Embodied Soul

26/03/2026

From my experience, most people don’t have problems with their body because they overloaded it or lifted something too heavy.

It’s usually the opposite.

They’ve chronically under-loaded their body… and over time, that turns into a fear of loading it at all.

Progressive overload is actually a very safe way to build strength.

You make small, gradual increases, and your body adapts.

It gets stronger.

But if you never increase the load, your body adapts to that too.

Without load, your body gets weaker and weaker.

I genuinely feel like I can work with almost anyone and help them get stronger.

But the few people I’ve seen go backwards tend to have two things in common:
1. They’re not showing up consistently
If you barely show up, your body just keeps going backwards.
2. There’s a fear of loading their body
They want to stay with mobility work because it feels safer.

Mobility has its place. I love mobility, it’s a really important way to add variety and diversity to our movement diet.

That’s why my classes are called Mindful Mobility & Heavy Lifting.

But we do need to load the body.

And we have to keep progressively increasing that load if you want to get stronger and more stable.

And the thing is, you don’t get over fear by avoiding something.

You get over it by doing it anyway.

That’s courage.

Anyone who comes to me feeling hesitant is already being courageous.

If you’re ready to be courageous and start loading up your body, send me a message about my Mindful Mobility & Heavy Lifting Sessions.

Send a message to learn more

20/03/2026

My deadlifting day is a commitment I make to myself and one I honour, week after week.

It goes in my calendar before anything else.

Over the past couple of months I’ve had a bit of a hip ni**le. So I dropped the weight by 15kg, stayed consistent, and worked right at the edge of what felt safe, not beyond it.

Even with slight injuries, the body responds well to appropriate loading. Not too much, not too little, but enough to maintain strength, support healing, and rebuild trust.

Now my hip feels good again, and 100kg feels lighter than it did 6 weeks ago.

Heavy lifting isn’t just about lifting heavier each week.

It’s about building trust with your body, meeting yourself where you’re at, and keeping that commitment to yourself.

19/03/2026

Yes, exactly.

Everybody gets older.

Not everybody gets stronger.

That part is a choice.

16/03/2026

With petrol prices going up, the cost of living increasing, and uncertainty about what might happen next, a lot of people are feeling fearful.

And it’s understandable. When the systems we rely on feel unstable, it can make the future feel frightening.

But I’ve noticed that I don’t really have that reaction anymore. In situations like this, I don’t feel fear. I actually feel a little bit of excitement.

It wasn’t always that way.

I used to feel that fear. At one point I was somewhat of a prepper. I lived on a block of land where I tried to grow most of my own food. The thing I worried about most was running out of water, so I invested in three massive water tanks.

But something shifted in my perspective after walking Te Araroa.

I started that journey with fear too. There’s a saying that “you pack for your fears”. On Ninety Mile Beach I carried three litres of water because I was afraid of running out.

But when you spend months carrying everything you need on your back, sleeping in noisy huts or a tiny one-person tent, filtering water from rivers, and walking long distances to the next place to rest or the next town to resupply, you start to realise something.

Most of what we think we need, we actually don’t.
And most of the things we fear we couldn’t handle, we probably could.

I realised there is almost always another water source somewhere. Even if you get a little thirsty first. Even if it’s just a small trickle or a puddle that needs filtering.

That experience taught me something about anti-fragility. Not just resilience, but the ability to grow stronger through challenge.

Now, not everyone needs to walk Te Araroa to experience this. Even going tramping for a weekend can give you a taste of it. Carrying what you need, being out in the elements, and remembering how capable humans actually are.

But there are also ways to build that resilience much closer to home.

Strength training is one of them.

When we lift something heavy, we place stress on the body. That stress signals the body to adapt, to become stronger, more capable, more resilient.

Over time, something deeper develops as well. Confidence.

I can handle difficult things.

Movement practices, whether it’s strength training, mobility, yoga, or time in nature, give us opportunities to experience manageable challenge. They help us build capacity, physically and mentally.

And that capacity changes how we meet uncertainty.

When the world feels unpredictable, when prices go up, when plans change, there can still be a sense of calm underneath it all.

Because somewhere inside you know:

You’ve done hard things before.
You can adapt.
You can begin again.

That’s anti-fragility.

And if you’re not already building it, now is a good time to start.

I have space in several of my Mindful Mobility & Heavy Lifting sessions. Message me to find out more.

13/03/2026

𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗗𝗢𝗡’𝗧 𝗡𝗘𝗘𝗗 𝗔 𝗥𝗘𝗟𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗣 𝗧𝗢 𝗙𝗘𝗘𝗟 𝗪𝗛𝗢𝗟𝗘

Many women are taught, directly or indirectly, that they do.

So they keep searching… dating… compromising… hoping the right person will finally make them feel complete.

Or they stay in an empty, unfulfilling relationship because they are afraid to be alone.

That’s what this program is about changing.

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𝗙𝗜𝗡𝗗 𝗪𝗛𝗢𝗟𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦 𝗙𝗥𝗢𝗠 𝗪𝗜𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗡
A 5-week program for women ready to stop outsourcing their wholeness and begin feeling strong, empowered, and confident in their own lives.

⸻

💫 What we’ll combine:

💪 Nourishing Movement & Mobility
🏋️ Heavy Lifting (learn to deadlift)
⚡ Explosive Power-Based Movement
🧘 Restorative Yoga
🌀 Embodied Processing (trauma-informed)
✨ Intuitive Energy Healing
📖 Journaling & Deep Reflection
🤝 Sharing in a Small, Supportive Group Environment

This program uniquely combines physical strength, nervous system regulation, emotional processing, and intuitive connection — because true wholeness includes all parts of you.

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🌱 My story

I’m a personal trainer, yoga teacher, Embodied Processing practitioner and Theta Healer.

But before that, I lived this journey myself.

I got married at 19 to the first person who showed interest in me.

At the time I had low self-worth and low self-esteem, and I didn’t believe I had other options.

I stayed in a 14 year co-dependent relationship that I didn’t truly want to be in, because I was afraid of being alone.

After leaving, I spent years searching for a soulmate who never showed up.

Eventually I realised something important:

I was still outsourcing my sense of wholeness.

So I made a radical decision.

I packed my life (and my daughter) into a van and decided I was going to take ownership of it.

I spent years exploring, healing, processing my emotions, and learning who I really was.

I did things I once thought impossible — including walking the length of New Zealand.

Then I discovered heavy lifting, and realised just how strong I could be.

I stopped dating.

I stopped looking for someone else to complete me.

And I started to feel whole, confident and empowered within myself.

Now I help women do the same.

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🌸 This program is for you if:

• You stay in a relationship because you’re afraid to be alone
• You’re single and constantly dating, searching, or feeling incomplete without a partner
• You attract partners who don’t truly meet you
• You over-give, self-sacrifice, or put yourself last
• You struggle to express your needs or speak your truth
• You ignore your intuition and second-guess yourself
• You feel exhausted from trying to make relationships work
• You feel “too much” or “not enough”
• You feel disconnected from yourself or your body
• You’ve been consumed by the idea of a soulmate, or have fallen victim to the twin flame story
• You’re ready to stop abandoning yourself and start showing up fully for your own life

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🌟 You might be the kind of woman who:

• Feels things deeply and is sensitive to the energy around you
• Is strong and capable on the outside but doubts herself inside
• Has spent much of life taking care of others
• Finds herself thinking deeply about life, relationships, and meaning
• Knows she is meant for more authenticity, freedom, and alignment

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💖 Where you want to be

• Happy and whole on your own (a relationship is just the icing on the cake)
• Grounded, stable, and emotionally regulated
• Knowing who you are, what you value, and what you need
• Trusting your intuition and inner guidance
• Strong, capable, and independent — physically and mentally
• Living with unshakable inner strength

⸻

📅 Details

5-week program
Tuesdays 10:00 – 11:30am | Starting after Easter | Motueka

Investment:
$175 early bird (booked & paid before Easter)
$200 after Easter

Commitment required for the full 5 weeks.
No refunds for missed sessions.

Small supportive group.

⸻

If this feels like the right container for you, send me a message.

We’ll arrange a free 1:1 chat to see if this program is the right fit.

12/03/2026

11/03/2026

Your regret will rarely be about setting the boundary, leaving the relationship, quitting the job, firing the bad client, or ending the friendship.

The regret is usually that you didn’t do it sooner.

That you tolerated a toxic person for too long.
That you gave so much of your precious life force trying to manage or endure someone who didn’t respect you.

You can choose to walk away from anyone who doesn’t recognise your worth.
From anyone who doesn’t treat you with respect.

You don’t have to stay in something that isn’t right for you just to prove that you’re tolerant or understanding.

When you become more selective about who you allow into your life, the quality of all your relationships improves.

This is something I’m still learning, over and over again.

I stayed in a 14-year relationship seven years longer than I should have. I still feel regret about that. And I’m still learning that I’m not for everyone, and everyone is not for me.

The people who feel good to be around are the people I want in my space and in my life.

If my boundaries feel oppressive to someone, if asking to be treated with respect in my own space offends them, then that person is clearly not the right person to feature anywhere in my life.

Boundaries aren’t walls. They’re how we make space for the right people.

05/03/2026

I agree with this. I think the people who come to me having done pilates have really good body awareness already, they do have good proprioception. And I don’t have to spend time teaching them how to move. So I definitely think there is a role for pilates, but you’ve also got to do the heavy lifting.

04/03/2026

Knowing yourself is one of the most important benefits of heavy lifting.

If you don’t know what your capacity is, how much you can comfortably lift, how much is doable but needs recovery, how much will challenge you, exhaust you, injure you, or simply won’t move off the floor, then you’ll either underload or overload your body.

Both have consequences.

If we don’t load our joints and connective tissue, they weaken. If we don’t load muscle and bone, they diminish.

But if we load beyond our capacity, without recovery, we risk injury or burn out.

So we have to learn what our capacity is.

And that capacity isn’t fixed.

Right now, my lifting is a little lighter.
Because everyday life is a lot.

Solo parenting can be a full-time load. Scouts. School. Activities. Emotional holding. The invisible labour of being the only parent managing a household. Add running a business, holding space for clients, planning and teaching, and refusing to lose myself in it all. It all adds up.

Load is load.

And if I ignore that and try to lift at my peak numbers anyway, I’m not being strong, I’m being stupid and disconnected.

Heavy lifting teaches us that capacity is always changing. Some seasons we add 2.5kg every week. Some seasons we deload. Both are part of strength.

Heavy lifting not only teaches us how to safely pick things up, it teaches us how to safely put things down.

Because when we’re not even aware of everything we’re carrying, the stress, the tension, the unseen emotional weight, we don’t realise we’re allowed to set it down.

Learning to say no.
Learning to prioritise recovery.
Learning to recognise when we’re at our capacity.

That is strength.

The more we practice lifting, the more we practice discernment. Because attempting to lift more than our capacity is not worth the risk.

Send a message to learn more

04/03/2026

You can also drop books off for the Tamaha Sea Scouts when you come to classes at Embodied Soul. My daughter is going to Jamboree this year and we really appreciate any support.

03/03/2026

I love seeing this too.

One of the most underrated benefits of strength training for women is building self-efficacy.⁠
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When a woman believes in her ability to execute the behaviors necessary to achieve a goal...⁠
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She’s unstoppable. 💙💙⁠
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Gimme a 👏🏻 or a 💪🏻 if you agree!