Ocean Yoga & Mindfulness

07/28/2025

Love this new piece..It feels like home.

07/23/2025

Why You Feel Worse After Wellness

You’ve tried the apps, the courses, the retreats.
So why do you feel more anxious, not less?

Because most wellness treats symptoms, not systems.
Your body’s screaming for safety while you’re forcing positivity.

🌀 Wellness became performance.
Your healing has to look good now. Ring lights. Quotes. Perfect carousels.
But real healing is messy. Ugly cries. Fatigue. Anger you can’t explain.

🌀 One-size-fits-none.
If you’re neurodivergent, traumatized, or chronically overwhelmed, generic wellness will make you feel more broken, not better.

🌀 Healing turned into a luxury.
The good stuff costs thousands. The rest of us get toxic positivity and $14 apps.

🌀 They sell mindset.
But your nervous system doesn’t care about affirmations when it’s stuck in survival.

🌀 We don’t need more content.
We need integration. Safety. Practices that actually meet us where we are.

❤️ Ready for a different way?

One rooted in ancient wisdom, modern neuroscience, and real human complexity.

✨ Link in bio to explore:

1. HEAL Retreat – Embodied healing for real people.

2. The Bridge – A Community Wellness Gathering, to discuss these topics


Come feel what healing actually feels like.

07/22/2025

Why You Feel Worse After Wellness

You've tried everything. Apps, courses, retreats, affirmations. You're more anxious than when you started. Here's why: most wellness treats symptoms, not systems. Your body is screaming for safety while you're forcing positivity.

🔸The Instagram Spirituality Problem
Wellness isn't about healing anymore. It's about looking healed. Your morning routine needs ring lights. Your breakdown needs to be photogenic. Your trauma needs to fit in a carousel post with serif fonts and earth tones.
Meanwhile, real healing is ugly. It's crying in grocery stores and sleeping 12 hours and not knowing why you're angry all the time. But that doesn't get engagement.

🔸Cookie-Cutter "Solutions" for Complex Humans
The industry peddles the same recycled formula: download this app, try this breathwork, shift your mindset, manifest your way out. One more productivity hack for your nervous system breakdown.

But here's what they won't tell you: if you're neurodivergent, traumatized, or chronically overwhelmed, those generic solutions will make you feel more broken, not less. Your brain doesn't work like the wellness poster child, and pretending it does is making you sicker.

🔸Wellness as Luxury Commodity
Real support costs thousands. The retreats that actually work are for people who can drop $5K without blinking. Everyone else gets meditation apps and toxic positivity.
Healing became a status symbol while people are literally dying from stress, isolation, and nervous system dysregulation. The people who need help most can't afford to get it.

🔸The Guru Industrial Complex
Wellness leaders sell certainty in an uncertain world. They promise they have the answer, if you just buy their course, follow their method, surrender to their wisdom.
But healing isn't a subscription service. It's messy, nonlinear, and deeply personal. Anyone selling you a guarantee is lying.

🔸Nervous System Ignorance
Most wellness approaches completely ignore how your body actually works. They're still treating anxiety like a mindset problem and depression like a motivation issue.

Your nervous system doesn't care about your affirmations when it's stuck in survival mode. You can't think your way out of a dysregulated body.
But the industry keeps selling mind-over-matter solutions to people whose matter is screaming.

🔸Information Overwhelm Disguised as Help
Everyone's burnt out on wellness advice. Another podcast, another book, another 30-day challenge. More techniques to add to the pile of things you're failing to do perfectly.
No one's teaching integration. No one's helping you actually live this stuff. Just more content to consume while your nervous system stays exactly where it was.

❤️A Different Way Forward
What if healing didn't require perfection? What if you could work with your nervous system instead of against it? What if someone actually understood that trauma-informed means starting with safety, not solutions?

This is where real change happens: in the space between ancient wisdom and modern neuroscience. In practices that meet you where you are, not where you think you should be.

In healing that's accessible, authentic, and built for real human complexity.
Your nervous system knows the way home. Everything else is just noise.

If this resonates, check out my website: https://www.jodywilliams.ca/

Looking for peace right now, including a one minute Nervous System Resest.
https://www.jodywilliams.ca/peace

07/21/2025

I sat with Marcus for twenty minutes in a prison chapel.
He hadn't spoken in our Mindfulness Yoga Recovery Group for two months.

When he finally broke his silence, he said: "My daughter would be eighteen today. I haven't seen her since she was seven."

That moment landed hard.
I was raising my daughter alone, and she was seven at the time.

I didn’t try to heal his grief. I didn’t offer perspective about forgiveness or moving forward.
I said, “You must carry so much pain. Your heart has been breaking for 11 years."

He nodded, his jaw tightening as a single tear fell onto the dirty floor.

The next week, Marcus started sharing in the group.
Not because I had the perfect response.

Because he felt what happens when someone witnesses pain without trying to fix it.

Your nervous system doesn't need you to be perfect.
Your nervous system needs you to be present.

Healing isn't about transcending pain
Healing is learning to be with pain without drowning.

Real healing happens in a relationship.
Always.
The most radical act?
Simply being there.

Please read the full story about what Buddhist pastoral care taught me about real healing in my latest blog post.

https://www.jodywilliams.ca/post/what-being-a-prison-pastoral-care-worker-taught-me-about-healing-presence

Also, if you want to experience presence as medicine yourself, checkout my upcoming HEAL Retreat in September. Currently - 10% off Regular Price.
https://www.jodywilliams.ca/event-details/heal-recover-regulate-reset-return-2

And, I have some amazing bonuses, including a custom HEAL Bracelet that we designed specifically to symbolize the themes of this Retreat.

07/20/2025

Your nervous system is scanning for threat or safety before you think a single thought. This process is called neuroception. Dr. Stephen Porges introduced the concept through Polyvagal Theory.

Neuroception is fast, automatic, and below your awareness. It shapes how you feel, act, and connect.

You Feel First, Then Think
You walk into a room.
You tense up.
You don’t know why.

That reaction started in your nervous system.

Thoughts come later.

This is why managing your thoughts is not enough. I tried. Meditation. Gym. Cold showers. Smoothies. I still burned out.

Then I learned my nervous system was not sabotaging me. It was trying to protect me.

What Neuroception Does
Senses threat or safety without conscious thought

Triggers fight, flight, freeze, or connection

Affects your heart rate, breathing, digestion, and posture

You react to a raised voice before you register danger. You soften at a warm smile without thinking. These reactions are not mental. They are physical.

Why This Matters
You do not need more focus. You need more safety.
Safety is not a mindset. It is a state.

Your body only feels safe in what Polyvagal Theory calls the ventral vagal state.
This state supports connection, calm, and health.

Zen Points to the Same Truth
Zen training teaches:

Observe without judgment

Return to your breath

Stay with your body

At Plum Village, I learned mindfulness is not a tool for performance. It is a way to return to reality.

The nervous system is not separate from this. It is central.

How to Support Your Nervous System
1. Feel Your Feet
Sit still. Close your eyes. Focus on your feet.
Notice temperature, pressure, or sensation.
This shifts your attention from thought to body.

2. Track Glimmers
Glimmers are signs of safety. They signal your body to soften.

Examples:

Sunlight on skin

A kind look

The smell of tea

A soft blanket

Write down three glimmers each night. This trains your system to track safety.

3. Use the Breath Like a Switch
Slow breathing helps shift you out of fight-or-flight.

Try this:

Inhale through your nose for 4

Exhale through your mouth for 8

Repeat 5 times

This calms your heart rate and signals safety.

Final Question
What is one safe signal you can focus on today?
Name it.
Return to it often.

This is how you train your nervous system to settle.

Feel like your system needs this kind of reset?
Join me at HEAL.
A weekend retreat for real nervous system support, presence, and peace.
Tree of Life, September 5 to 7.
Only a few spots left.

More information here: https://www.jodywilliams.ca/event-details/heal-recover-regulate-reset-return-2

07/18/2025

You’ve been DOING everything “RIGHT.”
So why DO YOU still FEEL so OFF?

HEAL is a 2.5-day nervous system immersion rooted in science, spirit, and stillness.
SAVE 10% NOW!

You don’t need another productivity hack.
You need a real reset.

It’s not for perfect people.

You’ve held it together for long enough.
Now it’s your turn to exhale.

It’s for anyone who’s been carrying too much and is finally ready to let themselves recover from the chaos, regulate and reset their nervous system and return to life feeling whole again.

🔸 Sept 5–7 | Tree of Life Retreat Centre
🔸 Includes meals, accommodations
🔸Workshops on Self-Compassion, Nervous System Regulation, Positive Neuroplasticity, and more
🔸Nature Walk, hike and swim at the waterfalls, Group Reiki, Breathwork, Restorative Yoga, and more
🔸 Payment plans available
🔸 Only 7 spots left

💥 Limited-time: 10% off → Regular $333.00 + HST

🎁 BONUSES:
Every guest receives:
- A custom HEAL bracelet by OceanFire Designs
- Access to Calmback, your customized personal nervous system AI guide, created by Jody

👉 Learn more + register at https: https://www.jodywilliams.ca/event-details/heal-recover-regulate-reset-return-2

Learn more about Jody: https://www.jodywilliams.ca/
Learn more about the Tree of Life here: https://treeoflifenl.com/

📩 Dm me, or email jody@jodyawilliams with questions or payment plan info.

07/12/2025

Raising Sage Spiritual
Check out the full video Podcast here, where we share our original idea for 'The Bridge', how we met, a few laughs, etc..

✨ The Bridge: A Community Wellness Gathering🗓️ Date: Saturday, September 27th, 2025📍 Location: The Lantern🎟️ Details + Registration: https://www.eventbrit...