Written by Dragana Favre, Psychiatrist & Jungian Psychotherapist Dr. Dragana Favre is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and seeker of the human psyche's mysteries. With a medical degree and extensive neuroscience education from prestigious institutions like the Max Planck Institute and Instituto de Neurociencias, she's a seasoned expert. Lately, I have found myself returning to an unusual image. Perhaps it comes from conversations with patients, perhaps from reading too much news, or simply from living through these curious times. Imagine that we are all passengers on a vast spaceship. It is an extraordinary vessel. It has never travelled faster, processed more information, or possessed such astonishing technological capacities. Yet its passengers seem increasingly caught in radically different realities unfolding at the same time. In one part of the ship, artificial intelligence promises to transform medicine, extend human capacities, and solve problems once considered impossible. Elsewhere, passengers are preparing for ecological collapse, war, democratic breakdown, or technological catastrophe. Some believe humanity is approaching an unprecedented evolutionary leap, others fear we are approaching the end of something fundamental. Utopia and apocalypse no longer alternate. They travel side by side. Perhaps this is what makes the ship feel so familiar. Our world is not only politically polarized. We seem increasingly pulled towards extremes of hope and despair, omnipotence and helplessness, connection and isolation, acceleration and paralysis. Contradictory realities coexist, sometimes within the same society, the same family, even the same person. The mothership is useful as a metaphor for the difficulty of maintaining psychological orientation when so many extremes coexist and compete for our attention. As a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, I increasingly hear people describe not simply being overwhelmed by events, but by the speed with which experience arrives. Before one event has been psychologically digested, another demands a response. We know more, react faster, and communicate more frequently than previous generations, yet psychological understanding does not necessarily follow the same rhythm. The psyche appears to live according to a different tempo. Jung understood that psychological transformation does not occur simply because something happens. Experience needs to enter into dialogue with dreams, memory, imagination, and unconscious life. It needs time before it becomes psychologically meaningful. Symbols cannot simply be produced on demand. Perhaps, then, our problem is not only information overload but symbolic overload. Thousands of images, opinions, catastrophes, and predictions pass through consciousness, but surprisingly few have time to become symbols capable of transforming us. Experience accumulates faster than meaning can emerge. Hartmut Rosa distinguishes between a world that is available and one that is resonant. Contemporary technology has made astonishing amounts of the world available to us. But resonance cannot be accelerated or optimized. It requires enough openness, and enough time, for something genuinely to reach us and for us to respond. Perhaps we are moving too fast for the psyche to answer. This is where Jung’s idea of individuation becomes unexpectedly contemporary. Individuation is not simply self-discovery or personal fulfilment. It involves learning to distinguish what genuinely belongs to us from what belongs to the collective psyche, while remaining in relationship with both. Jung’s question might once have been, "Who am I beyond the collective?" Today, the question may be slightly different, "How do I continue hearing my own inner voice when the collective never stops speaking?" The collective now wakes with us, accompanies us through meals, interrupts conversations, and follows us into bed. We carry its emotional weather in our pockets. Perhaps never before has the collective been so continuously present in the intimate spaces of individual psychological life. Under these conditions, remaining open to the world without being flooded by it becomes an important psychological task. We need enough openness for unexpected experience, emotion, and imagination to reach us, but also enough inner differentiation that every headline, fear, outrage, or collective reaction does not immediately become our own. Neither complete withdrawal nor unlimited openness allows symbolic life to flourish. This may be why dreams, art, imagination, contemplation, and genuine conversation matter so much now. They create spaces in which experience can remain with us long enough to change form. Every night, dreams quietly remind us that another rhythm still exists, a rhythm largely indifferent to productivity, algorithms, and acceleration. The unconscious refuses to hurry simply because the culture does. Remaining human on this emotionally fluctuant mothership may therefore have less to do with resisting technology than with protecting the conditions under which meaning remains possible: silence, dreams, art, conversation, uncertainty, imagination, and above all, time. Perhaps individuation today does not ask us to repair the mothership. Nor to abandon it. It asks us to become passengers who are no longer carried entirely by its emotional weather. We may not control the speed of the ship, or the contradictory directions in which it seems to be travelling. But we still participate in something profoundly our own, the quality of consciousness with which we travel. Perhaps individuation has always begun there. Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Dragana Favre Dragana Favre, Psychiatrist & Jungian Psychotherapist Dr. Dragana Favre is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and seeker of the human psyche's mysteries. With a medical degree and extensive neuroscience education from prestigious institutions like the Max Planck Institute and Instituto de Neurociencias, she's a seasoned expert. Her unique approach combines Jungian psychotherapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and dream interpretation, guiding patients towards self-discovery and healing. Beyond her profession, Dr. Favre is passionate about science fiction, nature, and cosmology. Her ex-Yugoslav roots in the small town of Kikinda offer a rich backdrop to her life's journey. She is dedicated to helping people find their true selves, much like an alchemist turning lead into gold.

Written by Martha Maria Smith, Bilingual Mentor Martie Smith's journey as a Resilience Ambassador began in Colombia and highlights her steadfast strength and adaptability, from her service in the US Air Force to becoming a Radiation Therapist and a certified personal trainer at 62. An internationally acclaimed author and Poet Laureate, she mentors young individuals and shares her expertise. The ground can catch a fall, humble a spirit, interrupt momentum, and force a view of life nobody asked for. It can become a classroom without a registration form, a place where pride goes quiet and perspective finally gets a chance to speak. But the ground was never meant to become a permanent address. Falling there and belonging there are two remarkably different things. Life has a way of rearranging carefully made plans without asking permission. A relationship changes, a dream collapses, health shifts, a door closes, or a path that once felt certain suddenly becomes unfamiliar. In those moments, it is natural to stare at what was lost and wonder how everything changed so quickly. Yet being brought low has a strange way of changing what the eyes can see. From that lower vantage point, what once looked enormous may suddenly appear smaller. What felt urgent may lose its grip, and what was tolerated for years may finally become impossible to ignore. A fall can expose where too much power was handed away, where comfort had been mistaken for peace, and where fear had quietly become the decision-maker. That does not make the fall a gift. Some experiences hurt, some losses deserve to be grieved, and some chapters should never be wrapped in motivational language just to make them easier to explain. Resilience is not pretending pain did not matter. It is refusing to let pain become identity. There is tremendous power in being able to say, “This happened to me,” without allowing it to become, “This is all I am.” Pain can become familiar, and familiar things have a way of moving in without permission. Before long, they begin rearranging the furniture and acting as though they own the place. Awareness interrupts that process because once we recognize what has been holding the keys, we can decide what deserves access to the next chapter. Getting back up rarely looks as dramatic as people imagine. There may be no soundtrack, perfect comeback, or cheering crowd. Rising may look like getting dressed, making the call, asking for help, saying no, trying again, or taking one small step while fear sits nearby, acting as though it has already signed the lease. Progress does not become less meaningful simply because it looks ordinary. Faith can be just as unpolished. It is not always certainty wrapped in beautiful words. There are seasons when faith sounds like, “Lord, I do not understand what You are doing here, but I am still listening,” and other days when the prayer is simply, “Lord, seriously?” Both belong. Humanity and faith were never meant to cancel each other out. One of the most significant shifts after a fall is not always a change in circumstances, but a change in sight. A closed door may reveal protection rather than simple rejection. A delay may hold information that could not have been understood earlier. A detour may signal that an old route has completed its assignment rather than prove that the entire journey has failed. Clarity rarely arrives as one giant revelation. More often, it appears in small rays of truth. A boundary becomes visible. A chapter finally looks finished. Peace begins to matter more than proving a point. Somewhere in that new perspective, a key may also appear, not one handed over by someone else, but one that was already being carried beneath fear, disappointment, survival, or noise. Difficult seasons can strip away enough distraction for us to recognize tools that were inside us all along. Those discoveries do not erase darkness or undo what happened, but they can provide enough light for movement. We rarely need the entire map before taking the next meaningful step. Sometimes we only need enough clarity to stop handing the steering wheel back to what already hurt us. Strength also begins to take on a different meaning after enough life has been lived. It is not always holding on tighter. There are moments when strength means releasing what no longer fits, walking away from what once looked like the answer, or choosing quiet over chaos, dignity over desperation, peace over performance, and truth over familiarity. Letting go can become its own form of wisdom when holding on is powered more by fear than by love, purpose, or faith. Growth often hides inside those decisions. It may resemble exhaustion, uncertainty, or rebuilding something nobody else can see yet. It may even involve meeting the same lesson again and wondering whether life offers loyalty points for repeat enrollment. Apparently, some classes come without extra credit. Still, a repeated lesson can reveal something entirely different when the eyes looking at it have changed. What once felt like punishment may expose a pattern. What once triggered panic may now invite discernment. What once looked like an ending may become the place where another tool is added to the internal toolbox. This is one of the quiet powers of lived experience, what happened does not have to become wasted mileage. Experience can become wisdom, wisdom can sharpen discernment, discernment can create direction, and direction can eventually be placed in service of purpose. Over time, the shift becomes noticeable. The voice becomes clearer, boundaries become stronger, and the spirit becomes less willing to negotiate with what drains it. The heart can become softer without becoming weaker. Perhaps most importantly, rising no longer has to mean returning to the person who existed before the fall. Sometimes that version has already completed her assignment. Rising can mean discovering someone with deeper discernment, a different relationship with peace, and far less willingness to mistake familiarity for destiny. That is not becoming someone else. It is excavating more of who was already there. There is freedom in realizing that the ground was a place, not a definition, a season, not an identity, a chapter, not the entire book. A scar can become evidence of what was lived through without becoming the center of the story. It may even become a credential, not because suffering automatically produces wisdom, but because what we choose to learn, build, and offer from what we survived can become part of the arsenal we carry forward. That changes the questions worth asking. Instead of being still only with “Why did I fall?” there is power in asking, “What can I see from here that I could not see before?” That question creates space for honesty without hopelessness. It allows grief and gratitude to exist in the same heart and makes room for faith without pretending certainty. It can reveal the lesson, boundary, tool, truth, or key that was impossible to recognize from the earlier altitude. The ground can teach, humble, expose, and redirect, but it does not deserve permanent residency. What belongs to the next chapter can be carried forward, and what has already finished its work can be left behind. Rising does not mean the fall never mattered or that the pain was somehow necessary. It means what happened does not get unlimited authority over what happens next. The ground may have held you for a season, but it never owned your address. Sometimes remembering that is the first step home. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Martha Maria Smith Martha Maria Smith, Bilingual Mentor Martie Smith's journey as a Resilience Ambassador began in Colombia and highlights her unwavering strength and adaptability. She exemplifies resilience from her service in the US Air Force to becoming a Radiation Therapist and certified personal trainer at 62. As an internationally acclaimed author and poet, Martie mentors young individuals, sharing her expertise and spreading messages of hope and resilience globally as a captivating speaker.

Written by Sarah Wittl, Health & Wellbeing Transformation Coach Sarah Wittl is a Health & Wellbeing Transformation Coach and founder of Sarah’s Wellbeing Hub. She helps individuals and organisations build sustainable physical, mental, and emotional health through self-guided tools, coaching, and leadership wellbeing programs. You already know the advice. You've read the articles, downloaded the app, maybe even hired the coach. So why isn't any of it sticking? The answer isn't a lack of discipline, it's a gap most wellbeing advice never actually names. What is the real gap between knowing and doing? Most driven people don't lack information. They know they should move more, sleep better, breathe before reacting. What they're missing isn't another fact, it's a way to close the distance between knowing and doing inside a day that never slows down long enough to try. That gap has a name. Researchers call it the intention-behavior gap, the well-documented pattern where strong intentions to change a health behavior fail to translate into action, forming a persistent barrier to behavioral change. It isn't a personal failing. It's a predictable, studied phenomenon, which means it isn't something to feel ashamed of. It's something to design around. For a lot of ambitious people, this gap hides underneath something else entirely, a feeling that's hard to name. They know they work hard, and they love working hard. But there's a quieter signal underneath it, one that keeps knocking. Physical energy runs low. The mind won't stop racing. Somewhere along the way, they stopped remembering what it feels like to be vibrant and in charge of their own wellbeing. Everything around them moves too fast to stop and notice. What looks like passion and drive from the outside can, from the inside, feel more like a current too strong to pull themselves out of. Why “driven” and “well” feel like they can't coexist Underneath that feeling sits a belief many high performers carry without ever saying out loud, either I'm driven and work hard, or I feel well physically, mentally, and emotionally. I can't have both. It isn't true. It's entirely possible to be driven and work hard while feeling energetic, vibrant, and physically, mentally, and emotionally well, but almost nobody believes that's possible until they've experienced it, because most wellbeing advice was never built for people who refuse to slow down. The real problem isn't a lack of information Here's the part that surprises most people, you don't need more information. You need to implement the one piece that's actually missing, you. The specific, real, current version of you, not a generic template of what “healthy” is supposed to look like. The abundance of information already out there is often what numbs, freezes, and confuses people further, as I explored in Why Workplace Wellbeing Fails Before It Begins and What to Do Instead, where environment and setup, not more advice, determine whether wellbeing actually sticks. The same principle holds true individually. What's missing isn't another strategy. It's an approach structured enough to hold you in chaos and flexible enough to move with the chaos of your actual day. This is also why, as I wrote about in You Don't Have a Productivity Problem, You Have an Energy Problem, the answer was never about finding more hours or more willpower. It's about building a system that works with your day exactly as it is, not the version of your day you wish you had. There's one more belief worth naming directly, the idea that “once I have things under control, then I'll start.” It feels responsible. It's actually backward. Tools and strategies built for calm, perfect conditions rarely hold when life throws its real curveballs. The tools that hold are the ones built right in the middle of the chaos, because those are the only ones tested against the pressure of real life. The one-minute round that changed everything In full-contact Kyokushin karate, fights happen in rounds, three rounds of two minutes each. Once the round starts, you give everything, physically, mentally, emotionally, completely switched on, every fibre of your body engaged. A split second of lost focus and your opponent's foot is in your face. Between rounds, you get exactly one minute. That one minute can change absolutely everything. You use every resource you have to recover as fast as possible, gathering what's left of your strength, staying sharp, staying alert, and breathing with intention to make the most of your lung capacity. You optimise it down to the smallest detail, because in the ring, it can genuinely mean the difference between staying in the fight and going down. This is where real change actually starts. Not with more information. Not with more time. With one minute, used on purpose, inside a day that was never going to slow down for you. Where your one minute starts Your version of that one minute won't be a karate mat. It might be the sixty seconds before you open your laptop or the pause before you walk through your front door at the end of the day. The round looks different. The principle is identical. This is exactly the work I walk people through inside the Founder Membership, helping you build your own Personal Wellbeing Blueprint (a concept I go deeper on in my recent interview), so that instead of chasing more information, you finally implement the one piece that was always missing, you. Explore the Founder Membership here. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more info! Read more from Sarah Wittl Sarah Wittl, Health & Wellbeing Transformation Coach Sarah Wittl is a Health & Wellbeing Transformation Coach and founder of Sarah’s Wellbeing Hub. With over a decade of experience in executive coaching, neuroscience-based leadership, and physical training, she bridges personal and organisational wellbeing through her unique self-guided approach. Her work empowers individuals and teams to create lasting balance across body, mind, and emotions by focusing on sustainable habits and self-leadership. A former Australian National Karate Champion and lifelong martial artist, Sarah blends strength, compassion, and science to help others thrive from the inside out.

Written by Andi Saitowitz, Business Psychologist & Professional Coach Andi Saitowitz is a passionate bettermaker, helping people rise through change, reconnect to themselves, and lead with greater courage, confidence, and purpose. Blending psychology, strategy, and soul, she is known for her bold authenticity, thought-provoking insights, and powerful ability to turn everyday struggles into meaningful transformation. We are remarkably courageous when it comes to saying, “I’m sorry,” to other people. We reflect. We take responsibility. We acknowledge where we could have done better. We ask for forgiveness. We try to make things right. But how often do we offer that same grace to ourselves, especially when we’re high performers? High performers tend to have high expectations. We set ambitious goals, hold ourselves to demanding standards, and constantly look for ways to improve. We’re often the people others rely on. There is tremendous strength in that. There can also be a hidden cost. When high standards become relentless self-criticism, the very qualities that drive us forward can start working against us. Instead of asking, “What can I learn from this?” we ask, “How could I have been so stupid?” Instead of “What would I do differently next time?” we tell ourselves, “I should have known better.” Instead of recognising that we were navigating complexity, we judge ourselves for not having had clarity in the moment. Perhaps it’s time for a different conversation. Sometimes there is no perfect choice One reality of being human is that our values compete. We can value family and freedom, connection and independence, ambition and balance, achievement and wellbeing, giving to others and caring for ourselves. All of these are important. And sometimes, choosing one means another temporarily receives less attention. That’s what makes decisions hard. Whether in our relationships, our families, our careers, or our leadership, we will sometimes make choices we later question. That doesn’t automatically mean we made the wrong choice. Often, it means we were navigating competing values, incomplete information, real constraints, and imperfect circumstances. We made the best decision we could with the person we were, the knowledge we had, and the resources available to us at that moment. Then life gives us something precious, more information. We learn. We grow. We understand ourselves differently. And sometimes we realise that if we faced the same situation today, we would choose differently. That isn’t failure. That’s development. Accountability and self-compassion can coexist Self-compassion is often misunderstood as letting ourselves off the hook. It isn’t. It doesn’t mean avoiding accountability, ignoring mistakes, or pretending our choices have no consequences. It means being able to look honestly at ourselves without turning a mistake into an indictment of our worth. We can say, “I got this wrong,” and also, “I am not wrong.” We can say, “I could have handled that better,” and also, “I was doing the best I could with what I knew then.” We can take responsibility without carrying shame. We can learn without punishing ourselves. And we can raise our standards without making our self-worth conditional on meeting them every time. For high performers, that distinction matters enormously. The goal isn’t to lower the bar. It’s to stop beating ourselves up when we don’t clear it. The apology we owe ourselves Perhaps the most courageous conversation we can have is the one we have with ourselves. I’m sorry for the times I was harder on you than you needed me to be. I’m sorry for the times I made achievement feel like the price of being worthy. I’m sorry for expecting you to know then what you only learned later. I’m sorry for judging you for being human. And then comes the harder part, I forgive you. Not because it didn’t matter. Not because there’s nothing to learn. But because growth requires room to be imperfect. What if we spoke to ourselves the way we speak to someone we love? Imagine a colleague, a friend, a client, or someone on your team came to you after making a mistake. Would you tell them they were a failure? Would you remind them of every past misstep? Would you tell them they should have known better? Probably not. You’d listen. You’d help them understand what happened. You’d identify the learning. You’d encourage them to try again. Because one difficult moment doesn’t define an entire person. So why is it sometimes so difficult to offer ourselves that same humanity? Self-compassion may simply be the decision to extend inward the kindness we so readily extend outward. Grace is not weakness Grace doesn’t mean lowering our standards. It means recognising that we are human while we pursue excellence. We are allowed to be works in progress. We are allowed to make mistakes, change our minds, and discover that what worked five years ago no longer works today. We are allowed to be ambitious and still need rest. We are allowed to care deeply and sometimes get overwhelmed. We are allowed to lead others while still learning how to lead ourselves. Because high performance was never supposed to mean getting everything right. Perhaps it means being willing to reflect, learn, adapt, repair, and begin again. The courage to begin again There’s a particular kind of courage in saying sorry to someone else. There’s another kind in turning that compassion inward. In sitting with ourselves and saying, I see you. I’m sorry. I forgive you. I’m still learning. I’m still trying. I don’t have to be perfect to be worthy of compassion. We can hold ourselves to high standards without holding ourselves hostage to them. We can pursue excellence without demanding perfection. We can be accountable without being cruel. And we can keep growing without believing that growth requires us to dislike who we are today. The goal isn’t to become someone who never gets it wrong. It’s to become someone who can get it wrong, learn from it, forgive themselves, and courageously try again. Because sometimes, the person most deserving of the grace we so generously give to others is us. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Andi Saitowitz Andi Saitowitz, Business Psychologist & Professional Coach Andi Saitowitz is a Business Psychologist, transformational coach, and powerful voice in personal development, leadership, and human potential. Through her coaching, speaking, Radio & Podcast Show Life & Lattes, and growing the Positive Recharge community, she inspires people to navigate change with courage, resilience, and purpose. Known for her bold authenticity and deeply relatable insights, Andi blends psychology, strategy, and soul to help people grow personally and professionally. She is the author of the Rise & Shine Personal Development Journal, proud mom of three, and passionate believer in meaningful growth, community, fitness, faith, and living fully.

Swedish organic brand True Organic of Sweden demonstrates how small, founder-led businesses build visibility and trust as consumers shift to AI-driven product discovery. Stockholm, Sweden – As consumers increasingly turn to AI tools like ChatGPT and Google AI to discover and evaluate products, a new visibility model is taking shape – one that favors clarity, authenticity, and verifiable trust over massive ad budgets. Founded by Tina Saare de Sousa, a practitioner with a background in the Science of Natural Health, Swedish skincare brand True Organic of Sweden offers a compelling case study. Built without paid advertising, the brand relies on organic content, word-of-mouth validation, and a strict commitment to ingredient transparency. “When you’re an independent brand, you can’t outspend mass-market competitors,” says Saare de Sousa. “We invest directly in ingredient quality and customer experience instead. Interestingly, that’s precisely the kind of signal AI tools look for: genuine reviews, consistent brand narrative, and real ingredient integrity.” True Organic of Sweden’s product strategy centers on clean, minimalist formulations: All You Need Is Me A multi-use balm crafted with 95% certified organic ingredients, recognized with accolades including the Daisy Beauty Awards, Swedish Beauty & Cosmetics Awards, and Bambini Baby Awards. Undercover Agent An aluminum chloride-free natural deodorant formulated with 99% natural ingredients, designed specifically for sensitive skin. With hundreds of verified customer reviews averaging 4.9 stars, the brand’s steady growth reflects a broader industry shift: as algorithmic discovery replaces traditional advertising, authentic social proof and founder-led credibility are becoming a business’s most valuable assets. True Organic of Sweden is available direct-to-consumer online and through selective wholesale and international distribution partners across Europe and Asia. About True Organic of Sweden True Organic of Sweden is a Stockholm-based organic skincare brand dedicated to sustainable, high-performance formulations for sensitive skin. Packaged in eco-friendly materials and made with certified organic ingredients, the brand delivers transparent, uncompromising natural beauty solutions. Media contact Tina Saare de Sousa Founder & CEO, True Organic of Sweden tina@trueorganicofsweden.com | +46 (0)73 778 5119 trueorganicofsweden.com High-resolution image assets and product review samples available upon request.

Written by Linda Løwebeck, Counselor & Teacher Linda Løwebeck is known as a psychic medium and healer. She is the founder of Spirit of One, where people can book her for counseling, healing, and information about the spirit realm. She is also the head of an unidentified flying object (UFO) group called CE-5 (Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind) Copenhagen, which conducts CE-5 Skywatches in search of extraterrestrial life. Life has a way of leading your attention outward in many directions. Over in this, over in that, over in him, over in her. It leads attention away from the centred Self, and it is a daily task to stay centred while interacting with life, which can feel overwhelming. Your core Self is full of wisdom, potential and peace. Leading your life from there makes life much more serene and a lot less stressful. Here are five ways that you can reconnect with your centred Self and serenity. Meditating has a magical effect on your centredness and life. Just meditating for five minutes works wonders for you. Usually, there are inner distractions, and the mind jumps around, also known as the monkey mind, because of its rapid movements. The best way to calm the monkey mind is to write down the different details, such as things to memorise for later. Emptying the mind of thoughts onto notes for later attention. It is my experience that it is highly beneficial to spend some minutes emptying the mind before going into meditation. Another practice you can do is journaling. This is where you let your thoughts out onto paper and express everything in your mind. No holding back and no politeness. These are your raw, authentic thoughts on things. This method has a very deep cleansing effect and can bring up all sorts of emotions. It is common to cry or shout and let the profanities out. A third method is to pay attention to your dreams. Dreams come in two forms. Firstly, when we sleep, we always go astral travelling, and we usually cannot remember it. Lucid dreaming is a gateway to becoming conscious while dreaming. Secondly, the brain processes daily life, and the subconscious has a lot to say. With dream interpretation, pay attention to the feelings in the dream, more so than the images. The feelings give clarity to situations in waking life. A fourth way to reconnect to your authentic Self and serenity is through bodywork therapy. Old feelings and traumas are stored in the body’s muscle memory. Bodywork therapy lets these stuck emotions flow and creates space for them to be released and processed. It is life-changing to finally let go of both childhood traumas and adult traumas, and this is essentially what we all need. Lastly, a fifth way to come home to your centred Self is through psychic medium consultation and healing. A psychic medium and healer offers guidance from the spirit realm and can heal energies in the body and auric field. The transformation can also have its origin in past lives, and here a psychic medium can help release it. This is where conventional therapy cannot reach, and it is my observation and experience that symptoms subside through regression and past life healing. My perspective on reconnecting to Self, the pure, peaceful Self, is that we have to do the inner work. It is a very long process to rest in the Self permanently, and it can be done, but most people will not attain that. What is attainable for everyone is to come back to your centre, and with some effort, as explained, you can be there most of the time. Your life will be more peaceful, more aligned, and serenity will emerge. Follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Linda Løwebeck Linda Løwebeck, Counselor & Teacher Linda Løwebeck is a psychic medium and healer from birth and has also trained her gifts at a psychic school. Since childhood, she has been in communication with spirits and has had the ability to heal. She uses her gifts to help people find clarity in their life situations and heal their discomfort with the Spirit of One. UFOs have always been an interest, and in 2015 Linda saw her first one. She established the UFO group CE-5 Copenhagen and has had many sightings. Her mission is to expand awareness, so people can experience a clearer approach to life and experience spirits, healing, and UFOs.

Written by Hilaryano Ferreira, Cardiologist & Founder of Aethera Health Hilaryano Ferreira is a cardiologist and the founder of Aethera Health, an EU-licensed telehealth platform delivering physician-led online care across Europe. He works in cardiology and co-authored early peer-reviewed research on using AI to automate remote cardiac monitoring. Longevity has become the most expensive word in wellness. In 2026, concierge and "boutique longevity" programmes charge between €1,500 and €100,000 a year for deep blood panels, full-body scans, biological-age reports and a plan built around supplements, sleep and cold water. The clients are successful people who have decided that their health deserves the same rigour as their business. That instinct is right. The market that has grown up to serve it is not always. I am a cardiologist, and cardiovascular disease is still the thing most likely to end the life of a high-performing man or woman in Europe. So here is the question I would put to anyone about to spend serious money on their longevity: Of everything on that glossy menu, what actually predicts whether your heart will still be working properly in ten years? The answer is shorter than the brochure, and much of it costs about as much as a good lunch. What changed in cardiology in 2026? Quietly, a great deal. The 2026 dyslipidemia guideline from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, the first full rewrite in years, did three things that matter to a reader of this magazine. It recommended that every adult have lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a), measured at least once in their lifetime. It recognised apolipoprotein B (ApoB) as a more accurate measure of the particles that actually cause atherosclerosis. And it upgraded coronary artery calcium scoring to a Class 1 recommendation for deciding who needs treatment and who does not. In plain terms, the tests that the best preventive cardiologists have been using for a decade are now official, and none of them requires a €50,000 membership. Which five numbers predict your heart's next decade? Apolipoprotein B. Standard cholesterol reports measure the fat carried in your blood. ApoB counts the particles carrying it, and it is the particles that lodge in the artery wall. Two people with identical "normal" low-density lipoprotein (LDL) levels can have very different ApoB levels, and it is the one with the higher count who is at risk. If your last panel did not include it, your risk was estimated with the wrong instrument. Lipoprotein(a). Roughly one adult in five carries a high level of this genetically determined particle, which raises the risk of heart attack and aortic valve disease independently of everything else. It barely changes with diet or exercise, which is exactly why it is worth knowing: It changes how aggressively everything else should be managed. One measurement, once in a lifetime, and most people have never had it. Coronary artery calcium score. A computed tomography (CT) scan lasting a few minutes, requiring no contrast or fasting, counts the calcified plaque already in your coronary arteries. A score of zero in your forties or fifties is one of the most reassuring results in medicine; a high score in someone who "feels fine" is the single most common reason a preventive plan changes overnight. It is now the guideline's preferred tie-breaker when the risk calculators are uncertain, which, for fit and successful people in midlife, is most of the time. Blood pressure, measured at home, not in a clinic. The number taken in a hurry at an executive medical is the least useful blood pressure you will ever record. Two weeks of morning and evening readings on a validated cuff tell the truth, and hypertension remains the largest single modifiable cause of stroke and heart failure worldwide. Cardiorespiratory fitness. Among more than 120,000 adults followed by the Cleveland Clinic, the least fit had roughly five times the death rate of the most fit, and the benefit kept rising with every step up in fitness, with no ceiling. Maximal oxygen uptake (VO₂ max) is the cleanest measure, and a wearable's estimate is good enough to start with. This is the number the longevity industry gets right, and the one most people in leadership roles neglect first. Add glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) and a waist measurement, and you have the whole panel. The total cost in most European cities, when done privately, is a few hundred euros, including the calcium scan. What does the longevity industry sell that the evidence does not support? Biological-age reports are compelling to read and, so far, poor at changing outcomes; no major cardiovascular guideline uses them. Full-body magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in people without symptoms finds many things, most of which are harmless and some of which lead to a year of anxious follow-up. Supplement stacks built on animal studies rarely survive contact with a human trial. None of this is fraud. It is enthusiasm running ahead of evidence, sold to people who can afford enthusiasm. The problem is not the spending. It is that the expensive items crowd out the cheap ones that actually move the risk. There is a useful exception worth naming. The glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medicines that most people know as weight-loss drugs cut major cardiovascular events by 20% in adults with overweight or obesity and existing heart disease in the SELECT trial, without diabetes. That is a cardiovascular result, not a cosmetic one, and it belongs in a serious conversation about prevention for the right patient, prescribed and monitored by a physician rather than bought online. Why do successful people get worse preventive care, not better? Because they buy in silos. A concierge physician, a longevity clinic, a wearable subscription and an annual executive medical in three different countries produce four reports that nobody reconciles. The single most valuable thing in preventive cardiology is not a test. It is one physician who holds every number, knows your family history and your travel schedule, and adjusts the plan as the numbers move. Brainz has explored why timing is the new longevity, and the same principle applies to the heart: It is not the volume of testing that protects you, but doing the right measurements early and acting on them in sequence. Technology helps only when it serves that physician rather than replacing them. Artificial intelligence (AI) is very good at reading a wearable's data, structuring a history and flagging what has changed since last quarter; Brainz has covered how AI is reducing physician burnout while improving patient care. What it should never do is make the decision. That boundary is the whole design of the telehealth I practise. How should a busy executive actually start? Order the five numbers this month, privately if your system will not provide them. Put the results in front of a physician who will read all of them together, not one specialist per number. Decide the plan based on evidence: ApoB and Lp(a) set the intensity of lipid treatment, the calcium score settles the argument when the calculators disagree, home blood pressure sets the target, and fitness sets the training. Then measure again in a year. That is the entire method. It is unglamorous, it fits into a quarterly calendar, and it is what the best-informed cardiologists do for themselves. If you want the version of this that travels with you across Europe, physician-led and built for people who do not have time to be patients, you can take a free two-minute health assessment with AETHERA Health. Every assessment is reviewed by an EU-licensed physician, and the Premium programme is designed around exactly these numbers. Follow me on LinkedIn and visit my website for more info! Read more from Hilaryano Ferreira Hilaryano Ferreira, Cardiologist & Founder of Aethera Health Hilaryano Ferreira is a cardiologist and the founder of Aethera Health, an EU-licensed telehealth platform based in Portugal. The platform provides physician-led online care in weight management, cardiovascular health, men's and women's health, and longevity, supported by AI-assisted triage. He has over a decade of clinical practice. Besides founding Aethera, he works in cardiology and co-authored research published in EP Europace in 2021 on using artificial intelligence to automate remote follow-up of cardiac devices. That early work shaped the principle Aethera is built on: automation absorbs the administrative weight of medicine, while licensed physicians keep every clinical decision. References: 2026 ACC/AHA Guideline on the Management of Dyslipidemia (Lp(a) once in a lifetime; ApoB; coronary artery calcium scoring, Class 1). Lincoff AM et al. Semaglutide and Cardiovascular Outcomes in Obesity without Diabetes (SELECT). N Engl J Med. 2023;389:2221-2232. Mandsager K et al. Association of Cardiorespiratory Fitness With Long-term Mortality Among Adults Undergoing Exercise Treadmill Testing. JAMA Netw Open. 2018;1:e183605. Global Wellness Summit, Wellness Trends 2026.

Elena Hernandez-Cordova, LCSW, is a psychotherapist, behavioral health leader, educator, writer, and founder of Embrace Psychotherapy & Education, an integrative group psychotherapy and teaching practice. A Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York and New Jersey, she brings more than 20 years of experience across clinical practice, behavioral health leadership, substance use and recovery, program development, supervision, advocacy, and community-based social work. Elena Hernandez-Cordova, Founder of Embrace Psychotherapy and Health Leader What led you to create Embrace Psychotherapy & Education, and what did you want the practice to do differently? Embrace really began before it was Embrace. I have spent more than 20 years in social work and behavioral health, and my career has moved between micro and macro practice, psychotherapy, substance use and recovery services, work with adolescents and families, crisis intervention, program development, clinical supervision, community education, advocacy, and behavioral health leadership. That range of experiences taught me something very early: you cannot fully understand a person without understanding the world around them. When I moved to Rockland County, I fell in love with the community. It was beautiful, diverse, and eclectic, but professionally, I also noticed a gap. There were limited opportunities and resources for people who needed treatment that addressed both mental health and substance use disorders. I had spent much of my career working at that intersection, and I began thinking about what I could create to help fill that need. During COVID, that idea became Rockland County Counseling Services. It was an extraordinary time to start something. We were living through collective uncertainty, isolation, fear, grief, and change, and people needed connection. My partner at the time, Brian, grew up in Rockland County and understood the community deeply. He became part of the vision for the practice. When Brian died by suicide in October 2023, my life changed profoundly. I made a commitment to continue what we had started and to keep building a place where people could feel seen, heard, respected, and connected. Eventually, I realized the practice needed to evolve, too. Rockland County Counseling Services became Embrace Psychotherapy & Education. Today, I see Embrace as much more than a place where people come when something is wrong. I don't want mental health to be understood only through illness, crisis, or healing. Emotional development is part of being human. Psychotherapy is one avenue for developing emotional intelligence, but so are relationships, education, movement, mindfulness, yoga, meditation, community, and simply becoming more curious about ourselves. That is where Embrace is going. We're building a community centered around emotional intelligence, helping people understand themselves, navigate emotions, communicate more effectively, strengthen relationships, and become more intentional about how they live. Emotional intelligence is intelligence. How do you decide which therapeutic approach fits a client when your work spans CBT, DBT, mindfulness, relational work, EMDR, and other integrative methods? I don't start with the modality. I start with the person. My approach has always been biopsychosocial and spiritual. I want to understand the whole person, not just a diagnosis or presenting problem. Who are you? What happened to you? What relationships shaped you? What are your strengths? What does your culture mean to you? What does your body do when you feel threatened? What gives your life meaning? What are you trying to change, and what might you need to accept? I've trained and worked in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), motivational interviewing, trauma-focused approaches, mindfulness, family systems, relational therapies, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), and other integrative approaches. They are all valuable tools. But people don't walk into my office saying, “Hello, I'm a DBT problem.” Sometimes clinicians become so attached to a modality that we try to make the client fit the model. I think the model needs to serve the person. One person may need concrete skills to manage distress before they're ready to explore trauma. Another may understand everything intellectually but continue repeating the same relational patterns. Someone else may need less talking and more attention to what is happening in their body. Sometimes what a person needs most is a relationship in which they feel safe enough to tell the truth. Integrative therapy doesn't mean throwing techniques at people. It means being intentional, flexible, and responsive. I bring clinical knowledge into the room, but the client brings something I can never have: expertise in being themselves. Good therapy respects both. What have you learned about the ways occupational trauma shows up differently in first responders, veterans, and military families? One of the most important things I've learned is that occupational trauma doesn't necessarily stay at work. It can walk through the front door with you. First responders and veterans may repeatedly experience things most of us will never see. Their minds and bodies learn to function in environments where vigilance, emotional control, rapid decision-making, and compartmentalization aren't necessarily problems; they may be survival skills. The challenge is that a response that serves you extremely well professionally may create distance personally. Hypervigilance can keep you alive at work and make it difficult to relax at home. Compartmentalization can allow someone to respond to a horrific scene and later make emotional vulnerability with a partner incredibly difficult. The family lives with that experience, too. That's part of why I co-developed Mind on the Frontline and Love on the Frontline. Mind on the Frontline addresses post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), occupational stress, trauma exposure, mental health, and resilience. Love on the Frontline looks at how occupational stress can enter intimate relationships, communication, sexuality, parenting, and family life. My work has included bringing these conversations directly to law enforcement and fire service audiences. We can't only ask, “How do we reduce this person's symptoms?” We also need to ask, “What has happened to connection?” I also believe therapists working with these populations need to understand occupational culture. Culture isn't limited to race, ethnicity, or religion. Law enforcement, the military, fire services, and other first responder professions develop their own languages, values, expectations, strengths, rituals, and attitudes about vulnerability. If we don't understand the culture, we may misunderstand the person. Where does psychotherapy fall short when a client's distress is treated only as an individual problem rather than a relational or systemic one? This is where being a social worker shapes everything I do. Social work taught me to think about the person in their environment. I've spent my career moving between micro and macro work, and one continually informs the other. Sitting with individuals teaches you where systems are failing. Working within systems teaches you how profoundly those systems enter the therapy room. Earlier in my career, I worked extensively in substance use and recovery services. I supervised 26 recovery specialists, Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselors (CADCs), and Master of Social Work (MSW) interns, and I created and implemented the Bergen County Opioid Overdose Recovery Program, which engaged people following an overdose reversal and worked to connect them to treatment and recovery resources. That experience taught me that telling someone to “get help” and making help accessible are two very different things. I've worked across behavioral health, addiction treatment, hospitals, schools, juvenile justice, community organizations, law enforcement, and family systems. I've watched people described as noncompliant when transportation was the barrier, resistant when fear was the barrier, or unmotivated when the system had given them very few realistic choices. We must remain curious about context. If someone is anxious because they can't afford housing, therapy cannot make housing affordable. If someone is experiencing discrimination, I don't want to teach them breathing exercises in a way that implies their reaction is the problem. If a parent cannot access appropriate services for their child, we need to examine the system as well as the family. Psychotherapy is powerful, but it should never become a way of teaching people to tolerate conditions that are harming them. Sometimes change is internal. Sometimes it means setting a boundary, changing a relationship, accessing resources, finding community, advocating for yourself, or challenging a system. Usually, it's a combination. We must be careful not to pathologize human responses to unhealthy environments. What does culturally responsive care require from therapists beyond simply being aware of a client's identity or background? For me, it starts with humility and curiosity. Knowing someone's race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, culture, family structure, or background doesn't mean I automatically understand what any of those things mean to that individual. Two people can share an identity and experience that identity completely differently. Culturally responsive care requires us as therapists to continually examine our assumptions, biases, power, privilege, and blind spots. It also means becoming comfortable enough with what we don't know to say, “I don't know. Help me understand what this means for you.” My current doctoral studies in integrative social work have deepened my interest in identity, advocacy, cultural humility, decolonizing approaches to social work, ethics, and the relationship between individual experiences and larger systems. I sometimes struggle with the word competence when we talk about culture because it can sound as though, eventually, we graduate and become competent in somebody else's lived experience. I don't think we ever get to stop learning. One of the ideas I keep returning to in my work and my doctoral studies is very simple: Ask questions. Listen to learn. Learn to listen. As clinicians, we have expertise. But the client is the expert on their lived experience. Our job isn't to replace their knowledge with ours. It's to bring the two into conversation. What are the clearest signs that someone is emotionally overwhelmed rather than simply struggling to communicate? Sometimes what looks like poor communication is a nervous system saying, “I can't do this right now.” When people become emotionally overwhelmed, their ability to communicate changes. One person may become reactive, defensive, or angry. Another may shut down, go blank, withdraw, repeat themselves, or suddenly lose access to language. We can easily interpret those behaviors as signs that someone is being difficult, uncaring, irrational, or unwilling to communicate. But sometimes what we are seeing is emotional flooding. I talk about this frequently with couples. Once your nervous system perceives a threat, you're no longer having exactly the same conversation. You're trying to communicate while part of your body is preparing to protect you. That is why slowing down matters. Sometimes the most emotionally intelligent thing a person can say is, “I want to continue this conversation, but I can't do it well right now. I need some time, and I will come back.” The last part matters. Come back. Taking a pause can be regulation. Disappearing indefinitely can become avoidance. Emotional intelligence means learning to recognize what is happening inside ourselves early enough that we have choices about what we do next. What can couples do to move from trying to fix each other toward feeling genuinely seen and understood? Become curious instead of corrective. I see couples get trapped in this all the time. One person is talking, but the other isn't really listening to understand. They're listening for what's inaccurate, unfair, exaggerated, or wrong. They're preparing their defense. Pretty soon, the relationship becomes a courtroom. Everyone presents evidence, and nobody feels understood. One of the most important things I tell couples is that understanding does not require agreement. You can say, “That's not how I experienced it, but I can understand why it hurt you.” You haven't surrendered your reality. You've simply made room for another person. I also encourage couples to become curious about what is happening underneath the conflict. What looks like anger may be hurt. Criticism may be covering fear. Withdrawal may be protecting someone from rejection. The argument about the dishes probably isn't just about dishes. Money isn't always just about money. Sex isn't always just about sex. A text message may become a fight about trust, security, importance, rejection, or whether someone feels chosen. That's where emotional intelligence becomes relational intelligence. Instead of asking, “How do I prove my point?” we begin asking, “Can I understand what is happening for the person I love?” Your partner isn't a problem you're supposed to solve. The goal is to learn how to turn toward one another. When you say “emotional intelligence is intelligence,” what do you wish people understood about that idea? This has really become the heart of Embrace for me. We've traditionally defined intelligence largely through cognition: what you know, how quickly you solve problems, your education, your career, and your accomplishments. Those things matter, but I think our definition of intelligence has been far too narrow. Can you recognize what you're feeling before the feeling controls your behavior? Can you tolerate discomfort? Can you hear another person's perspective without abandoning your own? Can you recognize when your past influences your present? Can you communicate a need without attacking someone? Can you establish a boundary without losing compassion? Can you recognize when you've hurt someone? Can you apologize? Can you repair? Can you sit with uncertainty without immediately needing to control it? Those are sophisticated forms of intelligence. That's why our philosophy at Embrace is, “Emotional intelligence is intelligence. We believe how you understand yourself, connect with others, and navigate emotion matters every bit as much as what you know.” I don't want emotional intelligence to become another standard people use to judge themselves. We're human. We're going to get dysregulated. We're going to misunderstand people. We're going to say the wrong thing. We're going to have reactions we aren't proud of. Emotional intelligence isn't emotional perfection. It's awareness, flexibility, accountability, curiosity, and the capacity for repair. It influences how we love, lead, parent, work, communicate, make decisions, handle conflict, and move through change. That's the larger vision I have for Embrace. Therapy is part of it, but emotional intelligence belongs everywhere. What is one shift in how we relate to ourselves or others that can create meaningful change? Move from judgment to curiosity. Instead of immediately asking, “What's wrong with me?” try asking, “What's happening for me?” What am I feeling? Where did I learn this response? What is this reaction trying to protect? Is it still serving me? We can extend the same curiosity to other people. Instead of immediately asking, “Why are they acting like this?” we can wonder, “What might be happening underneath this?” Curiosity doesn't mean excusing harmful behavior. It doesn't mean abandoning boundaries or accountability. I think curiosity can make accountability more possible. When we understand ourselves better, we have more choices about what we do with what we feel. That is an important distinction for me because I don't want Embrace to communicate that human beings are perpetually damaged and need to spend their lives healing. We are allowed to be well. We are allowed to be stable. We are allowed to enjoy our lives. Growth doesn't require something to be wrong with us. Sometimes therapy is about trauma and recovery. Sometimes it's about getting through a crisis. But sometimes it's about understanding ourselves more deeply, strengthening a relationship, becoming a better leader, navigating a transition, communicating differently, or simply becoming more intentional about the life we're already living. My own career has taken me through direct psychotherapy, addiction and overdose response, adolescent and family work, community programming, clinical supervision, organizational leadership, professional education, advocacy, and now doctoral study. The settings have changed, but the question underneath my work has remained remarkably consistent: How do we understand ourselves well enough to connect more meaningfully, with ourselves, with one another, and with the communities around us? That's what I want Embrace to represent. Not a lifetime spent trying to fix ourselves. A lifetime in which we continue learning about ourselves. Emotional intelligence is intelligence. Visit my website for more info! Read more from Elena Hernandez-Cordova

National City, California – September 17, 2026 – Children’s author, publisher, and World Love Press founder Mona Liza Santos has been named a Finalist in five categories in the 23rd annual Stevie® Awards for Women in Business. Her recognition spans social activism, social entrepreneurship, women’s advocacy, content creation, and children’s publishing, including a Book of the Year Finalist honor for The Filipino in Me: A Children’s Book About Identity, Belonging, and Cultural Pride. Santos is a Finalist in five categories: Female Social Activist of the Year Female Social Entrepreneur of the Year Women Helping Women – Government or Non-Profit Best Female Content Creator of the Year – Other Industries Book of the Year for The Filipino in Me: A Children’s Book About Identity, Belonging, and Cultural Pride The Stevie Awards for Women in Business honor the achievements of women executives, entrepreneurs, employees, and the companies they run worldwide. More than 1,500 entries from organizations and individuals in 56 nations and territories were submitted this year for consideration in more than 300 categories. Finalists were determined based on the average scores of more than 200 business professionals worldwide serving across seven judging committees. For Santos, the five Finalist honors reflect different parts of a journey that began unexpectedly during the pandemic. She started writing with a simple desire to create something meaningful for her young son. What began at home eventually grew into World Love Press, an independent publishing company with more than 40 children’s titles centered on emotional literacy, kindness, confidence, resilience, belonging, and cultural identity. “I honestly still can’t believe I’m seeing my name across five different Stevie® Award categories,” Santos said. “To be recognized for my books, social impact, entrepreneurship, content creation, and advocacy means so much to me. I’m humbled that the judges saw value in the work and mission behind World Love Press, and I’m especially grateful to my family, friends, supporters, and everyone who believed that my books and this mission could make a difference.” One of the five recognized entries, The Filipino in Me, holds particular meaning for Santos. The book was created to help Filipino children see themselves represented in a story while encouraging young readers to feel proud of their culture, heritage, and identity. Santos describes her journey into children’s publishing as something she never expected, but eventually came to see as a calling. As the books grew, so did the purpose behind them: helping children better understand their emotions, believe in themselves, appreciate where they come from, and know that they matter. That purpose has also moved beyond the page. In 2026, Santos pioneered Seafood City Chula Vista’s first-ever Kwento at Kulay event, helping launch a new community space for Filipino authors, families, storytelling, and cultural connection. A proud San Diego local, Santos says representing the community where she was raised makes the international recognition even more meaningful. “San Diego is home, and being able to represent the place where I grew up while also representing my Filipino heritage means so much to me,” Santos said. “I never imagined that something that began with writing from the heart would lead me here.” Santos is also the founder of National Intentional Kindness Day, observed annually on August 24, and Heritage and Heart Day, observed annually on October 15. Both observances have been acknowledged by the Mayor of National City in San Diego County, California, and were created to encourage intentional kindness, cultural pride, family connection, identity, and belonging. Her debut picture book, Mama, I Love You, has received recognition from several publishing and book-award organizations, including a Mom’s Choice Awards® Gold honor, three Purple Dragonfly Book Awards Honorable Mentions across three categories, Kirkus Reviews “Get It” status, and an A- rating from BookLife/Publishers Weekly. Santos’s additional recognitions include being named a 2026 TOFA Awardee, a 2026 TITAN Gold Winner for Outstanding Female Entrepreneur, a recipient of the Dangal ng Pilipino Founder’s Citation Award, a San Diego Magazine Celebrating Women finalist, and being recognized by CIO Magazine as “The Most Iconic Female Personality to Watch for in 2026.” She also serves as an Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine, where she writes about emotional literacy, childhood confidence, kindness, identity, belonging, cultural connection, and human relationships. Although the five Stevie Finalist honors carry her name and that of World Love Press, Santos says she does not view the recognition as hers alone. “These honors also belong to the people who stood beside me, cheered for me, shared my books, came to my events, encouraged me, and believed in what I was trying to build,” Santos said. “There were people who believed in my mission before I knew how far it could go. I will always carry that with me.” Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award placements will be announced at the awards ceremony in New York City on Monday, November 16, 2026. For Santos, however, the heart of the work remains unchanged. “Kindness matters. Identity matters. Representation matters,” Santos said. “Every child deserves to feel valued, understood, confident, and proud of who they are.” For more information about Mona Liza Santos, World Love Press, her books, and community initiatives, visit www.monalizasantos.com. About Mona Liza Santos and World Love Press Mona Liza Santos is an award-winning Filipina American children’s author, publisher, educator, and founder of World Love Press. A proud San Diego local, Santos is the author of more than 40 children’s books centered on emotional literacy, kindness, confidence, belonging, resilience, and cultural identity. Her recognitions include five 2026 Stevie® Awards Finalist honors, recognition as a 2026 TOFA Awardee, a TITAN Gold Award for Outstanding Female Entrepreneur, recognition by CIO Magazine as “The Most Iconic Female Personality to Watch for in 2026,” a Mom’s Choice Awards® Gold honor, a Dangal ng Pilipino Founder’s Citation Award, a San Diego Magazine Celebrating Women finalist distinction, and three Purple Dragonfly Book Awards Honorable Mentions. Her debut book, Mama, I Love You, also earned Kirkus Reviews “Get It” status and an A- rating from BookLife/Publishers Weekly. Through World Love Press, Santos creates books, educational resources, and community initiatives designed to help children feel valued, understood, confident, and proud of who they are. She also serves as an Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine. About the Stevie® Awards Stevie Awards are conferred in nine programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, the American Business Awards®, the International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence, and the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations and territories. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Media contact Mona Liza Santos Founder and Publisher, World Love Press Email Website

Written by Linden Thorp, Embodied Presence Mentor Linden Thorp is an Embodied Presence Mentor, writer, and founder of Lodestone Inside. She helps professionals and leaders restore grounded, compassionate, sustainable ways of working through embodiment, self-awareness, and whole human intelligence. There is a sentence I have heard thousands of times during more than fifty years of working with human beings, “Oh yes. I understand.” Very often, almost immediately, the person returns to doing exactly what they were doing before. I have witnessed it with musicians, singers, students, professionals and people seeking profound change in their lives. The intellect has grasped the idea. The person can explain it back to me, sometimes brilliantly, and there may even be a moment of excitement: Now I’ve got it. But the body has not. This is where the first two articles in this series have been leading. In The Brilliant but Limited Mind at Work, I explored what happens when the extraordinary analytical intelligence of the Limited Mind is allowed to govern alone. In Why Brilliant Thinking Is Not Whole Intelligence, I went further: intellectual understanding is not whole intelligence, and insight about embodiment is not embodiment. Now we arrive at the question that completes the trilogy. If understanding is not enough, how do human beings actually change? After a lifetime of practice, my answer is becoming simpler. We practise, not to repeat ourselves, become perfect or necessarily even become better, but to recover something much more fundamental: a natural way of being human. For most of our existence as a species, survival depended upon capacities we now routinely neglect. We sensed, listened, watched and moved. We oriented ourselves in space, read other human beings, responded to weather and landscape, recognised danger, found food and shelter, and lived within the rhythms of light, darkness, season and community. We survived not because we could explain the world intellectually, but because we could receive it. Our senses were not optional extras; whole-body intelligence was fundamental to being alive. Those capacities have not disappeared. Yet much of modern life gives us fewer reasons to use them. Increasingly, we inhabit screens, symbols, schedules, notifications, measurements and interpretations. We can spend an entire day responding to representations of life while scarcely noticing the physical life taking place within and around us. The body continues breathing, the heart continues beating, gravity continues acting upon us, sound enters, light changes and other humans affect us. The natural world continues its rhythms. The question is whether we are still receiving it. My work has increasingly become about bringing this natural way of living back into human experience. By returning, I do not mean going backwards, rejecting technology or romanticising an earlier age. I mean coming home to capacities that were always human. The demand for speed The Limited Mind loves an outcome. Give it a destination and it immediately wants to know how quickly we can get there. How soon can I solve this? How quickly can I learn it? How fast can I grow the business, change the behaviour, master the technique, recover my energy or achieve the result? Our contemporary world amplifies this tendency. We measure, optimise, accelerate and compare. Information arrives almost instantaneously, and AI can produce in seconds what once took hours or days. These are extraordinary developments, but they also habituate us to immediacy. Without noticing it, we may begin expecting the human being to operate at the same speed. The body has another rhythm. It breathes, digests, sleeps, wakes, moves, recovers and receives. It lives through cycles, rhythms and relationships rather than productivity charts. The Limited Mind demands speed. The body entreats practice. There is an important difference between those two verbs. A demand insists; an entreaty must be heard. Hearing requires receptivity, and receptivity cannot be hurried. Practice has been constant in my life Practice has accompanied me throughout my life, as a musician, classical singer, teacher, practitioner of the F.M. Alexander Technique, Buddhist practitioner and mentor. I have never experienced genuine practice as mindless repetition. Quite the opposite: practice has taken me deeper and deeper into what it means to be human. The Limited Mind tends to see practice transactionally: If I repeat this enough times, I will achieve that result. The F.M. Alexander Technique gave me a particularly useful term for this: end-gaining. We become so preoccupied with achieving the end that we interfere with the means whereby that end might naturally be reached. I recognise the temptation even now. Sometimes I listen to people producing elaborate intellectual explanations about direct experience and become desperately eager for them simply to experience what they are talking about. Yet I cannot hurry another human being into direct experience. That, too, would be end-gaining. The natural human organism has its own timing, and practice honours it. My body still plays music I no longer possess an instrument, yet my body still plays music. I wrote recently in Music Was My Oasis about how music entered my life long before I possessed the language to explain what it was doing to me. Music changed my breathing and my physical organisation before I knew words such as embodiment or whole-body listening. The experience came first; understanding came much later. That remains true today. Certain pieces move me almost immediately into a state of elation. One of the most powerful for me is Charles-Marie Widor’s Toccata for pipe organ. When I hear it, I am not simply remembering a piece of music I once played. In some extraordinary way, I am playing it. There is no keyboard beneath my fingers, but the phrasing is present, the legato is present and the movement is present. My body knows where the music is going. It fills me with joy and connects me with something far larger than myself, with life, with spirit, sometimes seemingly with everything in the universe. Science can investigate the neural processes associated with musical memory, and that matters. But those processes are not the totality of my lived experience. I do not experience a brain process; I experience music. I receive it. The music was practised so deeply that decades later, my body does not require an intellectual explanation before it responds. My body remembers what my intellect no longer has to command. Before interpretation comes reception The distinction between receiving and interpreting has become increasingly important in my work. Long before we explain an experience, we receive it. Sound reaches us. Light reaches us. Gravity is already acting upon us. The breath moves, the heart beats, the ground supports us and another human being enters our presence. Then the brilliant Limited Mind does what it does magnificently: it names. Music. Tree. Beautiful. Dangerous. Success. Failure. Right. Wrong. Me. You. We need this capacity. The Limited Mind is not the enemy in this series and never has been; it is an extraordinary human instrument. The difficulty begins when interpretation becomes so rapid and dominant that we cease noticing the experience being interpreted. We listen while preparing our answer, look while naming what we see, feel something and immediately explain it, or encounter another person and categorise them. Eventually, we can become more familiar with our explanations of life than with life itself. I learned something about this more than forty years ago while working as a young music therapist with an eight-year-old girl called Rachel. I recently told her story in We Saw the Moon Today. Rachel was blind from birth, partially deaf and autistic, yet she received rhythm, sound, voice, breath and space through an extraordinary whole-body intelligence. Working with Rachel challenged my assumptions about what intelligence, attention and perception were supposed to look like. I could not begin with an explanation and expect Rachel to follow me into an experience. We had to begin with the experience itself. Looking back, I can see some of the earliest roots of my work there: reception before interpretation, direct experience before explanation. For an earth-dwelling human being, losing contact with that order is a profound separation. Practice helps us rediscover it. A lifetime of receiving My awareness of receiving reaches back almost as far as my memory. My grandmother was a very good pianist. I found her difficult as a person, she could be rather hysterical, but she played fabulous music to me. Even as a very young child, before I possessed the intellectual apparatus to explain what music meant, I could receive it. At ten, I encountered Buddhist practice. Again, receiving came before explanation. I did not need an elaborate intellectual structure before something in me recognised what was being offered. Much later, during my Aboriginal fieldwork, Ninija entered my life and became my spiritual guide. I recently told more of that encounter in Why Do You Live in a Straight Line? One of her questions has travelled with me for decades: “Why do you live in a straight line?” Ninija remains with me, keeping me on the curving track whenever the Limited Mind attempts to turn life into a straight line from problem to solution, effort to outcome, beginning to end. Nature does not live in straight lines. Breath returns, the sun returns, seasons and moons return, and music returns to its themes. Human beings, too, belong to rhythm. Perhaps practice is one of the ways we remember that we do. The beautiful interruption This is why a phrase that has become increasingly central to my work is Beautiful Interruption. The Limited Mind demands an answer; the Beautiful Interruption creates space before the answer arrives. A breath can be a Beautiful Interruption. So can feeling gravity, becoming aware of the vertical spine, hearing another human being without preparing a response, or allowing silence to remain silent for a moment longer. We look before naming, listen before answering and receive before interpreting. These are not exotic skills. They are profoundly natural human capacities, and none requires force. In fact, force defeats the purpose. Something interesting happens when people discover this: practice can be pleasurable. It does not have to become another demand imposed upon an already pressured human being. Practice can become an opportunity to exercise capacities that modern life has encouraged us to neglect. We interrupt. We receive. We sense. We return. Over time, practice may deepen into ritual, not ritual as mechanical repetition, but as a dependable doorway into direct experience. This is what I mean by reclaiming. We are not frantically acquiring another version of ourselves; we are reclaiming our natural human inheritance. What fifty years have shown me For more than fifty years, I have worked with many hundreds of human beings, and I have come eyeball to eyeball with the intellect thousands of times. “Oh yes. I understand.” Then, almost immediately, the familiar pattern returns. This is not stupidity or failure. The person really has understood, but understanding occurred in one part of the human system. It has not yet become lived experience. That is why one insight, one conversation, one extraordinary session or one intellectual breakthrough rarely completes the process. The body entreats practice because practice allows direct experience to return. Yet returning is not repetition in the sense of doing exactly the same thing again. The person who returns is already slightly different. The breath is different. The moment and environment are different. What can be sensed is different, and what can be received is different. Practice is repetition without sameness. That may be one of the great paradoxes of human change. Neuroplasticity is real, is it the whole story? Neuroplasticity gives contemporary science an important way of describing the nervous system’s capacity to change in response to experience, learning and environment. I welcome that. It gives us valuable evidence that the adult nervous system retains a capacity for change. But I am wary when neuroplasticity becomes another intellectual explanation that appears to account for the whole human being. It does not need to. It tells us something significant about change within the nervous system; it does not follow that it explains the totality of human experience. When Widor’s Toccata fills me with joy, processes are certainly occurring within my nervous system. Yet that is not what I experience. I experience music, memory, movement, breath, relationship, beauty and spirit. I experience being human. The scientific description and the lived experience need not compete, but neither should one be mistaken for the other. Neuroplasticity also leaves us with a fascinating question. If repeated experience can contribute to lasting change, what experiences are we repeatedly giving ourselves? What are we practising ourselves to become? Perhaps this is the uncomfortable question beneath this entire series. We are all practising something, whether or not we call it practice. We may be practising urgency, comparison, self-criticism, reacting before listening, ignoring fatigue, distrusting the body, living almost entirely inside words or demanding an outcome. Modern life can make these patterns feel normal precisely because we repeat them so often. But normal and natural are not necessarily the same thing. We can also practise receiving, breathing, sensing, whole-body listening, compassion, curiosity, presence, relationship and self-trust. This is why Lodestone™ is a 30-day practice. Thirty is not a magical number, nor is its purpose to manufacture a predetermined outcome within thirty days. It creates a container for direct experience. One experience may reveal a possibility. Practice allows us to encounter that possibility again and again until it is no longer merely something we intellectually understand. We begin to live it. At nearly 75, I am still changing I have changed constantly throughout my life and have never hesitated to change. As I approach 75, I am perhaps more conscious than ever of its rhythm. Strangely, though, I am less interested in becoming someone new. I am more interested in reclaiming what is natural. Breath, body, heart, spirit, senses and our capacity to receive are already here. We are earth dwellers before we are information processors. We breathe before we theorise about breathing. We hear before we name the sound. We sense another human being before we construct an opinion about them. The whole body is already participating in life before the Limited Mind begins its commentary. We do not have to manufacture our humanity. We have to inhabit it more naturally. Perhaps that is why practice has accompanied me throughout my life. It has never really been about perfecting myself through repetition. It has been about becoming more available to life. Every time I practise, there is more to receive. Recognition, realisation, and practice These three articles have followed a deliberate journey. The first, The Brilliant but Limited Mind at Work, was about recognition: what happens when one extraordinary but partial form of human intelligence assumes command of the whole human being? The second, Why Brilliant Thinking Is Not Whole Intelligence, moved into realisation: intellectual brilliance can illuminate the doorway, but understanding embodiment is not embodiment. This final article brings us to practice. Practice is where the argument leaves the page and enters life. The Limited Mind does not have to be destroyed, silenced or defeated. Its brilliance is indispensable. But it can relinquish its claim to sole authority and rejoin something much larger: Unlimited Mind, body, heart, breath, senses, intellect, spirit, relationship, direct experience and the capacity to receive before we interpret. The Limited Mind demands that change be understood, controlled and accelerated. Unlimited Mind knows that change emerges as we inhabit our bodies and spirits, live presently with the breath, and restore our relationship with the natural intelligence through which human beings have always participated in life. Perhaps this brings us to the question beyond the trilogy. Neuroplasticity tells us something important: change remains possible. My own life, approaching 75, tells me the same thing in another language. But perhaps whether we can change is no longer the most interesting question. If repeated experience changes us, what are we practising ourselves to become? As the world around us becomes increasingly technological and artificial, an even larger question may now be waiting for us: How do we become more naturally human? That is where my enquiry goes next. For now, the body is already entreating us. Perhaps practice begins when we become quiet enough to hear it. Read the full Brilliant but Limited Mind series Part 1 – The Brilliant but Limited Mind at Work. How the analytical mind became so dominant in modern professional life, and what happens when one brilliant part of human intelligence is asked to govern the whole. Part 2 – Why Brilliant Thinking is Not Whole Intelligence. Why insight and intellectual understanding, however sophisticated, are not the same as embodied change. Part 3 – The Limited Mind Demands Speed and the Body Entreats Practice. Why direct experience and practice are essential if understanding is to become something we actually live. Follow me on LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Linden Thorp Linden Thorp, Embodied Presence Mentor Linden Thorp works at the intersection of embodiment, communication, and sustainable professional life. As an Embodied Presence Mentor and founder of Lodestone Inside, she helps professionals and leaders move beyond overthinking, strain, and burnout into grounded, compassionate ways of working. She is the creator of Embodiment Q&A and Your Body Is Your Business Plan, live spaces devoted to whole human intelligence in modern work. Her work reconnects body, mind, heart, and spirit as the basis of clearer communication, wiser leadership, and more humane performance. Her mission is to help bring embodiment back into the centre of modern professional life.

Written by Melissa Coetzee, CEO and Co-founder of Algarve Wellness Specializing in exercise science and nutrition, Melissa Coetzee leads Algarve and Africa Wellness with a dedicated one-on-one approach. Her eight years of sobriety fuel a deeply personal commitment to helping clients achieve sustainable health transformations through professional expertise and lived experience. Most people think of the day someone stops drinking as the end of the story. In the body, it is closer to the opening page. The brain and the organs that alcohol has been quietly damaging for years do not repair themselves the moment the drinking stops. They repair themselves over the following weeks and months, and how well that repair goes depends on what happens during that window. For a private client, an executive, or anyone with a business and a family that cannot simply pause, that window is the actual problem nobody is writing about. I think about this constantly because the people who come to us at Algarve Wellness rarely have the luxury of taking a year out of their lives. You want to optimise your time in treatment because you do not have that much time. If you look at somebody who comes into treatment, they have got old behaviours, old habits, old reward systems, and old ways of thinking. When they want to leave, they need to have taken on all these new, better habits, these new ways of thinking. The new neural pathways. But this takes a long time. This does not happen in a month. So the real question I sit with is not whether someone can stop drinking. It is how quickly we can support the biological repair that follows, so the limited time available is used as well as it possibly can be. This is where hyperbaric oxygen therapy enters the conversation for us, not as a headline treatment, but as one part of that repair work. Not new and not a trend The first thing worth correcting is the assumption that hyperbaric oxygen is some new biohacking fashion. It is peer-reviewed, and it is not new, although a lot of people think it is. It has been in routine clinical use for more than forty years as an established treatment for gas embolism, carbon monoxide poisoning, decompression sickness, and slow-healing wounds. What is newer is the interest in how it might support recovery from alcohol dependence specifically. There is not that much research on it, which I do not understand, because there should be. How it actually works Under normal conditions, most of the oxygen your body carries travels attached to red blood cells, which are already close to fully loaded. Inside a pressurised chamber, additional oxygen dissolves directly into the blood plasma at levels roughly ten to twenty times higher than normal, depending on the pressure used. That oxygen-rich plasma can reach tissue that ordinary circulation struggles to serve, which is the basis for most of what follows. What the research shows A 2017 randomised study found that withdrawal symptoms were brought under control in an average of 3.72 days with hyperbaric oxygen, compared with 9.03 days without it. A larger 2022 study found that blood chemistry recovered faster with oxygen, although it did not find a measurable difference in symptom scores. The evidence during acute withdrawal is still developing, which is why I would rather point to what happens after that phase. A University of Pennsylvania study found that the body’s own regenerative cells circulating in the bloodstream doubled after a single session and rose eightfold across a full course. A randomised trial in older adults found improvements in attention and processing speed alongside increased blood flow to the brain. For the liver, animal studies and reviews suggest reduced inflammation and support for cell regeneration after injury. More people should be looking at this, especially for the brain. The brain fog, the memory issues, the chronic fatigue. It may help. What two months actually looked like A 64-year-old woman came to us after roughly thirty years of drinking. Her liver was in a terrible condition when she came in. The first month was not clean, and I think that matters more than anything else about her story. It was very experimental because she still managed to get hold of alcohol. She was still very unsure. Humans are very complex, not very simple. Even when someone comes for help, they may still have the idea that they can drink or may not think they are really an alcoholic. She stayed. She completed two months, with hyperbaric oxygen therapy three times a week alongside her programme. By the end of it, it was like she had a new liver. I am not going to tell you the chamber did that on its own. She also stopped drinking, and those two months of abstinence were doing their own work. What I will tell you is that she had a limited window, and we used all of it. The body she left with was not the body she arrived in. What it requires when done properly Anyone taking disulfiram, sold as Antabuse, must have it fully cleared before entering a chamber. It can interfere with one of the body’s defences against oxygen toxicity and may increase the risk of complications. An untreated collapsed lung is a contraindication, while an active sinus infection or a head cold may also be reasons to postpone a session. I mention this because someone in recovery who books a session elsewhere without mentioning their medication could be at genuine risk, and that is worth knowing. At Algarve Wellness, this happens through our partnership with Lourenço Ribeiro, longevity and integrative wellness specialist and founder of the Hyperbaric SPA in Albufeira and Faro, with medical oversight from Dr Catia Saraiva, a pulmonologist and hyperbaric medicine specialist. Stopping drinking is the moment everyone notices. What happens in the weeks afterwards is quieter, and for someone who genuinely cannot give this a year, how well those weeks are used may matter just as much as the decision to stop at all. If that is the position you are in, or someone you care about is, the conversation is worth having before the window closes. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info! Read more from Melissa Coetzee Melissa Coetzee, CEO and Co-founder of Algarve Wellness Focusing on the intersection of longevity approaches and science-based wellness protocols, I provide a transformative experience for one individual at a time. My professional foundation in exercise science and nutrition is complemented by a deep personal understanding of resilience, having maintained eight years of sobriety. Supported by a multidisciplinary team of experts, I design bespoke programs that prioritize long-term vitality and sustainable health. My work is dedicated to those who require exclusive, high-touch care that addresses the whole person. Click through to my profile to see how our collective knowledge is distilled into personalized protocols for our clients.

Belgrade, Serbia – October 2026 – ROOT, a regional systemic psychotherapy community founded by four therapists working across Serbia and Croatia, will present its work at the Belgrade Psychotherapy Congress, held from October 22 to 25, 2026. The presentation, ROOT: Creating Community as an Intervention Against Professional Loneliness, explores whether the deliberate creation and maintenance of professional relationships can itself become a systemic response to professional isolation. “A therapist can have colleagues, professional contacts, clients, supervision, and an active social life, and still experience a lack of meaningful professional connection. Professional connection does not necessarily have to take the form of formal support or intervention. This recognition was one of the starting points from which ROOT developed.” – Ljubica T. Kennedy ROOT began not as an organizational project, but as a relationship. Its four members first met during their systemic psychotherapy training, continued their professional connection and eventually established ROOT as a professional community. Today, the members live and work across different regions of Serbia and Croatia. There is one detail central to ROOT’s story: we physically meet perhaps once or twice a year. Everything else has been built and sustained online. For years, we have developed consistent professional relationships without sharing an office, a city, or a daily physical environment. We did not become a community because geographical proximity made connection inevitable. We became one because we deliberately maintained the relationship. This experience led ROOT to consider professional loneliness from a systemic perspective. Loneliness is not simply being alone, nor is it synonymous with depression or objective social isolation. For therapists, this distinction is particularly relevant. Psychotherapy is fundamentally relational, yet the therapist’s own professional environment can be surprisingly solitary. The relational intensity of working with clients does not necessarily translate into a relationally rich professional environment for the therapist. ROOT’s geographical distance has made this question particularly visible. Its members do not work in the same city or share an office, yet technology has played an important role in sustaining their ongoing professional relationship without relying on conferences, training, supervision meetings, or travel. Technology became a powerful facilitator of professional connection. It made relationships more accessible and therefore more sustainable, but it also created an unexpected strength: distance became a powerful resource. Each member works within different professional, social, and cultural contexts, bringing perspectives that can challenge assumptions that might otherwise remain unnoticed. From a systemic perspective, difference is not noise to be eliminated. It is information. ROOT therefore serves not only as a space for support, but also as a space for questioning assumptions, introducing alternative meanings, and broadening the context in which professional experiences are understood. The model is also grounded in the realities of professional life. Time, geography, money, and everyday responsibilities shape the relationships that can actually be maintained. For ROOT, accessibility is therefore part of relational quality. “We are not trying to treat the lonely therapist,” says Ljubica T. Kennedy, systemic family therapist and ROOT member. “We are interested in creating a professional system in which meaningful connection is easier to access and sustain.” At the Belgrade Psychotherapy Congress, ROOT will present this model as an ongoing professional and systemic experiment: what becomes possible when a professional relationship is deliberately sustained across geographical distance and gradually develops into a community? For ROOT, the answer begins with a simple systemic premise: relationships do not merely exist within systems. Relationships help create the systems in which we subsequently live and work. ROOT began with four therapists creating a relationship. Its ongoing question is what becomes possible when that relationship becomes a community. About ROOT ROOT, or rootherapy, is a regional systemic psychotherapy community founded by four therapists who first met during their professional training. The community connects practitioners working across Serbia and Croatia through ongoing professional exchange, collaboration, supervision, and shared systemic practice. ROOT develops its work around the belief that professional relationships and communities can be intentionally created and sustained across geographical and organizational boundaries. Media contact Ljubica T. Kennedy Systemic Family Therapist tasic.kennedy@gmail.com fam-root.com