It’s a Captain-Obvious-level solution for overwhelm. You can’t do everything yourself, so find someone who can. And boy have I tried. I’ve hired companies, coaches, assistants, VAs, you name it, I’ve tried it. With each endeavour, I went in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with visions of releasing the menial tasks so that I could focus on what I love doing.

With each relationship, my bright eyes gradually faded as I realized that the only thing that had changed was that instead of doing everything myself, I was now paying someone to still do everything myself.

It was mystifying. I would assign tasks and then somehow end up doing it anyway. Was it a control issue? Maybe. There were certainly some beliefs under the surface that were leading to the consistent yet dismal result every time. In one instance, I paid a company thousands of dollars and the only concrete thing I can say I got from them was a branded palette of four colours (which I still love, so yay, but still).

That changed this past spring when I took the AI Employee Bootcamp. I was totally blown away. It shifted everything I thought I knew about AI and gave me something I didn’t expect from a course: real competency, not just information.

Prior to the Bootcamp, I had dabbled in AI, but it was very similar to my delegating experiences - I was still just doing repetitive tasks myself and not saving much time.

Here’s what’s different now.

I’m a solopreneur, and I’ve tried every kind of support there is. None of it worked. With what I learned in the Bootcamp, I now build the systems and tools to run exactly how I want them to, instead of spending months limping through poor performance from a VA and hoping things improve. I’ve built a system that knows every single aspect of my business in a depth none of the coaches I worked with ever reached, and I always have somewhere to turn when I get stuck.

Financial tracking and taxes are probably where I’ve cried the most in the past (and not because it’s sad). I used to dread compiling all the numbers, avoiding it as long as possible. I tried systems that were supposed to save time but ended up taking just as much, if not more, as the manual way did. (More tears.) Now, with what I’ve built, I can see the whole money picture at a glance, which is something I’ve never had before. It’s heaven.

Substack used to be the same story. I love writing the articles. It’s everything after that (the formatting, the tags, the cross-posting) that used to take so much time, plus I was always guessing how to do it. Now I’ve built a set of expert prompts that do all of it in seconds, and I know it’s giving me back hours every week.

And then there’s the part that I still can barely believe: I built an app. I saw a need coming from my clients, built the solution myself, and now offer it as a bonus inside my membership. Being able to surprise and delight the people I work with on my own timeline without hiring a developer (which I never would have done anyway) still leaves me in awe.

What I love most is creating. I don’t love the behind-the-scenes technical work, and between the bootcamp and what I’ve kept learning since, I spend less time on the nitpicky stuff and more time doing the parts that light me up.

What I’ve learned in the Bootcamp changed things at home too, not just in the business. Becoming masterful with AI has helped our family through some very challenging travel situations (including a stressful border incident), and I’ve also put systems in place that have made our day-to-day living smoother. It even helped me hire a cleaning lady, which is something I’ve wanted to do for at least 15 years.

I’ve also learned how to build the scaffolding I didn’t know my business was missing. The pieces that were always falling through the cracks because I never had time to notice them are now built. That matters because I’m working on scaling this year, and for the first time, I trust it won’t fall apart from holes I didn’t even know were there.

If any of this sounds like where you are (tired of trying every form of support and still doing it all yourself), the AI Employee Bootcamp is the course that did it for me. I’ll be taking it again when it runs this fall because it updates every time, and I’m excited to see what’s new.

So there you have it. The thing that finally helped me release control wasn’t a person or a meditation or another self-help process. It was learning to build the support myself.

With supportive love and rebellious courage,

Christina

🕺Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺Huge fan of saving time

🕺Proud of myself for keeping an open mind with AI rather than wishing it would go away and then missing out on the solution that was trying to find me

PS - the AI Employee Bootcamp is running again this fall, and the content updates every round. If you’d like to try a different way of delegating, this is a great place to start.

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An actual app! (I can still barely believe I’m saying that.)

Several people in my life told me around the same time that they absolutely dread meal planning. They said it takes forever, they loathe doing it, and their families don’t even appreciate all their efforts. (Relatable.)

It was a problem I thought I could do something about thanks to my new AI skillz from taking a superb course this summer.

And thus… behold:

Introducing BALM Nourish. (insert fanfare noises)

This is not just a meal planning app (which I discovered as I played around with adding features I thought would be useful.)

You tell it who’s eating, what they can’t (or won’t) eat, and how much time you actually have, and it builds an entire week of meals for you. Whether you want just dinners or the whole enchilada - breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and desserts - this app’s got your back!

And get this - it makes a grocery list at the same time. Divided into grocery store sections. Because easy = yay!

It even scans photos of your beloved recipes so you can store them as your favourites and fold them into your weekly plan.

Not only that, if you have a special occasion to plan for, you can add profiles for all the guests and then it concocts a meal with all the fixins’, either from your favourite recipes or generated automatically based on all the likes/dislikes/allergies/picky eaters attending.

Now, here’s the thing (shhh).

It’s not public yet, and it’s not quite finished-finished.

That’s why I’m doing a one-month beta, and I want a small group of you in it first, before anyone else sees it.

Ready to try out BALM Nourish?

To become a Beta Tester, click this link, fill out the form, and you’ll get an email with the password and a simple step-by-step to get set up.

After the month, it stays free forever if you’re already a BALM member. For everyone else, it becomes its own thing you can keep using if you love it.

I built this for the version of you standing in the kitchen at 5pm with no plan. Come be one of the first to try it.

With exciting love and gathered courage,

Christina

🕺Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺And now: Creator of an App! Called BALM Nourish! For the person holding all the family’s food info and would rather keep that energy/brainspace for more fun things. Click here to become a Beta Tester

🕺Feeling into the difference this fall with no kids going back to school. Now that’s a change I’ve never experienced!

Let me regale you with yet another tale.

A couple of weekends ago, it was a long weekend. On the Saturday, I was happily eating lunch outside on my beautiful deck in the garden when something crunched in my mouth. Nothing in my salad was that texture, so, as one does, I carefully sifted through the contents of my mouth to avoid crunching it again.

The strange particle was located, and, not being able to identify the non-salad item, I flicked it onto the grass. I barely gave it a second thought until I was enjoying a small square of chocolate after lunch, and a searing pain shot through the left side of my mouth.

I was very confused because, after many months of using LED light therapy on my sensitive gums, I am thrilled to share that my gum health is completely back to normal. No sensitivity to heat, cold, or sweet - hurrah!

Until the crunch.

Then, a synapse fired in my brain and I realized what the mysterious white chunk was… duhn duhn dunnnnnhhhhh (insert ominous sounding music)... it was a filling. That had been covering up an exposed nerve. And was no longer doing its job. Since it was now in the backyard grass.

My heart plummeted into my stomach as I realized I would have to go through another torturous dental visit to get the situation remedied.

Then I cried. For a very long time. Body-wracking sobs. My husband comforted me without saying much, as he listened to my tale of woe with his hand on my back.

I just couldn’t believe that I would have to go through the agony of getting the filling again. Right when my mouth was back to being in tip-top shape. A total travesty.

Then Paul suggested that perhaps I could see a different dentist at the office. And maybe, just maybe, I would consider doing something a little extra for the pain.

“Absolutely not,” was my response.

One of my core foundations is basically: I don’t do drugs. Of any kind. I look for every possible alternative before putting manmade substances (especially of the pharmaceutical sort) into my body. If pain is a result, then I deal with it.

That had been 100% possible to uphold until my gums started receding. Two fillings were needed. My plan was to not get any freezing, but ultimately, it hurt so much that I acquiesced.

It worked reasonably well for my first filling in the top of my mouth, but then, when I got the second filling a week later, the freezing didn’t work at all. Which meant that the dentist drilled extensively on an exposed nerve.

10 out of 10 pain is all I can say about that.

So, of course, I had zero desire to go through it again. (Fun fact: the top filling fell out a few months after getting it, so I had to get that done a second time. And the freezing was less effective on round two.)

Back to the beginning of the long weekend sans filling. Of course, the dentist wouldn’t be back at work until Tuesday, so it gave me four days to consider my options. (And four days of only letting things into the right side of my mouth to avoid the nerve pain.)

I cried some more to my sister and mom. They thought I was being totally ridiculous to A) go back to the same dentist and B) not get some sort of sedation.

“You absolutely don’t need to suffer,” insisted my sister. She looked up new dentist alternatives and gave me recommendations from a friend who was thrilled with her dentist. Silently, I remained adamant that I would stick to my guns.

But then, as the weekend progressed, the tightness that I’d been holding on to started to soften. I can see that it was a long weekend for a reason (thank you Universe!), so that it would give me enough time to release my grip on the steering wheel of life.

I started to ask myself questions like, “Do I really need to suffer? Could there be another way of going through this experience that feels better? Are there solutions I haven’t considered?”

By Tuesday, something had loosened. I wasn’t white-knuckling my way back to the same chair anymore, and I wasn’t digging in on my no-drug stance out of pure stubbornness either. I just asked myself a different question: what if the actual problem was never getting help? What if it was that dentist? I called the second location of our biological dentist group.

As I reflected on the previous filling experiences, it seemed like he had rushed through the procedure. He didn’t wait for the freezing to take hold, and then, when the pain was excruciating and tears were streaming down my face, I let him know that it hurt a lot. He replied, “Well, we’re almost done. I think you can hang in there.”

When I called the second location, I asked if they would be able to redo the filling, and they said yes. I also asked if I would be able to have nitrous oxide, which I had learned was the mildest form of sedation dentistry, and that was a yes as well.

Rather than approaching the appointment with abject terror, I was kind of hopeful after this news. Perhaps I had let go just enough to suffer less (or maybe even not at all).

As I got into the dentist’s chair at the new office, my body still went into full fight-or-flight: trembling, sweaty palms, pounding heart. But I did my conscious breathing, and that helped a lot.

I met the new-to-me dentist, and he asked me why I had come to this office. I explained how my previous fillings had been absolutely horrible. He was sympathetic - already an improvement over the previous guy.

Things just kept getting better from there. The nitrous oxide certainly did take the edge off, so that was a plus. And then I noticed right away that this new dentist put the freezing into at least four spots in my mouth rather than just one. And then - get this - he waited. He waited and waited, and he tested. He poked the tender spot and asked me if I could still feel it, which I could. He waited some more, and he tested it again, and it still hurt, so he waited some more. I was blown away.

I felt so seen and heard. I felt like I mattered. I felt like he really did care about my comfort. He didn’t start until my mouth was fully frozen, and guess what? The whole procedure was a million times better!

And as a special bonus, he did a much better job of making the filling smooth. With the last one, I could definitely feel it on the outside of my molar. It was bumpy, rough, and crude. Now it’s as smooth as my tooth.

All of these miraculous results stemmed from one thing: softening. My mind had let go of whatever it had made up and was clinging to in order to have a new and improved dentist experience.

It’s a good thing I teach this stuff over and over so that when it shows up in my life, I’m receptive to it because I’ve heard it thousands of times (from my own mouth).

A tight mind ensures a contracted experience through life. A mind that’s willing to release and try something different means far less suffering - even in the dentist’s chair.

“How do I soften?” you might ask yourself.

Well, life works to soften us over time, but the thing is, it can take a really long time. For too many people, they might finally soften and let go in the last five minutes of life. That’s far too long for my liking.

I prefer an accelerated experience so I can do less suffering and more thriving.

That’s why I teach what I teach.

When I get on the mat, when I do conscious breathwork, when I do BEST and Spiritual BEST healing sessions, softening isn’t the focus, but it’s a happy byproduct that happens naturally with no effort.

When I first started learning these modalities, the promise was that I would soften. I had absolutely no idea what that meant or why I should even care, but now, many years later, I can see the results of softening. They have changed and positively affected every single part of my life.

And the great news is: there’s always room for more softening, for more surrendering the tightness of the mind to the wisdom of the heart.

That’s what I’m taking away from the Long-Weekend-Dental-Adventure. I apparently needed a really significant experience to catch my attention, to bring up the emotions that were wanting to be acknowledged, and then to soften the tightness of the stories my mind had made up that I was clinging to.

As a result, I have a wonderful new dentist (because of course I’m not going back to the other one), I’m no longer holding onto the stuck energy of those emotions like dread, terror, and stubbornness, and my whole vibration has been upleveled as a result of the softening.

All that goodness from one tiny little filling.

I’ve got a new dentist, a smooth molar, and one more piece of proof that the tight grip was never actually protecting me.

With glowing love and upleveled courage,

Christina

🕺 Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺 Going through the finishing touches for the slideshow I’ve been compiling for my dad’s celebration of life that’s coming up this weekend. It’s been such a gift to see a lifetime in photos.

🕺 Paying close attention to cherishing moments with my son Oakley. He’s here for two more weeks and then heading off to do some wwoofing in New Zealand until Christmas. Dramatic changes are afoot.

My beloved and I went to see the new movie last week, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since because it had some quantum teachings in it, and hardly anything gets me more excited than Spiritual Truths, Universal Laws, and how to make them practical so your life gets better and better. (Apart from sourdough croissants. Sidewalk Citizen in Calgary. You must go.)

So. Spider-Man. A Brand New Day.

I hadn’t been keeping up with our friendly neighbourhood superhero, but I thought the Brand New Day preview looked good, and so we watched the previous movie at home last week and then ventured out to the theatre for the new flick.

I thought it was fantastic. Captivating story, great acting, hilarious moments; it certainly didn’t feel like 2.5 hours.

My favourite part was when a quantum teaching was delivered, and so I’d like to unpack it here. Not everyone goes to movies to glean spiritual teachings, but I do (#quantumweirdo), and I love to share what may have otherwise gone unnoticed.

I’m pretty sure what I’m going to share does not need a spoiler alert. It also doesn’t require that you go see the movie, or even particularly like Spider-Man. It will be useful regardless of your opinion on buff demi-gods in leotards and masks.

With all of that said, here we go.

The Question That Doesn't Spoil Anything

In a fairly intense and action-packed scene, someone asks Spider-Man to make a choice. Is he Peter Parker or is he Spider-Man? (See, that doesn’t spoil anything, right? I feel like that question is pretty pervasive throughout his entire existence.)

Even his answer doesn’t reveal anything about the plot. He replies (with great conviction): Both.

But First, A Little Quantum Primer

Now, probably, you’re not seeing the quantum teaching here yet, so first, a little primer.

Everything is energy, and all energy goes through cycles.

Those cycles are straightforward and identifiable.

The four parts of the cycle of life are:

1- Creation energy, which has a springtime kind of vibe. New things, growth, a certain freshness, and anticipation.

2- Sustaining and Abundance energy, which feels like summer. Easy-going, relaxed, all the hard work is done, hands-off, let things continue to unfold and grow.

3- Transformation and Letting Go energy, which is like fall/autumn. There is deconstruction, a falling away, and a harvesting of the fruits of one’s labours.

4- The Void energy, which is like winter. The Void is an interesting time because it seems like nothing’s happening. It can feel like things are dead or like there’s a problem because there’s a stillness… a pause. Western humans don’t tend to do “pause” so well. And so we think that something’s wrong and we better work oh-so-hard to fix it.

The interesting thing about the Void is that even though it might feel empty, it’s the complete opposite. Everything - absolutely everything - is in the Void. In fact, everything comes from the Void. We have to go through the Void in order to move into creation, because that is the cycle of life.

If we resist while we’re in the Void, if we continue to think that something’s wrong and we have to power through or struggle in order to “fix it,” then we stay in the Void longer. Conversely, when we learn to embrace the void and its unfamiliar feelings, when we learn to accept what is and to turn our attention toward ourselves, especially the inner sanctum of ourselves, the Void becomes enjoyable, graceful even.

Why 'Both' Wins

And so the quantum teaching from Peter Parker/Spider-Man’s ultimate choice of being both is that we can be all of it. We don’t have to limit ourselves by being just one thing or just the other. In fact, there are rarely, if ever, only two choices, no matter what the circumstances are.

In quantum physics, we, as humans, are made of light. That light gets condensed into sound vibration, and the sound vibration gets condensed into physical matter. When we see ourselves as made of light, what we can learn to decipher is that we are much bigger than our physical body.

We’re made of so much more. Not only are we not just our body, we also are not just our emotions or our thoughts. We are truly made of ALL OF IT.

What most people crave is a harmonious life. That harmony doesn’t come from always being happy or always being just one part of yourself. It comes from embracing all of it.

There might be happiness in one moment, then there might be sadness in another. The next moment might be followed by frustration, and then judgement shows up. None of these parts of ourselves are wrong or bad. They are never something to be fixed. All emotions are created equal, and that goes for all the other parts of us as well.

And so that’s why the quantum teaching in Spider-Man is so very powerful.

We don’t have to choose.

Although Spider-Man/Peter Parker said one simple word - both - the underlying teaching is that, to access our ultimate power, we must embrace all the parts of ourselves and use them as fuel to create the ultimate life for ourselves.

As soon as he declared that choice for himself, he had a huge surge in energy because he had landed on the truth. When we’re aligned with the truth of who we are, we become absolutely unstoppable.

And there you have it: the quantum teaching of our magnificent power, what we can get from embracing the void, the paradigm that we don’t need to choose, or that there are at least more choices than we initially thought - all of that was embedded in this one brilliant and empowering scene.

Okay, But How Do I Actually Do This?

How can you use this teaching in your life?

The next time you notice any of these words fall out of your mouth, “I have to fix this,” or “I just have to work harder,” or “I’m broken,” or “This never should have happened,”

… the invitation is to level up and embrace your wholeness, the bigness of who you really are.

How do we do that specifically, you might ask?

Well, with daily practices like conscious breathwork, BodyAwake® yoga (which could also be called Quantum Yoga), and energy healing modalities that open up the trapdoor between the conscious and subconscious minds for ultimate healing and thriving.

That’s not a metaphor, by the way. Conscious breathwork, BodyAwake® Yoga, and BEST healing are the exact practices I share with my BALM members every single week, because reading about wholeness and living inside it are two completely different things. If that list just landed somewhere in your body, the BALM is where you go do something with it. Learn more about the BALM

You Don't Need The Spider Bite

When we become masterful at working with Universal Laws and understanding how to access our full power and creatorship, we become the superheroes we’ve been admiring on the screen and page for decades.

It’s not out of our reach. That’s why I think we’re so fascinated by superheroes. They are revealing something that might be hidden deep on the inside, but when we learn how to make it practical, we can become just as powerful and devoted to good as those bigger-than-life characters.

With tingly love and super-strong courage,

Christina

🕺Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺Putting the finishing touches on an app I’ve been working on this summer. I’ll be sending out a beta tester invite in the very near future. Watch your inbox!

🕺Intending that the second half of this Year of the Fire Horse becomes smooth and exciting (Like galloping rather than trotting. The first part of the year has definitely felt more like trotting to me.)

PS - You don’t need a radioactive spider bite to access this kind of power. The BALM is where I teach yoga that helps you connect with your quantum self, conscious breathwork, and monthly BEST group healing, the actual tools for embracing all of you instead of picking a side of yourself. It’s $97 a month or $997 a year, and annual members get a 90-Day Devotion Guarantee, if you do the work and don’t feel a shift, you get a free upgrade to 1:1 coaching with me. That surge Spider-Man felt the moment he stopped choosing is available to you too, and it isn’t fictional. More on the BALM

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My dad was an exceptional educator who loved sharing a good story. He would have wanted this one told.

Personally, I found the story to be soothing and healing, and so I wanted to share it with you too.

When a soul is set to be birthed into a body as a human, we make preparations. We celebrate, have baby showers, decorate the room, and get things ready to welcome the soul when it arrives.

On the other side of the veil, the same thing happens when a soul is about to leave its body. Before the person’s transition, other souls are already preparing. Celebrations happen. A banquet of sorts is arranged.

When the moment comes for the departing soul to let go of the body, it boards a golden canoe made of light. Its task is to cross a river to the other side, where it will be welcomed by waiting loved ones.

Guess what propels the boat?

The grief and sadness of those still here, in this dimension.

Grief is an expression of love. When you love someone, it’s sad when they leave their body and make their transition. They will be missed, and that missing has weight. It moves things.

That’s why it’s so important to let yourself feel the depths of grief. You’re doing a great service to the one making the transition. You’re helping them fully leave their body, so they can cross the river and be welcomed into the celebration on the other side.

Isn’t that beautiful? I’ve turned this image over in my mind so many times since that day, and it brings me great peace.

When we feel deeply, we’re being of service to the one we love, and that’s all the more reason to embrace what is. And when we give ourselves the gift of feeling our emotions, especially by noticing where they live in the body as sensation, we help them move through.

Rumi said it perfectly, and I think this poem is right on point:

With vast love and huge courage,

Christina

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This week, I’m sharing what I’ve learned about grief and how the teachings have made my dad’s transition sacred and much more easeful to navigate.

I was in my old room at my mom’s house a few days ago, doing a savasana, when my eyes fell upon a gift I had given to my mom when I was little: a heart made of barbed wire, with dried flowers woven through it.

I remember being at a craft fair and thinking that my mom would just love this:

She did! (At least I think she did.) She’s kept it for decades, at any rate, and now it hangs in my old room.

As I sat up from the savasana, a phrase flashed through my mind: Grief is a barbed wire heart. I knew that I would be writing about it.

Grief is a kind of love

In my coaching role, I’ve come across many people who are either subconsciously or overtly afraid of feeling grief. They’ve told me that if they really feel the grief, they’re afraid they’ll drown in it, or that it will get even stronger, or that it will last forever.

Although convincing and seemingly logical, none of these ideas are true.

Grief is actually reflective of love. If you’re deeply grieving someone who has passed, it’s an indication of how much love you had (and still have) for them.

When you let yourself feel that immense love, it automatically helps to transmute the grief into wisdom.

Making the connection between grief and love is fairly intuitive once you sit with it. The next part is a little more energetic in nature, so stay with me here. We’re going quantum.

Grief is heavy on purpose

Another aspect of grief is that it’s a heavy emotion. We tend to think that heavy energy is bad or wrong, and that we need to get rid of it in order to heal.

That idea is also backwards.

Our masterful energy system that includes all of us (mind, body, emotions, spirit) knows exactly what it’s doing. When it’s giving heavy, it means that we’re supposed to bring our attention to the 10th chakra, an energy centre that resides two feet below us in the earth. The Egyptians called it the Earth Star. It’s also known as the Christ Consciousness and the Buddha Consciousness. It’s very much about unconditional love.

The 10th chakra holds the reflection of the highest self. It also contains the energy of our destiny. Whenever we experience heavy energy, it’s a call for us to use the mind to focus on the sensations below us in the earth.

Why?

The next version of who you are becoming is waiting to emerge from this chakra. It’s the version of you who has integrated the grief. It’s the version of you who is wiser as a result. It’s the version of you who knows how to connect with a loved one, whether they are in a body or not.

I love to think of the tenth chakra as a treasure chest. The lid is wide open, and it radiates light up from beneath you. All the most actualized versions of you are the treasure in the chest (the treasure is you!), and they are shining up to become part of you, both inside and out.

Grief can be uncomfortable

The thing is, grief can be uncomfortable. It can be big sensations in the body that can feel uncomfortable, intense, or even painful. No wonder the mind wants to hide or suppress.

Despite the discomfort, we want to use the mind to focus on the sensations anyway. That way they get acknowledged and accepted, and that means they can move through (as emotions are designed to do) rather than setting up camp for hours, days, weeks, or even years.

Sometimes people wonder: If you integrate the grief, does it mean that you don’t love the person who passed?

Absolutely not. It’s the exact opposite. When the grief gets integrated, you can then put your energy and attention into connecting with your loved one’s energy. You can focus on love rather than the suffering that accompanies extended grief.

That’s why it seems to me that grief is like a barbed wire heart. If you interact with it by holding on, you’ll get hurt. (Grabbing barbed wire and squeezing = pain.)

But, if you observe the bigger picture - the barbed wire woven into the shape of a heart - it’s actually love. There are even beautiful memories there (symbolized by the dried flowers). Although the flowers are no longer growing in the garden, they remain beautiful - just in a different way. Everything is still there; just not maybe in the way we were used to.

And that’s okay. We’re made of change.

Love Pouring Through

Since my dad’s transition, I’ve connected with him often. I don’t feel like he’s missing. I don’t feel like there’s a hole in my heart. In fact, I feel like his energy has melded with mine and love has been amplified.

The BEST/Spiritual BEST healing sessions I’ve done since our energies coalesced have been next level. The yoga classes I’ve taught have been exceptional (if I do say so myself). I’ve been able to support people from a very whole and fulfilled place.

To me, that’s an indication of an expanded love I’ve become privy to by integrating the grief. The grief isn’t getting in the way of experiencing the love I have for my dad or in receiving his love. I can feel an even bigger love pouring through.

I feel very blessed to know the perspectives I’m sharing with you here. They’ve made a tremendous difference in my life over the last few weeks.

No matter what emotions show up - sadness, regret, disappointment, fear, and of course, grief - I welcome them in and pay attention to what they feel like as sensation. Even when it’s uncomfortable, painful, or prickly, I continue to focus on what they feel like in my body.

I breathe.
I accept.
I receive how it feels.
I love what is in the moment.

And then they pass through. There’s no need for them to linger because they got what they needed - love.

(By the way, I’m not talking about romantic love or something that feels manufactured; rather, I’m talking about the love that naturally occurs when you pay attention.) Attention is the most sincere form of love. If something hurts, I pay attention. And then it melts.

Barbed wire is generally not beautiful. But like grief, when it’s formed into a heart, and love becomes the focus, something that’s painful by nature can beget healing.

And that’s the whole shift, really - from bracing to observing, from squeezing to seeing the shape it’s actually making.

Love is a barbed wire heart.

With integrated love and surprising courage,

Christina

🕺Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺Planning one more article about grief/transitions for next week. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and I wanted to share it today, but I didn’t want to make this post too long. I’m really looking forward to sharing it with you!

🕺 Putting ze final touches on an app that I’ve been working on. (Which is just absolutely crazy - who would’ve thought I would be doing that?!? Not me. In a million years.) There will be a beta test going out soon. Stay tuned

Questions? Comments? Please share below. I read them all.

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What I’d love to share with you today are three unique things about my dad and how they positively affected my life.

Melon and The Beginner’s Mindset

My dad had this quirk that I thought was absolutely hilarious. Whenever we would eat cantaloupe, he would remind us that he didn’t like it. Then, he would say, “Well, maybe I’ll just try it today. Things might have changed.” He would have a bite, grimace, and say, “Nope, still don’t like it.”

I always thought this quirk was so funny, and now, looking back on it, it also taught me something profound. What I learned from my dad’s endless optimism towards cantaloupe is that we change. You never know how you might have evolved since the last time you tried something.

I see it as being similar to the white belt mentality. In martial arts, students start with a white belt, then they go through all the colours, and then they get their black belt. Although they have become masterful, as they continue to practice and wear that black belt over and over, eventually it fades back to white. It represents the power of a beginner’s mindset.

I love this approach. I think it’s highly evolved, and my dad showed me that through his endless cantaloupe testing that it’s important to be open. Things are never set in stone - not even orange melon aversions.

(And funny enough, as the Alzheimer’s set in, my dad eventually forgot that he didn’t like cantaloupe and was very enthusiastic about any food put on his plate, so there you go.)

Checkers and The Joy of Effort

I must have been about eight years old when my dad taught me how to play checkers. We would play every so often, and I thought it was a lot of fun.

Then, one day, he didn’t let me win. I ended up in tears. I was so upset and disappointed - it wasn’t fun to lose! He told me outright that he didn’t let me win on purpose. He framed it as a life lesson: we’re not going to be good at something the first few times we do it. We need to practice, put in effort, and be devoted to what matters.

I’ve taken this lesson to heart. I’ve become much more gentle with myself when I’m not good at something the first time or the first few times I try it. If something is important to me and I love it or I can see the value in it, I put in effort consistently. My dad taught me to be kind and gentle with myself and to also have high standards so that I can produce exceptional results.

He also taught me, as a parent, not to just hand things over to my kids. It’s so important for every child to learn to have some grit and to not just have everything handed over on a silver platter. When we have to work for something, it’s much more satisfying when it’s finally accomplished because of what we learned along the way.

Sometimes parents go easy on their kids because they want their kids to like them and they want to be a friend. My dad showed me that it’s much more powerful to have a mentor and that there is a relationship beyond friendship. He’s the only dad I will ever have, and I value that he didn’t let me win just to try to make me happy and be my friend.

Embracing the Divine Feminine

One of the most beautiful gifts my dad gave me was being an example of a loving, caring, emotionally masterful man.

I saw my dad cry many times growing up, and although at the time I thought it was normal, as I left the sanctuary of my home, I started to learn that other men and dads didn’t do that as much. My dad was the most courageous kind of man. I think it takes incredible courage to express emotions rather than hide them away, and my dad did that so freely.

He told me all the time how much he loved me and how proud he was of me. Again, it just seemed regular, but now I know that it was rare to experience a dad so generous and vocal about his love and admiration.

My dad was very even-keeled, and what I can see now is that he modeled what my spiritual mentor calls “grand neutrality.” He mentioned to me several times that he picked his battles. If there was something that came up that questioned his core values, then he would let it be known and be very firm, centred, and grounded. If something came up in the moment, but he knew that it would be better to let it go, he did.

He wasn’t attached to being right or to having overt power over others. Instead, he exemplified what it looks and feels like to have a man embrace the divine feminine. Now, I doubt that he ever would have used those words, but from all the study that I’ve done around the divine feminine, I can see that he was such a beautiful example of a man who knew how to create, go with the flow, and be truly strong by choosing love over and over.

What a guy!

My dad was simply an exceptional human being. I could probably write weekly articles for years on all that I’ve learned from him.

In addition to all the awesomeness I’ve already shared, he was also super fun and loved to laugh.

One of his favourite things to do was to throw a bucket of cold water on his brother or on my husband during showers while on family vacation. (Thankfully, he also had the wisdom to never do that to me, my mom, or my sister!)

The last thing I’ll share with you today is that my dad was a remarkable educator. As a teacher, Assistant Principal, Principal, and education consultant for Alberta Education, he positively influenced countless lives.

Whenever we were out and about, someone would approach my dad - whether it was a former student or colleague- and gush about what a positive impact he’d had on them. You know that teacher that you remember fondly? That was my dad.

He always taught: Catch a kid being good.

When I became a teacher and then a parent, I took that philosophy to heart. Love, praise, and acknowledgment will take everyone much further than criticism, shame, or blame. My dad was the epitome of positivity, and I’m so grateful that I chose him to be my teacher, father, mentor, and hero.

Thank you so much for reading.

With grateful love and heartfelt courage,

Christina

🕺Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺Grateful that my dad is now liberated from his body. I feel so connected with his big love.

🕺Delighted in the fact that my dad made his transition at the end of the day on June 30 - the last day of school - a true educator right up to the end.

PS - If you knew my dad and want to share a story or anecdote about him, or if you’d like to leave a comment, please click the button below.

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Flash forward many unrestful nights to when I had my kids. They helped me take my non-sleeping feats to record levels.

My daughter was awake five to six hours most nights for two full years. Then, when my son came along, he nursed every two hours until he turned one. Sleep (or lack of it) played a pivotal role in my life for a long time.

As an adult, I was pretty sure my kids were the issue. Then they started sleeping better. And I still didn’t.

How rude.

What I know now, after years of figuring this out in my own body (and for the women I work with), is that the conversation most of us are having about sleep is almost entirely backwards. And the backwards-ness is what’s keeping you awake and/or unrested.

The pendulum didn’t just swing - it sent people straight into anxiety

If we backtrack as a society to a few years ago, the badge of honour was: Look how little sleep I got because I’m so busy and doing so many important things, but I’m amazing because I can still function.

Now, the pendulum has swung to the completely opposite extreme: you absolutely must get eight consecutive hours, or you will not heal, your cortisol will be destroyed, and your telomeres will shorten. (Noooo! Not my telomeres!)

I understand why that second message landed so hard. People were exhausted and looking for answers. But here’s what happened: if you’re someone who sometimes wakes in the night, you’re now lying there running stress calculations about your own healing trajectory. You’re not sleeping poorly. You’re sleeping poorly and then panicking about sleeping poorly, and the panic is doing significantly more damage than the waking.

(There is something almost impressive about the mind’s ability to turn a problem into a worse problem. Truly stunning efficiency. Especially in the middle of the night!)

We for sure needed to shift out of the too-little-sleep accolades, but what we got was another reason to catastrophize. What we actually need is a third option, and that’s what I want to share with you today.

Nighttime is the most powerful phase of your daily cycle

There’s a framework I teach inside The BALM that maps the four phases of the natural life cycle - spring, summer, autumn, winter - onto the rhythms of a single day. Morning is spring: new energy, possibility, the system coming back online. Midday is summer: sustained, abundant, things in full motion. Evening is autumn: winding down, harvesting what the day produced, preparing to let go.

And most importantly for our purposes here: Nighttime is winter. The void.

In quantum physics, the void is not empty. It’s where everything exists simultaneously - light and darkness, all possibilities, all opposites coexisting before anything arises into form. Everything we chalk up to “coming out of the blue” comes from the void. Every creative breakthrough, every idea that arrived in the shower or on a walk or in the middle of the night - that’s the void doing what the void does.

Your soul wakes you up in the void on purpose.

Not because something is wrong. Not because your cortisol is broken. Because you’re in the most energetically potent phase of your daily cycle, and conscious breathing done at 3am (or anytime in the middle of the night) is at least ten times more impactful than the same practice done at 2pm. The void amplifies everything.

The mind doesn’t know this. The mind wakes up, looks at the clock, calculates how many hours are left, writes a small Shakespearean tragedy about what tomorrow is going to feel like, and calls that helpful.

It is so not helpful. It’s the mind doing what the mind does, and the mind mistakes the void for a problem. It’s not a problem. It’s an invitation.

What you do when the invitation arrives

When the mind shows up at 3am with its story - you have five hours left, you haven’t been sleeping well, you’re going to be so tired, why does this keep happening, what’s wrong with you - there is but one move. You redirect. Not by fighting the thought, not by white-knuckling your way to calm, but by giving the mind something better to do than asking useless questions or being all middle-of-the-night judgy.

The specific practices for that redirect live in the paid section below: the two breathing techniques I use, and the sleep intention I’ve refined over the years and hand directly to the women in The BALM.

But the most important thing to take from the free section is this: you are not broken. The waking is not the problem. The mind’s story about the waking is the problem, and that story can be interrupted. I’ve had hospital nights with my kids where I got one hour of sleep and woke up feeling rested and energized, and I can tell you exactly why. It has nothing to do with willpower. It has everything to do with where you put your attention when the void opens.

Your soul knows what it’s doing. The waking is sacred.

With profound love and luminous courage,

Christina

🕺🏻Creator of Courageous Self-Care and The BALM

🕺🏻Heading to Montréal this week for the International Jazz Festival, where I’ll be fulfilling my dream of seeing Melody Gardot live. If you don’t know about her, search for her music immediately. She is phenomenal.

🕺🏻Just spent a wonderful weekend camping near Banff at Johnston Canyon, taking the world-renowned hike there (with 1756 other people), and then lounging in the Banff Hot Springs soon thereafter. Hello Summer!

For paid subscribers: The practices that actually work at 3am 👇

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There’s been a lot of change in our family recently and there’s no indication that it’s going to stop anytime soon.

With Father’s Day, the Summer Solstice, and a weekend filled with the winds of change (literally), I just had to write about it. Here’s what’s been happening.

My husband got a new dream job (hallelujah!) My son turned 18 and graduated from high school. He’s planning on wwoofing (working on farms in exchange for room and board) in New Zealand in the fall. My daughter has set a goal of moving out early next year.

Just one of these things would be fairly dramatic, but put them all together and kapow! That’s a lot at once.

Not to mention that we’re moving from school year into summer, which means all the people are at home (where I work from) rather than at school. Just that transition alone has taken a few years to fully understand.

I used to be delusional and think that I was going to get so much more done in the summer than during the rest of the year.

Wise-current-me shakes my head at younger-naive-me.

How could I have possibly thought that having my husband and kids at home in the summer meant I would get more done???

Who knows? (Well… Me. Now. It just took a few years.)

With all these changes, I’ve been reflecting on transitions, endings, and beginnings.

Sometimes, we know when things are coming to an end. In other cases, we don’t know that it’s the last time for something. I didn’t know it was the last time when my son went from holding my hand to not holding my hand on walks.

I didn’t know it was the last time when my dad would say my name. (He has dementia now and is non-verbal.)

I also didn’t know it was the last time he would look me in the eyes. (He doesn’t connect that way anymore either.)

Although how we relate has changed, I still feel a strong bond of love and energy between us. I tug on my heart-strings that link with his heart-strings many times throughout the day.

I didn’t know it was the last time when my daughter would want to do our family ritual of gratefuls and proud-ofs each night. (When she was younger, she said she was going to do it forever, and even call us every night once she moved out.) So sweet, but that ritual has faded away.

I’m definitely finding these times to be bittersweet. There are occasional tears as I let go of my role of parent. At the same time, my heart swells as I move into the role of mentor. It’s less about getting my kids to do things my way and more about helping guide them into their own answers and choices. (Which is sometimes REALLY challenging! Don’t they know I have all the answers? LOL.)

There are so many opportunities to let go of attachments - to how I thought things were going to be, or how I think they should be.

I think the most important way I’m showing up for myself right now is to be tender and to let myself feel the feelings.

If I’m moved, I cry.

If I’m attached, I breathe consciously and invite energy to flow through my heart.

If I’m trying to control, I surrender.

If I’m joyful, I dance or sing or partake in some other form of merriment. (Just this weekend, at our Father’s Day Celebration at my dad’s care facility, I sang a whole playlist of campsongs to my niece, including Poor Little Bug on the Wall in variety of styles including opera and cowboy. It was one of my dad’s favourite songs to sing around the fire.)

Earlier in the weekend, my husband and I went to see the new Toy Story movie. (Not his favourite but there was a draw for a chance to win a trip for 4 to DisneyWorld so I just had to get tickets. I’ll let you know if we win!)

I thought the movie was excellent. The primary message was about technology and how to ensure that it has a helpful role in our lives but that we don’t let it take over.

A more subtle message that surfaced as my husband and I discussed the movie after seeing it was relevant to what I’m sharing today.

The toys were worried about becoming irrelevant and being replaced by technology. In the end, they formed an alliance with the tech toys to give their kids the best childhood possible.

The sentiment from the toys was along the lines of: We just want to know that we mattered and that we were there for our kid when they needed us. We helped them become who they are, even if they don’t play with us anymore.

Twenty-two years of being all the things, and now I'm learning to let go of every single one of them.

Because our ultimate goal is their self-sufficiency.

We were there for them in every way possible to help them grow into exceptional people who make a contribution and are adept at making their own decisions.

Every single day, I’m reminded that what used to be up to me is now in their hands. And - whew! It can be challenging to let go.

After all, I have 49 years of experience of learning and thus knowing the “best way to do things.” What I have to keep remembering is that it’s the best way to do things for me. Not for everyone. My kids need to figure out their own way, and experience is such a great teacher.

So, like in Toy Story 5, I’m landing in the truth that I was there for them in the best way possible when they needed me in that way, and now I’m learning a new way to be there for them as we all evolve and grow.

Interesting times, that’s for sure.

I'm sharing this because I know I'm not the only one in a season of quiet letting go.

If we can devote ourselves to navigating our immediate circumstances with grace and understanding, it makes it much easier to flow through the significant changes and transformations happening all over the world as well.

May you move with grace with whatever changes you’re experiencing right now.

With flowing love and big-hearted courage,

Christina

🕺Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺Currently listening to my kids and their significant others laugh together downstairs - what a gift

🕺Debating how much more energy I should put into conveying to my kids that bread and cheese is not a food-group. (Probably none.)

The mind often has a tendency to fall back into the story of overwhelm as a reason to freeze, leading to feelings (stories) of being “stuck” or “just on the verge” of something but never quite getting there.

But what if the freezing/stuckness weren’t problems to be solved? What if they were indicators of what would help?

Inside of the BALM and in my own practice, I choose to see the sensation of overwhelm as a great sign that I’m up to big, important things (as we all are - spiritual expansion being an example).

If I ever feel stuck or just on the verge of something, I take it as an indication to pause, reflect, gather, and then create from a place of clarity, calm, and fullness rather than just hanging on for dear life.

Let me model the process for you here. You’re invited to play along.

Step 1: Take a Sacred Pause

Carve out some time to take a break from the chaos. It might be 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an afternoon, a weekend - it’s totally up to you. What freedom!

The key is that it helps if it’s scheduled and you have the intention to slow down and step outside of the busy.

I’m taking such a pause this very moment. I carved out some time in between yoga, coaching sessions, and taking a course with lots of homework to sit down and write. (But actually I’m standing because - standing desk! Love it!)

There’s nothing fancy about taking a pause. You just need to notice you need it, schedule it, and then do it.

That’s what the freeze/stuck energy is about. Not a problem. Just a really clear indication of what would help. Turn the freeze into a pause. That way you’re empowered rather than stuck in victim mode.

Step 2: Reflect

Once you’ve given yourself the gift of the pause, the next thing to do is reflect. You can either do this step by writing, thinking, or speaking out loud (ideally just to yourself). No censoring here. You’re giving yourself the gift of stream of consciousness.

I prefer a little structure, so I like to focus on writing down wins and highlights and then making a list of what’s working in my life.

Left up to its own devices, the mind usually has a tendency to look for what’s wrong. It’s hardwired that way. But - good news - neuroplasticity! We can teach the mind to move from its negativity bias to reprogramming neurons to find the positive.

As such, in this reflecting process, we nurture what’s right. What you focus on expands, so wouldn’t you rather expand what’s right in your life than amplify what’s “wrong?” (Your answer is yes. I hope.)

Let me share my reflections with you.

Recent Highlights

(lovely, delightful, easy things that have happened with little to no effort on my part)

⭐️Attending my son Oakley’s graduation!

⭐️Going to the premiere of my daughter Zoe’s new movie! (The movie itself was not delightful - it’s an 80s slasher-type movie, but it was totally thrilling to see Zoe rockin’ it on screen in a lead role! It’s called Prank Night, and it’s now on Amazon Prime in case campy slasher movies are your thang.) It was especially awesome when people cheered for Zoe’s character when she took out the villain. I’ve never heard an audience do that before.)

She’s in the top left corner of the poster ⬇️

⭐️ Celebrating Oakley’s 18th birthday! Twice!

⭐️ My husband, Paul, got a new job that is exactly his passion and skill set

⭐️ Going for a couple of long walks with Paul and basking in the glorious sun and verdant springtime greens

⭐️ Enjoying the flowers in our garden

Recent Wins

(different from highlights because they take more oomph, as in: I finally did it, or I didn’t feel like doing it but I did anyway so yay me!)

⭐️ Finishing a big project for the Brain Regeneration clinic where I’m the coaching program manager

⭐️ Keeping up with the homework for a 12-week course I’m taking

⭐️ Facilitating a book study of The Anatomy of Awakening where the participants keep having amazing wins

⭐️ Getting more organized than I’ve ever been in my life!

⭐️ Supporting Oakley to finish strong with his last exams

What’s Working List

(write down everything you can think of in every area of life that’s working right now)

⭐️ Getting on the yoga mat every day

⭐️ Going for daily walks and enjoying nature

⭐️ Being consistent with my Instagram posts

⭐️ Writing my weekly blog

⭐️ Getting organized with tracking finances

⭐️ Keeping up with reading The Anatomy of Awakening

⭐️ Stretched my comfort zone by hiring a cleaning service

⭐️ Scheduled and went to a craniosacral session

⭐️ Went to the spa for a body wrap (one of my top 5 favourite things to do)

⭐️Regular dates with Paul

So now I invite you to do some reflecting as well. Aim for 3 things in each category. Do more if you want, but 3 is a great place to start.

Step 3: Gather the Goodness

In this step, the invitation is to go deeper. Really gather the goodness that’s showing up in your life right now.

This might surprise you, but everyone has a set tolerance level for how much good they can handle in their lives. We know we want more, but unless we consciously work at it, there’s a ceiling.

In this step of gathering the goodness, we turn to embodied gratitude in order to increase our capacity to hold the good that’s showing up and make room for even more.

Here’s how you do it.

Write down something you’re grateful for.

For example, I’m grateful for the dance at Oakley’s graduation banquet. It was SO FUN!

Next, ask yourself: why am I grateful for this experience?

I love this step. It goes so much deeper than just writing down gratitudes. I like to focus on how the experience made me feel. This anchors the gratitude not just in your mind, but in your entire system.

In this example, the dance at Oakley’s graduation banquet made me feel fully alive, celebratory, victorious, invigorated, incredibly happy, connected, delighted, joyful.

I love contemplating how an experience made me feel because I learned so much about myself, plus I get to relive it.

The final step of gathering the goodness is to embody the gratitude. We do this by putting on a song and dancing with gratitude as a partner.

Embodiment is the key here. I’ve found that thinking about gratitude is very, very different from embodying it. When something is embodied, it lives in every one of your cells, and then that’s the vibration that you radiate. You become a gratitude magnet so more of that vibration has to come back to you in your life with way less effort. That’s how it works.

So after writing down one to three gratitudes and asking yourself how you feel about them, the practice is to choose a favourite song and dance so that the gratitude goes from just the head and possibly the heart to your entire being.

This is how you gather the good, so I invite you to do that now. Write down a gratitude. Write down how it made you feel, and then choose a favourite song and dance. It’ll just take you five minutes, tops.

Since I walk the talk, I’m dancing right now to “Walking on Sunshine.” Feel free to copy my song choice.

Step 4: Create from Clarity

In this final step, the idea is to proceed with refreshed energy and clarity.

Because you took some time to take a sacred pause, reflect, and gather, you’re more connected with the truth of who you are.

When you practice this process on a regular basis, it becomes easier to make decisions and to know what’s actually true for yourself. It helps you land in your core so that you feel centered and grounded.

I don’t know about you, but that’s the only place I want to create from.

I like to think of overwhelm as a funnel. It has lots of swirling energy - so many possibilities of how you could proceed and what you could do. I imagine all those ideas funnelling down into my body. When I choose to look at it that way, I see my body as a processing system so that I don’t need to do everything at once. I pick one thing and do that.

Overwhelm can be used as an excuse. The mind can say, “Well, I’m overwhelmed, so I can’t do anything.” When we follow the steps outlined above: taking a pause, reflecting, and gathering, it becomes easier to pick one thing to take action on. That’s how you get out of the stuckness. That’s how you train your system to take action even if the mind says that you can’t or don’t want to.

In this final step, you choose one thing from your gigantic list, and you do it. That gives you momentum to keep going.

You’re carving a path through the jungle of the mind.

It can be wild in there, but this process helps you get laser-focused and tuned into the one next thing you can do.

Then, you’re creating from a clear, grounded, centered place and it feels amazing!

Making it a Ritual

These four steps are the bones of something we’ve built into a full ritual inside our BALM community: the Sacred Success Friday Review. I didn’t invent this process in a vacuum. I built it because I needed it, and then I kept refining it because I watched it change things for the women doing it alongside me.

Prior to doing this review, I was overwhelmed most of the time, stressed, double-booking myself, forgetting important events, and living in general chaos.

Now, thanks to this ritual, life is much more manageable. Of course, stuff still happens, but I’ve trained my energy system and my mind to flow through it rather than let things take me out like they used to.

You’re invited to join us in the BALM. In addition to the Friday Reviews, we show up for each other regularly to create coherence in our bodies and lives so that we increase our capacity to hold and navigate whatever’s showing up with ease and grace.

We do practices like conscious breathwork, Rebellious Yoga, BEST/Spiritual BEST healing sessions, and Ugly Awkward Dance Parties.

It’s a full self-care system where all the guesswork is taken out. I’ve done all the research and the planning for you so you don’t have to. The only thing you need to do is show up (either live or to the replays) and then notice your life shift in ways you didn’t expect.

If you want to do this work inside a container where it's already built in - where the Sacred Success Friday Review is on the calendar and the only thing you have to do is show up - the BALM exists for exactly that.

If something in this piece landed for you and you want a community where this kind of practice is the whole point, come take a look at the BALM. It’s where we do this work together, every week, without the guesswork.

And whether that’s for you or not, the four steps above are yours. Use them today if today is a lot.

Life always gives us exactly what we need to grow and expand. If overwhelm is showing up, use it as an open doorway that’s inviting you into more clarity, celebration, and aligned action.

With gigantic love and propelling courage,

Christina

🕺Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺Mother of two adults!

🕺Debating whether the cleaning service is something I want to continue. (I’m so picky when it comes to cleaning…)

In the last few years, there’s been a resurgence of interest in The Wizard of Oz with the Wicked movies.

Growing up, I never really loved the Wizard of Oz. I thought it was both creepy and scary. (What’s with those flying monkeys? And that lion was just so whiny.)

However, when I first saw Wicked as a musical, I loved it. There’s been a trend in recent years to get the backstory of the “villain,” which is the bigger picture of collective consciousness, and it seems like a very good sign to me.

There’s that saying about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, and to me, the backstory villain trend shows that we’re moving toward seeking understanding rather than just outright judging. Of course, we have a ways to go, but movies are often a teaching ground for where humanity is headed, so we’ll take it as a good sign, illustrating curiosity over judgment.

With the Wicked movies coming out, I spent additional time contemplating why the Wizard of Oz story is so enduring.

What came to me is that it’s very much about giving all the power to the wrong master. The quest to find the wizard to “fix the problems” of each character is completely relatable. It’s about pinning all of one’s hopes on something that the mind has decided is the solution.

Here’s the catch. As each main character discovers eventually, the wizard isn’t the solution. The real growth comes from learning that they had the answer inside them all along.

The mind makes up stories all the time (it’s tricky like that) and, often, those stories become a driving force in one’s decisions and way of living. That then amplifies into people sharing their mind’s stories and teaching them like they are the truth.

What we can learn from the Wizard of Oz storyline is that the answer isn’t outside of us. It’s generally hidden in plain sight and is so simple that the mind overlooks it because the mind tends to complicate things in a fancy display of showing you how much you need the mind to solve the problems it created in the first place.

It’s all quite funny, really.

If you’re already a paid subscriber, the practice for working with the mind in the most powerful way possible is waiting below. If you’re not yet - and you just felt something shift reading that paragraph - that shift is exactly what the paid content is designed to help you work with. $10 a month.

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So here’s an example of how this idea is playing out currently in popular culture.

A few years ago, the only people who had heard about the nervous system were pretty much those in the medical field. There was a vague understanding of fight or flight for people outside of the training, and that was about it.

Flash forward to now, and you can hardly get through a day without hearing someone saying something like, “I just need to get my nervous system regulated.” (At least I’m hearing that over and over. Are you, too?)

Here’s the thing. The nervous system is just one part of us. Someone told us that it was very important, and now we’ve elevated it to being THE THING we absolutely need to focus on that will make all the difference once we finally figure out how.

The nervous system has become the elusive wizard. We’ve put it up on a pedestal (or maybe behind a curtain) and are pouring all our energy into figuring it out (with the mind, of course, because that’s how we tend to roll).

The truth, though, is that focusing on the nervous system is just another fragmented approach. You can’t take one part of the system and pull it out, “fix it,” and then magically be regulated and healed.

We don’t work like that! It would be like someone saying, “I’m going to become an elite basketball player,” and then only ever practicing 3-point shots. They’d never become masterful because they’re missing most of the game.

It’s the same thing with putting all the focus on regulating the nervous system.

Sure, it’s important, but it’s only one part of us. Plus, how much fun does it sound to “regulate” it? To me, that sounds about as interesting as sweeping a mile-long driveway with a hand broom. (Which is a true story. I’ve done that. Not interesting at all. Plus, so many blisters!)

So what to do instead? How can we shift focus from the slippery wizard of nervous system regulation, and where should we put it instead?

Well, my friends, I don’t know about you, but I’m much more interested in working with the system that built the nervous system (along with all the other systems).

It’s called the Master System, and if you choose to focus on creating coherence there, you work with all the systems at once. They all get upgraded.

What a great use of time and energy! Plus, creating coherence sounds so much more rewarding (or at least appealing) than regulating, don’t you think?

Paid members are getting the specific practice for this below - less than five minutes, no props, works anywhere. If you’ve been reading Courageous Self-Care for any length of time and are thinking “I want the actual practice, not just the concept,” this is the week to make the jump.

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The Master System incorporates all of you. It’s the union of mind, body, and spirit in a tangible way. There are very specific practices you can do to work with the Master System that take just minutes a day (or even less because you can incorporate them into what you’re already doing) and, as a happy byproduct, the nervous system gets upgraded without needing to fix it or wander around aimlessly, unsure of how to do that regulating thing anyways.

After the big-wizard-smoke-and-mirrors-letdown, Dorothy discovered, in that classic line, that there’s no place like home. The Master System is our energetic home. It’s our energy system that builds the body and then keeps energy, light, and life force running through it for optimal functioning.

The invitation here is to shift the mind’s focus. Rather than paying homage to one small part of us and using the mind to laser focus on that divided aspect, let’s use the mind to focus on our wholeness and completeness and have that be our come-from.

In a nutshell, here’s the point. If you focus on the nervous system, it’s a divisive approach, and so you’ll get fragmented results. If you focus on the Master System, you’re tuning into your wholeness and building from there. Nothing’s broken. No need to fix anything. No need to (yawn) regulate anything.

Just the opportunity to save time and energy and get way better results. (In my experience at least, along with countless students who I’ve shared this approach with.)

Do you think L. Frank Baum ever would have dreamed that someday, some girl with a passion for quantum science, spirituality, wellness, and energy would make metaphors with his story about Oz as related to the nervous system? I’m guessing no.

(And also, did you even know that’s who wrote the original story??? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him until just now when I looked it up.)

Curious about how to work with the Master System for ultimate healing, wholeness, and general awesomeness?

The Master System practice is below for paid subscribers - the specific steps, less than five minutes, and a video of me doing it so you can see what “creating coherence” actually looks like on an ordinary Wednesday morning. If Dorothy taught us anything, it’s that the thing you’ve been looking for was never out there. It’s been here the whole time. So has this.

$10 a month.

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When we focus on the Master System, we can both go big and go home. No need to make a choice - you can have it all!

With whole love and complete courage,

Christina

🕺Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺Attended my son’s grade 12 graduation last week (more reflections on that to come)

🕺On the same night as the grad, my daughter’s latest movie premiered! Never a dull moment in the Marlett household. (more on that another time, as well)

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There was one important upgrade, though. When I checked in, they gave me not just a key card but also a wristband that got me into the room, the gym, and the pool.

I wore it the whole time (even though it was definitely not the height of fashion and didn’t match my super cute outfits).

Here’s the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about the entire trip: that little blue band saved me so much time and energy it was almost embarrassing. Not because it was high-tech. Not because it was clever. Because it was ready. Right there on my wrist, no bag required, no wallet, no three-minute search through a purse that moonlights as a bottomless portal to the netherworld. I just walked straight to wherever I was going, waved my wrist and - poof - got in.

Just like that! No friction. No energy required. Just access.

(Here’s an unflattering photo of me and the wristband. I swear I took at least a dozen, and this was the best of the bunch. Consider yourself privileged to even cast your eyes upon this sweaty post-run image.)

I’ve been thinking about that unstylish but super useful wristband ever since, because that is exactly what it feels like to have a go-to practice for how to create coherence in your system.

Not a whole ritual. Not a forty-five-minute morning routine you’ll likely abandon eventually. Just one tool on your wrist (so to speak) that you can reach for in any moment: between meetings, in the middle of a conversation that’s going sideways, at Costco when the cart in front of you literally has one item of everything offered in the entire warehouse (we’ve all been there), or even during a conversation that feels wonderful and you want to stay connected to yourself inside of it.

That’s the difference between knowing about self-care and actually having it in your body, right there, ready to go.

The Tool We Keep Leaving at the Front Desk

Most of us have absorbed a lot of information about how to be well. We’ve read the books, done the courses, listened to the podcasts on our jaunty walks. And yet in the actual moments that matter, we reach for our bag and the card isn’t there.

The information isn’t the problem. Integration is.

And integration doesn’t happen in your head. It happens when a practice lives in your body so completely that you can access it anywhere, without thinking, without setup, without remembering to remember. Not more to learn, but a handy-dandy wristband. Something that’s already with you when you need it.

I’ve been using one particular practice for years and it’s become exactly that for me. Less than sixty seconds. No props. Works in the middle of a difficult conversation, a spiraling thought loop, a moment of self-doubt right before you walk into a room. I’ve taught it to clients who now reach for it the way you’d reach for your wristband heading to the gym: automatically, without breaking stride.

What it does is teach the mind to stay home inside the body while you’re fully engaged with the world outside it. Those two things, being present inward and outward at the same time, are not in conflict. Most of us just haven’t been shown how.

If you’re already a paid member, the step-by-step practice is waiting for you below. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber and you just felt that little pull while reading this… that’s the wristband calling. $7 a month is what it costs to stop reading about the tool and have it on your body.

Subscribe now

Why Your Attention Is the Whole Game

Here’s something worth getting real cozy with: wherever your attention goes, your energy goes with it. That part makes intuitive sense. What’s less intuitive is how far outside ourselves we’ve trained our attention to go, and how much it costs us.

Most of us, most of the time, are pouring our energy onto the outer world. The person across the table. The inbox. The thing we said last Tuesday that we’re still mulling over in hopes that all the mulling will create a different result (PSA: it doesn’t). Our energy is external, and we come home from a day of work feeling like we’ve been poured out. Puddle-like.

We think this is how you show up for people. You give them all of you. You focus entirely on them. But that’s not what makes a conversation land, or a relationship work, or a presentation powerful. What makes those things land is you being fully present, in your own body, while you’re with someone. That’s a very different posture, and it’s one the body can actually sustain.

The practice I’m sharing below shows you exactly how to do that, step by step, and once you have it, you’ll have it everywhere you go.

So there you have it: a wristband for your mind, body, and spirit. No bottomless bag required.

With easy-access love and ninja-level courage,

Christina

🕺🏻 Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺🏻 After years (YEARS!!!) of wanting to do this, I’m going to experiment with having a cleaning service help out in our home. Yippee!

🕺🏻 Looking forward to celebrating my son’s graduation this week. Once he’s finished high school, it feels like we’ll be embarking on a new adventure. I know many of you have been there. It’s a bittersweet time shrouded in mystery. I’ll probably write about it someday soon…

PSST! (So much more exciting than PS, don’t you think?) The paid version of this issue has the full practice. If you’ve been reading and thinking “I need the goods! Not just the concept!” $7 a month is how you get it.

Subscribe now

Already a paid subscriber? Keep reading for the Step-by-step practice below ⬇️

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That’s what happened when I walked into Modern Alchemist Wellness in Calgary and experienced a buccal massage for the very first time. And yes - I filmed the whole thing so you could experience it with me. (# embarrassing!)

In this episode of The Courageous Self-Care Experience, I’m sitting down (and lying back!) with Dr. Yvonne Cheng - Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Board Licensed Acupuncturist, and the most magical face sculptor I’ve ever met. Yvonne’s work draws on ancient Chinese medicine wisdom and brings it into a completely modern, deeply intentional practice that will make you rethink what “taking care of your face” actually means.

What we cover in this episode:

• What buccal massage actually is and why it has a cult following

• The surprising connection between Traditional Chinese Medicine and skin vitality

• What it actually feels like to have someone work inside your mouth to sculpt your face (yep, that’s what happened!)

• Why this qualifies as Courageous Self-Care - and why I think you should try it

This is self-care as an act of courage. Trying something new. Trusting a practitioner. Letting yourself be taken care of. That’s the whole practice.

Wondering why self-care keeps feeling harder than it should?

It might be stuck energy. Take my free Stuck Energy Quiz and find out exactly what’s getting in your way - and what to do about it. It takes just a few minutes and the results might surprise you.

Book with Dr. Yvonne: 🌐 modernalchemistyyc.ca 📍 Within Wellness, 200, 207 14th St NW, Calgary, AB 📱 Text: 403-703-9036 📸 Instagram: @modern.alchemist.yyc

Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend who deserves a little courageous self-care of their own. 💙

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Exhausted. Overstimulated. Needing two weeks to recover from one week of living.

I know that woman well. I was that woman - the one who loved life in theory but found it quietly, persistently depleting in practice. The one who said yes with her mouth and spent the whole experience white-knuckling through what was supposed to be joy.

Last week, I taught yoga at a luxury resort in Tulum, zip-lined upside down over a jungle, rode an ATV over rocks the size of buffet tables with my 17-year-old son, swam in a Mayan cenote, and watched said teenager attempt capoeira moves at a Brazilian dance show.

And I came home more energized than when I left.

That’s not personality. That’s not luck. That’s not even good genes.

That’s coherence. And it’s available to you too - which is exactly what I want to talk about today.

The purpose of this trip was two-fold. First, it was a celebratory adventure for my son, Oakley, who is on the glorious brink of finishing Grade 12. Three more weeks and he’s free.

Back when my daughter, Zoe, was in Grade 12, we flew to Paris to get her grad dress. So naturally, Oakley needed his own adventure - and since he had zero interest in grad dresses, Mexico it was.

The second very cool aspect of this trip was my first time teaching yoga at a resort through a company called FitBodies. As a member, I can apply to teach at any of their partner resorts worldwide and then spend the week as part teacher, part guest. It was a perfect fit, so we seized the day and booked into Dreams Tulum.

We had absolutely no idea we were stepping into the lap of luxury. The last time I’d been to a resort in Mexico was almost 28 years ago for my honeymoon in Playa del Carmen. Things have changed a bit.

Oakley and I were completely wowed when we arrived. Dreams Tulum is stunning. The weather was magical (as our family back home sent us photos of snow and slush in our absence). The staff was warm and attentive, always looking for ways to help. The food was abundant and delicious - perfect for a still-growing teenage boy - and the whole resort was impeccably clean.

We were genuinely impressed by the quality of the activities and performances. On our last night, we watched a Brazilian dance, capoeira, and drumming group perform. My mouth hung open the entire show. And then we got to dance with them - and I will never forget watching Oakley attempting the moves with total enthusiasm. My heart was completely full.

One of the highlights was an adventure tour we took: ziplining, ATVs, and swimming in a cenote - a freshwater underground river system and cave combo that the ancient Mayans believed was the entrance to the underworld. (Swimming through it, I could absolutely see why.)

We both ziplined upside-down, and then Superman-style (although in the photo below, I look more like a sloth than a superhero… I didn’t know photos were being taken. I was totally flying a few moments prior). We also ziplined in a hammock, which was essentially just a spectacular tangle of limbs flying over the jungle.

And then there was the ATV.

Oakley drove first. My experience in the back was essentially holding on for dear life, trying to avoid smashing my helmet into his (see photo below) while we navigated giant rocks and ledges at speeds that felt personally aggressive. It was a full-body contraction for 25 solid minutes - until we switched, and he got to have the exact same experience while I drove.

We both agreed afterward: never need to do that again. And we’re still laughing about it.

Fortunately, we recovered with lunch and then slipped into the cenote, marvelling at the crystal-clear water, the extensive bat colony living overhead, and the cool weight of thousands of years of history surrounding us.

Standing waist-deep in water that had been flowing underground for thousands of years, I thought: this is what coherence feels like. Ancient. Underneath everything. Already there.

The photos from the adventure were so ridiculous and hilarious that we had to buy the whole package. No regrets.

Other highlights from the week included daily ping pong until we were absolutely dripping, water volleyball, tennis, and daily workouts in the massive gym. We also got a “couples” massage at the spa - we’re not entirely sure why we went with the two-people-in-one-room experience, except that it seemed funny. It was. Especially because the room was entirely surrounded by jungle, and once our eyes were closed, it made no difference that we were in the same room.

We narrowly avoided an iguana who had his eye on my (bottomless!) guacamole and chips. We watched some kind of furry creature pull a cup of ice cream from the garbage, lick it clean with great dignity, and walk away - leaving the cup exactly where it found it. We both waited for it to tidy up after itself. It did not. (And we were both strangely shocked.)

It was a total gift to have this experience - and an even bigger gift to share it with Oakley before he heads off to New Zealand in the fall for a wwoofing adventure. This trip gave us something I couldn’t have planned: real connection, real laughter, real aliveness together.

And the whole thing felt like evidence.

Evidence that the work I teach actually works.

Over the last four weeks, I also spent one week in Panama co-facilitating a yoga and breathwork retreat, and six days in Las Vegas with my daughter and her boyfriend. I keep asking myself how this is my life - and then I remember. This is the direct result of getting coherent, becoming embodied, and practicing what I teach.

The women I work with inside The BALM are reporting the same shift - not just in how they feel, but in what they’re saying yes to.

There was a time in my life when this itinerary would have read like a threat. My body would have braced. I would have been smiling for the photos and quietly counting down until I could collapse.

Now it energizes me.

That’s coherence.

The beautiful thing is that this kind of expansion doesn’t happen by accident. It happens on purpose - through embodiment practices that fit into everyday life, no matter where life takes you, whether that’s a yoga mat, a cenote, the Las Vegas Strip, or an ATV that feels personally committed to launching you into another dimension.

The thing I keep coming back to is this:

A few years ago, I thought a good life meant trying to manage stress better and working hard to be happy. Now I see something completely different. Life isn’t meant to be managed. It’s meant to feel like riding a wave of grace.

Before I go make my own bed and cook my own food (the true cost of returning from resort life), I want to tell you about something.

This is for you if you’ve been reading this post, wondering why your life doesn’t feel like that yet. If you’re high-achieving and spiritually awake but still quietly exhausted. If you’ve done the work: the journals, the courses, the conversations… but something still isn’t clicking into place the way you know it should.

This week marks the beginning of the Anatomy of Awakening Book Study and Healing Circle.

Think of it as a container for women who are done consuming content and ready to become it.

We’re studying Dr. Sue Morter’s framework for coherence and embodiment - the same practices that took me from depleted and quietly white-knuckling through joy, to what I’m sharing here, and we’re doing it together, in community, with live healing circles woven throughout.

The energy you just read about? The expansion, the ATV-surviving, cenote-swimming, resort-teaching, capoeira-watching aliveness? That’s what happens inside this work. Over time. On purpose.

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This is for the woman who read this post and thought: I want that. (Not the trip.) The feeling. The expansion. The evidence that her own life is working.

You can have it. Come join us.

Lots of love,

Christina

🕺 Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺 Disappointed that I’ll be cooking my own meals and making my own bed again

🕺 Excited to see where my next yoga adventure will take me

One more photo. Clearly, this one was taken before we knew what we were getting into. (Because we’re smiling.)

Or at minimum, aggressively head toward the chips aisle and then regret your choices shortly thereafter.

And yet… that’s basically how many people are interacting with abundance.

We say we want more abundance.
More opportunities.
More experiences.
More choices.
More options.
More expansion.

But what if the problem isn’t a lack of abundance?

What if the problem is that we haven’t learned how to discern within the abundance?

That realization hit me in Las Vegas. (Which is not where I expected to have a spiritual aha, but life is full of surprises.)

I’d just returned from the second trip in my three-trip extravaganza month. This stop was Las Vegas because my daughter and her boyfriend were attending Magic Con, and I got to tag along for a little working holiday.

Now, before going, I had heard many things about Vegas.

“It’s overwhelming.”
“It’s chaotic.”
“It’s sensory overload.”
“It’s too much.”

And guess what?

I loved it.

Not in a “woohoo let’s make questionable life choices at 2am” kind of way. (I didn’t even try gambling. Those machines were way too scary. )

More in a “humans are wildly creative and visionary beings” kind of way.

First of all, we stayed at a beautiful resort that felt like a peaceful oasis tucked away from the Strip, which helped immensely. I wasn’t immersed in the chaos 24/7. There was space to breathe. Space to work. Space to move my body and connect inward.

And then there was Vegas itself.

The architecture.
The imagination.
The absurdity.
The sheer scale of the ideas.

As I walked through the hotels and casinos and wildly elaborate themed spaces, I kept thinking:

Humans dreamed this up! Yay humans!

Someone had a vision for dancing fountains, Venetian canals, and pyramids in the desert. Others said an epic YES to giant glowing spheres and then gathered teams of people to bring those visions to life.

That’s incredible.

Vegas, to me, became a living example of abundance and human creative capacity.

But the more interesting realization was this:

The outer world does not have to dictate the inner world.

Vegas is objectively stimulating. Yet I didn’t feel overwhelmed by it, because overwhelm isn’t necessarily caused by what’s happening around us.

It’s often caused by losing connection with what’s happening within us.

I stayed deeply connected to my own energy while I was there, and because of that, I could enjoy the abundance without feeling consumed by it.

This is where the mature divine feminine comes in.

The youthful divine feminine wants to experience everything.

She’s like a little girl on a playground:
“I want the swings!”
“And the monkey bars!”
“And the slide!”
“And the butterflies!”
“And let’s blow dandelions too!”

It’s beautiful energy.
Playful.
Expansive.
Curious.

But it’s not discerning.

The mature divine feminine is different.

She understands that abundance is already here.
She doesn’t need to frantically grab at every opportunity, experience, or possibility.

She discerns within the abundance.

That distinction changed everything for me when I first learned it.

Because discernment feels sovereign.

Grounded.
Powerful.
Masterful.

It’s not restrictive.
It’s clarifying.

It’s realizing that just because something is available to you doesn’t mean you need to consume it.

(Again: Grocery store.)

You don’t walk into a grocery store trying to eat everything in it.
That would make you deeply uncomfortable (and likely require medical attention).

Yet, many people are approaching life that way.

Trying to do all the things.
Attend all the events.
Take all the opportunities.
Answer all the messages.
Consume all the content.
Say yes to everything.

That’s not abundance.
That’s indigestion.

Vegas became a beautiful practice in discernment for me.

I didn’t try to do everything.

Some parts of the day were devoted to peace, spaciousness, movement, breath, and work.

Other parts of the day were for wandering the Strip and marveling at human imagination and excess and sparkle and giant indoor canals that make absolutely no logical sense in the middle of the desert.

And because of that discernment, I didn’t leave Vegas depleted.

I left feeling expanded.

That’s the difference.

Not less abundance.
Better discernment within it.

And here’s the thing: I think that’s one of the missing keys people aren’t talking about.

We don’t need more abundance. (We’re made of it.)
We need a more grounded, sovereign way of interacting with the abundance that already exists.

For paid subscribers below:

• How to stay deeply connected to your own energy in overwhelming environments

• The exact breathing practice I use to remain calm and grounded anywhere

• How to make decisions from discernment instead of overwhelm

• A powerful mature divine feminine practice for navigating abundance without depletion

Subscribe now

Sovereign.

That’s the energy we’re after.

Not consuming all of life’s abundance…
but learning how to consciously choose within it.

With grounded love and rebellious discernment,

Christina

🕺🏻Creator of Courageous Self-Care
🕺🏻Still thinking about the absurd brilliance of building Venice in the desert
🕺🏻Deeply devoted to choosing discernment over energetic indigestion every chance I get

PS: Next week we begin our Anatomy of Awakening book study inside The BALM, and this conversation about discernment, sovereignty, overwhelm, and staying connected to your own energy is exactly the kind of work we’ll be exploring together.

If you’re craving grounded spiritual expansion (instead of energetic indigestion), this is a beautiful time to join us. Click here for details and registration

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Because when I ask myself that question… the answer is:

Nothing.

Because the life I’ve created isn’t something I want less of; it’s something I want more capacity for.

I’m writing to you from Las Vegas - a little sojourn between my retreat in Panama and teaching yoga for a week in Tulum.

This last month has been my dream for over a decade. And thank goodness it’s happening now and not sooner because, at this point, I’ve built up the capacity to be able to hold it all without being stressed or overwhelmed.

In this message, I’m going to share:

1- Miracles in Panama (+photos!)

2- How I’ve built my capacity to hold my dreams

3- Upcoming events for women who are done running on empty

Miracles in Panama

My retreat co-leaders, Julie, Susie, and I had an exceptional time. We’ve been working on this retreat for the past year, and so it was exciting to see the plans unfold into lived experiences.

I’ve spoken about the BALM before - my online membership where creating coherence to increase your capacity is the main focus - and what we did at the retreat was basically a week of the BALM, plus all meals made, plus people taking care of us in every way.

What could be better???

Here are 4 share-worthy miracles that happened during the week.

Miracle 1 (In Two Parts)

On the first flight, Julie and Susie were seated in the same row, even though they didn’t choose their seats. What are the chances?

On the second flight, Susie and I were seated in the same row! Again, without planning. I mean, come on!

Miracle 2

While kayaking in a mangrove forest, our very knowledgeable guide, Ricardo, pointed out a King Vulture flying overhead.

“That’s nice,” was our reaction.

“No! You don’t understand!” he exclaimed. “It’s so rare to see a King Vulture, especially just overhead. Usually, they fly so high you can barely make them out.”

Then he went on with great enthusiasm. “If you were birders, that would be called a Lifer! It’s something you’ll see once in your lifetime if you’re lucky! For every million vultures you see, you’ll see one King Vulture!”

Our new reaction was WOW!

Of course, we looked up the meaning of the King Vulture, and it was about spiritual transformation and transmutation, leaving the past behind and calling in something new and spectacular.

So that was very cool. (No photo of the bird because it happened too fast, but here’s where we were.)

Miracle 3

On our island tour adventure day, we took a boat to a deserted island where I taught a yoga class on the beach.

Afterward, while taking a picture of a palm tree, I noticed a cloud rainbow (with no rain) shining right above our group.

We were blessed indeed. (Plus, I had said at the beginning of the retreat, “Universe, dazzle us.” The cloud rainbow was one of the many fulfillments of my intention.”

And here’s my Panamanian lunch on the beach (made with love and most importantly, not by me!)

Miracle 4

After just 3 days of yoga class, conscious breathing, and BEST healing sessions (plus lots of downtime and relaxation), one participant said, “I usually have stress headaches, but I haven’t had one since we started.”

Another participant shared, “I wake up 3-4 times every night and struggle to get back to sleep, but since being here I’ve slept through the night every night.”

Several participants also noted that they couldn’t believe how everyone got along so well. “In a group of 14 women, there’s usually at least one who you don’t want to spend much time with, but I absolutely love everyone here. I’ve never had that happen before.”

It’s our second time doing the retreat, and that’s happened both times because we set powerful intentions for the exact right people to show up for a cohesive and supportive group.

Of course, we have to do the retreat again next year. I’ll let you know dates and details once we have them finalized. Coming soon!

How to Build Your Capacity

When people get overwhelmed or stressed, the advice is often to get rid of things or drop parts of their lives.

I don’t believe the answer is to do less.

I believe the answer is to become someone who can hold more—without burning out.

If someone said to me that I had to cut out part of my life by doing less, what would I eliminate?

➡️ My spiritual practices that ensure I have overflowing energy?

➡️ Supporting my kids in whatever way they need?

➡️ Preparing healthy meals for me and my family to my high standards?

➡️ Taking time every day to move my body with joy?

➡️ Connecting regularly with my husband?

➡️ Doing the work I love?

➡️ Making a difference with my skills and talents?

No, I wouldn’t want to eliminate any of those things.

I’ve already refined my habits so that I’m not binge-watching, scrolling, or distracting myself with games or technology.

So, rather than getting rid of things, I’d much rather build my capacity to hold it all.

The main way to do that is to create coherence in my system - not just my nervous system, but my master system - the part of me that created the nervous system (and all the other parts).

There are 3 main ways I use to create coherence (because they’re the most efficient and effective):

1-BodyAwake® Yoga

2-Conscious breathing practices

3-BEST/Spiritual BEST

It’s a simple playbook that I stick to, and it continues to wow me with dramatic improvements.

For example, in Panama, we had a white night where everyone wore white, and after dinner, we had a dance with live music. I danced for 3 hours straight (very rambunctiously), and I didn’t feel tired at all. Sweaty? You bet. Drained? Not one bit. Plus, I felt completely fine in my body the next day.

Here’s a photo from white night (before the sweaty dancing):

Then, this week in Vegas, I walked all over the strip for 4 hours one day, and my feet didn’t even get sore. I wasn’t tired at all! How does that even happen?

(It happens with coherence. The energy of the body is finite, but when you teach your system how to access infinite energy, there’s no limit.)

Over the past couple of weeks, with all the travelling and night flights and such, some nights I’ve slept soundly and other nights not so much.

When that happens, I’ve learned to do some basic practices, and 100% of the time, I’ve had more than enough energy the following day. This is just so different from how I used to live.

Coherence, Baby! It changes everything.

So here’s the real shift.

You don’t need to shrink your life to feel better.

You need to expand your capacity to hold it.

Because when your system is coherent…

You don’t run out of energy.
You don’t feel behind.
You don’t need to escape your life to manage it.

You actually get to live it.

Fully.

Upcoming Courageous Self-Care Events

Here’s the part I want you to really hear:

Everything I just described - the energy, the resilience, the ease, the “how is this even possible?” moments…

That’s not random.

It’s trained - and it’s available to you.

(And if you’re honest… you already know where you’re running out of capacity.)

If you’re reading this and thinking, “Yes… I want that”…

Here’s where you can start:

1- The Anatomy of Awakening Book Study and Healing Circle

Dr Sue Morter recently released her new book, and it’s poised to change everything. It’s so important that, of course, I had to get certified to teach it.

I’m all set and very excited to host a 6-week book study and healing circle.

This is where the shift from “understanding” to “embodying” actually happens.

Dates:

Mondays, May 18-June 22

Times:

Mondays from 6:30-8pm Mountain

Replays available if you can’t make it live

Details:

Each week, we’ll cover 2 chapters and I’ll teach you exactly how and when to do the processes and practices. (Doing the practices is critical because it takes the content from information to embodiment - where it makes all the difference.)

Cost:

$197 with Early Bird $147

(Early bird pricing ends May 17 - don’t wait on this one.)

Registration:

The link isn’t quite ready yet, but I’ll get that over to you by email in the next few days.

PS - If you’re already a paid member of the BALM, the book study is included with your membership. Yay you!

2- Conscious Breathwork Journey: Cellular Regeneration

If you want to feel a shift in your energy quickly - this is your fastest entry point.

Date: Thursday May 7

Time: 9am - 10:30am Mountain

Details and Registration: Click here

PS - BALM members, this event is already included with your membership. Yay you x 2!

3- Live Event in Calgary: The Anatomy of Awakening Workshop

If you want to experience this content in real time, with real people, in a powerful space - this is it.

Date: Thursday June 11

Time: 6:30-8:30pm Mountain

Place: Luminescence Healing

Details:

The Anatomy of Awakening: From Spiritual Knowledge to Embodied Power

You’ve done the mindset work. You know the concepts.

So why does your life still feel like effort?

Coherence is the missing piece.

Learn exactly how to unify your mind, body, and breath so your energy, clarity, and results match the woman you know you are.

➡️ Turn spiritual knowledge into lived results

➡️ Break the patterns overriding your power

➡️ Feel aligned, clear, energized - without pushing

This isn’t mindset. This is embodiment.

Registration: link coming soon! For now, mark your calendar, and I’ll get that to you as soon as it’s ready.

Or… if you want ongoing access to all of this content (without choosing just one)…

That’s exactly what The BALM is for.

A system designed to expand your capacity - so your life can grow without you burning out.

If you’re done running on empty, this is your next step.

Click here for details

If your life is expanding… it’s time your capacity expanded with it.

With coherent love and great big courage,

Christina

🕺🏻Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺🏻 Still in awe from the Cirque du Soleil performance I saw last night (Kà). OMG! Humans are so amazing.

🕺🏻 Celebrating a free upgrade on our tickets - we got moved to the 7th row! How did that happen? A happy byproduct of a coherent system - that’s how.

PS: You don’t need more discipline. You don’t need to cut your life back. You need the capacity to hold it.

That’s exactly what we build inside The BALM.

If you’re ready to stop running on empty and start living with real energy, clarity, and ease…

Come join us

PPS: A few more photos

From the rainforest hike in the mountain town of Boquete:

Sunset from our deck

From a sunset hike, complete with Howler Monkeys (who didn’t make it into the photo)

Welcome to the last installment of our series about the 4 ways overwhelm shows up and how to get over them.

Overthinking
Overgiving
Overtrying
Overdoing

If you missed any of the previous articles, here they are, conveniently linked for your reading pleasure:

Click here for the Overwhelm Article

Click here for the Over-Thinking Article

Click here for the Over-Giving Article

Click here for the Over-Trying Article

Click here for the Over-Doing Article

What If Overwhelm Isn’t the Problem?

What if overwhelm isn’t the problem… but the excuse?

I’m going to be blunt.

In this final piece, we’re going to:

• look at how overwhelm can go into stealth mode and become a stopping point

• shift your relationship with it completely

• give you three simple ways to move through it in real time

When Overwhelm Becomes the Easy Way Out

I’ve noticed something that might be a little uncomfortable.
Sometimes, overwhelm becomes an excuse.
Not intentionally. Not consciously.
But effectively.

As in: I’m overwhelmed, so I just can’t do it.

(Send the email. Have the conversation. Take the next step.)

When overwhelm is used in this way, it’s an easy way out.

You might be scared to take the next step, and so the mind makes up a story saying you’re overwhelmed and that you just can’t proceed.

You don’t have to let overwhelm be the reason you stop.

You’re Bigger Than Overwhelm

Look at it this way: You’re a huge, energetic, brilliant, magnificent being. You’re a creator. You’ve got access to Infinite Intelligence and endless energy.

Do you really think that you can’t overcome overwhelm?

You’re much bigger than that.

There’s always a way through overwhelm, and so if you’re courageous enough to admit that you’ve been using it as a crutch or a stopping point, I invite you to open up to the possibility that with just a few tools, you can move through overwhelm and be on your merry way to creating whatever it is that your heart desires.

3 Simple Ways to Move Through Overwhelm

Here are three simple ways to move through overwhelm.

These aren’t complicated. They’re effective. Which is exactly what you need when overwhelm shows up.

1. Breathe. (Consciously.)

Yes, I know it sounds too simple, but it works 100% of the time. Overwhelm is big energy moving through your body, and if you can direct it consciously through breath rather than be at its mercy, you’ve got it made.

When you slow down your breath, you slow down your mind.

My preferred breathing method is Central Channel Breathing because then you carve a pathway through your system so the overwhelm can move through rather than get stopped up.

2. Get Your Spine on the Earth

Again, the mind is going to say this is a dumb idea and that it can’t be that simple. The mind is wrong. Simplicity is exactly what’s needed when overwhelm comes to town.

Get your spine onto the ground, whether it’s on a yoga mat, a carpet, the grass. Any surface will do. The spine loves to be in contact with a solid surface underneath.

It sends the signal to your system that all is well and that you’ve got this.

3. Brain Dump

Once you’ve done steps 1 and/or 2, take a pen to paper and write down everything that you’ve been trying to hold with just your mind.

Whenever I do this practice, I feel such relief because the mind isn’t meant to hold on to all that stuff. Getting it down on paper gives the brain permission to let it go.

Sometimes I then use the list to figure out what to do next. Other times, I just let it be, and then when I go back to it a few weeks or months later, I’ll see that I’ve made progress on it, even if it hasn’t been my main focus.

It’s the act of releasing it from the mind that’s important.

The Shift That Changes Everything

So here’s the shift.
Overwhelm isn’t something to avoid.
It’s something to move through.

Because the moment you stop seeing it as a barrier…
and start seeing it as energy in motion…
Everything changes.

You stop freezing.
You stop backing away.
You stop telling yourself stories about why you can’t.

And instead…
You take one breath.
One step.
One action.

And suddenly, you’re on the other side of something that used to stop you.

Not because overwhelm disappeared.
But because you got bigger than it.

And that’s who you actually are.

What’s Coming Next

Next week, I’ll be sharing about the many miracles that happened on my trip to Panama, where I co-hosted a yoga and breathwork retreat.

And then came home to snow.

To which I said, “How beautiful.”

This week I’m off to Las Vegas for the first time, and so I say, “Goodbye snow. Again.”

With confident love and vast courage,

Christina

🕺🏻 Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺🏻 “Why Vegas?” you might ask. I ask that too. I’m going with my daughter and her boyfriend. They’ll be attending MagicCon (a gathering of Magic: The Gathering enthusiasts). Zoe got invited as a content creator and will be competing with a costume she made. Photos to follow!

🕺🏻 Profoundly enjoying reading The Anatomy of Awakening. It’s a book that really changes everything. I’ll be doing a book study/healing circle on it soon. Stay tuned for details.

PS: If you’re ready to stop getting stuck in overwhelm and actually move through it, this is exactly what we practice inside The BALM.

Simple, powerful tools that help you work with your energy in real time - so you don’t just understand this work… you live it.

You don’t have to figure it out alone.

Come experience it here. ↓

Click this link to learn more

Welcome back to our series about the 4 ways overwhelm shows up and how to get over them.

➡️ Overthinking

➡️ Overgiving

➡️ Overtrying

➡️ Overdoing

If you missed any of the previous articles, here they are, conveniently linked for your reading pleasure:

Click here for the Overwhelm Article

Click here for the Over-Thinking Article

Click here for the Over-Giving Article

Click here for the Over-Trying Article

And now! We’ve made it to overdoing!

This topic is a personal favourite because when it comes to overdoing, I’ve overdone All. The. Things.

I didn’t even realize that overdoing was a thing for me because the pattern was just so ingrained.

If you’ve ever wondered how to stop overdoing everything, you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, we’re going to look at:

• what overdoing (also called overfunctioning) actually is (and why it’s so easy to miss)

• how it shows up in real life (spoiler: everywhere)

• and the one shift that makes overdoing dissolve - without forcing yourself to slow down or cut out things that are important to you

You know the phrase: if you want something done, give it to a busy person? That was kind of my motto. I was that person. The ultra-busy one. With no awareness of how I was showing up.

The overdoing pattern didn’t rise to the top of my awareness until one day when I was having a session with a psychic. She looked at my birthday and said, “Oh, you’re a Scorpio, huh? You tend to overdo things.”

I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. Until I started to observe myself. Right after the appointment, I hopped in the car and said my usual driving intention:

“I’m intending a safe and pleasant drive surrounded by kind, courteous, generous people, arriving at my destination in perfect timing with harmony in the car.” (*Followed by gasping for breath from the run-on sentence.)

I had to laugh. It was a perfect example of overdoing - too many words, more than enough effort. So I simplified it… and nothing changed except how much easier it felt. Now I say, “I’m intending a safe and pleasant drive.” That’s it, and it works like a charm. With a fraction of the words. And no more gasping.

Another time, on a call with some fellow coaches, I was tearful because I had so very many things on the go. My friend shared a wise comment that remains useful to this day:

“Just because you have a huge capacity doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

Game changer.

Overdoing It With Work

When the pandemic came along, I got a real sense that it was time to underdo it for a change.

When I thought of the expression “my plate is full,” it felt more like I had a buffet table. Filled with full plates.

As such, I paused the podcast I’d been doing for two years. I closed the various Facebook and Kajabi Groups I’d created. I deleted my LinkedIn profile (and immediately felt immense relief wash through my system). I also deleted Facebook and stopped going on Instagram.

As I basked in the spaciousness, I asked myself: What would I love to do? (Instead of what should I be doing, or listening to other people tell me what I should be doing.)

The answer that rose up through my system was: I would love to write, teach, speak, facilitate, and coach.

That phrase became my barometer. If an opportunity came up that didn’t fit, I said no. Simple as that.

And if I said yes, but it didn’t turn out to feel aligned, I noticed the most amazing thing.

The Universe would help remove it from my plate (buffet table). Of course, sometimes it looked like rejection, but ultimately, I realized that I couldn’t make a mistake with my choices. If I started down a path that wasn’t where I was meant to go, I would be yanked off the path. Or the path would dissolve.

Sometimes it seemed dramatic, but once I got back on track, I always felt better and could see more clearly. I felt immensely loved by the divine. Plus, I totally relaxed because no decision was a make-or-break-it. The Universe had (and still has) my back.

Overdoing It With Family

Another element of overdoing it showed up in my parenting. For a long time, I didn’t want to let my kids fail or make mistakes. I saw them and their behaviour as direct extensions of my image, and I didn’t want it tarnished.

Can we say controlling?

As I learned more and more about the benefits of coherence (unifying mind, body, and breath) and started incorporating my brief but powerful daily practices, things on the inside started to soften. I was able to release my very tight grip and see how much better it got when I allowed them to live their lives, make mistakes, and learn from them.

I’m definitely not there 100% of the time, but now, when I notice that I have an attachment around how I think they should be showing up in the world, I work with that on the inside, sensing into what’s present in my body, breathing through it, and inviting my heart to open.

It’s much better for everyone because now they can grow into themselves rather than into resentful replicas of me.

Overdoing It At Home

Somewhere along the way, I also picked up the mom habit of just doing most things (maybe all the things?) myself because it was much easier than asking 4007 times for the same thing to be done.

A great deal of overdoing resulted from that approach.

This area continues to be a work in progress, but I’ve learned to share my expectations, ask for help in a way that can be heard, and to get more vulnerable and authentic by sharing why I’m asking.

Overdoing It with Self-Care

This one’s pretty funny, but it’s not uncommon. Lots of my clients have expressed a tendency to overdo it with self-care, rituals, and spiritual practices. I can relate.

When I first started focusing on self-care, I was like a sponge. If I learned a practice, into my morning or evening ritual it went. Eventually, I found myself doing approximately 2.5 hours of stuff every morning and then another hour or more before bed.

It was outrageous! My self-care was leaving me feeling either drained and overwhelmed. When I counted all the things I expected myself to do every day, my list had 27 items! And some of them took an hour!

I’ve had many clients tell me the same thing has happened in their lives (so if it sounds familiar, you’re not alone!)

What I love about focusing on coherence is that it’s much more doable. Rather than hours of self-care every day, I now do a few distinct practices and the rest easily incorporate into what I’m already doing. Even better, the results I get from the handful of practices are unlike anything I’ve previously experienced.

I just love getting better results for less time and energy invested!

Overdoing It With Friends

So far, I’ve shared about overdoing it with my intentions, in my business, at home, as a mom, and with self-care. You might be thinking, “That about covers it.” But no. I found additional ways to overdo it.

My husband and I used to entertain often. And I wanted to impress. So, I would craft a menu (usually an exotic one), spend a day or two gathering ingredients from around the city, spend at least another full day in the kitchen, make our. home look amazing by cleaning every room, even if there was no chance our guests would be going in there, and generally feel exhausted before the company even arrived. So that was fun. And totally unsustainable.

As I brought more coherence into my system, I no longer felt the need to impress. The inner performer quieted. The perfectionist left the building. Now, if we’re getting together with people, we do a potluck and have a great time.

Some Thoughts on Delegating

Another area of overdoing it used to come from a challenge I had with delegating. I don’t know about you, but I noticed that things seemed to take less time and get done more effectively if I just did them myself.

I tried hiring people or asking for help in areas of my life where I knew I was overdoing it, but it felt like I just ended up doing the work anyway, with the frustrating interlude of spending precious time conveying my expectations and then being disappointed. Even when I paid for it.

Once again, coherence to the rescue! Thanks to a coherent system, I’m clearer on what to delegate. Sometimes I still do things myself (but without being overwhelmed). Other times, I delegate. I’ve gotten more skillful at deciding when to do so without working specifically on getting better at delegating. It’s unfolding naturally thanks to my daily coherence practices.

So those are my experiences with overdoing. Let’s now answer some questions you might have.

How to Know If You’re Overdoing It/Overfunctioning

Just in case you don’t have a psychic appointment scheduled…

Here are some signs you might be overdoing it:

• You’re constantly tired or running on empty

• Small tasks feel disproportionately heavy

• You swing between pushing hard and freezing

• You feel the need to control outcomes (or people)

• You notice resentment, frustration, or impatience creeping in

How to Avoid Burnout from Overfunctioning/Overdoing

As I researched for this article, I came across common tips to prevent burnout from overdoing. They include setting boundaries, prioritizing rest, releasing perfectionism, delegating, making time for hobbies, taking holidays, and healthy eating.

While all of these ideas make sense, it can be challenging to change your behaviour if your mind, body, and breath are splatted out in every direction. If this is the case, you likely want to make changes, but it can feel like a struggle to follow through.

Enter coherence. Rather than trying to become masterful at another big list, the main thing to focus on is unifying mind, body, and breath simultaneously. When you do that over and over again throughout the day, you become gathered.

You get access to all your energy and then some. You become powerful from the inside out. Then you don’t have to overdo it to stop overdoing it. Peaceful productivity becomes a happy byproduct of upgrading your entire system.

How Do You Create Coherence?

Here are my top three ways of unifying mind, body, and breath (plus a bonus idea).

1- Conscious Breathing. It can be done all day, every day. You don’t need to carve out hours; you just do specific breathing patterns no matter what you’re doing, and ta dah! It takes no extra time but has tremendous results because you’re gathering your energy so that it becomes more organized and less scattered.

2- BodyAwake® Yoga is the most efficient way to create coherence - fast. In this style of yoga, you give your mind the task of following the breath through the body, which 10x’s the benefits of yoga. I hop on the mat every day, usually for just a few minutes, and I can feel its positive effects all day long.

3- BEST (Bio Energetic Synchronization Technique) and Spiritual BEST are unique healing systems that also unify mind, body, and breath simultaneously. Unlike many other healing modalities, the receiver is an active participant, so instead of lying there and saying “fix me,” and relying on the practitioner to do the work, the receiver activates the brain, breath, and consciousness to co-create noticeable results and embody the shifts.

One other key consideration (bonus!) is to get connected with your invisible anatomy. You might know that you’re not your thoughts, or your body, or your feelings. You’re much bigger than all that. You’re a huge, brilliant, powerful energetic being, and you have organized energetic anatomy surrounding your physical body.

The degree to which people are disconnected from the invisible anatomy (known as Chakras 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12) is the degree to which people suffer in life.

Getting actively connected with these chakras is imperative for creating coherence.

These practices are the best ways I know to create coherence efficiently so that you see significant shifts in your life.

Overdoing becomes a thing of the past when the focus is on the solution rather than working hard to solve the “problem.”

What we focus on expands, so if we focus on “how to stop overdoing”, we’re still pouring energy in that direction. Instead, when we focus on “creating coherence,” that’s where the energy flows, amplifying results and making life exponentially better.

Bringing It All Together

So here’s the shift.

Overdoing isn’t actually about having too much to do.

It’s about how you’re relating to what’s on your plate because no matter how capable you are, no matter how much you can handle, if your energy is scattered, you’ll always feel behind.

When you become coherent, when your mind, body, and breath are working together, you stop forcing, and you start choosing.

You stop filling every moment and create space instead.

And from that space, everything gets better.

So instead of asking, “How do I do less?”

Try this: “How do I become more gathered?”

That’s where the real change happens.

You don’t necessarily need to do less. You just need to build your capacity to hold it all by creating a coherent system.

Next week, I’m going to share one more surprising thing about overwhelm, and then our series will be complete.

Until then, my friend.

With fulfilling love and bountiful courage,

Christina

🕺🏻Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺🏻 Waving at you from a jungle somewhere in Panama, where I’m co-hosting a yoga and breathwork retreat (or shall we say a Coherence-Creating retreat? We just decided that we’ll be doing another one in 2027! More details to follow.)

🕺🏻 Excited to announce that I’m going to be hosting a book study/healing circle for Dr Sue Morter’s new book: The Anatomy of Awakening. Stay tuned for details.

PS: If you’re tired of doing more and getting less, this is exactly what we shift inside The BALM.

Inside the membership, you learn the simple, powerful practices that bring your system into coherence - so you stop overdoing and start experiencing real ease, energy, and clarity.

You don’t have to figure it out on your own.

Come experience it here.

Welcome back to our series about the 4 ways overwhelm shows up.

• Overthinking

• Overgiving

• Overtrying

• Overdoing

If you missed Parts 1, 2, or 3, here you go:

Click here for the Overwhelm Article

Click here for the Over-Thinking Article

Click here for the Over-Giving Article

Today, we’re taking a look at what over-trying looks like and how to get better results by reducing the effort. If you’ve been wondering how to stop trying so hard and actually get results, keep reading.

When I ask my clients to set intentions, they’ll often say something like: I need to work harder. I need to try harder. I need to put in more effort.

These answers are evidence of an old, worn-out pattern that many people still subscribe to, usually subconsciously: The harder I work, the better results I’ll get. (Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.)

It’s a paradigm that’s still deeply embedded in the collective consciousness.

The thing is, if it worked well, everyone would be thriving because there are a lot of people out there trying REALLY HARD… and still feeling stuck..

How do you know if you’re trying too hard?

Are these words or ideas part of your regular vocabulary?

➡️ Push through/Fight through

➡️ Strive

➡️ Double down

➡️ An uphill battle/half the battle/fight a losing battle

➡️ Press on

➡️ Tough it out

➡️ Go above and beyond (the call of duty)

➡️ Suck it up buttercup

Do you set a goal, work hard to accomplish it, achieve it, and then say, “Ok, what’s next?” without pausing to acknowledge yourself or do some deep celebration?

Do you struggle to take breaks or slow down/pause?

Do you ever find yourself doing a task that isn’t working, but you force yourself to keep at it (getting more and more frustrated/livid)?

If any of these examples feel familiar, there’s a good chance you’ve been trying too hard or over-efforting.

What is over-efforting?

I didn’t know over-efforting/over-trying was a thing until I started learning from my mentor, Dr Sue Morter. She talked about softening on the inside to reduce over-efforting.

“Huh?” said my mind.

I had zero idea what she was talking about.

Gradually, I started to realize that I had been over-efforting in pretty much every area of my life.

Following some reflection and personal inquiry, I noticed that my over-efforting came from a need to prove myself. Some part of me wanted to show people (teachers, employers, family, etc) that I knew what I was doing, that I would go above and beyond, that I was enough (or better yet: more than enough).

I wanted to impress and to dazzle. It was full-on performing mode. And so I demanded perfection from myself, no matter what I was doing.

Can you guess how I felt a lot of the time?

Exhausted, high-strung, on-edge, anxious, and overwhelmed, to mention a few regular states of being.

It was very challenging to keep up with the image I’d built for myself because even what I’d done previously wasn’t good enough. I always pushed myself to go bigger and better. Phew!

Forget keeping up with the Joneses. They were no match for keeping up with myself.

What happens when you try too hard?

You can probably see that this way of living isn’t sustainable. Pouring 110% into every aspect of life doesn’t yield better results. It breeds burnout.

My body started sending me signals that I was over-trying.

Every month, with my cycle, I would have debilitating cramps. I’d be bedridden, sweating in agony. Guess what I did? Fought through.

Next came a year of digestive issues, but that wasn’t really enough to get my attention either, so my body tried out a mysterious pain in my hip that had no apparent cause. I struggled to go up and down stairs and would get shooting pains that woke me up at night when I tried to roll over.

Was it enough to slow me down, to pause, reflect, or make any changes? Nope.

I just doubled down on putting in tremendous effort to find out what was going on in my body. For all my seeking, I didn’t find any answers or experience relief.

When my own body couldn’t get my attention, I was next invited into a variation, wrapped up in the scenario of my daughter not really sleeping much for the first two years of her life.

What did I do with this added bonus? I shifted my over-trying to researching all things related to babies and sleep. I’m became an expert on the topic, filled with information. But it didn’t make much of a difference.

Most importantly, do you think I asked for help? Haha! Not me… I was superwoman, and I could do it all.

But, of course, I couldn’t keep up with that way of living.

When I found no answers or solutions in the mainstream, I turned toward developing my spiritual side, and that’s when everything started to change.

When I realized that I didn’t have to do everything myself and that I could partner with the divine, I accessed solutions I didn’t even know I was seeking.

I started learning about Quantum Physics and how to get your energy working for you. I learned that my body had been trying to help me make changes at a profoudn level; that it wasn’t against me - it was for my expansion. Most importantly, I learned how to gather my energy and become unified.

How do I stop trying too hard?

There are a lot of standard solutions out there to stop trying so hard, and the thing is, they are generally mind-based.

But, it’s the mind that created the trying-too-hard issue in the first place, so if we just try to solve it with the mind, we end up doing more of the same, like with my body and trying to get my daughter to sleep better.

Pouring in more effort tends to yield the same results, but you end up being burnt out and exhausted. At least, that’s what happened for me.

If only I knew then what I know now.

(And this is where everything changes.)

There’s one powerful and simple solution.

To stop over-trying and over-efforting, we need to learn how to unify mind, body, and breath simultaneously. That’s it! We just need coherence.

Every single experience I went through could have been resolved gracefully and seamlessly if I’d known that.

Now I base my life around coherence (unifying mind, body, and breath), and everything is better.

I have no pain in my body, no chronic issues, and take no medication. I’m in the best shape of my life. I move with joy and can do whatever activities I want.

I wake up every day feeling rested, refreshed, and energized, no matter how I slept, and I have overflowing energy all day long.

My capacity continues to grow, and I flow through the day, alternating between peaceful productivity and empowered pauses.

I used to think life was really serious business, and so I had a lot to prove. Now, I’m much more uplifted, and I have more fun than I even had as a child.

I know how to listen to my inner guidance and take action on it, and my sense of trust in myself, others, and the Universe is unwavering.

All of this from unifying mind, body, and breath by focusing on coherence.

When I was researching for this article, there were so many how-tos for reducing over-trying. You could work on your boundaries, your mindset, and your scheduling. You could do a myriad of things to reduce stress and anxiety. You could get clear on your values and prioritize.

Yes, you could do all that (and more) OR you could focus on creating coherence, and all of those other things would resolve as happy by-products.

That’s how you stop over-efforting.

You don’t have to become a whiz at 874 self-improvement strategies. When you focus on one thing - coherence - by unifying mind, body, and breath as often as possible, over-trying melts and dissolves. You don’t really even have to work at it all.

Which is exactly what we want. The mind doesn’t understand how it works, and that’s okay. I’ve seen over and over again with myself and my clients that when we get coherent and make that the focus, the mind softens and things shift.

When Dr Sue said that softening on the inside was the key, I had no idea what she meant. Now, years later, I can tell that so much has softened on the inside, and I can see the difference.

Over-efforting is a thing of the past. Now, I do a few practices every day that enhance coherence, and the rest unfolds with ease and grace.

Sure, of course, I still have my moments, but I always know what to do in the moment, so the amount that I suffer has dramatically reduced.

I invite you to get curious about creating coherence in your life by unifying mind, body, and breath.

Pulling It All Together

So here’s the real shift.

Trying harder isn’t the solution.

It’s the pattern.

A pattern that looks productive on the outside… but quietly drains you on the inside, because no matter how much effort you pour in, you can’t force your way into alignment.

Instead, you want to learn to access it.

Through coherence.

When your mind, body, and breath are working together instead of fighting each other, everything changes.

You stop pushing and start flowing.

You stop proving and start creating.

The results?

They come faster, with less effort, and they feel a whole lot better.

So if you take one thing from this article, let it be this:

You don’t need to try harder. You need to come back to yourself.

(And if you’d like support with that… start here. ↓)

With gathered love and potent courage,

Christina

🕺🏻Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺🏻 Enjoying winter…spring…winter…spring. I’ve just been pretending it’s Christmas whenever it snows and saying, “How beautiful.”

🕺🏻 Celebrating co-hosting a wildly successful in person mini-retreat with my dear friend . What could be better than an afternoon of embodying through yoga, meditation, breathwork and quantum physics? We’ll be doing more of this for sure!

PS - If you’re realizing that trying harder hasn’t been the answer (and you’re ready for something that actually works), this is exactly what we practice inside The BALM.

Simple, powerful ways to unify mind, body, and breath - so you stop over-efforting and start experiencing real results in your life.

You don’t have to figure it out alone. You can join us here: Click here to learn more.

Welcome back to our series about the 4 ways overwhelm shows up.

→Overthinking

→Overgiving

→Overtrying

→Overdoing

What’s your specialty? Please share in the comments. I’ve been working through overtrying with a side of overthinking.

Leave a comment

If you missed Parts 1 & 2, and are feeling left out, here you go:

Click here for the Overwhelm Article

Click here for the Over-Thinking Article

Today, we’re exploring a very common behaviour we probably learned in the womb: over-giving.

We’ll check out what it looks like, why it happens, what’s really going on, and how to stop doing it by upleveling your approach.

Pretty much all of my clients (and all the other women I speak with) are familiar with over-giving. It’s usually an ingrained behaviour, and - no wonder - we’ve all heard this idiom:

It’s better to give than to receive.

Which actually makes zero sense when you think about it for more than three seconds.

Giving and receiving are two sides of the very same coin. You can’t have giving without a receiver, and you can’t receive without there being a giver.

One is not better than the other. They’re both equal.

So, now that that’s settled, we’re pretty much done here.

Just kidding. If only it were that easy.

What is over-giving?

First of all, what exactly is over-giving? Good question.

Over-giving is a pattern of behaviour, usually subconscious, of going over and above while prioritizing others’ needs over your own. We can over-give time, money, resources, attention, or pretty much anything else. If you can give it, you can over-give it.

Often, this giving seems like it’s coming from a place of niceness or generosity, and while that can be true, if the giving is accompanied by resentment, burnout, exhaustion, running on empty, bitterness, or an underlying need to control, then it’s more likely part of you trying to overcompensate for something that feels like it’s missing deep inside.

Why do people over-give?

So many reasons.

Let’s start with a little story.

I was a speaker at a big event. All women. And there were some awards.

When one award-winner got called up, here’s what the event organizer said about her (let’s call the winner Zelda because - why not?).

“Zelda,” said the event organizer, “You are such an amazing woman. You’re always so giving. You never think of yourself. You always think of others first. We admire that about you. Congratulations!”

So many red flags in this experience.

But isn’t that what society expects from women? Give, give, give, and then give some more. Don’t think of yourself. Put everyone’s needs above your own. When you do that, you’re a good person. A nice person. A generous person.

You’ll even win awards for it! (Never mind that you’ll barely be able to make it up onto the stage to accept the award because you’re so depleted…)

Personally, I can identify that I used to subconsciously over-give because I was trying to fill up something on the inside that felt empty. A certain not-enoughness.

But, no matter how much I gave, that hole never got filled. Because no matter how much you give, if you have the underlying belief that there’s something wrong with you or something’s broken, no amount of heroic giving will ever come close to resolving the issue.

It would be like having a huge pothole in a road and then giving out bouquets of flowers to drivers trying to navigate around it. Basically, the “issue” and the “solution” aren’t even in the same universe, which is why it doesn’t get resolved.

I’ll offer up some practical strategies later on that will make a real difference because we’ll work at the energetic root. But first, some more questions for reflection.

Are you an over-giver?

How do you know if you’re over-giving? Well, you might already be quite clear on the answer, but just in case you’re not sure, here are some telling signs.

1- You rarely (if ever) ask for help

2- If help is offered, you often (always?) turn it down

3- You have a hard time saying no to others

4- You have a hard time saying yes to yourself

5- Your schedule is jammed packed (mostly with other people’s stuff)

6- You regularly don’t feel like you’ve done enough

7- You feel exhausted, like you’re running on empty

8- Underneath it all, you don’t feel like you’re good enough

9- You don’t spend a whole lot of time doing a deep dive into your own stuff - it’s much easier to ignore it while taking care of others

10- People seem to take advantage of you

11- You’re getting feedback from your life that something’s not working - either your body is speaking loudly, trying to get your attention, or your relationships are giving you indicators that it’s time for change

What’s an example of over-giving?

I’ll speak from experience. Here are a few examples of over-giving from my life.

A lot of my over-giving was performative. I was trying to get acknowledgment from the outer world because I wasn’t so adept at giving it to myself.

Other parts of my over-giving came from an inability to say no. Back when I was a high school teacher, I ended up with so many things on my plate because I did a great job.

It looked something like this:

Scenario A

“Hey, Christina, you did such a great job in your role on ___ committee! You’re a great leader! We’d like you to take on a leadership role on this new project. You’ll be great at it!”

Public Me: What an honour, I’d love to!

Private Me: I don’t want to do that! I’m already so busy. Oh well, I’ll make it work somehow.

Scenario B

“Christina, we love what you did with the volleyball team! You’re a fantastic coach! Now we’d like you to also coach field hockey!”

Public Me: Wow, thank you! I’d love to!

Private Me: I thought we only had to coach one team/year. I’ve already volunteered 4 months of my time. Now they’re asking me for another 3 months? Oh well, I guess I’ll figure it out. Goodbye evenings and weekends.

Woven up into the overgiving were a fear of disappointing people (hello people pleasing!), concerns about what other people thought about me, a desire/need to keep up with my image and then surpass it, and a longing to be acknowledged and validated.

In my personal life, over-giving showed up as well (because wherever you go, there you are).

On several occasions, my husband and I somehow became the hosts for monthly gatherings with friends and colleagues. We were always the ones who had to prepare our home for guests, host the meal, and then clean up afterwards. After several years of following that pattern, we eventually realized that we were doing all the work.

When we requested that others in the group take on a rotating responsibility of hosting moving forward, the groups dissolved. No one else was willing to do what we’d been doing for years.

Do any of those scenarios sound familiar? Where might you be over-giving in your life?

How to Stop Over-Giving (At the Root)

Hopefully, it’s becoming clear that no amount of over-giving will resolve underlying energetic patterns. Rather than working with stories the mind (or subconscious mind) has made up, it’s a much better use of your time and efforts to get right to the energetic roots.

This is where everything shifts - not by managing the behaviour, but by changing the source of it.

Here are 3 powerful and efficient ways to stop over-giving. They might not seem related at first glance, but as always, if you’re just using the mind to solve things, it won’t work because the mind is what made up the issue in the first place.

As Einstein said (paraphrased): You can’t solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it.

If it worked to use the mind to stop over-giving, it would have worked by now.

Instead, we must create coherence in the entire energy system. How do we do that? By unifying mind, body, and breath simultaneously. That’s how we work with the energy and get right to the root.

Coherence Method Practice #1

Subject → Object → Subject (SOS)

This practice comes from Dr. Sue Morter and her work in The Energy Codes®. We’ve covered it before, but it’s a core practice (like dribbling the ball in basketball), so here it is again.

Subject is self.
Object is other.

Most of the time, when we’re over-giving, our attention is on “other.” We’re focused on other people’s needs, other people’s expectations, other people’s reactions, and what’s happening outside of us.

And when the mind is out there, on object, our energy becomes scattered. We are less powerful. We feel empty.

That perceived emptiness?

It’s not actually real.

It’s created when the mind is off the central channel - the core of who you are - where there is a constant river of contentment and pristine energy flowing.

So the practice is simple.

Whenever you notice your mind is ruminating, storytelling, or focused on other, you gently bring it back.

Back to subject.

Back to self.

You can place your awareness anywhere along the central channel:

• your heart

• your solar plexus

• your belly

• your throat

• the center of your brain

• your crown

You might focus on one area or several at once.

The mind may not understand how this is helping.

That’s okay.

This is the right use of the mind.

The more you bring your awareness back to subject, the more coherence you create, and the less you will feel compelled to over-give to fill something that was never actually missing.

Coherence Method Practice #2

Take It to the Body (TITTB)

Also from Dr. Sue Morter and The Energy Codes®, this practice works directly with emotion.

Because over-giving is often fueled by uncomfortable feelings like:

• guilt

• fear

• disappointment

Instead of trying to think your way out of those emotions, we bring them into the body.

Here’s how:

First, identify what you’re feeling.
Ask yourself: What emotion is present right now?

Second, ask your body where that emotion is showing up as sensation. Every emotion has a physical counterpart.

Then, bring your attention to that sensation.

Not to fix it.
Not to get rid of it.
Just to notice it.

This is how you bring love into the experience.

Next, gently squeeze that area.

If there are muscles there, you can physically engage them. If not, imagine hugging that area from the inside.

Then begin central channel breathing.

Take long, slow breaths through the nose:

• Inhale from the earth, up through the body, into the heart

• Exhale up through the upper body, out the crown

• Inhale back into the heart

• Exhale down into the earth

All the while, keep the area gently squeezed and hugged.

As the breath moves through that space, intend to whoosh the breath through it.

You’re building new circuitry.

You’re teaching your system that it can feel without collapsing, overcompensating, or needing to over-give.

You’re filling up any perceived emptiness and returning to the truth that you are already whole and complete.

Three to five slow breaths are enough to start creating a shift.

Over time, your system won’t need to create situations that react with those emotions just to get your attention.

Coherence Method Practice #3

BodyAwake® Yoga

This is another practice developed by Dr. Sue Morter through The Energy Codes, and it is one of the most powerful ways to create coherence.

BodyAwake® Yoga is not just movement. It’s not just stretching.

It’s the unification of mind, body, and breath.

You place your body into specific postures (asanas), and then you track the breath with the mind as it moves through the body.

That combination is what builds circuitry. Your mat becomes a healing sanctuary, where something really important happens.

You don’t have to work so hard at “fixing” over-giving. You don’t have to constantly analyze your behaviour or try to manage yourself. You simply get on the mat, practice, and create coherence in your system.

And then, when you get off the mat…

Life starts to reflect that.

You naturally:

• give in a more aligned way

• feel less compelled to overextend

• feel more full from within

Things continue to get better and better, without you needing to force the change.

This is exactly what we practice inside The BALM - so you don’t have to figure it out alone or try to “be better” at not overgiving.

Bringing It All Together

So here’s what we’ve really uncovered.

Overgiving isn’t generosity; it’s a strategy. A very well-practiced pattern designed to fill a space that feels empty, but can never actually be filled from the outside.

No amount of giving will resolve a belief of “not enoughness.”
It just keeps you running on empty… while looking like you have it all together.

The shift isn’t about giving less. It’s about becoming more full from within, and that doesn’t happen through thinking harder, setting stricter rules, or trying to manage yourself better.

It happens through coherence.

When you bring your mind back to your body…
When you meet emotion instead of bypassing it…
When you build circuitry through breath, awareness, and practice…

Something changes.

You stop giving to prove something, and you start giving from overflow. That’s a completely different experience.

So the next time you feel the urge to say yes out of habit, pressure, or old conditioning…

Pause. Come back to yourself. Create coherence.

And remember:

You were never empty to begin with.

Next time, we’ll get into overtrying. It will be most illuminating.

With generous love and receptive courage,

Christina

🕺🏻Creator of Courageous Self-Care

🕺🏻Celebrating the completion of a new facilitator certification: The Anatomy of Awakening - Dr Sue’s latest book. I’ll be doing a book study of this life-changing work later this spring, and I couldn’t be more excited! More details to follow.

🕺🏻If you’re in Calgary - great news! I’m co-hosting a live mini-retreat where we put the Coherence Method into practice. The workshop is called Yoking: Become Super-Functioning, and it’s happening Saturday, April 11, at Junction 9 Studio. Click here for all the details. It would be so fun to see you in person!