Befriend your body. Rewrite the story of your life.

Join BodyStory: Hunger to write the tale of your inner fire.

BodyStory is a unique online program that recognizes that every body has a divine story to tell. Through our pleasure, pain, stuckness, and mobility we experience journeys that lead to deep self-realization. By writing the story of our strongest and weakest parts, we learn what it means to live, and how to live better.

In six live classes (recordings will be available) you’ll be guided through practical Ayurvedic wisdom, creative journaling exercises, body-based practices, and simple recipes to redefine your relationship with hunger and learn to harness your deepest desires.

This fall’s BodyStory offering is on the story of your hunger and desire. Together we will explore the power of agni, a word that represents the fire element, a deity, and the digestive fire that is at the heart of Ayurveda’s teachings.

But we won’t stop at physical hunger — we will learn how our cravings for experiences shape us, and how we can shape them.

This course will forge a new relationship with the fire inside you and show you how to direct it to go after what you are truly hungry for — on your plate and in life.

 

We begin Thursday, October 21, 2021 at 4:00 p.m. PT

Already a Nest member? USE THIS LINK to automatically apply your membership discount.

“Taking part in Sonja’s BodyStory class and sharing with her and others allowed my body and heart to have a more clear voice about its wants, needs and desires. Sonja created a sacred safe container for us to share openly and spontaneously.”

Nafisseh

Why Hunger Matters

Ayurveda views hunger as a critical component of health — it is said that when we are adequately hungry our bellies and eyes are filled with the brilliant light necessary to transform what we eat and experience into life force. This process of transformation brings better digestion, nutrient assimilation, and the vitality and inner strength required to know what we want and how to act upon it.

 

The Problem

In our search for safety and stability, we have lost the sense of what it means to be hungry. We have come to believe that success means never experiencing the pangs of hunger. And while the ability to eat well is a privilege not available to all, those whose plates are full are finding that a lack of hunger does not equal satisfaction.

Simply put, we are starving for depth. 

The Solution

We deserve more than a promise of the “good life” in a shelf-stable cardboard box. We can use our hunger as the fuel to go after what we want — whether we seek nourishing food, love, or livelihood. But we must first learn to stoke our internal fires.

In BodyStory: Hunger, you will reimagine and rewrite the story of your hunger.

Live gatherings each week guide you through creative exercises, body-based practices, and journaling to understand the nature of hunger, fire, and how the right amount of wanting feeds our deepest desires. Recorded Ayurvedic cooking lessons get you into the kitchen to fuel your body.

 

BodyStory: Hunger will guide you to safely build and tend to the fire in your belly.

Join us to improve your digestion of food and your hunger for life.

 

We go inward on Thursdays at 4:00 p.m. PT from October 21 to December 2 (skipping Nov 25).

Already a Nest member? USE THIS LINK to automatically apply your membership discount.

What you will receive:

 

  • Wise guidance to reimagine and rewrite the story of your hunger for food as well as your desire for life.
  • A safe group of likeminded people to witness your process and story.
  • Weekly live classes filled with a modern application of ancient Ayurvedic and yogic teachings around the nature of hunger, fire, and desire.
  • Weekly videos with Ayurvedic “unrecipes” to stoke your agni (digestive fire) and give you a template for eating and living well.
  • The structure and support to develop a journaling practice as a tool for self-awareness.
  • The chance to befriend your body and make sense of the experience you’ve had within it.

There is no perfect way to do Ayurveda.

 

I have been a student and teacher of Ayurveda for seven years, four of which I spent in direct apprenticeship with a well-known practitioner. I have applied these teachings to my life, and supported countless clients to make a map of their bodies through this wisdom. What I have learned is that there is no perfect way to do Ayurveda, nor is there a static point of perfect health. Instead, it is a powerful daily practice of nourishment, self-inquiry, and endless respect for the journeys we, in these bodies, find ourselves in.

 

BodyStory: Hunger is a journaling journey into the fire in your belly. Ayurveda is our guide — using these teachings I will share wisdom, practical tips, and recipes to transform your relationship with hunger and desire.

 

Register for

BodyStory: Hunger

Earlybird Discount Available Until Oct, 13th

Register for

BodyStory: Hunger & Satisfaction

Earlybird Discount Available Until Oct, 13th

Already a Nest member? USE THIS LINK to automatically apply your membership discount.

This program is ideal for you if:

  • You are befuddled about how your digestion/body works but believe it is possible to feel better.
  • You want to develop new (and doable) digestive self-care habits from a place of genuine self-approval.
  • You want to better direct your life, whether you wrestle with wanting too much, have no clue what you want, or have difficulty focusing on one path.
  • You struggle with health issues that are unexplainable by Western doctors.
  • You suffer from pain, anxiety, depression, or chronic illness and want to know how you got here.
  • You have difficulty asking for what you really want, or accepting how it is delivered.
  • You want to learn Ayurveda as a way to accept how your body functions.

 

This program is designed for those brand new to Ayurveda, as well as seasoned students looking to embody the teachings through storytelling. You don’t need any experience with writing or journaling to join!  

This program is not for you if:

  • You want a quick fix for your health.
  • You aren’t ready to embrace your whole self, including the parts that exist in shadow.
  • You are looking for black-and-white answers about your body.

Write the legend of your hunger. We go inward on Thursdays at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time, starting October 21, 2021.

Your Body, Your Story. Told By You.

If there is one theme from the past two years, it is this: Feel your body. The combined forces of COVID-19, the loss of social structures, the shifts in work and family structure, racial reconciliation, have drawn lines on our skin — through masks, wrinkles, and radical divisions in viewpoints. It is time to read these lines aloud and make sense of the story they tell.

I am a writer and have been an avid journaler ever since I could hold a pen, so I know the healing power of personal storytelling. It is a tool of digestion, organization, and self-awareness that makes us more available to ourselves and the world.

Investing in writing this story is a way to find the inner answers to the questions that have been hounding you about your diet, digestion, desires, and all the other gooey bits within.

 

Ayurveda, Your Map to the Body

Ayurveda is often called “the science of life,” but a better title is “the best guidebook to having a body that humankind has ever known.”

By naming functions and characteristics of the body based on the understanding that we are part of — not above — nature, Ayurveda teaches us to normalize the way the body functions in each stage of life. Its focus on digestion as the apex of health is especially appealing given how many people suffer from digestive disorders that confound Western medicine.

Already a Nest member? USE THIS LINK to automatically apply your membership discount.

Hunger serves us if we serve our hunger. 

Week by Week

BodyStory: Hunger starts Thursday, October 21, 2021 at 4:00 p.m. PT.

Each week we’ll join for one live group call, followed by a prerecorded Ayurvedic cooking lesson to watch on your own time (all sessions will be recorded and you’ll have lifetime access). In BodyStory: Hunger, I’ll be sharing three masalas (spice mixtures) and three recipes to make with them.

Already a Nest member? USE THIS LINK to automatically apply your membership discount.

Week 1: Meet the fire (Oct 21)

  • Reigniting the Ayurvedic concept of agni (digestive fire) as a three-dimensional, dynamic function of life
  • The nature of the fire element and Lord Agni
  • How hunger relates to desire and your power to realize your life

Recipe: Divine spark masala

Week 2: Samagni and the Wisdom of Just Right (Oct 28)

  • What balance really means in your body
  • How to build a steady fire in your belly
  • How to engage in desire alchemy to get what you want and release negative cravings

Recipe: Just right soup

Week 3: Tikshnagni and the Teacher of Too Much (Nov 4)

  • Reframing the story of the fire that burns too hot
  • Activating discernment in the face of desire
  • What to do when you want everything

Recipe: Sweeten Up Masala

Week 4: Vishmagni and the Teacher of Hot and Cold (Nov 11)

  • What an erratic relationship to hunger is really saying, and why it’s important to listen
  • Learning to surf energy waves
  • How to focus when you can’t focus

Recipe: Breakfast Cookies

Week 5: Mandagni and the Teacher of Cooler than Cool (Nov 18)

  • Why sweetness matters when hunger and desire feels absent
  • The wisdom of smoldering hunger
  • Why your coldest desires matter, probably the most

Recipe: Masala Francais

Week 6: Into the Flames (Dec 2)

  • Beyond manifesting — learning to tend to your fires ethically and wisely
  • Why what you don’t want is as important as what you do
  • Closing ceremony: Becoming a master of hunger and desire

Recipe: Perfect lentils

Calling your fire.

Calling your hunger.

Calling your desire for a digested life.

 

Join BodyStory: Hunger for an intimate relationship with the fire in your belly.

In six live classes (recordings will be available), you’ll write the story of your hunger. while learning how Ayurveda allows you to more intuitively work with your digestion, recipes to stoke your fire, and wisdom guidance to ignite a new relationship with hunger.

Already a Nest member? USE THIS LINK to automatically apply your membership discount.

Register for

BodyStory: Hunger

Earlybird Discount Available Until Oct, 13th

Register for

BodyStory: Hunger & Satisfaction

Earlybird Discount Available Until Oct, 13th

Already a Nest member? USE THIS LINK to automatically apply your membership discount.

BodyStory: Hunger is best served with BodyStory: Satisfaction (begins March 2022).

The Journal

Don’t Stop Me Now: The Erotic and the Power of a Healthy Nervous System

Don’t Stop Me Now: The Erotic and the Power of a Healthy Nervous System

When it comes to healing, the way up isn’t always down. I’m speaking in terms of the nervous system, of course. And I’m speaking to the multitude of teachings that focus on attuning to calm as the definition of healing. What I’m saying is that true nervous system...

“On this path effort never goes to waste, and there is no failure.”

The Bhagavad Gita 2:40