Wellness with Juanita Podcast

Join me as I explore what it means to honestly love ourselves – and how that has a ripple effect out into the world. I argue that self-care is not selfish, self-indulgent or self-absorbed. I talk about the differences between self-soothing, self-care, and self-love. What is involved in truly loving ourselves? And loving ourselves through all of it — not only when life is good and we feel happy, bu...

After our “look back” last time, today I talk about how that process evolves as we look ahead to the new year. By utilizing insights from the past year, we can identify lessons, themes, and patterns that have emerged. This kind of deep introspection may not always be easy, but the natural slower, subdued, rhythm of winter and the reflective energy of the New Year create the perfect opportunity—if...

Happy New Year! Sending us all warmest wishes for a happy, healthy 2025 as we continue to learn, love, and live along our individual paths. In today’s bonus episode, I take a look back at the past year to some of my achievements and accomplishments as an important part of the process of change and growth. Taking periodic intentional looks back helps us to recognize that the small, consistent steps...

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to think of all the things you don’t like about yourself, or things you wish you could change about your life, than it is to think of your wonderful qualities or all the things going well? How readily can you think of a negative customer service encounter versus a positive one?  As humans, our minds tend to “stick” to negative experiences much more readi...

Today I talk about how we begin to *actually* create the space and time to practice self-care in our busy, frantic-paced lives. So many of us can relate to feeling like never having enough hours in the day for our To Do list – which we very often find ourselves at the very bottom of.  Using personal examples of how I was able to not only quit detrimental habits like smoking and drinking, but also...

Today we talk about fierce self-compassion; what it is, and how it acts as yang to tender self-compassion’s yin.  We explore how it can help to protect, provide, and motivate ourselves to take action in the world, and how we can start to cultivate it.  I discuss both the constructive and destructive sides to anger, and how recognizing that anger usually has something to teach us can be beneficial,...

Join me as I talk with Gretchen Miura, a mindfulness meditation teacher, grief care facilitator, and dear friend.  We discuss what originally led each of us to mindfulness meditation, the role grief played in our paths to it, and how our paths intersected in the first place.  Gretchen shares what led to creating the grief support group she co-facilitates with Sarah Furuya, Lighthouse Circle. Joini...

In today’s episode we dive deep into self-compassion.  We talk definitions, learn the three basic foundations (mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness), and hear first-hand examples of how it has worked as a strategy in my own life to deal with difficulties, daily stressors, and some deeper ones too.  I explain how asking and answering the quintessential question of self-compassion – “What do I...

Welcome to the very first episode of the Wellness with Juanita Podcast! I am an American living in Japan for 20 years and a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach. One of the primary reasons I became a Wellness Coach was because of what I went through. When I say I went through massive amounts of stress and overwhelm myself, I mean it. Listen to what brought me to where I am today -- h...