Educational

In this blog, I share how to transform your posture through the lessons I have learned from my recovery post car accident.

It was an early summer morning.

I opened my eyes

I gently moved my neck from side to side.

Something I have gotten used to since my car accident to check the intensity of my neck tension.

To my surprise, there was no pain but ease of movement.

I felt energized and ready to get out of bed something that I was rare since my accident

Felt so hopeful, thinking to myself, I finally found something that works.

Unlike other treatments, it’s not a quick fix, only to go away in a few days.

It is here to stay!

In the video, I go in-depth into my experience with my posture, and the changes I’ve noticed.

Watch the journey that I believe can massively support you to transform your posture + try my fav posture exercises:

Let’s understand grounding through feet sensory awareness!

You perhaps heard about the concept of grounding/earthing, i.e. activities that electrically reconnect you to mama earth.

Today though, I want to talk to you about the concept of grounding through the lens of your feet’s abilities to grip the earth.

Over the years, one of the most common things I’ve seen among my clients has been the lack of sensory awareness of their feet. And it always amazes me how often people fake feet motion by moving their ankles instead.

Feeling solid beneath your feet is one of the most important things you can relearn, which leads to:

〰 fewer knee issues

〰 stronger legs

〰 better balance

〰 improved overall posture

The way your feet grip the ground sends a sense of assurance or lack of it to your nervous system. That’s why having a solid footing can not only improve your overall movement pattern but also could help you feel calmer and more in control.

Try these exercises to learn grounding through feet sensory awareness:

Exercise 1:

Exercise 2:

The number one secret to improve your posture

is to build a stronger core! You may roll your eyes at me and tell me this is not anything new. Take a moment to see the photo below and the impact your midline has on your overall posture ↓

However, the way I teach it to you is uniquely different.

It’s less about doing all the crunch variation in the world; it’s about bringing your ribs into their ideal position for your body type.

You may ask, what’s the ideal position?

The answer: Where you can breathe more effortlessly (check out this blog for more on this)

If you ever worked with me in the past, you know that I’m obsessed with learning new modalities and experimenting with them on my body first. Then massage it into something that I know my community needs.

Here is my insanely unbelievable result 👇🏻

Here are a few things I began noticing that you don’t notice from the photos:

⭕️ The tension in the right side of my body decreased tremendously.

⭕️ My bodyweight began feeling more equally distributed on my feet, less leaning on one side compared to another side

⭕️ My pelvis started moving effortless side to side, and I could feel my body working on a walk without thinking about it

⭕️ I maintained nasal breathing on long hikes without feeling the need to open my mouth or have a dry mouth

⭕️ My post-concussion neck tension began diminishing

⭕️ I feel taller, leaner and experience a lot less anxiety

When I began changing the way I worked with clients from only focusing on strength coaching to incorporating foundational training (ie joint health, breathwork, neuromuscular control, etc.), one of the hardest things I had done was de-conditioning myself from what the personal training and fitness industry had taught me.

I continuously caught myself wondering what if my clients preferred the old way. The way that promotes “the heavier, the faster, the sweatier, THE BETTER.”

But I acknowledged the doubts and trusted that my clients would get this different way. The way that promotes “the more efficient, the more functional, the more freedom, THE BETTER.”

Unfortunately, we live in a culture that prioritizes quick fixes, torturous weight loss methods, and lifting a certain amount of weight over:

→the quality of human movement,

→the joints’ health,

→the depth of breath,

→the grounded strength

→the freedom of movement in our bodies

→the sense of awareness of what’s happening in our bodies

I often see people lack the freedom in their body to do their day-to-day activities effortlessly; however, fitness culture insists on pushing them through that 100 reps of squats, 10-min plank hold, the 30 reps half-ass pushup, etc.

No wonder so many left with all kinds of injuries.

As part of my commitment to changing the narrative around movement and educating you on what’s possible when you learn your body’s language

I believe it’s also essential for you to know the common mistakes in the fitness industry so you can choose your “better” way and spread it with your community.

I wish I could tell you all you need for healthy living is to eat healthily and exercise regularly, but this is far from the truth. 

The quality of your inner landscape, how you process your emotions, and how safe you feel inside could contribute to your overall health a lot more than just a healthy lifestyle. 

I battled with anger and unbearable rage for years; I smiled in one minute and lost my temper a second after that, especially towards people I cared about the most. The more I tried to control and suppress my anger, the more out of control it became. This pattern continued until I learned to sit with my anger. It came as a shock when I recognized my anger was coming from emotional hurt and even more shocking to realize how disconnected I felt from my emotions. 

When I was reading the book “When The Body Says No” by Gabor Mate, the part that got me the most was when cancer scientists studied a mixed group of cancer and non-cancer cases and showed them a series of disturbing images. The participants were asked to write how they feel after seeing those images while being monitored by stress devices. The result was mind-blowing. The people with cancer showed a significant disconnect between what they thought they felt and what they actually felt. 

This disconnection at some point protected us from getting more hurt, but what if we no longer need to suppress those emotions? What if we could live a more thriving life by unburdening our emotional pains? 

As part of the House Membership, we address the topics that are left out from a lot of healthy living conversations. In these events, I am committed to bringing you excellent resources and practitioners that guide you through creating safety in your body so you can return home. 

This month, we have Juliana Herlaar. She is a spiritual counselor and works by weaving ancestral acknowledgment, inner child healing, emotional understanding, somatic practices, meditation journeys, and the power of connecting emotions to communication and boundaries with her clients. 

Come and join us to tap into your body’s infinite wisdom.

This 90-min session has two parts:

❶ A dialogue around understanding why we disconnect from our bodies from a psychological and physiological perspective. And why it’s essential to reconnect to the bodies’ inherent knowing of what it needs to do to shift emotions, thoughts, trauma & beliefs that keep us stuck. 

❷ A practice session of the Non-Linear Movement Method that allows the body the opportunity to lead, shift thoughts, move emotions, connect to sensuality, experience pleasure, move discomfort. It’s done on the floor with music.

After this event, you have a better understanding of:

✦ How & why we become disembodied 

✦ How disembodiment leads to people-pleasing & a disregard for own experience, intuition & beliefs. 

✦ How the body leads & how to listen to it through the Non-Linear movement practice. 

Meet your inner desire, friend!

You crave progress

You crave to get to where we want to be

You crave to have the body you want

You crave to be pain-free

You crave to feel even more confident in your body

You crave to feel free in your body

You sit with those cravings for so long that your cravings become something far-fetched.

Something that causes you more pain than a direction to move towards

Something that you may feel threatened by and another reason to be disappointed in yourself

You may take a couple of steps towards what you desire, but they don’t work out the way you wanted because so many of us don’t get what we desire on the first tries.

Sometimes your cravings need a new level of you to come to fruition.

Sometimes the next level of you requires a new level of commitment, the one that says, ” I show up no matter what it takes and how long it takes.”

Sometimes the next level of you requires the willingness to invest in yourself like you never did before, whether it be time, money, or resources.

Sometimes the next level of you requires unshakable faith in yourself, your path, and your abilities.

Sometimes the next level of you requires a bigger vision for your life and the lives of generations after you, which may bring chills to your spine, put everything in perspective when you are going through a rough patch, and set your priorities when you feel lost.

What is the craving that you want to fulfill? What does this next level require of you?