Embodied Soul

30/05/2026

Urgh.

Just to be clear before someone deliberately misses the point:

plenty of people are naturally slim, healthy, strong and thriving.

The issue is the current wellness obsession with being “skinny” at all costs.

When being skinny becomes more important than your bone health, your hormone health, strength, your wellbeing or your relationship with food… that’s where the problems start.

Your health and wellbeing are way more than your body size!

28/05/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about anger, embodiment, and what happens when we carry too much stress in our bodies for too long.

A lot of people are feeling overwhelmed right now. For me, some of that stress has come from trying to buy a house. But I also feel a lot of anger about the actions of this coalition government and political decisions I deeply disagree with, around education, homelessness, Te Tiriti, the weakening of the Conservation Act and the cost of living to name just a few.

I hate injustice, and I think this government is doing some very cruel things to people.

And I think anger in response to harm and injustice is appropriate. Healthy, even.

But the question is: what do we do with that anger once it’s in the body?

Because staying in a constant state of outrage and stress takes a toll. It can lead to shutdown, dissociation, anxiety, irritability, tension, and exhaustion.

Especially as women, many of us were conditioned to suppress anger, internalise it, minimise it, or feel ashamed of it altogether.

But anger is energy.

And for me, lifting has become one of the healthiest ways to move that energy through my body instead of letting it stay trapped there.

There’s something deeply grounding about picking up a heavy weight and feeling fully present in your body. Sometimes the last few reps of an overhead press or bench press are exactly where I channel the frustration and rage I’ve been carrying.

And it helps.

I meditate and practice yoga too, but those practices don’t always process anger in the same way. Sometimes sitting still with anger can turn into stewing. Lifting gives it movement, direction, and release.

That’s one of the reasons I think strength training can be so powerful for mental health.

Not because it makes life easier or fixes the world.�(I’m also spending my afternoon making submissions on some of the bills this government is rushing through Parliament — yeahnahbills.org.)

But because it helps you stay connected to yourself while living in difficult times.

If you’ve been curious about learning how to lift, I still have space in my Friday 10am class. Suitable for complete beginners.

Message me if you’d like to join us tomorrow.

27/05/2026

I remember the first time I ever went to an intuitive energy healer.

She was a Māori woman working with a modality I think was called “blue star healing,” though she was so much more than any modality. She was a powerhouse of absolute empathy.

I lay down on her healing table and she asked permission to read my body.

The first thing she said was: “I see a little girl who absolutely hated school.”

I immediately broke down in tears.

Because going through the school system as a highly sensitive, undiagnosed autistic child with selective mutism had been incredibly traumatic for me.

It was something I had never had seen or acknowledged by anyone, not even my mother.

In that moment, I thought she had some sort of extraordinary ability.

Not long later, I realised I was also a healer in my own way.

And that what people call “reading energy” is not always something mystical. It can also be a language of deep sensitivity, pattern recognition, and attunement to what is unspoken.

But not everyone has access to that level of sensitivity. It was an ability I had that made school absolute hell for me, and something I was shamed for.

I went on to study Theta Healing® and spent thousands on courses, and hours healing myself and practicing readings with swap partners.

Clients actually started coming to me quite quickly. Each session felt profound, and it challenged my skepticism about whether this kind of work even “worked” at all.

Over time, I noticed that being deeply seen is something most people don’t experience very often in life.

And what people call “psychic ability” is often simply a capacity to deeply attune to another person’s emotional and somatic experience.

I’ve sat with many people, reflected back what I sense in them, and watched them cry as things they had carried their whole lives were finally witnessed and spoken into awareness.

I don’t claim to be fully psychic.

There are areas where I don’t get it right, despite a lot of practice.

But I do trust my capacity to notice what sits beneath the surface, emotionally, somatically, and relationally, and reflect it back in a way that creates clarity.

When I first moved to Tasman, before I bought the gym, I did online readings on Fiverr just out of curiosity. Absolute strangers would hire me to scan their energy and tell them what I saw.

I received kind feedback from people all over the world and had people booking sessions with me. People told me I had given words to wounds they had carried their whole lives but could never articulate.

But I stopped after one bad review telling me I was completely wrong in what I saw. This was after about 50 good reviews.

That one experience made me doubt myself. I started to wonder if I was a fraud, and whether it was ethical to continue doing this work.

So I stepped back and moved more into Embodied Processing, which felt more grounded, evidence-based, trauma-informed, and stable.

I’ve been told I was very effective in that modality, because I don’t just guide people to feel their feelings, I stay with them in their experience.

My empathy is not just cognitive empathy (understanding someone’s experience), but affective empathy, actually feeling with them.

This was why school as a child was so overwhelming for me. Imagine being in a room feeling everyone else’s emotions and not knowing they weren’t your own. I was a little ball of anxiety.

And the fact that I can now lead a room in my lifting sessions, without getting overwhelmed by other people’s energy, is a testament to my own healing journey.

But I am cautious.

Because part of me still wonders if I “should” have a counselling degree, or study psychology before doing this work.

And while I’m a big believer in training and education, qualifications alone don’t guarantee attunement. You can sit with a highly qualified therapist and still feel unseen.

There is a difference between explaining yourself… and being met and accurately reflected.

So I don’t claim to be a therapist. I don’t call what I do therapy, counselling, or even coaching.

I’m here to be with you in your experience. To reflect back what is present beneath the surface and help bring clarity to what you’re carrying.

Many people are walking around with experiences in their body and nervous system that they have never had mirrored back clearly.

This is the space I work in.

I’ve had a bit of a break from this work, but it calls me back regularly.

If you are someone who feels misunderstood, overwhelmed, or like you’ve had to explain yourself your whole life, this work might be for you.

I offer 1:1 sessions: 1.5 hours for $100 NZD, in person in Motueka or online.

We work with what is present in your body and lived emotional experience.

To book a session, send me a message.

27/05/2026

It’s important we prioritise training for strength in mid-life.

That’s why we keep our rep ranges low — 5 reps or less for our main lifts, and 6-8 reps for our accessory exercises. It’s why we move towards heavier weights not more reps.

It’s also why I’m slowly introducing power exercises like plyometrics (jumping).

This can all be done safely if you follow the principle of progressive overload, starting light and making small, gradual increases every week.

22/05/2026

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22/05/2026

Oh god. I can look at this now and wonder how anyone could be so stupid to take nutrition advice from someone like this. But once upon a time, I had disordered eating and used to eat like this…

21/05/2026

Consistently is important.

If you are feeling fatigued, you can still come to my class and just focus on mobility and technique without the heavy weights. A de-load day like that is good for everyone once in awhile.

Just moving can make you feel better. So many people say to me that they came in feeling miserable but feel much better after the warn up.

As the weather gets colder, and we need to do more to get the body warm, we'll be doing some plyometrics (jumping) and eventually some sprint intervals too.

19/05/2026

People are often surprised that my classes don’t leave them feeling exhausted. That’s not the intention.

The intention is to create enough of a stimulus to create an adaptation, without compromising recovery.

17/05/2026

The people who stay consistent with strength training usually have two things in common.

First: they’ve done it long enough to feel the benefits for themselves. Maybe they sleep better, feel stronger, have less pain, feel more confident in their bodies, or simply feel more grounded mentally. They also know how they feel when they stop showing up, and they’d rather not feel that way.

Which means you need to give yourself long enough to actually experience the benefits. My suggestion is at least five weeks. If you stop after two or three sessions, you probably haven’t even reached the point where you’ve noticed a change.

Second: they make it a priority until it becomes habit.

Real habit formation comes from creating routines that support you. You know that Monday at 5pm is your strength training class, so you set yourself up for success.

You’ve eaten properly throughout the day instead of skipping meals. You’ve organised a pre-workout snack. You already know what dinner will be afterwards (ideally something high in protein with some carbohydrates). If you have kids, childcare is sorted. If you work for someone else, you’ve made it clear that on Mondays you finish on time for your class. If you work for yourself, you’ve set that expectation with yourself too. You didn’t exhaust yourself the day before with a spontaneous six-hour hike. You didn’t volunteer for something at your child’s school that clashes with your class time. You got enough sleep.

And when you consistently do that, success becomes much more likely.

Eventually, the habit becomes so ingrained that showing up feels almost effortless.

This is also why my classes are structured the way they are. I want them to feel approachable, sustainable, and realistic enough that people can actually keep coming long enough to experience change.

If a geniune emergency comes up, if life really does get in the way and you feel that making it to class will be absolutely impossible — my system is flexible enough that you can switch to a different class that week (with at least 3 hours notice) and not skip your strength training.

My classes are happily looking quite full this week, which is lovely to see.

The exception is Friday at 10am — there’s still plenty of space in that class. It would be a particularly good option if you’re an absolute beginner, although beginners are welcome in any class.

I’ve also had a few enquiries about whether you need to be over 40 to participate.

My classes are designed with 40+ in mind because what you can get away with in your 20s and 30s won’t work in your 40s. Training needs to become more intentional. We can’t ignore mobility or skip warm-ups, and we generally need to be more thoughtful about how we progress our lifts.

But it’s incredibly beneficial to start earlier, and training this way (with heavy loads and lower reps) is absolutely appropriate for women in their 20s and 30s as well.

So if you’re under 40, you’re still very welcome.

I also now have a new mixed class where men are welcome too. This will be at 11:30am on Fridays, although this week it’s been moved to 1pm.

Message me if you’re ready to get started.

16/05/2026

Yep. Sometimes it's hard to admit we need to back off. But doing so keeps you in the game.