Nourishing Your Body with Workouts You Actually Enjoy with Nicole Meline

This is the transcript of an interview hosted on Ruth’s Feel Better. Live Free. podcast.

Ruth Soukup: Raise your hand if you hate exercise. Is your hand up? If so, you are definitely not alone. And believe me, until just a few years ago, I was right there with you. I thought exercise had to be miserable. It was basically my punishment for all the ways I was failing to create the body I wished I could have.

And maybe you feel that way too. If so, today’s post might just change everything.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ruth Soukup, and I’m the founder of Thinlicious and the creator of the Thin Adapted System, as well as the New York Times bestselling author of seven books. And today we’re going to be chatting with the amazing Nicole Meline, who is not only a four time Ironman triathlete, she’s also one of the original Peloton instructors and the founder of the soul based fitness program, Alter.

And what she has to share today about strength and fitness and about nourishing your body, and even about learning how to tailor your workouts to fit within your own body’s hormonal cycles is not only super encouraging and really different than. Any approach to exercise I’ve ever heard, but so empowering.

I can’t wait for you to dig into this powerful interview. Nicole, thank you so much for being here today. I’m so excited to talk to you.

Nicole Meline: I am too. It’s so fun to explore all of our alignments. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. So let’s just start with kind of background. Tell us who you are, what you do and how you got to be doing what you’re doing now.

Nicole Meline: Yeah, I am a teacher at heart. I am a, Reformed academic went on a long academic journey through many in master’s degrees in the humanities and went to seminary. And part of my journey has been understanding my work can. Breakthrough the kind of conventional containers. So starting down conventional roads and then realizing that things, especially in this incredible online age that we live in, can take a brand new form that maybe the world has never seen before.

So I fell into fitness as just a side job while I was in grad school, when I was living in New York city. And that was just at the time that the boutique fitness kind of revolution was happening. So. Fitness as an industry was rising in a very new way. And it was just as Peloton was starting to take off.

And so I came on as their second instructor and what a whirlwind it was to be a part of this company and also really learn, what is, what does it look like to build a startup and what does it look like? I think most importantly, and. Intriguingly to build a lasting and passionate community, which is at the heart of any business, I believe.

So I had this kind of realization about a year or so into it that I’m doing all the things that I love to do, teaching, inspiring people, connecting folks to their hearts, igniting their spirits in this way that I never would have imagined doing it. So the joke that I told my dad was dad, I’m dropping out of my PhD program to sweat in a sports bra on TV.

He’s great. That sounds really sustainable.

Yeah. And so since then I’ve started my own platform and I offer online courses. I offer one on one coaching and really the heart of what I offer is a movement practice called alter, which is a shift in. Relating to fitness and relating to nutrition, relating to our body image from this place of feeling like our bodies are enemies or this thing that’s constantly not living up to what we wish it was, or it looked like or felt like to.

Reconciling with our bodies and treating our bodies. I love to refer to her as her that’s this kind of massive mind shift for me, even as an ally. What does it look like to engage fitness, to get curious about how strong I can get to have a daily movement practice that brings me back home to myself rather than, just feels like this thing that I have to do.

Cause I’m trying to conform to some thing that I’m never going to conform to. 

Ruth Soukup: Punish myself and while I do it, I can relate to that so much for, because for so many years, that was like exactly my approach to fitness and working out. I hated it so much. And really, and I think it even goes back to cause we were talking for a few minutes before, and as you were like, sharing what you just said, I was like, I played basketball.

In high school. Right. And while it’s starting, gosh, I don’t know, fifth grade, junior high, my sister, six years older than me, she was this huge star and she was, the town start like record breaker and all the things. So I had this like big shoes to fill and everybody was like, well, you got to play basketball.

You’re so tall. And you have to be just like and I think that The whole right psychology that goes into that of just never liking it, but being forced to play. And I was, I grew up in a small town where basketball was everything, especially women’s basketball, the most winning this team in Washington state history.

They’ve won like 20, 000 state championships. So it’s like a dynasty team. And so practice was like brutal, right? Even in junior high. It was. Three hours every day we were doing drills and all the things like, and I just remember hating it every minute of it for however many years I played eight years that I played, like hating every single second of it.

And I think in my mind, I always hated exercise, right? Because I have just this association that it has to be brutal. It has to be hard. You have to be like on the verge of throwing up the whole time, or it doesn’t count. And what do you have to show for it at the end? You’re not even good, very good at it.

Right. Like I sucked at basketball. It was terrible. And so I just, I think it really has taken my whole life to get through that. So how do you work? How do you work through that? Like, how do you help women work through that? 

Nicole Meline: That was a long, that was a long response. You’d be like, Oh, I love that. And I connect I, I grew up as a, first of all, I felt, I feel like it’s been important.

To my life as a coach that I didn’t think of myself as an athlete. I thought of myself as not an athlete growing up. I started swimming right around junior high, which was very late for, if you’re going to be a good swimmer. And I got into distance freestyle cause I had, I didn’t have talent for the other strokes, but I had grit.

Right. So, and to this day, I mean, I do, I will jump in a pool occasionally. Just do some laps in the summer, but I still have this like deep seated rebellion in me from the year. There were some years that I was training at like the highest level, four hours a day, morning workouts, evening workouts.

And there is I very much relate to what you’re talking about, about like how long it can take you to heal from these relationships that we have to movement. And I think. Particularly, and I’m tempted to say maybe particularly with women, but I actually think that this is much more common in men as well.

And it’s just not as widely talked about that. It’s so common for us to have this very secret dialogue that we would never, we’d be, totally ashamed that if anyone ever knew the way that we actually thought about or talk to ourselves, that’s very punishing that has this extremely high.

Expectation or hope maybe is a better word for what we can become through training right through exercise and oftentimes to it’s interwoven with diet and calories. If you’ve ever gone through like a very rigid diet of one kind or another that trained you to become very hyper aware, maybe of your macros or your calories, once you’ve awakened that awareness, it can be very hard.

To ever shift out of that so that there’s always some part of you. That’s like the police agent part of you, that’s okay, you’re eating this much. You haven’t moved this much. And so you need to go and offset for that, right. And your training or in your nutrition. Yeah.

And man, is that an exhausting mindset to live in? Right. And I think it’s way more common than a lot of us really admit to. And I’ve definitely experienced being in and out of that at different moments of training. I’ve done Ironman for Ironman triathlons, where I was in that like extreme kind of training mindset.

And with. I think that you and I were just talking a minute before we started about the, what I like to think of as the initiation of middle age. So I’m 45 right now. And I started to feel this kind of maybe around like 38, where You’re first of all, you realize that your thought, your kind of default mindset of maybe someday, Oh no, girl, that’s today, what your, those dreams you’ve had, if you’re not like materializing them.

They’re just going to be dreams, right? And there’s that wonderful urgency that I think we start to feel right around middle age first around what are we here to create in the world? And I love that because it can be really purifying, I think to a lot of these kinds of toxic mindsets that we may be been in where suddenly, what we, this sense of what we are here to create in this world.

That can become most important in a way that maybe it hadn’t up to that point, way more important than what your pant size is, or what your kind of calorie count is for the day or something. And so that’s the core of the, when I’m working with a woman who wants to shift out of an exhausting lifelong kind of enemy relationship with her body, that’s actually the sort of counterintuitive way that I often begin, is Let’s not even talk about that.

Let’s talk about what you are here to create in this world. What lights you on fire? What are you passionate about? And what if we started to view food, the way you’re nourishing yourself, sleep, the way you’re resting and recharging and we’re an exercise working out as actually these inputs and outputs that fuel your creative work in this world.

And that is actually a big enough why that. Can motivate us, like most days I don’t feel like moving in the way that I know I’m going to feel amazing afterwards. Like we’ve all never, we’ve all never regretted a workout that we’ve done, but we’ve skipped tons of workouts because we just talk ourselves out of it.

Right. And so I think First of all, normalizing that feeling unmotivated is very normal, especially in a more sedentary lifestyle that many of us are getting pulled into. And really under a thing what is that, that why that is big enough for those days, which are actually going to be most days that you don’t feel like moving and training and engaging and building your strength.

That’s that’s where the juice is. 

Ruth Soukup: I love that. I love that. So it makes me think, so my thing, right. Cause for so long I had to be had in my mindset. And then exactly what you’re saying about the calories, I felt like I’ve got to lose weight. I got to count calories. I got to deprive myself.

I got to be miserable. And then I got to run really hard and do all this stuff. I have to burn calories. Like it just, this toxic. Like misery that I would constantly put myself in for 10 years and then only to not see the results. Right. And so now it’s so different for me where it’s I go outside every day.

Right. Like my dogs. That’s my cue is to go outside. Cause my dogs that we were talking about our dogs right before too. And at seven, come 7. AM, as soon as it’s laid out, they are like, mom, it’s time, right? They will start nudging me at my desk. And they’re like, mom, come on. It’s time. It’s time at night.

And so we live on this property. I go outside and my, for my, for me, like what motivates me, I think is that I tell myself you can do the easiest thing. It’s okay. Doesn’t even matter what you do. If you just want to walk around the property one time in your pajamas and your boots. It still counts. If you decide to walk a little harder or run for some of it, it still counts.

If you do go on the Peloton app and do the like very easiest workout, it still counts. Like everything counts. It doesn’t matter what it is. As long as you’re doing something, just, it doesn’t even. And I think freeing myself from this mentality of. Not having to always go push a little harder, push a little harder, make it miserable, but actually just enjoy it and do what I feel like doing.

And sometimes I surprise myself, right? Sometimes I’m like, I think I’ll do a little bit more. Like I could go a little longer and sometimes they don’t. And it’s either way. It’s fine. I think it’s it’s crazy how freeing that is, but I don’t know, understand why it’s so hard for us to get to that point because it’s taken years.

Nicole Meline: Yes. And I mean, I do think, I think there’s so many juicy answers to this. Number one, first of all, I think that the fact, like most of our kind of modeling and understanding about what fitness looks like. Is tested on and modeled by men, by male bodies. And this is all changing, which is awesome. The super bowl just happened this past weekend and Nike did their first ad and I think like over 25 years and it was just celebrating women’s sports because that’s the future.

And but I think that we’re just beginning in the medical community and in the wellness community to really take seriously what it means to live in a secular body. Women, are living in secular bodies. And so, first of all, let’s just acknowledge that in, in a given month, probably half the month, you’re not at your highest energy.

There’s those weeks that you are. It your highest energy. And then there’s also weeks where your body is telling you that it’s it’s sending your resources elsewhere. Right. And so it needs more rest. It needs more downtime. I think that’s just a really important thing to acknowledge is that so many of the like.

Running training programs that we might’ve seen or weight training programs, or we might’ve seen, did they assume that you’re in this like total hormonal steady state, like a male body or are, do they assume the kind of secularity that is the reality, for maybe for your body. So I think that is actually one really important element to consider is asking yourself this simple question of, What does my body need to feel strongest and most energized today?

And sometimes that absolutely means. Just 10 minutes of stretching or a 10 minute walk with the dogs and you need to, spend more kind of downtime that day. And other days it’s hitting the weights and it’s, doing some sprint training or something. So I think that kind of coming back to that very basic question of, okay, I’ve got my training plan maybe, but what is my body really need today?

And to feel more energized, to feel more powerful. And I think that you were hinting at it where we get so caught up to. So one issue is like this question of, am I honoring my hormones and where I’m at right now? Second question is, um, is what you just said. A little bit counts.

So in, I think both in the way that we’re nourishing ourselves, the way that we’re eating and in movement, we, it’s so common to be in this all or nothing mindset. And we do it with any change that we’re wanting to make in our lives. That’s an uncomfortable change. It’s this all or nothing mindset is this Excuse that we give ourselves.

Right. And so if I can’t be 100 percent perfect, then I’m just going to fully jump like both feet off the wagon. Right. Instead of the more realistic, no, a little bit counts. And also when I tell myself, okay, I’m just going to walk for 10 minutes or I’m just going to do that, 10 minute workout online or something.

So often I would say like at least half the time that leads to more, even like I’ll just, okay. I’m just going to do a quick five minute weight workout. No, I felt good. I’m actually like in there for 15, 20 minutes and then you’re stretching out. And so giving yourself that that really realistic, like to be human is to live this complex life.

That’s going to have curve balls every single day. And if you’re only gonna. Allow yourself to be in your full wellness. If you can show up and have that perfect uninterrupted week, of like the workouts being exactly as long as you want them to be, we’re never going to get there. And that’s going to keep being an excuse to actually just move forward one brick at a time.

I love that idea of I’m just out here laying one brick today, 

Ruth Soukup: just 

Nicole Meline: one. 

Ruth Soukup: I love that. It is so true that all or nothing mentality and it gets in our heads so much. And I think we’ve been basically indoctrinated it, but I never really accounted for the fact what you were saying was so interesting about men’s bodies versus women’s bodies and the stable hormones versus the cyclical hormones and how that can really impact.

So what should, how do you, like, how do you even navigate that? So if you’re a woman, you’re like, okay, I’m listening to this and I want to start. Making changes and nourishing my body and doing the right things. But how do you even know like where to start with it? 

Nicole Meline: Yeah. I mean, first of all, one of the things that we’re learning right now it’s so exciting to see this huge emerging conversation about menopause, perimenopause, and just women’s hormones in general, infertility that we haven’t really had at this level before this time, it’s so exciting.

And one of the things that is surfacing in that conversation is just. The importance of muscle of building muscle, basically, once you hit 30, your body is naturally going to be losing muscle as you age every decade, losing a significant percentage of muscle. And so there is that bare fact, right? And then also muscle is this.

Organ of longevity, actually that it’s a huge element in helping to stabilize our hormones even. So I would say that the foundation of our training should be building muscle that could, that can look like so many different things that can look like walking with a weighted vest. Maybe if you love to walk, right, that can look like, of course, lifting weights.

That can look like resistance on a bike or an incline on a treadmill. But not only is the building of the muscle, the physical side of that training, but The emotional and spiritual side of strength training is, I think, even more significant because it’s when, and when I can make that shift to remember, okay, yes, I’m doing my weight training, but every single time that I do that.

I remember my strength. I remember how strong I am. I remember that I’m powerful and it’s this way daily of resetting and coming back into agency versus kind of victim mode, coming back into decision making and connecting with my intuition. So I think that I want to lay that out as a foundation.

If you’re going to do one thing, if you’re going to just try to commit to one element of training, it’s a strength training program. That’s even if it’s three times a week that you’re just intentionally strength training for as little as 20 minutes, right? That again, that could be like walking with a weighted vest, but even better if it’s a strength training workout.

And that being said. Again, like looking at, and all of our bodies are, different, we’re at different ages, we’re at different kinds of places with our hormones. But I think kind of step one is to take a month and. Just journal and notice, like, how is my body feeling over the course of a month? And if you do that, especially for two or three months, like one sentence a day in the, at noon time, or before you go to bed, where you’re just reflecting on even just answering a simple question of how was your energy level today?

You’ll start to see the patterns. And if you have a somewhat regular cycle. hormonal cycle, you’re also going to see that those patterns correspond to where you are in your cycle, right? So those weeks that you are at your highest energy optimize those for that’s when you’re really kicking up those strength training workouts.

It’s so beautiful to me that the body. Gross. The body grows strength, stickularly in the same way that we move through a cycle over the course of a month. So it’s, and this is one of the kind of it’s such a simple truth, but it was so profound for me to really realize we build strength in rest.

So when you do a weight training workout, right, or any kind of a, like a workout where you’re challenging yourself, maybe it’s a high intensity interval training and you’re breaking down your muscles. And it’s, so you’re not building strength during the workout, you’re building strength after the workout, you’re building strength in that 24 hour window where, your muscles are rebuilding themselves.

They’re recruiting more muscle fibers than you had before. So it’s actually the quality of our rest. That is going to most support our growing strength. That feels like very important principle. And when you look at, yeah. So like the body is growing stronger in these cyclical patterns, right. Of like intensity and then rest and rebuilding and then intensity and rest and rebuilding.

That’s really similar to the kind of cycle that we’re moving through hormonally. So to. Start to become aware of those, maybe two ish two to three weeks of your cycle where you do feel higher energy, that’s when you’re going to be doing more of the intensified strength training, more of the high intensity interval training.

And then those weeks where you’re lower energy, that’s more of the yoga, the foam rolling, the, just like more of the stretching, more of the walking, maybe the like zone two training. So I think that’s. One way of starting to connect with your own intuition, and I think especially at midlife too, this changes.

For all of us, it, our bodies force us to finally start listening to them, which is super annoying and is so good. Right. To even if we’ve maybe spent our whole lives dissociated from our bodies, this. Portal. It forces us to really attuned, like, where am I and what do I need now?

Ruth Soukup: What is this body now today need? I love that. I love  that. And I have never, I don’t know why it’s never occurred to me to just track that like energy levels versus cycle levels and see where that feels. But I find that so interesting. Okay. So going more, a little heavier on the strength training in those.

Energetic weeks. What does that look like? I think, because I think, especially for like us, 40, 50s, grew up in the eighties with aerobics in the nineties with all the, that it’s hard to even imagine like that going to the gym wouldn’t mean an hour on the elliptical machine or something like equally calorie burning, because that’s, All that we ever think about.

But I think for so many women, like this idea of. Strength training or lifting weights feels very intimidating. So how do you get past that? And what’s the best way to do it? 

Nicole Meline: Yes. I love this question. So my workouts now at 45 have two goals. Number one is to build muscle because I know that I, by default, I’m losing it.

And number two is to be an emotional processing experience. So it’s. There’s this incredible book that thankfully it’s everywhere now called the body keeps the score and this whole body of somatic research that’s grown out of this work. That’s tracking like the extent to which our bodies hold trauma, the extent to which our bodies hold onto experiences that we’ve had grief, just every feeling.

And there’s this beautiful connection between the word emotion and motion, and maybe when you’ve danced or you’ve been in a yoga class, or you’ve even just been out on a run or out on a walk, things surface. That oftentimes don’t in any other way, even maybe even just like sitting on a couch, talking to a therapist or a friend, there’s something about putting the body in motion that, that unearths what’s in here.

And I love to remember that if I’m not expressing what’s in me, then it’s in me, it’s stuck in me. Right. So. I now think of my workout. And this is a big part of the vision of the altar practices that I lead the movement practice as this daily moment to, first of all, ask myself, what am I feeling today?

What’s, what is the biggest feeling that’s swirling around in me? What are the thoughts that are on loop? What are the anxieties that I’m in actually notice them? Cause otherwise They’re looping kind of draining our energy. Right. And to give myself a chance in movement to express that. So if it’s grief, if it’s gratitude, if it’s anger, confusion, joy, playfulness, right?

Every I like to say all vibes welcome, right? That there’s at least one moment during my day where all the vibes are welcome. And to, Give motion to that emotion. So to allow myself for just the space of a few songs, even to be primal, to connect to my wild heart and let all of that come out, right.

So those are the two goals that I have when I’m moving, when I’m training now is yes, build the muscle and also build the heart muscle, build the spiritual muscle and allow all that is stuck in here to flow and ask myself on the other side of it. Okay. I’ve released everything. What do I want to intentionally pick up again?

And what do I want to just. Leave at the wayside. Right. So that’s my Wu answer. 

Ruth Soukup: That is Wu, but I love it. So do you, I’m now I’m like 

Nicole Meline: such 

Ruth Soukup: a literal person, right? Like I’m not always very 

Nicole Meline: Wu. How do you let the feeling flow? 

Ruth Soukup: How do you let the feeling? Yeah, exactly. So do you like.

Do you say it out loud to yourself? Or do you just do a mental check in? I’m trying to imagine how this what would I walk into my weight room? I’m going to say, how do I feel today? Self? Is that like literally what you do? 

Nicole Meline: Yeah, I will. I will always start a practice by putting my hands on my heart or maybe a hand on your heart, a hand on your belly and just breathing into your palms.

And literally all of our listeners just doing this for two breaths right now. Brings you home immediately. It brings you into your body. I like to think of it as riding the elevator down a floor from your head into your body. And you’re noticing, I mean, even just by doing that, I was like, Oh, I’ve been sitting in this kind of like bent posture for several minutes.

I’m feeling that tension in my lower back. Right. Just noticing how your body even is in space and how, what’s your energy level today. Right. And asking yourself. That really simple question. What’s the biggest feeling that I’m working with today? And I actually really love phrasing it that way. The biggest feeling I’m working with what if I work with this feeling instead of.

Suppressing it instead of letting it maybe come up in times in conversations where it’s not going to be of service. Let me bring this into this workout and work with it. So that your workout is as much a work in as it is a work out. Right. And. I, to circle back to your question about weight training, which I totally agree is super intimidating.

And I think it’s also been like a masculine dominated like world, or it’s, it has masculine branding. And so you can walk into most, and we also tend to think that, Oh, to do strength training means I’m going to need to join a gym with all the machines that I need to have. I mean, if you like to do that, great.

And I think there’s really something to be said for. Getting getting a strength training coach, even if it’s just for a few sessions to set you up for the next three months or so of goals. And so that you know how to use these machines safely, because so when you’re working with weight training machines, that’s allowing you to load up the body in a much heavier way than you’re going to be able to do just with hand weights at home.

But I think starting with hand weights at home is a great way to start. And I actually created this 10 day strength training challenge that is called uplift that is designed specifically just to be. They’re under 15 minutes during training workouts. So it’s like you’re all out of excuses.

Yeah. Super simple, a kettlebell, some ankle weights, some higher rep, upper body weights, like very simple equipment. And you can start to just build that. Infrastructure, right? That strength infrastructure at home. 

Ruth Soukup: I love that. Yeah I actually, so I used to work out at the gym when we lived in a different house, that gym was like two minutes from my house with a trainer for gosh, four years, I worked with him and he was awesome.

Every, every I’d work with him three days a week, different workout, every time, never had the same workout twice for four years. And, but I felt like that was so good for me as somebody who didn’t. Understand strength training at all. Like even just like how to do all the things. Right. Like I, and I, so I feel pretty confident now.

And then we moved out to the country and I have my barn turned one of those barn stalls into a weight room. And I love that. Like I. I mean, it was convenient before when the gym was basically next to our house, but this is no excuses. And it’s so easy when you have just a few, and it’s not like elaborate, I didn’t spend tons of money on setting it up.

It’s very rustic. It’s in a barn. So it’s dirty too, but 

Nicole Meline: it’s I’m dying to see it. This is like my dream. 

Ruth Soukup: It is. It’s so great. And I’m like, well, I’m not going to worry too much about it because again, it’s in a barn. It’s a gym. Yeah, but it’s a gym and it’s all I need is to just have the weights. I got the mirrors and it makes it so easy, but it also makes it so easy to just do five minutes, 10 minutes, like whatever I need in that day, instead of feeling like, Oh, I got to go to the gym for an hour.

And I like it, make it a whole thing, which I sometimes would. Dread, right? Oh my God, too busy for this today. And we’ll talk ourselves out of it and we’ll talk ourselves out of it. Right. And the trainer kept me accountable because I was paying for it and prepaid. And so I would go to my appointments, but I would never go on my own.

And now I think I find it so easy to just do a little bit, because every bit counts. 

Nicole Meline: There’s actually. Really intriguing research right now about like the physical payoff of say six five minute intervals throughout the day versus, going and doing a 30 minute workout, 30, 40 minute workout.

And there’s been some interesting studies lately that actually say it’s more effective for your overall metabolism. Let’s say, especially if you like are doing a lot of sedentary work and you’re, I mean, a, if you can get a standing desk, do it because even just the weight bearing that’s so much better for just building overall muscle bone density, all of that, as we age, just to stand rather than sit.

But. So especially if you are sedentary or you’re maybe working from home and just every hour, even if you have a watch or on your phone, you can set a timer every hour, five minutes to just do some air squats, some Yoga poses, some lunges, right? Like a little upper body routine and the efficacy of that metabolism wise that you’re getting your heart rate up every hour during the day.

And so your metabolism is at it was working at higher frequency anyways, versus just doing that for 30 or 45 minutes at the gym. It’s there’s interesting research that’s showing that actually is probably more supercharges our metabolism more so. I think that, yeah. And you also just feel better, right.

During the course of the day, if you’re getting up and moving for a few minutes, or even I’m such a fan of a walking pad underneath your desk, you’re not on it all day maybe, but just maybe like 30 minute intervals throughout the day, you just get on and walk really slowly. And yeah. 

Ruth Soukup: I do. And I don’t stand nearly enough and I goes up and down.

It’s really fancy. I thought, yeah, I’m going to see it all the time. I love that. So I had another question for you back to what were we talking about before the strength workout? Weight training, like intimidation 

Nicole Meline: maybe with weight training. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. I remember what it was. It’s a dumb question.

So back to you, ask yourself the question hand on your heart. And then do you like tailor your music to what your mood is? 

Nicole Meline: Yeah. So the altar practices that I lead are each one is themed and the playlist is like the captain for the whole experience. Right. So the it’s very music driven and yeah. So if you’re if you just want this done for you, I’ve done it for you, but I mean even as simple as like dancing to one song every day for five minutes, where You’re moving in a non linear way.

So we’re moving all day in linear ways, meaning it’s task oriented. It’s either like task oriented or training oriented. So we’re doing squats, we’re doing maybe yoga flows. We’re doing types of movement because we’re trying to build a certain kind of physical strength or accomplish a certain kind of physical task.

Moving in a nonlinear way. So this is the really fun question that I love to think about, especially in our wild, modern world right now, forever for millennia, humans have gotten together and danced around fires. We’ve had ceremony together and there’s this. Across all cultures, like there’s this sense that there is a certain like deep primal need that we have to periodically gather and move in this primal, wild, communal way, right?

Yes. I’d love to ask this question of what does that look like? Now, what does it look like to dance around fires together now in this like wild modern world? And because I think we still need it and move in it, move in a nonlinear way to move in this way that opens you to possibility to curiosity, to playfulness, to also the true expression of whatever feeling that you’re working with that day.

So so turn on it. If you’ve got 10 minutes to move today, dance for five minutes and just let whatever is flowing through you come up and express, and then grab some kettlebells. 

Ruth Soukup: I love that. No, I seriously, sometimes I just, I do want to dance and I’m a terrible dancer. I have one thing, I call it tiny fist.

And I go like this, and that’s my dance move, but I do, I love it. And sometimes tiny fist count, tiny fist got to come out. They got to dance. And my daughter, when she was little, she’s 15 now, so she doesn’t do it really anymore. But she used to do like surprise dance parties. She would, I don’t, I forget what she would even call it, but when she was little, she was so cute.

She’d be like, mom, it’s time for dance party. And we would have to do a dance party for a minute, right? And it was just the funnest little thing. And I remember that so fondly when she was little. And I think we lose that as we love 

Nicole Meline: that. You’ve brought that up. Yeah. When I teach altar practices, I often say, check in with your three year old self and your 90 year old self.

How did they want to invite you to move today, to dance today, to train today? And it’s this I think these two poles of our life, we do have this kind of deep freedom and wisdom that we can get conditioned out of. Right. And so to have a practice of reconnecting with that, and it’s. It’s been such a powerful thing for me in my own reconciliation process or my like allyship process with my body to think about.

Pretty regularly to just pause for a moment and think about all the times that I have healed, like by this point in our lives, hundreds, all the colds that you’ve come through, all the scratches that your skin has re knit itself from the, maybe the surgeries that like serious injuries, pregnancies, or like all the ways that your body has healed over and over again, like this is this miraculous thing that you’ve been given this miraculous vessel.

And. To have that kind of honor and reverence and wonder. And can we, so then what does it look like to feed ourselves from that perspective, to nourish ourselves from that perspective, to move from that perspective, right? With this wow, this miracle machine that I live in, how strong can it get? How energized can it get at 

Ruth Soukup: this moment of my life?

I love it. Wow. This is, it’s so encouraging and self lifting to hear this. And I think for anyone listening, I hope I just hope you’re taking this, right? Like it’s okay. You can give your. Per self permission to just do a little bit at a time to actually enjoy it, to check in with yourself and to feel it, to bring what you need in that moment, rather than have this sort of pre conceived idea that it has to be hard and miserable and just start loving your body through movement, such a, such, such an encouragement.

And it’s so so what probably everybody needs to hear for sure. I love it, Nicole. I feel like we can keep talking for a long time about this, but we are out of time. So, final question, how can we connect with you? Where can we find you online? And of course we will link to all of your things in our show notes for anybody who’s listening.

So if they want to find your workouts and find all your stuff, let us know how we can find that. I love that. I 

Nicole Meline: have found that our hearts work draws our hearts people. So it’s been so fun to put work out into the world and. Feel that draw like friends that I hadn’t yet met, right? Friends that were, I was just waiting to meet.

So my online home is nicolemaline.com. I’m also on Instagram and social media at @NicoleMeline and. The you’ll find it. At nicolemaline.comc both a bunch of different programs, courses, but then you’ll also find at nicolemeline.com/alter the Alter platform membership.

You’ll find that uplift strength training challenge. If you just want like a kind of 10 day. Very doable, beginner friendly challenge to start with, or if you want to just dive into some of the Alter Together practices, I’d love to lead you. And I also have a free gift at NicoleMeline.com/gift, which is some practices, some meditations, even some indoor cycling rides, if you have a bike and just so many ways to move and be moved.