If you’re burned out on reading articles touting the latest methods of or findings on weight loss, join the growing club.
As anyone who has worked in this field knows, you can give a monkey a copy of the latest diet book and (s)he will make great progress losing weight (so long as you reduce the amount of monkey chow you feed them every day.)
During the pandemic many of us turned to meditation to reduce our astronomical rise in stress levels.
Some of the benefits of Mindful Meditation include reduction of anxiety & depression, stress relief, helping the brain reduce distraction, & the increase of your body satisfaction.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.
Meditation is not something you can be bad at, like anything it’s a practice. Your brain will always seek to think, plan, drift & worry, so the main intention is to bring your thoughts back to the breath, quieting the mind.
Mindfulness meditation in steps from the Harvard Gazette:
Settle in
Find a quiet space. Using a cushion or chair, sit up straight but not stiff; allow your head and shoulders to rest comfortably; place your hands on the tops of your legs with upper arms at your side.
Now breathe
Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax. Feel the fall and rise of your chest and the expansion and contraction of your belly. With each breath notice the coolness as it enters and the warmth as it exits. Don’t control the breath but follow its natural flow.
Stay focused
Thoughts will try to pull your attention away from the breath. Notice them, but don’t pass judgment. Gently return your focus to your breath. Some people count their breaths as a way to stay focused.
Take 10
A daily practice will provide the most benefits. It can be 10 minutes per day, however, 20 minutes twice a day is often recommended for maximum benefit.
You can practice your meditation in a designated quiet space in your home. Or sometimes going into nature, such as near water, on a hike or even a park will do. Whatever is available to you and whatever you choose is perfectly ok.
Your area can simply be a cushion in a corner or you can design a serene space however you’d like.
Calm and Headspace are 2 apps you can use for guided meditations, but there are so many free YouTube videos and websites you can utilize.
Personally, I lost my job and 3 family members in the last year. I’ve slowly found my way back to peace using some of the steps above to reduce my anxiety and bring me a sense of calm.
I do hope you found some value in the above.
You can practice your meditation in a designated quiet space in your home. Or sometimes going into nature, such as near water, on a hike, or even a park will do. Whatever is available to you and whatever you choose is perfectly ok.
Do you have a meditation practice of your own? What do you do to lower your stress levels?
The idea for a wellness coaching business evolved in late 2017 as Anne Mitchell and Roxie Speer plotted their escapes from corporate America. This is the story of how they created Teacup Wellness and what happened after it failed.
Wanting to devote our talents and energies to something we felt passionate about, we brainstormed and researched and crafted personas and defined target markets and wrote lean business plans.
As recovered alcoholics and former smokers, we each had gone through our own wellness journeys and had also gotten certified to be coaches.
We loved what coaching can do and we wanted to build a business that helped other wellness coaches be successful and help more people.
The first iteration of our business was focused on helping coaches operate their businesses so they could focus on coaching. We got to work setting up tools and systems to fill that need.
The name Teacup Wellness came as we explored branding for successful companies such as Apple, Google, and Starbucks.
We knew our name didn’t need to be literal, it just needed to be memorable. Maybe our name could even get a positive response when people heard it for the first time.
We thought the idea of tea evoked a sense of wellbeing and connectedness. And the word “teacup” was fun to say. Adding wellness to the name shares a little about what we do.
People loved our name and loved our concept. Coaches excitedly joined us, hoping for a new way of working that would make it easier for them to do what they loved best.
Except we never quite figured out how to make money doing it, for us or for our coaches.
After about a year of spending more time and more money trying to make it work, we finally closed up shop and considered what to do next.
Roxie moved on with her life but Anne soon discovered that she wasn’t able to let go. The idea of creating a business that benefits coaches and clients seemed too promising to just walk away from without some more thought and some more tinkering.
Creating Teacup as a nonprofit had always been a consideration, but since we knew nothing about nonprofits, it seemed safer to go the profit route. If only…
Recreating Teacup as a nonprofit had to cost next to nothing to build and operate since all the money was gone after the first failure.
With unreasonable optimism based on absolutely nothing, Anne kept trying different online solutions. She was looking for a way for us to offer a directory of coaches and a process for connecting them with clients in a way that didn’t require a room full of technology experts to run the thing.
After many false starts and dead ends, Anne finally identified a suite of tools and processes that seemed to work.
Then she had to expand upon and refine the concept and do all the rest of the work of setting up a new nonprofit. The following list of steps is an overview of what it took, and not necessarily in order.
devour books and podcasts about nonprofits
learn about fundraising approaches and opportunities
craft a nonprofit business model
develop a financial structure
create a collaboration space for coaches
register as a nonprofit
file for an IRS EIN
define all the processes
design and build the site
write all the content
obtain a bank account
identify and configure a donor management tool
apply for a secure payment processing service
submit 501c3 (started)
Inviting earlier coaches to give feedback on the concept, she tweaked the business model and finished building out the site based upon their input.
After more months of work, Teacup was finally to the point where it was ready to onboard coaches, solicit donations, and invite clients.
Teacup Wellness Nonprofit was officially (re)born on April 20, 2021.
We hope this story is just the beginning of something amazing.
In case you’re curious, Anne wrote all the content, built Teacup’s site, and crafted the processes and structure of our new nonprofit operations.
Roxie, along with supportive friends, family members, and other wellness coaches gave Anne the love, support, and input to help keep her going during what sometimes seemed like slow-motion progress (plus her fulltime job as an experience designer for a major insurance firm keeps her busy on weekdays).
Anne’s vision and stubborn passion for the possible got us to this point, and the passion of our devoted coaches and donors will be what drives us to new heights going forward.
Let’s all raise a cup to a fabulous future for Teacup and for everyone it touches.
