People of color and marginalized communities, who face a disproportionate amount of societal stress and burden, are often the ones who need self-nurture the most. But because of the economy around self-care, it is inaccessible to them, let alone enough time for themselves to think about how they can care for and nurture themselves.

That is why, today, I asked Elena Velez, founder and director of Community Restorative Training, to be here with us today to speak on this very important mission she is on — to educate and bring accessibility of self-nurture to marginalized communities.

In this episode, Elaine explores our relationship with rest and the resistance many of us have towards it. She shares her own journey of learning to embrace rest and the importance of balancing busyness with rest. Elaine encourages listeners to have an honest conversation about their relationship with rest and to reframe the idea of deserving rest. She emphasizes that rest is the foundation for success and caring for oneself and others. The episode concludes with a reminder to constantly listen to our bodies and adapt our forms of rest as our circumstances change.

Have you ever sat yourself down on the couch at the end of the day, feeling completely exhausted from a busy day, and yet, you couldn't quite remember exactly what you did? This is because we often fill our days somewhat mindlessly with busy activities that feel urgent (but may not be so important), and by the end of it all, you still didn't complete what you set out to do that day. And forget about personal down time!

In this episode, discover a simple experiment that can help you reprioritize your days so that you can include your self-care, family time, work, hobbies, and other activities without having to choose. This experiment is inspired by Stephen Covey, author of "7 Habits of Highly Effective People."

Can "setting boundaries" with other people be yet another form of finger-pointing rather than turning the mirror back to ourselves?

How do we know whether we are trying to avoid a healing opportunity (which can be messy and painful) by "setting boundaries?"

Listen in to this week's {potentially} controversial topic with my very dear sister Irene as my guest.

We speak about:

• How we can miss out on healing opportunities and bypass deeper self-work when we are too quick to set boundaries with people who trigger us

• Recognizing good stress, and balancing stress with rest for better personal growth, healing, and development

• The need for everyone to reinvestigate our old emotional wounds rather than never ripping off the Band-aids

We are often driven by the insecure need to keep accomplishing and achieving things in this busyness culture. When this need is driven by the feeling that no matter what we do, it never is enough, then success becomes a constantly moving target. This guided meditation is designed to anchor ourselves back into what we already have, what we have already accomplished, and the fact that who we are, right here and right now, is already enough. There is no need to prove anything else to anybody, and especially, ourselves. 

Have you noticed that oftentimes when asked: “how are you?”, many reply by saying: “oh, I’ve been super busy.”

Busyness seems to be a badge of honor nowadays. There’s this constant need to do, achieve, perform, and succeed. While there is nothing wrong with accomplishing goals in healthy measures, when there’s an obsession with it, when the drive to accomplish stems from feeling insecure about ourselves, then that could be a recipe for burnout.

In this episode, we discuss the burning (pun intended) question: "Is burnout real?" We will dive into the definition of burnout, what leads to burnout, and my own personal story of how I burnt out 3 times (and probably still counting) and how I regained my inner strength by nurturing myself.