Good Life Project - Tiffani R. Moore | Living & Flourishing With Chronic Illness

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Imagine, after years of living on your own, building a 15-year career an award-winning career as a Creative Consultant and Wardrobe Stylist, and essentially checking all the success boxes, a chronic illness drops into your body, leading you back to your hometown to move in with your parents as you work to rehabilitate and heal, and try to not just reclaim, but reimagine your life.Today's guest, Tiffani Moore, knows exactly what it's like to be in this scenario—forced to listen to her body's need for recovery and support after she found out she had Lupus. Tiffani is the Founder and Owner of Moore WellBeings, in addition to being an Intuitive Healer & Coach, Reiki Master, yoga instructor, BreathWork, and MNDFL certified Meditation Facilitator. Before making her mark in the world of wellness, she spent 15+ years building a career as a successful, sought-after stylist and Creative Consultant. But her lupus diagnosis, and the physical and psychological devastation that led up to it, changed everything. Seeking less conventional solutions, she followed her intuition and began to study the power of alternative therapies, including meditation, yoga, herbal medicine, and many of the healing practices she utilizes with clients now. Recovering her wellbeing has been a years-long, painstaking process, fueled by intensive learning, and eventually, a drive to train in and share the many modalities she’d discovered, while also creating a safe, nonjudgmental and well-informed space for marginalized communities to explore holistic wellness. In this conversation with Tiffani today, you'll hear us explore the harsh realities of living with a chronic illness, like feeling like a burden to loved ones or the struggle to balance rest and recovery with the need to work to survive. We talk about intuition and its role in healing, wellness, and self-expression and how it could benefit us to rethink wellness not as a luxury but instead as a birthright or something we all deserve and can access.You can find Tiffani at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with James Gordon about the power of the mind to heal and work through illness and trauma.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes.ClickUp: 15% off ClickUp's massive Unlimited Plan for a year. Code GOODLIFE.Zocdoc Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Your life isn't just something that you wake up and you do what you're supposed to do as far as society says and you reach these milestones and you don't get to, you know, enjoy your life or you push past what your intuition, your body, your soul, your mind is telling you to be able to accomplish these goals. This is something that you are actively living and creating every single day. The decisions that you make are real and true and they manifest in your life one way or another. So imagine this, after years of living on your own, building a 15 plus year career as an award winning creative consultant and wardrobe stylist, and essentially checking all the success boxes, a chronic illness drops into your body, leading you back to your hometown to move in with your parents as you work to figure out what's going on and try and rehabilitate and heal

and not just reclaim, but to a certain extent, reimagine your life moving forward. Well, today's guest, Tiffany Moore, she knows exactly what that's like because she was in this very scenario, forced to listen to her body's need for recovery and support it after she found out she had lupus. So Tiffany is the founder and owner of More Well Beings. In addition to being an intuitive healer and coach and Reiki master, yoga instructor, breathwork, and mindful certified meditation facilitator. But before making her mark in the world of wellness, she spent 15 years building a career as a successful, highly sought-after stylist and consultant. But her lupus diagnosis and the physical and

psychological devastation that led up to it, it really changed everything, including the direction of not just her career, but her life. Seeking less conventional solutions, she followed her intuition and began to study things like the power of alternative therapies, including meditation, yoga, herbal medicine, and many of the healing practices that she now utilizes with clients. Recovering her own well-being has been a years-long painstaking process fueled by intensive learning and eventually a drive to train in and share the many modalities she had discovered while also creating a safe, nonjudgmental, and well-informed space for marginalized communities to explore holistic

wellness. In this conversation with Tiffany today, you'll hear us explore the harsh realities of living with a chronic illness, feeling like a burden to loved ones or the struggle to balance rest and recovery with the very practical need to work to survive. We talk about intuition and its role in healing and wellness and self-expression and how it could benefit us to rethink wellness, not as a luxury, but instead as a birthright or something we all deserve and can access. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,

making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. There are a whole bunch of different things I'd love to explore with you. I know the last year, year and a half has been particularly challenging in a lot of different ways,

but I'm guessing there's also a lot of revelation and emergence built into that. But I want to take a bigger step back in time. It sounds like the last decade or so before this really recent moment, you've been really deep into the world of wellbeing. And I want to learn more about what that looked like, but there was a period even longer for that, something like 15 years before you made that shift where you were really focused on the world of your stylist. It was a completely different life. And I'm so fascinated by big transitions, inciting moments, and what leads to change on that level. Tell me a bit about the past past life at this point. Yeah, I've been a lot of different people. So to tell you that story, I need to go back just one more step before that.

Growing up, my mother was a seamstress. So I was always around clothes, always at Joann Fabrics. My father was just irresponsible with the amount of clothing that he bought. So I was always around clothing. And even before I knew what those words were, I understood that clothing was like a form of expression. And as a kid, I have a twin and I have an older sister. They were just into different things. That was like my thing. I would always want to go to the store with my mom, but I was also that weird kid that was like really in tune energetically. I was that weird kid that was like hearing messages and telling my mom stuff and what I would hear and saying names of people that I passed before I was born and like freaking her out.

So that was like our connection for me to be able to say things to her. A lot of times I would say it to her at Joanne Fabric. So that became really special to me. And not only was it a form of expression, it was also a form of like, I can feel safe in this space. I can feel safe to communicate things. I can communicate things through color, through texture, through fabric. I can play dress up. And when I found out that you can get paid to play dress up, my whole life changed. I can get paid to play dress up for myself and other people. When I found out what a stylist actually was, that was how I put it together. So I think I was 22. I'm 40 now. I just turned 40. I think I was 22 when I left Buffalo to go to New York. I think I was 22. I'm 40 now. I just turned 40. I think I was 22 when I left Buffalo to go

to New York. I think I had about $300 in my pocket and I was just going to figure it out. I had a friend's house to stay at for a little while and I had no formal training, none whatsoever. I just went and that's, I'm an Aries with a Leo moon and the Gemini rising, if that means anything to you. So I would just like, go for it, figure it out. And I did. I started working, volunteering my services on different sets with productions at NYU film school students.

And when I realized there was a whole language that I had to learn, PA, you know, be on set, the AD needs you to do this, all these, like this language that I had to learn, PA, you know, Beyonce, the AD needs you to do this. All these like this vocabulary that I had to learn that I had no clue about. I went in headfirst and I did everything that I could. I worked on every single project that I could to understand not only what I was doing, but the craft and the industry itself. So it started out with fashion and wardrobe styling. It went in all different directions, wardrobe styling, costume design, commercial work. I've worked on so many different commercials, print work. I worked on music videos. That was very short because that

world is something that I do not need to revisit. And I did, yes, I said the commercial work, film, all that stuff. And I landed in personal wardrobing. That was where I was actually able to couple like caregiving with what I was doing. So before I did anything with fashion and wardrobe stylist, I was actually a rehabilitation aid for adults with developmental disabilities. And I worked as a certified nursing assistant in the Alzheimer and dementia wing of a nursing home. So caregiving and well-being and care was always stitched into me. I knew that that was a part of me. I just didn't know to what depth, but I realized nursing wasn't for me. I was much more of a creative. So to bring that story back, wardrobe was part of how I saw fashion and style being a part of someone's care,

because I realized that people want to feel good how they show up. It's just, you know, we buy clothes, we color our hair and do all the things and fix our teeth and wear glasses and everything. But we also want to feel good in what we wear beyond capitalist, consumerist, keeping up and styling all that stuff. We want to feel good. So I began working with personal clients and teaching them, you know, you can wear this if you're not confident about your shoulders, maybe you can wear this and this will help you kind of like not necessarily cover yourself up and hide, but it won't accentuate, you know, what it is that you're insecure about so much. And maybe over time we can shift into something else. And I found that to be really,

really therapeutic, not only for myself, but more importantly for my clients to the point where some of them were just like, I think I got it now. And our relationship ended, not in a bad way, but it felt really good that I taught this person or assisted this person in how you can show up fully as yourself, not need to keep up with what the style pages say you should be wearing. But this is what you feel good in be wearing, but this is what you feel good in. This is what you feel you look good in. That was a really important part of that part of my career for me. That's why I was doing it. Once I realized that's why I kind of stuck there for a few years working with personal clients. I've worked with celebrities and done all this stuff, but that was the part that was really important to me. And once it was on its way to being over, we go through these phases in our life where you do this thing, you learn what you need to learn from it, and maybe it's time for you to move on.

Would I tell you I was so resistant to moving on? Of course, you're not the only one like we all have that inside of us it was looking back on it it was fascinating everything in my being was like you're done here you did what you set out to do why are you still pushing for it i was so attached to that label of being a stylist i was attached to the freebies and stuff that i was getting, to the access that it offered me, everything that I was working towards and being a stylist, all those benefits and everything that I was working for, I was so attached to that and no longer the work itself. So I started to pacify that calling to do something else. I think a lot of us humans are familiar with that.

I'm supposed to, what feels, not supposed to, but what feels right for me right now, what my guidance is telling me right now is this direction. So I won't turn the whole way. I'll just like pacify a little bit. It's not a full 90 degree turn. I'll go 20. So I started to offer or do clothing drives. I did clothing drives and took the clothing to different shelters around the city. And I would teach them the same things that I would teach the clients that I had. You know, here's this skirt that you have for five bucks. If you need to alter it, you can take it to the local dry cleaner.

And for like another five bucks, you have a perfectly fitting skirt for you. I felt really good about that. I did really good work, but it was still me being attached to that label. I produced a show with Care for the Homeless for four years. And it was a fashion show. And the models in the show were the women that lived in the shelters. So it became something that was raising money. It was a big deal. And we were doing good things, but I still wasn't

listening. I still was not listening. And finally, my body, my spirit, my mind got fed up with me not listening. And I got sick. I got sick. I was diagnosed with SLE lupus and I had to stop. I had to. I was still pushing, walking through Brooklyn with a cane because my joints were so inflamed. And it got to the point where I had brain fog so deeply, so bad that my friend was calling me all day and I had no idea. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, still trying to go brush my teeth. That's all I remember from that day. And thank God I give my friends the extra key to my apartment. He just walked into my apartment and he was like, what is going on? I was like, what are you talking about? It's almost dark at this point and I'm

still sitting on my bed trying to go brush my teeth. So I went to the hospital and they recognized something was wrong. And that started a completely different journey into my health and well-being. And it opened up a lot in reference to my truth. What's true for me? Why am I not being honest with myself? Do I even know what I sound like? And that was the beginning of that. When you start to feel the effects of lupus in your system, because from what I know of it, it can show up in a lot of different ways in a lot of different people. So tell me if this understanding is right, that it's effectively, it's an autoimmune condition and your body, as happens with a lot of autoimmune conditions, rejects a lot of different parts. And that can show up as pain, as brain fog, as like joint swelling, as all sorts of different

things. And to my knowledge, there's no outright cure for this right now, right? There's just, there's all sorts of ways to treat it. When you start to experience those things, because it sounds like they were expressing themselves in a pretty extreme way. Were you immediately saying something's going on? I need to do something about this. Or was it sort of like, I'm doing my thing. I'm going to push it away because I know I've done that in my life. I know so many people were kind of like heads down doing our thing.

And there are these signals coming in, in the form of symptoms. And we're like, often I find so often so many stories that I hear in these conversations is that we end up being brought to our knees. And that's the thing that finally says, oh, there's something I need to actually address here. It is exactly that. It showed up for me in severe brain fog, very severe brain fog. My thoughts were not cohesive whatsoever. I would stop in the middle of what I was doing and not remember what I was doing. My joints were inflamed to the point where I was, you know, I couldn't lift my arm higher than my shoulder, my left arm higher than my shoulder. And I don't know if you know anything about clothing, but clothes get heavy. So here I am

pushing to do things that I physically can't even do anymore. My left hip, I was walking with a cane because there was so much stiffness in my left hip. My hair started to fall out on the right side of my hair. Thank God I'm fashionable. So I just did the shave one side thing for a while. And to answer your question, yes, I was pushing past all of it. All of it. I need to get this done. I was an independent contractor. So it was like, if I don't do this job, my rent doesn't get paid, let alone the attachment that I had to the label and the work itself. I still need to eat. So it broke me down. It brought me to my knees to the point where I had to leave New York. I went back home to Buffalo and lived with my dad after

being outside of my family's house since I was 19. I lived with my dad and that was a thing because I had a puppy and I had a cat and he did not want any, either one of them in the house, let alone, like he was already iffy about sharing space with someone, which I understand, you know, we're adults who lived alone for a long time. There's as much as I was welcome, there was also like, how is this going to work? You're talking also about like something that I think often we don't talk about, which is okay. So even even when you hit that moment, where you're like, okay, there's something big that I have to deal with here. But so many folks, and I feel like even more now have gone out on their own. And if you're in a profession where if you're not working, the money's not coming in to sustain yourself. It's not as simple as, well,

just take the time off, go do what you need to do, heal up. You know, the reality for so many people is it's just a lot more complicated than that because how do you, and maybe if you have other people or other beings or other animals looking to you to also sort of like create a space and create, you know, like something that feels okay. I feel like so often this moment gets oversimplified. Well, you should just do that, or you should have just on that. And it's like what you're describing, it's more complicated than that. Real life is messier than that. Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. That was a conversation that I have had with so many different friends. Well, you need to stop. You're not well. And I'm just like, okay, are you taking me in? Are you the one that is going to pay these credit card

bills that I'm about to rack up because I have to stop? And you're absolutely right. It's something that is oversimplified because there's so much guilt that comes with it. There's so much guilt and mental and emotional turmoil that came with that decision to go home. And I'm giving up. That was a big part of it. I'm giving up. But in actuality, I'm not giving up. I'm taking care of myself, which is something that I obviously did not have a full relationship with. This is why I got to this point in the first place. There's also, if I would have done things properly up until this point, maybe I can afford to take the time off. Our society isn't necessarily set up that way.

Unfortunately, most of us have to work. Most of us are paycheck to paycheck. A lot of us don't have the privilege of having a large savings or that large cushion. And another element of it was like, okay, I really need to learn more about finances. That was something that was afforded to me, but that's a completely different side of it. Or maybe it's not, you let me know. I had to learn like, I'm doing all of this work and I'm receiving money in return for my time, but what am I doing with that money in relationship to my future? Because there's a possibility that something like this can happen again, even if it's not in terms of my health. Some unforeseen circumstance can happen again.

How am I going to prepare myself for that in the future? So it is oversimplified. And there were many conversations that I had to sit down and have with myself around the situation in general. I had to surrender. 100 a lot of questions. You describe it as a fight. It's sort of like who wins? Because for you, it sounds like a big part of this was, yes, you were re-examining sort of like the way that you work, the way that you explore money and sustainability, but also wellbeing, like mental and physical health, because now you have this autoimmune condition and it's like, but you're young, you know, there's, you got a lot of life ahead of you. And it's a condition that from my understanding, lifestyle can have a huge impact on how symptoms manifest, whether they do or whether they don't and how, how bad they are when they do. Is that right? Or is, I mean, this is your lived experience. Once I got to my dad's house and once I settled in and got comfortable, my dad and I kind of developed some flow around being underneath the same roof. I started to sit with the position that I was in, what my body was going through, what I was going through mentally, emotionally, finances, the fact that I still had fur babies to take care of, all that stuff. I started to sit with all of it.

And I would take a walk. I would go. There's this one willow tree next to this lake in this park. And I would take a walk every day and go to that tree and just sit underneath the willow tree. And it was a very mature willow tree. So the branches draped over and it created this room for me to just sit underneath and look at the lake. And I would sit there for,

it felt like hours and just listen. I had no idea up until that point that I did not know what I sounded like. I would sit there and listen to my thoughts. I would listen to my emotions. I would listen to the intuition and the spiritual guidance, even if I didn't have the vocabulary for it. And I realized there were different voices that were speaking in terms of my thoughts sounded different from my emotions. My emotions sounded different than my intuition or guidance. And that felt different in my body. And like when I would listen to certain things, certain parts of my body would light up. And I was like, okay, I don't know what this is, but this is something that I'm doing. And as soon as I started doing that on schedule and continued it as a part of like my day-to-day, I started to feel better.

And I was like, okay, so this is a thing. Like, what is this thing? And I did not realize that that was meditation. I had no idea. I'd heard meditation before. I'd taken yoga classes before. And like, I just didn't, it never clicked to me what meditation was because you have to sit in this position and you have to be still and nothing happens and you stillness, no thoughts, no nothing. And I was like, that doesn't make sense. That like the way that it was introduced to me never really made sense. But me sitting underneath this tree and just listening, that makes sense. That resonates.

That's a better way to say it. That resonates with my whole being. So I kept doing it. And from that point, I found out about yin yoga. I did not really know what yin yoga was, but I just happened to get into a conversation with someone and they mentioned supported yoga. And I was like, I need that because I can't really move very well right now. So I got into yin yoga. And if anybody listening is unfamiliar, yin yoga, you use support of bolsters, blocks, blankets to support the body. When you go into these postures and you hold them anywhere from 45 seconds to three minutes,

fully supported so you can breathe into them and you can be with those postures, be with your body in those postures. So it's much more of a meditative, moving, breathing, meditative practice. And getting into that practice really opened me up and realizing that a lot of the illness that I was dealing with, a lot of the pain that I was dealing with was emotional. It was 100% emotional pain that I had no idea was living in me because I didn't even know how to listen to it. So it's one of those things where I am so grateful for that breakdown because it led me to truly understanding how to hear myself, how to listen to myself.

And ultimately, I started working with herbs and different practices. Once I got into one, one led to another because community members share all these different things. And it was a really beautiful time in my life of exploring me, what works for me, like who's actually there in support of my healing, not just me getting better. I think those are two different things. And it was a really beautiful time in my life. And ultimately, once I really connected with the fact that this is more of an emotional and spiritual thing that manifested physically, my doctors were surprised that my levels evened out and my body started to heal itself. And I refused medication because I was taking these herbs in conversation with my doctor.

He was like, can you give me a list of the herbs that you're taking? And I was like, yes. And he said, well, I'll look into this and I'll give you three months. This is what he said. I'll give you three months. You do everything that you're doing because it seems like you're getting better for three months. Come back and see me. If anything changes and it's not better, we're going to consider medication. We never had to consider medication. So healing was an exploration for me in that time.

And once I understood what healing actually meant, not just getting better, not just feeling better, but actually like healing down to your core, I realized that I didn't go through all of that just for me. That experience wasn't just for me to like get better for myself or heal for myself. So I started to explore, you know, what does it look like to learn these different modalities, to learn these different meditation, yin yoga, working with herbs to offer it to community? It's so interesting also, because there's the way that you described the career that led up to that. It was like a deep element is you're taking care of other people.

Like there's a powerful nurturing element, a powerful teaching people how to know themselves and feel themselves and see themselves and be seen as who they are and holding them in that space. When you being the person who then has to go into the process of doing that to and for yourself, I'm wondering how that was because so often I see those with the powerful, powerful nurturing impulse towards other people really struggle to turn that back on themselves because they feel like that I'm here to do this for others. Who am I to like, quote, luxuriate, you know, in the time and the energy to actually give all of that same loving energy and support and curiosity to myself. I'm curious whether that was a part of your experience at all.

Initially, in the beginning, it wasn't. Because what everything that was happening was telling me was I needed to learn how to take care of myself. I needed to turn all that energy and attention and awareness back on myself in order to be able to just be, to wake up in the morning with full capacity in myself. I needed to do that. As I got deeper into actually showing up as a teacher, actually holding classes and creating my own community and like being a part of other people's community, that's when it actually happened. That's when some like imposter syndrome popped in. Like, cause especially when I was diagnosed with cancer, especially because I was like, who am I to sit in this seat? And I'm over here with cancer. And I

know as I say it out loud, even the first time that I said it out loud, I was like, that sounds nuts. That sounds crazy because I'm a human being. But it didn't negate the fact that those thoughts were still there. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

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Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. I want to dive deeper into that moment. But before we get to the moment, which is fairly recent when you get a cancer diagnosis, there's about a 10-year window between when you start saying, okay, so this helped me in a really powerful way. And then like you shared, I want to now learn what it would take for me to be on the other side of this, for me to be the teacher or stand in the role of the healer or introduce people to these different practices. And at the same time, you're living at home. And like, at some point there's got to be this thought

like, I have to figure out if I'm not going back to the thing that has sustained me for years now, and there's this deeper passion, how do you step into that? Because at some point, I would imagine the thought is, I need to get back to a place where I'm sustaining myself physically, emotionally, in my health, but also financially. How do you make the decision that says, well, maybe this is actually the thing that I'm going to step into, not just as a devotion, not just to take care of myself, but to build my living around, to sustain myself with.

Okay. So I will be perfectly like 100% honest in saying, even through all of this, releasing that attachment to being a stylist and producing that show that I mentioned, Care for the Homeless, that was really hard. I was still going back and forth to New York doing that work during a lot of this. And I was slowly beginning to say no to things, slowly beginning to recognize that, no, I don't need to style this commercial. This is not even what you want to do anymore. That's one of the reasons why you left New York. So saying, giving myself permission to say no was a big part of this practice or a big part of this process. So I was learning how to

say no. I was learning that it's okay to say no. And I was still learning how to forgive myself for pushing myself so hard to the point where I got sick. So that was a big part of it. And as the years went by, I took on less and less styling work. And I started to explore what does training look like for me to be able to do this. Initially, I started with 26 and 2 training because at the time I was told that that's a foundational yoga practice to learn. And I went to the studio where I was taking in and I asked the owner, what does it take to be, what I said specifically, what's the investment to be a teacher? And he looked at me, he said, what are you talking about? How do you mean that? And I said,

what's the investment? Like time, money, books, what's the full investment? He said, okay, so you're not just talking about money. We can continue this conversation. And I was like, okay, I like this. I like that response. And then he said, do you have something to say? And I said, yes, I absolutely do have something to say. He said, a lot of people get into being a teacher because they see it as something that's trendy, that's going to make them money, and they don't actually have something to say. If you're not in it for the money and you actually have something to say, come back on this day and we can talk about you being a teacher.

And I said, okay. And that's exactly what we did. And the thing that I shared with him around what it is that I have to say is everything that we're sharing now, your life isn't just something that you wake up and you do what you're supposed to do as far as society says, and you reach these milestones and you don't get to enjoy your life or you push past what your intuition, your body, your soul, your mind is telling you to be able to accomplish these goals. This is something that you are actively living and creating every single day. The decisions that you make are real and true and they manifest in your life one way or another.

And I also recognize that there was something, I didn't know anything about supported yoga for a long time. So I wanted to be able to facilitate bodies that needed support, that still wanted to explore asana, the physical form of yoga. That was a big part of me getting into training is because I actually had something to say. I actually had something that needed to be shared from somebody who looked like me. I did not see very many people, Black women of larger bodies in that position. We're just now starting to see more of it. And that's 10 years later. That was a big portion of getting into training and then getting out of training and then figuring out what does that look like financially? So I started to volunteer some classes just to like test the waters. Unfortunately, Buffalo wasn't necessarily the place to test that particular brand of water.

But like I said, I was going back and forth to New York and I would like set up by donation classes. And I would like rent out a space for an hour by donation, see what the outcome was, see how it felt to teach. And on one of those trips, I ran into a friend of mine and she yelled at me from across the room. We were in an event. She yelled at me from across the room to come over to talk to her because she was opening up a wellness space. And that was my first paying position was from someone yelling at me from across the room to come over and talk to them because they were opening up a wellness space and they liked what I was sharing online about my experience of healing and learning and recognizing that this was something for me to share.

Every single paying position at the beginning of my career was something that was really easily kind of like given to me. This person was already opening up a wellness space. They knew me, the next person. I was referred to a lot of places, like you kind of have to quote unquote audition to teach. I've never had to do that. It was always, this feels right. You don't have to over-explain who you are. You don't have to over-show who you are. We know who you are from your word of mouth. Come teach with us. And that has been my experience for quite some time. So it was pretty fluid. It wasn't easy, but there was definitely fluidity in that transition. It's interesting because part of what you're describing too, it seems like they're from the outside looking in. There's some really interesting similarities to how you stepped into the world of

styling. It's sort of like something just lands in you. You're like, this, I need to go deeper into just knowing everything about this. There's something inside of you that just is drawing you to that. And then you're like, okay, so let me just drop into this world. And there's something that says, I trust that I'll figure it out. And along the way, you know, like I'll have the relationships.

I'll just keep learning and learning and learning and turning around and sharing and sharing and sharing. And that opens doors. So like you describe it as, you know, in one way as, you know, like the things just happened. But what I'm hearing is, no, you just like stepped in a hundred percent. You talked to everybody. There was a lot of work that was happening behind the scenes.

And like you said, I think it's important not to discount that conversation that you had with your teacher where that teacher said, like, do you have something to say? And you got really clear on what that was because so often just because you have a platform doesn't mean that you have something unique to say. And also it sounds like for you, it wasn't just something to say, but you knew who you wanted to say it to also. And you were also representing something and someone, an idea, an ideal, an individual in a space, whereas you described there weren't a lot of people like you in that space. And it has gotten a little better today, but it's still

very unbalanced. Very much so. You're absolutely right. There's a lot to say with the way that I maneuver life. I've learned from that experience with lupus what it is when your guidance, I call it spirit, intuition, your guidance, we all have like that internal navigation system, when it is speaking to you clearly. I've learned very clearly what it is to listen to it and what it is to not listen to it. And when I don't listen to it, things tend to go awry. And that's something that I don't want to risk anymore at all. So I tell people there is no greater authority in my life ever than my guidance and my intuition. If everybody tells me that I need to go left and my intuition says, go right, I will see you later. And that

was what was guiding me. My intuition was guiding me. And there was also this pull that was like, this is the door. This is the pathway to everything that you said that you want to create. It just looks different than you thought it was going to look starting out. And I can say today that is 100% true. I've been able to work with amazing people and work in communities and make differences in people's lives and be a mirror for a lot of people in various ways just because I listened and I showed up and I recognized that this is the thing that I have to say. And it may, I may learn, it may vary, it may change, but the foundation of it is authentic and it is real. And that's what I have to stay true to.

I love that. It's interesting also, because part of what you're describing, so like yoga, Sanskrit word, which actually translates roughly to yoke or union. And a lot of what you're talking about is sort of like you yoking together, unifying sort of like the more, the deeper, more intuitive part of yourself that knowing with what shows up, what actually is your lived reality on a day-to-day basis. And so many of us were so disconnected from that. It's like, we just, you know, we live from the head up rather than like allowing that, that union to happen where like, there's, there's this seamless feedback mechanism where one informs

the other and that leads to decisions, which leads to behavior, which leads to like, you know, like the way that we live our lives. So it's interesting, you know, to me that, that you, you're so passionate about bringing that out in yourself and also bringing that out in others. And one of the mechanisms that you've chosen is yoga, like along with a lot of things that I think can fold it into that from meditation to breath work. Like these are all things that I feel like you've chosen to bring them in as modalities that you really bring to the work that you do. And they all kind of help us.

They tease out that same unification and expression. Absolutely. One of my community members said something to me one day, and it changed the way that I look at how I teach. And this was quite recent. I think earlier this year, she said, the way that you've created community was intentional in us being able to consider ourselves. And that was one of those mind-blowing moments because that is so true. Creating space for people to consider their whole self, not just your day-to-day, not just your career, not just, you know, your relationships, but consider your whole self. And that includes your relationship with your inner knowing, your relationship with your intuition. So let's shine some light on that and consider how we marry that relationship. How

is that relationship with our knowing coupled with how we move throughout the day? Do you wake up in the morning and actually just like take a breath and check in with how you feel or just get up and get going? And for some people listening in, that may sound like a luxury. That may sound like something that takes so much extra time, but actually it doesn't.

And can you afford not to? It's interesting because I don't know if you've experienced this, but it's been my experience that we often don't get how critical it is and how much we do have the capacity and the time to do that until we're doing it. And we realize, oh, so if I do this first thing in the morning, it literally changes the nature of the entire rest of the day to create the space to do it. Absolutely. You know, it creates just so much more intentionality.

And it's like exercise often also. It's like, you know, I don't have time to do it. And like, we don't realize that it's actually, it's the movement that changes our physiology and our psychology that literally allows us to function at a higher level that creates the space to do it. But we don't get it until we're actually doing it and we feel it in our system. It's very hard to convince somebody, just like talk somebody through that. Just like try a little bit of it. And like, you'll see,

like let the doing do the convincing. That's why I do my best to make the practices accessible. And I also do my very best to be 100% honest about the fact that it is a practice. I am still in practice. So I use myself as an example all the time. One morning I get up and I'm rushing and I got to go to Trader Joe's and somebody hits the back of my ankle with the cart. Do I immediately react or do I give myself a breath to check in? They didn't mean that. So I use myself as an example all the time that I am always in process. I am always learning. And that doesn't mean that you always have to be like 100% dialed in, you know, gripping the wheel of your life, but giving yourself that opportunity to actually release yourself from that grip and be in your life. Be present with the breath that you're breathing. Be present with what it is

that you're seeing. It takes time. It takes time and it takes practice. And I don't think we're ever done. Yeah, no, completely there with you. You over a period of years build the training and the practice and the community into a living, into a company, more well-beings. That's kind of chugging along. You're doing stuff for individuals, for groups, and then for organizations. And then as you shared earlier, things are kind of cruising along. Of course, two years ago or so, the world gets ground to a halt in a lot of different ways. The pandemic hits within the context of that. starts a racial reckoning starts to happen within the country. And it gets all bound up with the disruption of massive global health crisis. You're also just personally, I mean, to a certain just step back and breathe again and really think about like the last decade or so.

And like, what do I want the next decade or so to look like? Wow. Just thinking about time for a moment. 2020. And that was New York City. The first half of the year was one of the most horrific things I have ever been through, if not the most horrific thing. I mean, it was devastating on so many levels. It's fascinating to me because I live on both sides of it. 2020 blew up our lives in so many different ways. It was a lot of devastation, a lot of pain. And I acknowledge and recognize that. But 2020 for me was so fascinating. It was so fascinating on like an exploratory level, just to observe humanity and observe myself in the midst of all

of this. So 2020 started out with me meeting Oprah. And like in February, ever since I was a little kid, I was like, I'm going to Africa when I turn 30. I'm going to meet Oprah and my forties are going to be the best years of my life. I've said that ever since I was little, I turned 30. I went to Africa. I just met Oprah. I was actually just came back from Ghana at the end of 2019. So I was like on a high coming into 2020. And then this pandemic starts to hit and then we like are locked in our homes and people are scared. And at this time I'm already teaching. I'm teaching on a couple apps and I'm teaching in a couple of different communities. More well-beings hadn't been born yet. And I find myself, for lack of a better word, like kind of managing people's emotions in class. And I was like, are you here for me to tell you everything is going

to be okay? Or are you here for the practice of you managing what it is that you're going through and learning the tools to be able to go through this on a daily basis. So I found myself kind of readjusting in the way that I teach, in the way that I hold space in 2020. And that ultimately led to me reevaluating how I hold space in my own life, how I show up for myself in my own life. So I was like, you know what? I don't need to be in the city. I don't see myself being in the city for the rest of my life. My body, my spirit craves nature on a daily basis. So I took a sabbatical. I took a sabbatical. I went to Mexico. The end of 2020, I hopped on a plane, had a detour in Dominican Republic, and I spent

six months in Mexico, still teaching, but lightly, very lightly teaching. I actually canceled a few of my contracts and just did enough to sustain me while I was there. And Mexico is a very different place. I spent most of the time in Oaxaca, Mexico, very different place than New York City. The vibration was different. There was a lot of fear in the vibration of people in New York. Although walking around, making eye contact with people over masks was something that I made sure that I did.

Try to meet people with a smile, even with a mask on, because I was feeling okay. I wasn't full of a bunch of fear. I wasn't full of a bunch of angst. I was just like, this is something that we're going through and we're going to figure it out. And it's probably going to take a long time. Mexico was quite different. People were still enjoying their lives. There was still festivities happening safely, a lot safer than New York, but the vibration just felt different. So I felt like I was able to take a breath there and really think about what it is that I do, what it is that feeds and restores my spirit, and how that helps me show up for community and show up for humanity in general.

And that's where More Well Beings was actually born, sitting on a patio in Oaxaca, Mexico. more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later require, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. Sounds like another thing that really came to you was a desire to go deeper into your own education in the form of like, it sounds like so much of the work that you've been doing for years,

as you described, people would show up and it was beyond the physical change. It was beyond even this early. There was almost like a therapeutic element that was looking to you. So while during that time that you were away, it sounds like part of the clarity that emerged was, oh, I actually like I'm really interested in going back to school and pursuing training on the actual therapeutic side beyond the mod things that you were doing, but into an entity that could live, expand beyond you, and then also spend some of your time back in school, sort of like training so that you could add the therapeutic side into what you were doing as well? Yes, that was actually the plan. So Moral Beings was born or launched, I'll say, April 1st, 2021. And I shared it, opened it up. I started out with meditation, yin yoga, breath work. And then there's also a community care aspect of it. So 5% of every membership or class or workshop goes towards community care where that money is gifted

to someone to come and have like a free membership. And I was really proud of that as a foundation. And my plan was like for the next year, build into that part of it. And then I'm going to go back to school because I really do want to have that license to be able to couple therapy, like licensed therapy with the modalities that I do have, because that's something that I see growing a lot now, like somatic therapy. I see it growing a lot now and it's really exciting, but I didn't see a lot of it at that point in time. And I definitely didn't see a lot of it from Black people in particular. I'm seeing more now, which is exciting. So at the end of May,

someone had reached out to me for some work and it was a really exciting project. My visa was running out. I was only on a six-month visitor's visa, so it was running out and I needed to go back, switch some things out and be able to come back because my plan was to come back to Mexico, stay in Mexico for a while, and then start school. My plan was to start school in December 2021. So getting back in May, 44 days after I get back, I was diagnosed with cancer. So I was in between my international health insurance and my United States health insurance. And I was just like, I got back. I was feeling a little bit run down, but I also have lupus and I've been traveling

different water, different food, different sun, all these different things. It's probably nothing. My levels are just probably off. Let me just go get checked out real quick. So I run to a clinic, nothing, no special. They didn't call my doctor or anything. Just wanted to get my levels checked out. And they're doing a basic checkup on me. And the doctor, Dr. Blymore, I will never forget this man. He starts rubbing around my neck, doing the normal, you know, check that they do. And he says, oh, you have a couple nodules around your neck. And I was like, okay, what is that?

What does that mean? And he said, you know, nodules are normal. Most Americans have them and don't even know it. No big deal. Just going to pull some blood, do some blood work just to make sure you're all good. Blood work turns into ultrasound. Ultrasound turns into biopsy. Biopsy turns into you have cancer. And anytime you get news like that, like life altering news that could, you know, ultimately end your life, the world stops. Like the whole world stops. You couldn't tell me at that moment that all clocks did not stop. And I had to spend quite a bit of time remembering the tools that I do have and allowing myself to be human, to feel my emotions, to have my like fist to God moment. Why? To have that moment, but also be like, OK, this is where we are. Let me put my feet back on the ground. Let me see what needs to be done.

How does this affect me emotionally, physically, financially, my family, all this stuff? And it's just funny how I was led back to Buffalo. I was led back home once again at a moment of healing and gestation. I was not planning on coming back to Buffalo, but that's where I ended up. And that's why I'm here now, almost a year later from coming back from Oaxaca. After the surgery, healing up and everything was its own process. And the pathology report, we were hoping that it would come back with clean pathology. Like your cancer was contained within the tumors and taking out half of the thyroid works just fine. The other half that remains works just fine. That's what we were hoping for. And we got half of that. Half of the thyroid that remains

works just fine. My levels are gorgeous, beautiful levels, but the cancer had spread outside of the tumors in six different places. So talking to my doctor and I was blessed to finally get a doctor, a black doctor, six months older than me. So we related like just on a personal level and our personalities kind of meshed really well. So she was like, well, how do you feel? What do you think? And how, what? You just told me that I'm still stage one cancer after having surgery and it doesn't look good and you want me to have another surgery. I'm not landing anywhere right now. I don't think anything. I don't feel anything. It's just the information you gave me. And she said, okay, fair.

What do you want to do? How do you want to live your life? Like, what do you want to do with your life? And she said, it's not my job to tell you what to do with your body. It's my job to be there for you when you make the decisions of what you want to do with your body. And I thought that was just, after all the doctors that I've seen in my life, that was the most beautiful thing that I've ever heard from a physician. So the first thing that came to mind when she asked me what I want to do is something that I've been scared to do for over a decade. I've always wanted to take my business on the road. So if there's anything that I was doing, I was like, can I do it in a vintage Winnebago?

That was my first question for anything, any project, any business that I wanted to start. When I initially had the idea, I was going to be taking like clothing on the road and doing the clothing drives that I mentioned before and taking it to different shelters. It's different now. Now I bought a vintage Winnebago. It's a 1972 Winnebago Indian and it's gorgeous. I've named it Shadowfax because I am a Lord be visiting Black and Indigenous-owned farms and communities, offering breathwork meditation to different communities on a voluntary, by donation basis. That's what my heart and my intuition is leading me to do. I've gone back and forth on like,

am I paying? Am I charging for these things? But the money will definitely come. That's been shown to me so many times. All I have to do is start. So starting in August, I'm on the road and I am delightfully terrified. Yeah. And I mean, it's so interesting to be speaking to you at this moment with sort of like where you are in your journey right now, because it sounds like part of it is you have ideas, you have skills, you have training, you have a vision. And at the same time, you have an acute awareness of the fact that I need to keep really listening at every moment as I go, because my body is continuing to give me information. And sometimes you need to

actually take that plan and say, okay, I need to actually take care of myself, cancer and surgery and treatment and do whatever is needed to do to be okay. Just you as a human being and know that there's a space for whatever the future holds to unfold. But you also brought up something earlier in our conversation when you first shared this diagnosis, which is that I actually had this conversation with one other person who was, you know, like deep into the well-being world, into the wellness world and a public figure and known who was diagnosed with cancer. And there was, I did not share it with anyone publicly for quite a while because there was a certain amount of shame. Like they were feeling like, I'm the person who's not supposed to have to deal with this.

And I have to process this myself that no, actually, here I am. But also, they were really concerned about what would happen because they were putting themselves out to the world. And they were concerned that there would be this expectation that, oh, everything that you're talking about should allow us to opt out of these very real things that happen to human beings. And look, you're doing all the right stuff and you still got this thing. Are you just making this all up? And it was an interesting part of the conversation because they were really grappling with this both on a personal level and then on the way that they were showing up in the world and a concern about how both they and all that they offered was going to be perceived. Yeah, that was a real, and it still is to this point, much like the person that you're mentioning,

I did not share it publicly until two weeks ago, actually, was the first time that I actually shared it almost a year, well, shy of a couple of months after the diagnosis. The thing that got me the most was listening to myself, much like those moments underneath the tree, listening to those thoughts. How dare you be the person talking about healing and get cancer? How dare you be the person that's talking about taking care of yourself and considering yourself, but you didn't do it because obviously you didn't do it right, because you have cancer. And I had to listen to those thoughts very much with an analytical mind, more so than a compassionate mind. The analytical part of my mind was like,

you know, that doesn't make sense. You think that, or you thought that, or that thought is present with you, but you know, that doesn't make sense. One, because you're a human being, period. And that's where it starts. And that's where it ends. You're a human being. And I gave myself so much space and so much grace to write down all the things that I was afraid of, or even I would just grab my phone sometimes and turn on the voice note and just speak all the things that I was afraid of, go back and read it, go back and listen to it, and look at it with a very analytical mind. You can be afraid of this. It doesn't mean this. One thing doesn't automatically mean the other. Giving yourself grace to recognize, you know,

maybe there were things that I could have done better over the years as far as taking care of myself, as far as eating better or sleeping better or drinking more water or taking better supplements. Yeah, of course. And that doesn't mean that you're not in the right seat right now. So there was a lot of grace around that, that I had to give myself a lot of forgiveness that I had to give myself for those thoughts in general. And I feel so much better that I allowed myself to feel those feelings and

think those thoughts rather than just like have them come up and deny them immediately because I would be denying my humanity. I'll be denying, you know, being a person that is scared right now because I have cancer. And as far as sharing it goes, I've always had kind of a weird relationship with social media. There's a part of it that I just don't understand the sales selling yourself part. I just don't get it. I just want to show up and be myself. And I haven't figured out that sweet spot yet. After all these years, I still haven't figured out that sweet spot.

So when I finally shared it with friends and family, I was very strategic in reaching out to specific friends and family because I didn't know when I was going to share it on social media to say, hey, this is what's going on. If you see it on social media, I didn't want you to get surprised or blindsided by it because I care about you and we have a relationship. So I did that first. And the response was supportive and easy and calm because that's just the relationships that I've intentionally built in my life. And when I shared it on social media, I was not prepared for the influx of people reaching out to me personally. I just, I don't know why I wasn't prepared for it, or maybe it was genuinely overwhelming. I just wasn't prepared for that. And the kind of cliche sayings that I got,

that does, it was, to be perfectly honest with you, it just rubbed me the wrong way. Because in that share, I also shared how much of a blessing it was to be able to be in process, you know, be in process of healing, recognize, you know, the support that I've had over the year, over this last year, it's been a really beautiful process beyond, you know, having cancer itself. Everything else around it has been really gorgeous and really beautiful. Even down to my doctors, it's just been really beautiful experience. And it's just one of those things where you hear people say, you know, having cancer is one of the best things that ever happened to me. And you can hear somebody say that and be like, yeah, okay. Okay. But actually in my experience, it is, it's one of the best things that I've ever experienced.

And I'm still in the midst of it. I'm still diagnosed stage one, even after surgery. So that, you know, I still haven't revis, even after surgery. So that, you know, I still haven't revisited a lot of the comments or, you know, commentary around me having cancer, but I've allowed myself so much grace to just be human in the process and recognize that, you know, a lot of people who may consider themselves healers or teachers or guides go through a lot in order to sit in that seat. This wasn't something that I chose to do. I didn't seek out to be in the seat of a teacher or a healer or a guide. This was something that I was guided to do. So everything that comes with it is a lesson in order for me to learn it internally, embody it, and eventually share it when it's ready to be shared.

Yeah. And you don't leave your humanity behind when you take that seat. And you also don't leave being subject to all the things that all human beings are subject to behind. It's like you're still in it with everybody else. And you can have all the practices and all the things and all the thoughts and do all the things, quote, right. As you were sharing this, I was, I had this really odd memory of being at a conference a decade ago, maybe big event with thousands of people in the audience and, and sort of like a big self-help type of person up on stage. And, and they were talking about like wellbeing and all these things. And, and the woman next to me was a stranger, just starts weeping. And, and, you know,

so I just kind of turned to her and tried to do whatever I could to comfort her. And she just looks at me and she says, she's like, I just found out this morning I have cancer, like, like stage four cancer. And she's like, I'm the person who has done everything right. She said, I eat right. I love openly. I take care of my body. I meditate. I do all the things. This wasn't supposed to happen to me. And my heart broke. And her heart was clearly breaking because this was her reality. And it was just such a stark reminder to me. We don't get to opt out of the human condition, even when we say yes to all of these things. You know, we're all in it together. Yeah. And what is right? What is doing everything right?

What does that actually mean? And this is something that goes beyond, you know, having a tough diagnosis, even in just yoga teacher class space. Like, just because you're sitting in that seat doesn't mean that you're above anything else. And I make it really clear, if you are in a position where your teacher is removing themselves from humanity, or they don't talk about the fact that they are human in some way, shape, or form, maybe that's not the right person for you to be learning from. Because one of the biggest parts of this work for me is the heart, connecting with the heart. The minute that goes into you leaning into your ego, you're no longer doing the work. And that's something that I had to learn in process. I am

guilty of, you know, I'm guilty of all the things that there's, as Lodro would say, if there's a mistake that has been made in the spiritual world, I have made it. And I can attest to that myself. And I think it's really important for those conversations to happen from the people that we choose to learn from, from the people that we choose to sit with, that we're all in this journey together. We're all in practice together. We're all part of a whole and the whole is continuously learning and evolving.

So that's a big part of it too. Yeah, I love that. And it feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So sitting here in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Ooh, to live a good life, what comes up? Ooh, to live a good life.

Hmm. To live a good life means to continuously liberate yourself from the things that weigh you down, liberating yourself from comparison, liberating yourself from the shoulds of humanity and society. To live a good life,ize what really makes you happy, what makes you smile, what ignites you. Follow that thread. Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation we had with James Gordon about the power of the mind to heal and work through illness and trauma. You'll find a link to James's episode in the show

notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app. And if you appreciate the work that we've been doing here on Good Life Project, go check out my new book, Sparked. It'll reveal some incredibly eye-opening things about maybe one of your favorite subjects, you, and then show you how to tap these insights to reimagine and reinvent work as a source of meaning, purpose, and joy. You'll find a link in the show notes, or you can also find it at your favorite bookseller now. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series X is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations,

iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.