figure out what comes next. Then there is the noise inside our own minds, the judgments, regrets, worries, old stories, and endless mental conversations. The still, small voice doesn't seem interested in competing with any of them. It waits. For some people, it becomes clearer through prayer or meditation. For others, it becomes clearer while walking, journaling, sitting beside the water, driving alone, or simply allowing a few moments without distraction. For me, on that November day, it came as an image. Two signs. Two possibilities. One choice. Perhaps listening to our inner wisdom doesn't require an extraordinary spiritual experience. Perhaps it simply requires enough space to notice what has been trying to get our attention all along. The courage to follow what we hear Choosing life did not erase my grief. It didn't erase forty-three years of love or the pain of losing someone who had been woven into nearly my entire adult life. But something shifted. Grief was no longer the only thing I could see. For the first time in a long while, I could begin to imagine what might still be. I had no idea where that choice would eventually lead. I could not see the people I would meet, the growth I would experience, the love that would return to my life, or the person I would become. None of that was visible from where I stood. All I could see was the next choice. Perhaps that is one of the most important lessons the still, small voice has taught me. We don't always need the entire map. Sometimes we simply need enough courage to take the next step. Every life eventually brings us to a crossroads we didn't ask for. Loss, disappointment, uncertainty, changing relationships, aging, unexpected circumstances, or simply the realization that the life we have been living no longer reflects the person we are becoming. We often do not get to choose what brings us to that crossroads. But we do get to choose what happens next. The still, small voice may invite us toward honesty instead of hiding. Curiosity instead of certainty. Compassion instead of judgment. Forgiveness instead of resentment. Hope instead of resignation. Those choices may seem small in the moment. But little by little, they become a life. Perhaps something within you has been whispering lately. Perhaps you have dismissed it because it didn't come with enough certainty, evidence, or guarantees. Maybe you have been waiting for a map when all you'll receive is a sign pointing to the next step. My still, small voice gave me only one word: Life. I chose to follow it. That quiet choice changed the direction of everything that followed. What has your still, small voice been trying to tell you? Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Linda Lee Smith and Richard Schmelke Linda Lee Smith and Richard Schmelke, Transformational Wellness Services LLC Linda Lee Smith and Richard Schmelke are authors, coaches, and TEDx speakers dedicated to helping people rediscover purpose, vitality, and joy. Linda brings decades of experience in holistic healing and has trained thousands worldwide in integrative practices. Rich’s background in leadership and personal development inspires others to think bigger and live more intentionally. Together, they create transformational programs that blend inner healing with practical life guidance. Their work is grounded in both professional expertise and their own experience of creating a vibrant new chapter later in life.

Written by Veronika Monteith, Certified Therapeutic Coach Veronika Monteith is the founder of Mindflow Coaching and a certified therapeutic coach specialising in subconscious belief work with ambitious women. She works with clients internationally to help them overcome self-doubt, break self-sabotage patterns and finally feel as confident on the inside as they appear on the outside. You've done the work. You have the results, the qualifications, and the track record to prove it. Yet, somewhere inside, a quiet voice insists it doesn't really count, that you got lucky, that you've somehow fooled everyone, that one day they'll find out you're not as capable as they think. If that voice sounds familiar, you're not alone. The truth about where it comes from might surprise you. What feeling like a fraud actually is That feeling of being a fraud, despite clear evidence that you're anything but, is something a lot of capable people live with. It's usually called imposter syndrome, but I find that term a little unfair, because it makes it sound like something is wrong with you when, really, there isn't. What it really is, is a belief. A deep, often unconscious belief that you're not quite enough as you are, and that any success you've had must therefore be explained in some other way. Luck. Timing. Good impression management. Anything but your own ability. The evidence of your competence doesn't quiet the feeling because the feeling was never based on evidence in the first place. It's based on a belief. That's a really important distinction because beliefs can change. Why achieving more doesn't fix it Here's what surprises most people: succeeding more rarely makes the feeling go away. If anything, it can make it stronger. You'd think that each achievement would be proof, another piece of evidence that you're capable, that you belong, that you've earned your place. But when you believe deep down that you're not really good enough, your mind doesn't file success as proof. It files it as pressure. Now there's more to live up to. More that could come crashing down. A greater chance of being found out. So you reach the next milestone, and instead of relief, you feel the bar move. The goalposts shift. The quiet voice simply says, "Yes, but that doesn't count either." This is why you can't achieve your way out of feeling like a fraud. You're trying to solve a belief problem with an evidence-based solution, and the two don't speak the same language. The two faces you might recognise For a lot of the women I work with, this shows up in two very particular ways. The first is crediting everything but yourself. You got the role because they happened to like you. The project went well because the team was strong. The praise was them being kind. Somewhere along the way, you learned to hand your success to luck, timing, or other people, anyone but yourself. Owning it feels uncomfortable, almost arrogant. So you don't. The second is over-preparing to feel safe. Because underneath, you don't quite trust that you're enough on your own, you compensate. You over-prepare, over-research, and over-deliver. You make sure there's no possible gap where you could be caught out. It works, in the sense that it keeps the fear at bay, but it's exhausting, and it only confirms the very belief driving it: that without all that extra effort, you wouldn't be good enough. Both of these are protective. They developed to keep you safe. But both keep you locked in the same loop, never quite able to believe that you, as you are, are the reason things go well. Where does it come from? This belief can start long before your career does. Often, it traces back to a time when you learned that being yourself wasn't quite enough, that love, approval, or safety came from achieving, performing, or being impressive. Maybe you were praised most when you did well, so you learned that your value lived in your achievements. Maybe you grew up around high expectations, and being good enough always felt like a moving target. None of this means anything went badly wrong. These beliefs can form through ordinary moments and be picked up without you noticing. But they can take root, and years later, they may still be running in the background, shaping how you experience every success you have. How to begin loosening its grip You can't argue yourself out of feeling like a fraud, but you can begin to loosen the belief underneath it. Here are a few places to start. Notice when you give the credit away. The next time something goes well and you hear yourself crediting luck, timing, or someone else, pause. Ask: Is it possible I had something to do with this? You don't have to fully believe it yet. Just interrupt the reflex to give it away and leave room for another explanation. Let one success land. Instead of rushing to the next thing, try letting a win actually register. Sit with it for a moment. Notice the urge to dismiss it and gently resist. You're teaching yourself that success is allowed to count. Ask what you're protecting against. When you notice yourself over-preparing, get curious. What am I afraid would happen if I did just enough? Often, the answer reveals the belief, "They'd see I'm not really that good", and naming it takes away some of its power. Separate the feeling from the fact. Feeling like a fraud is not the same as being one. The feeling is real, but it isn't evidence. You can acknowledge the feeling without treating it as the truth. You were never fooling anyone The most freeing thing to understand is this: You feel like a fraud not because you lack ability, but because, at some point, you learned to believe your worth had to be earned and re-earned, over and over. But it doesn't. You didn't fool anyone. You didn't get lucky every single time. You are the common thread running through everything you've achieved, and you're allowed to let that be true. If this feeling is one you know well, you don't have to keep working around it on your own. The belief underneath it can shift, and when it does, success can finally start to feel like something you're allowed to own. If you'd like to explore what that could look like for you, I'd love to invite you to book a Belief Breakthrough call with me. Together, we can begin to loosen the belief that's had you doubting yourself, and help you feel as capable on the inside as you clearly are on the outside. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Veronika Monteith Veronika Monteith, Certified Therapeutic Coach Veronika Monteith is the founder of Mindflow Coaching and a certified Rapid Transformational Coach®, Positive Intelligence Coach® and Mindvalley Certified Hypnotherapist working with ambitious women across the world. Her work draws on subconscious belief work and nervous system awareness. She developed the Triple A Shift™, a methodology built around Awareness, Acceptance and Action after recognising that Acceptance, the step most commonly skipped in coaching, is the one that changes everything. Veronika works with women who appear to have it all together on the outside, yet feel quietly held back by patterns they cannot seem to think their way out of. Her approach gets to the root of those patterns and shifts them.

Written by Daryl Henderson, Transformational Facilitator & Creative Visionary Daryl Henderson is a master coach, facilitator, and artist known for blending spiritual traditions, shadow work, and leadership training. He is the co-founder of Odyssey of Man, the creator of True North Coaching, and the founder of One11, a health & wellness brand. It’s 5 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. The sun is hanging low in the autumn sky, casting its nostalgic long shadows in a warm, glowing light. The grapefruit tree above is bursting with fruit, ready to be picked and delighted in. I’m standing there, looking up at all the beauty… fuming with anger. My partner had just told me that I was wrong about her flirting with someone else, and I just couldn’t let go of being right about it. I saw it with my own eyes… didn’t I? Over and over, I repeated the scenario in my head and came to the same conclusion: I was definitely right, and, even further, she just couldn’t admit it. The problem was that we’d run through this same argument in different versions time and again. So much so that it just seemed normal. But now I see that it was normal. For the world of angry, righteous men that I grew up around and watched on television, this was completely normal. The problem is that it turns out that all those guys who had it all together, had all the women and the success, are totally full of themselves and completely out of touch with a world where emotional competency and compassion are actually the currency of a happy life. At this point, I’ve been deep in the world of personal development for the last two decades, and I keep coming back to the same thing over and over. It’s about the simplest definition of emotional intelligence I’ve got. You need to be able to be wrong. Otherwise, you’re just right all the time, and that’s not very intelligent. Someone once told me, “You can be right, or you can be alone.” I know that sounds almost too easy. Sit with it for a second, though, because it moves in a direction most people don’t expect or know what to do with. Ask almost any man whether he’s emotionally intelligent, and he’ll tell you yes or look at you sideways like he has no idea what you’re talking about. Let’s say you get a yes. Then ask him when the last time was that he was actually wrong about something that mattered. Not a wrong turn, a bad restaurant pick, or forgetting to pick up something at the grocery store. What I’m talking about is being wrong about a person, a situation, or himself in a way that cost him his pride and required him to admit he was wrong. That’s the real measure because emotional intelligence is really about awareness, not actual knowledge or what we have typically considered “intelligence” in our Western world. Intelligence quotient (IQ) measures cognitive abilities such as logical reasoning, memory, and problem-solving, whereas emotional quotient (EQ) relates to the ability to understand and manage emotions in yourself and others. I say that admitting you’re wrong is one of the true tests of emotional intelligence because it brings up some of the most difficult emotions for humans, especially men. The biggest of them are usually shame, embarrassment, and the worry that you’ll be shunned by your family, tribe, or community. The feeling is often not just that you did something wrong, but that you ARE fundamentally wrong in a way that is unfixable. So this one, in particular, is a good gauge of how emotionally intelligent you actually are. So, when was the last time you admitted you were wrong? Why this gets harder the smarter you are The most intelligent people I know question things. They ask what’s actually going on here. They look at it from a few different angles, and they genuinely consider that something else might be happening besides what they assumed was going on. A mind that cannot be flexible and admit its errors is not a smart mind. It’s a locked one, and there’s a very big difference, even though, from the outside, they can look identical for many years. The part that tends to sting a lot of egos is discovering that the higher your IQ, the worse your EQ tends to be. Even more so if you’re a high earner. Because if you’ve been the smartest guy in the room since you were nine years old, being right isn’t a thing you do. It’s a thing you are. It’s how you got attention, how you got approval, how you got out of trouble, and probably how you built your entire career, with all its accolades and success. Ask a man like that to be wrong in front of people, and you’re not asking him to change his mind. You’re asking him to give up the only reliable source of self-worth he’s ever had… right? So he doesn’t. He learns to argue better instead. He manipulates and makes it look like he’s doing the right thing, even when, deep down, he knows he’s not. He gets very, very good at it. We all know the type. What the research actually says Now, the data on this has been piling up for a while, and I believe it points to some very clear patterns. TalentSmart’s research found that emotional intelligence accounts for something like 58 percent of job performance and that 90 percent of top performers score high on it, while 80 percent of low performers don’t. Daniel Goleman studied nearly 200 large global companies for the Harvard Business Review and found that IQ and technical skills absolutely matter, but that they are the entry-level requirements for executive positions. They get you in the door. What separates genuinely effective leaders once they’re through it is emotional intelligence. Read that again because it describes a sneaky trap that I think ensnares a lot of well-meaning souls. Oftentimes, the very intelligence that earned you recognition and success in the first place ends up becoming the roadblock to maintaining your success. Most men never notice the subtlety right in front of them, so they respond by doing more of what worked before. They do more analysis and continue to remain steadfast in being right more of the time. They try to work harder, faster, stronger, and better than everyone else. We know that this is only effective for a little while, and then burnout sets in, forcing you to slow down and reevaluate your entire life. Enter the midlife crisis. But it’s not all so grim. There’s a 2026 piece in Forbes making the case that adaptability is the next frontier beyond both IQ and EQ. Adaptability is defined as how quickly a person can learn, unlearn, and recalibrate when conditions change. Unlearning is the whole ball game when it comes to adapting, and you cannot unlearn anything without first being willing to acknowledge that you were wrong about it. So, the newest thinking on this and the oldest thinking on this arrive at the same place, which is usually a good sign that you’re near something true. What emotional intelligence is not Let me clear some things up here because this term has been beaten into a mushy pulp so much that most people don’t even know what it means, much less what it consists of. We’ve established that being emotionally intelligent isn’t about getting it all right and trying to be perfect all the time. It’s also not about making sure nobody ever gets their feelings hurt. You will upset people. That’s a fact of life. Avoiding that fact or constantly trying to avoid it isn’t emotional intelligence. That’s management, specifically the management of other people’s comfort at the expense of anything real ever getting said. It also isn’t the same as being “nice.” We all know the stereotype that if you show emotion, compassion, and kindness, you’re a “nice guy,” and “nice guys finish last.” This is one I’ve had to reckon with myself, and after years of beating myself over the head with this belief, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s 100 percent utter hogwash. Malarkey, and a total BS narrative perpetrated by patriarchal structures that have done an immense disservice to women and men alike. The truth is, I’ve met extremely nice men with no emotional intelligence at all who had simply learned that agreeableness keeps everyone calm, and they never once examined what they were actually feeling underneath it all. Honestly, these guys scare me a little. Not because there’s anything obviously dangerous about them, but because everything they’ve never once looked at is still in there, and it always comes out sideways eventually, usually on the people closest to them. EQ also isn’t about being able to read other people well. There are scores of manipulative people who read rooms beautifully. I call them politicians, anywho. Reading a room is a skill, and it isn’t a virtue. Confusing those two is how a lot of charming men end up doing a lot of damage over the years. What EQ actually is It’s about being authentic and real and not directing our blame and anger at other people irresponsibly. That’s it. That’s the whole kit and caboodle, and actually living this is much harder than any of the stuff we usually put under this heading. For example, if you’re angry about something, the first thing you should do is look in the fucking mirror. Especially if that anger feels uncontrollable or like it’s boiling up inside of you. That’s your first sign that what’s coming up is connected more to your past and unresolved issues than to what’s happening in the present moment. Anger that comes from the present can be directed and communicated respectfully. If you can’t do that, it’s time to look at yourself before saying anything to someone else. That’s not to say you won’t get angry. You will. I still do, and I’ve got a lot of feelings generally. Anybody who tells you the goal is to stop having them has never actually done this work. But when you get angry and it harms someone or causes an upset, you have to clean it up. Do the best you can. Be responsible for the impact of your words and actions. That’s emotional intelligence at its best, and honestly, that’s human beings at their best. Fallible as can be, but willing to stand accountable for our words and actions. For me, it comes down to this. I know that I’m a fallible man, and I will never be perfect. I know many of my shadows, I accept my shadows, and every so often, I still turn up a new one. But I meet them with as much grace and humility as I can because they are my greatest teachers. So I meet them, sometimes in terror, but I meet them. If I have caused people pain along the way, I acknowledge it. For the record, this doesn’t always mean having to do this with the person you hurt. There are times when their anger and pain are blinding, and no matter what you say or how many times you apologize, they can’t hear you. That’s their work, not yours. That’s the practice. It’s very simple, but it’s probably one of the most challenging and worthwhile things you can ever take on if you wish to have better relationships in your life. That, by the way, turns out to be one of the key markers of happiness. Not accolades and money. Relationships. That’s where the real wealth of life lies. The question to ask yourself before you speak Here’s the one I use in difficult conversations, and it has saved me more times than I can count. Before the sentence leaves your mouth, ask whether you’re speaking your truth or whether you’re just irritated and need to get something off your chest. Those two things can feel absolutely identical from the inside, and they are not the same thing at all. If the answer is that you’re just getting something off your chest, then stop. Shut your mouth and wait. A day, a week, a month. It doesn’t matter. Wait until your perspective shifts enough to see what the other person might be going through and what it is you feel you need to get off your chest. Just waiting can often resolve the issue, and if it doesn’t, approach the conversation with clarity and respect. Then ask three more questions… and ask them slowly. Is it true? Has this always been true? Or did I just make it up somewhere along the way and never check? Honestly, I’m tired of living in a world where people throw slander around like it’s candy, and a lot of that comes from men who have never once run their own sentences past those questions before firing them at somebody. It’s time for us to be more accountable for our words instead of blindly and falsely accusing others of things that, once said, cannot be taken back. Remember that what you put out will eventually come back to you, so speak carefully. Now the part nobody really wants to say There’s a version of teaching emotional intelligence going around that is really just being sincere and compliant, dressed in a nicer outfit. It says to absorb everything, regulate yourself endlessly, and do your best not to say anything that upsets anyone else. If you do, you’re the problem. Make sure the other person always feels fine. That isn’t the source of EQ either. I’d go even further and say it’s the version most likely to get a man badly used. There are scores of internet chat rooms filled with men who tried to be nice guys and got trampled on. I am a peaceful man, but I am a warrior at heart. Many mistake kindness for weakness, but that would be a mistake. Most people know not to cross me, as they will be met with my direct response. Real accountability runs in both directions, or it isn’t accountability. It’s just you doing all the work while somebody else does none. If a person is not willing to hold themselves to the same standard they’re trying to hold you to, then the emotionally intelligent move is not to keep absorbing it and calling that growth. The emotionally intelligent move is to step back. You live your life, I’ll live mine, and we can agree to disagree. If that doesn’t work, then the move is to respectfully remove yourself from that person’s life, lest you continue to subject yourself to their lack of respect. This isn’t a failure of your practice. It is the practice, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to work that out. A man who can be wrong is not the same animal as a man who can be walked on, even though, from a distance, they can look almost identical… The difference is that one of them is choosing it, and the other one has simply run out of ways to say no. So what do you do with this? Choose to be wrong on purpose, on small things where it costs you almost nothing. Say, “Actually, you’re right. I hadn’t thought about it that way,” out loud, in front of somebody, this week. It might sting at first, but that tells you something about how much you’ve been protecting. I do this all the time with my partner. If I’m wrong about something, I literally say, “You’re totally right. I’m wrong, my love. Sorry about that.” You will get serious brownie points for this, by the way. Next, separate the feeling from what’s actually going on. You can be furious and still not take it out on the nearest person. Those are two separate things, and most men have only ever experienced them as one. The first is the emotional response, and the second is simply the facts. Clean it up faster. The gap between doing the damage and acknowledging it is the whole game. Not whether you cause damage, because you will, but how long you let it sit. That is what makes the real difference. The faster you repair, the better you get at it and the less time upsets last. Choose to have people in your life who will question you and tell you when you’re wrong. Choose people who truly love you for who you really are, warts and all. That is a rarer combination than it sounds and worth more than any course you’ll ever buy. The question I don’t have this handled. I want to be straightforward about that because it would be very easy to write a piece like this from a chair marked “expert,” and then I’d be lying. I still get it wrong all the time. I still catch myself building the case for my own position while somebody is mid-sentence. I still have days when I’d rather win the exchange than understand the person, and on some of those days, I do win it. The winning always tastes like nothing about an hour later, when I realize the harm it caused. Then I have to humble up… again. The difference now is only that I notice sooner and clean it up faster. That’s it. That’s the whole improvement over twenty years, and I’ll take it because that means far less of my life is spent upset. So here’s what I want to leave you with. Your IQ got you here, and it isn’t going to get you the rest of the way. What gets you the rest of the way is the willingness to be a fallible man and admit it, over and over again, in front of people whose opinions of you actually matter. Can you stand by what you say, knowing deep in your heart that it might be harming somebody? Are you willing to find out you were wrong about it? That’s the question. Nobody can answer it for you, which is exactly why so few of us ever do. See you on the other side. I want to hear about this one. When were you last wrong about something that mattered, and what did it cost you to say so? Leave a comment below or reply to this email. I read everything. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Daryl Henderson Daryl Henderson, Transformational Facilitator & Creative Visionary Daryl Henderson is a master coach, facilitator, and artist with over two decades of experience blending creativity, men’s work, and spiritual practices. He has photographed top brands and artists worldwide, including Nike and Michael Kors, and documented indigenous and peace gatherings across the globe. Drawing on this experience, Daryl guides high performers, artists, and businesses to express their stories through soul-aligned photography, branding, and personal transformation. He is the co-founder of Odyssey of Man, the creator of True North Coaching, and the founder of One11, a health and wellness brand. His work is playful, transformative, and designed to unlock authentic expression.

Written by Rose Sexton, End-of-Life Doula, Registered Nurse & Author Rose Sexton is an end-of-life doula, nurse, mother, performer, mover of mountains, and author based in Victoria, Australia. Throughout a nursing career spanning more than four decades, she has been drawn to those facing life's biggest transitions, supporting people in this sacred space. She has recently published her dual-voice memoir "The Bird and the Bee" (Balboa Press, October 2026). We plan obsessively for weddings, careers, and retirement, yet the one thing guaranteed to happen to every single one of us gets nothing but silence. After forty years as a palliative care nurse, I've watched that silence extract a devastating price. Here's what we've lost, and why it's time to start talking. How we used to do it It wasn't always like this. We used to know what to do. When someone died, you'd send little Jimmy out to knock on the doors and tell the neighbourhood. Food would arrive. You'd clear the parlour table for laying out the body, and friends and family would gather to cook and cry and pray and laugh and sing and hug. The grave would be dug, the prayers would be said, and the whole community carried the burden of it together. Dying was done at home too. The wisdom of what to expect, what it looks and sounds like when someone is leaving, was absorbed simply by growing up. You sat by the bedside of your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, sometimes siblings, and you learned. Death was understood as a normal part of ordinary life. It's curious, isn't it? We spend our lives planning for the big events. Weddings. Birthday parties. Babies. Careers. Retirement. Vacations. We plan in minute detail for all of it, and yet when it comes to the one thing we know is absolutely, positively going to happen to every single one of us, it's crickets. Where it all went wrong With the dawn of the 1900s, the funeral industry arrived and quietly took the whole thing off our hands. Modern medicine followed, convincing us, with the very best of intentions, that death is a healthcare issue. A problem to be solved. A tragedy. A failure of the patient, or the treatment, or the system. We are not all entitled to die in our sleep at eighty-five. But somewhere along the way, we started acting as though we are. The excuses are creative, I'll give us that: "If I talk about it, I'll make it happen." "That's too morbid, I'll make everyone sad." "I'm never going to die." My personal favourite: "I eat really well." Which brings me to a meme doing the rounds lately. A headstone in a cemetery. The inscription reads: I ate all that kale for nothing. Despite all our collective best efforts to strain and strive for eternal life, we have never managed to get the mortality rate below 100 percent. Not once. Something for you to ponder. The cost of pretending I'm a palliative care nurse and an end-of-life doula. I've sat with a lot of dying people, and with a lot of people who love dying people. What I've watched, over and over again, is the cost of this pretending. Death is not the opposite of life. It's the opposite of birth. It's the next transition, as embedded in our humanity as any other, and we have collectively decided to pretend it isn't there until it absolutely cannot be ignored. The result is that we have, as a culture, systematically pushed death and dying into the shadows. We become very interested in the floor whenever anyone mentions it, change the subject, or suddenly need something from a different aisle of the supermarket when we spot the newly grieving widow coming towards us. People who arrive at the end of their lives having never thought about it, never talked about it, never made a plan, or had a single honest conversation have more than likely not said the things that needed saying. They haven't had the conversations that mattered, and then there's no time. The people who love them haven't either. They don't know what they don't know. They don't know what they're entitled to, what's available, what they should be asking for. So they bob around in the ocean of doctors' appointments, treatments, and ill health, not knowing who to turn to, making decisions under enormous pressure with little support. What gets me, every time, is that this is all so preventable. Not the dying. The dying is happening regardless. But the isolation. The panic of it. The things left unsaid. Herd immunity for death Getting conversations going about death and dying helps loosen up the resistance to it. I think of it as a kind of herd immunity. If enough people start opening up about it, we reach a kind of event horizon where death and dying and grief and loss become normal conversations. I do like to mix my metaphors, but sometimes it really helps! The kind that can happen around the kitchen table, at the pub, at the school gate. Before anyone is sick. While there's still time to say what we actually mean. Bill Walsh was a guitarist, armchair philosopher, and my soulmate. He had melanoma twice, and he spent years thinking and writing and talking about death long before it became urgently personal. His line was this: death enchantment brings life enhancement. The more honestly you sit with your own mortality, the richer and more present your living becomes. What happens when we look We are not promised anything more than the present moment. Awareness of our impermanence, when we let it in rather than slam the door on it, doesn't shrink life, it can often do the opposite. It changes our priorities and what we say to the people who matter. What we stop putting off until some imaginary later that may or may not arrive. Death literacy is not about becoming morbid. It's not about spending your weekends contemplating headstones, though if the kale one speaks to you, then go for it. It's about having the conversation. The one most of us have been avoiding. The one that might, as it turns out, change everything. Not just how we die, but how we live. This is the first in a series of articles drawn from my memoir The Bird and Bee (Balboa Press, 2026). In the next piece, I'll introduce you to Bill and let him speak for himself. If this landed for you, the book goes much deeper. You can order The Bird and Bee here. Read more from Rose Sexton Rose Sexton, End-of-Life Doula, Registered Nurse & Author Rose Sexton is a palliative care nurse, end-of-life doula, and author based in Victoria, Australia. Throughout a nursing career spanning more than forty years, she has been drawn to those facing life's biggest transitions. The Bird and Bee (Balboa Press, October 2026) is her debut memoir, a dual-voice account of walking with her soulmate Bill, guitarist and philosopher, through his final journey.

Written by Tricia Brouk, Founder of The Big Talk Academy Tricia Brouk helps high-performing professionals transform into industry thought leaders through the power of authentic storytelling. With her experience as an award-winning director, producer, sought-after speaker, and mentor to countless thought leaders, Tricia has put thousands of speakers onto big stages globally. Monica Gostkiewicz is an intuitive and channeler. She spent nearly two decades in corporate, rising to leadership positions at Accenture and Walmart, and earned her Executive Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Kellogg Northwestern University. She lives the human experience while also being connected to her spirit guides, The Galacticies, who, through her, are here to help us raise our frequencies and live at a vibration we can dream into our reality. The guides never interfere with free will. They only help people to surrender and work through any misalignment. Working with Monica, or hearing her speak, will forever change your life trajectory. What is channeling? Channeling is simply the ability to tune into a frequency level, aka a certain radio station, that is sharing information for us from the higher realms. There are infinite levels of frequencies, ‘radio stations,’ that we as humans can tune into, and the most common one we all can do is with our higher selves. When did the Guides begin to communicate with you? The Guides have been my besties my whole life, my family always knew me as the radio you can’t turn off, or the girl who talked to herself for hours. Chatterbox and Chatty Kathy were common nicknames I was given, but at the time I didn't realize I was channeling them. They started to make themselves more present during the last 6 years of my life, with the most dramatic starting in 2024, when they decided it was time to dismantle my current life since I was ignoring them and hiding in the shadows, as they describe it. Throughout the last few years, I have created a real bond with the Guides and truly couldn’t see my life without them now. They are a ball! When did you finally fully embrace your Guides publicly? This is the best question, as I refused to come out. I had an image in the corporate world and physical world that made me hide the ‘weird’ parts of myself, and this felt like the ultimate ‘weird,’ so I dragged my heels in the mud, refusing to move forward with what the Guides wanted me to do. You can picture it like the dog you are pulling on a leash on a walk, and it literally refuses to move and then just lies down. That was me, multiple times! The Guides would keep pulling me, and then they did it gently, like you train a puppy. I started with close friends, then family, then classmates, then I shared it on my Instagram in November of 2025 and hosted a live channeling session in January 2026, yet I was still unsure and, truthfully, still trying to hide it, and I had a different plan in mind. Then things changed in March 2026, when I was about to go on stage for a filming, and I was terrified to do so and truly begged to do anything other than this. During my morning meditation, the Guides pleaded that I am their chosen vessel and I have to do this. It’s so much bigger than me, and they want to help the world heal and rise to their utmost frequency. So, after a lot of crying, I accepted, and from then on out, anyone who asked me what I do, I shared it openly and honestly. The mask and gloves were off, I was no longer hiding. The Guides, you could say, ‘trained’ me, and I was ready to run and haven’t looked back. I even recently, in August 2025, gave a speech fully embracing it to my entire Kellogg program and, of course, the great reveal of the live site today. The Guides have a mission to help people rise to their utmost potential. At all present moments, there are an infinite number of versions of ourselves that exist, and the only reason we don’t have or are or do what we desire is that we are energetically a mismatch. Like two puzzle pieces needing to fit but just don’t connect. They work with people’s energetic fields to clear blockages and help you lift your vibration. Many new frequencies are being born on Earth right now, the Guides being one of them, and they are here to help us humans rise to our higher vibrations. When I work with people, I serve as the container for the Guides to come through and connect with people’s field to clear, heal, and elevate, leaving people transformed and upgraded. When you speak on stage, who is speaking? You or the Guides? Both, actually. I start and end any speech with me to connect with the audience, or, as you can think of it, as warming up the scene for the Guides. If they jump right in, it’s like when you jump into a cold lake, and then you are focused on being cold until it warms up, and so you are not paying attention to the scenery at all when you keep repeating in your head that you’re cold. But when you walk into an ocean on a warm summer day, and the water is warm, and it feels nice from the first step that you go in, then you are in a state of receptivity and enjoyment. That’s when the Guides like to come in. I set the warm summer day for the audience, in a way, and the Guides join in with their own splash. When I am channeling, I’m present enough to hear the Guides in the moment and can tell them when they may be too blunt or dramatic for an audience, but they usually don’t listen to me, as they read the frequency of the room and know what and how the audience needs to hear the message. So it’s always an adventure for me too. What are your Guides interested in teaching us? If you can think of it, they want to teach you about it. Every question that we have, they say, is because it’s a part of our curiosity to lead us on our journey and to follow it. They love talking about prescriptions of joy and soul-led expansion, as well as imprinted memories. But their list of metaphors and teachings is endless. They're also writing a book that will come out in February 2027. What is the compass of life that you and the Guides talk about? The compass is joy. It’s quite simple, and yet we overcomplicate life. They say to follow joy, and it will lead you to where you need to go. A rule of thumb: if it feels good, do it. If it doesn’t, don’t. The Guides are pretty cheeky. Having had interactions with them, does this get you into trouble? Oh, totally. Sometimes they come in when I’m just being Monica to send a message to someone, and most people aren't prepared for their sass or directness. If someone comes to meet with them, I warn them at the start, but in a casual setting, if someone asks and they don’t like their spiciness, I simply say, "Well, then don’t ask." Also, sometimes what they want me to do–ok, not sometimes but most of the time–is illogical, and the opinions of others are totally off-putting in terms of judgment, which I have learned, as the Guides never ever lead me into trouble or cause trouble for me. Any reaction someone has is a part of their journey and a self-projection of what they think of themselves, not me or the Guides. How often are we not prepared to hear what the Guides have to say? 99%. If we ask the Guides, we've usually heard the answer deep down once in our moments of solitude, but we ignored it. Sometimes it’s information we don’t know but is buried in our subconscious, and the Guides say we can always hear them if we seek our own higher selves, but we don’t. We fill up our days with more and more and more and more on the never-ending ‘to-do’ lists, and so we create voids and block our own radio signals. So what the Guides have to say, well, they will tell you the truth of everything you are running from, blocking, filling the void, you name it. It’s the part we don’t want to face to change our lives. The Guides will not sugarcoat. They will push you to move into alignment. To get onto your radio station, now. So you better be ready, because they are not messing around, and they are asking all of us to join the party and rise. Is it challenging for you to be so deeply connected to them and their desires? Or have you been able to integrate? How do you do that? At first, yes. It took me some time to integrate with them and set boundaries. Just like any relationship, you have to set boundaries with the Guides too, and they follow them most of the time. Now, I have a great balance with them and the difference between my desires and theirs, as well as how they amplify my own. A great example is when I get an idea and then, as a human, put some doubt on it. It can be like trying a food or visiting a place, and then they confirm it by giving me signs everywhere, like, yes, go do that. For example, I got a hint to go to Ethiopia and then ignored it due to the travel warnings, so they gave me signs everywhere, from my Uber driver to the takeout on the Morning Show from Apple TV, to a chapter of a book I was reading, and even my mom calling about an Ethiopian restaurant featured on Good Morning America. I got the hint, and yes, I booked the trip and went. Sometimes it’s other ideas, like training for a HYROX race because I kept getting videos of it even though I still wasn’t running after a major reconstruction surgery, and so it went: more mentions of HYROX, to even a gym I’m not a member at giving me an early access code, and me getting into a sold-out race coming up in Chicago this February. It’s the illogical signs that just keep showing up in your line of sight to get your attention. Even more so, it’s sometimes the song I hear on the radio while driving or walking in the grocery store or sitting at a cafe in Montenegro and hearing Elvis play and knowing my dad is present spiritually. The signs are there. The question is: are we listening, or are we paying attention to receive them? Or will some of the business ideas I have had bring the right people into my life to confirm yes or no? If it’s a yes, they amplify the path of acceleration so it materializes quickly. This is the power we all have to work with our Guides. They push you when you need it and confirm for you when you doubt because, let’s face it, we are all humans and the ego wins sometimes, so your spirit team keeps you on track. Mine definitely do! Another tip I have for people on how I work with mine is simply asking them, and it’s usually in my head or during my morning automatic writing sessions. They take over and write it out loud and clear to me. They are always near. They are just asking for us to listen. How do you and the Guides work with people? Many different ways. They love to channel in the studio, where we release monthly videos to the realm so people can receive and have their energetic fields upgrade just by listening to their words, as they carry a unique frequency being released to Earth at this time. They also love doing lives for groups and answering our questions. The most exclusive way is working with them in a private, one-on-one session, as they connect to the person’s energetic field and do major healing and upgrading at the same time. The mission is for the humans to carry out the actions and messages the Guides give, and sometimes the homework is baffling. For example, one time they told me to draw hopscotch on the sidewalk outside of my apartment at 3 am and play hopscotch. Yes, I did it and loved it! They are on a mission to sparkle more joy into our lives and to help us elevate. The Guides welcome you all and are excited to see you in the realm! Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Tricia Brouk Tricia Brouk, Founder of The Big Talk Academy Tricia Brouk helps high-performing professionals transform into industry thought leaders through the power of authentic storytelling. With her experience as an award-winning director, producer, sought-after speaker, and mentor to countless thought leaders, Tricia has put thousands of speakers onto big stages globally. She produced TEDxLincolnSquare in New York City and founded The Big Talk Academy. Tricia’s book, The Influential Voice: Saying What You Mean for Lasting Legacy, was a 1 New Release on Amazon in December 2020. Big Stages, the documentary featuring her work with speakers, premiered at the Chelsea Film Festival in October 2023, and her latest passion is the new publishing house she founded, The Big Talk Press.

Written by Charlotte Cheetham, Gut Health Coach Charlotte Cheetham is an expert coach in gut health for menopausal women. She is the founder of Lifeinsights and aims to help all menopausal women, one by one, to heal their symptoms, which are preventing them from living a normal life. She has also written articles for Healthieyoo magazine about gut health, menopause, and psychobiotics. You wake up feeling fine. You have your usual breakfast, get the children organised, answer a few emails and head into work. Then, somewhere between your morning meeting and lunchtime, something changes. Your stomach feels uncomfortable. Your waistband feels tighter. By the afternoon, you're bloated, tired and struggling to concentrate. Perhaps the most frustrating part is that you haven't really changed anything. You're eating the foods you've always eaten. You're exercising when you can. You're trying to look after yourself. So why does your body suddenly seem to be behaving differently? For many women, the answer may partly lie in the transition they're going through: perimenopause. We often talk about perimenopause in terms of hot flushes, night sweats, changing periods, mood changes, and brain fog. But there is another part of the conversation that deserves far more attention: The gut. Your gut doesn't exist separately from your hormones The digestive system is not simply a tube that processes food. It is a complex system influenced by hormones, the nervous system, diet, movement, sleep, stress, and the trillions of microorganisms living within the gut. Research is increasingly exploring what happens to this system during the menopause transition. Oestrogen and progesterone receptors are found throughout the gastrointestinal tract, and changes in these hormones may influence gastrointestinal function, including gut motility. Research also suggests that menopause can be associated with changes in the gut microbiome. This doesn't mean that every episode of bloating is caused by changing hormones. Nor does it mean that your gut microbiome is the answer to every perimenopausal symptom. The science is still developing. But it does tell us something important: Your digestive symptoms deserve to be taken seriously. Why am I suddenly so bloated? Bloating can be one of those symptoms women simply learn to put up with. Perhaps you find yourself undoing the top button of your trousers after lunch. Perhaps you avoid certain clothes because you don't know how your stomach will look by the end of the day. Perhaps you feel uncomfortable sitting through a two-hour meeting. Or perhaps you're constantly asking yourself: "What did I eat this time?" This isn't just an inconvenience. Digestive symptoms can affect confidence, concentration, social activities, clothing choices and quality of life. Emerging research suggests that gastrointestinal symptoms are common around the menopause transition. A UK study of almost 600 women aged 44 to 73 reported high levels of digestive symptoms, including bloating, constipation, stomach pain and acid reflux, with many participants reporting that symptoms began or worsened around perimenopause or menopause. So if your digestion has changed in your 40s, you're certainly not imagining it. But there is another mistake I see women make. They immediately start removing foods. The restriction trap When something doesn't feel right in our bodies, our first instinct is often to take something away. No bread. No dairy. No gluten. No sugar. No carbohydrates. No eating after 6 pm. Then perhaps a new supplement. Then another. Before long, you're left with a list of foods you're frightened to eat and no real understanding of why you're experiencing the symptoms in the first place. Restriction can sometimes be appropriate for specific medical conditions or under professional guidance. But randomly eliminating foods isn't necessarily the answer. Instead, I encourage women to become curious about their symptoms: When does the bloating happen? What have you eaten? How quickly did you eat? How stressed were you? How well did you sleep? Have you been sitting at your desk all day? When did you last have a bowel movement? Where are you in your menstrual cycle? These questions can reveal far more than simply asking: "Which food is making me bloated?" Your lifestyle matters too One of the biggest mistakes we can make is looking at gut health through a food-only lens. Think about the reality of many professional women's lives. You wake up and immediately start thinking about everyone else. You rush through breakfast. You have coffee while answering emails. You work through lunch because the meeting ran over. You eat something quickly between Zoom calls. You sit at your desk for hours. You finish work and move straight into family responsibilities. You finally get into bed, and your brain starts planning tomorrow. Then we wonder why our digestion isn't behaving perfectly. Your gut is connected to your nervous system through the gut-brain axis, and the relationship between the brain, gut, and microbiome is an increasingly important area of research. This is why gut health isn't simply about putting the "right" foods on your plate. It's also about how you live. What about the gut microbiome? The microbiome has become one of the biggest conversations in women's health. You may have heard about the "estrobolome", the collection of gut microbial genes involved in the metabolism of oestrogens. Researchers are investigating the two-way relationship between sex hormones and the gut microbiome and whether changes in one may influence the other. It's fascinating science. But we need to be careful. There isn't currently a single "perfect" microbiome for a woman in perimenopause, and we don't yet have enough evidence to say that taking a particular probiotic will solve bloating or balance your hormones. The research is promising, but it is still evolving. That's why I believe women deserve something more useful than another list of supplements. They deserve to understand their own body. 5 things you can start doing differently You don't need to overhaul your entire life tomorrow. In fact, I would argue that trying to do everything at once is one of the reasons women struggle to make changes that last. Instead, start small. Stop skipping meals: If your working day consists of coffee followed by a late lunch followed by whatever you can grab at 4pm, start there. Aim for regular, balanced meals that include protein, fibre and a variety of nutritious foods. Slow down when you eat: Eating lunch while answering emails might feel productive. But your body still needs time to eat and digest. Whenever possible, step away from your desk. Sit down. Take a breath. Eat without trying to do three other things at the same time. Get curious about your symptoms: Instead of immediately cutting out another food, keep a simple diary for a couple of weeks. Record: what you eat, when you eat, bloating and digestive symptoms, bowel habits, sleep, stress, movement, menstrual-cycle changes. Patterns can be much more useful than assumptions. Move your body throughout the day: You don't necessarily need another intense workout. A walk after lunch. Taking the stairs. Standing during a phone call. Walking around the block between meetings. Small amounts of movement can help you break up long periods of sitting and become part of a sustainable routine. Look beyond the plate: Ask yourself: How am I sleeping? How stressed am I? Am I constantly rushing? Am I moving enough? Am I giving myself time to eat properly? Am I constantly trying to do everything for everyone else? Because sometimes the most helpful thing you can do for your gut isn't another superfood. It's changing the way you live your day. Your body isn't failing you Perhaps the most important message I want women to hear is this: "Your body isn't suddenly failing you because you've turned 40." Your body is changing, and when your hormones, lifestyle, stress levels, sleep, nutrition, and digestive system are all interacting, the strategies that worked for you at 25 may not be the strategies you need at 45. That doesn't mean you need to become obsessed with your gut. It doesn't mean you need to follow an incredibly restrictive diet. It certainly doesn't mean you need a cupboard full of supplements. It means you need to start listening. Because bloating isn't something you necessarily have to accept as "just part of getting older." It's a symptom worth exploring. From fixing your gut to understanding your whole self This is the philosophy behind the work I do with professional women over 40. I don't believe women need another complicated diet plan. They need a realistic approach that recognises the whole picture: their food, their lifestyle, their movement, their stress, their mindset, their changing bodies, and, importantly, their individual circumstances. Because the woman who is eating lunch between three meetings needs a different strategy from the woman who has time to prepare elaborate meals every day. The woman who is exhausted after work needs a different starting point from someone training for a marathon. The woman who has spent years trying every diet going may need something very different from someone who has never thought about their gut health before. There is no single "perfect" perimenopause diet. There is no magic food. There is no supplement that replaces understanding what your body is telling you. There is only the opportunity to start listening. Your gut shouldn't be your boss. But it can be a very useful messenger. So the next time you find yourself standing in front of the mirror, feeling frustrated because your stomach looks different from the way it did a few years ago, don't immediately ask: "What should I stop eating?" Try asking: "What is my body trying to tell me?" That question could be the beginning of a very different relationship with your body, and with your health in midlife. If you experience persistent, severe, or unexplained digestive symptoms, don't assume they are caused by perimenopause. Speak with your GP or an appropriately qualified healthcare professional so that other possible causes can be considered. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Charlotte Cheetham Charlotte Cheetham, Gut Health Coach Charlotte Cheetham is an expert Gut Coach for menopausal women. After suffering from an acute gut infection, she had to learn how to manage her gut health to prevent another massive flare-up. She has learned how to manage her nutritional needs to become healthy and happy during menopause. Her mission is to help as many women as possible manage their diet and lifestyle so they can also learn how to become healthy and happy again.

Written by Manuel Wotsch, Founder of AURA Silent Disco Manuel Wotsch is the founder of AURA, a Barcelona silent disco and wireless headset company that has produced over 1,200 events across 14 countries. He writes about experiential events, wellness formats, and how personal audio channels are reshaping the way people gather. Personal audio makes an event inclusive by giving every guest their own volume, clarity, and language, all on the same headset. For most of history, an event had one volume. Whatever the sound engineer set, everybody got, whether it was too loud, too quiet, or in a language they did not speak. We accepted this as normal because there was no alternative. A speaker points at a room, and the room takes what it is given. When we started putting audio directly into personal headphones, I thought we were solving a noise problem. What I did not expect in 2026 was how much we were also solving an inclusion problem. Personal audio is one of the quietly kindest things to happen to live events in a long time. One room, many needs Any crowd holds a huge range of bodies and brains, and a single shared volume fails most of them, at least a little. Some people love the wall of sound. Some flinch from it. Some cannot hear high frequencies clearly. Some are processing a second language in real time. Some are on the edge of sensory overload before the night even begins. A single shared volume asks all of these people to fit one setting. Personal audio flips that. When every guest wears their own headset, every guest holds their own dial. The event stops being one broadcast and becomes a thousand private experiences running in parallel, each one tuned to the person wearing it. That is a small technical fact with a large human effect. Imagine a single evening where one guest is recovering from a migraine, another wears hearing aids, and a third arrives straight from a long-haul flight with frayed nerves. On an old speaker system, one volume would have failed at least two of them. On personal audio, each simply sets the level that works and stays in the room. The engineer no longer decides who is comfortable, because the decision has been handed to the only person who can truly make it, the guest. How does personal audio help sensitive hearing? It lets each person set their own level, so someone who finds loud music painful can turn it down and stay fully in the room. The most obvious win is also the most powerful: they no longer have to choose between their comfort and their presence. Nobody has to leave to protect their ears. Nobody has to shout to be heard over a system pinned to maximum. The person who wants it loud gets it loud, and the person beside them who wants it gentle gets it gentle, and they are having the same night together. I have watched people who told me they had stopped going to events entirely come back to the floor once they realised the volume was finally theirs to control. How does it help people who are hard of hearing? It delivers a clean, direct signal straight into the ears, without the reflections that smear speech in a normal room. For guests who are hard of hearing, a normal event is often a blur. Sound bounces off walls, muddies against the crowd, and arrives smeared. Speech becomes impossible to follow, and many people simply give up. Headphones remove that reflection entirely. The audio does not have to survive a crossing of the room. It goes straight into the ears. For anyone using hearing aids or straining to catch a host's words, that clarity is the difference between following along and feeling lost. It is not a special accessibility mode bolted on afterward. It is how the system works for everyone, which is exactly how good inclusive design should feel. Quieter zones for neurodiverse guests Personal audio gives neurodiverse guests a dimmer switch for the room, so they can self-regulate without missing out. Sensory overload is real, and traditional events are engineered to cause it. Relentless volume, no escape, no off switch. For many neurodiverse guests, that makes the whole environment a no-go. Personal audio changes the room's physics. Because the ambient noise is so low without speakers, a guest lifts one ear cup and instantly finds a quieter reality, or lowers their volume, or steps to the edge of the space that is now genuinely calm rather than merely less loud. They self-regulate in the moment, on their own terms, without stepping away and without making a scene. I remember a guest who spent the first hour at the very edge of the space with their volume low, then drifted into the middle of the floor once they felt ready. Nobody managed that transition for them, and nobody noticed it happen. That is the mechanism that matters. When a person can adjust the room instead of enduring it, the choice to stay stops being a test of endurance and becomes an easy yes. The event gives them a dimmer switch for the world, and that control is often what makes attending possible at all. Multilingual channels Because our headsets carry up to three simultaneous channels, one stream can carry a different language, a translation, or an alternative narration. A host speaks on one channel while a second carries the same content in another tongue. A third can run a quieter narration or a stream of music alone. I have watched a room where the Spanish speakers, the English speakers, and a small group who simply wanted the soundtrack were all served at once, from one microphone and one kit. Nobody waited for a translation, and nobody sat politely through words they could not follow. The room held everyone in the same moment. In a city as international as the one where I work, this matters enormously. A mixed-nationality crowd shares a single event without half of them nodding politely at words they do not understand. Tours, talks, launches, and ceremonies all open up to people who would otherwise be quietly excluded. In practice, one host covers a bilingual room without a second stage or a translation booth, because the other language runs on a parallel channel. Weddings joining families from two countries, product launches for an international press list, and city tours for mixed groups all use this the same way. Inclusion is not only about volume and clarity. Sometimes it is simply about being spoken to in a language you actually speak. How do mixed crowds share one space? They share it because personal audio satisfies every different need at once, so a crowd that would normally splinter stays whole. The person who needs it quiet, the person who is hard of hearing, the neurodiverse guest, the visitor who speaks another language, and the friend who just wants to go loud are all in the same room, all satisfied, all together. This is why I keep coming back to festivals as the clearest example. A festival is diversity at maximum scale, thousands of different needs crammed into one field, and it is also where old sound systems cause the most friction. Multi-stage festivals running on personal audio put several acts side by side with no bleed between them, which is how you get festival stages without noise complaints while still giving every attendee their own perfect mix. What used to be a crowd forced to compromise becomes a crowd of individuals, each one included by default. Inclusion you do not have to announce The best part is that none of this is framed as accessibility. There is no separate quiet room, no special seating, no sign pointing out who needs help. Everyone gets the same headset and the same freedom, and each person uses that freedom for whatever they need. The guest turning it down for sensitive ears looks identical to the guest turning it up to dance. Dignity is built into the design. That is what I mean when I say personal audio is inclusive by default rather than by afterthought. It does not accommodate difference, it assumes it, and then it gets out of the way. After more than 1,200 events, the moments I am proudest of are not the biggest parties. They are the times someone told me they could finally be in the room with everyone else. That is the whole point, and the technology is just how we got there. If you are building an event that includes everyone, look at silent stages for your festival and get in touch to plan it with us. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Manuel Wotsch Manuel Wotsch, Founder of AURA Silent Disco Manuel Wotsch is the founder of AURA, a silent disco and wireless headset company based in Barcelona. Since 2021, he has grown AURA from an equipment provider into a full experience producer, delivering more than 1,200 events for 250,000 attendees across 800 venues and 14 countries. His work focuses on experiences that thrive inside real constraints, from city noise limits and venue curfews to inclusive access and corporate wellbeing. He writes about silent disco, sunrise sessions, wellness formats, and the shift from events to designed experiences. Through AURA, he helps brands, wellness practitioners, and companies bring people together around sound without disturbing anyone nearby.

Through her work with women and Feminine Yoga, Heidi Marja Norman explores the connection between the body, emotions, and feminine power. Her approach focuses on helping women reconnect with their natural rhythms, listen to their bodies, and create more space for self-awareness and inner balance. In this interview, Heidi shares her perspective on womb wisdom, emotional signals in the body, the importance of slowing down, and how her own journey following a head injury transformed the way she understood healing, mindfulness, and the intelligence of the body. Heidi Marja Norman, Feminine Power & Sacred Womb Wisdom Expert What does it look like for a woman to have feminine power in everyday life? From what I have seen through years of working with women, feminine power begins with feeling grounded in yourself. A woman becomes clearer about her boundaries, what she wants, what feels right for her, and what she is no longer willing to accept. She learns to care for herself in simple, everyday ways instead of constantly pushing until she is exhausted. She trusts her intuition more, listens to her heart, and feels more connected to her creativity, emotions, and natural rhythm. I also believe feminine power changes the way women relate to one another. When a woman feels secure within herself, there is less comparison and competition. She can genuinely celebrate other women, support them, and also allow herself to receive support. For me, feminine power is both strong and soft. It is standing firmly in who you are while still being open, sensitive, creative and vulnerable. It is knowing when to act and when to soften. Ultimately, it is about becoming more at home in yourself and moving through life with greater clarity, trust and connection. What does “womb wisdom” mean to you beyond its spiritual meaning? For me, womb wisdom is also about understanding the female body and learning to work with it instead of constantly pushing against it. Women are often expected to function at the same pace every day, but our bodies can move through different rhythms and life stages. For women who menstruate, the menstrual cycle can bring changes in energy, mood and physical needs. I often think of this as moving through different inner “seasons” across the month. Womb wisdom also includes recognising the major transitions a woman may experience, such as her first period, pregnancy, birth, pregnancy loss, perimenopause and menopause. These stages can affect how she feels physically, emotionally and energetically. To me, the deeper message is to stop treating the body as something that must always keep up with a schedule. It is about noticing when you need rest, when you have energy to create, and when your body is asking you to slow down. Womb wisdom, in everyday life, is really about learning your body’s language and trusting that its signals are worth listening to. How do emotions show up in the body before we consciously recognise what we are feeling? I believe our bodies often give us clues before we are consciously able to name what we are feeling. We may notice that we are more tired than usual, restless, tense, or unable to sleep well. Our shoulders may tighten, our jaw may clench, or our body may begin to feel heavy, stiff or uncomfortable. Sometimes we simply know that something feels “off” before we understand why. When we continually push emotions aside or do not give ourselves space to feel them, that tension can build. We may become more irritable, withdrawn, or disconnected from ourselves. Over time, we can start feeling as though we are carrying something we have never fully expressed. I often think of emotion as something that needs movement. It needs to be acknowledged, felt, and allowed to pass through us rather than constantly pushed down. For me, learning to notice these early signals is an important part of reconnecting with the body. Instead of immediately asking, “How do I get rid of this feeling?” we can begin by asking, “What might my body be trying to tell me?” Why do you think so many women lose touch with their body’s signals and natural rhythms? I think many women have simply become used to living at a pace that leaves very little space to listen to themselves. They may be caring for children, managing the home, working full-time, supporting a partner, keeping up friendships and still feeling pressure to show up for everything. Even self-care can become another task to complete rather than a chance to slow down. When life becomes this busy, it is easy to ignore tiredness, tension, changes in mood or the need for rest. We keep going because there is always something else that needs our attention. I also believe many women were never taught how to understand their own rhythms, including the changes they may notice throughout the menstrual cycle. Instead of becoming curious about what the body is asking for, we often learn to override it. Over time, those quieter signals can become easier to miss. For me, reconnecting begins with creating enough space to notice the body before it reaches a point of complete exhaustion. Sometimes the most important question is simply, “What is my body asking me for today?” Where do you see Feminine Yoga offering something different from more conventional approaches to yoga? For me, Feminine Yoga is less about performance and more about learning how to meet your body with softness, awareness and care. The movements are calm, gentle and natural. Rather than pushing the body into a shape, the practice invites you to slow down, breathe, release tension and become more aware of how your body wants to move. I often describe this as moving away from the constant “doing” energy many women are used to – always achieving, producing and performing – and creating more space for simply being. For someone new to this idea, that is what I mean when I speak about balancing masculine and feminine energy. Women who practise with me often say they feel more relaxed, peaceful and connected to themselves. With regular practice, some also notice that they express themselves more freely and feel less guarded, both on the mat and in everyday life. A yoga teacher once told me something I have never forgotten: “As you are on the yoga mat, you are also in life.” That is what Feminine Yoga offers for me – a way to meet yourself with more care, warmth and freedom. What is one sign that a woman may be living out of harmony with her body? One sign I often notice is that a woman is constantly moving from one thing to the next, with very little time to truly rest or check in with herself. She may have low energy, feel tense or stiff, sleep poorly, or feel as though she is living on a hamster wheel. Sometimes women also become disconnected from parts of themselves after difficult or overwhelming experiences. They may learn to push feelings aside, shut down, or simply keep functioning because that feels safer than facing what they are carrying. Over time, this can make it harder to recognise what the body is asking for. Even relaxation may become sitting in front of a screen rather than really giving the body space to settle. Many women also tell me they lose touch with their creativity and sense of aliveness. For me, living in harmony with the body means learning to notice these signals earlier. Feminine Yoga can help women slow down, reconnect with themselves, and begin working with their body rather than constantly pushing against it. What simple practice can help someone begin listening to their body more closely? One of the first practices I recommend is very simple: sit on the floor, if that is comfortable for you, with your legs extended or in another position that feels supportive. Then breathe slowly and give yourself a few minutes to simply notice your body. Many women find even sitting still surprisingly difficult because we are so used to doing, moving, and thinking about the next thing. But when you stay there and breathe, you may begin to notice where you are holding tension, where you feel restless, or what your body is asking for. I usually suggest beginning with just a few minutes and gradually staying longer if it feels right. The goal is not to force deep breathing or make anything happen. It is to create enough quiet to listen. Sitting close to the ground can also create a sense of grounding and stability. Sometimes the body may naturally want to shift, stretch, or even tremble slightly. I encourage women to stay curious rather than judging what comes up. It is a very simple practice, but it can become a powerful way of coming back into contact with yourself. How did your head injury in 2011 change the way you understand your own body and inner wisdom? My head injury in 2011 changed the way I understood both my body and the way I had been living. I fell backward on the ice just two days before I was due to go to a rehabilitation centre for pelvic joint problems. After the injury, even simple things became difficult. I experienced tunnel vision and double vision; I dropped things, and watching television was almost impossible. Because I could not distract myself in the way I normally would, I began to sit quietly and listen inwardly. What surprised me was how much of my attention was always focused on everyone else – my children, my family, my work, my responsibilities – and how little attention I gave to myself. At the rehabilitation centre, I was introduced to mindfulness. I began lying quietly after training and listening to what I was feeling in my body. That experience made me deeply curious about the intelligence of the body and the stories we carry within ourselves. That curiosity eventually led me to explore the chakras, yoga, and many different practices that helped me understand my body more deeply and learn how to care for it differently. What would you most like women to understand about their relationship with their bodies, emotions and feminine power? I would love women to understand how much strength and potential they already carry within themselves. For me, one of the most important things is learning to listen to the body and allowing ourselves to feel what we feel instead of constantly pushing everything aside. Our bodies often give us signals when something needs our attention, whether that is tension, tiredness, restlessness or simply a feeling that something is not right. In yoga, there is a concept called Spanda, which speaks about movement, expansion and contraction. I relate this to the way life and emotions move through us. We cannot always hold everything inside and expect ourselves to continue at the same pace. When we slow down, listen, and allow ourselves to process what we are carrying, we can feel more connected to ourselves and often more open to our creativity and energy. This is also what Feminine Yoga means to me. It creates space to stop performing for a moment, come back into the body, and reconnect with parts of ourselves that may have been pushed aside. I want women to know that feminine power is not something they need to find outside themselves. It begins by learning to trust and care for what is already within. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Heidi Marja Norman

Written by Anne Wallen, Director & Founder of MaternityWise International Anne Wallen is a respected figure in women’s health with over 30 years of experience and is a leading voice on global change in maternity care, particularly for those at greatest risk. There is an industry holding society together that rarely gets recognized as an industry at all. Women raise children, teach classrooms, care for the sick, comfort the dying, support mothers through pregnancy and birth, tend to aging parents, manage households, counsel families, remember appointments, notice emotional changes, and anticipate what other people need before those needs are spoken. Then millions of those same women go to work and do it professionally. They become nurses, teachers, social workers, therapists, childcare providers, doulas, midwives, home health aides, counselors, care coordinators, and support professionals. We might call this the Nurture Industry. It is the vast network of paid and unpaid labor that keeps human beings alive, healthy, educated, regulated, connected, and cared for. It raises an uncomfortable question, "Why does society depend so heavily on women’s capacity to nurture, yet so often undervalue the women doing the nurturing?" Women protect and provide, too For generations, Western culture has associated the word "provider" primarily with men. The father provides. The mother nurtures. But that definition of provision is painfully narrow. Provision is not simply earning income. Who provides the meals, the emotional security, the medical care, the education, the breastfeeding support, the clean clothing, the doctor’s appointments, and the thousands of small acts that turn survival into human well-being? Women provide every day. Women protect, too. Men aren’t the only ones who can protect, and protection is not simply a physical concept, either. Sometimes protection looks like physical defense. Sometimes it looks like recognizing that a child is frightened, noticing that an elderly parent is becoming confused, questioning a medication error, advocating for a laboring mother, or realizing that someone in the family is quietly unraveling. The feminine drive to protect and provide frequently expresses itself through relationships, vigilance, empathy, and care. Research supports at least part of this observation. A 2023 study in Scientific Reports found that women demonstrated higher empathy, compassion, and prosocial giving in a naturalistic social task, although the researchers appropriately cautioned that findings about gender and social abilities are complex. Biology, personality, socialization, and cultural expectations are difficult to separate cleanly. That distinction matters. Women are not genetically destined to become caregivers, and men are certainly capable of profound nurture and empathy. We should be careful not to replace one limiting stereotype with another. But neither should we ignore observable patterns simply because discussing differences has become uncomfortable. Follow the care, and you will find women The workforce tells the story. In 2024, women represented 75% of healthcare practitioners and technical workers and 72.3% of education, training, and library professionals in the United States. Women also made up approximately 84.6% of healthcare support workers, and among home health aides, the proportion was almost 89%. These are not fringe professions. These are the people teaching our children, administering medications, caring for disabled adults, helping families navigate illness, tending to older people, and supporting human beings during some of the most vulnerable moments of life. Then many women go home and begin another shift. The International Labour Organization reports that women perform 76.2% of unpaid care work worldwide, spending more than three times as many hours on it as men. The most recent American Time Use Survey shows the same pattern in the United States. In households with children under six, women spent an average of 2.8 hours per day providing primary childcare in 2025, compared with 1.7 hours for men. In other words, women participate in the care economy twice, first for wages, and then for free. The larger economy quietly depends upon both. A surgeon can perform surgery because someone cared for the surgeon’s child. A Chief Executive Officer (CEO) can remain in a twelve-hour strategy session because someone else remembered the pediatric appointment, bought groceries, or checked on an aging parent. Care is not separate from the economy. Care is the infrastructure underneath it. We praise women’s care, then discount its value This is where the contradiction becomes harder to explain away. We call nurses heroes. We tell teachers they shape the future. We say childcare workers care for our greatest treasures. We describe motherhood as priceless. Sometimes, "priceless" becomes a remarkably convenient way of avoiding putting an adequate price on women’s labor. Women still earned approximately 85 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024, based on median hourly earnings analyzed by Pew Research Center. Among workers ages 25 to 34, the gap was smaller, but it remained. Even within heavily female caregiving professions, differences appear. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that in 2024, female home health aides had median weekly earnings of $696, compared with $765 for male home health aides. Female nursing assistants earned a median of $743 per week, compared with $850 for men in the same occupation. These raw comparisons do not prove that every difference results from discrimination. Hours, experience, geography, scheduling, and other variables can affect earnings. However, they certainly justify asking why the people carrying so much of society’s care burden continue to experience economic disadvantage. Sex discrimination in employment has been illegal for decades. The Equal Pay Act requires equal pay for substantially equal work, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits sex discrimination in employment. Yet making discrimination illegal did not magically erase every structure, expectation, or cultural assumption created during centuries when women had dramatically less economic and political power. The glass ceiling still has fingerprints on it Women have entered professions, universities, and management at rates previous generations could scarcely have imagined. But follow power upward, and the numbers begin thinning. In the 2026 Fortune 500, only about 11% of America’s largest companies were led by women, even though that figure represented a record high. A record can represent progress and inequality at the same time. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously said, “Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.” We are still working on the "all" part. The issue feels particularly urgent as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives face continued political and institutional rollback in the United States. In August 2026, Reuters reported that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was moving toward ending a longstanding requirement for many large employers to report workforce demographic information by sex, race, and job category. Supporters of the change argue that such reporting can enable improper preference systems, while critics, including employers and former officials, argue that the information is important for identifying inequities and evaluating compliance. Whatever one’s opinion of specific DEI programs, eliminating discrimination and eliminating the measurement of disparities are not the same thing. You cannot declare the playing field level simply because you stop measuring the slope. Patriarchy versus matriarchy misses the better question The word "patriarchy" can instantly make people defensive, but patriarchy does not mean “men are bad.” It describes social structures in which authority, property, political power, and institutional decision-making have historically rested disproportionately with men. That history is indisputable. Women were once legally excluded from voting, many professions, educational institutions, and meaningful economic independence. We have dismantled many of those barriers, but their cultural shadows remain. Replacing patriarchy with an equally rigid matriarchy is not the answer, either. Women do not need to dominate men. Humanity needs balance. After centuries in which leadership was overwhelmingly shaped by male experience, balance necessarily requires more women at the table. That does not mean every woman is peaceful, every female leader is compassionate, or women are morally superior to men. It means that excluding half the human population from meaningful power inevitably narrows the experiences represented when decisions are made. There is evidence that women’s participation can change outcomes. Research examining peace processes has found that women’s participation is associated with agreements that are more likely to endure. One widely cited analysis found that women’s participation increased the probability of a peace agreement lasting at least two years by 20% and lasting fifteen years by 35%. Perhaps the lesson is not simply that we need more women leaders. Perhaps we need more of the qualities women have historically been expected to provide everywhere except the halls of power, empathy, relationships, protection of children, community stability, human dignity, and long-term thinking. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern challenged the idea that compassionate leadership is weak, saying she was “proudly focused on empathy, because you can be both empathetic and strong.” That may be one of the most important leadership lessons of our time. Stop asking women to care for the world at a discount Women do not need to abandon nurturing careers to become equal. That would be a tragic interpretation of empowerment. We need nurses. We need teachers. We need midwives and doulas. We need therapists, counselors, mothers, caregivers, childcare professionals, and community builders. We also need women running companies, governments, hospitals, universities, and institutions. Women should not have to become less nurturing in order to become more powerful. Society needs to stop confusing nurture with lesser value. The real problem was never that women entered professions built around caring. The problem is that society became extraordinarily comfortable benefiting from women’s care while discounting its economic and political worth. Perhaps the future should be neither patriarchal nor matriarchal. Perhaps it should be a world in which strength and empathy finally sit at the same table. It should be a world that understands that protecting children is leadership, supporting mothers is infrastructure, caring for vulnerable people is skilled work, and nurturing humanity is not a secondary contribution to civilization. It is how civilization survives. After generations of women caring for the people who run the world, perhaps it is time for more women to help run it. If we want healthier families, safer mothers, supported children, and stronger communities, we must invest in the people who provide the care that makes those outcomes possible. MaternityWise International prepares doulas and maternal health professionals to turn compassion into competent, evidence-informed action while advocating for families through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. Nurture is not weakness. Care is not secondary work. The people who hold society together deserve a meaningful voice in shaping where society goes next. Learn more about professional doula education and MaternityWise International here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Anne Wallen Anne Wallen, Director & Founder of MaternityWise International Anne Wallen is a respected figure in women’s health with over 30 years of experience and is a leading voice on global change in maternity care, particularly for those at greatest risk. She continues to educate and empower birth professionals in more than 20 countries, contributes to a variety of curricula, and shapes the future of maternal health through her impactful role as a speaker and mentor. Anne is the Director and founder of MaternityWise International, and her legacy lies in inspiring generational changes and elevating women's healthcare worldwide. References: McDonald, B., & Kanske, P. “Gender differences in empathy, compassion, and prosocial donations, but not theory of mind in a naturalistic social task .” Scientific Reports, 2023. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Women in the Labor Force, 2024: Occupation Employment Profiles of Women and Men by Age . U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employed Persons by Detailed Occupation, Sex, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Ethnicity, 2024 . International Labour Organization. Research on unpaid care work and the global care economy, reporting that women perform 76.2% of unpaid care work worldwide. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. American Time Use Survey: 2025 Results . June 2026. Fry, R., & Aragão, C. “Gender pay gap in the U.S. has narrowed slightly over 2 decades .” Pew Research Center, March 4, 2025. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Highlights of Women’s Earnings in 2024. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Equal Pay/Compensation Discrimination and Sex Discrimination. Fortune. Reporting on women CEOs in the 2026 Fortune 500. June 2026. Council on Foreign Relations. Women’s Participation in Peace Processes. Reuters. Reporting on proposed changes to federal employer demographic reporting requirements, August 26, 2026. (URL not provided.) Blackwell, G. “Jacinda Ardern: Political leaders can be both empathetic and strong .” The Guardian, May 31, 2020.