Sister Science Stories

Feng Shui for Kids' Bedrooms: Setting the Stage for a Successful School Year

Back-to-school season means your kids have changed. Catching up to that change can be as easy as giving a little attention to their bedrooms. In this episode of Sister Science Stories, I sit down with feng shui specialist, interior designer, and healing touch practitioner Wendi Napier to talk about how the spaces our kids sleep, play, and grow in need to evolve right alongside them.

Wendi walks us through the foundations of BTB feng shui and how she applies it in real family homes - starting with the "command position" of the bed and why it matters for a child's sense of safety, when to ditch the bunk beds, and how to offer the right amount of choice to foster independence in your kids. 

We get into the layers of lighting a growing kid needs, from night lights to black out blinds. Task lighting, play or study zones, and how to let your kid's interest detemine what gets packed away or showcased. 

This conversation is a pretty fun preview of everything Wendi will be teaching in much greater depth this fall in her course, The Language of Space.  Our ten-month journey into the subtle energies of pattern, shape, colour, and sound frequency, starts on September 18th. See more details here... sisterscience.ca/language-of-space.

This week on the Sister Science podcast, I'm sitting down with Malann Klassen; artist, mother, and recent Year of YOU graduate, for a conversation that started with talk therapy and ended up somewhere much more embodied.

We talk about the difference between processing an experience and actually living inside your body. About the tension - or maybe the necessary friction - between structure and flow, achievement and ease, creating and monetizing. About what it means to trust an inner knowing that the world rarely affirms back to you.

And somewhere in the middle, Malann tells me about the mulch she put on her front lawn instead of grass - and how one small, "not even that rebellious" act became a perfect stand-in for everything we're talking about: what happens when you stop performing for a system that was never built for you in the first place.

This one's for anyone who's ever felt the pull between what they feel and what the world tells them they should feel. Come sit with us. If anything in this conversation landed - that ache to come home to yourself, to trust the wisdom that's already in your body, Year of YOU is where that becomes a practice, not just a feeling.

Malann started exactly where you might be right now: googling a name she'd heard around town, looking for something that wasn't talk therapy, not totally sure what she was looking for. A year later, she's telling me she knows how to listen to her own body, and that it's changed everything from her inflammation to her relationships to how she shows up in her own life.

It doesn't get better than this!

Your body is changing. Your biology shifting - and just like your monthly cycle it is a involuntary, automatic thing happening in your operating system that you have no control over. It happens whether you want it to or not.

This podcast is a recording from our live workshop from May 2026. Jill Novak of Sister Science walks you through perimenopause and menopause through an Ayurvedic lens, translating what is happening in your body, why it is happening, and what your symptoms are genuinely asking of you. This is not a conversation about hormone therapy, supplements, or symptom management protocols. This is a conversation about body literacy.

We want you to learn what your body is trying to say, what you do have control over and what you don't. We want you to make clear discerning choices about what you are learning with awareness.

In this workshop you will learn:

↳ What estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone were actually doing for you all these years, and what their decline is really asking of you now

↳ Why perimenopause is a Pitta-to-Vata transition and what that means for how you feel, how you move, and how you show up

↳ What each symptom (hot flashes, night sweats, rage, anxiety, insomnia, brain fog, dryness, loss of drive) is actually communicating in the language of Ayurveda

↳ The three causes of disease in Ayurveda and why they become non-negotiables at this stage of life

↳ How cortisol steals from other hormones and why it is essential to look at it as this life transition happens

↳ What the Ayurvedic concept of Vanaprasta (the forest dweller stage) tells us about who we are becoming

↳ The hormones you CAN control: melatonin, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin - and how to work with them

↳ What daily practices, rhythms, and habits support this transition regardless of whether you are on hormone therapy or not

This workshop is for you if:

*You are in perimenopause or menopause and feel like nobody is telling you the whole story

*You have been handed a list of symptoms to manage and something in you knows there is more to it than that

*You are curious about Ayurveda but have no background in it

*You are on HRT or considering it and want to understand what is happening underneath

*You know your body is trying to tell you something and you are ready to listen

Sign up for the full workshop video here: https://www.sisterscience.ca/understanding-menopause

Download your free companion worksheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1etGrc6IyA6-bDraExD91IhM_hGviBQUz/view?usp=sharing

This podcast helps you learn more about the new Sister Science Course - Chakra Healing Journey. Jill sits down with Meghan McGovern, to talk about how it came to be, what is is, and how you can use to it help you KNOW YOU. 

Megan and Jill talk about what actually happens when you spend seven months in relationship with your own energetic body. They dig into the somatic side of chakra work: what it felt like for Meghan to shake through poses as old patterns released, why the throat and navel were her personal "sticking points," and how a practice that starts at ten minutes can meet you wherever you're at. No perfectionism required!

Along the way, they talk about interdependence versus independence, why healing happens faster in community, and the Sister Science stance that no course can fix you - it can only offer you a doorway back to yourself. I

f you've ever heard "root chakra" or "heart chakra" tossed around in a yoga class and wondered what it actually means for your life off the mat, this conversation is the practical, embodied answer.

The Chakra Healing Journey launches this fall as part of the new Sister Science Academy. Head to the the SisterScience.ca website to learn more, see if it fits your season, and grab the coupon code while it is still valid: 10OFF2026, for 10% off any Sister Science course.

The answers you're looking for aren't out there, they're already living in your body, waiting to be understood. 

In this episode, Jill sits down with Chelsey Beda, who taught our Human Design course over the past year, to unpack what this work really is and why it matters.

Chelsey shares her own path; years of chronic pain and burnout that led her to massage therapy, then to hiking the Pacific Crest Trail alone, and finally to Human Design as a way to make sense of the body's quiet, unconscious wisdom. Together, Jill and Chelsey talk about strategy and authority, the different energy centers in the body graph, and why learning your own "language" changes how you make decisions, set boundaries, and show up in relationships. Jill shares her own aha moments from the course - including how discovering her emotional authority gave her permission to stop rushing decisions and start trusting her own timing. This is a conversation about coming home to yourself; flaws, gifts, and learning to be in right relationship with a world that's always changing.

The Human Design course is launching again this Fall 2026.

If you've ever felt like you there is some way you don't get how you fit into this world, or you're craving a deeper understanding of yourself and the people you love, this is your invitation.

A discount code 10OFF2026 is available for a limited time this month.

Check out the course details at SisterScience.ca/Human-Design

https://www.sisterscience.ca/human-design-22ac1d31-e54a-460e-a1e5-567dfef17e1f

The Language of Space, with Wendi Napier

I sat down with my friend and Sister Science faculty member Wendi Napier to talk about something that's been years in the making:  "The Language of Space", launching on the platform this fall.

Wendi and I go back to 2020, she and I exchanged the Year of YOU for her Design expertise. What emerged was a supportive friendship and container of growth for both of us.

The Language of Space is the product of years of evolution, trusting ones voice, and bringing for the gift and wisdom inside. This course is not a prescription. It's not "move the couch here, buy this crystal." It's learning to read your home the way you'd read a conversation - the cadence, the tone, what's being said underneath the words.

In this episode we talk about:

The course opens this September and runs through June. Twenty-five live hours with Wendi and me as your classmate, the rest is yours, at your own pace, in your own home. If you're listening to this in August of 2026 we have a coupon code good for a short window only - 10OFF2026. It expires August 18th. After that, it's gone. If this is the course catching your attention, listen. That is your inner wisdom guiding you.  

Learn more and grab your spot: sisterscience.ca/language-of-space

What happens when the resilience that carried your family forward becomes the very thing holding you back?

Serena Arora, author of Unbound, joins Jill to explore that question through the lens of Ayurveda, yoga, and generational healing. Serena shares how being a first-generation Canadian of Indian and Chinese descent, gave her "immigrit" and "immiguilt", words she coined to describe the resilience and guilt carried by immigrant children. 

Together, Jill and Serena unpack how yoga and Ayurveda are far more than wellness practices, they are tools for processing generational trauma, releasing accumulated "ama," and finding the courage to live in alignment with your own truth.

This one is a powerful listen for anyone navigating inherited expectations, cultural identity, and the cost of doing life right vs being in relationship with your life. 

Themes: Vulnerability, Ayurveda, Breaking Generational Patterns, Feminine Wisdom, Personal Growth, Healing, and Truth.

Serena is a #1 international bestselling author of "Unbound," an Ayurvedic health practitioner and a yoga therapist of over 25 years who’s dedicated much of her career to guiding transformation—both at her retreat center in Costa Rica and through teacher trainings across the globe. Serena believes our histories live in our bodies, and she offers practical, accessible rituals rooted in Ayurveda and therapeutic yoga that help women break patterns and come home to themselves.

Born and raised in Calgary, Canada by an Indian father and Chinese mother, her personal journey as an immigrant daughter balancing generational expectations with her own healing brings another textured angle to the conversation.

Find Serena and her book: 

Unbound on Amazon Canada: https://a.co/d/0hPadGiw

Unbound on Amazon USA: https://a.co/d/0e14T310

Website: www.serenaarora.com

Have you ever felt like you're doing everything right - eating well, exercising, prioritizing sleep - and still feeling disconnected, heavy, and overwhelmed? You're not alone, and this episode is for you.

Amanda came to the Year of YOU program stuck. She was experiencing unexplained physical pain, caught in cycles of negative self-talk, and carrying the weight of a lifetime of "shoulds." What she discovered was an unlearning. It was permission to feel, to do things imperfectly, to trust the process, and to let go.

In this conversation, Amanda and Jill explore what it really means to listen to the body speaking, and stop listening with our heads. They talk about perfectionism, emotional stagnation, the powerful connection between physical symptoms and unprocessed feelings, and why community might be the most underrated wellness practice of all.

If you've ever checked every box and still felt heavy, this one's for you.

Amanda Selmser - 

in 2012, Nicole Dyck walked nervously into her first yoga class at Alchemy. Knowing that something needed to shift for her, a hyper independent widowed Mom, finally choosing to step out of the insular safe life she had created.  From her first yoga class to the leap into Teacher Training in 2019, Nicole shares a story of being vulnerable with strangers, asking for helps, opening up, sharing, and letting her light shine.

Today, she's a yoga teacher, diving into intensive Yoga Therapy studies, and living proof that your Yoga mat finds you at exactly the right moment.

In this episode, Jill sits down with Nicole - one of the original 16 women in Jill & Jody's very first 2019 Yoga Teacher Training - to trace a journey that has been anything but linear. Weeks after completing that training, Nicole found a lump in her breast. By December 27th, she had a breast cancer diagnosis. And then COVID hit.

What unfolded in the years that followed is a story of radical opening learning to ask for help, finding her voice in the seat of the teacher, building a beloved chair yoga community, and recently discovering yoga therapy after being diagnosed with osteoarthritis in both knees.

Nicole shares how yoga gave her the one thing she didn't know she was missing: freedom. Freedom to be imperfect, to grieve, to love again, to run (yes, run!) up a flight of stairs with no pain, and to show up fully for her students, community, family, partner, and the grandbaby on the way.

This conversation will move you. Grab a tissue, settle in, and let Nicole's story remind you to trust the timing of your own life.

Nicole teaches at High River & District Seniors Friendship Centre and the Bob Snodgrass Recreation Complex.  She can be reached at [email protected].

Topics explored: breast cancer survivorship, grief and widowhood, vulnerability, yoga teacher training, chair yoga for seniors, yoga therapy, neuroplasticity, osteoarthritis, and the healing power of community.

What Does It Mean to Be Whole? A Conversation on Integration

In this heartfelt episode of Sister Science Stories, Jill and Chelsea unpack one of the most misunderstood concepts in personal growth: integration. Drawing from the Latin root integer — meaning whole, complete, undivided — they make the case that what most of us actually need isn't to be fixed, but to be restored to the wholeness that was always there.

Chelsea opens up about one of the most painful years of her life, navigating the decision to step back from her relationship with her mother, ending patterns of over-giving, and sitting with the grief, rage, and self-shame that surfaced in the process. Together, Jill and Chelsea explore what integration actually looks and feels like from the inside — and why it's so much harder, and more rewarding, than any quick fix.

They also touch on the connection between integration and physical health, the body as a truth-teller, and why perimenopause may be one of the most powerful invitations to come home to yourself that a woman will ever receive.

This episode is honest, vulnerable, and deeply human. If you've been white-knuckling your way through life, managing symptoms, or quietly wondering whether there's another way — this one is for you.

In this episode: