Blog Stories

Jan and I spent a lot of time asking ourselves: what exactly is the magic of what we do in our retreats, workshops, and classes?

On the surface, it looks like a lot of things. In fact, we made a list—Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy, mindfulness, creativity, art, polyvagal theory, guided visualization, breathwork, conversation, and more. It’s a long list of powerful modalities.

But the thread that ties them all together?
We teach deep listening—of the intrapersonal variety.

We help people learn to listen inwardly: to their own bodies, intuition, inner wisdom, and quiet knowing. This kind of listening helps participants create lasting, meaningful change in their lives because it’s guided by deep connection to the self.

Then, the other day, I was listening to The Good Life Project with Jonathan Fields and Emily Kasriel, talking about the power of interpersonal listening—the kind that happens between people. And it hit me (though it probably shouldn’t have): we teach that, too!

I recently shared this with a lovely group of entrepreneurial women:

I consider myself someone who’s very real and realistic about the nature of the world. Yet, as grounded as I try to be, I still find myself constantly readjusting to what that actually means. It’s like fine-tuning a signal—clicking the dial, just a hair at a time, until the image finally comes into focus… and then realizing, nope, still not quite there.

I was talking both about the United States and about the changes I’m making in my business right now.

So yes, I’m realigning for a new phase of my work—leaning into intensives, workshops, groups, and retreats. I want a business structure that leaves room for a richly authentic and creative life. But, as with all transitions, new realizations keep showing up.

Right now, I’m realizing I need to change my systems to truly support this next phase–not just to save money during the lean part of a reboot, but because the change will make community building far more powerful in the long run.

(Did I mention that the new platform I invested in will allow group conversations outside the social media giants? I cannot wait to exit Facebook groups!!)

This is a scary moment—which is probably why I didn’t fully realize the scope of it until now. It means intentionally breaking some of the beautiful, labor-intensive things I’ve built… so that I can birth something new.

A mantra for growth, grace, and grounding in hard moments.

“I am all of that and I am none of that.”

Communicating well is very important to me, and the underlying need is to be understood. Seen.

But what happens when it all goes sideways?

The mantra above was my dose of redirection.

People have their own lens shaped by their background and experiences that bend their interpretation toward conforming with what they expect out of others. Add to the top of that that I am truly I am an imperfect human. No matter how hard I try, I’m going to fall short on pleasing every one in every way in every moment.

(And that’s just my inner people pleaser talking. There’s also the part of me with good boundaries that knows that’s not my job.)

And as much as I may want to place the blame on others or reject their diagnosis of my motives and intent, Carl Jung made it clear that I am participating in a defense mechanism right along with them.

They may be projecting onto me, but I am also projecting onto right back onto them. They have become the anti-hero in my story, and me in theirs.

Carrying Retreat Home With You

In the Stress and the Spirituality of Uncertainty retreat, we explored the importance of solitude and ritual—tools that help us live inside uncertainty without unraveling.

Here’s one ritual I love: cleaning up after company.

When guests leave, I find myself replaying conversations as I wash dishes, fold bedding, and reset the house. It’s a warm way of savoring the visit even as it ends—recalling conversations and love as I move slowly through tasks I might usually kick out quickly.

After a retreat, I do something similar. I sit with my team and ask: How did it go? We celebrate connections (between and within participants), note what could have gone better, and then tweak every detail—from typos to activities to timing—to make the next gathering even richer. This “tidying up” keeps me connected to participants. I linger on moments of insight and imagine the ripple effects in their lives . . . IF they let the retreat keep working in them.

I LOVE the lead-up to a retreat almost as much as the retreat itself.

There’s something magical about planning experiences that give people space for their own self-understanding—and creating an environment where that can actually happen. (We like to call it sustained sacred community.) Honestly, it feels like the perfect antidote to the uncertainty this world has been drowning us in for the last few years.
As I prepare the afternoon session of our upcoming retreat, Stress and the Spirituality of Uncertainty, I found myself returning to a TEDxAtlanta talk I discovered a few years back.

It’s called “The Real Reason Why We are Tired and What to Do About It” by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith—and it was my first introduction to the idea of different types of rest.

Growing up, “rest” meant sleep, maybe a lazy day of fishing, or an afternoon nap in a sun patch. Later, as an adult, I added yoga, meditation, and relaxation practices to the mix.

But Dr. Dalton-Smith takes it further: she names 7 types of rest—physical, creative, sensory, social, emotional, spiritual, and mental.

If you’re neurodivergent, you’re probably already nodding along. It just makes sense. But for everyone else, let’s play this out a little:

I’ve been talking a lot lately about the stress we choose.

We all volunteer ourselves for stress in multiple ways—whether it’s making a big change, chasing a dream, or even just getting up in the morning (cortisol spike mandatory). But today, I’m talking about a sneakier kind: the stress we create by worrying about things outside of our control.

I know—control is a loaded word. Some of us grab for control to feel safe. Others fixate on danger because it feels impossible to look away. Either way, when we’re obsessing over what might happen, we’re choosing stress we don’t have to carry.

A family member recently shared their fears about a loved one. The conversation was full of a telltale phrase that signals you’ve wandered into “stress-you-choose-ville”:

“What if…?”

“What if it’s A? What if it’s B? What if C happens and then D, E, F, and G? I couldn’t handle it!”

Whew. Have I ever been there! In my 20s I spent an entire month torturing myself with “what if” spirals—my body buzzing with anxiety as I was faced with a health issue that could have lifelong implications—all for scenarios that never happened. That month? Gone. A twelfth of a year I’ll never get back. A whole month I could have spent laughing, dancing, loving, and being present.

The plot thickens: even if the worst-case scenario had come true, that month of joy would’ve given me more resilience to face it!

I’m a multitasking queen.
That’s not a brag—it’s a confession.

Like so many people holding households, caregiving, and big dreams together, I learned to split my attention into tiny pieces just to survive. The cost? A brain that feels scattered and further splintered by a household full of requests (because hey, I deluded them as much as I deluded myself that I could do it all), and a nervous system that feels this must be the only path because I feel as though I am always behind.

And here’s the kicker: multitasking isn’t just a bad habit. It’s an economy. Whole industries profit from keeping our attention fractured, selling us the idea hat we should be able to “do it all.”

So you can see why I keep circling back to the same practice.

Note the intentional word choice there: practice.

We can take change seriously, fall short sometimes, and return to the active engagement with change—meaning we are still heading in the same direction because we are practicing it!

The practice? What would happen if I just… did one thing at a time? And how do I increasingly make that practice a part of every nook and cranny of my life?

That’s where The Twelve Monotasks by Thatcher Wine comes in.

Wine identifies 12 areas where we can increasingly infiltrate our busy lives with the intentionality of slower living and monotasking: reading, walking, listening, sleeping, eating, getting places/traveling, learning, teaching, playing, seeing, creating, and thinking.

Am I Deluding Myself?

I actually ask myself this question fairly often. I used to be an emotional stuffer—the kind of person who shoved everything into a closet until it overflowed into physical symptoms. That overflow led me to therapy in my mid-20s, and I vowed never to get to that point of debilitation again.

That question is up again now as I send my youngest “off” to college. (My oldest is commuting, so this is my first round of a child truly fledging the nest.) Friends kindly keep checking in, and I notice my lack of the expected sob-fest. So I watch myself closely.

Here’s what I’ve noticed so far:

I’ve spent a good part of this afternoon staring out my window . . .

Both here, on social media, and in my journal, I’ve been writing a lot about how we need safe, growth-filled community more than ever. More and more, I feel that the intrinsic hierarchy baked into the therapy relationship just isn’t the right container for the kind of collective healing we need right now.

From the outset of my career, I was a “different” kind of therapist—incorporating the body before it was “cool” and engaging with my clients as someone who (yes, has expertise, but mostly…) is a co-journeyer.

So it’s no surprise that this past month has been one of deep reevaluation. I wish I could say it’s been all magical—but honestly? It’s also been uncomfortable. I’ve been squirming a bit, even as I hold myself through the process with as much grace as I can muster.
I’m 54-and-a-half. It’s legacy time.

I don’t have forever to hang out in a rut—especially one that keeps me busy with maintenance-level system-supportive work instead of the deep, purposeful rewiring kind. It’s time to shift out of the container of therapy and fully into the container of inner wisdom and transformational growth.

I’m stepping out of the overfunctioning, workaholic, Midwestern-farmgirl part of me…

I’ve spent a good part of this afternoon staring out my window . . .

Both here, on social media, and in my journal, I’ve been writing a lot about how we need safe, growth-filled community more than ever. More and more, I feel that the intrinsic hierarchy baked into the therapy relationship just isn’t the right container for the kind of collective healing we need right now.

From the outset of my career, I was a “different” kind of therapist—incorporating the body before it was “cool” and engaging with my clients as someone who (yes, has expertise, but mostly…) is a co-journeyer.

So it’s no surprise that this past month has been one of deep reevaluation. I wish I could say it’s been all magical—but honestly? It’s also been uncomfortable. I’ve been squirming a bit, even as I hold myself through the process with as much grace as I can muster.
I’m 54-and-a-half. It’s legacy time.

I don’t have forever to hang out in a rut—especially one that keeps me busy with maintenance-level system-supportive work instead of the deep, purposeful rewiring kind. It’s time to shift out of the container of therapy and fully into the container of inner wisdom and transformational growth.

I’m stepping out of the overfunctioning, workaholic, Midwestern-farmgirl part of me…