If you enjoyed this meditation and would like to practice somatic yoga therapy with me in a way that fits  into your schedule - day or night.

Check out The Nourished Woman Sanctuary - my membership for women who want to soak in the benefits of a regular somatic yoga practice that is based on the state of your nervous system and helps with emotional well-being, deepens your spiritual connection to your highest Self and helps your body feel it's best. $33/month and easy to cancel anytime. 
Details here -> https://www.kerimarino.com/the-nourished-woman-sanctuary.html
​
About Keri Marino:Keri Marino is a C-IAYT certified somatic yoga therapist with 17 years of clinical experience working at the intersection of yoga therapy, nervous system healing and women's mental health.
She founded The Nourished Woman to bridge the gap between traditional yoga, mental health support and the body-based healing that completes it — helping women move from understanding themselves to actually feeling free in their bodies and their lives.
Keri brings both deep clinical expertise and genuine personal experience with trauma recovery to her work. She has supported hundreds of women in building embodied practices that reach what therapy alone doesn't always touch.

This is for the woman who already loves yoga. 

But also feels like your yoga practice hasn't gone deep enough to tend to the parts of you that need it most. Your nervous system, the trauma imprints and your innermost Self. The part that therapy helps with, but hasn't fully resolved. The part that yoga classes, don't really access. 

You know yoga is more than just something that makes you feel good - it holds the power to help you heal and feel more wildly whole and free. 

That's what Daily Devotion is for. 

It's a 21 day on-demand therapeutic home yoga practice in just 10 minutes a day or less. 
Incorporating somatic yoga with movement, breathwork, relaxation, meditation, guided inner work and applied yoga philosophy. 

Built specifically to tend to your nervous system, move what's been living in your body and build a daily rhythm of practices that sticks. 

It's yoga as medicine, at home on your own time - made for self-aware women ready for more joy, play and pleasure in your life. 

Here's what women are saying...

"I look forward to this each day. I got behind, but then your email came in and reminded me to log back in. I'm so glad I did." 

"The shadow boxing practice has been so helpful. I've been using it regularly and I'm feeling more clear headed and having more fun."

"I don't want this to end."

Here's how it works...

21 days of on-demand practice that you have two full months to complete at your own pace. 

Structured email touch points throughout - keeping you gently accountable without pressure. 

Immediate access - you can begin the moment you purchase. 

One time payment of $47. 

What actually happens when you practice like this.

She laughs unexpectedly. Feels things she forgot she could feel. Notices pleasure in small everyday moments and feels present enough to truly enjoy them. 

She cries sometimes. From relief, from sadness and from the kind of heart expanding warmth that brings you to your knees you're so damn grateful. 

She feels the weight lift - of pressure, of being stuck in patterns and of the disconnection she's carried for years. Because she's returned parts of herself to herSelf repeatedly. And there's nothing quite like that feeling. 

She analyzes less, feels more. Navigates the hard things with a little more grace and perspective. And when the going get's rough - she knows how to meet herself, how to tend to herself and come back to herself with less judgment and more ease. 

That's what Daily Devotion actually does for you. 

I get it mama.

Sometimes the constant demands on your attention, the invisible load you carry, the impossible task of regulating your own emotions while anticipating your kids emotional needs amidst the noise, the messes and still having room in your heart to savor the precious little moments of it all - it's a lot. 

I made this meditation for those moments when you want to recalibrate, center and open up the space inside you to be the kind of woman and mom you want to be. The deeply resourced, self-aware and spiritually held one. The one who can laugh, cry, smile and also raise her voice when she needs to without feeling immense guilt. You know - a real one. 

Grab a comfortable space to sit and let's meditate. 

If you enjoyed this meditation and would like to practice somatic yoga therapy with me in a way that fits  into your schedule - day or night. Check out The Nourished Woman Sanctuary - my membership for women who want to soak in the benefits of a regular somatic yoga practice that is based on the state of your nervous system and helps with emotional well-being, deepens your spiritual connection to your highest Self and helps your body feel it's best. $33/month and easy to cancel anytime. 
Details here -> https://www.kerimarino.com/the-nourished-woman-sanctuary.html
​
About Keri Marino:
Keri is a C-IAYT certified somatic yoga therapist of 17 years and founder of The Nourished Woman — yoga therapy and mental health support for women ready to feel wildly free.

Calm is not the goal.
I know that might sound strange coming from a yoga therapist. But hear me out.

Calm is a byproduct of this work. What we're actually building — through consistent devoted somatic yoga practice over time — is something so much bigger than calm.

A nervous system that can actually feel pleasure without bracing against it. That can move through grief without drowning in it. That can hold the hard and the beautiful simultaneously without losing yourself in either.

That's liberation. And it lives in your Soul — not just your mind and body.
In this week's podcast episode I go deeper than I ever have on what nervous system healing actually feels like from the inside. The felt sense of it. What expands when your window of tolerance grows. How yoga gets you there in a way that nothing else quite replicates.

This one is personal and it goes all the way down. 

ou've felt it before.
That moment after yoga when something in you has settled — not just physically but somewhere deeper. Something that's hard to name but impossible to ignore.

That's your nervous system. And once you understand what yoga is actually doing to it you'll never think about your practice the same way again.

Here's the short version — your nervous system is your body's alarm system. For many women it gets stuck in fight or flight and stays there. Anxious. Scanning. Unable to fully come down even when nothing is actually wrong.

You cannot think your way out of that.
But you can move your way out of it. Breathe your way out of it. Rest your way out of it.

That's what slow somatic yoga actually does — it speaks your nervous system's language and signals safety in a way that insight alone never could.

I break down exactly how in this video.

Ready to feel it for yourself?
🕯️ Grab my free 10-minute somatic yoga practice — Come Home to Your Body — and experience what nervous system medicine actually feels like from the inside.
Grab it here -> https://kerimarino.eo.page/comehome
​
🌙 Or come home to The Nourished Woman Sanctuary — 160+ somatic yoga therapy practices for nervous system healing, emotional processing and women's mental health. $47/month. Cancel anytime.
Details here -> https://www.kerimarino.com/the-nourished-woman-sanctuary.html

About Keri Marino:
Keri is a C-IAYT certified somatic yoga therapist of 17 years and founder of The Nourished Woman — yoga therapy and mental health support for women ready to feel wildly free.

If you've been wondering why your nervous system is always activated or wondering if you can ever break the cycle of fight or flight - then this is for you. 

What is Nervous System Dysregulation for Women?
At its core - it's your nervous system responding to the present moment to try and protect you (physically, emotionally, relationally) in a way that doesn't align for you. It can feel like your nervous system is "stuck" responding the same way - even when you want to feel differently. 

It's the old wiring that shuts you down when moments get hard between you and your partner. 
Or, the anxious feeling that comes over you when life is quiet at the end of the day and you're ready for bed. 
It's the constant need to move, do and difficulty slowing down or the inability to peel yourself off the couch and get stuff done. 
Or the feeling of stress and overwhelm when your kids play loudly or won't go the "f*ck to sleep," haha. 

Nervous system dysregulation means your nervous system can't do what it does ideally - shift between states with ease based on the situation and come back to the window of tolerance as a baseline. And it's not your fault, but it's also your responsibility to change this and you absolutely can!

Signs and Symptoms
It can show up as SO many different things, but here's a short list.

High energy in your body - tense, tight or buzzy
Thoughts like "I can't stop or everything will fall apart."
Jaw clenching, shoulders up, shallow breathing. 
Feeling reactive or easily triggered or feeling alert even when nothings wrong.

Low to no energy in your body - numb, heavy, shut down or a gas & brake pedal combination - activated and shut down all at once. 
Thoughts like, "I feel invisible," or I don't know what I need."
Disconnection from your body, needs or desires.
Focusing on others needs and ignoring your own or saying yes when you mean no. 

Why It Happens
To sum it up quickly, because of what you've been through in the past - how you were raised, your experiences, past trauma, etc. 

What Actually Helps (And Why Somatic Yoga Might be the Missing Piece) 
Yoga has been serving up nervous system medicine, somatic healing and holistic care since way before it was trending. Yoga is especially therapeutic because it offers both stimulating and relaxing practices that help your nervous system learn adaptability and resiliency. It helps your nervous system to regulate and move between states easy. But not just any kind of yoga - therapeutic or somatic yoga in particular - that goes slow. balances effort and ease, is calming in nature (no loud music blaring) or fast flows. 

Yoga works with the four pillars of you - body, mind, spirit and life. As Dr. Timothy McCall says, Yoga is one stop shopping." It therapeutic on so many different levels and touches layers that talk therapy never could. 

If you'd like to hear me go deeper on this topic, watch this Youtube video on it here.

Want to Practice with Me?

Grab this free 10 minute Somatic Yoga Practice to help you come home to your body and tend to your nervous system. Get it here -> https://kerimarino.eo.page/comehome
​

There is a conversation I have been wanting to have on this podcast for a long time.

Not because it's comfortable. But because it's necessary.

Because in 17 years of working with women — in therapy rooms, on yoga mats, in group containers and one on one — I have never met a woman who doesn't carry some version of shame.

Not one.

And yet it remains one of the least talked about, most misunderstood and most pervasive experiences in women's lives.

So I called in Christy Bonner.

Christy is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified Enneagram teacher, 500-hour yoga teacher, TEDx speaker and author of *Freedom from Shame.* She is also a woman who has done her own deep work — and is willing to say so out loud.

In this episode of The Nourished Woman Podcast we went deep on what shame actually is, how it lives in the body, how yoga uniquely helps heal it and what freedom from shame actually looks and feels like.

​

What shame actually is — and how it differs from guilt.

One of the most clarifying moments in this conversation came early — the distinction between shame and guilt.

Most women use these words interchangeably. But they are completely different experiences with completely different impacts on your healing.

Guilt says — I did something that feels out of alignment with my core values. I want to do it differently.

Shame says — I am bad. I am not good enough. I am fundamentally flawed.

Guilt, when it's healthy, moves you forward. It's information. It points you toward something you want to change.

Shame immobilizes. It tells you that you yourself are the problem — not something you did, but who you are. And when you believe that story about yourself deeply enough, it stops you from showing up, taking up space, asking for what you need or trusting that you deserve to be loved as you are.

Understanding this difference is one of the most liberating things a woman can do. Because suddenly all those years of *I'm not enough* start to look less like truth and more like a wound that can be healed.

​Where shame comes from

Christy shared something from her own story that I think will resonate deeply with many of the women reading this.

She grew up in a home where her father struggled with alcoholism. The chaos, the unpredictability, the messiness of her family life became a source of deep shame for her as a child. Her sense of worth became tangled up in her family's struggles — as if their imperfection meant she was imperfect too.

So she compensated. She kept the house clean. She was responsible. She was the good child. She tried to make everything look okay from the outside so that nobody would see the truth of what was happening inside.

Sound familiar?

This is how shame works. It takes root in childhood — in the environments we grew up in, the messages we received about our bodies, our worth, our belonging — and it shapes how we show up in the world for decades afterward.

Sometimes it shows up as perfectionism. Sometimes as people pleasing. Sometimes as chronic overachieving. Sometimes as an inability to rest or receive or let people truly see you.

And sometimes — as Christy so beautifully named — it shows up as leaving your body entirely.

Shame lives in the body — not just the mind
This is the piece that most conventional approaches to shame healing miss entirely.

Christy said something in our conversation that rings SO true: Healing shame is ultimately about coming home to your body — because shame disconnected you from it.

When shame takes root — especially early, especially from trauma, abuse or environments where your worth was constantly in question — the body learns to protect itself by leaving. Dissociation. Numbness. Hypervigilance. Chronic tension. An eating disorder. A persistent sense of being a stranger in your own skin.

This is not a character flaw. It is a survival response.

Your body did exactly what it needed to do to keep you safe.

But here is the thing about healing — you cannot think your way back into your body. You cannot analyze your shame away. You cannot journal yourself into embodiment.

At some point the body has to be part of the healing.

Which is exactly where yoga comes in.

How yoga heals shame
Yoga is uniquely positioned to heal shame in ways that talk therapy alone simply cannot reach — and Christy and I explored this at length.

Here is what yoga offers that nothing else quite replicates:
Compassionate self-observation.
On the yoga mat you practice noticing yourself — your thoughts, your patterns, your reactions — without judgment. Christy described this beautifully. When she catches herself trying to perfect her tree pose, wanting to be seen getting it right, she can smile and say *oh — there's that part again.* Not with criticism. With curiosity.

This is revolutionary for a woman who has spent years judging herself harshly. Yoga teaches you to observe without condemning. And that practice on the mat slowly — steadily — becomes a practice in life.

Returning to the body as a safe place.
For women who have experienced trauma, abuse or deep shame — the body can feel like an unsafe place to inhabit. Yoga creates the conditions for the body to slowly, gently remember what safety feels like from the inside. Not forced. Not rushed. Just an incremental, devoted return.

Working all four pillars simultaneously.
This is what I talk about constantly in my own work — yoga addresses the body, the mind, the spirit and the life all at once. Talk therapy primarily addresses the mind. Yoga gets underneath the story, into the nervous system, into the breath, into the places where shame has been quietly living for years.

Telling your story.
Christy and experts like Brene Brown are clear about this — shame loves secrecy. It thrives in the dark. One of the most powerful antidotes to shame is telling your truth to safe people. And the yoga space — when it is genuinely held, genuinely therapeutic — can become exactly that. A place where you are witnessed and held in your full humanity.

What freedom from shame actually feels like

Near the end of our conversation Christy and I both described what it feels like to have done this work. Not to be finished — neither of us claimed that. But to be freer.

For Christy it looked like taking up more space. Getting on social media. Using her voice. Letting herself be seen beyond the quiet, helpful, behind-the-scenes presence she had hidden behind for years.

For me it has looked like becoming more audacious, more bold, more unapologetically myself. Having a hell of a lot more fun. Letting pleasure and people in.

And most importantly — being able to meet shame when it rises with a sense of I know you. You are not the boss of me. Rather than being consumed by it.

Healing isn't a mountain you summit. It's a circle you revisit and dance your way through.

And every time you come back — you come back with more grace, more tools, more capacity to find your way home faster.

Listen to the full episode
This conversation is 90 minutes of two women going deep on the things most people are still afraid to say out loud.

If you have ever wondered what shame actually is, why you can't seem to think your way out of it, how yoga helps in ways therapy alone doesn't — or how to find your way back to yourself after years of disconnection — this episode is for you.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or watch on YouTube.

Ready to feel it shift in your body — not just your mind?
I made you a free 10-minute somatic yoga practice called Come Home to Your Body.

It's your first taste of what this work actually feels like from the inside. Not more understanding. More feeling. More freedom.

Grab the free practice here -> https://kerimarino.eo.page/comehome

About Christy Bonner
Christy Bonner is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified Enneagram teacher, 500-hour yoga teacher, TEDx speaker and author of "Freedom from Shame," based in Chattanooga, TN. 
Find her at www.mindbodyandspirit.com and follow her on Instagram @enneagram.yoga

Two years ago I built something I wish had existed when I was doing my own healing work.

I was working with women in 1:1 somatic yoga therapy sessions and watching something happen between our appointments — they were doing profound, life-changing work in the room with me (in person and online) and then going home to nothing. No place to practice what we were discovering together. No curated resources that wove the nervous system work, the emotional tending, the somatic movement and the breathwork into one intentional space.

Generic online yoga studios weren't the answer. Bulk class libraries with no therapeutic intention behind them weren't what these women needed. They needed something specific. Something that understood that a woman processing childhood trauma needs a different practice than a woman working on her core strength — even if both are doing yoga.

And it needed to be bite-sized. I'm a busy mom of three. My clients are busy women navigating real lives. A 75-minute class you never get to is worth nothing. A 15-minute practice you actually do — over and over, week after week — changes everything.

So I built it.

One practice at a time over the past two years until we reached 160 and counting. Each one crafted with specific therapeutic intention. Each one designed to fit into a real life. Each one pointing toward the same destination — a woman who feels more at home in herself than she did before she pressed play.

But I also built it because I needed it once.

In the years when I was finding my way back to my own body — navigating childhood trauma, religious shame, the relationship at 14 that took years to name — I needed exactly this kind of space. A devotional home for my practice. A place to return to again and again. Something that held me steady when life didn't.

Yoga had already changed everything for me. It was the first place I had ever felt — even briefly, even imperfectly — what it was like to be safe inside my own skin. But what I needed wasn't just a yoga class. I needed a space that understood the whole of me. That knew my nervous system needed tending. That honored the connection between my body, my emotions, my spirit and my life.

That space didn't exist. So seventeen years later I built it.

What two years has taught me:

The women who thrive inside the Sanctuary are not the ones who practice perfectly. They're the ones who keep coming back.

The woman who does fifteen minutes on a Tuesday when the kids are finally asleep. The woman who plays a meditation practice in her car before a hard conversation. The woman who rolls out her mat on a Sunday morning not because she has to but because something in her body knows it needs it.

Consistency doesn't look like discipline in this space. It looks like devotion. And devotion — practiced in small sacred doses — is what actually changes a nervous system, heals a body and brings a woman home to herself.

Over the past two years I've watched women arrive exhausted, disconnected and stuck in their heads — and gradually, through practice after practice, begin to soften. To trust themselves more. To feel things they had been protecting themselves from feeling. To recognize that their body was never the enemy. It was always trying to bring them home.

I've also listened. When women told me they struggled to practice consistently at home I built a monthly practice calendar — three practices per week, one meditation and one breathwork practice repeated all month so the body has time to actually integrate, plus the two live Candlelight gatherings that have become the heartbeat of the whole community.

Because structure isn't the enemy of freedom. For a woman whose nervous system grew up in unpredictability — structure is actually one of the most healing things I can offer her.

Who the Sanctuary is really for:

In the beginning I described my ideal member in broad strokes. A self-aware woman who wanted to feel more at home in her body. That's still true.

But two years in I can be more specific. More honest.

The Sanctuary is for women who grew up learning that their bodies weren't safe. Women who experienced childhood trauma, religious shame, sexual abuse or the kind of relational wounding that taught them to leave themselves in order to survive. Women who built beautiful, capable, high-functioning lives on the outside while something underneath stayed quietly disconnected.

Women who have done the therapy. Read the books. Journaled. Meditated with an app that never quite touched it. And who still feel like something essential is just out of reach.

The gap between knowing and feeling it — that's what the Sanctuary exists to close.

Not through more information. Not through another course that asks her to analyze herself further. But through practice. Embodied, devotional, therapeutically intentional practice that speaks directly to her nervous system in the language it actually understands.
Movement. Breath. Stillness. Repetition. Safety. Return.

What's waiting for you inside:

160+ somatic yoga practices in 15-30 minute chunks — organized by what you need right now. Tightness in your hips. Anxiety in your chest. Grief you haven't named yet. A body that needs strengthening. A spirit that needs nourishing. A nervous system that needs to remember what safe feels like.

A monthly practice calendar that removes decision fatigue and gives you a simple, sustainable rhythm. One meditation practiced all month. One breathwork practice repeated until your body knows it by heart. Movement practices that shift and evolve through the weeks.

Two live Candlelight Restorative Yoga gatherings on Zoom each month — the first Tuesday and third Sunday. 75 minutes of deep rest, nervous system nourishment and the quiet magic of practicing alongside other women who are doing this work too. If you can't attend live the recording is always there waiting.

And something harder to put into words — a sense of belonging. Of not being alone in this. Of knowing that somewhere out there other women are pressing play on the same practices, returning to themselves in the same small devoted ways, finding their way back to their own bodies too.

Two years in — what I know for certain:

This work matters. Not as a wellness trend. Not as self-care content. As genuine, life-changing, ripple-effect healing that touches every relationship a woman has — with herself, her body, her family, her life.

The woman who tends her nervous system consistently becomes calmer in conflict. More present with her children. More intimate with her partner. More trusting of herself. More willing to take up space. More able to receive what she actually deserves.

I have watched this happen again and again over two years. In the women who show up. In myself.
And I am just getting started.

Join us for our two year anniversary in May:

May is a special month inside the Sanctuary. We're celebrating two years of women showing up for themselves — and I'm opening the door wide for new members to join us.

Every time a member logs in and completes a practice in May her name is entered into our anniversary giveaway. The women who practice most consistently receive beautiful gifts — things that say you deserve to be nourished.

If you've been curious about the Sanctuary — if something in you has been quietly saying this is the kind of support I've been looking for — May is the most alive and beautiful time to walk through the door.
​
$33/month. Cancel easily anytime. Your first practice is waiting.🕯️

If you've journaled, gone to therapy, done the reading and still feel like something isn't fully clicking into place — you're not missing more analysis. You're missing the other half of the equation. Most healing journeys focus heavily on the mind: understanding your patterns, gaining insight, developing self-awareness. And that work is genuinely valuable. But in somatic yoga therapy, we work with four pillars — body, mind, soul and life — and for most self-aware women, two of those pillars have barely been touched. When your body and soul are left out of the healing process, there will always be a gap between what you know and what you actually feel.

​This is the heart of what somatic yoga therapy addresses. Your body doesn't heal the way your mind does. It doesn't benefit from more talking, more analyzing or more storytelling. It heals through embodied experience — through movement, breath, nervous system regulation and what I call soul-led integration. When we bring all four pillars together, something shifts that no amount of insight alone can produce. The patterns that have felt wired in start to move. Your body finally catches up with everything your mind has already understood. That gap between knowing and embodying begins to close.

If this resonates and you're ready to experience this kind of healing in real time, I'd love to have you join me for Candlelight Restorative Yoga on Zoom. Twice a month, from your own home, in your coziest clothes — 75 minutes of nervous system nourishment, restorative practice and the kind of soul-led guidance that makes this work feel different from anything you've tried before. It's the most accessible doorway into this practice, and honestly? It might be the missing piece you've been looking for.
​
Join us here -> Candlelight Restorative Yoga on Zoom

On Monday I told a group of women I'm guiding through group somatic yoga therapy that we were diving into "past self work."

And that this work the yoga, healing, all of it it's not just about feeling better or dredging up the past.
It's for your liberation, wholeness, freedom.

It's about reconnecting with yourSelf in a way that life...trauma...expectations slowly pulled you away from. 

And honestly, it's so you can have way more fun in this life.

If you've been around a while, you know that I rebranded to The Nourished Woman about a year ago. And if you don't know, The Nourished Woman isn't me...she's you, me and the vision you and I hold in our hearts of the women we already are and are undeniably becoming. 

After sharing this, the EMBODY ladies and I practiced.
Slow, intentional movement. 
Grounding into their feet, hips and bodies.

Feeling their strength, stability and power.
We worked with the root chakra, with safety and taking up space.

I guided them to use their voice, to make sound and let themselves be heard. 

There was laughter...real laughter the kind that feels unexpected in a room where you've also cried.  Even Snoop Dogg came up, because apparently he has a children's album now - my clients tell me, haha. 

And then we softened
Moved into stillness, bodies laid out loosely in the way that only do after a great yoga practice 
They breathed slow and all was quiet

Then into writing
About meeting parts of themselves that still carry things
The younger parts, the protective parts, the ones that learned how to survive

And then we shared. 
And this is the part that always get's me.
Because of the range...the depth...the humanity in the room.

One woman spoke about recovering from medical trauma.
Another about growing up with an addict mom who saw too much too early.
One shared the quiet excitement of apartment shopping for her very first place. 
Another spoke of the ache of wanting deeper friendships.
There were stories of sexual and emotional abuse. 
Of staying with the scared, lonely parts of yourself instead of abandoning them.
Of hitting your 40's and realizing...you don't know yourself anymore. 
Of seeing, in real time, just how deeply you love and cherish someone you lost. 

There were tears
And soft breaths
And long pauses
There were smiles too. 
And something you could feel shifting in the room...like weights being set down...one by one. 

And then they walked out.
Lighter, clearer, more connected.
With real grounded ways to move forward. 

That's the real magic of this work.
Not surface level.
Not aesthetic.
But women...coming home to themselves
Together. 

PS If you're interested in being part of this 6 week women's empowerment yoga program called EMBODY, I run it a couple of times per year. Sign up for emails with me to be notified of the next time it's offered. Sign up and get a free "Meditation for Women Who Think You're Bad at Meditation Guide," here: ​kerimarino.eo.page/meditationguide