Do you love your body?

If you’re like most of us, the answer is probably uhhh, no...does anyone actually love their body?

I don’t know, but I think it’s worth trying, even if it feels overwhelming and very far away.

It takes so much energy to criticize yourself. Do you even realize how much energy you waste fighting with yourself everyday?

This month in Radiance Collective we are engaging in deep conversation and embodied practice around loving, celebrating and reclaiming our bodies.

Why? So we have more energy to live our lives! Love our people! And care about way more important things!

Here are some questions we pondered last night:

• Why don’t you love your body?
• Who benefits from this?
• What would happen if you stopped fighting with yourself?

I invite you to take a few breaths with each of these questions or a few minutes journaling on them.

I want to acknowledge that there are a million reasons why you don't love your body. You’ve been told and shown again and again th...

Can you relate to this?

You’re going along doing the things – maybe that’s a job you’re good at, a relationship you love or a family you care for and everything feels great – that is, until it doesn’t.

In 2018 I finished my master’s program, quit my full-time job, and took a sabbatical to travel and be with myself. In 2019 I started my 1.5 year deep dive into coaching and completed my certifications.

And in 2020 I started my coaching business. I coached my first low-fee client, got my first full-fee client, launched my group course Pleasure as Medicine and things kept growing from there!

As I’ve hit this one year milestone of running my business I’m taking time to evaluate.

And here’s what I noticed:

I have only ever run a coaching business during a global pandemic, the worst fire season in California history and the racial justice reckoning of our generation.

Needless to say, it’s been a lot.

It’s been hard work holding my own vision, holding the vision for what I am creating ...

I have a question for you today. Here it is:

Do you know who you are without work?

Before you keep reading, notice what happens for you when I ask that. Check in with your body. What do you feel? Is there disbelief, anger, confusion, tension or constriction? If so, it’s all welcome.

Many of us have carefully honed strategies we’ve been practicing since we were kids to feel safe, secure and loved in this wild world. Some of these – like working (a lot) – are so normalized in our culture that we don’t even realize that something feels off.

The strategies I see most often in my clients are the achiever, giver, people pleaser and perfectionist.

For me, working is a big one. The time I took off in 2018 was the scariest and most liberating thing I’ve ever done. It was the first time in my entire life I had given myself space from working, being in school or doing some other extracurricular activity. And it rocked my sense of self and identity.

There’s nothing bad or wrong about these, ...

Have you ever considered how much you actually like not feeling good?

I know it’s a bizarre question, but trust me it’s one worth investigating.

Humans are neurologically wired to focus on the negative, what's not working, what needs to be fixed (google negativity bias.)⁠ In fact, we spend inordinate amounts of time trying to solve problems that don't even exist!⁠⁠
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This is partly what it is to be human and have this big ‘ole brain that's designed for SURVIVAL (aka problem solving and scanning for threats) vs THRIVING (aka actually enjoying life).⁠
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But this doesn't have to be your reality⁠.
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There are very practical strategies you can use to see the good, feel the good and actually let yourself take in the good.⁠
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Here's what I mean by taking in the good (or rather what I DON'T mean)...⁠
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😱 Do you know someone who is rich but miserable?⁠
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😱 Do you know someone who lives in the most beautiful place on earth but doesn't enjoy it?⁠
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😱 Do you know someone or are you that someone who has everyt...

Last week I was hosting a three-day live workshop called Alive Again and we had dozens of amazing women signed up! The first two days were amazing, but you’ll never guess what happened.

The worst case scenario...and I had to reach for all the pleasure and self-care tools that I teach my clients to take care of myself, work through my emotions, and make a decision to pivot the event!

If you identify with being a perfectionist and being very aware of how you are perceived by others, watch the video to hear how I worked my way through this one.

This is what taking radical responsibility looks like – even when you didn’t do something wrong!!

Curious? Catch the live video replay here

When do you find yourself performing and not showing up authentically? Where do you get stuck in perfectionism and the injustice of things going wrong even when you did everything “right”?

XO Alyssa

P.S. Want to learn the self-care and pleasure tools that help me move through hard shit like this?

Send m...

Do you find yourself feeling exhausted and overwhelmed about everything on your plate?

In the spirit of undoing the burnout-inducing patterns of overworking and overgiving, I'm always asking myself how I can do less, while having more fun and creating a bigger impact.⁠
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I have a pink post-it on my desk that I look at everyday that asks me how I need to care for myself and how I need to show up for work that day. After I map that out, I ask myself:
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How can I make this all feel more fun, safe, and pleasurable?⁠
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So many of us overachievers are driven by deep feelings of unworthiness, fear, doubt and complex emotional trauma that drives us to work harder because we learned early on that achievement was a way we could earn love.⁠
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It's healing to interrupt this pattern by creating a sense of safety, ease and pleasure as you work.⁠
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Curious how this works? Intrigued that I talk about pleasure and burnout in the same sentence?⁠

Join us for the free workshop series Alive Again I’m leading next ...

Let my people go surfing is the name of a book by Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. It’s also a great summation of my biggest insight from this week!

Monday morning I woke up and found a reminder on my calendar for work I was scheduled to start this week and no part of me felt excited to do it.

I could have forced myself through but thankfully, I had a call with my coach that day and she told me to go surfing instead of working. All of my good-girl hard-working programming wanted to protest and defend why this thing HAD to get done today...but I knew she was right.

Instead, I finished what needed to get done and I went to the beach. I gave myself full permission to be in play instead of work mode and the next day I felt so lit up, energized and full of creative ideas. I was even able to finish the behind the scenes work to get my latest free offering ready for you in record time!

And since I know you’re dying to hear, the idea that came to me was for Alive Again a free live...

As I was strolling on the beach this week, pondering life (as one does), I had an insight that might just be exactly what you need to hear today.

I caught myself wondering how much of the self-care and pleasure practices I do are exactly for me...let me explain.

I was first introduced to mindfulness and meditation through my former employer, Google. I felt super fortunate to take classes like Search Inside Yourself, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Managing Your Energy and Emotional Intelligence that were all incredibly helpful on my journey.

Through this education, I learned fundamental skills to help me manage my energy, emotions and mental health. But the thing is...these skills weren’t really intended for me or my own well-being and happiness, they were intended to make me a more effective and productive employee.

Our intentions matter!

Can taking care of your body and emotional health help you be a more successful employee – yes! Should that be your primary intention? I ar...

Is your brain on your team or fighting you every step of the way?

If most of us answer honestly, our brain is definitely not on our side. It’s constantly telling us why we’re not good enough or can’t possibly have the things we desire. Why is that?

Well you see there’s this concept called resistance. You can think of it like a principle of nature – whether it’s resistance in an electrical circuit or friction generated by pushing something heavy –

Resistance is a universal reaction to change

In human beings, resistance can look like avoiding doing the things you know make you feel good, like meditating or exercising, in favor of what is comfortable and known, like perhaps Netflix ;)

Our minds are literally designed to resist change because what is known is always safer than what is new. To our brains, the unknown is always where potential danger lies..

To get your brain on board with your dreams and desires, you have to give your brain a chance to voice and vent all the subconscio...

I’ve been wanting to share this huge shift in my life but wasn’t sure how so I shared it in our weekly call for The Radiance Collective last week and it sparked so many perspective shifts and amazing conversations that I wanted to share it with you too, so here it goes:

I’m at my heaviest and have never felt more sexy than I do right now 🔥

Body image is a huge topic with my clients and we all carry so much shame and conditioning around what we look like and that little number on the scale (which is funny because I don’t have a scale and I’m just guessing that I’m at my heaviest 🤷‍♀️)

Most people think that weight is a key indicator of health and happiness and they couldn’t be more wrong. There’s an entire body of research called Health at Every Size and if you’re baffled by this concept, I encourage you to go look it up, read a book, whatever you do.

I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been and have never felt more sexy. I feel more sensual and lit up by my body than I’ve ever felt before. ...