Thank you to the 15+ people who attended the Gentle Seated Yoga class today! It made my day to see so many of you there.
I was able to record and edit the session – see below. I’m making this one free to download, so you can have it locally on your device and re-watch as often as you like. I apologized that it doesn’t have captions – hopefully following along visually gives you the gist.
You can do this session from the floor or in a chair!
I’m hosting a free, SUPER GENTLE yoga class 2pm US Eastern Time (UTC-5) New Year’s Day! Suitable for any body that can sit in a chair for 30 mins without feeling dizzy. Come join me for half an hour of seated stretches and expansive breathing to start of the year with a few minutes of calm and flexibility. 2024 is going to need it…
I spent a lot of 2023 wondering what direction(s) I wanted to go with Fenhaven Wellness. I dedicated time to Fenhaven in a way I’d never done before – half of my working hours or more starting in mid-September. I consulted marketing experts, got a new logo that I LOVE, and made a few starts at blogging, videos, and Instagram, which didn’t really “take.” I attended the Great Lakes Herb Faire to get a sense what ways people weave herbs into their lives. I started seeing new bodywork clients again, and found I’d really missed hands-on healing. Almost reflexively, I planted herbs – and what what seemed like an extraordinary amount in April now looks like a tiny patch to me!
The 2023 herb garden. Clockwise from the big leaves at 1 o’clock: elecampane, tulsi, lemon verbena, scallions, skullcap, calendula, hibiscus, anise hyssop, plus more things hiding from view!
Another key moment of ’23 was releasing myself from the thought that I should – or even want – to make my living solely with my wellness business. I like my “day job,” and it gives me many useful things: financial security, colleagues I like, a different flavor of job challenges, and external direction. (Self-employment can be very tiring when you have to come up with “what should I be doing today?” as well as doing the work!)
When I let go of trying to “grow my business,” several things happened. I started doing what sounded fun, instead of doing what marketing folks told me I should be doing. And by following fun, I fell in love with making tea.
Festive Digestive tea steeping with a view of the fen
As you’ve probably noticed, teamaking totally took over my brain, my heart, and my hands in the last quarter of the year. I haven’t had that much fun with plants in years. It’s just so freaking satisfying to put together a tea that is tasty and functional and then share it with others. Tea Club has been an absolute blast the last few months! I put together holiday gift boxes, and I have thoughts for two new ones (one for when you have The Crud and one for people dealing with grief). The spate of strictly tea-related ideas is slowing down, so I wonder if the honeymoon of teamaking might be passing now – or I might just be tired from/of pushing the commercial side through the holidays. In 2024, I know I’ll be exploring what my tea interest wants to mature into.
Gorgeous deep color, thanks to a boatload of turmeric!
I also started having more ideas of things to do in the wellness realm. Savory Better Broth (one of my favorite herbal blends) was a small step from teamaking. Sourcing large quantities of local herbs has me thinking about collaborations with local farmers and cafes. Conversations with friends and my own bodyworkers has me thinking about hosting my own super-gentle somatic yoga class online. And my interest has rekindled in developing a “resilience curriculum” around skills for food/health/mental health/community that would be a self-paced exploration for adults and teens (especially homeshoolers).
So there’s a bit about my thoughts as 2024 approaches. Now, your turn!
I’m excited to announce that I will be sharing my new course, Self-Care for Restoration, as a name-your-price series beginning this week!
If you’ve had a viral illness or a prolonged bout of stress, it’s not unexpected to feel tired. But ongoing, crushing fatigue could be a sign of a more serious condition. We’re told to “rest a lot” and “don’t push yourself,” but figuring out how to care for yourself, and then following through, can feel like just another chore competing for your limited energy. This course will help you understand why rest is so important after illness or stress, how this bout of fatigue might be different from normal tiredness, how to measure your physical and mental energy expenditures, and how to pace yourself for complete recovery.
This self-paced online course may be right for you if you:
Are exhausted from months or years of chronic stress
Have mostly recovered from Covid and still don’t feel back to your usual levels of energy
Have a pattern of overdoing it, then crashing
Are trying to “take it easy” but can’t seem to get fully rested
Aren’t really sick anymore…but haven’t really gotten well
This course has practical advice for giving your body the space it needs to recover and will guide you to build a recuperation program that suits your unique needs. The program has three phases:
Radical rest
Active recovery
Reconditioning
In each phase, I quickly sum up the physiology of what’s happening in your body during that phase, the #1 thing to focus on in each phase, and practical tips for helping yourself progress to the next phase of restoration. Then I share activity recommendations and a physical practice video and go into more detail on the how-and-why behind my recommendations, if you have the interest and energy to explore deeper. I’ve even developed a week of deeply nourishing menus to reduce the work of feeding yourself well at this time!
There is no timeline for recovery – instead, I help you learn to follow your body’s cues for what it needs. Chances are, if you are experiencing the symptoms above, the old rules about what your body needs don’t apply right now. I’ll teach you what body signals you need to pay attention to, how to track them qualitatively and quantitatively, and how to know when it’s safe to increase your activity.
Because I feel strongly that this course material needs to be out in the world and accessible to as many people as possible, I am offering it on a pay-what-you-will basis – including “free.”
Weather got you down? Dreading your day at work? Recovering from COVID or another part of the 2022 “tripledemic”? Depressed? Just enjoying your warm, cozy bed too much to haul your hindquarters out into the cold Michigan winter? (Not that I’d have any experience with that…ahem…)
Here’s a five-minute stretch to ease you into some movement. By the time you’re done, you may well find that extracting yourself from the covers has lost some of its horror. And if not…well, you’ll have moved your body a bit and gotten the blood and oxygen moving.
I’m demonstrating this on my massage table, but I promise you, you can start this routine in bed under the covers!
I sequenced these movements to move you in gentle stages from “hiding under a blanket” through “de-creakifying your body” to “emerging to start your day.” Only takes 5 minutes!
