7 Simple Ways to Live Earth Day Everyday
My family lives Earth day everyday through our sustainable lifestyle. It doesn’t have to be hard. There are numerous, tiny ways you can “vote with your dollar” to celebrate and give gratitude to Mother Earth who has given so much. It’s our turn to give back by supporting earth enhancing habits and purchases.
Here are 7 Simple Ways to Celebrate Earth Day Everyday, that I hope inspire you too:
1. Reduce plastic use. We avoid buying snacks with tons of plastic packaging and buy bulk where ever we can. We don’t use plastic bags and do our best to have zero waste buying the smallest garbage bin as a challenge. So far so good the last 7 years using a 20 gallon bin, sharing with our renter.
Even when it comes to everyday household items like floss, you can play your part. Floss with compostable silk floss in glass containers to reduce plastic impact on wildlife. If you google “floss wildlife”, I was shocked to see tiny bits of floss accumulate into these tangled balls of death traps for wildlife. I was happy to take action and simply buy compostable floss in a glass container.
2. Compost and Recycle. We are lucky to live in a town where we simply buy compostable bags and dump our food scraps in a bin, that can then get dropped into our yard waste bin.
Did you know food scraps are the #2 waste product following cotton from fast fashion of dumped clothes?
3. Shop with reusable canvas bags. We have an electric car and a hybrid car. So we put a set of 4-5 canvas bags in each set that we use shopping at Trader Joe’s so we never forget when out of town and out of our normal routine.
4. Buy fair trade and organic. Nothing like eating food and sourcing products free of child/slave labor in the production supplies that are paying fair wages and are not sprayed with toxic pesticides into our body.
If you think of your body as earth itself, would you want to pollute the home you have to impact your quality of life in future years?
5. Replace all LED light bulbs in our house. Not only will they last for 20+ years versus incandescent, you can get brands that are “happy lights.” Especially in Seattle where SAD can set in from dreary weather, I have a happy LED light right above my desk giving me an extra boost.
6. Offset carbon usage: A fun new way for those who travel a fair amount and feel guilty about the carbon footprint in flying on planes, is that there are now options when buying your airfare to offset carbon emissions by investing a small amount towards sustainable aviation fuel. My last plane ticket, I reduced my environmental impact of flying by offsetting carbon at 106.59 lb for $24.50 invested.
7. Take the New Humanity Pledge: This is a declaration you make to become a truly global Earth Citizen rather than a consumer. The author Ilchi Lee asks in his latest book A New Humanity, “Are you willing to sacrifice convenience, profit, and power for the benefit of all humanity?” If yes, I’ll put a link in the description of the simple pledge you can sign up for as a commitment. https://www.newhumanitypledge.org/.
BIGGER ACTIONS:
There are more bigger decisions we’ve made as well that require more time and patience, and well worthwhile.
Recycle Grey Water. We have redirected our plumbing pipes from from showers and sinks to flow into irrigation for our yard and plants, rather than irrigating using new fresh clean water.
Buy an Electric or Hybrid Car. Since 2007, not only saved us TONS on gas, along with tax credits, we feel great knowing our choices are helping reduce our carbon footprint.
While these actions require more thought and planning, start small. Making tiny changes each year goes a long way as we have done. There’s no effort to do the above now, and have saved lots of money along the way. This earth day everyday lifestyle is now unconscious, easy, and automatic. The biggest payoff is feeling good going to bed at night knowing that our lifestyle is aligned with our values.
Grow your Own Food. Not gonna lie. I was about to sell my Tower hydroponic garden after several failed attempts to grow greens, until it worked the 7th time. Now that we’ve learned from our failures, it’s a pleasure to grow enough chard, kale, spinach and spring greens for our meals. If you’re not up for this task, start with sprouting sides for microgreens! You can get a kit of 2 jars and seeds and you’ll harvest so many microgreens in a couple days, the abundance is amazing.
Tell me below! Which of the habits above do you also share or are now inspired to share?
How to Surrender and Manifest your Dream Life
Back from Tulum, Mexico! Honored to speak, sing, and lead somatic mindfulness and movement through qigong at the amazing RALM3 Consulting led by extraordinaire Luba women’s mastermind retreat!!
What a respite to simply hang with the ladies and talk business while deep diving into personal growth and wellness at the most pristine, beautiful jungles and underwater caves in Tulum, Mexico.
Qigong is a somatic mindfulness and moving meditation that allows you to manifest your dream life, I’ve discovered the last 3 years.
Here’s 4 steps to manifest your dream life through somatic mindfulness like Qigong.
1. Surrender Your Illusion of Control
Sounds simple, but by far the hardest part. The “work” likes within to notice how little control you actually have in life if at all. This looks like a lot of NOT doing (stop strategizing, analyzing, asking others for advice). And a whole lot more trusting of yourself through uncertainty, having faith what is happening is for your best no matter how crappy it may feel or look.
2. Connect Within
Ask your Soul: What is my next action to create [insert your dream here]
3. Listen to Your Soul (not Ego’s) Response
This took me personally years to discern which voice is which within our inner wisdom. If you’re confused, just ask “who’s talking” to yourself OR simply feel into if you feel fear/love, contraction/expansion, light/heavy.
4. Take the Action, No Matter How small, Right Now
Typically the next step naturally reveals itself. I find it’s typically just one more step though. My mind gets greedy for the next 5 steps and starts to plan out. Don’t do that. It takes longer and not as magical constrained by your limited ego’s version of results.
If you feel inspired to take more, great. But only take action to the extent there in inspiration.
The root meaning of inspire is literally to “breathe life into”.
So if you’re forcing an action, that’s your signal to go back to #1 and repeat the steps.
Why Invest in an Energy Coach?
Nobody needs a coach. You only need a coach to the degree of the game you are playing in business or life. Just like athletes, are you going for the gold in the Olympics–then obviously a coach is required. But if you’re playing in a rec league, no coach is typically needed. The better question to ask yourself is: what game are you playing in business?
What is Health?
Why aren’t more business leaders, entrepreneurs, and CEO’s able to be healthy?
This conversation was 100 years ago. What’s changed since?
While technology’s god like powers have accelerated exponentially, our ancient, paleolithic brain impulses have barely evolved from survival.
We live in an age of brain overload and attention deficit economy where the new resource extraction isn’t water, or air, it’s our brain’s attention.
How does this relate to your health as a CEO?
Burnout has become a new normal. High stress “hustle” environments have become the status quo. Many high achieving clients fail to recognize they’re even in burnout.
Until a crisis forces you to pay attention. Perhaps it’s being rushed to the ER for high blood pressure. Or you receive an unexpected diagnosis with a life threatening tumor or disease. Perhaps someone close passes away that has you stop and question the meaning of your life.
Rather than wait for a crisis to give you a message to wake up, you can redefine what health looks like to you. Then commit to actions that will create that level of health you desire.
How do you define health?
The dictionary states how health is “the state of being free from illness or injury.” It goes further to say it’s “a person’s mental or physical condition.”
Yet, this definition hardly accounts for aging. Or recovery from unexpected injuries or accidents. Or being able to play with your kids or grandkids.
You can be sick or injury free, yet 20 pounds overweight not fitting in your workout. You might look healthy but drained by the end of each day unable to get a deep sleep.
Here are some examples of more holistic definitions of health:
– Complete well being of one’s mind, body, heart, and spirit
-Your body’s cells are in harmony
-You live to 120 years old with a high quality of life and healthspan
Just as each person has their own metrics for success, the same is true for your definition of health. What is your unique definition?
I define health as wellbeing, full power, and energy vitality of your body, mind, heart, and soul. Where you “youth” instead of “age” as you get older.
Here are a few real life examples of youthing “seniors” to inspire you:
- A 96 year old yoga instructor who began yoga for her first time in her 80’s more flexible than even many children
- A 105 year old cyclist wins a race, can touch his toes, with the body of someone in their 50’s
- A woman in her late 80’s had a stroke. She recovers in 3 weeks from no drugs but yoga qigong based exercises, good diet, and is able to drive again
What would you do with this kind of energy? What would be possible?
The kind of health I am talking about is totally possible and happening all around the world.
What’s Possible for Your Health
What if living to 120 years old with a high quality of living was the norm?
What if you got healthier as you get older?
I personally am more healthy at 40 years old than in my early 20’s now training 3x/week in taekwondo as a black belt with young teens.
It wasn’t always that way. Between 20-35 years old I stopped being active focused solely on business. I went to the doctor thinking I had torn an ACL only to learn my knee muscles were weakened and had atrophied. I couldn’t do a sit up after water birthing my son.
Health is a choice you make each moment. Each time you don’t eat the chocolate cake. Each time you choose to workout when you’re tired–your cells respond and reward you with more vitality.
Knowing what’s possible for your health, now it’s your turn. What is your personal definition of health?
Comment below, what does vibrant health look like for you? How do you define health?
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How to Unleash Your True Self: 3 Paths to Overcome Fear and Doubt
What are your biggest blocks to unleashing your truest self?
To unlock your true self overcoming doubt and fears, you must penetrate those layers to the True Self with your awareness.
Imagine concentric circles with your True Self or Soul at the center. To embody your Soul, your awareness needs to penetrate each layer of your
Thoughts > Emotions > Beliefs > Preconceptions > Doubts > Fears
Interestingly enough, these layers correspond to the layers of your brain from the outer prefrontal cortex, into the limbic system of your emotions, down to the brain stem firing the amygdala designed to survive.
Your awareness has to be strong enough to stay centered amid all the noise of your programming. This includes your ego, upbringing, societal expectations, media and news, and inner triggers and reactions from survival mode.
The more consistently centered you are, the more your soul power takes over the ego’s programming of what is possible for you or not.
How do you cultivate stronger awareness to penetrate your preconceptions and grow your soul power?
Here are 3 Paths to Grow Your Soul Power over Ego Power
1. Grant more space and silence in your life to force your ego to face the noise within. This can be done as a silent retreat at home or traveling to a retreat center with a community. A practice I continue since the pandemic are silent periods. I let my 12 year old son and husband know I’m going into silence, then only talk to them with a whiteboard during those periods. I find that my anger melts and bliss blossoms.
2. Face fears intentionally than waiting when they arise. Constantly be clear on what fear you’re going after.
As a black belt in Taekwondo–I’m constantly facing fears on the mat whether sparring, testing, or many other things I have no idea how to do working out 3x/week alongside 12-14 year olds in their prime. Here’s my last belt test from last Saturday where I showcased new forms and weapons.
We meditated all together right before starting the belt promotion test. In doing so, I was able to calm the nerves, as did my peers, and right before sparring someone 3x my weight, had an out of body transcendent experience.
I kid you not, time slowed down or stopped, noise from outside became muted, and it was as if I could see what was about to happen being 100% present in this moment. No thoughts, no emotions, just the “zero point” or void it’s sometimes called.
It felt so nourishing, like sitting at the bottom of a deep ocean of peace. Never have I experienced this during taekwondo, conditioning, and surely not a belt test. Fear disappeared and I was home. I was able to then relax and enjoy the rest of the 2 hour test.
Imagine living life from this space of nothing or zero point. What could be possible?
3. Trust “the how” will unfold itself and take action anyway. This requires developing your will over your analytical thinking of figuring out out how to meet your goal.
I’ve discovered over 20 years that when I force an outcome it rarely goes to plan. Now I imagine specific outcomes and milestones, take actions, and allow my Soul to partner with me in co-creating the outcomes. Especially post pandemic, a super defined plan where all the variable and assumptions will change became a waste of energy.
But the biggest energy suck is over-strategizing HOW to meet your goal, and instead focus all energy on BEING the feeling you will feel after the goal is met to attract higher vibing people and opportunities.
I used to be like a terrier who will keep moving forward with the plan no matter what to perform and be my word (often to my wellbeing’s detriment). While that approach has its merits and can be used in specific situations, using that approach every time was exhausting.
Now, I take action in the face of doubt and fear, confront the feelings I’m scared will happen if I fail, let them flow through, and focus on the feeling I want if the outcome is met. You’re only focused on what you want or don’t want in any moment.
Why not focus just on what you want? What you don’t want naturally melts away. Then trust the next step will reveal itself.
As simple as this sounds, many clients when asked, “What do you want?” have a hard time with specifics. Typically it’s all very similar: I want to travel, have more freedom, have a stronger marriage or quality relationship, make lots of money. But when asked, “then what?” They draw a blank. It gets vague real fast.
The funny part is that they don’t really want the goal. They want the feeling the goal gives them. You can generate that feeling of the goal met now. Then see what arises.
👇 Comment below: What opened up from this post? What new actions might you take?
Love and Light,
Anna
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Longevity: What’s Possible for your Health?
What has been your journey of health? Do you think youthing as you age is possible?
I’m here to share yes it is. I’m more healthy now at 41 years old than in my early 20’s! (No, it’s not just the Asian genes!) Granted, I eat a plant based, gluten free, organic whole foods, intermittent fast, avoid alcohol, caffeine, sugars, and processed foods, and prioritize moving my body with daily qigong classes, 103 bows/day, 1 hour meditation, and training 3x/week in taekwondo as a black belt with young teens.
It took years to build up these disciplined habits. It wasn’t always that way.
I collapsed from physical exhaustion in my early twenties overworking in my first business as a financial planner. I had severe IBS from negative thinking and rarely worked out or had a social life focused on my business. I went to the doctor thinking I had torn an ACL only to learn my knee muscles were simply weak and had atrophied.
After water birthing my son, I let my body go, giving up it could be any other way. My abs had split apart in birth and not quite come back together making it difficult to do even 1 sit up. Everything got loose and flabby down there. What a surprise to jump on a trampoline at a kids birthday, to pee in my pants and have to change myself in the bathroom. **Embarrassing!**
After 30, no more weekend warrior—I’d get injured. Severe allergies kicked in with constant itching, eyes tearing and running nose impossible to do anything but grab another tissue.
Then after 35, suddenly I had what felt like uncontrollable sugar cravings. I wouldn’t be hungry, eat anyway for comfort, to appease boredom. Processed carbs like chips and crackers were my Achilles heal. I was addicted to snacking every time I was bored or needed comfort. I soothed myself as my tummy hurt telling myself “It’s ok. Mom loved us through food.” Enter another chip into my mouth.
It wasn’t until 3 years ago that I got serious about holistic health in treating my body as a temple and regularly working out. The result has been remarkable at the level of energy I’m able to have now than when I was a youth. It’s never too late to start! (See below for true stories of 85 year olds starting yoga or 105 year olds winning bike races with the body of a 50 year old)
That’s been my health journey, how about you? When I hear “Wow you look so young—must be the asian genes.” That is NOT the case and being healthy more after 40 than in my 20’s has been a labor of love.
Health is a choice you make each moment. Each time you don’t eat the cookie, drink the glass of wine, or watch netflix. Or each time you choose to workout when you’re tired, you don’t eat that sugary thing, and you pass on the beer-–your cells respond and reward you with more vitality.
Knowing what’s possible for your health, now it’s your turn:
What is your personal definition of health?
What does vibrant health look like for you? How do you define health?
Here are some examples of more holistic definitions of health:
– Complete well being of one’s mind, body, heart, and spirit
– Body’s cells are in harmony
-You live to 120 years old with a high quality of life and healthspan
Just like each person will have their own metric of success, same for your and your definition of health. These are just ideas, and what’s important is to make your definition of health your own.
Inquiries for Your Health Journey
Where do you see the healthiest version of yourself in 50 years? (this timeline really stretches the mind)
10 years? 1 year? 6 months? 30 days?
Take out some soothing music, shut your door, and allow yourself to journal or share with someone you love what vibrant health looks like for you. No editing. Just allow yourself to free flow a stream of conscious. You can use just 1 or more of those timeframes. Allow yourself to brainstorm.
Use all 5 senses of what you see, hear, taste, sense, and smell so that you can embody the FEELING of the future feeling. The less thinking or analyzing the better.
Perhaps you see a vision of yourself. More important how do you feel?
Create this future vision now by fully embodying that feeling of vitality, vibrancy or [insert your feeling here].
To bring your vision more a reality, share with a loved one. As you speak,add, edit, or take parts and allow a continuous inquiry of what a healthy you looks and feels like.
Then find one word, sound, and/or creative movement to represent that state of health you see yourself as to remind yourself moving forward.
Why is staying healthy so hard?
Most of us know what to do, but don’t do it consistently over time. It never quite becomes an unconscious habit.
Over 100 years ago, EO Wilson began a conversation:
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.” -EO Wilson
While technology’s god like powers have accelerated exponentially, our ancient brain impulses have barely evolved from survival. What’s changed since then?
We live in an age of brain overload and attention deficit economy where the new resource extraction isn’t water, or air, it’s our brain’s attention.
How does this relate to your health as a mindful entrepreneur?
Burnout has become a new normal. High stress “hustle” environments have become the status quo. Many high achieving clients fail to recognize they’re even in burnout.
Until a crisis forces you to pay attention. Perhaps it’s being rushed to the ER for high blood pressure. Or you receive an unexpected diagnosis with a life threatening tumor or disease. Perhaps someone close passes away that has you stop and question the meaning of your life.
Rather than wait for a crisis to give you a message to wake up, you can redefine what health looks like to you. Then commit to actions that will create that level of health you desire.
Create your own definition of health?
The dictionary states how health is “the state of being free from illness or injury.” It goes further to say it’s “a person’s mental or physical condition.”
Yet, this definition hardly accounts for aging. Or recovery from unexpected injuries or accidents. Or being able to play with your kids or grandkids.
You can be sick or injury free, yet 20 pounds overweight not fitting in your workout. You might look healthy but drained by the end of each day unable to get a deep sleep.
Here are some examples of more holistic definitions of health:
Complete well being of one’s mind, body, heart, and spirit
- Your body’s cells are in harmony
- You live to 120 years old with a high quality of life and healthspan
Just as each person has their own metrics for success, the same is true for your definition of health. What is your unique definition?
I define health as wellbeing, full power, and energy vitality of your body, mind, heart, and soul. Where you “youth” instead of “age” as you get older.
Here are a few real life examples of youthing “seniors” to inspire you:
- A 96 year old yoga instructor who began yoga for her first time in her 80’s more flexible than even many children
- A 105 year old cyclist wins a race, can touch his toes, with the body of someone in their 50’
- A woman in her late 80’s had a stroke. She recovers in 3 weeks from no drugs but yoga qigong based exercises, good diet, and is able to drive again
What would you do with this kind of energy? What would be possible?
***
Anna Choi, Founder of Soljoy.Life, Energy Master, Black Belt, and 2x TEDx Speaker, helps high achieving, mindful entrepreneurs tap into boundless energy through her signature program Ignite: 40 Days to Aliveness. She takes clients from scattered, overwhelmed energy to conscious, consistent micro health habits so they feel more health, happiness, and peace embodying their soul’s highest potential. If you want more energy, Wswatch this free training video series.
SolJoy with Anna Choi is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber here.
Joy as a Choice
Where does your joy come from?
It took me years to realize I waited for joy to come from outside circumstances.
Waiting for my son to laugh to bring a smile. Waiting for an experience or song to move my body. Waiting for my husband to say thank you for the dinner I’ve cooked. Waiting for my client to say “you’ve changed my life. Waiting to go on a trip, traveling to a meditation retreat to feel joy.
The better question is: If you stripped away everything and left with nothing–would you still feel joy?
Or be a hot mess?
Does an infinite source of joy even exist?
I’ve sat with this inquiry and can now say with confidence that infinite joy does exist.
It simply must be cultivated as a habit.
Joy as a Habit
What?! Joy is a habit. Yes. That’s what I’ve discovered.
While you have power to create circumstances that will likely bring you joy—we’ve all been in those situations where we should feel joyful, but we’re not. Or those times when you shouldn’t feel joy cause of crappy circumstances, yet you do.
We just explored this in a recent Activate Joy event where I spoke at for the ShiftUp community. Here we are practicing joy in the body by smiling for one minute followed by laughing for one minute.
Awkward. Yet super effective to your well being.
In Ron Gutman’s TED talk on the Hidden Power of Smiling he shares how a simple smile has a measurable effect on your wellbeing from firing off the same reward mechanisms in the brain equivalent to receiving $25,000 cash or eating 2000 bars of chocolate.
He shares how “Unlike chocolate, smiling can actually make us healthier…it reduces the level of stress enhancing hormones that cortisol, adrenaline and dopamine, increases the level of mood-enhancing hormones [endorphins] and also reduces blood pressure.”
If you want to cultivate joy as a habit. Give it a go and smile and/or laugh for 1 minute to your favorite song. Notice how your mood shifts before and after. Then like any habit, create consistency for even just 3 days in a row to start setting an alarm to randomly laugh and smile for a minute. You may feel dumb initially, but I promise—it’s gets easier.
When I did this practice many times through 3 days, I found myself laughing out loud randomly, while brushing my teeth. It was as if joy was just bubbling out of me for no reason and it felt so good.
Joy Assessment
Here are some questions to assess where your joy comes from:
On a scale of 1-10, 10 being joyful, how joyful do you feel on average over the week?
Think of what brings you joy. Do you depend on an experience to give you joy? For example, once I travel to that dream place, I’ll feel joy. Once I have solid friends and family relationships, I’ll feel joy. Once I make enough money in my business, I’ll give back, then feel joy.
Is what brings you joy a desire of the ego or soul? Check in with your body to. help you discern. Does your body feel more expansive, love, light, and bright or heavy, contracting and fear based.
Joy Practices
Once you get better at discerning true joy from within that reaction based, if-then joy, you can start to practice joy in the unexpected areas of life.
Most humans don’t like change. The uncertain unknown sucks and we try to find control in it. Instead, lean into the transitions of life as a home to discover joy anyway.
Make it a game. See if you can find joy in the most unexpected places: wounded relationships, pain in your body, or triggers.
It’s not that you need to feel joy 24/7. But by cultivating and practicing joy as a habit, you then have choice. If joy can be a choice, generated for no reason, what might open up in your life?
Consider your life circumstances have zero bearing on what degree of joy you feel. Imagine the liberation of being able to walk into any fire, and the power of being able to choose joy (if you desire) or not. That is true freedom.
I implore you, choose to smile for no reason. Laugh for no reason. Smile at yourself. When I have done this, life gets a lot less serious and more fun and light.
***
Anna Choi, Founder of Soljoy.Life, Energy Master, Black Belt, and 2x TEDx Speaker, helps high achieving, mindful entrepreneurs tap into boundless energy through her signature program Ignite: 40 Days to Aliveness. She takes clients from scattered, overwhelmed energy to conscious, consistent micro health habits so they feel more health, happiness, and peace embodying their soul’s highest potential. If you want more energy, Wswatch this free training video series.
SolJoy with Anna Choi is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber here.
Love your Body : The Power of Somatic Exercises for High Achievers
What is your relationship to your body? Do you enjoy your body? Do you take it for granted or not even conscious of it unless it’s not working or breaks down?
Perhaps when you look in the mirror (if you look at all) you tend to notice gray hairs, flab, wrinkles. You may notice your body not recovering the way it used to or that it’s slowly becoming weaker as you age if you don’t keep up exercising. Subconsciously you may feel “I’m too fat,” “too small,” “too tall,” or some other version of not enough.
Let’s be Real
Many of us treat our bodies like a garbage disposal in the name of not wasting food (cause there are starving kids in Africa!) or forget to eat at all running around being too busy. Others find it difficult to have time to prepare healthy meals and end up eating junk food or eating out too much.
Perhaps like diets, you set a goal to look great before attending a wedding or to prepare for a 5K run, but those exercise habits fade after the goal is met.
I find it rare in my work with clients to find someone who genuinely enjoys caring for their body. Rather, caring for the body (let alone loving it) occurs as a chore to constantly manage, especially through aging.
It doesn’t have to be this way!
Imagine what it would feel like to consistently treat your body as a sacred vessel for your soul’s growth. As a wise friend that you honor and respect for its wisdom within.
Regardless of what you believe or not spiritually, what if you treated the body as a beloved companion rather than as an unpaid slave you beat up for not working perfectly despite laboring 24/7 to keep you literally alive from your heart beating to cellular regeneration.
Beyond what the body does for you, have you ever ventured inward to explore the vast galaxy within your body? My enlightened masters have taught me how the body is a map of your soul’s enlightenment. I’ve found this to be true.
Consider how you treat your body now is how you treat your soul.
What?! But Anna, where do I start? I have no time.
Let’s start with the basics by assessing yourself.
What is your body’s current state?
Many humans are numb to their body. Anywhere from eating out of boredom to escaping the body as a coping mechanism to escape childhood trauma. Others use substances to drown out their worries and anxiety or have an addiction: overworking, being busy, nonstop screen time, social media scrolling, sugar cravings, binging on netflix, or a host of other distractions that don’t have you face reality.
Others might feel resigned. They’ve had body dysmorphia or decide to just “let themselves go” after having babies.
Then there are my high achieving clients in denial of how out of shape they are, stuck in the past of their former healthier self. They try to become weekend warriors to suddenly injure themselves then be out for weeks slow to recover.
They often end up resorting to yet another surgery to heal a chronic back pain or hip injury they cannot fix themselves naturally. I’m all for western emergency fixes when you need it. However, while diet and exercise are respectable healthy habits, it only addresses the physical—what regular habits are they doing to “exercise” their hearts, mind, and spirit?
This is where inner somatic work of the heart, mind, body, and spirit creates a foundation for wellbeing to weather any unexpected storm.
The key to unleashing boundless energy for my clients and myself is consistent, daily somatic practices. It’s a powerful tool to help tap into your body’s inner wisdom, optimize flow state or peak performance, and achieve greater focused success.
What are Somatic Exercises?
Somatic exercises focuses on the mind-body connection, recognizing that our physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts are deeply intertwined.
Unlike traditional life or health coaching, which may primarily focus on mental strategies or behavior change, somatic practices delves into the body’s sensations and movements as access points to unconscious programming to accelerate holistic growth and transformation.
Through somatic exercises, you learn how to feel energy and listen to your body’s cues physically and intuitively. By consciously releasing tension and stress you integrate mind, body, heart, and spirit.
This heightened awareness enables you to make more conscious choices, respond effectively to challenges, and optimize your performance in all aspects of life, and most importantly–communicate and express your soul’s desires from the ego’s incessant grip.
3 Somatic Exercises to Optimize Peak Performance
Why Somatic Coaching: 5 Benefits
Somatic coaching offers several unique benefits that set it apart from traditional coaching approaches:
Embodied Learning: Embodiment is learning with your body (not just your brain) that helps you access untapped resources and wisdom within. You don’t need to learn why or how to perform better. You have to recognize and feel it in the body.
Integration of Mind and Body: High achievers often live in their heads, disconnected from their bodies’ signals and needs. Somatic coaching bridges this gap by strengthening the mind body connection. Experience new ways of moving, breathing, and being to integrate learning at the brain stem (versus limbic feeling brain and executive functioning of the brain) creating lasting change from the inside out.
Stress Reduction: Somatic exercises promote relaxation releasing tension held in the body. As you learn to regulate your nervous system and manage stress more effectively, you become better equipped to navigate challenges with grace and ease. Less reacting to life and more conscious creating life as it comes.
Emotional Resilience: Beyond the buzz word emotional intelligence, developing your ability to simply name an emotion and feel it fully is one of the biggest benefits of somatic exercises. Feelings can often feel like a threat to the ego who then reacts with judgment, fixing, or avoiding our feelings.
Feelings are distinct from emotions which are reaction based and come automatically with the biology of our bodies. Feelings are the energetic sensations from an emotion that get stored in the body as trauma or baggage when we don’t learn as humans to feel.
By learning to feel through somatic exercises, you release a lot of baggage in the body and develop stronger emotional resilience.
Optimized Performance: By aligning your mind, heart, and soul with the body’s movement patterns and energy flow, somatic coaching enhances your physical performance and mental clarity. Whether you’re leading a team, giving a presentation, or making critical business decisions, you’ll feel more grounded, focused, and confident in your abilities.
When to Hire a Somatic Coach, Somatic Trainer, Somatic Guide, or Somatic Mentor
So, when is the right time to hire a somatic trainer? Here are some signs that somatic coaching could benefit you:
Feeling Stuck or Stressed: If you’re feeling stuck in your personal or professional life, experiencing chronic stress, or struggling to manage overwhelm, somatic coaching can help you break free from limiting patterns and find greater ease and balance.
Seeking Peak Performance: If you’re committed to achieving peak performance in your work or creative endeavors, somatic coaching can provide you with the tools and practices to optimize your physical and mental well-being, enhancing your productivity, creativity, and resilience.
Desiring Greater Mind-Body Connection: If you’re interested in deepening your mind-body connection, cultivating greater self-awareness, and accessing your body’s innate intelligence, somatic coaching offers a holistic approach to personal growth and transformation.
Ready for Holistic Growth: If you’re ready to embark on a journey of holistic growth and self-discovery, somatic coaching can support you in integrating all aspects of your being – body, mind, heart, and spirit – to live a more fulfilling, authentic, and purposeful life.
Developing Stronger Soul Power in an Ego Driven World: If you’re on a path to living your highest Self, yet find your ego constantly demanding of you and sabotaging your efforts to meditate, somatic training helps you discern your soul’s voice from the ego’s in that incessant inner committee in your head.
Now What?
In the quest for success and fulfillment, high achievers often overlook the body’s wisdom in favor of the mindset coaching. While mindset work has its place, solely focusing on that wastes more than half of your innate energetic power available to you as guiding wisdom.
Somatic exercise offers a powerful pathway to unlock your full potential, optimize peak performance, and live a more vibrant, balanced life.
Whether you’re seeking stress reduction, emotional resilience, or greater mind-body connection, somatic exercises are key to shifting from burnout to brilliance so you can scale your growth with grace and ease.
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Anna Choi, Founder of Soljoy.Life, Energy Master, Black Belt, and 2x TEDx Speaker, helps high achieving, mindful entrepreneurs tap into boundless energy through her signature program Ignite: 40 Days to Aliveness. She takes clients from scattered, overwhelmed energy to conscious, consistent micro health habits so they feel more health, happiness, and peace embodying their soul’s highest potential. If you want more energy, Wswatch this free training video series.
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How to Cultivate a Culture of Self Care
“You need to give yourself some self care,” my husband said soothingly as he hugged me.
I didn’t want to admit that my time of the month was impacting my hormone levels. Tears streaming down my face, a felt a big fat ugly cry coming on.
Crumpling into his body, I sobbed and boo hooed “But I teach this stuff! What is the lesson to learn here? Why the emotional breakdown?”
The source wasn’t physical exhaustion from working long hours. Nothing dramatic was happening. Instead, it was something much more subtle.
What Drives a Lack of Self Care?
Have you ever kept doing something you know you didn’t even want? You know it’s bad for you but still keep doing it? This is what I call a pattern or internal conflict. Deep ingrained patterns direct automatic, unconscious behaviors.
Consider patterns or internal conflicts cause a lack of self care.
When there are internal conflicts building up in our body, stress finds a way to surface in the most unexpected of ways, often through emotions or triggering old pattern habits of the mind.
In this case, I was forcing my son to continue a sport he wasn’t interested in continuing. While I vowed I’d never do that to my kid, here I was and the incongruency was erupting into an emotionally fragile state.
While my pattern was to make things harder than they need to be, my internal conflict was on one hand respecting my 12 year old’s decision to quit and supporting that.
On the other hand, I wanted my son to:
- “build character”
- “not be a quitter or dabbler”
- “persevere through challenges to build resilience”
- “stay the course no matter what”
- “all the best things worth having in life are hard”
As I went deeper, I asked are“values” mine? Are they in fact values or programs from society, my upbringing, or just my unrelenting ego trying to survive a threat?
Given my dad was a Korean war orphan in poverty the first 30 years of life, I have plenty of reprogramming from his trauma. When life felt to easy, I’d look for hardship to overcome so I could practice thriving in any adversity. Nothing like achieving in the face of struggle and I used to wear it like a badge of honor.
But that strategy doesn’t work in all situations, and certainly not with my son Eli.
Why Self Care is Hard
We know self care habits of the mind, body, heart, and soul health are important. Yet why do my clients prioritize self care after kids, family duties, business clients, or household chores?
Uncertainty. Mindful entrepreneurs face constant pressure to perform, innovate, and adapt to ever-changing circumstances. In such a demanding environment, it’s easy to neglect our well-being in favor of reacting to the demands of our business.
Busy being busy. Do you have multiple hat syndrome? (I just coined that term) How many roles do you juggle per day? Multitasking includes doing activities in rapid fire succession, besides doing two things at once. So again, we’re stuck in reacting to interruptions and disruptions.
Accomplishments = Self-Worth. Despite knowing we are worthy as we are, that’s not necessarily how we live. Do you measure success by how productive or how much you accomplish in a day? Does relaxation or personal activities occur as a luxury you cannot afford when there are deadlines to meet?
Self care isn’t a one time act you do in the morning—it’s a lifestyle.
Cultivating a culture of self care requires taking breaks throughout the day, consistently, in a supportive environment that allows you that autonomy.
There’s more reasons, infinite really, but the good news is that all the above can become conscious choices. When you have awareness, you now have choice to opt in or opt out.
Why Self Care?
You matter. Full stop. You must take care of yourself first before you can effectively support others. By taking care of your physical, mental, and emotional health, you enhance your ability to perform at our best and sustain our energy and motivation over the long haul.
Connect with your Soul. The only relationship that lasts through death is your Soul or life source energy. Self care moments being present nurtures that relationship with the soul to inspire soul first.
Thrive in adversity. When you master emotional resilience by developing greater self-awareness, emotional regulation, and coping mechanisms, you bounce back from setbacks more easily. You become unstoppable.
How to Cultivate a Culture of Self-Care
1. Replace the word productivity with being in flow state instead. Flow state includes the natural ebbs and flow of performance like nature. Unlike a machine, humans sprint then rest. The best world athletes know how to relax the best. Check out my TEDx talk (10:32) that gives the whole story here.
2. Develop microhabits. Discipline can be more organic if you break down a habit to its smallest element and integrate it into your day.
Try these:
- Chewing slowly 30x before swallowing
- Feeling your feet as you walk
- Step outside and breathe in from the belly
- Breathe slowly while brushing your teeth
- Say I love you while wash your face tenderly
- Look into your eyes in the mirror and genuinely say “I love you” from your heart (no head)
Carving out time for self-care doesn’t have to be time-consuming or complicated. It’s simply bringing consciousness or presence to unconscious, already established routines.
3. Personal Retreats. Plan time off intentionally for the year. They can be at home or somewhere exotic—what’s key is creating space to go deeper.
During the pandemic I took 10 days of silence meditating 100 hours that created a new habit of daily meditating an hour a day ever since. Days I miss meditation, I’m more reactive than days that don’t pull for self care. Days I meditate are grounded, and self care arises naturally.
In our ALIVE course, students start off blocking time off each year, on a quarterly or monthly basis, weekly basis, and daily basis. Family trips or vacations only count if you are more relaxed by the end (versus drained).
At least annually a year, I take a longer personal retreat into nature. I’ve recently been invited to facilitate at a women’s mastermind retreat in Tulum, Mexico that allows me time to take my mom hat off and give a space to relax in soulful company.
I’ll be leading somatic movement exercises and otherwise participate in soaking up what other wellness trainers have to offer in professional development.
Self-care isn’t selfish but essential. It’s required and necessary for our overall well-being and success. Self-care doesn’t have to be hard. By prioritizing well-being, you’ll optimize your energy reserves and tap into boundless energy within.
Comment on this post: What resonates for you from this article? What actions can you take to cultivate self care?
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Anna S. Choi helps conscious businesses and social entrepreneurs attract more clients through her signature program The Client Accelerator for Conscious Entrepreneurs. She takes clients from scattered marketing approaches to an intentional strategic marketing plan. If you’re interested in gaining focus, clarity, accountability in a community of conscious entrepreneurs, please watch this free training video on attracting clients or join her email list.
3 Questions to Embrace your Shadow
What times in life did you embrace your fear?
What demons turned out not to be so scary after all, once you faced them?
How can you love your demons, your fears, and the things you “hate about yourself?”
When I was 4, my mom made sure I never was an “evil character” for Halloween.
Anytime someone I knew was going to be a “bad character” I silently winced inside cursing Halloween for celebrating evil. Why give our energy to that?! Anytime my son might ask to be a villain, I was a heck no to that and would steer him another direction.
However, what you resist, persists.
So when my 10 year old asks to be an orc from the Lord of the Rings I decide to stop “my control train.” Just go with the flow.
It didn’t work at first. I still resisted: I decided I wouldn’t dress up with him as I always had since the day he was born. I felt anxious and broody just watching Leo make Eli his war costume. Why the violence?! I would think to myself. I cursed the slave trade chocolate and candy. I could not relax and dreaded the night while still silently organizing a trick or treat with a few of his friends.
As his friends arrive to trick or treat, in one moment, I give in. I simply decide to surrender. In fact, I’m suddenly inspired to create a costume in 15 minutes flat.
Why fight against the tide? I play along. First off, my son’s an awfully cute orc. It’s all so meaningless to him–it’s just a costume!
Walking into my closet, I look at what materials I have on hand…a lot of white things. A cloud costume? Hmm…Every year we as a family have a theme. One year Eli was yoda, I was Padme, and Leo was Obi Juan. Another year he was a Kracken, Leo a boat, and I was a pirate.
I look to Eli for ideas, “Who dresses in all white in the Lord of the Rings?” I look in the mirror–and a light bulb goes off as Eli says “Saruman the White–an evil wizard.”
In that moment, everything clicked. I saw how my fear was killing off fun and connection.
How my fear was causing suffering.
How my judgment was making no difference in having fair trade chocolate being given to children.
I embraced my shadow. And just like that, something magical happened.
Everything became light again.
The evil character costume was just that–a costume. When we were done playing that part, it got tossed into a corner and disposed of. There wasn’t any real threat.
I saw how evil characters aren’t real. They are funny illusions we create to have fun. I saw how fun it was to simply make a costume without assigning unnecessary significance and heavy energy. While I was trying to use my judgment to shield myself and family from evil, I ended up embodying fear–the very thing I wanted to avoid.
By embracing my shadow, I was embodying creativity, light, and joy.
What energy I embodied is what mattered most.
Just like fear, your shadow side longs to be seen. Believing that at the core of any fear–is still purity or light–you can even learn to “love your fear” and embrace it. Even welcome it!
Here’s a quick litmus test: Who would you rather be around?
Someone being light, fun, and joyful making a villain costume?
Or someone silently judging and condemning you in the name of light?
If in doubt of who you’re being, simply tune in and feel your body. Do you feel more heavy or light? Contracted or expanded? Fear or love?
As an entrepreneur, which way of being will attract the right clients? You guessed it.
Here’s a blog I wrote a year ago that still holds true today on Transforming Fear into Love that breaks down the 6 steps to transform fear into love.
Back to the inquiries:
What times in life did you embrace your fear?
What demons turned out not to be so scary after all, once you faced them?
How can you love your demons, your fears, the things you “hate about yourself?”
Take a few moments to reflect and would love to hear from you!
A wonderful song from a dear colleague sums it up best here.