Did you know your breath directly relates to your quality of life? Powerful thought. Our guest this week, Emily Spang, is the Founder of Haarbor, which creates a space for people to find connection within themselves and outside of themselves through group breathwork and meditation sessions. Emily shares her journey to find breathwork and its powerful ability to transform our relationship with our intention, body and community. She encourages us to focus on our breath, lead life with more feminine energy, and, most importantly, start from within.

As you get ready to travel for the holidays I want to share our most popular posts/podcast episodes of a year. Feel free to download them ahead of time and enjoy the flight or drive. I’m thankful you’re part of our community and hope you’re able to rest and reset. I can’t wait for more slowness and inner connection in the new year. What about you? Let me know in the comments!

As we’re nearing the end of the year, I’m recognizing that the space I'm currently in has been calling me to trust the unknown and take some breathing room. You can probably already tell from the title, but we’re taking a pause on new podcast content until the new year. While I'm in Zurich I wanted to be able to explore and be present, while still continuing to connect with the TGS community through weekly emails.

When it comes to self-care, we often overcomplicate things, thinking we have to make huge changes. Our guest this week, Danika Brysha, Wellness Entrepreneur, Body Positive Fashion Model signed with IMG Models, and a Self-Care + Lifestyle Design Coach, is the perfect person to explain why self-care starts small. She shares how her own journey led to the creation of a self-care checklist and why we should take things one day at a time. Danika encourages us to look inside ourselves and start asking important questions because we already have the answers inside us.

I'm not sure if you've already heard, but I’m currently in Zurich, my husband and I will be here for the next couple of months! Recently, I've been struggling to embrace the space around me, to fully be in the present moment instead of worrying about what's next. So I came to the decision to take a little pause on the podcast starting this November. I’ll have another episode explaining this in more detail but this week, I wanted to share an experience in Central Park as a tangible way to talk about the things I’ve been learning about creating space in your life and embracing the space in hopes that it will inspire you, too, to embrace your own present moments.

As we kick off the month of October and begin to look toward the end of the year, I thought it would be important to get some insights into what it means to free your life of clutter, both emotionally and physically. So I brought in our guest this week, Peggy Fitzsimmons, author of Release: Create a Clutter Free and Soul Driven Life.* Learn why “most people think decluttering is about forcing themselves to get rid of things against their will. What actually happens in the process is that things let go of us,” what causes emotional, mental, and emotional clutter and how to free ourselves of that to live in alignment with our true soul nature; along with some practical tips on how to de-clutter.

What happens when a child has emotionally immature parents? How do you recognize it and heal yourself? This episode is inspired by Lindsay C. Gibson’s book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. After this post, you’ll have the ability to better create boundaries with ease and focus on living from a true, authentic space. Rather than spending tons of time and energy on a parent who won’t change. Shoutout to Jenica from The Good Space community for recommending this book!

Our guest this week, Rachel Jepsen, nonfiction writer and executive editor for Every, is the perfect person to speak on finding your voice and what that looks like. I know many members of the Good Space community have some type of involvement in, and passion for, creativity in some way. For me, that's through my writing and through The Good Space. Rachel shares with us why she feels that "chaos isn’t only necessary to create anything, harnessing chaos is possible and our ultimate creative state." By the end of this post, I hope you’ll feel inspired and encourage to step further into your creative voice.

A while ago, I received a request from a Good Space community member to bring Sarah Baldwin, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and an Embodied Coach, on the show! So, this week, she joined me for a conversation I think we could all use, what emotional trauma really is, and how to actually begin healing it. We discuss how to know if you're dealing with your own trauma, where it can stem from, and how we can teach our bodies to feel safe again. Sarah also takes us through how our bodies carry trauma what can happen if trauma does go left untreated and gives practices you can use to begin your own healing.

We’ve talked in the past about dealing with negative people, but this week I want to talk about dealing with your own negative thoughts. I truly believe we can re-learn how to think so that we don’t allow our negative thinking to take over our life. I want to share an exercise that I've been using for years that allows me to challenge my negative thoughts and then choose a better one. This exercise helps your true self override the programming of the ego. You'll start to internalize the exercise, automatically challenge them and pull in the reins. Give it a try and then let us know how it goes.

I’m so excited to welcome back Dr. Jody Carrington, our guest from episode 8, for a conversation about connection, relationships, and being brave. As the author of Kids These Days and newly released Teachers These days, we catch up on everything that’s happened since she last joined us and how her mindset and strategy have changed since writing her first book. Jody also shares why connection is more important than ever, especially as we’re adapting to life while the global pandemic continues, and gives us brave actions we can take to start reconnecting.

This week I want to get a little more personal than usual. I’m using a recent triggering experience of mine to walk you step-by-step through one way you can process painful emotions. Since I can remember I’ve always shut down when experiencing painful feelings. This time I finally figured out how to redirect from an emotional spiral to a nurturing one instead. Hoping that it will help you process and tolerate painful emotions in your own life, I’m sharing five of the keys ways I was able to do this.

Our guest this week, Jules Evans, researcher, philosopher, and the person that inspired me to dive into this whole realm of mixing spirituality with conspiracy, joined me for a conversation to talk all things socratic and ecstatic, conspirituality, and creating boundaries in your own spirituality. Jules tells us how a freak skiing accident helped him heal from a life of misadventure with drugs, and led him all the way back to the Stoics of Ancient Greece and the work that he does. We chat about the concept of conspirituality and being able to enjoy spirituality without falling into these more darker areas.

In our culture, we develop negative beliefs around self-care and focusing on ourselves. Things like self-care is selfish, taking time for self-care is lazy. But our guest this week, Katie McDonald, creator of b.nourished, had to learn the hard way that taking care of yourself is the only way you can take care of anyone, or anything else. Through illness, burnout, and a deep desperation, Katie came to the hard truth of why recalibrating and healing your own relationship with yourself is really the key to your happiness, your success, etc. She reminds us that we do have permission. “Self Care is not indulgence. Self neglect is selfish.”

I’m excited to welcome Deirdre Fay this week, author of Becoming Safely Embodied: A Guide to Organize Your Mind, Body and Heart to Feel Secure in the World. Deirdre's message resonates deeply with those who may look successful on the surface, but internally they may be plagued with shame, anxiety, distress, depression, wondering why they’re stuck in these repeating patterns. We had an honest conversation about what trauma really is and how you can feel the better energy you long to step into. She also opened my eyes to why shame is an attachment wound and provides ways to transform it.