Staying Conscious with Meg & Aly

So sorry for the hiatus, but we are back and so excited to bring you today's guest Roo Cotter! Roo is a personal trainer here in Columbus, Ohio, who quit her finance/accounting job in Chicago and is now pursuing her passion for helping others live a healthy lifestyle. This conversation was so much fun and we had so many laughs with Roo, just sipping coffee on a lovely Sunday morning like old friends. We chat about her childhood, her family, and the lessons she’s learned from her parents on all things life from finances to relationships. Roo talks about her transition out of the corporate world and becoming an entrepreneur and gives us advice on following your passion. Make sure you listen to the end on this one, because our absolute favorite part about this conversation was the last bit, when we discuss how even though your career field/industry may feel over saturated at times, there is always need for this work because every person has their own unique self to bring to the table. One person cannot heal the entire world, and it’s not a competition out there! Roo shares the term “collaboration over competition” and we could not love it more! Also make sure to follow Roo over on instagram for inspiration on not only workouts, but also great nutrition tips, recipes, and fashion!

We are so excited to share with you the fiercely strong, fun, and inspiring Victoria Frye. Victoria founded the Black Lotus Sanctuary Collective, a nonprofit that assists people through whatever transformation they are going through and she is currently in training for her 500 RYT. Victoria tells us about her journey as a lupus warrior and how she got into the fitness world through hiphop dance classes and bikram yoga. We go on to discuss how these lead her to develop her own teaching style of yoga (Black Lotus Sanctuary Vibes) that accepts all body shapes, sizes, colors, and sexual orientations, her passion for seeking out communities that are underserved and cheering for the underdog, and how it has been so important for her to create a space that is welcoming and allows people to be seen, not only in the studio, but outside the walls of the studio as well. She goes on to inspire us through her commitment to her lifelong friendships, choosing a partner/husband who has similar morals and values, and how together they consciously parent their sons. The conversation ends with us discussing the future of the health/fitness/wellness industry and how important it is for our students and ourselves to continue to be aware, conscious, and grow as a yoga instructor.

We are so excited to bring you Regan Walsh, an executive and life coach who helps women and men find joy and fulfillment in their lives by helping them uncover their truest selves. In this episode, we discuss navigating success and hardships in business, believing in yourself and your work, feeling your emotions, and knowing that it’s ok to feel disappointment in setbacks. We loved hearing Regan tell us about her passions and how she is intentional about how she shows up in the world by being present, putting her phone down, making eye contact, and connecting with people daily in life. Such a great reminder for us! We end the conversation with how she has cultivated the marriage and relationship she wants with her husband, by living a life that they are happy with now, and not living for the future.

**Special Giveaway**

Regan is gifting her nine-course program to two lucky winners!

How to enter:

Like our instagram post

Follow Regan and Staying Conscious with Meg & Aly on instagram

Tag a friend that you want to share it with!

The giveaway will end 10pm EST on Tuesday July 30, 2019!

This week on the podcast we are so excited to bring you our friend Rachel Kerr. Rachel is the owner and founder of The Beauty Boost, a space for women to come to feel empowered, healthy, and beautiful. The Beauty Boost hosts so many cool and fun events throughout Columbus, that we have personally attended, including taste of fitness events, retreats, workshops, paddle board yoga and so much more! Rachel has also expanded The Beauty Boost to Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh and could possibly be expanding to more cities soon so be on the look out for that! We had such a fun time chatting with Rachel about how she came to find herself in the health and wellness world, her journey navigating entrepreneurship, and we even got a little personal chatting about dating and relationships. We loved all of Rachel’s advice for people who may want to start their own business some day and even her advice on life, love, self-care, and relationships. Our favorite little nugget from her was, “Your mindset is what limits you.” If you’re curious about The Beauty Boost and looking for connection with like-minded women, check out the fun events Rachel has planned for this summer in the links below for her website, instagram, and The Taste of Fitness event next weekend Sunday, July 21, 2019! We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it and please feel free to leave a review, share this episode with a friend, and hit subscribe!

This week we are so excited to bring you our dear friend Simi Botic. Simi is a health coach who helps women embrace their beautifully imperfect lives through intuitive eating and intuitive movement. This was such a special episode for us because both of us have worked with Simi and can equally say that our work with her changed our lives and our relationships with food, our bodies, and movement forever! We are incredibly thankful for her work and her approach to health coaching. In this episode, Simi discusses overcoming perfectionism and how she realized that she didn’t have a problem with food and body image, but rather that she was struggling with finding her own self worth. We talk about asking for help, not needing to be an expert at everything, unrealistic expectations, and finding compassion and curiosity when navigating hardships. We end the conversation talking about creativity and how both of her pregnancies have driven her to create new and exciting things in her business. Her first pregnancy with her son Osh, lead to her book, “Letting Go of Leo,” and we are so excited for what her current pregnancy will bring for the future of her business! We had so much fun chatting with Sim and we cannot wait for you to listen! Enjoy!

Today we are so excited to bring you a very special guest, Josie Schweitzer. Josie is the owner of The Space, a yoga studio recently opened in Columbus, Ohio that teaches a blend of Vinyasa and Katonah yoga, along with breathing and meditation techniques. In this episode, Josie tells how she transitioned from her career in hair to her career in yoga after her first 200 hour teacher training in Costa Rica and how showing up and do the doing, (even when you don’t feel like it) played a key role in her transition. We discuss listening to your intuition, knowing when it’s time move on, grow, and expand, taking care of yourself, and setting boundaries. Josie also shares with us how being an empath and truly caring to hear others stories has been a huge part of her work and how it’s helped her to connect on the level she does with her community. She takes us through her journey of finding Katonah Yoga, and how this practice and the theories just make sense and feel right in her body. During this conversation you’ll come to find out that this episode is so special because I was actually in Josie’s 200 hour yoga teacher training at the time we recorded. It’s hard to explain in words how amazing this training was for me, but it was an incredibly transformational experience and I cannot recommend it enough. The exciting news is that she is starting another 200 hour teacher training in the Fall, starting in September! If you are interested click the link below to find out more and sign up! We end out the conversation with Josie telling us what she’s excited about for the future of The Space and it’s not just the physical practice, so make sure you listen all the way to the end!

This week on the podcast we are so excited to introduce you to Dr. Jonathan Grischkan. He is a pediatric Otolaryngologist with an intense passion for teaching and educating future medical professionals. His infectious energy for showing up as the type of physician he wants to see in the world, lit a fire in us that we hope inspires you to show up as your best self in whatever field you work in. We loved that he opened up to us about his family and his journey in becoming a physician. He also shares with us what excites him about the future of medicine, and how he fears that the shifts in physician education will change the culture of medicine in the future. We had so much fun recording this episode with him! We laughed a ton and we hope you do too!

We are excited to bring you today's guest Dr. James Murakami, a pediatric interventional radiologist who treats patients from all over the world. In this episode, he defines interventional radiology and sclerotherapy in a way that anyone can understand. We discuss how he grew up in Hawaii and how his parents have made a great impact on his life in his career and how it has shaped him as a father. Our favorite was his mother’s advice to not take yourself or life so seriously. We enjoyed this conversation so much and loved hearing about the serendipities that have happened throughout his life that have brought him to where he is today.

Today's guest, Dr. Patrick Walz, is a warm-hearted and caring ENT surgeon who fills us in on how he navigated surgical residency, marriage, family, having their "miracle baby" and adopting their beautiful baby girl. He opens up about their adoption process and you can feel how much love he has for his beautiful family. The three of us laugh at ourselves and agree on how we have little understanding of what people do in their careers outside of the medical field and how they should explain it to us at a 2nd grade learning level. We end the conversation by discussing how if he wasn't a doctor he would be a climbing bum and how he's already teaching his son how to rock climb.

Dr. Tarun Bhalla is an anesthesiologist with an infectious positivity for life. We knew this would be a great conversation when it started with him telling us about his current curiosity with magic and learning how to DJ. He tells us about how his father was the first one in his family to move from India to America, how he met his wife in his first year of college at Case Western, and how dealing with the sickness and hospitalization of his newborn baby shaped how he practices medicine by being on the other side early in his career. The three of us chat about learning how to set boundaries, finding work/life balance, while learning that multitasking isn’t always as productive as it seems, and finding out what truly makes you happy.