OWN IT

WEEKLY WELLNESS NOTE 🌿
Own Your Quirks

This week, give yourself full permission to OWN your quirks—your challenges, your desires, your rhythms, your needs.
You don’t need to fit someone else’s mold to be whole or worthy.

Maybe your body craves slower mornings. Maybe your mind spirals until you’ve had your grounding breath. Maybe your hips hold stories, or your emotions show up loud. All of it belongs.

Our quirks aren’t flaws to fix—they’re cues. Invitations. Part of your unique design. Let them guide your movement, your rest, your boundaries, and your joy.

This week, let’s move in ways that feel like home.
Let’s honor our whole selves, without apology. 💛  OWN IT!

Shine your light friends!
Namaste,
Rebekah
@Rebekah-BodyIllumination
@bodyilluminate

👉 👉 👉 ACCESS your calendar with all the video links:

Where You Put Your Energy

Hi Beautiful Friends,

This week, I’ve been reflecting on how powerful our energy is—and how where we place it shapes not just our mood, but our entire experience.

It’s easy to give our energy away to things like overthinking, people-pleasing, or worrying. But when we consciously choose where to direct it—toward movement, rest, or presence—we begin to shift, not just mentally, but physically and emotionally.

I had a little reminder of this when I was blowing up pool floats this week. The watermelon and zebra floats were effortless—ready for summer fun. But the toucan… that one had several holes in it! Turns out, the Easter Bunny’s gift wasn’t quite as easy as expected. And despite my efforts, the toucan wouldn’t stay inflated, and I had to laugh at how sometimes, even with good effort, things don’t go as planned.

This reminded me that it’s okay if things don’t always work out the way we hope. Sometimes we just need to know when to let go and when to keep trying. Somatic practices help us tune in—to notice when something isn’t working  or is working, and to respond with awareness rather than pushing through.

So this week, ask yourself:
Where is my energy going—and is it where I want it to be?

Let’s move and breathe with intention. Let’s choose wisely and compassionately.

Shine your light friends!
Namaste,
Rebekah
@Rebekah-BodyIllumination
@bodyilluminate

👉 👉 👉 ACCESS your calendar with all the video links:

SOMETHING UNEXPECTED

Hi Beautiful Friends,

This week, I invite you to expect the unexpected—not in fear, but with wide-eyed wonder.

What if you smelled a scent that cracked open a memory you hadn’t touched in years—or one you never even knew existed? Something beyond imagination. This past week, one of my daughters graduated from elementary school, and I told her, “I could never have imagined you or created you in my sketchbook.”
She is beyond anything I could have planned.

And what if your body moved in a way that surprised you—gently, instinctively—like it remembered something your mind had long forgotten?

In our practices, we often seek routine for stability—but this week, I encourage you to lean into curiosity. Let your senses surprise you. Let your body teach you. Feel what it’s like to experience life from the inside out, to shift old patterns and soften programmed responses to challenge.
When discomfort arises, what happens if we pause… and respond differently?

Transformation doesn’t always come with fireworks. Sometimes, it’s sparked by something as subtle as a breath, a scent, or a shift in posture.

Let this be a week of new sensations, fresh awareness, and softened edges. Expect something different—and see what opens.

With you always on the journey,
Namaste,
Rebekah

👉 👉 👉 ACCESS your calendar with all the video links:

🌿 The Space In Between

Hi Beautiful Friends,

This week, we honor something subtle yet deeply powerful:
✨ The Space In Between. ✨

The quiet between breaths.
The soft pause before a smile.
The weightless stillness between yoga poses—where the body recalibrates, and the spirit gently stirs.

In our practice, we often focus on movement or stillness. But what about the transition? That whisper of awareness between effort and ease? That gentle energetic pause—like the hush in the wind just before it shifts?

These in-between moments are the sacred threads that hold it all together.  They hold possibility and a connection to the infinite.  They’re where the nervous system resets,  where cortisol levels soften,
and where we begin to hear ourselves more clearly.

This week’s calendar is built with space in mind—space in your fascia, your hips, your spine, and your day. Somatic stretches, Yin invitations, Pilates energy and mindful breathwork are waiting for you… not to fill you up, but to help you empty out—and listen.

What if your next big shift isn’t in a pose… but in the pause between them?

With you in every exhale and in every whisper of wind.  Poof!  🌬️  Then it is gone.

Namaste,
Rebekah

👉 👉 👉 ACCESS your calendar with all the video links:

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:us:39d38efc-4985-4d04-add3-910d648bf9b0

What Your Nervous System Has Been Waiting For

Hi Beautiful Friends,

Have you ever finished a somatic practice and felt something shift—not just in your muscles, but in your mood, your energy, your whole being?

This is the magic of somatics. And it’s not just a feeling—there’s science behind it.

Somatic movement and awareness-based practices help us heal from chronic stress, pain, and emotional overwhelm by working with the nervous system, not against it.

🌿 Why Somatics Heal (According to Science)

1. They restore your nervous system.
   When we move slowly with intention and awareness, we stimulate the vagus nerve, which tells the body: You’re safe now.
   • 🧠 Study: A 2018 review in Frontiers in Psychiatry highlights how vagus nerve stimulation improves mood and reduces symptoms of PTSD, anxiety, and depression.
   • 🌀 Somatic movement offers a non-invasive way to tone this nerve and bring you into the parasympathetic “rest and digest” state.
2. They reduce cortisol (stress hormone) levels.
   High cortisol from chronic stress can lead to fatigue, inflammation, anxiety, and hormonal imbalance.
   • ✨ In a 2020 study, gentle movement paired with mindful breathwork significantly reduced cortisol levels and improved heart rate variability (HRV)—a marker of nervous system resilience.
   • 💛 Somatic practices give your body permission to slow down, recalibrate, and return to balance.
3. They help release stored tension and trauma.
   According to trauma expert Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (The Body Keeps the Score), trauma isn’t just in your mind—it lives in your body.
   • 💫 Somatic work helps unwind chronic tension patterns, reconnect you to sensation, and rebuild a sense of inner safety.
   • Movement becomes a way to rewrite your story—from survival to freedom.

💬 In My Own Life…
As a mom, a yoga pilates teacher, and a human being, somatic practices have given me tools to regulate my emotions, reconnect with myself, and support my body, my life and my home to become better.  These movements invite us to listen inside—to treat the body not as a problem to fix, but as a wise guide to follow.

✨ This Week’s Practice
If you’ve been feeling stuck in stress mode or just need a nervous system reset, I invite you to try this week’s new video:

🎥Somatic Yin Yoga Full Body | Detoxing Cortisol + Vagus Nerve Toning 35 minutes

It’s a gentle, grounding sequence designed to bring you back home to yourself.

With love and somatic healing,
Namaste, Rebekah

👉 👉 👉 ACCESS your calendar with all the video links:

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:de8797ea-cdb6-4eea-b273-10fe6d4b9223

This week, the unexpected came swooping into my backyard—literally.

There I was, sipping my tea and getting ready to drive my kids someplace, when I saw a prehistoric-looking heron perched at the edge of our little pond, eyeing our lovely goldfish. My heart pounded as I flew out the door, yelling and waving my arms like a madwoman. It was one of those wild moments where you act first, then laugh later—drenched from the rain and building a makeshift contraption to shield our fishy friends from any more drama.

It got me thinking about how often life throws the unexpected our way. A surprise visitor. A missed workout. A snack that turns into a not-so-mindful big snack. It happens.

But the beauty isn’t in never slipping—it’s in the way we come back. Back to our practice. Back to presence. Back to compassion. That’s the rhythm of life. That’s who we are.

So if something knocked you off course this week, whether it was a heron or just a hard day—know this: You can always return. There’s no shame in the reset. Only strength in the showing up.

Sending you love and laughter.

Namaste,
Rebekah

👉 👉 👉 ACCESS your calendar with all the video links:

https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:51b27f72-9b88-4012-8ce7-7050bc826d7b

🌿 Rinse the stagnation

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🌿 This Week’s Somatic Inspiration
+ Breakthrough Research