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What if the answer you keep searching for outside yourself has been living in your body all along?

Your nervous system is not your enemy. It is your ally, and it has been trying to keep you safe since the day you were born. In this conversation, Sarah sits down with somatic psychotherapist, author, artist, and ritualist Rose Rita James, author of Tears Are Holy Water: Somatic Wisdom and Rituals for Feeling and Aliveness, to explore how listening to your body can change the way you know yourself and the world.

This is a warm, grounded, deeply practical conversation for anyone who is ready for real change, and who wants it to feel safe, gentle, and possible.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why your nervous system can flare up even when the change is good for you, and why familiar patterns can feel safer than healthy ones
• How to grow at your own pace using titration, the gentle art of working in small doses so your body can trust the process
• What “somatic” really means from Rita's perspective, and how the mind, body, and emotions all get a seat at the table
• Why ritual is an ancient technology for feeling safe, and the simple structure behind every ritual: set the space, orient, ground, work briefly with what is present, and close with care
• What to do in the moment when panic rises, including how to feel your feet, lengthen your exhale, and find your choice points
• How to find your embodied yes and your embodied no, and why saying no can actually deepen your relationships
• What it means to become your own oracle, trusting an inner knowing that does not depend on outside approval
• Why small steps, curiosity, play, and safety are the foundation for lasting growth

You do not have to push through, fix yourself, or do it all at once. You only have to begin where you are, with curiosity.

You are the magic. And the middle is the pause where your body’s wisdom finally gets to speak.

Continue this journey:

Practice with Sarah live, Monday through Friday at 7am Pacific, for 30 to 35 minutes of Spring Forest Qigong: https://marrvelouslife.com/spring-forest-qigong-practice-group-page

Download the free Fire Horse Journey and bring these practices into your mornings, middays, and evenings: https://marrvelouslife.com/fire-horse-integration-qigong

Get Rita’s book, Tears Are Holy Water: Somatic Wisdom & Rituals For Feeling and Aliveness - https://a.co/d/0c740A6T

Follow Rita for free somatic mini lessons, journal prompts, and tiny rituals on Instagram - @roseritajames, Threads - @roseritajames, and TikTok - @roseritajames

Support the show

Thank you for spending this time in The Magic in the Middle.

If this episode supported you, follow the show and continue exploring the space where science meets spirituality and life begins to flow with greater clarity, joy, and ease.

New episodes are released every Monday.

If someone you love would benefit from this conversation, share it with them. Every time you listen, follow, or share, you help this community grow and support more people reconnecting with the brilliance already within them.

You are deeply loved.

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What if the change you have been waiting for does not take a year, a retreat, or a whole new life? What if it begins with the very next thought you choose?

Welcome to October, the month of changing and transforming. Your guide for this journey is Sarah, a certified Spring Forest Qigong practice group leader and trainer who has walked from her own darkest season to a life she describes as magnificent, and who is here to show you that the same shift is possible for you. Transformation is not about becoming someone better. It is about revealing the powerful being who has been inside you all along.

In this episode, you will learn:

• How to change your mind and your mood in any moment, using a breath, a movement, or a one to five minute meditation
• A simple way to interrupt the thought loops that keep you stuck, and choose a thought that supports you instead
• The story of the two wolves, and the question that can change your week: which one are you feeding today?
• How to treat your mind like a garden, pulling out what no longer belongs and planting what you want to grow
• Why fall can stir up grief or heaviness, and how to move toward contentment one small step at a time, without pretending you are not hurting
• Why the little light inside even your hardest feelings is the part of you seeking to emerge
• How Penny Makris' intuitive calendar for October, changing and transforming, can guide your month

You do not have to fix yourself to begin. You only have to be willing to play with change and see what happens.

You are the magic. And the middle is the pause where everything begins to shift.

Continue this journey:
Practice with Sarah live, Monday through Friday at 7am Pacific, for 30 to 35 minutes of Spring Forest Qigong: https://marrvelouslife.com/spring-forest-qigong-practice-group-page

Download the free Fire Horse Journey and bring these practices into your mornings, middays, and evenings: https://marrvelouslife.com/fire-horse-integration-qigong

Penny Makris Intuitive Calendar 2026 - https://www.zazzle.com/2026_seasonal_monthly_calendar-256392882718449413

Support the show

Thank you for spending this time in The Magic in the Middle.

If this episode supported you, follow the show and continue exploring the space where science meets spirituality and life begins to flow with greater clarity, joy, and ease.

New episodes are released every Monday.

If someone you love would benefit from this conversation, share it with them. Every time you listen, follow, or share, you help this community grow and support more people reconnecting with the brilliance already within them.

You are deeply loved.

Send us Fan Mail

Your phone is not in charge of who you are today. You are. And it is time to take your power back.

We just crossed the equinox, equal daylight and equal night, and your body is moving right along with the Earth into fall. This is the season when your lung energy comes on duty, and Sarah is back with week two of the Fire Horse Journey, precision and purpose.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why the pause, that quiet space between one thought and the next, is not wasted time but where the magic actually happens
• A morning practice that puts you back in charge of your own day, before your phone tells you who to be
• A midday white light purification breath that balances your lung energy and clears anything gray, heavy, or stale
• An evening energy audit journal to gently notice what is feeding you and what is draining you, no judgment required
• Why the fire horse year can push you toward overextension, taking on too much because everything feels possible and urgent
• How the metal element offers the corrective, discernment, quality over quantity, and the loving no that protects your yes

Sarah shares this from a place of real experience, having known deep darkness herself, and speaks directly to the magnificent being that already lives inside you, the one that is always worth the few quiet minutes it takes to come home to yourself.

Contentment is a choice. You are worth choosing it.

You are the magic in the middle.

Continue this journey:
Join Sarah live on zoom for Qigong practice, Monday through Friday at 7am Pacific, link is here https://marrvelouslife.com/spring-forest-qigong-practice-group-page

And deepen this work with the full Fire Horse Journey, free, here is the link https://marrvelouslife.com/fire-horse-integration-qigong

Support the show

Thank you for spending this time in The Magic in the Middle.

If this episode supported you, follow the show and continue exploring the space where science meets spirituality and life begins to flow with greater clarity, joy, and ease.

New episodes are released every Monday.

If someone you love would benefit from this conversation, share it with them. Every time you listen, follow, or share, you help this community grow and support more people reconnecting with the brilliance already within them.

You are deeply loved.