Living an Authentic Life with Shana Francesca

Our guest today is  Shana Francesca  a professional life designer, speaker and writer. Shana helps people live more joyful and fulfilled lives by speaking about Life Design. 

From an early age Shana had been fascinated by the power of intention, the way that what we say affects our perception of reality, the way our physical surroundings reflect back to us our beliefs and our beliefs about ourselves.

Fifteen years into her career and five years into founding what is now Concinnate, Shana continue's to lean into what it means to be a leader. Her purpose is to empower us all to live more intentional, connected and authentic lives-to design our lives and by doing so, experience untold depths of Joy. 

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Jennifer Pilates, Spiritual Thought Leader has been  transforming clients body, mind and spirits worldwide for over 20-years as a Celebrity Trainer + Empowerment Mindset Coach, World-Renowned Intuitive-Medium Advisor, Author and Host of the Top-Rated Podcast Host Empowered Within. 

 Jennifer is a  multi-passionate entrepreneur, detail-loving, stubborn-as-heck achiever, unshakeable optimistic, philanthropic, self-care activist, fur-baby momma and ocean loving intuitive-empath. 

"My mission is to help you discover your own truths, gain self-empowerment and in turn transform Body, Mind and Spirit.”   – Jennifer XO

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Transcript

0:59

Welcome to Empowered Within a Soul Quenching transformational podcast that will set your soul on fire through candid and inspiring conversations. Leading experts, celebrities, healers, and I share our journeys of how we've overcome challenges to living an empowered life from within. I'm your host, Jennifer Pilates. Welcome to another episode of Empowered Within. Hi there and welcome to the show. I am super excited to have with us today, Shayna Franca. Having transformed her life, breaking away from the pattern of abuse in her family, Shayna found curiosity to be one of her greatest tools. She has had to get curious about what was possible. She has had to be willing to question everything and take on new challenges. Shayna is a speaker, writer, and entrepreneur. As the founder and lead designer at Consonant, a multi-discipline, interior design and life design firm. Working with clients around the world, Shayna lives her life, leaning into empathy, curiosity, and intention. And through her design work, conversations and talks, she invites people to do the same. Shayna believes our present and future were transformed when we take ownership for designing our lives. We write our life story, we do that with the level of intention we infuse into the many small decisions we make in every day. Oh my goodness. Shayna cannot wait to jump into all of this with you. So tell me, take me to, how did this start for you? How did you go, oh my gosh, this is my passion, this is what I need to be doing, and highlighting this for everyone in the world. Yeah, so I, it started when I was a kid growing up in an abusive environment. I began to recognize the ways in which I was not safe to take up space in the world. Right. Um, I was not safe to be seen, heard, and understood as my authentic self. And I started in reaction to that crafting my physical environment very specific ways. I would, you know, careful when I was at the doctor's office, like my, with my parents, I would sit in the waiting room and carefully like, tear out the pages of the magazine cuz you know, you would get in trouble for pairing out the pages, right? I would check out the pages that were like a beautiful home or like a, or a, or a landscape design or. Or well, Dressed person or like anything that kind of felt like it was connected to how I wanted to be able to show up in the world as I grew into the world, right? And I would put them all up over the walls in my bedroom, and then I started getting index cards. I still keep index cards still part of my life. Um, where I would write. Um, quotes that I would find in magazines on count. Cuz back then we had like physical calendars, right? I still do. So I would take, I still, so I would take the ones and I would, and I would tear out the pages or rewrite the, the quote that really inspired me, that felt connected to reading a sense of safety and a, and a sense of ability to show up as myself in the world. And I put those all up on the world. Now we would call that vision board, right? Right. But I had. No con, there was no word for that in my life at that point in time. It was just me trying to take up space in the ways that I was safe, and every time something difficult would happen inside of our home, I would rearrange the furniture, I would organize something and it, and now I look back and I feel like it was almost like I was breaking my association with what was and resetting the stage for possibility. Right, right. I needed to change my physical environment to signal to my brain that something new was possible. And just, and I kind of began to, and now relate our physical environment to like setting a stage, right? Like when you go and watch a play, that stage helps you to. Create a frame of reference to be, to support the actors, to create an environment, to create a culture, to set the energy of a moment, right? And so it was that for me as recognizing that physical environment, I wanted to be able to be the person who helped craft that for other people. And then I realized interior design was a thing, and that's what I went to school for. But there was always this deeply. Like both spiritual and mental aspect of what I was doing. And eventually that started taking up more and more space in my business. The mental, the spiritual aspect, the discussion about designing our lives, not just our physical space. And then, here we are with ate and you know, talking about life design and intentional living. That is so amazing. So tell me, what was it about your childhood that you felt that you couldn't be seen or heard for who you were? Well, I mean, growing up in an abusive environment, if I were to define that even further, it was physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive, right? And so when you are in that environment, you are punished for not behaving or being or existing in ways in which are authentic to you, but out of line with other people's expectations, right? And that's where other people's expectations and them putting them on us can be, So dangerous, right? Right. Detrimental. When we decide what's good for us is good for everybody, right? And because our f and also because our view of the world and our frame of reference is so limited. Without recognition of that, we start to put our expectations on other people and try to control them. And that is that slippery slope into abuse. And so I was physically punished, you know, I was limited. I wasn't even allowed to close my bedroom door unless I was getting changed. You know, there was a lot of control in my life, a lot of punishment for simply being myself. And so, yeah, it was very clearly communicated on a very consistent basis that I was not safe. So going through from childhood to now, How has your healing journey looked for you? Because that's a lot to unpack and that's a emotionally Yeah. Mindset. Physically how has your journey looked? At first? The healing journey was really hard because I had no one else embarking on it with me. I was really embarking on it entirely myself. And, and so it looked like me reading books like me trying to gather mentors through the written word. Right? Right. Because that's all I, that's all I had access to at the time. And my healing journey started when I was like in my teens, late, mid to late teens. And pretty quickly I realized, you know, with, by the time I was in my early mid twenties, I realized that I could not really, truly heal without support. I was trying to do it on my own, but hyper individualization is also a function of P T S D is also a function of trauma. You know, not feeling safe with other people. But it became very clear to me that in fact, I needed other people to heal. I needed community, I needed support, I needed mentors, I needed champions. and so slowly I didn't know how to do those things, right? When you grow up in an abusive environment, you are consistently held away from everyone else, and I grew up in extreme evangelical Christianity, and so I was also starting to separate myself from extreme fundamentalist belief. So I was walking away from my religious community and walking away from my family, literally at the same time. So all of the community I had ever known. And so I moved to the city. I moved into Philly. And I began to craft new community around myself. I started a book club. I started going networking events. I started to find people who I figured out that I was safe with right through sharing little aspects of my story and seeing how they honored them or you know, and then being able to craft community around myself in which I wasn't the only person doing healing, but we were all kind of, On these journeys in different ways and could support and help each other and have these really important conversations about what does it look like to show up for each other. Yeah. And so the one of the largest parts of my healing journey has been curiosity and community. Wow. And you talk about a lot of how you've transformed your life from one defined by abuse to one defined by joy. Yeah. How did you transform that, because that's huge. Yeah, especially growing up in trauma, the thing that you learn in an abusive environment is that you're not safe to be present. You spend a lot of time dissociated, and so in that dissociation, you can't be in your own body because it's not safe. And so part of that healing journey was learning to be safe inside of my own body so that I could be present so I could be connected to joy, because for me, Being connected to the present moment. Being in, being present in this moment, right? Not trying to make it anything other than what it is, accepting it for what it is, but knowing that who I am in this moment leads to who I can be in the next right is where I find joy, where I'm grounded in that joy, just being able to be present. And so that's been. That kind of progression of how did I get to joy? I found it safe to be inside of my own body. Wow. Were there any certain practices that you started or, you know Yeah. Therapies that help you to stay connected to Joy and that keep you in that place? Yeah. Yeah. So for me, staying connected to my body, and I think you'll truly appreciate this being in my body had to be a practice. I started, so I started doing Pilates when I was a teenager. Aw. And doing, and, and being connected to the breath. It felt like the first time I learned how to breathe. And cause you, you spend so much of your life when you are in danger, constantly holding your breath literally, and phys like literally holding your breath, unsure of. What might happen in the next moment. And so practicing, breathing, meditation, lotties, all of these things really got me connected to my body so that I could, you know, show up and be in my own body. But they became these practices where every time they kind of slipped away, I was like, oh wait. We need to bring it back. We need to bring it back. That's what's centering me more than anything. Absolutely. I agree with you. I have those moments too, where I always like to test and or life gets busy and then you're not. For me in my Pilates flow, what I agree with you, the breath work of Pilates is amazing and it's more that, that I find that some people can't handle Pilates than the actual movement because you must be in your body in that moment. You must feel. And a lot of people don't wanna feel what's going on. And that's really, I have found that quite a bit. Yeah. With clients, it's a huge deal. It's a huge deal because so many people feel unsafe inside their own bodies. And that's when I began to recognize that's where the shift happened for me in my business, from just focusing on interior design and kind of coaching my clients around that to focusing on designing our lives because they're really. Very similar things, right? To me, it's the connection between interior design, our physical environment, and interior design, our internal environment, right? And so in making that shift and making that connection and recognizing that people don't feel safe in, in, to be themselves, inside of their own home, and likewise don't feel safe to be themselves or to be inside of their own bodies, it's deeply. Necessary that we heal that. Absolutely. Yeah. And tell me how do you work with that, with clients? How, like, is would I just be a normal person that's attracted to you to say, oh my gosh, there's just something special about her. I want her to do my house, and then it becomes something more. Or am I really knowing what I'm getting into ahead of time with you? So originally when people hired me just as an interior designer, I don't think they originally expected there to be this deep internal work that was going on around it. But very quickly they were referring me because of that. And depending on, we, the conversations depended on how much people wanted me to be involved in that aspect of their life. Right? And some people really just wanted to focus on the interior design, but I still needed to get to know them, right? And so there was this still this beautiful connection of who are you, how do you wanna be able to show up in your own home? And for others it was way more coaching, right? But some people approach me just because they know of my interior design work. But many people now, Are beginning to approach me more for my work around workshops and specifically my intentional living and leadership work. I think that's beautiful. I love how it goes both ways. That's how my Pilates practice has always been. Yeah. People think they're coming for one thing and it turns into something completely different and more of what they truly needed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's so much nuance in life, and I think too much of our world decides that things can only be one thing. Right? But there's no such thing, right? There's no such thing as something being sig, just exactly. Only one thing. It's all connected. Life is all connected. Energy is all connected. We as human beings are all connected to an ecosystem, so the more we lean into that nuance, the healthier we are. Absolutely. So talk to me about how working with empathy and curiosity and intention is such an important theme in your personal world and in your professional world. Yeah. For me it all starts with curiosity, right? There's nothing for us if we aren't leaning into curiosity, we aren't practicing curiosity. First of all, let's just start with anything we wanna be good at. We have to practice, right? And so practicing curiosity is really important. A place of like, I wonder. Right. And letting that, I wonder thought, take us wherever it takes us, let it meander around, let it do some research, do whatever it is, wherever it takes you, go with it. Right? And we start to begin to see the way that all life is connected, the way that we are connected, our impact. We start to understand the world in much more powerful ways through curiosity, right? And then that curiosity allows us and leads us right into empathy. Right. Because the more we understand something and our connection to it and our impact on it, the more empathy we have for it. Or the person or the, you know, but I say it because it could be people, it could be the world, it could be nature, it could be energy, it can be anything. Right? And the more that we then do that, right, we're leaning into being, respecting everything that's around us, all that we're connected to, all that we affect, all that we engage with. Which leads us into, and naturally when we start to engage curiosity and empathy and respect, and we start to understand all those things, then naturally we're understanding, okay, I need to be accountable for what I'm bringing into this world. Right? And once we're in, we're working with all those things together. We're naturally functioning more intentionally in this world, right? So it's like all these things kind of weaving together. That allow us to show up as a truly powerful human being and one that understands our power and is responsible for our power. That is so beautiful. And we do, we need so much more of this. Yeah. Like I just keep envisioning you needing to like walk through even New York City and being like, I need to touch and fix this building and that building, because that's part of our environment, right? Like even in Jersey, I'm sure like what we're walking around and. It affects so tremendously. I recently, it was a couple weeks ago, and I you're in Jersey, so I'm sure you heard about this. I don't know the name of the town, but it has to do with the Jersey boardwalk or near there. And the town came together with their own money. They needed to redo the boardwalk from when Sandy came through. So they made a boardwalk into a cross and the whole town is, Very great with that. And I guess there was a lot of people that weren't really great with that, but what that energy that they're changing now, there's so many people that are flocking to the area to wanna see this and embrace it and feel it. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's so interesting when PE groups of people come together, and are doing something really powerful together. Right. And I also think, you know, of course when there's a group of people who are. Feeling connected to something that doesn't mean it's for everybody. Right. So I just come back to that group of people can feel powerfully connected to that moment, to that thing, to that physical object. But other people don't have to. And I think, embracing the fact that it is for some people and not for others, and living in that nuance is so important because something can be really powerful for other people and have no connection to us, ever. Right. Right. It's really important for us to focus our energy on what is powerfully connected to. Right. I, I just wish we could get more of that throughout our nation, just in general with people and places and things and have more of that unity feeling because we're here to be a community. Yeah. We're not here to be divided and isolated you, you know? So definitely love everything that you're doing. So super excited. You published your first novel. I did. How exciting. Congratulations. Yay. Yay. Okay, will you, let's talk about it. Tell me everything. Okay. Tell me all the goods. Yeah, so I wrote it under the pen name Maze Maron. It's on Amazon, it's called Under My Skin. I wrote, edited, did the cover art, formatted. I did it all myself. I had no intention of writing a novel before I sat down and started to write it. But it. It felt like a time when I needed to begin to allow myself to express my own creativity in ways that I hadn't used in a while, and I had the idea to write the novel. I had an idea behind the characters, and then the characters just kind of told me who they were and what to write. That sounds insane. Not at all. Once you establish a character and their energy and their presence in the world, they. You know how they're gonna show up in it, right? And so, you know, I sat down and I wrote it in five weeks, and then it took me about another month or so to edit it because every time I would read it and edit it, I'd have to wait a few days to read it again. Right? Uh, you have to come with like fresh eyes. And so, yeah, within, like, I wrote it and within three months it was published. And I'm, I started writing the second novel, but I've been focusing on speaking engagement, so like writing speeches and writing the novel is not coinciding also well right now, maybe I'll get back to it in the summer, but it's so beautiful because. You know, fiction connects to us in really beautiful ways and being able to process the world around us through fictional characters. And what I loved for myself is that it was deeply therapeutic because I could decide the outcomes, right? I could, something could terrible could happen, and tension happens in the story, and then I get to reimagine how I wish. That if I had gone through those things that people in my life had showed up for me, right? And I could create this tension, but also create this community and this support around the characters. And so it was a very interesting process. I really, I highly recommend it unless like everyone should write a novel. Right? Well, I mean, maybe not for everyone, but like for so many people, I think whether they published it or not, right? Just I think writing. Yes, there's something about putting pen to paper. That it's deeply therapeutic. Yes. And it allows us to feel heard in a way, and to articulate what we really mean in a way that I don't think happens the same way in verbal. I. Right discussion. Right. We're just in, in our, using our words. So, yeah, I would, I already, like I said, I already named and started writing the second novel. It's just a matter of like, having the time to finish writing. This is so exciting. So I have lots of questions. So first, for those out there that, that might not know the difference between a novel and a book. Yeah. Well, so a novel is fiction typically. Yeah. Novel is fiction. People will still call it a book. It's just. The book is like anything in written form that's bound, whereas a novel is specifically fiction. And sometimes it can go to length, some novels. But yeah, it's a matter of it being fiction typically versus not fiction. Okay. Next question. Why a pen name? Yeah. Oh, so many people ask me that. I, people know my pending, it's tagged in places. You know, I have it on my LinkedIn profile, so I don't hide from my pending. The reason why I wanted to have a pen, that's number one, because I. I love the imaginary part of writing the novel, and I was like, if I could reimagine myself too, right, and be part of this creative journey, I think that would be fun. But also because my work, I work in my work, I work with, you know, CEOs and leaders of companies and leaders of teams and so on and so forth. I didn't. Want it to be a confusing message when people Googled me. I didn't want it to be like, is she a romance novelist or is she a coach? Right, right. Is she, you know, am I hiring an executive coach or am I hiring a romance novelist? So to be able to keep those things a little bit separate have that pen name, you know, felt like the better way to go. Okay. Love that. So then my next question you're kind of leading into it, is, what is the premise behind our novel? The premise is two people who meet in on a street corner in Philadelphia. By accident and then start dating. And, aria is the lead female character, and she's smart and she's spunky and she's neuro divergent like myself. So I have, I am autistic and have h d I just imagine this kind of, you know, quirky, neuro divergent character. Because most of the time we write what we know exactly. Yeah, and Ethan is the main nail character, and he's in real estate and it's a really interesting journey for him to kind of understand what it is to show up in relationship and for her to learn to trust. And for them figure out how to build a life together and on their own terms. Oh, that sounds like so much fun. And now the next novel that's coming, is this a trilogy or is this completely new? Is this different? So this is a, it's a, so I'm calling it the Maiden Philly series because there's a character in each book and I have like, notes on characters for like this book and the following book and the following book. But, at least one of the main characters in each book will be, have grown up, currently live in Philadelphia. So the next, the next novel is a what? The what In the in book talk world, in or in the romance novel world would be it called a grumpy sunshine, which means one main character is grumpy and the other is a sun, shinny, happy-go-lucky character. But in this story, she's the grumpy and. He's the sunshine, which is a little flipping it on a Ted, cuz normally in the romance novel world, he's the grumpy and she's the sunshine. I am learning so much. I hope everyone else is like pent paper and listening. This is amazing. And the fact that you wrote it, you edit it, you did all the artwork and did you self-publish, I'm assuming as well? Yeah, yeah. In like three months, 90 days? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So everyone literally. Anything is possible. Yeah, anything's possible. Anything possible. Do I recommend that speed for everyone? Do I think that's a practical speed in most situations? No. But it can be done. It can be done. Right. So tell me, with this incredible world that you're living in now that you are truly designing for yourself. Yeah. What is a day in the life of Shayna? Oh gosh. That's a great question. I get up. I make myself a cup of tea, set it on the counter, go meditate, come back up. I, I love oat milk in my tea. Whatever tea I'm drinking. For some reason oat milk is just my favorite milk to put in a tea. I still drink regular milk, but oat milk is my jam. And then I'll be listening to an audio book while I prep my breakfast. Usually I'm looking out the, the kitchen window. And I love to open the windows to be able to hear the birds and so on and so forth that be connected to. And then usually I sit out on the back porch, eat my breakfast, you know, just try to be present or, I'm also typically listening to an audiobook, something that's educating me, something that's helping to expand my worldview. but not always. Not always. I love to mix in fiction. It's really important for a mental health fiction or like biographies. I just finished reading Spare, Terry's book. Okay. How, let's take a break here and just talk about that for a minute. yeah, I loved that. I loved the book. I thought it was at times fascinating. At times. Hysterical because he talks about his private parts for like a whole chapter. Oh, a whole chapter. I had heard about that. No, I haven't read it, but I heard that he talked, I didn't, A whole chapter. It's like woven in. It's not the whole chapter's, not entirely about, What he calls his taja, but, God. But there's a lot about it. But here's the thing, it's kind of a cliffhanger because he never tells us if it was completely okay. Like in the book, he never comes out and is like, well, it's completely healed now. But he tells us the whole journey of like what happened, you know, the difficulties with it, so on and so forth. But he never tells us if it was fully healed. So we need to call him and we need to ask him about his penis is what you're telling me. Hundred percent. I'm like, is there gonna be a book too where he tells us it's okay? Like, Megan, what are we working with? Seriously? Look, I'm thinking if a whole chapter is about your penis, How big are we? What are we working with here? But I, but I also just need to know that it's okay. Right. Because then I'm deeply infested in the fact that like, it got hurt. He had to go to the doctor a lot. He was in a lot of pain. He could barely walk sometimes. And then you're like, but is it okay now? Like I just need to know if it's okay. Right. Are you okay? How did this affect you when you were in the military? Was this after the military, before the like, right. Well, he does kind of mix it. Okay. Like he does know, you do know through the story, like where it was sequence of things, but. His military service, all these different things. I mean, I think it was, I would say probably for him deeply therapeutic to have his side of the story told us he wanted it to be, I'm sure. Oh, a hundred percent. Because I think for the first time in his life, he's like, I'm gonna tell my story my way. Right. And I think that has a voice. Oh, how interesting. Yeah. Okay. Now back to the day in life. Yeah. The day of Shayna. Yeah. So I'm, yeah, so I'm usually listening to an audiobook of some sort. and then like taking a shower is a deeply therapeutic thing for me. It's very much almost a stem for me. So I love to listen to a really powerful. Song or songs, something that reminds me of who I am and helps me to get into my body. I love shower dancing. Please only do it if, if you can do it safely. I have a textured bottom to my shower so I'm not to slip and break my neck. I love dancing in the shower. So I, I do that and then I usually kick off my day, right, and I get a couple of hours of work done, and then usually around lunchtime or just after I go on a nice long walk for like an hour, And just connect with nature. And my favorite thing is to be curious when I'm on a walk and to be like, oh, you know what? There's this plant. Like the other day I was walking, I was like, oh, look at all the poison ivy sprouting up. You know what? I'm gonna look and see what is poison Ivy's role in nature? What is its role in an ecosystem? How does it benefit us, rather than us thinking of it as simply something we can get sick from. And it only grows in very specific ways. By the way anybody listening to is Google. What's the benefit of poison ivy? What is it, what role does it play? It's really fascinating. And so I do that. I, I'm connecting with the world around me in a variety of ways and stirring up and practicing my own curiosity. And then I'm finishing working and usually evenings I'm at a networking event or with girlfriends or some way to connect with other people, in a way that feels restorative for me because I'm giving out all day long. Right. So I need to do things that, that then are helping to bring that energy back to me. Right. What is your go-to for when you are feeling misaligned and you know that you need to, like what you're speaking of, you've gotta fill your cup. What is your go-to? Typically alone time or time with one girlfriend, right? When I'm really going through it, sometimes it's overwhelming to have a bunch of people, especially for me being autistic. Like I, sometimes I need to verbal process. And I need somebody who understands that and is willing to go on that journey with me and has the space for it. Right? So I, there's always consent in this and it's something that powerfully transformed my relationships, is checking in with girlfriends and seeing, do you have the space right now for me to be able to talk this thing through with you and to be able to process this thing, right? Because they might be at their wits end in their own life, and then that's no good for the two of us. Right? So making sure I'm checking in with somebody before I just launch into an important conversation, or just assume that we can grab a bottle of wine and we can have this long, deep conversation. Maybe they just wanted to keep it light and friendly. And here I'm wanting to process something difficult, right? And so I think it's really important to set expectations and ask for consent when we're launching into difficult, complicated, or long-winded conversation. Absolutely. I think that is so important, and I applaud you for doing that. More people need to say, yeah, this is what I'm needing, hashtag venting, or hashtag, I need help with an answer. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Do you have the space for that? And then being able to go ahead and process and really spend time, but sometimes I just need a cup of tea and a warm blanket and to turn on Netflix and to just remind myself. It's like, or, well, I also have this funny practice. Like once a week or like at least a couple times a month, I make an in. I intentionally watch something or listen to something or engage with something that makes me laugh for at least an hour. So it might be a standup comedy show, or it might be a, a comedic movie, or it might be a book written by a comedian. Right? Whatever it is that reconnects me because laughter is so healing. Right, and so making that a part of my life has been. It's fascinating cuz when I tell people, I'm like, today is my day for laughing. I'm like, what? But it's a really important practice for me and I think would be for so many people, for us to reconnect to that joy and that picture. Absolutely. Oh my gosh, I could talk to you all day Shannon. Like we could go on for hours. That would be absolutely good. We absolutely could. But we are getting to this time in the show where I asked this one question. Yeah. What is something that almost no one knows about Shana? Well, Bo, okay, so I was a semi-professional salsa dancer for four years. Oh my God. So a quick portion of the world. Some people know that there are thousands of people in the world who know it, but. But not who know it through my work. Right. Like, if they just know professional me, they would never ever know that I, so from the time I was 26, till the time I was 31, 32, I, competed and and performed salsa. Yeah. How, I love the salsa community. I love salsa. There's people, I know people all over the world because of it. It's, I love it. It was also part of my embodiment practice. Yeah. How beautiful. That sounds like. So much fun. Oh my gosh. I have not salsa in so long. I learned in Solita, Mexico with this little gentleman who taught all my girlfriends and I He was so sweet. Yeah, that's where we salsa so incredible about it. Martha Graham said it so beautifully. She said, the body says what words cannot. Right? And I think it's, and we all, we do know though that 85% of communication is nonverbal. That also counts with ourselves, right? Our own body. Being able to say what it needs to say is deeply important for moving difficult and positive emotions through our body. And so dance is one of the really beautiful ways to do that. Absolutely. Oh my goodness. Now you've got us dancing in the shower. Now I'm thinking about salsaing through the house. Oh my goodness. Sheena, will you share with our community where they can best connect with you and continue this conversation if they'd like to? Absolutely. I'm most present on LinkedIn and TikTok. On TikTok, it's at Shayna, Francesca on LinkedIn. It's the same. And you can also. Great place to connect with me is to subscribe to my email through my website. my website is a perfect place. It's www.cons.world. Perfect. And as always, everything will be over in the show notes on jennifer plots.com. We will have all of Shayna's links, her website, and a link to get her novel so you can stay up to date. Oh, this is fabulous. Shayna. As we close out the show today, what is one lasting piece of inspiration that you'd like to leave with us today? I would say that reconnecting to curiosity in your life is vitally important cuz wrapped up in curiosity as vulnerability is play is intentionality. There's so much in it, right? And being able to explore the world and to view the world like an explorer is something that I think we haven't given ourselves, many of us permission since we were kids. And it's such an incredible way to, to really reconnect to happiness and to feel present. I agree. That is beautiful. Thank you, Shayna. Thank you so much for coming today and being so authentic and bringing joy and light and the glow in your eyes and your happiness and bringing your light to our community. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me. You are so welcome. Well, as we say, until next time, may you live an empowered life from within. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe to Empowered Within with Jennifer Pilates. Your feedback is important. It helps me to connect with you and gives me insight into who you are and what you're enjoying about the show. For today's show, notes and discount codes from today's sponsors. Head over to jennifer pilates.com. Until next time, may you live an empowered life from within.