Do you feel at home in your body? I had the pleasure of talking about our relationship to our bodies with the multitalented Arielle Estoria, an artist, poet, writer, and actor. Her journey of self-discovery and spirituality is beautifully chronicled in her book, 'The Unfolding: An Invitation to Come Home to Yourself. ' Her story is a testament to the transformative impact of embracing one's body for ultimate liberation. Arielle shares the practices that allowed her to release years of self-condemnation and reconnect with her body on her own terms. Tune in and let Arielle inspire you to find home within yourself.
Find out more about Arielle Estoria
More on these topics
Learning to listen to your body
Dating your body
Evolving out of purity culture
My letter to young women
Book review: The Body Is Not An Apology
Book review: Mother's, Daughter's and Body Image
JOIN my Newsletter Community.
FOLLOW on Instagram.
VISIT my Website.
Do you feel at home in your body? I had the pleasure of talking about our relationship to our bodies with the multitalented Arielle Estoria, an artist, poet, writer, and actor. Her journey of self-discovery and spirituality is beautifully chronicled in her book, 'The Unfolding: An Invitation to Come Home to Yourself. ' Her story is a testament to the transformative impact of embracing one's body for ultimate liberation. Arielle shares the practices that allowed her to release years of self-condemnation and reconnect with her body on her own terms. Tune in and let Arielle inspire you to find home within yourself.
Find out more about Arielle Estoria
More on these topics
Learning to listen to your body
Dating your body
Evolving out of purity culture
My letter to young women
Book review: The Body Is Not An Apology
Book review: Mother's, Daughter's and Body Image
JOIN my Newsletter Community.
FOLLOW on Instagram.
VISIT my Website.
I think it's in our most vulnerable, it's in our most honest that people do engage and connect with us the most.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Permission for Pleasure. I'm Cindy Sharkey, your host, and I'm delighted you're turning in today. Last season I had an episode with Hilary McBride on learning to listen to your body and it resonated with so many of you. It remains in the all-time top five episodes on the podcast and the feedback from the listeners was we want more on this topic. Well, I'm with you, my friends, and I have that for you today with my guest, ariela Storia.
Speaker 2:Ariela is an artist with a beautiful soul and a way of being in the world. I read her book, the Unfolding an invitation to come home to yourself, and was thrilled that she agreed to come on as a guest to talk about it. As a poet, writer and actor, her motto is words are not for the ears but for the soul. Friends, I hope this conversation is nourishing for your soul, ariela. Welcome to Permission for Pleasure. Hi, thank you for having me Delighted you could join me. We had a mutual friend connect us and that just makes it so fun to get to know you a little bit and introduce you to my community and tell them about the themes in your book, unfolding, which I just finished and enjoyed so much. Thank you, why don't we start with you telling my community a little bit about yourself and your work in the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I am a poet and author, a drop down of a lot of creative, different things. I'm based in LA and honestly, I think a lot of times I take on the jobs I need to take on in order to pay the bills. So I like to say that I'm multi-passionate, multi-dimensional, multi-creative, and those worlds, every world I think, I sit and I live in, is ultimately the message that words are meant to be experienced, they're meant to be felt, and sometimes that's through photos, sometimes that's through being on stage, sometimes that's through other different realms in which I storytell. I'm a huge believer in just being a storyteller. I think the through line of that is being an artist and a creative, and that's kind of been me forever.
Speaker 1:I often kind of bring into the room my youngest self, my younger version of myself, who would make up songs and walk around with plastic hills and these microphones that had the little springs in it and you could hear your echoes inside of it, and a feather boa and she had an alter ego and she called herself Erica Wallace, and now I feel like I'm a version of that Erica Wallace in Aurelia Astoria.
Speaker 1:Astoria is my middle name. It's my grandmother's name, so I carry a lineage of women I never got to meet or experience, but they somehow feel very much so a part of me. And yeah, I'm the oldest of five kids. I come from a family very involved in evangelical ministry and being an artist. That's always been a very funky line to sit in between. I'm the oldest of five kids, so I have three sisters and a baby brother and now I'm niece, so our family is expanding and that's really beautiful. I'm based in Los Angeles with my husband. We got married in May of 2020, not planned, but we did it anyway. I'm a huge believer and advocate for people finding home and themselves and back in their own bodies.
Speaker 2:This is when I wish I did video, because if you could see Ariel as she talks, her whole face lights up and there's such joy coming out of her. I hope you engage with her platform so you can see just the light that she brings, and not just to her writing and her poetry but, I think, to her life, which is why I'm excited to talk today together. I always like to ask guests, and you came from a big family and you mentioned an evangelical background. I did. I'm curious what kind of sexual health education you had growing up.
Speaker 1:Sure, I remember very vividly being dismissed from sex ed at school and instead my parents wanted to be the ones to tell me how that all works. I honestly, I don't remember very much of what they said. I do remember being given a book called it's like how your body changes, or something it's called, mostly geared towards girls, young girls, and I remember being given this book about the things that my body would experience and ultimately, though this messaging of that this was something precious, that this was something to be valued and protected at all costs. So that was like the earlier years of it. And then, obviously, as I got older, I think one of my favorite traditions my mom had when we all first started our mentor cycles she would take us out of school, we would go get Jamba juice. She would already have pads or tampons or whatever it is for us, and we would go get a Jamba juice and we just talk about what we were feeling, if it was weird, if people noticed and, yeah, each of us experienced that the first time it happened, and it was a house full of women. So we often synced up quite a bit and my dad being the sweet me that he is, but also a man in the fullest sense would come home on the weeks where we were all synced up and he would throw pads. I have this very distinct memory of him going to the store because we commissioned him to and him coming back and literally we're just in the living room watching TV and we just start seeing pads just start flying around, flying through the air. Flying through the air. He was like I got axes, I got things I got and we're like this is not what we asked for. This is not what we asked for. So I have really precious memories.
Speaker 1:And then I also have a lot of memories of growing up in church settings and the older you get and me having boobs since I was 12, you know, and feeling that sense of hiding, like your body's changing, cover it up. You know your body's shifting in its temptation for the brothers around you. You know your body's changing, which means you need to be hyperactively aware of not conveying a message. You know, whatever that is. So that shaped into a teenage Ari, who wore a lot of camouflage, a lot of black, which is funny if you look at my Instagram Now I'm in the season of embracing my colors and embracing this brightness to stylistically how I want to show up in the world. But, yeah, younger me, there's a very fun. I don't know if fun is the word for it, but I have this picture of me and my sisters at the beach and I'm in a full on turtleneck and I think I was maybe 12 at the time and, granted, I grew up in the Bay Area so it was a little colder, but all my sisters are in like T-shirts and tank tops and I, being the oldest, I'm in a full on turtleneck, and so that kind of showed a lot of just how my teenage years turned into.
Speaker 1:There was not room for pleasure. That wasn't a thing. It was. It's for something to save, or for when you get married. And then, as I got older, you know attending retreats, purity culture retreats, you know being given purity rings and things like that, and, being the oldest, I took that very, very seriously. I didn't have my first kiss until I was 27. Up until then, I told myself I was gonna wait until my wedding day. I was gonna give this gift of my first kiss to my husband.
Speaker 1:I was not only gonna save, you know, the activity in my vagina, but I was gonna save my, my lips to like all of me, was going to be this gift. You know this pure and untouched gift, and my husband is the only person I have been sexually active with and that was its own undoing and processing. But yeah, there wasn't a lot of invitation for permission, let alone for pleasure. It was a very shut it down until it's time to turn it on kind of energy, and I took that very seriously. I made an identity so much that I took that very seriously.
Speaker 2:That is such a common story that I hear either with women that I consult with. I've also had Britt Barron's on the podcast talking about her evolving out of purity culture, and she uses a lot of the same language as you did right there, and I like people to hear it out loud because sometimes they feel like I think I'm the only one who ingested all of this and then had to do what you said flip that switch. And this is another theme that's so common for women who grow up in that purity culture is then getting to a relationship and deciding they're going to flip the switch, and it's a very difficult switch to flip.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean, a lot of my therapy was just because we were more intimate before we had gotten married, even though we both knew very early on that we were each other's persons. It was just a very, very quick, very full, felt, full soul, intact kind of experience, like the day I met physically, met him. I was like either this man is going to break my heart in a thousand little pieces or he might actually be the first one who knows how to hold it. I felt that very clearly when I met him. But in that time I just remember so much of being told I'm an example. You know, I've been told I'm a leader. So how can I be this leader and this speaker and this encourager of young girls when I'm sleeping with my boyfriend, who I fully intend to marry, but also at the same time even if I didn't, you know like that's still with something I clung onto that made it seem like I could ask if it was right, you know, or make it make sense in my head, even though it's just something my body had wanted, you know, and it felt safe for the first time actually to do so with him. Like I said, I had kissed and I was just now, in a season this summer, before I met him of just like learning to ask myself what it is I wanted. What is it I want in a relationship, you know, like, not who am I looking for to make a? I'm like, what are the things that I enjoy and date? What are the things I don't enjoy? What are things that guys say that just gets under my skin and what are things I really appreciate? You know, and that was just before I could even get to you, was that a good kiss? You know like, did I enjoy that? I didn't know. I didn't know what any of that was.
Speaker 1:And when I did have my first kiss with a boy I had grew up with, who had known for 10 plus years, you know, and we're at his sister's wedding and we're it was a very tuck, everlasting, that meets the notebook. We're in the middle of the street, in the middle of nowhere, and it was a very light, delicate kiss and it was, honestly, it was nothing. I think now that I think about it, but it was something to me then and I remembered the feedback I was being given after was well, you know, when sin creeps in, you know. So I already had these very immediate responses to like engaging physically results in being further from God or further from divinity if it's not within these thresholds that we've been told that it exists within. And so I wasn't, well, until almost my 30s.
Speaker 1:Well, I even started to be sexually active, and that was its own mind trip in itself, because then you're like learning yourself and you're learning your body and a whole new way that I wasn't aware of before, and it's with someone else. So, no, I can't shut down, I can't just not text him back. I have to communicate, I have to make you know what my needs are, what feels good, what doesn't feel good, known, and all of that I'm. We're three years into marriage and I'm still having to learn what that is.
Speaker 1:Or having to not like clinch my butt clinches when I'm tense, when I'm tense or when I'm uncomfortable, you know, like how not to have my butt clinch when I have to, you know, talk to him about things, or when I have to be vulnerable in a different, in a very raw and intimate way, and so that part makes me sad, you know, that part still I grieve, and so when I do talk to younger people I'm like I'm not telling you to just go out there and just sleep with you ever, but I am asking that you find more permission and more freedom to know what it is that you want and don't want and what it is your body is speaking to you about. You know, there is a lot there we could talk about.
Speaker 2:I'm thinking number one. I have a little mantra that I'm sure people have been listening a while. They've heard me say like we have to have a sexual relationship with ourself first before we can have a relationship with another. And yet when we grow up in these cultures where that's not encouraged nor normalized, then we come into the situation that you're describing, which is very normal, by the way, and you're sort of being a little hard on yourself, I think, because it's an ongoing evolving for all of us, as our bodies change, as our relationships change. I mean, I'm almost 60, and I'm still evolving and growing. Absolutely, it's just a normal way to be.
Speaker 2:So show yourself a little grace about that as you continue to invest in your relationship and in your sexuality together. And you're talking about, you know, paying attention to your body, which is a huge theme in your book, and one of the poems in Unfolding is called who Told you? Can I read just a couple lines from it? Yeah, it's really what we're talking about. You said I do not remember the first time I was told that my body was not good, but I do know how deeply this disembodied route goes.
Speaker 1:Tell me more, I think, just sharing. I have memories about growing up and about figuring out how to be a girl in her body, of really beautiful memories, you know. And then I have memories that have shifted the narrative to where I'm undoing a lot of that work now here in my 30s and I think, for the most part, a lot of the messages, especially for my dad having all girls, he always was really good at being like. You're beautiful, you know, and not just in a physical sense but in a spirit sense and a deeper sense and not a surface level. But there's beauty to you, there's beauty to your existing. But then you add Sunday school and you add youth group and you add getting older and how most of our messages and most of the conversations in our youth group and in said summer camps were always somehow around how our bodies were changing and what it is we were feeling and put those things to death.
Speaker 1:You know the constant narrative that our flesh cannot be trusted, especially the flesh of a woman, because Eve, for God's sake you know, and all of those narratives starting to take root in how not only I showed up in the world, but how I saw myself and how I interacted with other people. And I think for me it really shifted when I got to college and I was so adamant about making sure that I was being put in spaces where I could speak to freshman girls and speak to sophomore girls about who they were, about how valuable they were, about how enough they were. And here I was a junior, senior and being so good at giving those narratives to other people and very much so not believing it for myself, very much so like having to be caught in my own words and being faced with like you're a hypocrite, you're so good at being like you're enough, you're worthy, you're valuable, you know, and you don't speak that over yourself. And why don't I speak that over myself? Well, because I was told that my body is one. If it's anything to pay attention to, it's something to condemn, it's something to control, it's something to hide, it's something to separate myself from.
Speaker 1:And so I think, also being an artist, I'd gotten really good at knowing how to connect on a soul level, so much so that I lived very disembodied entirely. You know, like I'm a soul, I'm focusing on a body for it. You know, my art comes from the core of who I am, not the physical of who I am, and that just was another way of ignoring, of turning off, and it got to the point where I couldn't anymore, where I had to turn in what I had, to listen, and then that started my journey of being more active, you know, and connecting with my body, and Zumba, and then yoga and all these different ways that were outside of kind of what I was taught to tap into, and I think it really just became, because if my work is about being a part of unlocking these cages for other women, then I gotta start unlocking my own.
Speaker 2:Love to hear that these themes we talked about in another episode with Hilary McBride and I'm gonna link to that in the show notes if you've missed it, listeners, because what Arielle is sharing here is a lot about that disconnect that so many of us live our life in, putting all our focus on our mind or soul and almost pushing the body aside. I mean, as a nurse I always talk about are you paying attention, are you listening to what your body's saying? And it sounds like you started with movement. You talked about Zumba and yoga and were those the things that sort of jump-started feeling more embodied for you? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think when I started to realize that mentally I was contradicting the things I was teaching and the things I was encouraging and the things I was preaching with how I was actually actively living. I just had a summer where I went across the street, there was like a gym across the street from my college and there was a Saturday morning Zumba class. That just became a little bit like a church for me. There was just something so beautiful about watching these women 40 and up and they're sweating and they're moving their bodies and there was just so much permission. There was no cares given, there was no looking over your shoulder trying to make sure you're doing the thing right. There was just being in your body and moving.
Speaker 1:And I think that was my first. That was my first, I think sermon, if you will, to the unfolding of watching these women. Just be so very free. And I just was like I want that. So if I gotta come to Zumba every Saturday morning, then that's what I'm gonna do. And then, shortly after, starting to practice yoga, and that being the space where I could actually listen to my body, where I actually felt the connection and the intimacy to be still on a mat and to listen to how my body was responding to shapes and to poses and to breath and to being, and it's still something I practice to this day. And so tapping into those, I would say, fairly intimate spaces of movement too kind of was like that first thread I needed to pull in order to start undoing a lot of this. Your body is this, you know, wag the finger kind of mindset, but like no, my body is good, my body is capable, my body is free, my body feels things and she talks. My goodness, my body talks and she's worth listening to.
Speaker 2:She is worth listening to. Ah, I keep trying to be committed to doing yoga, and except for I always cry at the end.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, which I think is just what a beautiful release, you know, like what a beautiful space. I know it's an exhausting, it's the vulnerability hangover. You know, sometimes now I'm at a point in my practice where I dance a little, where I move a little, where that stillness at the end is just it's like what it is meant to be. It's that rebirthing, that rebornness, but sometimes that rebornness desolicit tears, you know, and your body's releasing a lot of that, and that's something really beautiful. I'm something we're celebrating, yeah.
Speaker 2:I have started also morning routine. People think I'm so woo-woo, but you're someone who will not think this is too woo-woo. No, I already do. Quiet and no screens in the morning. Is this the only way I can set up my day for sanity and peace and joy? And I went to a sacred feminine retreat and I learned more about dance and you talked about starting to dance with your yoga and so I started adding dance to my morning routine and it has been. I am not sure the words describe it. It's I'm getting sort of emotional. It's really freeing. It's a lot of what you're talking about. It's the giving myself the freedom to move, stretch, listen to a song that helps me, listen to my body, pay attention to her, be in her and then move. Yeah, it's really been transformative for me. I mean, at this age, you know, to finally allow myself that freedom and give myself permission for that. It's been a wonderful new addition to my mornings.
Speaker 1:I love that. Yeah, I'm moving with no perfecting that very subconscious way of existing and so much of our bodies, especially as female identifying people, is obstacle based, and so there's so much freedom in being able to take back that we're not something to just be looked at or to be watched, but that we are our own and being able to reclaim that and movement is just really juicy and really silly all at the same time.
Speaker 2:Juicy and silly your themes in the book. You have another poem. I just can't stand it. I have to read a few things out of your book because I really enjoyed it, Please do. And one of your poems is Permission to Dance Exactly what we're talking about. So it stopped me in my tracks. Of course I have it, you know, with all my sticky notes, and for once in my life I don't want the safety net. I don't want the cool, calm and collected, calculated or controlled. I want frenzy and chaos. I want uncomfortable, wild and untamed. I want to move where the wind takes me, get lost in my body.
Speaker 1:That's a fun, I love hearing it. But it's sometimes that it helps me hear it from other people, from other people's voices, because if I just read it, then there's just a lot of critique. There's a lot of. I wrote this, but for some reason, hearing it from other people, I'll have moments where I'm like mmm, that's good, you know, like that was really beautiful.
Speaker 2:It is good, and I do think, as a creator, I'm sure people receive your creation in different ways, you know. And so for me I was thinking about this new practice of dancing in the mornings and then I read this part in your book and went ah, it is that no one's looking, it's not for anyone else. I could just be wild untamed and move where the you said wind, For me it's the music takes me and get lost. Yeah, but, and there's such beauty and really delicious permission in that to really be present and just be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I went to a uber tree in June and it's through where I got my own teacher training from, so I got to teach and it was really beautiful. But we had two nights where we did a silent disco and it was just one of my favorite parts of the retreat because I got there a little bit later, so I came into it and you can hear nothing except for a few vocal people just singing their heart out like literally in the forest. And you go over and everyone has their headphones on and people's eyes are closed and people are just like moving. And I don't know if it was even more powerful being a part of it or if it was more powerful just watching it happen, watching all of this music in someone's ears and watching just this for freedom and permission to just dance in the middle of the forest and to music that only, like literally, you can hear in your ears.
Speaker 1:You know, but it was this collective moment and my husband had come up a little bit later and he was like this is a sight, like watching all of you, like I can't hear what it is you're listening to, but just watching everyone move and watching everyone be, that was probably one of my favorite parts. I will permanently have that image play in my head over and over again as what a representation of just being in your body looks like and not caring if you're yelling up to the trees. And I ended up writing a poem at the end of our time together and it was just being able to find that permission. I said the forest can handle. The forest can handle your unbeared existing. You're screaming into the trees, you're dancing wild and untamed and on purpose, you know, and there's something so beautiful about women existing unapologetically that is just continuously inspiring to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in community and in community even more so. Yes, because in the silent disco right you listened to the same song.
Speaker 1:Yes, uh-huh, yes, it's a playlist we all compiled as well, so we all got to, like, add songs to it, and so sometimes you don't know. You know, sometimes you're learning but you're still moving to it. You know just because you can't help it or you're watching other people move to it and there's something about that. So, yeah, the collectiveness of it, you know that makes you feel less alone, that makes you feel less crazy, that makes you feel just so in tune with each other and also with the nature around you, which is I'm constantly learning. There's a lot of nature themes in the book constantly looking at outside things to teach me about inner realities.
Speaker 2:I am on the page with you on that. I just have to be outside as much as possible. Yes, yeah, I'm wondering, you know, about the language you grew up with, about femininity, and I'm so delighted with your mom and how she normalized period, yeah, and provided opportunity to talk about what you're feeling, and often many young girls don't get a lot of information or affirmation or recognition of that time being a pivot time. So what a gift that she did that with you girls, and I'm also thinking about the language you talked about, about femininity in our bodies as women, and I'm thinking of women who are listening, or partners of women that they don't know where to begin to unfold, to unravel these difficult things that maybe you know they heard growing up, like you did, like I did. Sure, where would you encourage them to start?
Speaker 1:I guess in this moment I'm kind of thinking of going where your fear is like, going where I think what's the thing that comes up that probably scares you the most. You know, like what is it like? I'm thinking of that in my own writing right now and my own, really wanting to just like express more honestly than I've allowed myself to and I think writing this book was the first wave of that but I still am so crippled by what other people think of me, by how I'm viewed, and I'm really having to like very practically release and let go of all of those things, even though it terrifies me. I had a poem I wrote the other week and I got invited to go to a friend's event and she puts on this show called Lauren is a Jealous Bitch and she literally talks about why she's jealous of things and people and she brings up her friends who are artistic and talented and we perform our said talent and then she tells us why she's jealous of us after and it's so fun and so freeing. And so when she invited me, I obviously was like, well, I gotta write a poem of things that I'm jealous of. And even that was just like. So I wanted to constrict myself. I wanted to hinder certain things. I custom it and that's still something I'm learning to. Like the booty clenching, you know, like that's still something I'm so afraid of. And so I think it's going where we're most afraid and it's tackling that first Cuz.
Speaker 1:I think if we can remove the fear to the thing that we don't know how to get past, the next start of, I think, if we remove the fear, we have a better picture of this actually like isn't as scary as it seems. You know, like me undoing and unfolding my faith in my spirituality, I was told that's just so scary, you can't come back from it, you're never gonna be the same. Your connection to divinity is just gone after that. And now that I'm on this other side of that fear, I'm like, my goodness, the water feels great over here. You know, like there's so much freedom over here. There's no chains to all of this being and existing and connecting with creator and with the spirit, and it's less scary now. But, my God, those waves at the beginning were terrifying, you know. So go where it's the most scary, go where your fear is just like. I really don't want to do that. I really don't want to go there and just start to kind of poke holes a little bit.
Speaker 1:For me, a lot of it was just like well, what if I just write it and I'll have to share the thing that I'm scared of saying the most? But what if I just write it and then I get to a point where I'm at a show and everything I'm doing is like you're doing this poem, you know, and I'm like, and okay, and so what if I poke another hole and I see how other people engage with it? And then it becomes a lot less scary because there's connection there, there's relatability there, and I think it's in our most vulnerable, it's in our most honest that people do engage and connect with us the most. And it is scary Even writing the book.
Speaker 1:You know the first draft look very, very, very different and my editor was like so you're holding back and I can tell, you know, I can read it and I'm like oh, you know, and she's like I understand that I'm asking you to do things that a lot of people won't do and don't want to do. I'm asking you to go first, and I understand how hard it is that I'm asking you to go first. So sometimes we got to go first, and that means it might be a little bit uncomfortable, that means it might be a little bit of an awkward silence, oh my gosh. The exhale after is like but I did it and look, there was no actual risk to it all, there was no looming reality that was going to come into fruition. There's actually just like more freedom on the other side of this, and I think that is again another stronghold that we're continuously breaking, because free women have the ability to really shift things. So it's not something that they're really wanting to encourage us to be or to do.
Speaker 2:I had to start clapping if I could do that and have it come across on the podcast. But that's just beautiful. Thank you for sharing so much of yourself, you know, in your book and even here with my listeners and think you are paving the way, you know, for those that are thinking about facing whatever they fear the most, as you said. I hope, if it's in relation to sexual health and those themes, that you'll feel safe to keep joining me here and keep hearing from people like Ariel and others to know you're not alone and feeling community a bit here I'm thinking of a letter to that I've written to young women in this area and I'm going to link it in the show notes, because this is a common theme of feeling so alone and that it's difficult to break this cycle, so to speak, and unravel the twisted, tangled narratives that we soaked in. Well, tell people how they can find your book and you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can find the unfolding, whatever books, audiobooks and ebooks are sold.
Speaker 2:Wait, do you read the audiobook?
Speaker 1:Do you read the audiobook? Yes, the voice is something that you find appealing. Feel free to grab that. It's on audible, but it's also on Libro FM. I would say, go to your local bookstore and see if they have it first, if they don't tell them to order it and then you can also find it at your nearest Romans or Barton Novels or whatever, and also online as well. There's some really cool smaller businesses that you can shop online from, whether that be reparations club or Octavia's bookshelf. So try to find a smaller book place to support.
Speaker 1:Libro FM is an audible or audio book, but it's also connected in funds library, so feel free to find it on there. Yeah, you can get your physical copy on Amazon if you'd like to, but feel free not to go through there but to leave a review on Amazon. You don't have to purchase it on Amazon To leave a review, so you can leave a review on Amazon and or Goodreads if it connects with you. So I would love to know how and you can find me at all things REL Astoria, that's two L's and a E. Astoria is E-S-T-O-R-I-A. That's dot com. That's on Instagram. I do respond to my DMs and my website is kind of a hub so you can find that at REL Astoria dot com you can find all those things there.
Speaker 2:All the things lovely and on this podcast we like to have guests share something that's delighting them, it's bringing them pleasure, anything or everything that's delighting you these days.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say I've been in the season of. I'm an actor as well and there are lots of strikes happening right now, so that is kind of a little bit wonky right now. But I'm trying to put a little bit more energy into my teaching and I've been certified for about two years but I really didn't feel comfortable teaching yoga until the last like year or so. This last Saturday I got to teach yoga to ambassadors for figs, which is a scrubs company, and so doctors and nurses, and we just posted up on the beach and put on our yoga mats and it was fun and sweaty and really beautiful. I'm still really beaming off of that. So that was really lovely and I'm trying to break that fear myself of teaching in a studio and trying to decide if that's a route I want to go and so, yeah, that's bringing me a lot of joy this week so far.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I wish I'd known I would have showed up on the beach in my scrubs or whatever I had to do. Yes, yes, it was so grateful for you joining me today. Thank you for your time and for your book and putting it out in the world. Thank you for reading it.
Speaker 1:Thanks for picking it up.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And today, as we wrap up, I want to share a meditation that Ari has in her book called Permissions Slip, and of course I stopped at the word permission. She encourages us to inhale, read an affirmation over ourself and then exhale. One of the affirmations is today I give myself permission to protect, nurture and tend to the person I am and the person I am becoming. And, if I may, could I take just a teeny liberty with your last affirmation? Sure, thank you. And as we close our conversation, I'll leave us with this Think about what you might need to give yourself permission to do or be today. Know that you are the only person who needs to ask this of you and you have full freedom to respond with all the permission you need. So today I give myself permission. Your pleasure.