Zander Fryer is a coach I’ve been following over the past few weeks. I’m learning a lot from him and get the sense that he has a lot of integrity. He is doing a free Training Session later today (12 pm PST) specifically for Health and Wellness Professionals. You can learn more about the session and sign up here. Zander also has a Skool community..Coaching Business Launch. The community is completely dead, to be honest, but there are some great trainings in the classroom. If a few Thrivers join, maybe we can bring it back to life! Maybe see you at the session later today :). I’ll probably be packing at the same time!

Do you have a favorite season? Mine is spring. I love the slowly rising temperatures, the noticably longer days, and just the overall awakening and increase in colours after a long white winter here in the Canadian prairies. Only that this year... spring just doesn't seem to happen! Last week we've still had overnight frost with -2C, single digits daytime temps... and then this coming week... boom! Up in the +30Cs!!! Trees exploded into green literally overnight (ok, that's exaggerated - it was over 2 or 3 nights 😏)! Well, bottomline, it's not the easy transition that I love, but a steep jump. And my body and emotions really struggle to keep up. I'm literally in a grieving state - and as an emotional eater this obviously reflects in my tendency to overeat at the moment. As a marine biologist having worked with global change and it's effect on aquatic animals performance, I gotta say that all these changes in weather scare me. And it doesn't help that it'll be a Super El Nino year! But all those changes in these external cycles also make me realize how important our internal cycles are. Like, hormonal and nutritional cycles, allostatic capacities, nervous system rests, to name only a few. It's about staying balanced, or knowing how to return to our homeostatic state quickly, when our external environment just doesn't "play along". For me that means finding these pockets of joy, the moments that light me up, in the here and now - no matter how long or short spring is this year. To focus on what DOES work, rather than what doesn't. How do you honor your cycles, and return to center if something external throws you off?

I had the privilege of being a parent chaperone on my son’s school field trip to Catalina Island, off the coast of California. And for some reason, I couldn’t connect to Skool at all during my time there. I missed my community on Skool. And yet, REAL LIFE experiences are often under-rated and under-explored in our super techy world. If you have a chance to fast from any kind of screens and social media for a week or more, I would highly recommend it! We hiked daily, walked on the beach, kayaked for hours, some of us got sun burned, we snorkelled in super cold water day and night, saw lots of bright orange garibaldi fish, touched sea anemones and urchins, learned about marine life, ate a lot of healthy food, kissed a sea cucumber, saw a Buffalo wander into camp and drink our dirty boot water, played games, rock climbed, and more. I was grateful to get to know some of my son’s classmates and spend time with him in this special environment. Didn’t get much privacy, as I was often accompanied by teenagers everywhere I went. But, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. It was truly awesome to get off screens completely, step out of my comfort zone, embrace cold water (which I typically avoid!), and support a bunch of sixth graders as they tried new things and explored a whole different world. Some of the kids we were with had never flown in an airplane or been to an airport. Others had never seen the ocean. It was truly epic. Hope you had a great week too last week, would love to hear about it in the comments! Have you stayed off of screens and/or social media for multiple days recently? Would you consider it? Why or why not?

This week, my boys are home on winter break, and we are taking a pause from Live Meetings in the Thrive Community. Next week, meetings resume, but with a simplified schedule. Only one or two meetings daily. I will also be hosting Release the Weight that Holds You Back Bootcamp. Not your typical Bootcamp, this one is all about the inner work you need to do to live in a healthy body for life. Replays will be available in the Thrive Community. Will share more about that in the days to come. What’s one area of your life that could use a mindful pause? If you’re enjoying the ThriveCommunity, remember to invite your friends and family to our fun little group, using your Invitation Link!! You can just say, “Hey Friend, This is a group I think you’ll enjoy…( Invitation Link goes here)” You automatically get 50 percent of the monthly payment of anyone who joins with your link. Talk about passive income!!

When I was studying Contemplative Psychology, I wrote many, many papers. Hundreds probably. But one of them, I remember to this day. I studied a lot of different therapeutic modalities...psychoanalysis, Jungian dream analysis, Gestalt Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, Person-Centered Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Family Systems, and more. I was curious about what made therapy effective or not. This paper that I remember delved into this topic...what is the most effective kind of therapy for healing and transformation? I learned that any therapy can be quite effective for healing and transformation, as long as the therapist provides this one ingredient. What is this ingredient, you might be wondering? It's called Unconditional Positive Regard. It means the therapist holds a space full of empathy, compassion, and a loving regard towards their client, no matter what stories they hear, or what kind of guilt and shame the client might be holding. The beauty of Unconditional Positive Regard is that we are able to give it to ourselves as well! We don't need to wait for a therapist or friend or family member to hold that space for us, although it's wonderful to have a person like that in our lives. We can also give ourselves Unconditional Positive Regard. Like most other things, the more we practice Unconditional Positive Regard, the better we get at it! I've seen a few people move through this group and within weeks start a journey of transformation and joyful release of stubborn weight with the slightest nudge...a one-on-one meeting, attending a few group support meetings, doing Hypno Health, reading my book. There are two things these folks had in common, as I reflect on this dynamic... 1.) A readiness for change and transformation, a feeling of commitment for doing whatever it takes to create change, as long as it felt right and good to them. 2.) A strong, internal sense of self-love and compassion for what they've been through and where they wanted to go, in other words... Unconditional Positive Regard for themselves!