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Passion and Purpose Project: Episode 3

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Episode #3 of the Purpose & Passion project is one hour of your life that will change your perspective forever about what it means to TRIUMPH. 

Rachele sat down with VFitter Sarah Z from Oregon and had a heartfelt, honest, and tear jerking talk about Sarah’s story through health issues and her perseverance and positive perspective.

Even before Sarah was born, the odds were against her. But what her story proves, and continues to prove each day, is that inner strength and a positive attitude trumps over darkness along with a strong community of support and love.

Sarah’s tests in life are now her testament.

She’s taken lessons learned in her life and her wellness journey and supports others as a health coach as she follows her passion for educating and empowering others.

We hope you enjoy tuning in and are able to take away nuggets of hope, inspiration, and strength from Sarah’s journey. Thank you for continuing to support the Passion and Purpose Project.

The Passion and Purpose Project: Episode 1

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Tune in above for a full replay of The Passion and Purpose Project: Episode 1

Welcome to The Purpose & Passion Project. The next dimension of VFit. Enjoy Episode 1 as we kick off this new chapter of spreading light and inspiration.

Going into 2023, PURPOSE and PASSION are 2 of my words. Once I set that clarity, I got a clear calling that in 2023 I am to empower others to share their stories.

Everyone has a story. No story is insignificant, or without lessons and inspiration. When we share our journeys, we can help each other.

That is what shining your light means – to share your gifts, your strengths, your struggles……to Live ON Purpose.

So this month I launched episode 1 of my new project – The Passion & Purpose Project – with my dear friend and fellow VFit Trainer Lauren.

While this isn’t a “traditional” podcast, we are using the infrastructure we have in place at VFit, and have opened these up for all to join.

I know deep in my heart that the people who need to hear these stories, will find them and my purpose is to get them out through all the channels we have built over the years.

Enjoy this vulnerable share on Lauren’s journey of chasing goals, doors closing, doors opening and reaching a milestone she had worked incredibly hard for.

First Friday’s Wellness Cafe: You are strong than you think & an overview of the macro fat

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This month for the First Friday’s Wellness cafe Maria covered the topic of strength training and exploring your current home inventory of dumbells and Lauren covered the macronutrient fat.

Maria’s talk was geared towards helping our community members understand that different exercises can benefit from having different sets of weights such as: light, medium, and heavy. Modifcation options were also talked about during this discussion.

Next up, Lauren continued from last month’s session on the macronutrient of protein and covered fat. She provided resources and ideas of how to better understand fat and how it is used by your body.

Next month for the Wellness Cafe we’ll have the live session open to all that are joining us for VFit’s 7th birthday celebration week. Lauren will close out her macro talk and cover carbohydrates and Maria is set go over heart rate training zones and cardio tips and tricks as part of the FUNctional Fitness Plan and a well balanced routine.

Full slides available here.

If you have any questions on either topic, you can learn more about Maria and Lauren’s Signature Series coaching options here.

First Friday’s Wellness Cafe: Posture Clinic & Protein Overview

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For our August First Friday’s Wellness Cafe with Lauren and Maria there was a posture clinic to start then an informative overview of one of the three macros: protein.

Maria begin the Wellness Cafe demonstration 3 ways to use an everyday object, in this case a broom, to help improve posture and mobility in three activities: holding a standard plank, during a hip hinge movement, and using the broom handle to help open up and increas mobility in the shoulders.

Next, Lauren led an overview on protein and provided the group with an explanation of what this important macro does for your body, what foods you can find it in, and recommendations for how much protein you should incorporate into your diet.

Here are slides of Lauren’s presentation, for our September 9th Wellness Cafe session, Lauren will build off this with another macro. Maria will lead another demonstration, this time helping educate on strength training from home with tips on what kinds of weights to use, grips, and recovery time.

First Friday’s Wellness Cafe Round Up: The Kinetic Chain and Posture, How to Stop Body Bashing, and Marma Points

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The Wellness Cafe at VFit Studio has been in full swing this spring with two excellent sessions held in May and June.

In May, Lauren and Maria hosted the Wellness Cafe with insights on the following two areas:

  • the kinetic chain and posture led by Maria, sharing insights on functional movement and body balance and imbalances and how to work to correct them
  • how to stop body bashing with Lauren with insightful prompts and tips on how to combat this negative self talk led by Lauren

Slides

After the presentations, there was an excellent live session discussion focused on negative self talk, thank you all who attended for sharing and we will bring this topic back in the future for round 2.

In June, Shari led as a guest host in the cafe with a conversation and presentation on marma points. She led us through a thorough presentation and why these areas on our body are important then we went through the top 10 marma points together. This was an eye opening and powerful exercise and a great introduction to this concept which was new to many of us in attendance.

Slides

First Friday’s Wellness Cafe: Special Guest Misa with 12 tips for raising healthy eaters

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For our April First Friday’s Wellness Cafe we had a special guest, VFitter Misa from New Hampshire, who shared 12 tips for raising healthy eaters. Misa is passionate about helping kids find joy in exploring eating a wide variety of foods and shared her personal story of what led her to create Misa’s Clean Kitchen as we began the cafe. Her youngest daughter was diagnosed with failure to thrive which led Misa down a path of exploration and deciation to better understand the impact that food choices made on our bodies. She went on to become a certified nutrition coach and open Misa’s Clean Kitchen to share her new knowledge with others.

We have the full replay below for you to soak in all the goodness of Misa’s 12 tips.

We also have the Google slides that Misa used for her presentation if you’d like to go through the slides to read through each of the tips! Click here to view the slides of the presentation.

Thank you again Misa for being a guest host in the Wellness Cafe! Join us next month as Lauren and Maria share live demos of tips and tricks that have helped their clients in reaching their wellness goals on May 6th at 8:30 AM PST.

First Friday’s Wellness Cafe: Ayruveda 101 with Lindsay

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This month in the VFit Studio First Friday’s Wellness Cafe with Lauren and Maria we were honored to let Lindsay M take over the cafe with a special workshop on Ayruveda.

As Ayruveda has helped Lindsay personally navigate the changing of seasons of life, she has put her focus in the Signature Series here at VFit with working one on one as a coach to assist those looking to deepen their understanding of their own constitutions and use yoga and Ayruveda principles to help restore balance and harmony in their lives.

Below, we have the full replay of Linday’s Ayruveda 101 Workshop in the Wellness Cafe:

Lindsay culled her own personal knowledge along with the following book as part of her workshop, Practical Ayurveda: Find Out Who You Are and What You Need to Bring Balance to Your Life by the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre.

Lindsay’s Slides are available here for viewing here.

To learn more or explore ways to work directly with Lindsay, her one on one coaching services are available through the VFit Studio Signature Series.

Join us next month for the VFit Studio First Friday’s Wellness Cafe when Lauren and Maria have guest host and VFit member Misa from Misa’s Clean Kitchen as she shares information on her specialty area of adding healthy food to kids (and OUR) plates, by providing strategies to make healthier food more appealing and fun for all.

First Friday’s Wellness Cafe: Revisiting Wellness Intentions and Mindset Shifts

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Tune in to the full replay of the VFit Studio First Friday’s Cafe with Lauren and Maria up above.

For the February installment of the First Friday’s Wellness Cafe with Lauren and Maria, the duo revisited the idea of setting intentions, goal setting, and mindset shifts from their January session.

Self improvement by means of setting intentions is a powerful activity, but is often challenging to achieve without support and a framework to work from. Throughout the Wellness Cafe session, we held an open dialogue about how our experience has been with setting intentions so far in 2022, and shared different resources that have helpd us.

Lauren shared that after the January session she revisited her feelings about walking and shifted her mindset of it being done as low impact workout or recovery exercise to getting in quality me time, outdoors, ALONE through her neighbhorhood. This mindset shift has turned this marathoner and HIIT-workout lover into a neighborhood walker and she’s now hooke on getting in her walking time.

Maria shared in the Cafe about how last year she focuse on two words as intention: flow and connection. Each of these words encompassed different areas of her life and actions she wanted to focus on and brought many of her 2021 goals to light. This year by leaning in on these two words again, while out with her sister having brunch, she was introduced to a home care cleaning and maintenance program that’s been really working for Maria to have a system for taking care of the house. It’s been a game changer for her, and a few other members were familiar with it – Fly Lady. Maria’s been using the Fly Lady app and following along with the morning, afternoon, and evening homecare habits along with the zone cleaning areas and it’s made a world of difference in her sense of peace at home.

Other members shared their power words and intentions for the year and took the opportunity to open up on goal setting and empowerment. Thank you to all who were able to join us and your continued support with the Wellness Cafe Series. We look forward to returning in March with more wellness goodness to share!

If you have any tips on setting intentions, goal planning, or would like to share your words or personal mantra for the year, we’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to comment below and share this blog and replay with those in your life who you think would enjoy this positive message of growth mindset, self improvement, and self care being critical care and not being selfish.

First Friday’s Wellness Cafe: Setting Intentions for the New Year

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We kicked off 2022 in the First Friday’s Wellness Cafe with Lauren and Maria focused on intentions for the New Year. With a focus on a short and long view for goals, our conversation flowed and worked on brainstorming personal goals and intentions, with a shift in mindset from a classic New Year’s resolution.

We have included the full slides that were used by Lauren and Maria during the session which include many prompts and brainstorming ideas for the upcoming year:

We also have below the full replay of the session below. During this 30 minute session, Lauren and Maria share ideas on the topic and there’s member engagement and sharing about ideas to set intentions for the year:

During the live session, a few other resources and comments were shared by members. We have them included below:

Sarah Z shared the following:

A good video to help you understand how to dig deeper and figure out why you want to do something….called 7 layers deep. It’s so good. I will share it here as it can help you with what Lauren is sharing:
https://youtu.be/Sv882g7UVQE

Kristin A shared a great New York Times article about our human desire to do an annual instinct to improve eating.

https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220107&instance_id=49661&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN&regi_id=84225412&segment_id=78932&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F24640e1a-d7a1-5738-b879-173bfe80fa46&user_id=dad5236cf145bc250375e6bb767b776a

Linda A shared a journal that has been working well for her called The 5 Minute Journal which has worked well for her to get into the daily habit of journaling.

For planning out the year with weekly and daily goal setting, many members have picked up the VFit Annual Compass Planner. For those still looking for a comprehensive planner these are still available for sale as a PDF download.

October First Friday’s Wellness Cafe – Wellness Resources & What Kind of Eater Are You?

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VFit Trainers Maria and Lauren hosted the Wellness Cafe and each brought their own unique perspective to the conversation on wellness.

First, Maria shared more on VFit Studio resources for members:

Recipe Rolodex

VFit Blog

Weekly Dashboard and Wellness Wheel

FUNctional Fitness Plan

VFit Signature Series

Next, Lauren shared about the different eating personas. Do you know what kind of eater you are?

Careful clean eater? Professional Dieter? Chaotic Unconscious eater? Possibly a refuse-not, waste-not, or an emotional uncouncious eater?

Tune in to the full replay above to watch Maria guide through the VFit Studio resources and for Lauren to dive in to the different kinds of eating personas.

We are here for you and enjoy sharing the Wellness Cafe Series with you each month! Any questions on our topics covered, you can email Maria maria [at] thevitstudio.com or email Lauren laurenferrara85 [at] gmail.com.