Hello, my lovely, how are you? Truly Welcome back, or welcome to your first episode, I hope that this time together brings you the uplifting grounding or space you need in this moment, as you might be able to hear, my voice is a little weird today the allergies are doing its fuckery over here in New Jersey. And honestly, you know, with current events happening, I'm feeling kind of just like there's been a lot to process. So as there continues to be right, at least here in America and across the country. So, my friend, I really do hope that however it is that you're coming however, you answered the question of how are you and I really mean it not as unlike a greeting that we just put out there into the world, but I do actually care about your answer, I really do hope that you find the excuse me, the uplifting the grounding or the space that you need, whatever it is that you need, or a little bit of it. I hope that you find that here today. The shit we need to talk about in this episode is the goodness, the goodness, my friend of the spring sanctuary that is happening this Saturday, our very first virtual retreat on Zoom, Saturday, April 22, from 11am to 2pm. Eastern, the benefits of which will reach far beyond this spring season. And honestly for me as your guide, as the person who's just offering the invitation to these practices, I think it's a pretty big deal. The fact that these benefits will reach far beyond the spring season. I'll offer the registration details here. Very quickly, head to Steff gallante.com/spring. And I've included the link in the show notes as well. Don't forget, the recording will be available for one month, but you've got to register. If you've been around here for a while, you've probably heard me talk about how you're in the thick of the day to day maintenance of your self care the thick of the day to day, just experience of life. But what's really cool is in this process, I get the honor and the privilege to zoom out to a more expansive view on your behalf. And right now, I've got your end of the year while being in my sites. And let's be honest, I've had that in my site since the very beginning of this year. So in the sad event that you can't make it online in real time, remember, the recording is an option. And in the really sad event that you're listening after April 22, and had no idea this was happening, know that I'll be holding a summer retreat in June. So definitely check back for all that in information. But back to the topic at hand. For weeks, for weeks, we've been talking about how essential a spring pause is for all that you want to feel do and achieve this spring. And beyond. That might be to interrupt the cycle of burnout, or to and or to connect more deeply to yourself. Maybe and or it's to live authentically out there in the world, especially in your relationships and with others and to support all of your disrupting in the world. I cannot say enough, obviously, this is I keep repeating myself each week that this pause is essential for how you want to feel do and achieve this spring and beyond. I'm really glad you're not sick of me yet, maybe. And my friends also I should say, my kids are still on spring break when I'm recording this. So apologies if you're hearing kids voices in the background. My friend I'm super excited about the spring sanctuary. As I said before, it's the first retreat I'm offering and excited honestly like doesn't even scratch the surface of how I'm feeling. I'm feeling honored. I'm feeling grateful I'm feeling in awe that my business has evolved to a place where I feel confident, honestly enough to offer this I've held works a workshop each season for the last two years or so. But this time around when it came to planning this event, I felt called to do things a little more bit more differently, more spaciously and more deeply. And I think that I have been feeling this call for a while, probably the winter, maybe even the fall, but I was scared. But this year, my model was fuck it right. And so I decided, You know what this pause is critical and I need to make it so. So here we are, this paws my friend. In this spring sanctuary, it's critical for you to slow down if you've been Go Go going since January 1 with like lots of light, great intensity and pressure. It's also critical for you to step into an expansive space to just be in breathe Hello, like continuing that invitation from winter. It's also critical to ground yourself and how you want to feel how you want your soul to feel, and have an intentional and strategic way forward planned out to bring this to life. One that's not rigid, but flexible and totally in tuned and aligned with yourself. In a nutshell, the spring sanctuary will be a haven for gentle renewal and surviving capitalism for the next few months. I'm so excited to share the five main events I have planned for you in this in this sanctuary. First is going to be understanding springs vibe, nature's call, and how this period will impact your well being through summer fall. And next winter. As we've been talking about in the last month or so spring is a time of birth of new beginnings of renewal, gentle growth that's watered by increased rain that we see. And it has a slowish vibe, that's not quite as slow as winter, but certainly is not as fast and as intense as summer. There's a softness and a warming present for that allows for an opportunity to release that accumulation of winters excess in all the ways. Above all, this phase of nature's cycle is our time for tending the soil of our life, and an initial planting of what we want to grow for the rest of the year. Now you might be thinking, that's great, you know, and it makes perfect sense stuff. But what does it exactly mean? Or actually mean? Or how do I take this information and apply it to my life because I'm nobody's farmer. But you're the farmer of your life, you know. So on Saturday in the spring sanctuary, we're gonna be talking about all of the we're talking all about options, really not all of the options, but we'll be talking all about options for bringing or expanding gentleness and slow slowness into our lives. And if you're like me, and those two words do not exist without some real work, my friends, I'm here for it. We might bring in gentleness and slowness through our morning and evening routines, our pauses throughout the day, and the hobbies and adventures we choose to do, as well as the boundaries we uphold with the things and people that don't serve us as well as the things that people that do. We'll be talking about all types of things regarding these areas of our lives, and others as well. We'll also be considering what we'd like to renew, as well as beginnings and new births we'd like to initiate the bottom line here, my friend is how we interact with and uphold this spring vibe will directly impact our experience and how resource we are in the upcoming seasons. And you guessed it, it'll also affect whether we interrupt the cycle of burnout, whether we interrupt our disconnection with ourselves, and whether we disrupt the kind of the authenticity with which we're interacting in the world, especially in our relationship with others. As you might be expecting, engaging with your self care in this manner goes against capitalism's gogogo method of operation, which is a direct disruption of society's pace and will help you interrupt how you're upholding the system and other systems in your life. Fuck yes, yes, friends. The next thing we're going to do is learn shifts to yourself care practices that align with springs energy and honor your current state of being. We'll be talking about the three energies present in nature and within us how a dominance and Kapha energy that slow moving moist and steady characteristics will affect you and how to release winters accumulation because that's going to be really important for
you Not allowing some of the stuff that needs to be released to hang on and kind of weigh you down. We'll also talk about how you might be impacted on the days of vata energy with its mobile and flexible qualities is more dominant. And then later in this season, warm, maybe some days presently, because climate change, I mean, it's already hit Aedes here in New Jersey, and will again in the coming week or so, which is that's not normal. When we we don't usually get to the 80s until like June usually. But, you know, when the temperature really starts to warm as pika energy becomes more prominent, you know, talking about how that's going to land on you, and how to navigate all of this with ideas to shift your self care practices based on how you're feeling, and what you need in order to remain in harmony with yourself in nature. And we'll do this all with curiosity, compassion, and tenderness, of course. Generally, I don't know if you realize this or not. I was talking to my the academic class I teach at Rutgers recently about this. Generally, we monitor our energy within two categories, either high or low. It's like we notice I'm high energy today, or I'm low energy today, or there might be somewhere in the middle where it's just kind of like ballots, I want to offer you a more fitting way to monitor your energy, which is to actually notice what type of energy is present and how you're seeing it play out mentally, emotionally, and or physically. So you might notice, if your energy is flexible or unsettled, that's more vata energy. You don't need to know all like the logistical terms of everything right, but be able to notice flexible, changeable, feeling cool with that, or are you feeling unsettled? Is your or is your energy second option motivated? Right, feeling good motivated, getting things done? Or is it pushing with energy with intensity or maybe even critical, that's the flip side of of that Pitta energy. Or third option is it deliberately slow moving, careful and calm. Or the flip side of kafa energy, resistance to resistant to change, lethargic or even unmotivated and dull. Now, I want to be very clear, because you know, we live in a society that kind of, you know, celebrates or demonizes things, and anything in between is kind of just like blur. But remember, all of the energies and feelings that I just named in any others are real and valid and necessary at some point. So we're not going to label energies or feelings as good versus bad or positive versus negative, which we often seem to see in Western culture, will simply be naming them as they are, again with curiosity, compassion, and tenderness. And educating ourselves because having this information of what type of energy is present, and understanding how it's showing up, or the effect it's having, will allow you to more readily shift your practices, workflow boundaries and plans in the way you need it. Because the reality is viewing your energy from a high versus low place kind of just misses the mark, or just scratches the surface in terms of what you're experiencing. But this practice of noticing the type of energy and understanding the characteristics of it, like how it's playing out in your life, will directly interrupt the bypassing and gaslighting society loves for us to do when we expect that we shouldn't feel off or shouldn't feel sad or shouldn't be slow moving, or whatever. And just keep pushing forward with an all in intensity and rigidity and our consistency with how we really show up to anything including our self care. And so we're going to be diving into a conversation that is more around noticing the type of energy and how it plays out. The third experience in the spring sanctuary will be exploring yoga, Asana, Pranayama, and meditation practices for spring harmony. Now, you may be very familiar with these practices in your life, you may just be getting into them. You may be a little skeptical. Y'all know, no judgement either way. Our yoga practice our yoga asana practice, particularly pranayama and meditation, they're tools for us to come back to ourselves for building self awareness by witnessing ourselves in the moment. These practices can and should you know I don't drop shoulds very often but various specific situations where I do and this is one of them. These practices can and should change with the energy present and dominant within us. scuze me as well as in nature season. So oftentimes, when I'm teaching align yoga, restorative practices, whatever it is, I'm often asking, How are you feeling right now? Are you feeling balanced and in harmony? If so, great? What do you need to do to maintain that? If you're feeling unsettled? How would you feel a little bit more grounded? If you're feeling intense or critical or angry? How might you create space for yourself to kind of just fan those flames? Soften the intensity? If you're feeling dull, lethargic, sad, towards depressed? How can we soften the hold of those things and uplift energy a little bit more? And how what might we meet ourselves there through many different ways that might be the pace of our practice, that might be the timing of things. It may be the amount of time you spend in a pose, it may be the transitions, it may be the variation of a pose that you choose. I mean, so many ways we do this. Now, when it comes to our asana practice, in general, the spring is a really good time for a pace that's faster than your winter practice, but not the fastest. It's great for heat building on cold mornings and evenings. Also a precise muscular effort. So attention to detail here that focuses on heart openers, back bends and forward folds and ends with a Shavasana. That's shorter than winter's, but not non existent. Either. We don't want to, you know, omit it altogether, or rush through it. Something else I really focus on throughout the entire spring practice is the transition from one post to another, which I just mentioned real quickly. This is something that I typically do during the glitch periods, you know, that two week period between the end of one season and the start of another. But since winter and summer are such drastically different seasons. With all the spring happenings like in between as one big transition from one intense season to another. I find that spotlighting transitions in our practice is really important as well. But the real guide in our asana practice is how you're feeling in the moment, and how the energy of the season is landing within you. As I said at the very beginning of this part of our conversation, because your agency over yourself and autonomy over your practice are front and center anytime I'm teaching and it should be anytime you're in any other class or a practice you're doing on your own. So in the spring sanctuary, we'll talk about things. Generally speaking, when it comes to your asana practice, and also discuss more specifically, these are some optional paths on your journey based on each energy state. So you can call on them based on what you might need to maintain what you're feeling or establish a little bit more balanced energetically. And the same attention to detail goes for pranayama meditation in the spring or any season. On the cooler days a warming Capella bati breath is supportive, as it is also for digestion and abdominal toning and also releasing accumulation from the winter. However, on the days when the qualities are more variable, alternate nostril breathing might be grounding. And when the temperature starts to rise, or in any other day, you might find full torso breathing or yoga, breathing, being spacious and softening intensity. For meditation, the focus here something that will be really supportive is creating space, for breath for awareness for reflecting for visualization and imagination of renewal, initial planting, and a slow steady growth will be really, really beneficial in your meditation practice. I'm really excited because in the spring sanctuary, I'll be leading these practices in a very uncomplicated way, so that you can facilitate these practices on your own outside of the sanctuary. And of course, you can always join us in weekly classes within the holistic self care collective as well. We're coming up to the year anniversary next month friends, stay tuned for celebrations there. I am thrilled because I am planning on facilitating a spring meditation within the sanctuary in a completely new way in a way I've never done in space before. And I'm really excited about it because I'll be offering some unique options to honor the energy present within you as you come to the meditation. And as well as as you experience in meditation, of course, within your own agency and autonomy. And I can't wait to do it because it's just gonna be
it's gonna be really cool. And really cool. Even if you're the type person who's like meditations, not for me, come and try it. And remember Remember, you can always abandon anything you need to write. But this creativity, this newness, this is going to lead us to our next exploration, our fourth exploration with our time together, which is creating space for creativity, and a reconsideration of rest practices for the spring season. Because of the newness that is felt in spring, the initial nests, I made up the word, the softness, the extension of winter's expanse, this is a fantastic time to tap into your creativity, creativity, whether it's simply within your creative practices, or maybe it's creativity in the way you interact with your life, or maybe its creativity in how you practice self care. Friend, spring is not a time for rigidity, rigidity, but rather, it's a time that favors spontaneity, trying new things and playfulness. And it's also a very important time, as is every season for rest. And a crucial part of this process is going to be to identify rest practices that will be supportive for you in the spring, you guessed it based on how you're feeling and how you're affected by nature's characteristics. These may look slightly different, or a lot different than your winter rest practices. And that's okay. And remember, rest doesn't mean just napping, sleeping or being sedentary, watching TV or listening to music. It can be those things. But it can also be so many other things including meditating, breathing, being in nature, and really so much more. So what are some of your favorite spring Rest practices? What's coming up for you? Maybe you're not sure, or maybe you don't have any spring specific practices, no worries, it's not too late to identify or develop some. That's another reason to join me on Saturday. This entire year, since we began 2023, we've been talking at least once a month about seven types of rest. Those are physical, mental, emotional, social, creative, sensory, and spiritual. And so on Saturday, we're going to spend some time considering practices in each of these categories, and options that will be aligned for you based on these seven categories. But also, based on how you're feeling in the moment and what energy is present. It's going to be pretty cool. And creativity will be in space will be kind of the way we facilitate all of that inquiry. And the final, the grand finale of our time together. It will be spent connecting with your sankalpa your heart's deepest desire for the year and recommitting to or maybe even redesigning or designing in the first place. Small sustainable steps that will help you be resourced through December 31. If you've been listening since the first few episodes of this podcast, this is episode 17. I've asked you numerous times how do you want to feel in 2023? Because we started in December? How do you want to experience life this year? What do you want to experience? Now it's fine if you've haven't been around since then, right? Cuz I'm gonna give you all the information needed to know anyway, the practice of a son culpa the centering of your heart's deepest need, listening to the call from your soul. This is so much different than setting a new year's resolution, which is typically set by your egos need, or directed by society standards, you know, based on self improvement, what healthy looks like what fit looks like, what you should be doing, right? But my friend, here's the thing. Clarity on your heart's deepest desire, a commitment to listening to the call of your soul, are game changers and living a lifestyle of Mindful self care. The reason is, rather than just floating around in the void, which sometimes we'd love to do, right, but not for extended period of time, usually, or engaging in self care, like in a reactive or playing catch up way where you're constantly behind and constantly trying to figure out things on the fly. Instead of that, being very clear about how you want to feel, why and what basic steps will move you in that direction are essential in your desires coming to fruition, as well as navigating challenges that are sure to arise, including getting off course, abandoning the course and falling into huge ass potholes. Because you know, that's gonna happen, no matter what. So, in this part of the session of the sanctuary, you'll reconnect with your sad culpa. Maybe you've been connected to it since January or whenever you made it, because January is not the, you know, deadline. Or maybe you didn't make one so you'll have the chance to We'll explore one, if you're down, totally no pressure there. Or maybe you feel like you need to or want to make a new one. And within the space and prompts offered by yours truly, you'll zoom out on the year and create small sustainable steps that will resource you through the end of the year, or will begin to because my friend, listen, listen, listen, listen, listen. The reality is if you want to feel at ease, or if you want to feel grounded, or study or energized, or motivated or clear, whatever it is that you want to feel, if you want to honor your soul's call, your steps have to be in alignment and honor that. Your steps have to be in alignment with and honor that. If you want to achieve this thing or do that thing, your steps have to be in alignment with that and honor how you want to feel in the process. So for instance, if you want to feel at ease and also achieve this particular thing, but what you end up doing is running yourself into the ground. In order to get there, the ease you expressed wanting to feel has gone out the window, if you want to disrupt if you want to dismantle but you also desperately desperately need softness and tenderness. But what you're doing is a hole but what you're how you're bringing yourself to the work of disrupting and dismantling is only with intensity only with pushing. Well, what you want it to create for yourself, is not being centered. So my friend, this process, honoring how you want to feel answering the call from deep down in your soul. It requires a rewiring in your brain. And a new plan of action that will allow you to strengthen your protection of your well being in a deeply personal way. One that is aligned with all of your needs and all of your wants. Friend, you are a protector of so many things your work your family, your plants, animals, your ancestors, elders, culture, traditions, the environment and universe, your wealth or I should say the well being and safety of others. preserving your well being in a deeply personal way will allow you to be resourced to continue to show up to all of that authenticity, and authentically. truly connected to yourself and others without having to deplete your energy stores in the process without having to uphold that cycle of burnout. So my friend, my final invitation to you give yourself permission to be inspired and accept what you need. Ultimately, build a haven within yourself for tender renewal and surviving capitalism for these next two months. Bring how you want to feel mentally, emotionally, physically and energetically to life and live how your soul wants to feel for the rest of the year. So my friend joined me this Saturday, April 22 from 11am to 2pm. On Eastern Time on Zoom. The recording will be available for one month. You can register at Steff gallante.com/spring And I've included the link in the show notes. Until next time, my friend please be kind and gentle to yourself just as you would those who are most precious to you, whether that's a human, animal, baby or a plant. I'd love to hear your thoughts about any of the support and guidance I provide in this episode. So feel free to reach out and share that with me I do really love to hear from you. If you've been loving the show, please share it with your nearest and dearest and most of all, leave a review or rating. You my friend, you are a badass and you are enough. Now go and be your favorite self and be well
