The Low & Slow Podcast

You did the work. You built the life. You stopped over-giving, stopped losing yourself, stopped tolerating the wrong things. And somehow… you're still alone.

Not because you're broken. Because the independence that was supposed to be the goal became the cage.

In this episode, Crystal and Laken sit down to unpack what happens when self-protection outlives its purpose — when the walls you built to keep yourself safe start keeping everyone else out too. They get into the real difference between independence as a goal (something you arrive at and then live from) versus independence as a strategy (something your nervous system built to survive a moment that's already over).

Together they trace how past experiences wire the body to file connection as a threat, why self-trust isn't a feeling but a track record, and how to tell the difference between a boundary that's protecting you and a wall that's isolating you. They talk masculine and feminine energy, foundation and home base, mirrors in relationship — and what it actually looks like to open the door again without abandoning yourself on the way out.

If you've ever looked at your beautifully independent, fully healed-on-paper life and wondered why it still feels lonely — this one's for you.

Sound bites:

• "Your nervous system files connection as a threat."
• "Self-trust is a track record, not a feeling."
• "Trust is built by showing up for yourself."

In this episode:

• The woman who built walls for protection — and her journey back to trust
• Independence as a goal vs. independence as a strategy
• How past experiences shape the nervous system's relationship to trust
• Boundaries, standards, and self-respect as the foundation of real connection
• Building self-trust through a track record, not a feeling
• The metaphor of foundation and home base for emotional safety
• Masculine and feminine energy in the work of trusting yourself
• Recognizing old patterns and acting from who you're becoming, not who you were
• Practical steps to open the door to connection without losing yourself

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken 

The Peace.Play.Love Retreat Recap

Fresh off their travels and still buzzing from it, Crystal and Laken sit down to reflect on Peace. Play. Love. — their women's retreat in Costa Rica — and what happens when you take a group of women out of their routines and into nature, unscripted.
This episode is about what a retreat actually gives you that a podcast or a post never can: an experiential reference point. Not another idea to think about, but a felt memory in the body — proof that peace, play, and connection are possible, because you lived it. Crystal and Laken get into the magic of women in a room together, why the best moments were the ones nobody planned, and what it means to surrender the need to have it all figured out and just let the experience hold you.
They talk nature as co-facilitator, vulnerability as a leadership tool, and the surprising, tender ways transformation showed up in guests who came in guarded and left different. Equal parts recap and reflection, this one is a love letter to what becomes possible when women stop performing and start actually being together.
Pura vida.
Sound bites:
"This retreat allowed them to have a new reference point in their body"
"Women all in the same room is nature at work"
"Letting go of the weight and stress to have it all figured out"
In this episode:
The impact of experiential reference points on the nervous system
The role of nature and environment in healing
Deep connections formed among women during retreats
The importance of allowing space for spontaneity and unplanned moments
How retreats facilitate self-discovery and transformation
Releasing pressure and embracing uncertainty
Vulnerability in leadership and holding space
Looking ahead: future retreats and opportunities
Resources:
Laura's Centered Women's Retreat in Sedona — myalignedlife.com/centeredwomensretreat
Los Altos de Eros, Costa Rica — losaltosdeeros.com

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken 

What happens when the life you built no longer feels like the life you're meant to live?

In this episode of The Low & Slow Podcast, Crystal and Laken sit down with their mindset coach and former CrossFit Coach Drea Tapia for an honest conversation about identity shifts, self-trust, and the courage it takes to choose yourself. Together, they explore the transformative power of mindset work—not as another self-development buzzword, but as a pathway back to who you truly are.

Drea shares her journey from the world of CrossFit into coaching, the grief and uncertainty that can come with personal reinvention, and the lessons she's learned about trusting her intuition even when the next step isn't clear. Through stories of vulnerability, emotional honesty, and self-discovery, this conversation offers a powerful reminder that growth often begins when we stop trying to hold it all together.

If you've ever found yourself questioning your path, navigating a major life transition, or feeling called to become a different version of yourself, this episode will leave you feeling seen, supported, and inspired to trust what you already know deep down.

In This Episode, We Explore:

✨ Why mindset work is more than positive thinking
✨ Drea's transition from CrossFit coaching to transformational coaching
✨ How childhood stories and limiting beliefs shape adulthood
✨ The role of grief during identity shifts and life transitions
✨ Why vulnerability is a strength, not a weakness
✨ Learning to trust your intuition and inner guidance
✨ Creating emotional safety and self-trust from within
✨ The ripple effect of doing your own healing work
✨ How authentic connection transforms relationships
✨ What it means to love yourself through every season of growth

This Episode Is For You...

This conversation is for the woman who's outgrowing old versions of herself, questioning long-held beliefs, and learning how to trust her own voice again. It's for anyone navigating change, grieving what was, and stepping into what's next with courage and curiosity.

Because self-trust isn't built by having all the answers.

It's built by learning to listen to yourself when the answers begin to whisper.

🎧 Press play and join us for a conversation about vulnerability, healing, and becoming the woman you were always meant to be.

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken 

You’ve been waiting to feel sure. Waiting to feel ready. Waiting for the fear to stop so you can finally trust yourself. But self-trust isn’t a mindset. It’s a nervous system skill. And the fear you’ve been waiting to disappear? It’s not the problem. It’s the signal.

This episode dismantles the idea that self-trust is simply “thinking positively” or becoming fearless.

Because most women don’t struggle with knowing.

They struggle with feeling safe enough to follow what they already know.

So they will respond with “I don’t know” because they aren’t 100% certain but when a woman says I don’t know this tells her body she can’t fully trust what it’s saying.

This episode explores:

• the difference between mindset and nervous system trust
• why fear doesn’t mean “don’t do it”
• how women disconnect from intuition
• the quiet ways life keeps trying to redirect us
• the pressure, softness, and expansion that precede transformation
• and what it means to stop performing worthiness and start embodying it

This is the episode for the woman standing at the edge of a life she can already feel…

…but hasn’t fully chosen yet.

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken 

You’re not incapable. You never were. The question was never whether you could do it — you’ve already proven that. The question is whether your nervous system can safely hold it. Today’s episode is about the difference between capability and capacity — and why one of them has been quietly running the show. 

This episode reframes one of the biggest lies high-capacity women believe:

“I’m not capable enough.”

When in reality…most women are wildly capable.
They’ve already proven that.

The real issue is capacity.

Can your nervous system safely hold:

• rest?
• love?
• visibility?
• money?
• support?
• peace?
• expansion?
• success without self-destruction?

Because capability gets you there.
Capacity determines whether you can stay there.

This episode explores the difference between performing and holding, and asks a deeper question:

What if everything you’ve been through wasn’t punishment… but preparation?

Not in a toxic “everything happens for a reason” way.

But in a:
“What if life has been slowly stretching your nervous system to hold what’s already yours?”

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken 

Every time you leave the interaction you feel confused. Anxious. Emotionally underfed. And somehow you keep calling it patience. This episode is about the hunger you’ve been calling love — and what it actually costs you to stay.

This episode explores the painful space where women stay emotionally attached to people, situations, relationships, dynamics, careers, or versions of themselves that consistently leave them emotionally underfed.

Not because they’re weak.
Not because they’re “too much.”

But because somewhere along the way, they learned to confuse:

• waiting with loyalty,
• emotional hunger with chemistry,
• inconsistency with depth,
• and self-abandonment with love.

This episode asks the hard question:

Why are you emotionally invested in something that keeps requiring you to betray yourself to stay connected to it?

We hope after listening today these takeaways provide you a safe place to land in understanding that: 

You cannot analyze the doorway forever. At some point the question isn’t what it means. The question is whether you’re walking through it.

The absence of anxiety isn’t the absence of connection. It’s the presence of safety. And your nervous system hasn’t learned to read safety as love yet. But it can.

You stop chasing the possibility when you finally believe you deserve nourishment now.

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken 

You didn’t lose yourself all at once. It was the opinion you didn’t share. The feeling you swallowed. The limit you moved. The need you convinced yourself wasn’t that important. One trade at a time, until you looked up and couldn’t find yourself anymore.

This episode names the pattern nobody wants to claim: not the dramatic loss of self, but the quiet, incremental erasure that happens in the name of being low-maintenance, keeping the peace, not rocking the boat. 

The woman listening knows this pattern intimately because she’s lived it. She just hasn’t had it named this precisely. 

Self-abandonment in relationships is not weakness. It’s a strategy — one that was learned, one that once worked, and one that is now costing her the relationships she actually wants. 

The episode holds two things simultaneously: accountability without self-destruction. You played a role in this. And you are not to blame for the wounds that taught you to play it. Both are true. 

We hope today after listening you feel seen in the specific, quiet way you’ve been disappearing, and clear about what the first step back to yourself actually looks like.

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken 

This episode explores the shift that happens when your healing is no longer something you silently survive… but something you can speak about without collapsing inside of it.

Not because the story didn’t hurt.
Not because it didn’t shape you.

But because it no longer owns you.

This is the moment many women misunderstand in healing:
You don’t stop talking about the story because you’ve healed.

Sometimes…
you know you’re healing because you can finally talk about it.

Without shame.
Without defending it.
Without needing someone to rescue you from it.

The wound stops being the loop.
And becomes the lesson.

This episode can feel like:

• sitting on the couch with your best friend
• finally exhaling after years of carrying something
• realizing your story doesn’t make you “too much”
• understanding the difference between living inside the wound vs speaking from the scar

We hope after listening today these takeaways provide you a safe place to land with understanding that: 

Healing is not pretending the story never happened. Healing is not silence. Silence is suppression with better PR.

There’s a difference between reliving and reflecting – Repetition keeps you in the loop. Reflection creates meaning and distance. 

Integration is not erasure. Integration happens when the nervous system no longer treats the story like immediate danger. You do not need to erase your past to grow beyond it. 

The story becomes part of you without being the center of you.

Clinging to the wound is usually about not having built identity on the other side yet. 

Pain becomes medicine the moment your story helps someone else feel less alone.

Your story is allowed to evolve from identity → wisdom → connection

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken 

This episode names one of the most misunderstood and most shamed experiences in the boundaries conversation: the freeze response.

The moment you know exactly what you need to say, you’ve rehearsed it, you believe it — and when the moment arrives, your body goes somewhere else entirely. 

You go quiet. You go flat. You agree when you meant to hold the line. And then you spend the next three days hating yourself for it. 

This episode’s central argument is that the freeze is not a failure of courage, character, or communication skill. It is a nervous system response — a protective mechanism doing exactly what it was trained to do. 

Your nervous system isn’t responding to what’s happening right now. It’s responding to what it learned to expect. Those are two completely different things.

Understanding that distinction doesn’t excuse the pattern. 

It makes the pattern changeable. 

You cannot think your way to a different nervous system response. You have to experience your way there. The body learns through evidence, not insight.

The goal isn’t to never freeze. It’s to shrink the gap between the freeze and the recovery. 

That gap is trainable.

We hope today after listening you feel like the freeze finally makes sense — and like there is an actual path out that doesn’t require forcing yourself through it.

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken 

Your parents didn’t just raise you. They handed you a blueprint. For what love looks like. What safety feels like. What you have to be to belong. And most of us have been building from that blueprint for decades without ever looking at the architecture. Today we look.

Specifically at the editing process — how a child learns which version of herself is safe — this episode names the specific parenting styles that drove that editing. 

Here’s an opportunity to look at the map: here is the parent, here is the pattern it produced in you, here is why. The nine archetypes are introduced briefly and without judgment, then the conversation lands on the adult impact — the behaviors, the nervous system patterns, the relationship dynamics that grew directly from a parent’s emotional limits. 

The reparenting framework provides the neuroscience underneath: these patterns are not personality, they are adaptive code. And adaptive code can be updated. 

You are not your parents’ emotional ceiling. 

You are the person who can see the ceiling — and choose to build higher.

We hope today after listening you feel like the patterns you’ve been ashamed of finally have an origin story — and like that origin story is not your life sentence.

Follow along, tune in, and let’s get into your next mindset shift!

It means the world to us if you would rate, like, save, share, and most importantly hit that subscribe button! And if something you heard today hit home for you, share it with your world. There is plenty of room at our table.

She looks like she has it together.
But inside, she’s tired of being the strong one.

Request A Remix! If you’re stuck or in a situation you want a new lens on, submit your dilemma anonymously below for a mindset remix from us on a future podcast episode!

Follow us on IG: @thatgirlmagic.co - @i.am.crystal.clear - @coachlaken

www.thatgirlmagic.co 

Ways to work with us: Book With Crystal - Book With Laken