Embodied Soul

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.⁠
⁠
When a woman believes in her ability to execute the behaviors necessary to achieve a goal...⁠
⁠
She’s unstoppable. 💙💙⁠
⁠
Gimme a 👏🏻 or a 💪🏻 if you agree!

28/02/2026

SO I’ve been feeling bitter about my business lately.

I thought it was to do with the influx of people in the new year who haven’t been able to stay committed to their strength training. Now that life has gotten busier, it’s the last thing on their priority list. And I have to do more advertising and find more clients… and that’s a really hard part of business for me.

So I’ve been writing posts about commitment and consistency and enforcing boundaries around showing up (letting go of anyone who doesn’t make it a priority).

But all of that was leaving me feeling bitter, because I’ve found myself becoming just another personal trainer. I’m repeating the same rhetoric that all the influencers online repeat.

And it’s boring to me.

Because I know there are deeper reasons why people don’t show up. The other side of my work, which I’ve branded as “stillness,” is that deeper intuitive healing work. It’s incredibly powerful. And having autism makes me really good at it, because I can see patterns.

I’ve had a lot of people coming to me for the strength side of my work and hardly anyone coming for the stillness side. And that’s baffling to me, because before I became a personal trainer, I had lots of healing clients.

I remember my healing clients being completely confused when I opened a gym and became a personal trainer. One said she could never imagine me bench pressing or deadlifting. That she could only imagine me as a healer.

Why do we allow people to box us into an identity like that?

Somewhere along the way I did it too, I wasn’t sure how to hold fitness and healing together. So I split myself into two parts — strength and stillness — and I started prioritising one while abandoning the other. I let myself be seen for the practical, functional side, and quietly hid the deeper, intuitive part of me.

I know that people who are struggling to show up don’t need more motivational posts. They need to feel seen. I think my bitterness has come from the fact I was only being seen for half of me. And in doing that, my clients only felt half seen.

I’ve been waiting for clients to recognise my ability to see them and invite me into doing the deeper work. And I hold myself back because I don’t want to seem invasive. I don’t want to overstep people’s privacy. I don’t want anyone to feel pushed. Deeper work is not for everyone. Some people are only ready for the surface level. I start talking about deeper things and they look at me blankly.

But in trying to respect people’s readiness, I ended up hiding my ability to see them. I don’t even use it much in my classes anymore. More and more, I’ve started acting like a regular personal trainer.

And there are lots of those out there. If you wanted a regular personal trainer, you’d go to one.

I know that everyone who comes to me, on some level, is craving something a little deeper. Even if they’re not consciously aware of it.

Yesterday I ran a knee workshop. It was completely functional, mobility and strength. It was ok. But I left feeling like I could have done so much more to help people actually feel better in their bodies if we’d gone deeper.

I left feeling inspired. I went home and created a new workshop for March. This time, I split it into two halves — the functional side, focusing on hip mechanics, movement, strength, and relaxation for tight hips. And then a second half, where we go deeper into somatic exploration.

Where we explore what we’re actually holding in the hips. Whatever pain is there is contracted energy, and we hold it for a reason. Often it’s protecting us from something. Exploring that has the potential to shift so much more than physical exercises alone.

I put the event out there, unsure if anyone would be interested at all. Within a minute of posting it, someone messaged me, “That looks amazing, book me in.” Within an hour, I had two more.

And all of a sudden, the bitterness went away. I felt relief. It was immediate confirmation that showing up with all that I bring to the table is what people have been craving.

Send a message to learn more

27/02/2026

The days of outsourcing our bodies to an expert who tells us what is wrong with us, diagnoses us and fixes us are coming to a close.

We can feel it.

So many of our top-down systems are crumbling. Trust in institutions is declining. Access to good health care is unequal. And the idea that someone else knows your body better than you do is being questioned.

That doesn’t mean the medical model is completely useless. It isn’t. I’m not anti-doctor. I will always tell you to see a medical professional when something is beyond my scope. It’s often better to get reassurance than to live in fear that something terrible is wrong.

There is still a place for the medical model.

But there is also a deficit in our own awareness.

Many of us have outsourced our health in a way that has disempowered us. To the point where we don’t really know our own bodies anymore. People are fearful of movement. Scared to explore. Unsure how to interpret sensation. Afraid that pain automatically means damage.

I don’t routinely outsource my health. I would seek medical support if I truly needed it. But day to day, I cultivate awareness. I pay attention. I experiment. I move and I learn. I build literacy in my own tissues, joints and nervous system.

That’s what my supported knees workshop was about.

I didn’t diagnose anyone.
I didn’t tell anyone what their “problem” was.
I didn’t hand out corrective exercises based on assumptions.

Instead, I created space for exploration.

We softened the tissues.
We moved the joints.
We stretched and lengthened the muscles.
Then we strengthened the new range.

All while noticing sensations. Comparing sides. Observing. Listening.

It was surface level compared to how deep I’d ultimately like to go with people.

But it was a start.

And each person got to feel, in real time, what helped and what didn’t.

As a movement teacher and intuitive healer, my role isn’t to position myself as the authority over your body.

It’s to guide you back into relationship with it.

To help you build enough awareness that you don’t panic at every sensation.
To help you distinguish between discomfort and danger.
To help you recognise when you need external support, and when you simply need strength, patience or nervous system regulation.

Your body is not a problem to be fixed.

It’s a system to be understood.

And when you understand it, you become far less dependent on someone else telling you that something is wrong with you.

27/02/2026

Consistency is not about being perfect.

There are absolutely times when staying home is the right call:
If you’re contagious.
If you have a concussion.
If you’re in significant pain.
If you’ve just had surgery.
If a medical professional has told you not to train.
If there’s a genuine family emergency.
If you’re travelling or intentionally taking time away to live your life.

In those cases, staying away is wisdom.
And honestly, whatever reason you have for not showing up is always met with compassion from me.

But most of the time, there is a version of training that will support you.

Tired? We adjust and focus on lighter work or technique.
Minor injury? We work around it.
Headache? We move gently.
Low energy? We prioritise mobility and finish with restorative yoga.
Chaotic week? We reduce load and train with intention.

You don’t have to lift heavy every session.

You just have to show up.

If deadlifts aren’t available to you, I’ll find you another lift.
If lifting heavy isn’t right that day, we deload and focus on technique.
If your program aggravates something, we build strength another way.

Unless your entire body is immobilised, there is almost always something you can do.

It never has to be all or nothing.
And that all or nothing mindset is often what sabotages progress.

I don’t train with an all or nothing attitude.

Some days I lift at 90% effort. Other days 50%.
On the rare occasion I choose not to lift heavy, I still prioritise mobility.

The reality is that we live in a sedentary society.
Most of us are chronically under-moved. (Even me.)

Appropriate movement is almost always beneficial.

I have some people who show up no matter what, even with chronic health conditions.
They are the ones who keep me committed to this work, because I see the difference consistency makes for them.
And they often tell me they leave feeling better than when they arrived.

When life presents challenges, we don’t push through recklessly.
And we don’t disappear at the first obstacle.

We adjust and continue.

Because momentum matters.

When you become someone who shows up, even in a modified way, you build self-trust.

And self-trust is more powerful than motivation.

Heavy lifting isn’t about maxing out every session.

It’s deciding:
“I am someone who honours my commitments to myself.”

And when that becomes part of who you are, fewer small things knock you off course.

26/02/2026

One of the assignments I had to complete during my personal training course was to cold call former members and try to get them to come back to the gym.

I hated it.

One thing I don’t do in business, or in life, is chase people.

If someone stops coming, I let them go.

Sometimes I genuinely enjoy working with them. I like their energy. I like having them in the space.

But I still let them go.

Because I’m not looking for clients who need to be convinced to show up.

I’m here for the people who decide that they are ready to work with me and who value that opportunity.

The people who value their own strength.
The people who honour their commitments.
The people who communicate when something changes.
The people who recognise the value of consistency.

If someone ghosts, I don’t follow up.
If someone enquires and disappears, I don’t chase.

Because the culture of a space is built by what is tolerated.

When a group is made up of people who follow through, who show up, who respect each other’s time and energy, we are all elevated.

If you stop coming, I’ll quietly remove you from my booking system.

If life is happening and you need a break, or you’d like a space held for you in the future, that’s yours to communicate.

But I won’t chase you.

I build spaces with people who choose to be here whole-heartedly, not half-heartedly.

Send a message to learn more

26/02/2026

There comes a point where you stop dabbling.

You stop saying “I’ll try.”
You stop starting and stopping.
You stop waiting for the perfect time.

And you decide.
You decide what you actually want.

You decide that your strength matters.
You decide that your body deserves consistency.
You decide to prioritise yourself.
You decide that you will show up, not just when it’s convenient, but consistently, because you’re important.

This space was created for women who are ready for that level of commitment.

It’s not a drop-in gym.
It’s not casual.
It’s not something you squeeze in when nothing else is on.
It’s not for sporadic attendance.

It’s a container for women who are ready to commit.
Women who are ready to transform.

If you are already inside this space, this is your reminder: strength is built through consistency. Showing up matters. Momentum builds when you keep your word to yourself.

If you are considering joining, you’ll start with once a week and build toward twice a week within a few months. This container requires commitment, because that’s how transformation happens.

Because strength isn’t built from intensity.
It’s not built from a burst of enthusiasm at the start of the year.
It’s built from consistency.

Strength takes years to build.
And it’s not easy to build after menopause either.
It requires structure, strategy, and intention.

Many women reach a point in life where they are ready to invest in themselves more deeply.
They have spent years giving to others.
They have spent years putting themselves last.

At some point, you must choose to include yourself in your own life.
At some point, you must decide your life is yours and nobody else’s.

And you have to be intentional about it.
Because nobody else is going to put you first.
Nobody else is going to make you the priority.
You have to claim your own life.

Strength training, particularly heavy lifting, is a powerful way to reclaim your life.

When women show up in this way together, collective empowerment happens.

We rewrite the narrative that women’s lives are here to sacrifice for others.

Momentum builds.
The container strengthens.
The energy in the room changes.
Supportive connections naturally develop.
Confidence deepens.
Transformation happens, in your body and in your life.

And when you consistently show up, you realise you’re not doing this alone.
There is a supportive community here to hold you.

If you’re ready to prioritise your strength…
If you want to be held in a space that strengthens you back…
If you’re done with half-hearted attempts and half-hearted results…

This space is for you.

Send a message to learn more

19/02/2026

Heavy lifting isn't about picking up a heavy load right away. Learning to move well and make small, slow progressions is really important. You do have to earn the load.