11 minute read
GO WITH THE FLOW
FINDING FLOW as a Female Founder
BY WENLIN TAN (SHE/HER)
During the golden hour, the Huay Tung Tao Lake mirrors the warm glow of the setting sun. We take slow, unhurried steps around its periphery, fallen leaves under our feet making soft sighs with each step we leave behind. I am in good company. On my travels through the hilly north of Thailand, I met and befriended Eli, a worldly and welltravelled founder of a digital startup. Our encounter was serendipitous. Eli arrived exactly as I, an aspiring founder, started to seek a mentor.
“You are at the sea’s will. Your success relies on your ability to swiftly read the signs and flow with the changing tides.”
Ruminating over Eli’s words, I find myself returning to a concept I first encountered while studying martial arts: “Wu Wei,” the idea you can reduce unnecessary struggle by using your natural abilities and intuition to flow with your environment. As I build various ventures and communities, they become the center of my life with all my activities, personal and work-related, orbiting around them. As I sail through storms of fatigue and uncertainty, instead of slowing down, I am tempted to hit the gas, driven by my desire to leave a greater impact and succeed. On occasion, my boat reaches safe harbor, but often I barely hold on.
Concurrently, as a student of Chinese medicine and an instructor of Qigong, I become fascinated with the concept of
Yin Yang, two bipolar but complementary qualities and forces, and the Five Moving Forces, often known as the “Five Elements:” wood, fire, earth, metal, and water — cyclical forces which are a result of the interaction of Yin Yang. These cyclical forces are different forms of energy, which manifest in diverse ways: the seasons, sounds, directions, virtues, tastes, smells, and so on. Even our natural instincts. Synchronously, I am gifted timely advice while in an entrepreneurship incubation program:
“The secret to sustainable success lies in working with the seasons.”
Convinced this is an omen, I begin to adopt cyclical or seasonal working, and it starts to revolutionize my life. Identifying separate phases of work across each of my ventures and synchronizing all activities across them so the phases — visioning, planning, executing, reviewing, and reflecting — align, saves me energy while optimizing the results of my ventures. Concurrently, I notice my fluctuating energy corresponds to the phases of my menstrual cycle and realize this cyclical wisdom applies beyond work to all aspects of my life. I start to share this to transform and improve the lives of women around me.
Marie, an ex-corporate banker turned yoga studio owner, is a wood type who thrives on challenge and competition. If you are like her, you probably find executing easy, but struggle with visioning and reflecting. If so, it is crucial for you to set aside time to cultivate the practice of being rather than doing. Conversely, if you are like Justine, a meticulous Reiki healer and a metal type who, in seeking mastery, struggles with procrastination, a shift toward progress instead of perfection would be your way forward. Notice and harness the dominant forces within you. Consider your internal laws, and learn and follow your most effective way of doing.
Modern society normalized a patriarchal style of working that favors producing, taking action, and being outward-facing ceaselessly. In truth, life and beings observe cyclical patterns of birth, growth, transformation, decay, and death. As a female founder, you have an edge over your male counterparts. Inherently and biologically, you are more intimately connected with cyclical wisdom than they are.
“Women cannot, and should not work or live like men.”
This is what I tell all the aspiring female founders I mentor: yoga entrepreneurs, healers, and educators. Synchronize your business, fitness, and social activities with the phases of your menstrual cycle. Reduce unnecessary effort and maximize results by harnessing each quality heightened during each phase. Schedule most outwardfacing and energy-consuming activities (networking, presentations, pitches, social gatherings) during follicular and ovulation when you are most energetic, vibrant, and magnetic. Be compassionate with yourself especially during your premenstrual phase when you are susceptible to fatigue, irritation, and overwhelm. Make your needs known, and request and accept support from others. Pay attention to your inner critic, as it may be voicing truths about situations and people you might otherwise neglect. Schedule downtime to recuperate right before and during menstruation when rest is most needed. In this time, harness your heightened ability for self-reflection by connecting with your intuition, inner visions, and dreams.
In doing so, you will begin to feel as if you catch the wind in your sails. Cruising, each action, movement, and thought of yours will follow inevitably from the previous one. You become aligned with and feel attuned to yourself and the world. +
WENLIN TAN is a women’s health and well-being specialist, curious human, growth consultant, passionate people person, and systems geek obsessed with finding flow and minimizing effort to maximize results. She supports female founders to optimize their health and career success by aligning with the ancient wisdom of Chinese medicine, Eastern philosophy, Qigong, yoga, Somatics, and psychology. She looks forward to supporting you to maximize success and minimize effort by finding flow in your life.
WHY WE ALL NEED A HEALTH COACH
Even a Health Coach
BY ANNIE HAYES (SHE/HER)
Why is taking steps to be healthier so hard? We know we need to drink more water, find time for movement, meditate, and eat our veggies, but why do we struggle to add these things to our daily lives? With all the information in front of us, why can’t we just do it?
The short answer is we think we lack the time and become so overwhelmed with the amount of information, we don’t know how or what to add to our already busy lives. We need balance, accountability, and support when making changes. Change is hard, but with support and an accountability partner to help us implement small steps, we tend to be more successful.
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Where can we find one-on-one support? Or an accountability partner, someone willing to meet us where we are at any given time and give us the compassionate, but hard truth? Enter a health and wellness coach!
Health and wellness coaches are the unicorns of the wellness world. Now let’s be clear, anyone can call themselves a health and wellness coach, but not all coaches train properly or pass the National Board certification exam, an essential test. National Board-Certified coaches undergo rigorous study and training that prepares them to support clients integratively, followed by an assessment exam to ensure quality coaching.
These unicorns of the wellness world walk alongside the client, offering support and compassionate accountability while using cutting-edge, science-based evidence and empathy. Coaches ask hard questions and dig into the root of the client’s issues. Together, they develop practical tools to help the client improve, find daily balance, and create long-lasting lifestyle changes. They can bridge the gap between the client’s current position and where the client wants to be. These unicorns can also be a bridge between patients and doctors.
A simple way to look at this: a doctor tells a patient to lose weight and reduce stress. The health coach plays the accountability and support partner who will create a wellness plan with the patient. Starting with a wellness vision, possibly asking, “What does your life look like when you reach the goal of reduced weight and stress?” From there, the patient and coach develop a practical wellness plan by breaking weight loss and stress into areas of focus, and creating concrete goals. For example, reducing weight by 15 pounds would be considered a goal. How do we reach that goal? By implementing small doable action steps. This could be walking ten minutes per day after work or increasing vegetable intake from five to seven servings daily.
This type of coaching — where the coach empowers the client with selfefficacy, intrinsic motivation — can open up the capacity to change, especially when change can be challenging. Who would not want a person like this in their wellness life? We all do, even health and wellness coaches.
Wait! Are you telling me even coaches need a health coach?
You betcha! Let’s face it, even health coaches need accountability, compassion, and empathy through a partner willing to listen and break things down. Health coaches are no different from you. We are ordinary people who suffer from information overload, lack of motivation and time, and not knowing where to start.
As a health coach, I know what is good for me, but putting a plan into practice can be difficult. I struggle getting started because I am constantly looking at the big picture. The picture can be so huge I don’t even know where to start, so I just don’t start. With no one watching, my inner voice convinces me I can wait. The problem is not really that bad yet, is it? My stress gets to me only a few nights a week to where I cannot sleep. That’s not that serious, right?
Coaches need coaches to hold them accountable, collaborate on a plan, and support them in reaching their goals by using tools specific to the individual. This can be a bumpy ride without the right kind of support. Coaches need the same reminders, tenderness, and firm hand they provide for their clients. They need someone to say “Hey, it’s fine you are not doing the work, but you need to ask yourself if are you okay with staying in this space.”
So, ask yourself, “Are you okay with staying in this space?” If the answer is no, but you cannot motivate yourself, or need a partner to walk the journey with you, a health and wellness coach may be just what the doctor ordered. +
ANNIE HAYES has been called a wellness deviant, a badass with kindness, and the sweetest person when she wants you to do core. An M.B.A.-wielding yogi and meditation practitioner, and a National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBCHWC), Annie’s aim is to bring affordable wellness and yoga to all communities. NICOLE LOVALD is one of the co-owners of Spirit of the Lake Yoga and Wellness Center and is a master’s level counselor, certified life coach, master Reiki healer, and registered yoga teacher.
FINDING BALANCE
BY NICOLE LOVALD, MS (SHE/HER)
in Unbalanced Times
Tips for Building Your Resilience:
Does anyone ever ask you if you have balance in your life? Sometimes that feels like a loaded question implying you should be able to handle all life’s challenges and walk gracefully through life with your head held high and a smile on your face.
These last few years of living during political unrest, racial disparities, and pandemic brought on real hardship and imbalance in our lives. Yet we are still asked how we find balance in our lives, and, if we are unable to, we may feel guilt, shame, anger, or a myriad of other emotions.
Instead of seeking balance in how we utilize our time and energy to perfect the art of a balanced life, we could instead be talking about how to build our resiliency to life’s adversities.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines balance as “having full use of one’s mind and control over one’s actions.” Mindfulness and yoga teach us how to become aware of our thoughts and our actions so that we might be more intentional about how we move through our lives. By looking at
balance as a state of intentional awareness, we shift from a place of guilt for not being able to juggle all of life’s challenges at once, and instead become thoughtful about how we respond.
As a collective society, we all experienced different levels of stress and trauma over the past few years. By recognizing the impact stress has on our bodies, we can begin learning how to counteract it to start building our resilience. Stress can trigger a “fight, flight, or freeze” response that causes us to become reactive — the opposite of having control and mindfully responding. With the practice of yoga, mindfulness, and anything that brings us into a calm and relaxed (parasympathetic nervous system) state, we begin to build our resiliency muscles. Over time, we gain more control of our mind’s reactionary thoughts and of our body’s automatic responses.
Instead of striving toward balance during these unbalanced times, we could change the dialogue to become well-adjusted or resilient. By redefining how we talk about balance, we take control and manage how we respond to life’s challenges. As mindfulness guru Jon Kabat-Zinn wisely stated, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
1. BREATHE DEEPLY —
By breathing fully and deeply into your diaphragm, you can tone your vagus nerve, which brings you into the parasympathetic nervous system. With deep breaths, your body can calm down and counteract anxiety, worry, and stress.
2. INCREASE AWARENESS
AND INSIGHT —
Meditation is a great tool for becoming more aware of your thoughts and reactions. By moving into stillness, we are able to more clearly see our reactions and can learn to better handle discomfort. With awareness and insight, we can learn to respond instead of react.
3. GET INTO YOUR BODY —
Our yoga practice helps us to become more aware of our body and any emotions or information we store there. With yoga we combine our breath, meditation, and movement to use this trifecta to learn how to be resilient among adversity. +
