Writings & Musings
Rested. Rooted. Radiant.
Insight and inspiration on living unhurried lives, overcoming feminine burnout, reclaiming our radiance and self-sovereignty and embracing our brilliance.
Is The Wisdom Within™ Somatic Practitioner Training Right for You? 6 Signs It Might Be Your Next Step
The word ‘somatic’ has become a bit of a trend, and the integration of somatic approaches in coaching has evolved the way in which we hold space for transformation.
We now know that working cognitively and reframing our thoughts alone are not enough to facilitate deep and sustainable change. Lasting change does not just happen at the level of the mind but needs to encompass the body, the nervous system, and our lived, felt experience.
The Wisdom Within™ Somatic Practitioner Training was born from that knowing.
Why Women Deserve Somatic Approaches That Honour Their Body, Cycles and Lived Experience
I’m often asked why my work centres women.
There are many reasons for this, but at its core, I deeply care about and believe in women.
I believe that when women heal, grow, take a stance for what they believe in, the world heals in some ways too, and it becomes a little more harmonious.
Many coaching approaches are based on the assumption of a one size fits all model. But women aren’t just smaller, more delicate versions of men’s.
We are also profoundly shaped by centuries of cultural conditioning, by the expectations we’ve internalised, and by the way the world meets us…
The Edge of Burnout: Listening to the Body Before It Shuts Down
Before we experience the full force of burnout, we often find ourselves in a confusing space.
We are still holding everything together, but beneath the surface, we sense that something within us has begun to fray and to deplete.
Even if a part of us knows that something needs to shift, we don’t feel that we have the time to pause, explore a more sustainable path, or recalibrate.
So while we double down to make sure that the veneer stays intact on the outside, on the inside, our heart races for no clear reason, our sleep doesn’t seem to restore us in the same way, and we wake up in the middle of the night with thoughts racing in infinite loops.
If this feels familiar, you could be standing at the edge of burnout.
The Tender Grief Beneath Women’s Anger
Last week, I was in a facilitated space with other women, exploring the theme of anger.
It’s a subject that can feel highly charged and deeply uncomfortable, particularly for women.
The conversation was deep, and the shares were nuanced and reflective.
What really transpired was the grief, the sadness, the lack of being seen that often sits tenderly beneath the emotion of anger.
For women especially, anger often surfaces from the grief of not being seen, not having a voice, living in systems that we don't feel we fully belong to.
Beyond Learned Helplessness: A Somatic Path For Women to Reclaim Their Energy, Voice, and Agency
When I look back on my experience of burnout, one of the most profound parts of that experience was the sense that no matter what or how much I did, nothing seemed to make any difference.
My efforts felt futile.
I was expanding every ounce of energy I had, and yet it felt like pushing against an immovable wall.
Most of the time, I felt like I was drowning.
For a long time, I gave increasingly more, believing that eventually, things would shift.
But over time, the ‘fight’ energy that initially mobilised me into action started to dwindle, and slowly I fell into what psychologists call ‘learned helplessness’. A subtle erosion of hope, an insidious and devastating settling in my heart that said: “What’s the point anyway?”.
How to Embody the Life and Future We Desire to Create
We are always embodying something.
It might be the forward urgency of our hectic schedule, the relaxed openness in our heart in moments of joy, or the way our body’s shoulders tighten when we feel stressed.
So much of what we embody isn’t chosen consciously.
It’s shaped by our history, our family, and the culture we live in.
Often, the patterns we have practised are what allowed us to get through, to cope, to keep going in challenging moments. They are deeply intelligent responses that have helped us to navigate life. Responses that we have unconsciously honed and perfected through repetition.
Understanding the Mind–Body Connection and How to Shift Old Patterns by Working Somatically
So many of the patterns we live with, like the endless late-night thinking loops, the automatic “yes” when we mean “no,” the crushing feeling of self-doubt, are often considered to be mindset problems.
But if you have ever tried to think your way out of them, you will know that reframing our thoughts can offer relief, but doesn’t address what might lie beneath and causes these thoughts to arise.
That’s because these patterns don’t begin in the mind.
They begin in the body.
Before these patterns became habits, they started as survival strategies. Unconscious, protective responses to moments when something in our world felt too overwhelming for our system to cope with: too much, too fast, too soon - or conversely, not enough.
The Missing Piece in Transformation: Why Awareness Alone Doesn’t Always Create Change
Maybe, like me, you have an insatiable curiosity for understanding why you are the way you are. You read all the books and articles you can put your hands on, listen to the podcasts, watch the videos … to more deeply know yourself.
And what an incredible and profound journey this can be! Truly life changing.
We gain so much awareness around our ways of being, behaviours, thoughts, beliefs, and the long-held patterns that we might want to shift.
We journal, reflect, share it with others where it feels right to do so.
We reframe our thoughts, clean up our mindset.
And yet, the patterns remain.
We know. And yet change isn’t happening.
The Somatic Path to Women's Empowerment: How to Cultivate the Inner Conditions for Growth
As women, we are told to own our worth, to take up space and believe in ourselves, as if empowerment was just a mindset shift away.
A simple choice we haven’t made yet.
For many of us, rather than feeling liberating, this can actually feel like more pressure and keep us stuck.
Even if we long to feel daring and empowered, something within us still hesitates, contracts, or resists in moments where we are invited to step up or forward.
However bright, intelligent and capable we are, deep within our system, something might not yet feel safe enough for us to expand into a fuller expression of who we are.
This is where traditional empowerment models can fall short…
