On the root causes of emotional eating, tools with which to begin your healing process, and gifting yourself grace as you go. And you're not broken.
Amber Romaniuk is an Emotional Eating, Digestive and Hormone Expert, with 12 years experience helping high achieving women create a level of body confidence, intuition and optimal health through powerful mindset healing, self-care and overcoming self-sabotage with food.
She does this through addressing the key negative thoughts, patterns and limiting beliefs that keep women stuck in the same behaviors for years and decades, that they haven't been able to break.
Resources:
Emotional Eating Quiz
Free 30 minute Body Freedom Consultation
Amber's podcast
Amber's YouTube
Amber's Instagram
On the undeniable gift of becoming our own ally, when personal healing becomes shared, universal healing.
Annette Knopp is a meditation teacher, somatic counselor, and nature mystic who favors an integrative approach to living in wakeful and embodied connection. For twenty years she has mentored clients on their unique journeys of healing and awakening. She spent nine years living in India, Japan, Australia, and the Netherlands before moving to the US on a religious worker visa. In 2009 Annette and her husband Stephan opened the Blue Spirit Retreat Center in Nosara, Costa Rica. Today she divides her time between Costa Rica and Woodstock, New York. In the US, she is often teaching at the Upaya Zen Center and Omega Institute in Rhinebeck..
Mystic Nomad: A Woman’s Wild Journey to True Connection https://www.annetteknopp.com/book.
On practice as a continuous evolution of form, care and depth, and sustaining the light of our teachers as an act of love.
Kino MacGregor is a Miami native, happiest on the beach with a fresh coconut. She's a poet at heart, always stopping to smell the flowers. She also the founder of Omstars, the world’s first yoga TV network, and her message of spiritual strength reaches practitioners the world over. With 1m+ followers on Instagram and over 500k subscribers on YouTube and Facebook, she's sought after as an expert in yoga and international yoga teacher, inspirational speaker, author of four books, producer of six Ashtanga Yoga DVDs, a writer, vlogger, world traveler, and co-founder of Miami Life Center.
On the tortoise approach, the seven-day ask, the gift and truth of less being more, and the practice of no-complaints-whatsoever.
For over two decades, Light Watkins has helped leaders and teams embed presence into how they live, lead, and connect. His approach elevates performance not by pushing harder, but by helping audiences show up more fully. Light is the author of five bestselling books on happiness, mindfulness, minimalism, and transformation. His TEDx Talk on rethinking mindfulness is approaching a million views. Known as “The Presence Whisperer,” Light delivers keynotes that are humorous, heartfelt, practical, unforgettable.
On the practice of sitting, walking, becoming, and living as yourself, precisely where you are.
This long-awaited new book from Shunryu Suzuki: Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life, edited by Jiryu Rutschman-Byler and Sojun Mel Weitsman, is one of my favorite books of 2025.
Jiryu Rutschman-Byler is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest and teacher in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, with dharma transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman. Jiryu has trained residentially in Zen temples since 1996, and currently serves as a co-Abbot of San Francisco Zen Center through his role as Abiding Abbot of Green Gulch Farm Zen Center.
Shunryu Suzuki was one of the most influential spiritual teachers of the Twentieth Century and a founding father of Zen in America. Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, first published in the U.S. in 1970, is considered one of the most important Buddhist books in modern history, and has been translated into more than thirty-five languages.
A Japanese priest of the Sōtō lineage, Suzuki taught Buddhism in the United States from 1959 until his death in 1971. He was the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. While contemporary Buddhist figures such as His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Thích Nhất Hạnh, and Pema Chödrön are more familiar to American audiences, Shunryu Suzuki was among the first Buddhist teachers with cultural influence in the West and was the first to establish a lasting practice community in the U.S. Importantly, the warmth, humor, and simplicity of Suzuki’s teachings made Buddhism accessible.
For decades, the San Francisco Zen Center has preserved an archive of Suzuki’s original audio teachings, most of which have never been edited or published.
Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life offers newly available teachings by Suzuki, exploring a practice he describes as fundamentally about “becoming yourself.” Rather than offering a philosophy or even a set of techniques, Suzuki points to a way of being, and calls readers to the simple practice of zazen, or “just to sit,” as the expression of a fulfilling life and grounded ethical orientation.
Becoming Yourself is a result of the painstaking efforts of the Zen community over many years. Archiving, transcribing and interpreting Suzuki’s intention clearly and accurately proved to be very challenging work. The final editor and compiler of the book is Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, a senior teacher and co-Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center.
As we learn in these pages, “becoming yourself” is not meant to be understood as an idea but rather tried out as a way of being. It is a practice of deeply connecting with how it feels to be alive in your surroundings, whether on a meditation cushion or not, and stepping forward from that connection. It is opening to your life, wherever you are, and finding right there a deep well of innate wisdom, compassion, and care.
On the Tao Te Ching as guide through recovery, allowing our process, and the generative medicine of stillness.
Miguel Rios is an educator, writer, and recovery advocate.
By day, he teaches 8th-grade English, helping young people find their voice through literature. By night—and often early morning—he writes poetry, reflections, and spiritual texts grounded in Taoist philosophy, sobriety, and presence.
The Way Within Without was born from Miguel’s personal journey through recovery. It’s the book he wished he had in the beginning: something honest, non-dogmatic, and deeply gentle. Miguel believes healing happens quietly. In stillness, not striving. In simplicity, not performance. His work blends ancient wisdom with modern clarity, inviting readers to return to the calm already within them. He lives in New York and spends his free time walking, reading, and sipping coffee.
On the power of letting go of numbing habit energies, aligning with our intrinsic wisdom, and living a clear life.
Cecily is a mother, author, investor, and founder, the voice behind the ClearLife Movement, the ClearLife Reset, and host of the Undimmed podcast. A former attorney and Silicon Valley executive turned author and investor, she's also the co-founder of Wisdom Ventures. Cecily helps people create undimmed lives of presence and intention, free from the stigma of addiction and the patterns of avoidance that keep us from living fully.
Her new book, released January 2026. Undimmed, The Eight Awarenesses for Freedom from Unwanted Habits - https://www.cecilymak.com/book-coming-soon
Podcast, Undimmed; conversations with people on an undimming path: https://www.cecilymak.com/podcast
ClearLife Reset Supplement (feel amazing as you take a break from drinking): https://www.clearlifereset.com/
Our annual session includes readings from Hold Nothing, emphasizing practice, respect, and structures of encouragement. Join me to sit briefly, address potent prompts intended to create intentionality and spaces of grace for you and yours as you proceed into this year.
Resources
Planning Guidebook
Feelings and Needs List
Substacks
Elena Brower – Hold Nothing
Sierra Campbell – Choose Nurture | choosenurture.com
Laurel Hayne-Miller – The Flowering Path
Books