Episode 90: Sam on the Launch of Fatale Mind
Sam Solo on the Launch of Fatale Mind & How Meditation has Helped Heal Her Mind
This week Sam is solo discussing why she started meditating, why she knew she needed to share it, the ideation behind @fatalemind and what it means to be “Fatale”. There has been so much evolution over on The Fit Fatale these past couple months, and she's very excited to share with her listeners what she's been working on.
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Podcast Script
Sam: [00:00:00] Monetize your passion for wellbeing like a job you love every single day. Find a happy life from a healthy lifestyle. What's up guys. This is spin, skin and other addictions a podcast by me, Samantha E Cutler of The Fit Fatale. Each week I'm going to take you deeper into the world of wellness with entrepreneurs who are building brands designed to better your life.
[00:00:27] So you'll be hearing from fitness gurus, medical specialists, and influencers in the world of fitness, health, beauty, and nutrition. I hope you guys love it. Let's get down
[00:00:42] The word meditation makes people like freak out. They retract, they're like a turtle. They go back in their shell. What is that? That's woo woo. Like I don't have crystals, I don't understand what you're talking about. That's not for me. Then you have the other people who are like, that is for me, I will sit and meditate for two hours a [00:01:00] day.
[00:01:00] I got this. Im a yogi give me all the crystals, all the spiritual books and I'm in it. But what I want to do is find that middle ground where those two mend together and where we can be okay. Slowing down and taking care of our mind and giving it that rest day or that rest five minutes or 10 minutes that it needs to perform optimally. The reason why I called this new platform Fatale mind was because I believe that fatale is tuning into your power, tuning into who you are and what you have to offer and your ultimate power force.
[00:01:39] You're listening to spin, skin and other addictions episode number 90 this week is a solo episode with yours truly. I do these every now and again, where I get to share a little bit of insight into something I'm going through or a specific time of year and what better time than after the launch [00:02:00] of our new on-demand meditation platform and feel good resource Fatal Mind and the new website of The Fit Fatale. So this episode is going to take you through a little bit of the process that I went through on my own mental health journey and some of the brain trauma I've been through how meditation has helped me heal and how that's impacted me.
[00:02:22] And also a little bit of history on building my blogs and launching over the past six plus years that I've been doing this. So I hope you love this episode and it gives you a little bit of insight and as always check us out on Fatale Mind. And to just say, thank you for all of your support for being here for listening, for being a part of this community and journey.
[00:02:45] If you want to check out Fatale Mind on The Fit Fatale website, which is our on demand meditation platform, you can join with 25% off using code THANK YOU. In all caps, I'm going to put it here in the show notes, but I just want to say a [00:03:00] big thank you to everyone who has supported and been here through this process.
[00:03:03] Especially you ladies and gents tuning into the podcast. We have so many professionals and experienced entrepreneurs and really interesting people here. So all of your support means everything to me. And without further ado, here's a little bit from me on my mental health journey and building Fatale Mind.
[00:03:22] Hello fam. I am so excited this week. We are doing a solo podcast and I said we already, but it's just me. And I'll be bringing to you all a solo episode and we're going to be talking about my mental health story. And what that's been like over the past four years is really the prime of it, but we're going to talk about it and what that's been like for me and why we chose to launch Fatel mind, which we just launched yesterday.
[00:03:51] I'm literally sitting in my office recording this episode for you guys. I wanted to obviously do it beforehand, but you know how things are like. You always [00:04:00] just want to be an advance and somehow life comes up and smacks you in the face and laughs at you and says, you'll get to it when you got to it. So here I am, day after launch, this podcast is going live tomorrow and I'm sitting in my office.
[00:04:14] It's a complete mess. If I could explain to you how. I like cleaned my workspace so that I could prepare for this launch of the new website. And my desk is relatively clean and has like beautiful flowers that my best friend sent me as a congratulations. I have my notebook, my list of my to-do lists. I have After the Rain from Alexandra Elle next to me, who, by the way, it's going to be on this podcast shortly.
[00:04:41] So I'm really excited for that episode. And I have the things that make me feel really good that I can see visually. And then behind me, I have so many shipments and orders of clothes that came in for partnerships. A bunch of things I need to shoot other products, my plants that haven't been watered in [00:05:00] two weeks, files falling everywhere, my taxes to the side that I just paid. I just like everything in mayham, which I think is funny to put in perspective because I'm a really big visual person. And so what I see, I feel inside of me and that's why I created The Fit Fatale. It's why I love creating content, which you guys probably know as much as like Instagram goes on and on about like, how all these different forms of content perform, like I'm still a photo gal and I love just like a good visual that makes you feel good.
[00:05:35] So that's just the setup and to share a little bit of where I'm at, like the day after we launched this website, but the reason I'm doing this solo podcast is to take you through why launch this website and a little bit more on what The Fit Fatale means to me, what fatal mind means, and just like our passion behind it, and also take you to that story.
[00:05:54]In order to be able to do that. I was going to jump on Instagram stories and share a little bit more, but I thought [00:06:00] a podcast was the most relatable and realistic. To just share with you guys a little bit of that story from my side and how my mental health and mental health struggles have really evolved over the past few years.
[00:06:14] And if you go to my about page, I share a little bit more about it on the fit fee, how that just relaunched Why this is so important to me, but to really dive into it, I'm going to take you back to the beginning. And many of you probably already know this, but a little bit of quick history. So over six years ago, now I launched my first blog ever, which was called Silver Lining by S.
[00:06:35]And that was the first time I really put myself out there and was really vulnerable to share my story. And I did. So while I was working corporate, I worked at Holt Renfrew in Ogilvy's in Montreal. I was planning corporate events. I was doing tons of stuff that was really forward facing with our customers and managing all of our partners and customer experience events within the store.
[00:07:00] [00:06:59] And really just like all of marketing as a whole, we're a super small team. And I was given a really incredible position, but I was really overwhelmed with stress. And I came from an environment that was only focused on succeeding. I felt like that was embedded in me from a really early age. Not from my family, which is what's interesting, but more from like school and upbringing and society.
[00:07:22] And I think just society as a whole really pushes us, especially in the early two thousands, that was like the mindset. And so I really thrived in that, I'm also a Virgo. So I take on the environment around me, especially when it's pro like type A personalities or making list or getting things done perfectly.
[00:07:42] I like want to find people that are promoting that not so much anymore, but I used to really want to find that because I felt like I fit in and I felt like I had to do perfect. I launched this blog and it was really about finding happiness and the title of the blog was Silver Lining by S. You guys know a little [00:08:00] bit of the story, but it was just like a side project.
[00:08:03] That was an outlet for me. I lived alone in a condo in old port and Montreal, and I would come home really late hours and I was working crazy hours. And I didn't have a personal outlet and have a hobby, right? Like I didn't come home and paint or read or write. And so I was writing a lot, but I wasn't doing it with purpose.
[00:08:22] And so we started this blog to tell my story. And it was a lot of like where I've been, what I did and those little things that made us feel happiness. So as much as I positioned myself as a lifestyle blog, I always had a sort of mental health or mental wellness component in everything that I did.
[00:08:39] And I brought that into finding the silver linings because I personally was feeling burnt out and unhappy in my corporate job. And that was, that's a bit of that story. And I think that's like a whole other podcast on its own my kind of career journey, but this is really more about like the mental health piece in the blog.
[00:08:56] And so I was taking stress and I was really [00:09:00] internalizing it and it was affecting my body. And so I use this outlet to channel happiness and as I moved towards what made me feel good, and this was my first experience of really letting myself unapologetically move towards what felt good.
[00:09:15] I think I always followed my intuition and my instincts. And I said, you know what? Like I'm going to do this. No problem, but it didn't, it wasn't always necessarily just because it felt good. And this was just like a selfish, in a good way outlet. And so I was talking about a restaurant that I went to that, had some component that you go there and you feel good and you feel connected.
[00:09:39] And then I was talking about different experiences, it was really a traditional blog. And after about two years of that, I started to get a few opportunities here and there. I grew my Instagram, I think I had like about 10,000 followers and I was growing traffic on the blog and I was traveling a lot and trying to like, explore what my opportunities [00:10:00] were in that outlet, because it felt so good for no other reason than that.
[00:10:03] I was probably started making like my first one or two contracts, but it was not for the money. It was just like a personal outlet. And then I was getting so stressed and overworked and overwhelmed at work. And my body started to really deteriorate something that was at the forefront of everything that I did was feeling good and taking care of my body and eating well.
[00:10:26] And I stopped doing that and I was still writing and still blogging. I would wake up early in the morning and write an article, go to the gym or try to fit it in at 4:00 AM. And no matter how much I did all those things, it didn't help because I wasn't actually taking care of myself. And so I wound up actually having a stomach infection an ulcer, and really completely run down to the point that I was put on antibiotics that actually didn't work.
[00:10:51] I had to go on a second round of antibiotics. And that's when I actually left my corporate job. And started doing a little bit more research into my body. And I [00:11:00] knew that like the things that were making me feel good, feel this sort of silver lining and happiness in life, and like mental clarity that I could move towards where things like spin, eating well taking care of my body. And I wanted to dive a little bit more into that. So I did my health coaching. And again, this is probably part of the, some of the story that you guys already know. So I won't dive too far into it, but I started to realize like how stress plays such a huge impact on our bodies.
[00:11:24] And this is why I talk so much about gut health, because our gut is so closely linked to our nervous system and how we internalize stress is how our body is able to actually digest food or hold onto food. We hold on to weight. Like our body is just this, our gut in particular and how it links to our nervous.
[00:11:45] And it was just this fascinating thing. And I took my health coaching certificate because I wanted to know more and I left my full-time job. And I said, what really makes me happy? Which is why I started blogging and writing and communicating my story with people. [00:12:00] Is health and fitness and feeling good and like finding new products that help you feel good or new vitamins or a new workout, or even if it's the apparel you're wearing, like why and what I'm really big into the psychology.
[00:12:13] Like what's the chemical response. That we got from feeling that way. And why do we feel that way? Is it just confidence? Is it the way we look? Is it, what are the components? And so I wanted to dive further into that. And so I realized at that point I needed to let Silver Linings by S and move on to The Fit Fatale.
[00:12:31] Which was the story of me still finding that happiness. But now I had quote unquote found it through fitness and health. And so I launched The Fit Fatale because I believed in. I believed in two things, I believed in the term, the femme fatale. And I think it often has a lot of negative connotation towards it, which is a really interesting question.
[00:12:53] I asked to a lot of my audience a few weeks ago, actually, as we were doing this rebrand do you guys think it's a bad thing? And what does that mean to you? Because if you Google the femme fatale, if you do it right now, it'll tell you like, this is not a compliment. This is an insult. Someone tells you this it's because you're using your sexuality and your feminine energy to get what you want and control men.
[00:13:13]Let's just pause on that for a second. I'm sorry, what? I'm using my feminine energy to control men, by the way, you can use your energy to control. To impact your life around you, that's not controlling men or control. I just think it was very much this term that came from females in the workplace in particular, which was a very male dominant environment when the quote unquote French term la femme fatale came to be.
[00:13:41] But it's not like to me now in 2021, that doesn't resonate. That shouldn't be a thing where it's an insult like “fatale” to me is something that embodies power and tuning into your feminine energy, but not in a negative way. Why is being certain of who you are as a [00:14:00] woman has to be bad. This is why I fight for this name so hard.
[00:14:04] If that makes more sense, I think it's I want to represent that word. I want to be part of that, but I know all of you are as well. And that's why I'm so passionate about telling this story. And like what the word fatale means. And I launched The Fit Fatale, it was all about female energy and working out and feeling good and being a little cheeky, being a little sexual, but also like just being real, right?
[00:14:31] And just being like, this is me. I don't care who, what you think. And this was four years ago now. And obviously that has evolved so much because it was about me and I have evolved so much in that process. And what that means to me means so many different things, especially after the past year and this pandemic, but what was the most interesting thing to me was that I quit my job.
[00:14:56] I decided to launch The Fit Fatale. And in that process [00:15:00] maybe a month or so after. I took time and I was like, okay, I'm going to take four months or so I'm going to take a back seat. I have money in the bank like I had saved some money to be able to do this, and I'm going to rebrand my entire website.
[00:15:16] I'm going to rebuild. I'm going to launch as The Fit Fatale this summer. And it was like May or June. And right after I left my job, which was in, I think February, March, I got into a terrible accident in a Pilates class. And so I was in Pilates class and I fell backwards doing a move on a reformer machine.
[00:15:37]And if you guys are familiar with Lagree or Megaformer, this is not the same. So this is a traditional reformer machine that is really like janky. I actually love them and I still love the workout. Do it all the time, but it's like this wood, it has this sort of like wood base board. And isn't very sturdy feeling, whereas like a Megaformer or Lagree, it's a very much a different machine.
[00:15:58]But the traditional sort [00:16:00] of, Pilates machine that's from a reformer Pilates machine is very like wobbly. And so I ended up falling backwards and smashing my head into the baseboard around this, which is made out of wood. And I smashed my head fell from standing up. So I was standing on the machines.
[00:16:17] I fell quite a few feet up, fell into the base of the machine, smashed the base of my head, right at the bottom of our skull where your neck and your skull meet. So there's two really crazy things that happened to me in this moment. The first is that I hit just North of where I would have probably broken my neck and had I broken my neck,[00:16:42] there's so many different things that could have happened. I could have been paralyzed, I could had an extremely long, severe recovery process. And so I remember feeling very grateful and very blessed that I fell where I fell. And those things depended on like how tall I was and just the [00:17:00] circumstance of where I was standing on the machine.
[00:17:02] One little foot off, or one little foot here. I would have been in a completely different situation. So I remember feeling very grateful in that moment. The other thing that happened was because I hit the bottom of my skull. This is actually the part where our nervous system meets our brain. So our nervous system goes up through our spine.
[00:17:22] And often when I talk in meditation about expanding our lower belly and breathing through our gut. I'm talking about allowing our body to open up and oxygen to actually flow through our entire nervous system. So it sends a vibration through our spine that actually calms us down. But, because that nervous system runs up through our spine, it connects to our mind, our brain through the base of our skull.
[00:17:46] All of those receptors are right there. So because I hit there, for one, ended up with an extremely severe concussion and was pretty much bedridden for two to three months. I remember that [00:18:00] third month was like a recovery process. I would test what I could slowly do, but in that process, I became extremely depressed and extremely anxious.
[00:18:12] And I remember feeling like I just quit my job to do what I felt so aligned to do, to tell the story of The Fit Fatale,to tell the story of what fatality is now and how it is not just, women being suppressed for their sexuality or their power, and really tuning into it through feeling good. And I was like, I want to tell this story, I'm trying to feel good.
[00:18:37] I was working out and then this happened, like I had this “why me”mindset and I was so depressed and I actually had to stay at my parent's house because I was single at the time. I didn't have anyone to take care of me and I was solo. I was living in my condo and I couldn't be because I could barely get up and see any light.
[00:18:56] I couldn't really look at my phone or my computer. It [00:19:00] was really bad. And I ended up staying there and just making zero money, not being able to work and just paying rent every month for those three months and like dwindling away on what I had saved and hopes that would support me to be able to launch my business, my next website, my next blog and all that stuff.
[00:19:18] And so I became really depressed and anxious. And I think anxiety is something that I carried with me for a while before that, but never depression like this. And I never experienced it to this level. And so I wanted to understand more of why I was feeling that way. So I spoke with neuros and specialists and started to get to know what happens when we get concussions.
[00:19:42] And if you hear now in the news, there's a lot more that comes out about professional football players or hockey players or, sports and athletes that have severe depression. We see athletes committing suicide, dealing with severe anxiety, schizophrenia, many different things that are often caused by concussions and by their brain cells. And again, I'm not a doctor. This is just from the research and the specialists that I've spoken to, but from their brain cells, actually being repressed and depressed in the process of that injury and the swelling that goes on in their brain. And so obviously the more you have the worse it is when we have an injury that is not always taken care of or not tended to.
[00:20:24]So let's say you tore your ACL or you hurt your knee or you did something. You may have surgery and you may continuously always have a recuperation process for that, like where you have shoulder injury or surgery. And although you might get that surgery and things might get better and you might be able to do your sports and all that stuff again, you still always have to be aware of that injury and you have to always take care of it, knowing that it's something that is now weakened and that had to build back.
[00:20:53] And so what happens for someone who has brain trauma [00:21:00] or brain injury or concussion. Is that our brain is what goes into a state of, I am a weaker part of the body. I am what was hurt. I had the injury and I will always be sensitive. And so not only physically is my brain. Literally always sensitive to like bumps on the road or we're driving, we're going on a bike and we go over like a pothole and I have a headache for the rest of the day.
[00:21:30] Yes. That's a side effect of my concussion and something that has been with me since then, but also the depression and the anxiety and these different things that come with it are things that come up as you heal and they don't go away. They're from an injury the same way you might continuously get chronic pain, you might work to heal it, but that doesn't mean it's going to go away.
[00:21:55] And so from that moment, I have continuously dealt with [00:22:00] anxiety and depression, and I say those two over and over, because those are really the two that kind of stuck out for me. And they only got worse and worse when I didn't address them. And so my neuro I was, talking to my neuro who's, following me after my injury about this.
[00:22:17] And I had every symptom in the book. My fingers and hands and arms were completely numb. I had eyesight problem, chronic headaches and a lot of some of this I still have, but I also know that a lot of it's triggered from different things that were impacted from my accident, so like light and et cetera.
[00:22:39] But when those things happen there comes anxiety and depression and that's the hardest to really understand is okay, light is now triggering my head to here. And because of that injury and where I was injured, I now suffer from anxiety and depression in a much different way. So it was actually [00:23:00] my neuro who first suggested, why don't you try meditating?
[00:23:03] Because if you begin to understand the brain and healing, it's like any other muscle. And so yes, we say the stronger we get mentally, It's like a muscle. We push ourselves, we get stronger each day. Absolutely. And that's definitely correct. And it's the same thing with the injury of a brain.
By the way, mocha snoring. [00:23:20] So I don't know if you can hear her and if she's disturbing you. So I apologize if she is, but she's sitting on my lap and she is my therapy dog. So she's here in good timing, good spirits. And because our brain is like any other muscle. The more you move muscle it's injured, the more it hurts. And so I remember after my concussion, my neuro telling me only focused on one thing at a time.
[00:23:42] And that was the biggest thing that was so difficult for me because I was programmed to be an overachiever, a multi-tasker a go getter, just like doing a million things at once. And even the things that we don't consciously think we're doing many things at once. [00:24:00] For example, Looking at someone, but also speaking to them.
[00:24:06] So the reason why that's so tough on your brain is because. Your eyes are sending a message to your brain, but so are your ears, right? You're still listening to what they're saying. So that's why when you have a concussion or brain trauma, you're told to focus on one thing at a time. So podcasts and eBooks were huge for me, or I could watch shows that I didn't really have to watch, so I could listen to, but I wasn't very attentive.
[00:24:32] So like friends that I had seen a hundred times, I didn't have to actually, use a lot of energy and use so much of my muscle to process what was going on. And so this became really fascinating to me because I realized that not only is this relevant to brain trauma and concussion, but it's relevant to our daily lives and how much we do on a day-to-day basis actually affects.
[00:24:59] The [00:25:00] status of our brain as a muscle. And it affects how we feel, how much anxiety we feel. And yes, we know that anxiety is triggered by so many different things individually and is of course triggered by taking on too much. And that's just stress leads to anxiety. We know that, but a lot of different things going on at once will cause anxiety for me. And I think that's common across people who don't have brain trauma. And I started to realize this and I was suggested to meditate because when we slow down and we still, our minds, it's like giving our leg that just was injured that we need to put up on the couch, the break that it needs.
[00:25:43]So if you have another body part that's injured, you give it space to recuperate or maybe not even injured, maybe just sore from a workout. So you work out your body's sore and the next day you rest, you have a rest day and you give yourself that rest, but we don't give that to us, [00:26:00] ourselves with our minds, we have a crazy busy day.
[00:26:04] Everything is just wild and all over the place, we're trying to get things done. And then we go out and we do something at night and we're busy all night or not anymore, but we watch shows or we work all night and then we wake up and we do the same thing and we don't give ourselves that moment to heal.
[00:26:22] And that's where that word heal comes in. For me, when it comes to meditation, it's not so much that we're healing our traumas or we're healing our past. And yes, I think at times we are, but that takes a lot, a lot of deep work and probably therapy and some specialist far beyond myself, leading you in meditation.
[00:26:45] But the process of healing, like we would heal a muscle that is sore is how I view meditation regularly. And we can't work out every single day and expect ourselves to be able to keep up [00:27:00] with that. We have to take rest days. Even the most top athletes who have the best professionals and conditioning to their bodies have to take rest days.
[00:27:09]I will say that any other fitness trainer will say that. And we don't take it for our minds. So what I'm trying to do here with Fatal Mind is bring meditations to everyone and make it accessible, but also understand what it is. So I don't know if this resonates with you or with anyone, but I find the word meditation makes people like freak out.
[00:27:37] They retract, they're like a turtle. They go back in their shell. What is that? That's woo, woo. I don't have crystals, I don't understand what you're talking about. That's not for me. Then you have the other people who are like that is for me, I will sit and meditate for two hours a day. I got this.
[00:27:52]I’m a yogi give me all the crystals, all the spiritual books and I'm in it. But what I want to do is find that [00:28:00] middle ground where those two mend together and where we can be okay slowing down and taking care of our mind and giving it that rest day or that rest. Five minutes or 10 minutes that it needs to perform optimally so that we can be fatale so that we can be as women or men or whoever we are, be our truest selves and work and operate in optimal status.
[00:28:32] And the reason why I called this new platform, and we built this was Fatale Mind. Because I believe that fatale is tuning into your power tuning, into who you are and what you have to offer and your ultimate power force. And when I asked everyone, if you go check out our Instagram, @fatalemind on the Fatale Mind page, you will see tons of different [00:29:00] descriptions of what Fatale means. And it was given by only our audience. So I did not share any of those and they are incredible and people really do understand what Fatale means, but we need to give our bodies that same rest and our mind that same rest, that it deserves to be able to function in that way.
[00:29:19] And a little bit more about building this. That was my story of my brain trauma. And over the years, I've done quite a bit of research. I've dove really into how to heal my mind through food, through anti-inflammatory recipes, through talking with specialists through movement, journaling, gratitude.
[00:29:40] And I think right now it' so spoken about and so widely received and well-received that I'm so happy to see that mindfulness is a part of our social media and our everyday life. But for me, it was so personal is so personal because I went through that journey of having such a bad injury and now [00:30:00] living with what may be a lifelong anxiety.
[00:30:04] And I tell this story because I don't have the answers and everything figured out, but I'm on this journey with you. And I'm in this process of continually up-keeping the taking care of this injury and what my body and brain needs. And the only thing that I found was really meditation that was able to be that break, sleep is another one.
[00:30:32] I think that's incredible. If you can get good, night's sleeps, but our brains don't turn off in our sleep. And if you do have anxiety, you probably know this. I get terrible dreams all the time, especially when I'm the most stressed. It's like around Christmas. And there was a lot of holiday stuff deadlines or whatever, like horrible, just nightmare dreams.
[00:30:49] And when you have anxiety, either your anxieties that come up, all the time, it's you burn down your house and your dream or whatever these things are that are unique for each of us. And so [00:31:00] meditation is like consciously choosing to turn off for a little bit and it takes practice.
[00:31:07] It's very difficult, but even if you can just do it for 60 seconds, you feel better. So all that to say, here we are now four years later, after The Fit Fatale launched. And I realized that this has become such a key component in my life. And I think the pandemic played a big part in that I. When the pandemic hit in March, 2020, I started this spiral of anxiety.
[00:31:33] Everything you shared, people were in a state of fear and panic, nothing was well received. I wasn't receiving anything while I was panicking as well. We had no idea what was going on. And again, back to that Virgo and control that I crave in my life. This was a really bad place for me to be and so I knew I had to be meditating.
[00:31:55] I knew I had to be accountable. And so I knew that there were so many [00:32:00] other people that felt the same way. And I decided to meditate live on Instagram. And I remember the first time I did it, I didn't even do it to my own meditation. I put on the meditation on a sound like on, on my computer, put on my Instagram live and I sat there and I said, let's all meditate together for the next 10 minutes, because we're all in this state of panic.
[00:32:21] So let's just come together. And I remember people tuning in and I thought. I appreciate this meditation so much, but this is not what we're going through. I didn't find I could, I didn't feel I found something that really represented the situation that we were in, in the pandemic and the lockdown and the fear that everyone was facing and the uncertainty and the isolation and the loneliness and the separation and the lack of control.
[00:32:53] I didn't, I couldn't find that. So I decided to show up live and meditate and [00:33:00] lead the meditation through what I was personally feeling and just followed the energy that I felt universally, or I guess locally as a community we were feeling, and it started to resonate with people. And I promised I would do it until we were out of the lockdown.
[00:33:19] And I guess joke is on me because here we are a year and a half later. I was getting messages from everyone who was going to work, healthcare workers, teachers about how much fear they carried and anxiety they carried. And so I wanted to bring a tool that was accessible wherever, whenever someone needed it.
[00:33:44] And that is really why we built Fatale Mind and we evolved The Fit Fatale into an on-demand platform and we still have our blog and podcasts as you're listening to you and [00:34:00] everything, but we wanted to have a hub for feel-good content. So a little bit more on The Fit Fatale now what you can expect on the website.
[00:34:09] So we have the on demand platform, Fatale Mind. And the on-demand platform has meditations from 5 minutes to 25 minutes or so right now, who knows if they'll get longer, but those are that's the range of meditations and each meditation is about what it's targeting. So forgiveness accepting, change, abundance, all that stuff.
[00:34:30] But I knew that people who weren't as familiar or comfortable with meditation's that wasn't going to be how they would enter into the meditation space or stillness space. I also knew that there are healthcare workers and professionals, even those who work in service industries or restaurants that have to show up at work and pull up in their car and are scared to get out of their car.
[00:34:56] What will this day bring? How will I cope with this day? My anxiety [00:35:00] is overcoming me and these were the messages that I was getting from my community. So we developed videos that are called 60 seconds of stillness, and they are not meditations, but they are mini ways to find stillness, that are also educational.
[00:35:18] So my goal with all of them is that anyone who watches them doesn't need to necessarily tune back into them, always to feel good, but they can start to build that habit after they've done a few of them, and then they can bring that into their daily life. So the 60 seconds of stillness are about becoming aware or bringing your anxiety into check in just 60 seconds. And most of the videos are like a minute and 20 or so with the little intro, but basically the activity or the action that you need to do takes only 60 seconds. And how can nurses do this on their shift? How can teachers do this before they get into a classroom?
[00:35:57] How can students do this right before, as they're lined up [00:36:00] about to go take an exam. And so I wanted to bring this awareness and these tools to as many people, especially those who are serving us. And my goal is always to serve, always to serve this world, these people, this universe, like we are here.
[00:36:17] And I truly believe that this is why I am here. And I want to be able to give this to the people that need it and the right people. And if you're still listening, I am blessed that you're still here and listening to me tell this story. But yeah, like these 60 seconds of stillness to me are just like the biggest impact that I think we can make and just bring people into taking that rest. It's if you do your workout, yes, you need a rest day. But if you're not and you can't, bring yourself to do that, you always have to keep going at least stretch, at least stretch after your workout, do a quick stretch, do something that kind of says to your muscles in your body.
[00:36:53] It's okay. You might need to keep going, or you might have to work out again tomorrow or move again tomorrow, but like you did this for you [00:37:00] and that's where those 60 seconds of stillness come in. And then besides from that on the new Fit Fatale website, you can also expect in the blog feel good content from recipes focused on easy things to make anti-inflammatory recipes, a lot of vegan options and also different things that you can do right now.
[00:37:20] So I was feeling that like content was a lot of content that I was seeing was outdated, especially when it comes to like travel or recipes or different things because they were pre pandemic and this is a different world we live in. So I also wanted to make sure that we're focusing on local and safe activities that people can do.
[00:37:37] While they're at home or in their communities, particularly across Canada and how people can still get human experiences, even during this pandemic. And we know even after we are vaccinated and things return a little bit more to normal, that the reality will still be extremely different. And so I wanted to create a realistic resource for people.
[00:38:00]And feel good tips, different ways to incorporate into your life at home. And of course, a little bit of style, cause that's just something I love and I know you all love it as well, so much. And we also brought the podcast to a whole new level. So we still are interviewing wellness entrepreneurs, but also so many specialists in their field and people that bring a lot of education in various different subjects and topics all around feeling good.[00:38:27] Mental health, physical health, inspiration, motivation, all that kind of stuff. But we've brought the podcast to the actual website, so you guys can access it on thefitfatale.com and we also have all the transcripts. So if I'm saying anything or if any of our guests are sharing information or nuggets that you want to go back to.
[00:38:47] You can get that in writing and you can find it, you can quote them. It was something really important that I felt was going to be needed for our community to get the most out of the podcast. So you can find the transcripts, you can find the [00:39:00] show notes, you can find all the information on the guests, not just on iTunes or Spotify or any of those platforms, but also on our website as a whole.
[00:39:08] So that is the rebirth, the relaunch of The Fit Fatale and. The last component that I haven't touched on yet is the charitable component that is so important to me. And yes, the meditation platform is a subscription based, but we actually made it free for all frontline health workers.
It is something that I think is.[00:39:32] Should be free. I think the government should be offering more mental health resources for everyone right now, but especially, or for our frontline health workers. I think that is there should be no exceptions and no expenses to match when it comes to that, there, there shouldn't be any exceptions.
[00:39:48] And so I wanted to make sure that we offered that for free. I also wanted to make sure that while we are helping ourselves and others, be it taking care of their mental health and their mental wellness, [00:40:00] that we can also have that ripple into our communities for those who may not necessarily. Be in the right place financially, mentally, physically to be able to access that.
[00:40:11] And so with that in mind, 10% of all proceeds from the website, go back to local mental health, female health, and gut health charities and nonprofits. And so that's because, I'm obviously mental health is a big component of the entire process website, Fatale Mind, but gut health, as I told that story in the beginning, So closely linked to how our mental health evolves and what we eat and how we move, how we take care of our gut affects that.
[00:40:40] And then female health, because being fatale to me is about knowing our bodies as well. And I went through quite a bit and female health, which we're going to have a few awesome podcasts coming up on in the next few months. And I've gone through a lot when it comes to female health as well, periods, period pain, abnormalities.
[00:41:00] [00:40:59] And so that was a big focus of mine too. So those three are what we focus on. We built the Fatale Fund where 100% of the proceeds, which is going to be 10% of all sales along with various live events that will be fundraisers, different sales and other ways that we'll be raising money throughout the year.
[00:41:18] A 100% of that will go back to local charities. And most recently we raised $500 for crisis helpline. Which is helpline you can text at any time when you're having a mental health crisis. There's just so many great local and Canadian non-profits that can, or are making such a difference right now.
[00:41:36] And we want to be able to support them as we support you all. As we, as I support myself in this mental health journey, mental wellness story. And that is where we're at now. So I'm just feeling so blessed and grateful to have launched this, to have gotten this up. I had so much support from my friends and family to be able to do it.
[00:41:59] I'm feeling [00:42:00] filled with purpose and feeling so aligned in this. And so many people have asked me today, like, how are you feeling you exhausted? Oh my gosh. And I said, yeah, I'm exhausted, but I feel so filled with purpose. And I just think like the exhaust or however much you stay up and push and get it done, it becomes like it's a different, it's a different story when you feel that glow from the inside out, it just feels good and right.
[00:42:29]And so that is my story. This was my solo episode for the week. I wanted to tell a little bit of background, so I hope that was informative. And also how we got to where we are now. With The Fit Fatale & Fatale Mind, I hope you will support us in this process just by listening.
If you are still listening today, you are supporting exponentially. If you want to donate and you don't want to meditate, there's also a button to jump on and donate, which you are more than welcome to do. There's tons of [00:43:00] different ways to get involved in, to help what we're doing. Just sharing it and supporting it is a big way. I want to get this message out to so many people within Canada.
[00:43:09] And it's such a bigger story than me. And I said that in my announcement post yesterday, the story is not about me. The story is now about you. It's about us. It's about our communities. It's about how we are caring for ourselves. I may be The Fit Fatale, but we are all fatale minds and it is so important that we take that with us and we take care of that and we value it and we know how special that is.
[00:43:37] So until next episode, that is it for me. I am going to have a big glass of wine tonight and just chill out and I can't wait for the weekend. I feel so good. I feel so ready to take this on. And as I said to my friends and family this morning, we did the work. [00:44:00] We got it live, but now's when the real work happens, now is when we fight to make it known that to share this resource, to get it in front of the right people who need it. I don't want to just shove it in front of people's faces that don't necessarily need it or want it. I think everyone needs it, but don't necessarily want it. There are so many people that need and want a resource and a tool like this.
[00:44:23] And I am so excited. To get this to them. So if you know anyone send them our way, any frontline health workers please share with them that they can access the platform totally for free. And that's it for me sending so much love. Thank you for being here on this journey. And I can't freaking wait to see what comes next.
[00:44:46] Lots of love.