Most of us were not taught how to be in our bodies. To express what we were feeling from the inside out. Or see our sensations as a guide towards greater wisdom, insight and intuition. No, we were most likely encouraged to leave our bodies. See them as the enemy, and not to trust them. And so we remain disconnected from them, missing out on living fully embodied. We might find it hard to feel anything, let alone express what we are experiencing.  But learning how to identify and verbalize...

Whether you consider yourself a people pleaser or peacemaker or just can’t stomach the idea of a hard conversation - you might be a conflict avoider. Maybe you find yourself making jokes when difficult topics come up, maybe you’ve been holding onto a relationship for too long, maybe you bottle up how you really feel only to have a passive aggressive episode later… These might be signs that you are afraid of addressing conflict. For many of us, we believe that the risk of being judged, being...

How vital is your life force energy? Do you know what drains your energy? Do you know what charges you up? Do you know when your energy is the highest, and when it is the lowest? Do you honor your natural energetic rhythms? Probably not. Most people are running on fumes, feeling exhausted and trying their best to simply push through. Work a little harder. Work a little longer. But the number one contributor to success is not time or effort, it’s energy! When you learn to manage your own...

Ever feel like you are rushing to get to the finish line? How often are you fantasizing about your happiness being somewhere in the future? How frequently do you wake up thinking you should be further along than you are? Or maybe you believe that feeling secure, whole, or at peace is dependent on things externally changing. If any of this rings true you might be suffering from what one of my mentors, Robert Holden calls “Destination Addiction.”  In this episode, I explore what it’s like when...

Have you banished parts of yourself? Most of us have parts of ourselves that we believe are unworthy, shameful, unlovable, and just not okay. We all have parts of ourselves that we reject and ultimately exile. When you believe parts of yourself are a threat to your worthiness you will do everything in your power to push that part of yourself aside and deny the truth of who you really are. But the truth is that you can never cut off the parts of who you are. It takes so much effort and energy...

Happy New Year! The “New Year, New You” energy is in the air! And with it comes a lot of pressure to hurry up and get moving. But we don’t have to buy into the New Year hype. There is a different way to ease into a fresh year that feels more connected to the natural world. What if we started the year in sync with the cycles of the moon? What if we could honor the season of winter that we are in? What if this time could be about slowing down, reflection, and rest?  In this episode, Mary...

One of my favorite embodiment tools I use with my coaching clients and teach in all my retreats and workshops is something called the “Body Compass.” This is a “somatic” tool, meaning its wisdom is found in the body, not the mind. And just like an actual compass, your body’s compass is intended to keep you on track and pointed towards your true North. Your true North is when you are living YOUR path. When you are in alignment with your truest self. So how do you know if you're pointed in the...

The holiday season is officially here! For many people the holiday season has looked different the last few years. There is a deep longing to return to our normal traditions and normal patterns during this time of the year. While social media might have you fooled, most of us do NOT experience a perfect holiday. Many of us experience family conflict, financial stress, religious pressure, an overwhelming feeling of not doing enough… during this time of the year. We often even have a holiday...

Just like in nature, our lives go through different seasons. Think about Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter and consider how your own life might mimic the changes we feel as the seasons shift. If we truly want to live in alignment, we have to factor in the season of life we are in, and learn to respect all seasons equally. Winter is just as important as Summer. When we honor the season we are in, we can make decisions that are in alignment with where we are both on the micro and macro level....

What does “success” mean to you? Most of us have a blueprint given to us from our family of origin or society about what success means. Very rarely is our idea of success defined by what we actually want in our life. This leaves us feeling exhausted, heavy, fearful, stressed… the list goes on. Success should feel good. The getting there and the accomplishment. In order to begin to redefine success, we first have to get to the roots of where our current definition of success comes from. Once...

Join me and my friend Dr. Rob Murray on this episode as we talk about ghosting. Have you ever been ghosted? Or maybe you are a ghoster? It has become common in our culture to manage our fear and anxiety of letting people down by just vanishing. When we do this we often leave people in a place of having to finish the story on their own. Our brains desperately want closure and often the way we fill in the blanks of that story is rooted in our old stories of rejection and shame about who we are....

No one ever tells you that this process is going to be hard. Creating a new life is going to cost you your old one. That dismantling can be painful. But there is hope in the process. However, we can’t overlook the becoming. The pain, the crying, the sadness, the darkness… It is all part of the process. You have likely built your whole life to avoid experiencing pain. As you raise your awareness and you start to feel your feelings it is going to be raw and painful. All the old stuff is going...

It’s human to want to avoid pain. We often find ways to avoid loneliness, sadness, anger, grief, heartbreak… because these emotions leave us exposed and vulnerable. But just like joy, happiness, pleasure, wonder… They are a part of life. It’s all part of the human experience. However, we can get better at being with the pain. Being conscious and fully alive requires us to become proficient in feeling our emotions. Most of us didn’t grow up in spaces where we were given the skills to process...

The journey of self development usually starts with mindset work. We first learn how to shift our thinking and create more empowering beliefs. But that’s just the 1st layer. There is a deeper layer that involves connecting to the body. Our body has its own language and holds information, feedback, and wisdom that when understood, can be a game changer to how we live our lives. While our mind holds 20% of the information we need in order to create desired change, the body holds the other 80%....

The word “alignment” has been showing up a lot for me recently. The word itself gets thrown around A LOT. But what does it really mean to live your life in alignment? The only way to be in alignment is to be in integrity with your truest self. We don’t have to be doing everything perfectly. We just need to be operating from a place of wholeness. When we recognize the symptoms that something isn’t quite right, then we can begin to take necessary steps to begin to come back to a place where we...

It feels so good to be back with you after spending the past several months recalibrating and processing the last couple of years.  And last week in a coaching session, my client had a major breakthrough around identifying the root of her trigger and I knew it was the topic to kick off Season 4. See we all get emotionally triggered from time to time, and it can set off a big unexpected and “irrational” reaction inside ourselves. So what do we do? In this short episode, I explore what is...

Join Mary and her best friend Lindsley Brooks as they dig in deeper to talk about spiritual bypassing. When we experience emotions that feel “too big” or “too painful” we tend to find all kinds of covert ways to avoid “the work”. Many positive things that we incorporate into our lives with good intention can end up being used to help us cope and bring us comfort when life throws hard things at us. Prayer, meditation, astrology, spirituality, and religion are all things we might find ourselves...

Join Mary and her former part time co-host and best friend, Lindsley Brooks as they dig into how emotional intelligence affects your interpersonal relationships. We all learned in our childhoods emotional survival techniques. We learned how to be seen, get love, and gain approval. These emotional blueprints and patterns often come with us into adulthood causing us to abandon ourselves in order to attempt to get our needs met. How do we learn something new? How do we learn to be in a healthy...

Join Mary and her very special guest, Elizabeth A. Stanley, PhD. Liz is a professor of security studies at Georgetown University. She speaks, teaches, and writes widely on a variety of topics related to resilience, political psychology, civil-military relations, and international security. She is the award-winning author of Paths to Peace and Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive during Stress and Recover from Trauma. She is the creator of Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness...

Join Mary as she offers the second of several guided meditations in Season 3. As you tune in to the regular episodes and learn more about your emotions and feelings, it’s important to slow down to integrate what you are learning. Mary is a certified Kundalini Yoga teacher, meditation and breathwork teacher, and brings over a decade of experience in this area. In this guided meditation, she will guide you through creating a safe and loving space and learn how to feel some of the more...

Join Mary and her very special guest, Tracy Principi. Tracy is trained in Somatic Experiencing and Somatic Internal Family Systems helping men and women navigate childhood wounds and addressing family of origin and generational trauma. Her own unresolved childhood trauma and the most shameful secret of having a narcissistic mother and no father led her to her own freedom by finally talking about this subject of not having a loving parent. This mother wound was at the core of her addictions,...

Join Mary and her very special guest, Robert Murray. Hailing from Cape Town, South Africa, Rob graduated from Stellenbosch University before moving to the United States in 2002. His professional journey led him to complete a Master’s degree in Social & Civic Entrepreneurship, and he is currently completing a Doctorate in Transformational Leadership. Rob is the CEO and co-founder of Transformed Leader, a leadership research, coaching, and consulting company that helps mission-driven...

Join Mary as she offers the first of several guided meditations in Season 3. As you tune in to the regular episodes and learn more about your emotions and feelings, it’s important to slow down to integrate what you are learning. Mary is a certified Kundalini Yoga, meditation and breathwork teacher, and brings over a decade of experience in this area. In this guided meditation, she will guide you through an easy basic check-in. You’ll be invited to come into the present moment to observe your...

Most of us were taught that there were “good” emotions and “bad” emotions. Some were sanctioned and some were not. And so we walk around thinking that if we feel the “bad” emotions, we are weak or crazy. And so, as we move through life, most of us are chasing happiness but unwilling to feel the discomfort of grief, sadness, loneliness, shame or guilt. But as Brene Brown says, “When we numb the dark, we numb the light.” In order to feel fully alive, we have to give ourselves permission to feel...