Have you ever found yourself questioning your relationship with alcohol? If so, you’re not alone. In this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories, host Heather Carey welcomes Maria Mays, a meditation teacher and well-being coach, to explore the transformative practice of mindful drinking. Together, they delve into the journey from unconscious drinking habits to a more intentional approach, revealing how mindfulness can reshape our experiences with alcohol and enhance our overall well-being.

Maria shares her personal story of moving from habitual drinking, often dictated by societal norms, to a more conscious and aware practice. She emphasizes the importance of reconnecting with our intentions and experiences, which is crucial not only for mindful drinking but also for our broader relationship with food. As they discuss the impact of societal expectations on drinking habits, Heather and Maria encourage listeners to evaluate their own behaviors through the lens of mindfulness.

Throughout the episode, Maria introduces her unique mindful tasting process, which includes several transformative steps: arriving in the moment through breathwork, setting clear intentions, admiring the drink, exploring its aromas, tasting with awareness, and reflecting on the entire experience. This approach not only enhances the enjoyment of drinking but also aligns with healthy lifestyle choices that prioritize well-being. Heather and Maria highlight the significance of slowing down, not just while drinking but also during meals, to improve digestion and foster a deeper connection with our food.

Many find themselves in a ‘gray area’ with their drinking habits, and this episode encourages listeners to embrace mindful drinking as a way to cultivate a more conscious lifestyle. As they share practical advice on integrating mindfulness into everyday consumption, Heather and Maria provide valuable insights that align with nutrition advice and healthy eating tips. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone looking to nourish their body, especially women navigating midlife and the complexities of menopause health.

With topics ranging from personal food journeys to mindful eating practices, this episode is packed with wisdom and actionable strategies. Whether you’re interested in sustainable eating, culinary wellness, or simply seeking to empower your relationship with food and alcohol, this episode of Real Food Stories is here to guide you on your path to health and wellness. Tune in and discover how mindful drinking can transform not just your relationship with alcohol, but your entire approach to nourishment and self-care.

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Hey, everybody. If you are questioning your drinking and how much you drank and whether or not you should give it up, I want you to take a listen to today’s podcast because I had a really enlightening conversation with meditation teacher, mentor, and well-being coach Maria Mays, who has a slightly different approach to mindful drinking. She teaches courses and And… classes all around this concept of slowing down, using all your senses when you are drinking a glass of wine, and just taking it all in. Maria’s approach to drinking and alcohol consumption is likely something that you are not used to hearing. If you question your drinking or think maybe it’s too much, take a listen to today’s interview. You’ll definitely learn a lot.

Speaker #1
Hey everybody and welcome back. Today I am with Maria Mays and as a meditation teacher, mentor, and well-being coach,

Speaker #0
Maria serves as a conduit for inner peace. She founded Take 5, a company with a mission of helping time-strapped professionals liberate themselves from anxiety and the effects of chronic stress. Maria has a specialty in mental wellness in the workplace and brings… expert and professional instruction in meditation, breathwork, holistic health, and mindfulness practices to different companies and offices. And in addition to all her credentials, and the reason I was eager to talk with Maria today is because in addition to her goals towards inner peace and calm, Maria also has over 10 years experience working in the wine industry and teaches mindful wine tasting and drinking. This was so intriguing to me since so many people drink alcohol and I know from the experience of many of my clients that there can be a secret struggle behind it. Mindfulness, I imagine, around drinking could be the answer to that. Hi, Maria, welcome. And I wanted to just start by saying that I stopped drinking over five years ago because I could no longer. ignore all I knew about the health detriments of alcohol. And there’s truth to the fact that there’s no amount of alcohol that’s really good for you. I know Canada even set a standard of no more than two drinks per week now. And it sounds like the United States might eventually get to that place as well. So I really had a wake up call. for myself when it came to realizing the habit that I had been creating for myself. I mean, everything was linked to that glass of wine. It was the end of the week. It was the end of the workday. I was bored. I was meeting friends. I was hanging out with my husband. I mean, everything just, the habit that, you know, just centered around it was really eye-opening to me. So I’m curious to hear your story around wine and drinking and why you you believe that mindfulness could be the answer to someone who might question how much they drink.

Speaker #1
Well, thank you, Heather. Thank you for the intro. And that’s a great way to get us started in terms of the journey of my own with alcohol. And I’m grateful to your listeners to give us this time in their day as well. So my journey was definitely a long one to become a mindful drinker. And so I wasn’t always mindful. You know, I would say that although You know, looking back at childhood, even just having awareness of my father, for example, having a beer after work or, you know, a cocktail after work as a way to kind of end the day, take the edge off. Right. And so that was something that I observed, you know, in my youth, but didn’t really think about it until recently as I started reflecting on my own journey. And then it will. In my adolescence, you know, it became as I explored, as many of us do when we’re teenagers, I found that it could take the edge off my anxiety, even though we know that alcohol actually will create more anxiety in the human body for that minute or two or that hour or two or however long you actually receive the benefit of the. um, depressing of the system, depressing of the nervous system to allow you to be more calm. I found that that was a way where I could feel more comfortable in my own skin in social environments. And so that’s kind of how I started to dabble. I was like, Hmm, this is, you know, this is something that works to help me feel a little bit more, um, belonging at the time. And so then fast forward to, I would say the, the right, probably my first job out of college. And so I was working for, you know, Fortune 500 and was, it was very much a go, go, go fast, pressure filled environment. And what I found is, first of all, most people were 10 to 30 years, my senior that I was working with. But I found that that’s really where the deal got done. It was at the cocktail table. It was that happy hour. It wasn’t necessarily in the meeting that you had. prior to that. So it became kind of an indoctrinated thing, I think, culturally based on the, I’m going to say the corporate lifestyle, and then also just having already found it as a means to self-medicate. And so fast forward several decades, you know, I found myself in my early 30s in a unconscious habit loop. of, as you kind of mentioned or painted a picture, you know, coming home after a long day, heading to the wine fridge, pouring myself a glass of wine, going to the pantry, grabbing a bag of chips, eating some chips while I’m drinking my wine, trying to figure out what the heck I’m going to make for dinner. And I think it’s something that a lot of us fall into. And so there’s certainly been a lot of gaps within there where I partied hardied, right? And there also were times where I didn’t drink. And so, but there was that time in my thirties where it really became an unconscious habit loop or what we would call a karma cycle of create having an action, right? Like in this case, me pouring a glass of wine and sipping it, that creating a memory right in me. Oh, I had this experience. I’m feeling a little bit more chill. I’m not getting as anxious about, you know, the fact. that the house is a mess or the kids are doing this or, you know, whatever the day stresses, right? And then that created a memory in my brain and a desire then to do it again. And so we find ourselves falling into these unconscious habit loops where even if it wasn’t a bottle a night, it was just a glass of wine at night, you know, at times maybe two, it was still unconscious in that there was nothing intentional about my actions. And um you know, there’s some good, the bad and the ugly around along the way there. But I would say that it wasn’t until I’d stepped into and I’d stepped away from alcohol for a bit in my late 30s and early 40s. And then, as I developed a really consistent meditation practice, as I found that self love that I’ve been missing for most of my life, and as I became much more self aware, and much more self compassionate. At that point, I was able to really look at it as an entirely different experience. And so I’d been pouring in the, you mentioned I’d been in the wine industry 10 years, as a result of coming out of a deep period of grief and loss and a nervous breakdown as a result of it, because I didn’t take any care of myself. I was too busy taking care of everybody else around me to even consider. you know, how dare I take time for myself when I’ve got all these people to care for type mentality. And so I hit a wall and I had a full breakdown. And in coming out of that, as I was starting to come back to being ready to go back to work and being ready to be out in the world again, I wasn’t quite ready to go back to the software career that I had known since the start of my career. But I, long story short, I started pouring in a little tasting room in a boutique winery on the road to Yosemite. And I always had this love for the tasting experience because it was a slower process, because it was typically paired with food, because there was just, there are so many memories in, even in my early childhood, as I looked to, we would always go to Napa when people would visit. I’d watch my parents at that age. I couldn’t drink, right. But I would see, you know, someone would come out from Minnesota where we moved from, and then we would show them, you know, Napa, Yosemite, San Francisco, go all the things, right? And so I noticed, I think, subconsciously a little bit of slowing down and just a very joyful environment. And so I always had this bee in my bonnet that I wanted to pour wine in the tasting room after I retired. And so at that point, when I was getting myself well, I decided, why wait, let me start here. And it really helped me bring myself back to then diving back into the software world, etc. But as I became deeper into meditation and started you sharing meditation with others, becoming certified and, you know, starting to teach others. I really found such a keen, so many similarities in the tasting process, the five S’s that you learn when you’re in the wine industry, right. Of tasting. And then the mindfulness process within the Ayurvedic lifestyle that I teach. And so I decided to combine the two, um, because it’s really, I didn’t seek to become that myself, but it’s, that was my journey. was after I became dedicated with my practice, after I found that self-love, which I found through my practice. And after I was able to step into just full presence and awareness with my behavior, then I was able to taste really mindfully. And so I thought, here’s an opportunity to develop, to share this with others. And so it kind of happened as a fluke, the mindful tasting process during the shutdown of COVID, I decided let’s teach some wine and yoga classes up at the winery when we couldn’t teach indoors. And so I would teach one particular class, either yoga or meditation or something of that nature, and then take them through a mindful tasting without calling it that at the time. And I would get such great feedback from people because what I found is there’s a lot of us that are in this gray area, right? And so that is my, really my… My message is that for those of us who are in the gray area, this doesn’t apply to someone who has a severe substance abuse problem, right? You know, you’re going to need to get professional help to get through that prior to ever considering going on this journey, let’s say. But I’ve had so much feedback from people who are in that gray area or maybe even have a bigger problem with it than the average bear that this has been really life changing. And so I decided to take it more broad with. the podcast and with the mindful tasting process. So,

Speaker #0
well, your story, I mean, at least your beginning story, I’m not a meditation teacher, so I didn’t take that path, but your beginning story is, is my story too. You know, just the unconscious habit loop that you mentioned, you know, it’s just really becomes very mindless that you just, you just go home from work, you pour the glass of wine, I mean, without thought. you know, we can do this with food. We could do this a lot of things, but, but when I was drinking, that was, that was definitely on, on a loop, you know, of, it was just, I had my certain triggers that would, and I also started drinking the same, like, you know, as you, as, as when I was a teenager, it made me more social and more, less anxious, even though it creates so much anxiety and you, you know, I mean, it kills your sleep. I mean, there’s so many. reasons to not be drinking like heavily like that. But in the moment, it made sense. So I really can relate to that part of the story. And I really like your just analogy with I mean, wine tasting and being mindful because that’s really true. I mean, to slow down, smell it, taste it. I’m sure you you can talk about, you know, what else you might. do in that process really does bring you back to just full awareness and attention over what you’re doing rather than just like chugging down a glass of wine or chugging a beer because you just got home from work. Right. It’s really, it is, it sounds like it’s a really, really different experience.

Speaker #1
I think it is. You know, I think a lot of times when we, even if we’re going to environment to taste or to a party or something where we know there’s going to be consumption, Oftentimes we’re physically present, but we’re mentally in our last activity. We’re in the, did I pick up the dry cleanings? Did my daughter get her lunch this morning? You know, did I finish that? You know, did I send that email? We’re ruminating over the shoulda, coulda, wouldas, the tasks that maybe didn’t get checked off the list, the ones that are on the list, all the concerns of the future. And so there’s so much going on in our monkey minds, right? that oftentimes… when we’re consuming or even when we’re just. sharing an afternoon with someone we’re not consuming, we’re not fully present for the conversation or that which is in our glass or on our plate. And so the first step in my mindful tasting process is to become present. It’s called arrive. And by that, fully arrive in the moment. And so the fastest way to get present that I’ve learned in my life would be through the breath. And so we do, if I’m leading a group, let’s say I do this at wineries, I also do it in businesses. If I’m leading a group, I’ll typically start with a very deep guided meditation where I take you through a full sensory journey. And that includes quite a bit of breath work. Now, if I’m doing it just myself, let’s say if I sit down and I’m going to decide I’m going to have a glass of wine, I will pause or before I eat pause, and this is goes for everything and just. allow myself to arrive. So by taking five slower than normal, deeper than normal breath cycles, what we’re going to do is drop ourselves from a mobilized state of the sympathetic nervous system, where our digestive system is actually throttled back to a calm, restful state where then the digestive organs are starting to get, you know, ready to do their job. They’re more prepared, because they’re not being suppressed. So after we arrive, then it’s a question of asking, what’s my intention behind this sip? And I’m holding up, this is a water glass and there’s water and cement in it. But as you pause, again, you’re becoming aware, you’ve already arrived through your breath. So you’re much more able to ask this question in that state. And you ask yourself, what’s my intention behind the sip? So just that. question when I’m practicing this on my own, oftentimes results in me not having that glass of wine or not having that tub of ice cream. So other times it’s, it’s just a quick check. Like, yeah, I, I’m just really looking forward to enjoying these flavors. I’m here to celebrate. I’m going to have some time with a loved one. I’m going to really truly enjoy all of the. flavors. But a lot of times, you know, the, the examples we both gave in our past, those would be an unstated, unintentional, um, there’s an intention there, but it was subconscious, right? It was this, I’m going to curb the edge. I’m going to take the edge off my stress. I’m going to take the edge off my anxiety. I’m going to be able to feel better, whatever it might be. I’m going to just, you know, leave it at the office type thing, whatever. that is, it’s still an intention, whether you’ve outwardly stated it. But by the fact of slowing yourself down, asking yourself and getting curious on the response or lack thereof, if there’s no response, that’s something to get curious about too, right? And then decide how you’re going to proceed. And so that’s a pretty powerful step that I’ve heard from feedback from people has been pretty life-changing. And then as we go into the next state, it’s going to be admiring. And so by admire, we’re going to take a look at the actual contents of what we’re going to consume. So in the case of wine, we’re going to look at the color, right? We’re going to look at the hue, the different, the way the wine falls around the glass. We’re going to give it a little swirl. This is specific to wine tasting now, but if we’re going to give it a little swirl, swirl because we’re allowing them the wine to arrive just like we did by deepening our breath if we allow the wine to arrive with a little swirl we’re going to pull oxygen in and it’s going to bring out more of the aromas it’s going to oxidize the wine oxidize wine um and also in that process and looking at the color it’s just admiring the beauty just like our plates i mean how often do we eat without you know just start devouring without let’s look at all the colors do i have all the colors on my plate right you And let’s really look at them and admire them. And there’s some other things specific to wine tasting with legs, et cetera, that, you know, go into the process. But after that admiration and part of what we’re doing there is we’re starting our salivary glands to kick in. Right. We’re preparing for digestion again. And then the next step is really exploring it. So that’s when we get into the smelling. And even with food too, if you smell your food before you eat it, right? Just smelling the different aromas, what does it remind you of? So I go through a process of kind of questioning and pulling out answers, just getting curious. Like, have you ever smelled that before? Because with our sense memory, it’s… individualized, right? So if I’ve never smelled, for example, a lychee nut, I’ve never going to smell it in a glass of wine. But what we can do is we can sharpen our senses by smelling, right? And so we can actually create more acute awareness through all of our senses through practice. But so after we smell it, then we dip into the tasting. And now so you’re probably thinking if you’re listening to this, maybe, oh my God, we’re finally going to take a sip. which is funny because sometimes that’ll be a challenge for people, right? But there is so much more beauty than in that sip because we’ve built up this momentum, right? It’s just like when you’re booking tickets to go to Hawaii or somewhere, right? It’s all the anticipation and excitement about getting there. That’s what half the fun is, right? And so same thing is with our tastes. We’re excited about it. And then as we sip it, we kind of experience it. explore the different flavors again what it reminds us of if we like it or not right so because I’m I’m I literally did this last night I was at my mom’s house and she just opened a bottle of wine and it was bad and I poured it out and she’s like what are you doing I’m like life is too short to drink bad wine especially when you’re only going to have one glass and so we’re going to open another one because this one is scum so that’s a good idea so um yeah so then after that exploration piece, And we’ve kind of sit with the taste and the smells, et cetera. Then we go into the reflection. And this is where we would look at the savoring step in the wine tasting, what we would call the finish, which is a fancy word for the aftertaste, right? How does it leave the mouth? And you can do this with food too, right? Things that are astringent are going to have that uplift on the sides of the tongue. And they’re going to have different properties then for our digestive process. The other piece of the reflect is really to go on a little gratitude journey. So when I’m teaching this in person, I guide them through it to really bring awareness to all the humans and in the process, right, to get that from the soil to the glass. And so we go on a little gratitude journey and have gratitude with maybe who we’re with. So again, doing this just on my own, it’s going to be as quick as just having. I’m grateful for whoever, maybe it was myself that I prepared it, whatever the gratitude might be. But to really feel into that gratitude too, rather than just spout it out, like feel it viscerally. And then, yeah, just continue to enjoy it. So it’s a much longer way to sip a wine. But I’m telling you, stepping into mindfulness with consumption is one of the most liberating and empowering things we can do for our health.

Speaker #0
Yeah, I love it. this i mean i mean we can do this with with eating also and then what’s you know look at what’s on our plate and slow down you know the slowing down part before you sit down and eat is so important to just digesting food people don’t really understand that like digestion starts in your brain so so but just for then drinking and drinking a glass of wine and slowing down because i don’t know about you but right i mean like my first glass of wine could be gone and a minute, you know, depending on, you know, like what kind of day I was having or, you know, without no thought, no intention, no, no attention to it. So I think, I think for people who really don’t want to give up drinking, you know, and again, I want to just, just go back to, I know you said like, you know, this gray area drinking that, which I feel like I, that’s the category I definitely fell into. Not everyone is a gray area drinker and everyone has to really reevaluate or evaluate for themselves where they are with their drinking. But when you if you don’t want to give up drinking, you know that it’s maybe you’re drinking too much and you don’t but you still don’t want to give it up. This mindfulness exercise is a really nice way just to get come back to yourself, you know, and just realize.

Speaker #1
why you’re drinking in the first place and just appreciate what’s in front of you it can just be one glass of beautiful wine yeah and you know i think too as for someone who’s wanting let’s say if you’re just having a typical glass of wine at night or what have you and you want to explore this process you might take a few days or i’d recommend a week off to just reset the palate because there’s something that when we step away from consistency and we allow our taste buds to kind of recalibrate, then it’s going to be a much more powerful experience when you step back into it too. So I’d recommend. recommend that. And, you know, I think to your point with the digestion, I think a lot of us, I mean, I can just paint you a picture of how I used to eat my lunch. I was at my desk responding to an email, probably from my boss or whoever, and then just eating as I’m responding to an email. So I’m in a state of stress, right? Or oftentimes I’d be standing. How many of us are eating standing up. I mean, these are things that we all do as a culture, at least in the US. And it’s really because of how fast the world is. Right. And so, again, if we’re in this fast, mobilized, sympathetic nervous system state, those digestive organs are suppressed because the body thinks that it needs to mobilize and you don’t need to be digesting if you need to run away from something. Right. But rather than the saber tooth tire today, it’s an email. Right. And so I think just that. just starting with that awareness of being, okay, what’s going on here? Because we don’t realize that that impacts our health. And I think quite frankly, I mean, I don’t have any data to support this, but I think that’s why the majority of us have IBS because of not just what we’re eating, but how we’re eating and our level of unmanaged chronic stress.

Speaker #0
Yeah. I don’t have data in front of me to support that either, but I think what you’re saying makes a ton of sense. I mean, I know that I’m very familiar with that. stress eating and your cortisol levels get high and then that slows down your digestion. And it definitely leads to a lot of digestive issues and just a whole host of other issues. So slowing down, not only with our wine consumption or alcohol consumption, but with our food also just makes all the sense in the world. Do you ever have people who say to you, Well, then I start to drink like one glass of wine and then I feel like I can’t stop. And I guess those people are the ones that have to be really evaluating their their wine and alcohol consumption.

Speaker #1
So, you know, I think so. I haven’t had that feedback on this process in particular. I’ve actually had the opposite where I’ve heard people say, you know, I went to order another glass and I ordered it. And then I took a sip and I realized it didn’t even taste close to the first one. So then I just didn’t finish the glass and I never don’t finish the glass. Not to say that it’s a miracle pill for everybody. It’s going to be really individualized. And so, you know, I teach in a outpatient clinic and a couple of the groups that I teach are in the substance use disorder program, both adults and teens. And I think it’s not as much just this during the process. as it is, you know, the way I was able to get here is by cultivating daily practices that really supported my wellbeing. And so practices like daily meditation, movement, et cetera. And so I think this is something that it’s a way to expose people to mindfulness in a way that’s an easy step into, but then the reality is if, if we’ve been in a unconscious habit loop for some time, it’s going to take more than just one mindful taste to step out of that. But if we come at that with curiosity and compassion, so a big part of everything I teach has to do with self-compassion because it’s the most untaught skill in our culture, right? And it’s super important when we’re going to make any type of change in life. And we are going when we want to step in to more mindfulness is to have that compassion because there’s going to be times where, oh, you know what? Maybe I did eat the ice cream or whatever. You know, I did have… a glass and I didn’t ask myself what the intention was or what have you. Right. So I would just say, you know, the, the, the wisdom, the best advice I can give folks listening is the best teacher you have. And the wisdom that you have is actually within you. But in order to access that wisdom, we have to slow down. We have to get still, and we have to get quiet to allow those answers to come through that. So that’s. The majority of my work is working with people to get to that place of a baseline of inner peace so that it’s with these practices and consistency that we can support and sustain, right? And then we can cultivate a lifestyle that is for, I also teach 80-20, right? So I’m an 80-20 girl through and through. I mean, the 80% of my lifestyle is very, very consistent around these habits and routines and nutrition and clean and, you know.

Speaker #0
things that the earth created and not a manufacturing plant. But then there’s that 20% where you’re going to be at a, you know, a graduation party, or you’re going to be, you know, somewhere and maybe not have that control, but you can, again, go at it with intention. Okay. What’s my intention? I’m in this situation. I’m going to have this and not that, right? I think we just become really constrictive and restrictive with a lot of dietary and consumption. programs. And I’m here to suggest that we can liberate ourselves by being more conscious about our consumption so that we don’t have to have such a constricted approach. Because over time, what you find is as you step into more of a consciousness-based approach to health, is that these become habits and it becomes a lifestyle where it doesn’t feel like, you know, I was at a soccer game this weekend and the mom next… to me was eating, you know, eating some chocolate chip cookies out of like a little prepackaged bag, right from the store. And I was thinking, I’m kind of hungry right now, but my son was in and when he’s in my adrenaline’s pumping, right? And so I know I’m not going to have the best digestion, right? And so I waited until halftime. And then I had a fig, right? I had figs, fresh figs, which are in season right now and amazing, right? And And I reflected on that later, like, wow, what a, I didn’t even like looking at the cookies over there. It didn’t even spark any desire. Like you get to the point where there’s just no desire for junk because it makes you feel like junk. But also the awareness of everything that I teach in terms of nutrition to, or this mindfulness process also stems from preparing ourselves to digest. It’s the thing that we all forget about. So we have this concept of agni. um, in our uveta, which is our digestive fire. Right. And that that’s not just true of what we drink and eat, but it’s also our emotions that need to be metabolized and assimilated. Um, and so, yeah, it’s all kind of, it’s, it’s all the same thing. It’s whatever we’re consuming, whether it be social media, whether it be the news, whether it be, um, a stress or trauma experience or whether it be, um, food or drink. Well,

Speaker #1
those are really. Great points. And I think that the takeaway is that you said, like, you know, the wisdom really is within you first and the compassion. I mean, I know when I stopped drinking, there’s no way I could have done it without having self-compassion. I wouldn’t have worked. There’s no way. And all you’re like saying that, you know, like it’s not just the food and the drinking, but our other consumptions. I think the takeaway is we have a lot to learn. in this country, right? About just getting mindful and getting still and getting calm. And it would be a nice goal to have everyone achieve. And hopefully more as time goes on and with like work like you’re doing, that people can see that. And Maria, you sound like you’re just doing amazing work and I just love everything that you’re doing. So, and I’m so intrigued with this mindful drinking. I think my listeners definitely will. Well, as well, how can people find you? I mean, how can, can people work with you? Can people, I know that you’re in California, I’m in Connecticut. I mean, people listen all over the country and world, but can people get in touch with you and work with you?

Speaker #0
Yeah. So my website address is take five. So my business is called take five, take, and then the number five, just to remind you that all it takes is five breaths, right? If you’re in and I’ll just kind of. leave with that too. It’s if you cannot take five minutes for yourself, you can at least take five breaths slower than normal, deeper than normal, because that’s going to do wonders for your health. So take five dot health is the domain. So rather than.com and I’m on the social platforms as at take five health, no dot there. And so, yeah, I work I’ve got a mentorship program going on right now. It’s an eight week program called empower your health. and it’s a group mentorship. So it combines the best of these different teachings along with some group coaching. It’s very powerful. So the next cohort will probably start in late October and that will be an online option as well for a self paced course. And then I work one on one with people. So with one on one work, that’s where we can really kind of dive deep. And I also provide as a support to my one-on-one, to my mentorship and to my workplace. clients, because I teach this in the workplace as well, especially as holiday season’s coming up, and these holiday parties are on the heels. And if you think all you have to do is think back to that one Christmas party for work, or you know, so and so, or maybe using yourself got plastered and made a, you know, fool themselves. to remember that a lot of times, you know, in the workplace, our parties aren’t so mindful. So I actually teach this as part of a stress reduction and mindful tasting process for companies. So those you can reach out to me for all those things. And I also have an online studio that has over 100 different guided five minute video and audios that are designed to be done during your workday to just tap out of from the to do list. tap out from all the productivity, all the going, going, going, doing, to take five minutes to return to ourselves, to ground, to breathe and to stretch. And so that’s something I for, for businesses as well as individuals. So yeah, that’s all at my website.

Speaker #1
Fantastic. Well, I will put all of those links in the show notes so people can find you that way as well, in case they didn’t write that down and they can easily access. your services. So Maria, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation. I really learned a lot from you and I know that my listeners will too. Thanks again.

Speaker #0
Yeah. Thank you so much, Heather. I appreciate it.

Speaker #1
And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out. on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.