I live in the same Brooklyn neighborhood where my dad grew up, and where my grandparents grew up too.

Sometimes I think about my grandfather when I run down by the waterfront in the early mornings before work. There’s a park there now, but it’s the same place where he worked on the docks as a teenager during the Great Depression. I think about my grandmother when I walk by her old apartment in front of the cemetery, I imagine that it looks the same on the outside, expect the door is painted yellow now. She grew up in that little apartment and then raised her three kids there.

My grandfather Eugene died when I was 6 ,and I never got to meet my grandmother, Genevieve, who died suddenly when my dad was young. All I have are a few funny stories about her, and I know that she loved a party. My dad’s two older brothers have passed away now too, my dad is the only one left of their immediate family.

Sometimes I feel close to them as I retrace their steps around the neighborhood, the same old sidewalks lined with different shops now. But I’ve been craving a clearer connection with them for years.

I’ve always maintained a strong connection to my mom’s mom, Meme, since she passed the summer before my freshman year of high school. She was a big part of my life and now she shows up in my dreams, she sends me signs, and I talk to her.

Last Halloween, as I was walking through my neighborhood to go vote, I started thinking about how people say “the veil is thin” to the spirit world during these few days of the year. Samhain, Halloween, Día de los Muertos, Día de Todos los Santos, and more. Each of these traditions and cultures connect to and honor their ancestors and loved ones who have passed in their own way.

I figured, if there was ever a time to reach out to mine, it was now. As I continued walking, I put up myself into an energetic protection bubble, and I sent out an offering to the five of them (my mom’s Mom, my dad’s parents, and his two brothers). It was something along the lines of: thank you for everything, I’d love to connect. If you’d like to connect, please send me a clear sign that I will understand, or come into a dream if that feels right, (but nothing scary, please). And then I just keep walking and carried on with my day.

The next morning, while I drinking my morning coffee, I began to journal about all of this. About how the veil is thin and how I asked five of my ancestral relatives for a clear sign and nothing has come through yet, so I decided to write the offering down in my journal.

Right in that moment, I got a notification that a package was delivered.

Before I tell you what I saw, you need a bit of a backstory. When my sister, Gillian, was little, before she could tell time, whenever anyone asked what time it was, she would always say it was 2:38. We have no idea why, but it became a whole family thing.

Over the years, 238, then eventually just 38 became one of my clearest signs. I see it constantly. 38 (or 238) show ups whenever I need reassurance, and I like to think of it as a reminder that I’m doing okay, that I’m on the right path, or it brings me back into the present.

So when I picked up the package and the number 38 was written on it in red marker five times, my jaw dropped.

Five times. The number of loved ones I had asked for a sign. And I know what you’re thinking, and no, it had nothing to do with my order, nothing to do with my address. Just a totally random number scribbled in red marker all over the package (see the photo below).

I laughed and thanked the five of them (in my head) for checking in as I carried the package upstairs.

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Read it Next: (another short Real Life Magic story):

Practice with me: (practices I mentioned in the story):

As I rode the subway home the other day, I felt overwhelmed, pulsing with that urgent NYC energy, feeling rushed to do something, but I couldn’t even remember what I was in a rush for. My mind darted from one thing to another. As I habitually reached to open my phone, I locked eyes with myself in the reflection of the screen which brought me back to present moment, back to myself, where I was able notice the buzz of scattered energy throughout my body.

I could feel it buzzing in my fingertips and in my toes and I felt a low simmer of butterflies in my belly. I allowed the sensations of my body to be there before doing anything to change them. I did my best to be compassionate to myself, for being swept up into urgency once again, and then I did what is now second nature for me.

I put myself into an energetic protection bubble to ground and center myself as as the subway doors continued to open and close, people rushed in and out at each stop, sneakers squeaking on the subway floor, a baby crying in the background, someone’s speakers playing Bad Bunny on the other side of the car, little pieces of conversations and laughter floating in and out of my ears.

Creating an Energetic Protection Bubble

The easiest way to describe the energetic protection bubble is to imagine the bubble that Glinda the Good Witch uses to travel around (in both the Wizard of Oz and Wicked). I think of it as an energetic force field, impenetrable, stronger than steel, and that any unwanted energy can easily bounce off of it. Nothing gets into the bubble (unless I want it to). I’m safe and protected in there no matter where I go and I can separate from other people’s energy too.

Once I’m in that bubble, I guide myself through whatever grounding, centering, or visualization practices I need in that moment, even as the external world rushes by me.

A 5-Minute Energy Work Visualization

Today I’m sharing a short guided version of this playful and powerful practice to center or ground yourself, protect your energy, or set boundaries in your day.

Over the years I’ve been guided through several versions of this energy work practice by different names, from several teachers and lineages — from yoga/ meditation teachers to energy workers, healers and astrologers.

You can listen to this seated, lying down, on a walk, on public transportation, or in whatever way feels right for you. Allow it to be easy to create, for it to easily appear around you, for it to be fun & creative.

🎧 Listen Here: 5-Min Guided Energetic Protection Bubble Visualization:

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This week I’m sharing a conversation with Rachel Pierre, the Founder of Parlez. Rachel shares the story of her near-death experience as a teenager and how it changed the trajectory of her life, propelling her to live life on her own terms. She also shares several other Real Life Magic moments and stories from unexpectedly knowing things she shouldn’t to following her intuition through her corporate career to the launch of her private executive French coaching business. We talk about what her intuition feels like, how she uses it in her life, and she shares her daily practices to keep her present. Rachel’s stories are inspiring, and they’re examples of how listening to inner guidance and trusting yourself can change the direction of your life.

🎧 Have a listen above.

A little bit about Rachel:

Rachel Pierre is the Founder and CEO of Parlez!, which offers Private executive French coaching for leaders navigating high-stakes business in French‑speaking markets. You can connect with Rachel on her LinkedIn, Instagram or on her Website.

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This is the Real Life Magic podcast, where people share their stories of times they feel they’ve experienced magic in their lives. They could be stories of miracles, synchronicity, meaningful coincidences, serendipity, signs, following intuition, unexplainable events, connections with loved ones who have passed, and more.

If you have a story of your own, I’d love to hear it. You can share it ⁠here⁠.

You can listen here on Substack or find the Real Life Magic conversations wherever you listen to podcasts: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and more.

One of the first practices I like to introduce people to is the pause. The mindful pause, the sacred pause, there are many names for it.

It involves momentarily stopping whatever task you are doing to come back into the present moment, and it is one of the simplest ways to begin weaving mindfulness into daily life.

To me it is a foundational practice, because when you train yourself and your mind to habitually come back to the present moment, back to yourself, it slowly changes how you experience your life.

When you remember what you’re doing and where you are, maybe you’ll remember to drink water, get some fresh air, take a break, rest, eat something, add a bit more fun or joy to the task at hand, or notice beauty in mundane moments. Maybe you’ll soften a bit, or bring just a little bit more ease or intention into whatever you’re doing: work, chores, a hard conversation, quality time with loved ones. Maybe you’ll begin to create space to take a deep breath before you react to something in a habitual way. Maybe you’ll even start to notice synchronicities, the whispers of your intuition, the language of your body, and patterns in your life.

One of the best things about the pause, is that once you get into the habit of doing it, it is a tool you have to come back to yourself anywhere, anytime, eyes open or closed, moving or still, and no one will know you’re practicing it.

Practicing the Pause

Step 1: Set a reminder on your phone twice a day that says “pause” (even once a day is a great place to begin). I recommend starting with listening to a guided recording to build the habit. (I shared a free version below).

When you start those reminders, you will likely see how resistant your mind is to these pauses (at least it was for me, and sometimes still is), how you’ll want to put them off, how you’ll get annoyed at them, at your teacher, maybe at me. This is normal, it’s all part of the process.

Step 2: Add your own mini pauses when you notice you’re rushing, stressed, scattered, anxious, triggered, etc:

Once you’ve been practicing the pause for a week or two, you might begin to notice when you are rushing through daily moments that don’t require rushing (taking a shower, washing the dishes, speeding through traffic without a deadline) or when you’re stressed out.

There is no need to beat yourself when you notice that you’re rushing or stressed, it is a normal part of being human, but when you do notice these moments, you can practice your own version of the pause: softening your shoulders and jaw, taking a few deep breaths into your belly, paying attention to the sounds you hear, bringing the awareness to the sensations you feel in your body, looking around the space and mentally noting a few things you see, or any version or combo of those. (These can be shorter than the guided version below, even 3 deep breaths is great.)

Eventually you might notice a natural pause between a trigger and your reaction to it, allowing yourself to choose your way forward instead of reacting habitually.

You can guide yourself through this on your own, but if you’d like a guided version while you’re getting into the habit, I am sharing a free 3-min recording today:

🎧 The Pause: A 3-min Guided Recording:

If you try it out, let me know how it goes. If you’d like to find more of my guided meditations & visualizations, you can visit the practice with me section of my Substack.

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This is the wild knowing part of my Substack, where I share glimpses of my journal as I move through the ups and downs of life. Here, you’ll find raw journal-style entries: daily musings, stories, my random theories about the universe, simple joys, notes, adventures, travels, photos, stream of consciousness, processing my life, and more.

that moment in cabin 7

a glimpse of my journal from sat aug 22, 2026 | written in my notes app on the subway

A random collection of (somewhat) related thoughts I wrote down on the subway after reading Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, which conjured this familiar feeling of the passing of time, or what I means to zoom out and see a whole life:

How do you cope with the passing of time?

With life flying by, with always trying to catch up, always a little behind?

How do you cope with your kids growing up?

How do you cope with seeing your babies, the ones you cuddled at night and fed and taught to walk, turn into adults that live their own lives, that at times, infuriate you, that get tangled into their own life dramas? How do you let them leave, let them fly?

Does anyone really have an answer to this? I’m not convinced.

I think the answer is you just do. You have no choice, so it happens.

Life keeps moving on, the world keeps turning, sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, the little wrinkles, the tiny grooves along side your eyes from laughing in the sunshine get a bit deeper each time. The seasons go by. You try to catch them in your hands, hold onto them and soak them up for a min but the pages fly off the calendar like a fast-forward scene on tv.

When I was 3, maybe 3.5, (is that even possible? I swear it was living in California the first time I thought of this, but then again memory is weird), I remember begging my mom to stop me from growing up. Time was moving too quickly, my sensitive soul couldn’t keep up with the speed of life. She told me that wasn’t possible.

When I was 11, I was lying down on the top bunk of cabin 7, looking out the old screen window into the woods in the direction of the campfire circle and beyond that the pond that we called lake. I was pondering how quickly the summer was going by, and I had a revelation, an epiphany.

Life slowed down in that moment. And I flashed forward to how quickly things would change. How I would always look back to THIS moment, this mundane moment when nothing was happening at all.

That life would flash by and next year I’d be in cabin 9, then 11, then 13, then I’d be a counselor here (never happened) and I’d look back to this very moment and think, wow time is flying by. And then I’d be an old teenager, then an adult with kids, and I’d say, “wow, remember that time in cabin 7? that time I suddenly had a glimpse of my future self and I knew that as an adult I would come back to this very moment moment as reference point to how time has passed?”

And I do. I go back to that moment in cabin 7 often.

I did it again this morning. Grounding myself in the moment, I’m 34, I live in Brooklyn, I’m married to Noah, I work in real estate, I just finished school for yoga therapy. How did I get here? And then taking the time necessary to reflect on all the events that led me here.

I used to want to press pause on life for a minute. To catch up real quick. To reflect on it all, time to integrate, finish my to-do list & all the things I’ve wanted to do. Everyone else and everything would be frozen while I’d do this, and I wouldn’t be aging either. And then once I caught up? Once I fully integrated and reflected, once I tied up all the loose ends, got all my ducks in a row, sorted out everything, (any other cheesy way I could say this?) and was fully refreshed and ready, I would press play again, fully present forever after since it was all taken care of.

Life doesn’t work like that.

Nothing is ever done, nothing is ever fully figured out, loose ends will stay untied. We cope with our fears, our past rejections and our heartbreaks from our lost loves and lost dreams while we step towards our new dreams and new loves simultaneously.

All at once, we struggle with the past and we make changes and move to a new fresh day.

When I was little, don’t remember what age, I had a dream (maybe it was a daydream?) that I had dreamt my full life, and I woke up and was a little kid again and I would then live out that life. Did I want to change anything? Or let it be?

Sometimes, on days like these, I ask myself, was that even a dream? Am I awake? Am I in the waking dream or am I still asleep? Am I still in the first part, dreaming my life only to wake up again as a kid and do it again?

Then there are days where I laugh at these reflections, I say, sooo moody-sad-girl of me, which is a big part of me, but what a contrast to my silly playful self.

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Virginia considers intuition in two different categories: magical intuition (what I would call Real Life Magic), and body intuition which includes somatic practice and body-based awareness. Virginia leads with compassion and emphasizes that patience is the key to strengthening embodied intuition and self-trust, that you are never too late to begin, and there is no need to force yourself to move quickly through this process.

🎧 Have a listen above.

A little bit about Virginia.

Through her training at the Body First Healing Institute and her studies in somatics, IFS parts work, attachment theory, and Polyvagal Theory, she found the framework that finally made sense of her own experience (not just intellectually, but in her body).

At Magic of the In Between she helps women who are stuck inside lives that look right but feel hollow understand their nervous system, recognize their survival patterns, and build real safety in their body so they can finally make decisions that come from who they actually are rather than who they learned to be.

You can follow along and connect with Virginia on her Instagram, Website, and Substack, or work with her for one-on-one somatic sessions

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This is the Real Life Magic podcast, where people share their stories of times they feel they’ve experienced magic in their lives. They could be stories of miracles, synchronicity, meaningful coincidences, serendipity, signs, following intuition, unexplainable events, connections with loved ones who have passed, and more.

If you have a story of your own, I’d love to hear it. You can share it ⁠here⁠.

You can listen here on Substack or find the Real Life Magic conversations on Spotify. (Apple Podcasts, Youtube, and more coming soon.)

This is the wild knowing part of my Substack, where I share glimpses of my journal as I move through the ups and downs of life. Here, you’ll find raw journal-style entries: daily musings, stories, my random theories about the universe, simple joys, notes, adventures, travels, photos, stream of consciousness, processing my life, and more.

stepping out into the unknown (again)

a glimpse of my journal from fri aug 7, 2026 | written somewhere up in the air: JFK —> DEN

I have a bad habit. I don’t want to admit it, but here it goes.

I often (read: almost always), flip to the end of a book to see what happens. I take a peak ahead during the part of the book where I become the characters and get stressed out in the thick of the plot.

I know, I know. It’s terrible. I’m a writer’s worst nightmare.

I started writing about this years ago, and I even drafted a Substack post about it, but then I got nervous and locked it back up in my deep vault of secrets with no plan to share it.

That’s until the other day, when I was on a call with two close friends of mine, who admitted that they do this too! (I won’t expose their names here, their secret is safe with me).

My husband is the opposite of me. The dream reader, film-watcher, etc. He won’t even read the back of a book and he leaves the room if I dare put on a movie trailer, so I don’t ruin it for him.

I wish I was like that, but I’m not.

To go further, (I might as well come clean at this point), sometimes I even wikipedia the plot of a movie I’m going to watch, to soften the blow of the suspense & anxiety provoking middle for me, so I can enjoy the experience without squirming in my seat (as much).

Why am I like this? Well, I was born an anxious worry-wort, always concerned about everything and everyone. The most sensitive child who has ever lived, my mom likes to say. I guess it’s what I know. I have had my fair share of anxiety in my real life, so I don’t need it in my entertainment too.

But the more interesting question is: why are humans like this? (I can say this now that I know I’m not alone in this, that there are others who skip ahead, too)
Why do we need (AKA want) to know how it all unfolds?

Because sitting with uncertainty is unbearable. The unknown, the liminal space, the in-between — it’s so uncomfortable.

The practice of sitting with discomfort, learning to withstand uncertainty, to delight in the surprises and possibilities of the unknown (and even find peace here), has been one of the longest, most important practice of my life so far.

And it is clearly still on-going (since I still can’t even make it through a book without peaking to see how its going to end)

One of those friends on that call (who is fellow novel-end-ruin-er like myself), is currently in a long slow burn of a potential romantic situation. My other friend [name redacted] and I were joking about how we are trying to flip ahead in her life novel to see what happens with this romance, but her book is stuck shut. Our usual flipping-ahead-to-the-end strategy doesn’t work in real life, not with the anxiety of how our current situation will unfold.

I want to do that in my own life right now, too, take a little peak ahead.

But my life novel is stuck too. Glued shut and I can’t see what happens next, it’s annoying.

I know (intellectually) by now, that all I ever know is the next step, and I only know that when it is time.

I keep learning that more is often revealed. That I have to be patient enough to sit through the discomfort of the unknown and do my best to resist the urge to grab onto whatever next thing or quick fix appears just to move myself out of the excruciating liminal space of not knowing what’s next, not knowing how something is going to turn out. And that sometimes (only sometimes) it pans out even better than I could have dreamed up.

That is where I am right now, after finishing two years of school for yoga therapy, I’m officially a certified Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT.) Being in school gave me a knowable container of what was next, and there was some comfort in that because I didn’t have to worry about how to move forward in my business.

But I’m back, stepping out into the unknown again.

So, what is next for me? (so many people in my life have asked me this question, and I don’t blame them, they are curious)

I know I want to stay committed to following joy and aliveness and wherever my intuition leads. But what does that mean? What’s next exactly? I’m uncertain.

All I can say is that when I step back from the nonstop noise of the fear — the one that loves to guide my inner worry-wort to just grab onto something comfortable to ease that discomfort, even if temporarily— and when I have moments where I can sink down into the depths of my inner ocean of myself, below the wild waves and currents of anxiety on the surface, my best self says this:

“Not yet. Rest darling. Breathe, soften, celebrate, play. Enjoy right here right now, receive your life. Acknowledge how far you’ve come and just take a pause for a moment. Soak up the peace and the beauty right here right now, exactly as you are, exactly as it is. Your unknowing, messy, imperfect self who has come so far.”

“Nourish yourself”, she says, “You’re gonna need it when the next step appears.”

I practice this in my life, I’ve been practicing this for so long.

Yet, I still cannot commit to practicing this when I read. It’s just too easy to flip ahead. The stories I read aren’t glued shut, not like the coming chapters of my life.

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One of my favorite ways to connect with my intuition is to visit my future self.

Many years ago I created a visualization to visit my future self during my panic attacks as a way of assuring myself that I was going to be okay, that I would make it through. I wrote a whole Substack post on this a few years ago: my future self: a meditation that saved my life. I won’t retell the whole story, but it helped me (alongside daily unfiltered journaling) during one of the most challenging periods of my life, and is something I return to frequently, whenever I need to hear from the wise inner part of me that knows what to do.

The version I’m sharing today is a guided meditation that guides you to connect with your future self.

Your Future Self

When you practice this visualization below, you can go to your future self with a specific question or a decision you’ve been stressing about. You can go for comfort when you feel scared, anxious, or uncertain. Or you ask a general question that you might ask a tarot or oracle deck, such as: what is the message I need to receive? or what would you (highest self/best self/future self/intuition/etc) have me know right now?

We all have a wise inner part of us inside that we can connect to, and often the message we receive from them is simple. I shared examples some of my own examples of this in my past Substack post: “Sometimes she tells me to wait, to rest, to soften, or just to breathe in and out. “Not yet”, she’ll say, as she reminds me to be patient when uncertainty or overexcitement gets the best of me. She often gives me the courage to take the scary next step into the unknown.” No matter what answer I receive from my future self, I always leave feeling comforted.

Visiting Your Future Self: A Guided Meditation:

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This week I’m sharing a conversation I had with , a Relationship and Couples Coach. Lindsey shares a couple of her Real Life Magic stories, one from a solo backpacking trip she took to the Ansel Adams Wilderness and one about a stranger she met in a bar, and then we get into why synchronicity seems to find people who stay open to it.

We talk about the energetic patterns and cycles that show up in every relationship (not just the romantic ones), and about what it means to loosen your grip on manifestation if it accidentally turns into another way of trying to control the outcome. Lindsey also shares about her unique integrative approach to relationship and couples coaching.

🎧 Have a listen above.

A little bit about Lindsey:

Lindsey Bourne is a Relationship and Couples Coach who helps people understand what’s actually happening beneath the surface of conflict, disconnection, and dysregulation in relationships. Her work blends attachment theory, nervous system healing, subconscious rewiring, and parts work to help individuals and couples transform relationship patterns at the very root. She is especially known for her work on the power struggle phase of relationships, helping people move from cycles of conflict, activation, and disconnection to deeper intimacy, trust, and connection.

You can follow along with Lindsey’s work on Substack, Instagram, her Podcast: Relational Alchemy, and her Website.

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You can listen here on Substack or find the Real Life Magic conversations on Spotify. (Apple Podcasts and more coming soon.)

This is the Real Life Magic podcast, where people share their stories of times they feel they’ve experienced magic in their lives. They could be stories of miracles, synchronicity, meaningful coincidences, serendipity, signs, following intuition, unexplainable events, connections with loved ones who have passed, and more.

If you have a story of your own, I’d love to hear it. You can share it ⁠here⁠.

Today, I’m sharing a guided somatic visualization that I call, ‘your body is a compass’.

It was inspired by Martha Beck’s Body Compass exercise, which she uses to teach her clients/students how to recognize what a “yes” or a “no” feels like in the body, and to move toward the yeses and joy, one degree at a time. In this blog post, she shares that, “almost always, a wrong decision causes tightening and constriction, while a good choice feels like loosening, freedom, or weightlessness.”

Over years of paying attention to the somatic experiences that accompany my feelings, I’ve recognized that I have different physical sensations for each feeling. These sensations are unique to each of us and students and clients of mine have reported different sensations for the same feeling. So, I took the seed of Martha Beck’s Body Compass and created a guided somatic visualization that guides you through several different feelings to begin to intuit the difference and the unique language of your body.

I’ve led this in group yoga therapy classes and one-on-one sessions, and find that it is an excellent tool to strengthen embodied intuition and self-trust over time.

Your Body is a Compass

The visualization below will guide you through a series of memories, scenarios, and imagined moments, (from unconditional love to your least favorite food to a time you followed your intuition), so you can start to recognize the subtle energy and physical sensations occurring in your body underneath each one. Not the feeling itself (such as joy, love, peace, anger, sadness), but the embodied somatic experience (such as tingling, tightness, warmth, openness, heaviness, ease).

It won’t always be obvious right away, and that’s normal. Most of us are carrying years of conditioning, and sometimes trauma, that taught us to override our body’s signals. Learning your body’s language takes time and practice, and often is supported by community, and professionals along the way.

🎧 Your Body is a Compass: A Visualization

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Today I’m sharing a conversation with Sarah Espinosa about what it looks like to come back to yourself after years of ignoring the signals that something isn’t working.

Sarah shares her journey of spending over a decade in tech sales, climbing the corporate ladder, building an identity around achievement and external validation, and creating a life that looked exactly like it was “supposed to” look like, until it didn’t, and she couldn’t pretend otherwise anymore. Her story will feel familiar to anyone who has ever held it together on the outside while falling apart internally. We talk about building self-trust through the smallest possible promises, her path to yoga and spirituality, learning to recognize signs from loved ones you've lost, and practices she has to take care of herself and her mental health.

🎧 Have a listen above.

A little bit about Sarah:

Sarah Espinosa is a wellness founder and professional coach dedicated to helping ambitious, overwhelmed millennial women reclaim their lives from burnout. She worked for over a dozen years in tech sales at giants like Google and Adobe before burning out and stepping back from the 9-5 life to heal. Sarah is a 3x corporate burnout survivor, turned fierce advocate for mental health in a capitalist world, and she wants to help women identify, prevent, and recover from burnout so they can live happier, healthier lives.

Today, she blends her 200HR YTT yoga and mobility training with strategic burnout and workplace boundaries coaching. Her next group program for corporate women wanting to detangle their self-worth from their jobs, Identity Shift Intensive, starts the week of July 6th and is accepting applications now!

When she isn’t coaching clients 1:1 or teaching yoga in NYC, Sarah is writing her cultural digest blog, prettybusy, a weekly newsletter and place for deep dive essays on tech, pop culture, current events, any anything else affecting millennial women in America.

• Connect with Sarah: sarah-espinosa.com or @sarahespinosa__ on socials.

• Sign up for the Identity Shift Intensive: https://www.sarah-espinosa.com/identityshiftintensive

• Read her essays: prettybusy.beehiiv.com

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This is the Real Life Magic podcast, where people share their stories of times they feel they’ve experienced magic in their lives — miracles, synchronicities, meaningful coincidences, serendipity, signs, moments of following intuition, unexplainable events, and the experiences that make you wonder if something more might be going on. You can listen here on Substack or find the conversations on Spotify.

If you have a story of your own, I’d love to hear it — you can share it here.

Today I’m sharing a conversation with where she shares how a series of devastating losses cracked something open in her family and set off a chain of events she never could have engineered on her own. What followed is a visceral example of what it looks like to trust life, not only as a concept, but as a practice you build through repeated, very real experience with loss and what comes after it.

🎧 Have a listen above.

A little bit about Lesley:

Lesley Christine is an emotional clearing expert and the publisher of a 100th Anniversary Edition of Florence Scovel Shinn’s classic The Game of Life and How to Play It: Expanded with Commentary and Guided Practices. She is the creator of Living the Game of Life, a community built around Shinn’s timeless principles, and the developer of The Source Method™ — a precise, systematic process for finding and releasing the emotional and energetic patterns that keep self-aware women stuck, including patterns inherited from family lines generations back. Her work helps women who have done the inner work finally experience it landing in their actual lives.

You can find her and her work at lesleychristine.com.

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This is the Real Life Magic podcast, where people share their stories of times they feel they’ve experienced magic in their lives — miracles, synchronicities, meaningful coincidences, serendipity, signs, moments of following intuition, unexplainable events, and the experiences that make you wonder if something more might be going on. You can listen here on Substack or find the conversations on Spotify.

If you have a story of your own, I’d love to hear it — you can share it here.

Life started to feel like a quest, a grand adventure, with twists and turns, and different paths— some leading to dead ends, others full of surprises, but all with important lessons in hindsight. I made the choice to treat everything I came across like it was a clue to a larger mystery, every synchronicity or intuitive pull like it was guiding me towards something one step at a time, and every person I met like they might have a message or lesson for me. I decided to follow my curiosities, intuitive feelings, and joys, however random or weird they seemed, and this made everything more fun.

It started to feel like I was living in conversation with life. As if there was a mysterious energy, a current beneath the surface, orchestrating it all. I naturally became more present and started to feel more alive because I was experiencing more awe, wonder, beauty, and joy in small moments even through life’s challenges and tragedies.

This idea became the foundation for Real Life Magic.

Synchronicities are meaningful coincidences (a term Carl Jung coined, though the phenomenon goes much further back, across several cultures, wisdom traditions, spiritual philosophies, and religions).

Whether or not the synchronicities are “real” or statistical occurrences is less important to me, because choosing to embrace them has given me a deeper sense of meaning in my life—meaning that I intentionally created.

I now teach synchronicity as a mindfulness practice. A playful way to be present and find beauty and awe within the mundane and hardships of daily life. Tracking them can be a fun, low-stakes way to start noticing what’s occurring around you, an anchor in the present moment.

They tend to arrive not when you’re grasping for them, but when you’re simply present. I like to set the intention to notice more, and then move on. When I stop thinking about them is usually when they show up.

Some common examples of synchronicity:

• The person you are thinking about suddenly calls or texts you

• A book, show, or movie where the characters are dealing with the exact thing you’re working through

• The same theme, situation, animal, symbol, number, name, etc— keeps repeating.

• You overhear a conversation or randomly discover something that feels like a response to your inner monologue

• A random old song you've had stuck in your head comes on somewhere unexpected

Two of my favorite practices to increase synchronicity are:

• Track them: When you notice one, write it down: what happened, when, how you felt, whether it meant something.

• Storytelling: Read and listen to synchronicity stories, share your own, and look backward in your own life — write down moments that felt like more than coincidence and see if they connect to something larger.

Here is a fun one from my life:

In 2018, I had quit my job to commit to a 200-hour yoga teacher training in Costa Rica. Since I'd already quit, I decided to visit my sister in China for a couple of weeks before training began.

As I boarded my flight back to NY, the reality of what I was doing sank in, and I started to spiral. I began to beat myself up for making a reckless decision (even though the decision had been well thought-out and planned). By the time I found my seat at the back of the plane, I had talked myself into calling my old boss to ask for my job back, and canceling the yoga training.

In the middle of the spiral, I had a sudden, inexplicable urge to look in the seat-back pocket in front of me. Behind the in-flight magazine was a Chinese edition of Yoga Journal Magazine — seemingly left behind by whoever had sat there before me. I quickly checked the nearby seat-back pockets to see if anyone else had this magazine. Nobody else had it.

It made me laugh and pulled me out of my spiral. Finding a yoga magazine in that exact moment was enough to make me feel like I was on the right track. Something in me settled, and I didn’t question the decision again after that.

If you have any short synchronicity stories of your own, share them in the comments below. Or if you want to share one with me to feature on this Substack, please let me know.

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When times are tough, I return to a soothing place I created within my mind & body. I call it my inner sanctuary, and I wanted to share it here since it is one of my go-to tools (alongside my favorite sitting with the feeling visualization).

I shared this practice in the 3-month group yoga therapy class I hosted from February through April. Throughout the 3 months, we practiced developing deep self-trust and self-confidence internally, so that no matter what happens externally, we know we can take care of ourselves and have tools that work for us amid life’s unpredictability.

My friend Jess, a therapist and astrologer who was a guest teacher for one of our sessions, put it well: "Self-trust is having confidence in your own capacity to handle life's ups and downs." This practice is one of the ways I've lived that out.

Creating Your Inner Sanctuary

What you’re about to create with this visualization is a place that belongs entirely to you. A sanctuary inside of your mind and body — a healing, nourishing, or revitalizing space that you can return to.

Once you build it out, you can come back to it whenever. Sometimes I drop into it for just a few seconds. Other times I’ll lie on my couch in the middle of a hard day and stay there as long as I need. You can visit it before you go to sleep, daily while you’re going through a challenging season in your life, or if you need to feel restored.

There is no right way to create it. It can be as simple or as elaborate as comes naturally. Some people see it clearly, and others feel it more than they see it. Get comfortable, and allow your imagination to be free without limitations as you listen to it below:

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Today I am sharing a conversation with my friend and my former holistic career coach, Lynn Mull. In this conversation, we talk about how the path to our goals and dreams isn’t linear. Lynn shares how she views the dips, detours, and side explorations as part of the path that add new depth and layers, not as mistakes (which is such a relief!). And that you are never too late to begin, or to begin again.

At the beginning, Lynn shares a couple of her recent Real Life Magic moments and synchronicities, how she uses pattern reading and noticing what is showing up in her life and business, and toward the end of our conversation, we experience a fun surprise synchronicity between the two of us.

Lynn Mull is a Holistic Career Coach who effortlessly blends the practical with the holistic and the woo. She transitioned from working on Wall Street to working in wellness, and she is now a writer, healer, coach, facilitator, speaker, spiritual advisor, and Reiki Master.

She is the creator of the Clarity Map, which alllows you to map out any goal or your life’s big picture in a simple, visual, actionable, and non-linear way, which we talk about in this conversation.

She is also the author of The 24 Oracle Deck, which is created according to the phases of the moon and infused with Reiki Energy to help you gain clarity and closeness to all three of your energy centers – mind, body, and spirit.

You can follow along with her on her Substack and find ways to work with her on her website.

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joy, play & curiosity as medicine

Anything can be medicine or poison.

I’ve heard this from many teachers over the years, and it’s proven to be true.

From 2018 to 2021, it was clear to me that I had started (subconsciously) using my self-development, spiritual growth, and wellness journey as a way to (try to) “perfect” myself and to (try to) take away the tension inherent to being human.

I would try to stop and then find myself jumping back in through new side doors. From 2014 onward, in addition to years of therapy and deep self-work, I had read endless books on self-development, spirituality, nervous-system regulation, meditation, mindfulness, breathwork, yoga philosophy, several other spiritual, philosophical, and mystical traditions, astrology, human design, manifestation, tarot, the list goes on.

These were things I loved, and that had carried me through some of the hardest seasons of my life, but I could easily turn them into ways to give away my agency, feel like a victim of my circumstances, sneak productivity into, try to control life, or perfect myself. What had started as medicine for me had become poison.

It was sometime around 2021 that I decided I needed a real break. I needed to heal from healing.

I stopped reading non-fiction and stepped away from anything I could sneak perfectionism or productivity into in the name of growth. I didn't need to dig deeper, learn more, or find a new practice.

I needed self-acceptance and to return to joy, play, and curiosity.

I started reading fiction books I’d neglected for years: romance novels, mysteries, magical realism, and fantasy. Stories that made me feel alive in a way I hadn't in a while.

I had also moved back to New York City that spring, and I coupled it with spending more time with friends and exploring the city as if it were a grand adventure. I took surfing lessons in Rockaway, I biked along the West Side Highway whenever I could, and I explored new coffee shops, bookstores, and neighborhoods. I made having fun my priority, and I came back to life.

When I started feeling alive again, my creativity came back too. It led me to new people, new opportunities, and the energy to create what had been sitting in my heart. Things I couldn’t access when I was in a rut of trying so goddamn hard.

Prioritizing joy, play, and curiosity was the medicine. It still often is.

For me, that aliveness tends to show up when life feels like a giant quest or adventure: exploring somewhere or something new, time in nature, working on a creative project, traveling, moving my body outdoors, getting lost in a story, deep-diving into a curiosity, or following a thread that pulls at me for no logical reason. Following my intuition and noticing signs feels like joy and mystery to me, too. Playing with tarot, certain forms of manifestation (others I find unhealthy, maybe a topic for another post), and energy work all feel like fun to me when I am doing them from the right place.

None of these practices or tools are bad. I’ve returned to them all in a healthier, more playful and intuitve way.

Our culture is so thoroughly soaked in sneaky productivity and perfectionism, in secretly trying to perfect ourselves or control life, that joy, play, and genuine just-for-fun curiosity can be radical and necessary.

This pattern runs deep for me, so it isn’t a one-time fix. I thought it would be a good time to share my favorite (fun) practices around this now, since I’m doing another round of “joy as medicine” in my life.

If you ever need a quick reconnection to joy, play, or curiosity — something that reminds you of what makes you feel alive — here are a few of my favorite practices:

practices to reconnect to joy, play, & curiosity as medicine:

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noticing beauty

The practice is simple: at the end of the day, I write down anything that moved me. Moments of beauty, joy, wonder, love, awe, inspiration, a synchronicity, a sign — the small things we usually rush past without registering that they were even there.

Knowing that I have to write it down at the end of the day requires me to pay attention to the simple joys in the mundane of everyday life. Because if I can’t enjoy the little things now, then how will I ever enjoy anything?

Here’s what a few recent entries of mine have looked like:

• The way the light comes through my bay windows in the morning in the spring

• A text from a friend that made me laugh out loud

• A fresh light green baby leaf on my monstera plant

• The smell of my morning coffee

• Perfectly ripe raspberries

• Watching all the joyful tiny dogs play together in one section of the park

• A song that came on at exactly the right moment

• Finding a parking spot right away when I was running late (and had asked the universe to help me find an easy one)

• Seeing a couple laughing hysterically together on the subway

• Someone sharing their story with me that very much mirrored what I am going through and needed to hear at the exact time

• The feeling of getting into clean sheets

• Cuddling with the pups

• Seeing a hummingbird at the right moment when I needed reassurance (a sign from my grandma)

• Noticing the first signs of green and flowers coming back after this long winter

Doing this practice for a long time has changed the filter of my brain to notice beautiful things that are already there (rather than only focusing on what is going wrong, what I have to fix, etc.)

And it doesn’t require me to pretend everything is perfect or wait until my life is more settled to start appreciating it (which, as we all know, is a moment that never quite arrives).

It’s been part of the daily mindfulness practice in the group yoga therapy class I’ve been hosting the last couple of months, and it’s been one of my favorite things to hear people share in our group chat.

If you want to give it a try, know that at first it can be hard to come up with things to add to your beauty list, and that’s completely normal. But pretty quickly (once you get to the end of the first day and realize you have nothing to write down), something shifts, and you start noticing things in real time throughout your day because some part of your brain knows it’s going to be asked to remember later. It multiplies faster than you’d expect.

You can keep the list in a journal/notebook or the notes app on your phone — whatever you’ll actually use and come back to. Start by writing 5-10 things down a day.

If you try it this week, let me know what you notice.

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Today I am sharing a conversation with my dear friend Daniela (), founder of Lunaria Design Studio. Daniela is a brand and web designer, an astrologer, and one of the most naturally creative and whimsical people I know in the most grounded, real way possible.

I wanted Daniela to be one of the first people I sat down with when I brought Real Life Magic podcast-style conversations back, because she is an example of someone who has consciously chosen to live this way. She has built a practice of noticing signs, following synchronicities, and listening to her body as a compass as real, everyday tools for staying present and taking care of herself. And she has done it through some genuinely hard seasons of life.

What I also love about Daniela is that this same philosophy runs straight through her work. She has a rare ability to see people: to hear a vision that someone can barely articulate and bring it fully to life. She was able to bring my vision of Real Life Magic to life in the winter of 2021, long before I shared it with the world. I was blown away by her intuitive and creative work then, and she has only grown more herself and more extraordinary with every passing year.

In this conversation, she shares her story, how she weaves Real Life Magic into her daily life, and how her business (which has taken some pretty wild and beautiful turns) is its own Real Life Magic story.

🎧 Have a listen to her story above.

A little bit about Daniela:

Daniela Martí is the founder of Lunaria Design Studio, where she helps clients build brands with real heart and soul. Her work sits at the intersection of design, spirituality, astrology, and deep self-expression. She offers Brand Astrology Readings, Brand Kits for every zodiac sign, the Planetaria Brand Course, and one-on-one brand and web design projects.

You can follow along with her writing on her Substack, The Lunaria Letter, and receive creative inspiration from Lunaria’s Instagram.

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🎧 Prefer to listen? I recorded an (unedited) voiceover for you above.

Real Life Magic Practice # 3

Almost everyone has been told to “sit with their feelings” at some point, and almost no one is taught how to actually do that or what that even means.

Before I found the practice that I’ll share with you today, the idea of sitting with my feelings felt abstract and a little scary. I didn’t know what I’d find if I let myself feel something fully, and I didn’t know where to start.

Luckily, I came across this creative visualization technique in my early twenties, and it changed everything.

It was the first time “sitting with a feeling” made sense to me in a practical way. This technique gave me a tangible, safe container to first explore the physical sensations underneath a feeling, and then to use my creative imagination to create an image or scenario to allow me to feel and process it rather than intellectualize it. It gave me a way to invite a feeling in, let it show me what it was trying to tell me (rather than pushing it away), then give it compassion and take care of it before releasing it.

I use it all the time now. I have my own scenarios for different feelings (anxiety, anger, overwhelm, feeling lost, etc), and I can move through them with more ease than I used to. For example, for anxiety, I picture butterflies in a cage in my belly, all flying around manically, and when I resolve it, I open the cage, and they float peacefully out into the forest. For anger, I picture a woman screaming in a room, and to resolve it, I hand her plates to smash until she cries, and I lovingly hold her in my arms and let her cry it out. It sounds a little wild, and it works. Everyone I’ve guided through this has come up with their own images, colors, or scenarios, so different from one another that it still surprises me how powerful our imaginations are.

I guided my group yoga therapy class through this earlier this month, and the response was so encouraging that I wanted to share it here. One person said it was “really powerful” and that the answer to what she was carrying became immediately clear. Another shared that it was the first time she’d ever physically felt where a feeling was living in her body. Someone else said it was easier the second time she did it with me. This practice (like anything else) grows stronger with repetition.

I’ve guided many people through versions of this over the years as I’ve worked to improve it. It’s inspired by many teachers and blends a few common techniques. My version of it weaves together the RAIN mindfulness technique, somatic processing, mind-body connection, creative visualization, and loving-kindness.

I wish I remembered who I first learned it from over a decade ago. A few years ago, I came across a wonderful version of it by Maya Raichoora, a UK-based mental fitness expert, which reinspired part of this version. Adding the compassion and loving-kindness piece is an important part that I felt was missing from all previous versions of this method that I’ve come across.

If you’d like to give it a try, I added my guided audio recording below:

Real Life Magic Practice #3:
Sitting with the Feeling: Creative Visualization

Sitting with the Feeling: What to Expect

This is a 10-minute visualization you can return to again and again, for different emotions and different seasons of life. The more you practice it, the easier it gets, and eventually you won’t need the recording at all.

Here’s a brief walkthrough of what we’ll do so you’ll know what to expect before we begin: (Audio below)

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Real Life Magic started in 2018 as an idea to write stories about the moments when life feels like it’s trying to tell you something. Stories about synchronicities, signs, intuition, meaningful coincidences, miracles, connections with loved ones who have passed, and unexplainable things. Stories illustrating the idea that when you learn how to listen to life, to pay attention to your body, to timing, to patterns, to the small things you might otherwise walk right past, that life starts to feel more meaningful.

I knew living like this (living in conversation with life) was a grounded choice because I’ve seen it in my life and in the lives of the people I’ve talked to and worked with over the years.

And I’ve learned that one of the most powerful ways to cultivate intuition and start noticing synchronicity is through stories. By hearing someone else’s experience and recognizing a part of yourself in it.

That’s part of what I’ve been building here: a storytelling project, a collection of moments from all kinds of people, different backgrounds, different beliefs, different lives, that show what it looks like, and how meaningful it is to live this way in real life.

I’m collecting more Real Life Magic stories again, so if you have a story of a sign, a dream, a miracle, a moment your gut led you somewhere you couldn’t have planned, something small and impossible to explain, maybe something that you’ve never forgotten or even shared, I’d love to hear it. You can share however feels natural: I’m looking for both longer conversations around the topic (podcast-style), or shorter stories (a short written story, or a casual voice note like you’re sharing it with a friend). I can keep you anonymous if you prefer.

Or if you know someone who might have a story like this, I’d love to be connected to them.

Below is a short one of mine, originally shared on this Substack in July 2023. It’s about my grandmother, a hummingbird, and what it takes to believe you’re allowed to want what you want.

Real Life Magic Moment #3:
searching for signs (july 2023)

About a year and a half ago, I was feeling lost. I was unfulfilled in my job and genuinely unsure whether to quit and give my own creative business a real try, keep the paycheck and continue doing the fun creative things on the side, or give up on my creative side projects altogether.

I wasn’t getting anywhere by looping the same thoughts in my brain. I was exhausted by my inner confusion and desperate for some direction.

One morning, while I was staying at my mom’s house, I decided to go to Meme’s grave (my deceased maternal grandmother) and talk to her about it. I sat down cross-legged at her grave, feeling vulnerable, and told her what was going on:

I told her that my dream had been to have a creative business. And that all of it felt impossible, entitled, frivolous, absurd, overwhelming, etc, and I had this nagging voice of who the hell are you anyway? on repeat. I didn’t know where to start, how to narrow it down, or if any of it even made sense.

Couldn’t I just be happy with my normal job? Couldn’t I just have normal hobbies, do things purely for fun, and watch TV sometimes like regular people? Did I even want to do this?

I begged Meme for a clear sign if I should continue to pursue my creative dreams. I wanted a clear message from her, one that I would understand. None of these bullshit elusive signs, I wanted the real deal. Specifically, I demanded that a hummingbird be included in this message, so I knew I was on the right track.

I handed the burden of this choice to her and decided if I didn’t get that clear sign that day, I would give up on my creative dreams forever. (I know what you’re thinking, not exactly fair to Meme, who was probably just trying to rest and enjoy whatever the afterlife looks like. But, desperate times.)

I thanked her, stood up from the grave, walked back to the car, and got swept up in the rest of the day and forgot about it entirely.

Later that afternoon, I was lazily lying on the floor at my mom’s house with my sister Morgan, playing with my baby niece Florence. In the middle of whatever conversation we were having, Morgan looked over at me and said, “Chelsea, I forgot to tell you. You’ll never guess what we found.”

She left the room and came back with a small pile of our old children’s books.

“We were going through our childhood books to find some for Florence,” she said, “and we found a bunch of your old books with messages to you from Meme!”

The first book she handed me had a hummingbird on the front cover, and a handwritten message addressed to me on the inside from my grandmother.

I stood there frozen for a moment.

Before I could take in what I was holding, chills had spread through my body. I’m not sure a more obvious, undeniable, sign-ier sign could have found its way to me.

Maybe my creative business dreams were worth following after all. At the very least, I could do my best to baby-step my way there and see what flowed.

And when the rational part of my mind told me that none of this was real, I reminded myself that it didn’t matter. That the act of looking for a sign is a sign in itself. A signal from somewhere deep inside that I want to do the scary thing, and I’ve been searching externally for anything to confirm it.

But I prefer the Real Life Magic version of the story: that it was Meme who sent me a sign. It’s more fun that way.

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