Radical well-being is something of a puzzle and most most people are missing key pieces. River shares his holistic map, drawn from three decades of working with clients and his own healing journey—a three-sector model of health. To achieve true wellness on all levels, regenerate, and truly thrive, you must attend to ALL the sectors with restorative practices.

River launches 2025 talking about death as an archetypal, metaphorical process of endings and beginnings. Many Westerners have a fear of death, one of multiple fears in general, which often holds people back from their personal evolution. He asks, what needs to die so that something else can be born—such as a new form, role, identity, or passage of life?

The aspects of self that we deny or suppress, "Shadow" is humanity's least-evolved level of awareness, River states, our lowest common denominator. Shadow work is a key part of personal evolution—moving from victim-hood to greater awareness and empowerment—because in the "shadow matrix," you can never be free.

The majority of people are not here to evolve, River states boldly. Partly, because evolution never occurs in the status quo, it happens at the fringe; also evolution involves uncertainty, which most people actively try to avoid. River explores what it means to evolve personally, and why mainstream “success” usually aborts that process.

A key difference exists between gratitude as a mental, feel-good exercise useful for “reframing,” versus an embodied one (somatic and cellular) that resets one's inner environment in a powerful way, as it relates to epigenetics. Further, River shares how he turns gratitude around and sends it to others as a transforming mini-meditation.

Most people are not skilled at letting things go, even when those things cause angst. For all sorts of reasons, including roles and identity, beliefs and expectations, we hang on to "our chosen encumbrances," as River puts it. What if you decided to finally relinquish angst in order to make room and energy for something else to emerge?

Creativity is a form of nourishment, River says, yet we can find a hundred reasons (excuses) not to actively create, and often fear holds us back—subconsciously or otherwise. If we're willing to risk, we open to the possibility that through our creativity something greater can emerge through us, propelling one's personal evolution.

Perspective is everything; it determines one's entire reality. If we're willing to entertain the possibility that every situation contains a gift, then even challenging scenarios—including disasters, crisis, and loss—can have a silver lining and prove ultimately to be for our mysterious benefit.

An entire universe had to be created in order to experience this moment, whatever it brings; in River's view, that makes everything really a miracle. And when we simply become present with what is, a door opens to both nourishment and possibility—a powerful way to reframe life.

River looks at life through the lens of nourishment—in a much wider view than merely nutrition. Versus entertainment and distraction, nourishment is a golden key that unlocks the ability to thrive on all levels of being—body, mind, and spirit. What genuinely nourishes you? And what gets in the way of practicing that?