Welcome to the Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder. Our goal is to help you be your most healthy, confident, beautiful and joyful! Our topics focus on health and wellness (physical, emotional/mental and spiritual), holistic nutrition, medicinal plants, natural rhythms and cycles, beauty, meditation, self care and rituals, spirituality and personal empowerment.
Feeling Good means we are healthy, balanced, peaceful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of our perfectly imperfect lives. Feeling Good requires us to tune in and nourish our whole selves, which is made up of the four Solluna Cornerstones: our food, our bodies, our emotional well-being and our spiritual growth. Feeling good naturally leads to also looking good, in a much more powerful way from glowing skin created from within, a beautifully healthy body, radiant energy, and a greater level of overall well-being and personal growth.
Thursday is our community show, where I cover a themed topic and answer four questions that come right from members of our community, just like you! We are here to support you in living your most beautiful, inspired and joyful life.
I’m your host, Kimberly Snyder, founder of Solluna, New York Times best-selling author and nutritionist. I’m so grateful and honored we found each other!
This week’s topic is: Simple and Healthy Wellness Rituals
Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question and 3 more sent in by Beauties just like you, listen now to find out!
Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/
[Questions Answered]
Ava – Cambridge, Massachusetts
I work in the city and have to take the subway in from Cambridge to Boston, and back. Do you have any helpful tips on how to create a wellness ritual while on a packed train? Seems like the perfect way to utilize my time but not sure where to start.
Kennedy – Charlotte, North Carolina
If you had to choose, which ritual is one you wouldn’t miss, your morning or night time ritual, and do you have some simple tips for my overall wellness?
Kaylee – Atlanta, Georgia
I feel like I have a handle on my eating and exercise routine but am now working on adding healthy activities beyond food and working out. What are some simple tips on getting started?
Stacy – St. Augustine, Florida
I’ve been checking out some wellness rituals online but many of them don’t seem realistic. Do you have a doable ritual for a midday routine to re-energize myself while at work?
Inspirational Thought Of The Week
Simplicity and consistency are two of the most important attributes for big change.
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Want to know what to expect from other episodes of the “Feel Good Podcast with Kimberly Snyder”? My passion is to inspire and empower you to be your most authentic and beautiful self. We offer interviews with top experts, my personal philosophies and experiences, as well as answers to community-based questions around topics such as health, beauty, nutrition, yoga, spirituality and personal growth.
The intention of the Feel Good Podcast is to well…help you really Feel Good in your body, mind and spirit! Feeling Good means feeling peaceful, energized, whole, uniquely beautiful, confident and joyful, right in the midst of your perfectly imperfect life. This podcast is as informative and full of practical tips and take-aways as it is inspirational. I am here to support you in being your very best! I have so much love and gratitude for you. Thank you for tuning in and being part of the community :).
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[RESOURCES]
- The Magic of Morning Rituals
- The Power of Ritual
- How Meditation Can Improve Performance at Work!
- Choosing Rituals Over Resolutions To Improve Our Lives!
- Creating Conscious Daily Rituals with Ruby Warrington
- Probiotics
- Detoxy
- Digestive Enzymes
- Feel Good Starter Kit
- Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
- Be a part of the community Join the Feel Good Circle
Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:
- Overcoming Grief with Kristin Meekhof & The Magic of Morning Rituals
- The Importance Of Self-Care With Ruth Berhe & The Inflammation Weight-Gain Connection!
- Elevate Your Mood With Charlynn Avery & The Truth About Yoga
- Benefits of Acupuncture With Dr. Pina LoGiudice & How to Give Your Mood a Makeover!
Transcript: Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
Kimberly Snyder: Hi, Beauties! Welcome back to our Thursday Q&A podcast. We have a very practical, very useful podcast for you today around the topic of simple and healthy wellness rituals. So as we fully believe here at Solluna, it’s really small, simple steps that add up to make big changes, and you don’t have to overhaul your whole life. You don’t have to spend hours slaving in the kitchen. There’s little tweaks, little things that you can do even in your commute time and as you’re getting ready for work and in downtime that can really boost your wellness, boost your beauty, and help you feel really good. So we’re super-excited about our topic today.
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Kimberly Snyder: Before we take our deep dive, I just want to give you a little request reminder to please leave us a review on iTunes. If you have heard me say this week after week and not done anything yet, I get it. It’s very easy to get sidetracked and to procrastinate, but maybe today is the day, and it takes only a minute or two. Just head over there. Your review could literally be a sentence. What it does, though, is really help to support the show. As we know, we live in a time where reviews are just really helpful in other people finding our message and our show. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much in advance. I really, truly appreciate it. We’re all here to love and support each other, and we put a lot of love and energy into the show, and your review is a really great way to help spread it.
Kimberly Snyder: Also, I wanted to give a little reminder to please subscribe to our show. This is so that you don’t miss out on any interviews or any Q&A podcasts, to really stay connected into the flow. I think it’s a great form of self-care to hear this and really stay connected to your wellness, to just really taking care of yourself week in and week out. It’s very easy to get side tracked. It’s very easy to fall off the wagon and have a difficult time climbing back on. So back to our thought about small, simple steps. Just really staying tuned in every week is really going to just help to keep you on track. So subscribing is always a really positive thing.
Kimberly Snyder: We now have our amazing Katelyn on the phone with us, on the line with us, who is in New York. She’s gathered the questions. She’s super connected to the community. Hi, K, my love. How are you today?
Katelyn Hughes: Hello, everybody. I’m doing well. Fall is here. I have my pumpkin spice soy candle burning next to me.
Kimberly Snyder: Oh, nice.
Katelyn Hughes: Getting in the mood. I’m enjoying the cooler weather that has been rolling in here in New York, so it’s not as hot as it was. We had a crazy hot summer. So excited to see what some of these tips are going to be to incorporate wellness rituals into our daily life that people can start to implement. We know fall’s here. Seasonal depressive disorder starts to kick up, and people’s wellness rituals are more important than ever this time of year, so…
Kimberly Snyder: And this whole idea of rituals, I think, is really important to highlight. It’s not just doing a big yoga retreat once a year or getting a couple colonics or getting a nice facial here and there. I think all that is great if that resonates with you. But this concept of the rhythm, dinacharya, a Sanskrit word for daily routine, the small but consistent steps are where real wellness is to be had.
Kimberly Snyder: This is a long… This is like the ultimate marathon, K, of our lives. This isn’t… We’re never going to get the best results if we just bounce around, or we’re really on for a week, and then we go here and we feel like, “Oh yes, I just did this incredible spa retreat,” but then we go back to our life, and we don’t have a sense of grounded ritual. So again, the rituals can be very, very simple, as we’ll get into today. They can be just things that you can really execute throughout your day. But I think there’s a real power in consistency.
Question 1: Do you have any helpful tips on how to create a wellness ritual while I’m on a packed train?
Katelyn Hughes: I agree. Let’s see what your thoughts are, and we’ll go into the first question from Ava. She’s living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I work in the city, and I have to take the subway in from Cambridge to Boston and back. Do you have any helpful tips on how to create a wellness ritual while I’m on a packed train? Seems like the perfect time to utilize my time, but not sure where to start.”
Kimberly Snyder: So Ava, there’s two rituals that immediately come to mind when I hear your question. These are the rituals that I used to do when I lived in New York City, and I used to have a lot of time on the subway. So I think that commuting time can either be used to clear your mind, or it can be used to fill the time with information, listening to online courses or eBooks or a podcast. But since we’re talking about wellness rituals, I like the idea. I think this is a really precious time for commuting because you’re taking the train and you’re not driving, right? Driving time is more, like I said, like eBooks and information and podcasts. Since you’re not driving, this is a really great time to do two things. Number one, journal, write. Explore what’s going on, rewrite your goals. Let the writing come out of you, especially if you can get a seat. I used to always journal on the train myself.
Kimberly Snyder: And number two is to practice mindfulness and meditation. Again, if you can get a seat or even if you’re standing up, you’re listening to a guided meditation and you have your headset in, your earphones or whatever. You can tune out the noise. You can tune out everybody else. You can get those noise-canceling headphones, too, which I think would be a really great investment if you are regularly commuting and you are regularly going to do a guided meditation or stillness practice.
Kimberly Snyder: And then a lot of them have music in the background, so you can start to just really relax your body and get into your breath. I mean, what an amazing use of this time. And you’re not going to look like a weirdo because a lot of these breathing practices are pretty subtle. Or even if there is movement, you can do it very subtly. Or maybe you don’t do the movement and you just… Like, the Solluna Circle, the confidence one that we had last or this month rather, sorry, does involve a mudra with your hands. It’s a power position with your right and your left fist stacked, and then you expand and you come back. It’s like the Danda, the strength of your spine. So there’s a little bit of movement there.
Kimberly Snyder: But anyways, you don’t have to do that on the subway if you feel like a weirdo. You can literally just breathe and listen to a guided meditation. Close your eyes, put on your sunglasses even. I’m sure a lot of people take naps on the train, so it doesn’t look weird to close your eyes. And I think for a busy person that is commuting, Ava, back and forth and running around, what better use of that time than to unplug in that sense and connect and really work on the spiritual growth cornerstone. I think that would be amazing because you don’t have to drive.
Katelyn Hughes: I love that idea of doing a little mini meditation. I wouldn’t have thought of that, but a lot of people always say, “I don’t have time. I don’t have time to meditate.” And when you are… I always thought it was the benefit of commuting. I used to have to commute, before I did this for a living, three hours each way.
Kimberly Snyder: Oh, my God.
Katelyn Hughes: And it was very, very intense. So I had a lot of time, and I would take the Staten Island ferry and sit, and I would nap and do all of that. But anyhoo, I just think that for people who have to drive, that’s a lot more stressful on the body. So people that do take public transportation, this is a great tip for them.
Kimberly Snyder: Mmm, mmm, mmm.
Question 2: If you had to choose, which ritual is one you wouldn’t miss, your morning or nighttime ritual? And do you have some simple tips for my overall wellness?
Katelyn Hughes: Okay, Beauties. So we will go into Kennedy’s question, who’s living in Charlotte, North Carolina. “If you had to choose, which ritual is one you wouldn’t miss, your morning or nighttime ritual? And do you have some simple tips for my overall wellness?”
Kimberly Snyder: Kennedy, thank you so much for your question. No hesitation, morning ritual is it. And the reason I don’t miss my morning ritual is because if I don’t do it, I feel off the whole day. How you start anything really impacts, I think, the whole day, the whole project, whatever you’re working on. This is something that Yogananda said as well. How you start anything is going to impact it as a whole. So to me, having the time, even if I wake up 20 or 15 minutes early or whatever it is, to have my hot water with lemon and glowing green smoothie, SBO probiotics, the whole thing, I know that it’s going to make my whole day better, so I don’t miss it.
Kimberly Snyder: So if you’re finding that you just don’t have time to do everything, pick one thing that you can start to build on. It could just be taking your probiotics. It could be drinking the hot water with lemon, or it could be doing a three-minute meditation in the morning. I think doing a morning meditation is also really key because it tunes you to your breath. It helps to start the day from a much more relaxed state of your nervous system. You feel more connected. You know what your body needs. It’s easier to stave off food cravings. And your digestion, your circulation, your endocrine system, everything’s going to be functioning better because you’re coming from a much more relaxed, powerful place.
Kimberly Snyder: So when it comes to simple tips for your overall wellness, sure, I would say during the day at work, let’s say you work in an office, I would make sure to stock ginger. A simple wellness thing you could do every day, because we all need snacks and we want to move around, make a ginger tea every afternoon. Just slice it up, and your office probably has hot water, and just drink that every day. It seems really simple, but ginger is very powerful. It helps to promote detoxification. It boosts your metabolism and your circulation. So it’s just a nice practice to get into. I’ve gotten into this myself. I drink ginger tea every day now. I think it’s nice. I think it also helps you avoid spending money at the coffee place and having more caffeine and all that. So I think a ginger tea is really, really positive.
Kimberly Snyder: I also think that, you know, small steps, the body self-massage is something that I think is a really great, really impactful on your overall wellness. I was just talking about the nervous system, and the more I go into learning more and more, the more I realize that our nervous system has such an enormous impact on our happiness, on our well-being, on our organ health. And self-massage is one of the most powerful things you can do to soothe your nervous system. So just rub some lotion on your feet, or put a little coconut oil on and take a shower. Whatever it is, it’s the very small, feel-good stuff that is great for you.
Kimberly Snyder: And number three is stock up on your go-to easy snacks. For me, go-to easy snacks are so you don’t resort to worse alternatives or spending a lot of money out. So for me, my go-to snacks are bananas and sprouted hummus and gluten-free wraps, and I even have gruesome greens bars in my fridge if I need to go to, and almond butter with celery sticks. Just have some go-to snacks that will help to keep you on track. And I think that’s a nice little ritual, is like, oh, you know, no matter what, you don’t have to buy snacks. You have them in your fridge at home.
Kimberly Snyder: A really nice ritual for your overall wellness, and this may or may not be possible for you, but either after lunch or dinner or both to go for a 10 to 15 minute walk. Now, Ayurvedic medicine teaches that when you walk after you eat, it really does help to promote better digestion. It gets your oxygen going. It’s wonderful. Just a really nice practice to do. It’s very simple. So if you can incorporate a walk after your meals, I think that’s really wonderful as well.
Kimberly Snyder: Another thing that adds up in a big way is reducing blue light in your life, in the evening especially. So just taking 10 seconds going on your iPhone or your device and making sure night mode is checked, which means that from sundown to sun-up, your screen will be more red rather than blue, and it will not overstimulate your brain, and you will have a deeper level of sleep.
Kimberly Snyder: Another ritual that I think is really important is to spend more time cleansing your face. I used to rush cleansing. I used to kind of slap water on, and I realized that if you’re not really deep cleaning, and I think it should be at least a minute to two minutes of lathering up to get all the pollution and to help get the inflammation off your skin, to allow your products to penetrate deeper, to help remove old skin cells, then your skin is never going to look really bright and good. And so that’s a nice, overall skin wellness practice. Since our skin is our largest organ, that is so wonderful.
Kimberly Snyder: Another practice that I like a lot is tongue scraping. I’ve got to be honest with you, I’m not a oil puller. I don’t like it.
Katelyn Hughes: Good for you.
Kimberly Snyder: I think it’s… I could never get into it. Whether it’s sesame oil or coconut oil, I just think it’s kind of gross, and I just… I don’t know. The time. Like, I just couldn’t get into it. But what I do like about the Ayurvedic morning routine is tongue scraping, and I scrape my tongue almost every morning. So you can go on Amazon or wherever and get a stainless-steel tongue scraper for under $10. And what you do in the morning is you scrape your tongue literally like 10 times or so, and it helps to remove this mucus, this material that’s coming up and trying to get out of your body. And it also stimulates different organs. It takes about five seconds, and it’s just a wonderful practice to do that you can add in and to feel like, “Oh, I’m doing something really great for myself.”
Kimberly Snyder: My friend Justin, who I stayed with in Bali, who’s a really dear friend of mine, I just showed up one day at home, and there was a tongue scraper sitting on my front door. He had ordered it for me, and he said, “Hey.” He goes, “This really changed my life.” I said, “Oh, wow!” So then I started doing it, and I was like, “Yeah, you’re right,” because it feels good. We all know when you squeeze a black head or like something comes out, it’s very satisfying to feel like, “Oh, I’m getting this mucus out of my body.” So that’s another practice that I really love.
Kimberly Snyder: Another practice that… Sorry. I could go on and on about this, but there’s another one I want to say, and I want to hear some of yours, K. For my mindset and to feel strong and powerful as I go into the day, I always make my bed. And I know this is… For me, if I had to put it into a cornerstone, I would say this is the emotional well-being cornerstone because it just makes me feel calm when my room is put away at and it’s not cluttery and everything’s in its own little place. It gives you a sense of completion. There’s task completion with finishing making your bed.
Kimberly Snyder: So these are some ones that initially come to mind. I would say build from the morning up. If you’re going to put most energy into one part of your day, it would be the morning, as I suggested, because of the impact on the rest of your day. And then just find the ones that perhaps really resonate with you.
Katelyn Hughes: I love tongue scraping. Kim told me about it a few years back, and when you said it, my eyes lit up because I had forgotten about it. I don’t do it every day, but I have it in my bathroom, and I was just thinking, “Oh, I haven’t done it in a while.” But it really does just feel good, like that cleansing. So that’s definitely on my top list.
Katelyn Hughes: And my mornings, I typically like to start… I always tidy up. For me, starting the day clean and organized in my physical space then translates to how I do everything else, kind of like what you were talking about. If my space is messy, then I’m off. So I always kind of start with making sure everything’s in place, and that’s a rhythm that feels good to me before I move on to something else. So that’s a tip, keeping your space clean. And I have a lot of stuff, like my books and my trinkets, but it’s organized for myself. So it’s maybe not as feng shui as some people like to keep their places, but just what feels good to you in your personal home.
Katelyn Hughes: And I want to just challenge everybody, as we head into the break here, to maybe think about one of the things Kimberly just mentioned that you want to try to add into your morning routine. Maybe take a couple of minutes and just write down on a piece of paper, if you’re sitting, some ideas that you might want to try to incorporate and challenge yourself this week to add them in. So with that, we will be back in just a few moments, and Kimberly will answer the last two questions.
Break
Kimberly Snyder: Thank you so much, K. We’re back from our break, and I loved what you said before about writing down something that you want to follow. So this whole idea of small, simple steps to move us forward, we just need to pick one, pick a direction, and run with it, and then we can start to add on. So it’s not this… There isn’t this whole gravity to it, like, “Oh, my God, this is so serious.” It’s like, “Oh, that sounds good. Let me go with that.”
Kimberly Snyder: Or what I think could be really nice is to pick one thing to follow in each of the cornerstones. This is what we do every month in the Solluna Circle, whether our theme is overcoming self-doubt or whatever. There’s food. There’s elixirs. There’s just different aspects of journaling prompts and meditations and so on and so forth.
Kimberly Snyder: So you could say, “Okay, I’m going to add four wellness rituals to my life right now. For food, I’m going to add more sprouts because Kimberly always talks about sprouts.” In our community, we love them. They’re full… Super inexpensive. You could sprout them yourself, and they’re just full of living enzymes and charged with nutrients and power.
Kimberly Snyder: “From a body perspective, I’m going to do a DIY mask once a week. I just want to work with my skin more, whatever it is. And then emotional well-being wise, I’m going to start to really note some triggers and some things that start to keep me upset. I get upset over and over again, and I want to just sit a couple minutes every day and journal and think about one trigger and really take it head on. And then fourthly, with my spiritual part of myself, I’m going to take five minutes every day, and I’m going to go to that park near my work after work or before work or whatever, and I’m just going to sit in the grass and listen to the birds and just have more stillness in my life in general.”
Kimberly Snyder: So that’s an example of just taking a moment to look at the four areas and picking a small, but significant to you, ritual. And I want to emphasize again the power of consistency. It’s not about taking big leaps and then falling off and trying to do everything perfectly or right on at first. It’s better to take these small steps, but to stay consistent. I can’t say that enough. I think consistency, consistency, consistency, and not 100%. But consistency to me is striving for 80%, which I think is doable and realistic, more realistic.
Katelyn Hughes: And there’s research that shows when you take time to write something down, and not only write down what you’re going to do, but the place, like you mentioned the park, and maybe the time you’re doing something before or after work, that there’s astronomical difference in consistency and being able to stick with it, with making that commitment of writing it down and making sure you know when and where you’re going to be doing the activity you want to strive for. So I think that that’s great for everybody to kind of maybe today spend time journaling and add that in…
Kimberly Snyder: Today.
Katelyn Hughes: … today because you have to do it today because we don’t want to procrastinate, because then there’s always something that’s going to come up. So making that commitment to yourself. If you’re listening to this show and it’s resonating with you and there’s things that you’ve been wanting to do and you haven’t been doing them, just make that time. Write, when the podcast is over, for five minutes. We’ll challenge you for that. This is a challenge podcast.
Kimberly Snyder: I love that.
Question 3: I feel like I have a handle on my eating and exercise routine, but I am now working on adding healthy activities beyond food and working out. What are some tips on how to get started?
Katelyn Hughes: And we’re interacting with you guys, and we’d love for you to do that. So without further ado, let’s get into Kaylee’s question. Kaylee is living in Atlanta, Georgia. “I feel like I have a handle on my eating and exercise routine, but I am now working on adding healthy activities beyond food and working out. What are some tips on how to get started?”
Kimberly Snyder: Oh, wow! I love this question, Kaylee, because I love the sense of connection that you have that, wow, it’s not just about food and working out. Wellness isn’t just about eating and exercise, which probably for most of us and definitely me was what I thought being healthy was. Oh, isn’t it exercise and food? But then we start to… We go forward on our journey, and we realize, “Hey, I can be really on point with my food, and I can exercise. I can be super fit, but I’m actually not really that happy. I still have a lot of anxiety. I have a lot of sleeping problems. I have a lot of confusion in my life.” So this perfectly helps us review the cornerstones. So food, Kaylee, boom, you’ve got it. Body, right now you’re feeling really good, connected to your body, you’re working out. Boom.
Kimberly Snyder: So then the two other areas I would say to look at is your emotional well-being and your spiritual growth. And the simple tips on getting started between those are, I’ll say it again, we just talked about it, but I’ll say the meditation. Some practice. It could be guided. You could listen to a song, music. Close your eyes. Breathe. Now remember, at mysolluna.com, we have a bunch of free guided meditations for you guys if that is helpful. They’re absolutely free. You can just have them. There are tons of other guided meditations out there as well that may resonate with you.
Kimberly Snyder: But get started and commit to it, Kaylee. I would say morning… Start with the morning, and then you could start to do morning and night, and you could start to just give yourself five minutes or three minutes. That practice of tuning inward is going to have incredible benefits, including on a physical level.
Kimberly Snyder: As we spoke about earlier, your nervous system is going to start to reset. Your glandular system, your liver, your organs, everything benefits from mindfulness and deeper breathing and connection with the body. And everything starts to relax, and stress starts to dissipate in your body. So that is one of the tangible benefits.
Kimberly Snyder: And then the intangible benefits are, of course, just… or physically intangible, but you feel it. You just feel more connected. You feel stronger. You will feel your own power. And to me, when you start putting more effort into meditation, you will start to be guided more about journaling and practices and community and circles and ways to further your journey and your life’s path. But I think just very simply taking the moment to breathe and to get into some sort of meditation practice is going to really help. If you commute the way that Ava, I believe, said at the beginning of our podcast, if you commute, you can also use that time for meditation. It’s a very small… very easy, rather, simple way to really maximize your commute to be the most powerful thing, I think, you could do with your time, full stop.
Kimberly Snyder: Plus all of the tips that we talked about, you know, Katelyn talking about tidying and task completion. When we are in a tidy space… Marie Kondo will talk about this. What you see influences your thoughts. It influences your experience of life. So if you can be more tidy and more clean, then you will not feel as constricted and stressed in your mind. You’ll start to feel more open. And I think that that is a beautiful place to be in, a beautiful state to be in that will just really help facilitate and support your growth.
Katelyn Hughes: And sometimes I feel like we don’t give ourselves enough credit. So Kaylee, even just being at this point of saying, “I’m okay with my eating and exercise. I want something more,” that’s something just to sit and go we’re grounded enough to even be aware of what’s going on. A lot of time in today’s society, we’re constantly bombarded with all the social media and messaging and friends and going out. So just to take a minute to feel that… being proud of yourself, that you’re working on yourself, and that you’re moving towards these other cornerstones.
Katelyn Hughes: I know, for me, I’m always beating myself up, and I always have that not-enoughness. So that was just something, while you were talking, K, that I thought to share with Kaylee because I feel like I often need that reminder that we are enough and that we are doing a lot better than we often think we are.
Kimberly Snyder: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative). I love that, K. It’s true. It’s really true.
Question 4: I’ve been checking out some wellness routines online, but many of them don’t seem realistic. Do you have any doable routines for mid-day to energize myself while I’m at work?
Katelyn Hughes: Yeah. We all need that community emotional support together sometimes. Okay. So we are rounding out to our last question from Stacy, who’s living in lovely St. Augustine, Florida. “I’ve been checking out some wellness routines online, but many of them don’t seem realistic. Do you have any doable routines for mid-day to energize myself while I’m at work?”
Kimberly Snyder: Hmm. Stacy, thank you so much for this question. I think this is really practical, and I think it’s really important because we’re busy. There’s a lot going on, and we don’t have time for elaborate routines perhaps right in the middle of the day, but this is the moment where our energy starts to dip, and we may encounter a slump or a rough spot, and that doesn’t feel good to any of us. So mid-day, I will say, if you can go for a walk, move your body, go around the office if it’s super hot in Florida. Try to walk for 10 minutes in the middle of the day to just get your body going, to get oxygen getting to your brain.
Kimberly Snyder: Number two, because oxygen is so powerful, because the breath is so powerful, if you can just go in your office or your cubicle or wherever, and you can be peaceful, and you can do some deep breathing or some pranayama. And again, we have guided meditations with breathing practices like this. When I do a breathing practice in the middle of the afternoon, it resets me and gets my energy up.
Kimberly Snyder: The reason this is important is because it’s not just about getting more energy. It’s stopping the depletion of energy. Let’s say 2% of your energy is going out every moment because your shoulders are hunched. So you’re actually holding up muscles in your body, and your energy is going out, right? Or thoughts in your mind, you’re going through a circular thought pattern. It’s kind of like with food and what we talk about with Detoxy and cleansing, where it’s important what you put in, but just as important what you don’t eat and what you’re taking out of your body.
Kimberly Snyder: So these pranayama breathing techniques, and again, you can check them out on our site or find ones, they just help reset you. So again, you’re not just hunching and holding in your body. They will allow your energy to flow more. You could do them for one or two moments, and it’s really powerful.
Kimberly Snyder: Number three, rooibus tea and tulsi tea are herbal. They are easy to source. They’re inexpensive, and they have natural energizing qualities to them, and they don’t have caffeine. So mid-day is when, I think… And you can add sliced ginger because it’s so warming and helps to boost your circulation and your energy. So I think that having a nice hot tea, I mean, iced if you want it to be, but I always take the hot tea, even when it’s super hot out, I think that’s a really beautiful practice to give yourself a boost in the day that doesn’t… So you don’t have to rely on caffeine or sugar.
Kimberly Snyder: And back to food for a moment, our first cornerstone. We have a lot of great recipes for things like truffles and chia pudding and things that I certainly eat in the middle of the day. The power protein smoothie that gives me that boost that I’m looking for, but it isn’t setting me back. And it is delicious, and it’s helping to carry me forward through the rest of the afternoon. So I think the food part is important.
Kimberly Snyder: But go back to the cornerstones. Body, we talked about walking. And then emotional, you could also… Again, if you are experiencing guilt, shame, anger, resentment, you’re going to feel exhausted. So maybe just taking a moment to process, write in your journal about your feelings, or you could take one journal prompt a day from the Solluna Circle or whatever. Just getting it out of you, I think, is really healing and really beautiful.
Kimberly Snyder: And you can combine them, right? You can go for a walk. You can listen to music. You could go sit outside and write in your journal for a moment. And then doing a mini meditation is also super energizing and super helpful in connecting you back to yourself. That’s another thing you can do in your office or in your car or outside on your lunch break or wherever, and that’s something I definitely recommend in the middle of the day. I always tell you, K, don’t I? I’m like, “All right, K, do a mini meditation now. Go reset yourself.”
Katelyn Hughes: Yeah, because I’ll always be texting, “I’m so anxious.” And Kim will reply, “Time for a mini meditation.” And I’m like, “Oh yeah.” I need that reminder. I was thinking too, K, we have so many great podcasts with Charlynn Avery with aroma therapy, and I recently just got a little hand spray that has orange in it. So I’ve been using that, like spraying it on my hand and breathing that in during my mid-day slumps to get energy. So we can link to some of the other podcasts on today’s show notes for you guys also.
Kimberly Snyder: Thank you, K. That’s a great point to bring up, especially the one where Charlynn does talk about energy. She loves the citrus ones. I know she loves the clementine and the lemongrass and ones for energy and also the peppermint one. I think she talks about just taking a whiff or getting a diffuser for your desk. I think that’s great. Thank you, K.
Katelyn Hughes: Yeah, I’ve been into aroma therapy lately, so I figured we’d share that. And we do have so many great resources, and we have some DIY recipes as well we could link to if you guys want to make your own. So with that, K, we’re heading to that time of the show if you have any specific thought for us to round out what we’ve been talking about.
Thought of the Week
Kimberly Snyder: Yes. It does round it out. It’s sort of a little bit of a synopsis. It synthesizes everything we talked about today into a sentence, which is that simplicity and consistency are two of the most important attributes for big change. So simplicity means it becomes part of your lifestyle, right? It’s not this overly complicated formula with charting. You’re just not going to stick to that. So something that’s simple, boils it down to its essence, and it becomes like clockwork. You can bring in hot water with lemon, and you can bring in a couple of essential oils on your desk. Simple is powerful always. It’s not that everything that’s simple is powerful, but the practice of following through with simple steps is going to add up to big change.
Kimberly Snyder: And secondly, consistency. It’s way better to just, again, strive for 80%. Then try one thing for a couple of days, a couple of weeks. Then move to the next thing and bounce around. You really want that longer-term consistency for big change. And even as you mentioned, K, if you’re in the day-to-day life and you don’t think about how much progress you’ve made, sometimes it’s good to measure. Sometimes it’s good to write down where you started with something, because it’s amazing when you start to see, “Oh, wow, I really was consistent with this, and I stuck to it.” And then you start to see how it adds up in a big way, which is really awesome to see.
Katelyn Hughes: Yeah, it’s gratifying to look back and reflect on how far we’ve come, because sometimes we see ourselves every day, and we don’t notice the change, where if you see a friend and they’re like, “Oh, we really noticed this energy about you, or your skin’s so bright, or whatever it is.” And we don’t see it because we look at ourselves or are with ourselves every day. So I agree that that’s great to have those reflection reminders.
Kimberly Snyder: Yes. Yay! Well, thank you so much, K, for gathering the questions as always. Thank you so much, beauties, for tuning in for today. I think it’s great to just stay connected. You never know if an idea comes that’s going to move you in a different direction or help you shift. And even if not, I think just tuning in to the community and to the positivity and to our energy flow is always going to help you because we’re all here to lift each other up, to help keep each other on track, to help each other move forward.
Kimberly Snyder: So podcasts are great because you can just fit it in on your commute or your walk or whatever you’re doing, and it keeps you tuned into taking care of yourself. So thank you for taking this time for yourself. Remember to keep your questions coming. You can submit them at mysolluna.com in the podcast section. Always love to hear what you are wondering about, what you need extra support on. So we will look out for that.
Kimberly Snyder: Sending you so much love. I’m always here. We are here. You can write into us. You can let us know anything that… whatever. We’re listening always to hear how we can support you. We really, really care about our community, and we authentically want to hear what is going on with you.
Kimberly Snyder: So that being said, we’ll be back here on Monday for our next interview podcast. Remember, we have tons of resources over on the website, mysolluna.com, from recipes to learning more about our Solluna Circle. We have daily inspo for you on Instagram at underscore Kimberly Snyder. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Sending you love, and we will see you back here very soon.
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