Wow - the world truly feels like it entered yet another new chapter in the time since I published my last post on here. I even made it to another birthday! I’m continuing to share a lot more day-to-day updates and resources via my Instagram, but I wanted to take some time to step back and give you all some life updates and food for thought around what you can continue to expect from this space and Four Corners Health (as it grows!)

In short, my quiet and slower pace of life during Quarantine is officially over. Between personally holding myself accountable to a curriculum of social/racial justice material, nutrition, music and professional leadership as well as planning my WEDDING (and some other life things), while keeping up with my current workload and trying to stay healthy — that ship has sailed.

I’m grateful for the lessons of Quarantine. I’m grateful for the focus and appreciation on key relationships and people in my life. I’m grateful for technology keeping us connected. I’m grounded in my choices and Truth more than I ever have been before and even when life tries to rock us back into what was “normal” I will come back to that Truth and hope you do as well.

That said, part of the change in view for me is coming from the fact that I have personally had the luxury of not really needing to plan ahead for the last three months and that luxury is now gone! I still have a wedding date planned for 10/10/2020 and have to communicate with family and friends on what needs to happen to make that come together. My own vision for the day has changed so many times to be realistic with the state of things, but the feelings that I hope to evoke have never been clearer, and so I hold to that.

Similar thoughts are running through my head around Four Corners. I have and continue to do a lot of reflection on how to build this business to align with my values and contribute to necessary change in the world. I believe that caring for the self with a lens of how to apply your strength to changing the world for good is the only way to look at health, fitness and wellness. It has been foundational to my vision of Four Corners from the start, however I already need to make some necessary changes.

If you visit the Four Corners section on the website, you’ll see one of them is Sustainability. Now I still hold Sustainability as a value, but it doesn’t quite encapsulate what I want my programming to entail. Unfortunately, in the social movement space, Sustainability and Environmentalism have often left out the human elements and particularly the global fall-outs due to colonialism and white supremacy around the globe. We need Intersectional Environmentalism to consider solutions that take into the account the reality of human experience on this planet, and for that reason, my vision for what my future programming and message will provide is much more broad. I am still toying with several words that embody what that Pillar stands for (Collective/Collective Good, Justice, Uplift) but stay tuned for those changes on the site and those ideas will be embedded into all that is created and shared here.

On that note, following the TIU Summer Tone Up (another thing I have been grateful for — TIU for years now has helped me feel connected and uplifted by women around the globe!) I had every intent of opening up a small group nutrition coaching session but with all that is going on in my life right now that just isn’t realistic! So in the meantime I will be learning and writing content for that future program as well sharing resources on the blog. I am thinking an email list might be the next progression instead so you can easily keep up with the educational material provided here.

That said, because I don’t have the capacity to be coaching much right now please please please continue to share with me topics that will be helpful to you! I have gotten a ton of good ideas already and lots to work on but I always want to stay up to date with the challenges you are facing.

I’ll be sharing lots that is going into my own personal wedding prep as well which I hope to then be able to turn around and share with others in the same situation!

You will also see a lot more yoga content coming up here and on my Instagram. June 21st is International Yoga Day and as many of you know who have been following me, I have really amped up the amount of yoga that I am doing every week and I am loving it. I was called to come back to deepening my practice just in time to internalize it in light of Black Lives Matter; in light of life starting to open up again and definitely as I start to plan for how I want the rest of 2020 to play out for myself in the small areas within my control.

I don’t love talking about this aspect but I think it’s important to point that I feel physically so much stronger than I have in a long time. I think yoga brings up so many connotations for people and at the end of the day, the practice can vary so much based on what you bring to it. For me, it ends up being a full body, challenging bodyweight exercise most times I hop on the mat — I do love me some yin and restorative though every once in a while. I feel longer and leaner, my shoulders are popping and my core is tighter than it has been in a while. I also have eliminated some pain in my body probably from sitting more and spending more time in our apartment.

That all barely scratches the surface of what my yoga practice provides to me, but I often see this divide in the wellness space where either the physicality of the practice is lost in favor of the spirituality OR the practice is purely physical with not enough spirit. I require all of the above to feel well-rounded and I’m learning to align with teachers who help fuel me in the ways I need and stepping up to lead my own journey. I finally feel like I have a handle on a true home yoga practice and will lead myself through a full length class with confidence (and kick my own butt!) Plus I have now been teaching at least once a week for a year and a half and teaching virtually has really helped me examine areas to grow and how to show up for students.

All of this is to say that at the very least this blog continues to be where I share my epiphanies as they come up and my learnings as takeaways in the midst of change. I’m personally doing so much learning right now and always will be voicing and sharing my own journey. Many of you may be going through something similar or have the same questions that I do. Sometimes it will be messy and a path to “success” (whatever you define that is) will never be linear but I want you to know that you are never alone and to embrace the parts of us that are raggedy, changing and definitely not Instagram-perfect.

Please reach out any time that you would like to connect and discuss. I also continue to host opportunities for TIU Seattle to get together online and encourage you to join or seek out your local group as well to keep the positive energy going.