intentional living

Clearing as Practice: A Mindful March Reset

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Clearing as Practice: A Mindful March with Embracing Spirit Yoga

March invites us into transition.

Winter begins to loosen its grip. Light stretches a little longer. The earth softens. And something within us whispers:

Clear what no longer serves.

This month at Embracing Spirit Yoga, our theme is:

Clearing as Practice

Not as punishment.
Not as perfection.
But as devotion.

Clearing is not about becoming someone new.
It is about remembering who you already are beneath the clutter — physically, emotionally, spiritually.

What Does “Clearing as Practice” Mean?

In yoga philosophy, this echoes:

  • Saucha — purification, clarity, sacred cleanliness
  • Tapas — disciplined, loving effort
  • Svadhyaya — self-study and inner reflection

But beyond philosophy, clearing is deeply human.

It might look like:

  • Clearing a drawer.
  • Clearing a calendar.
  • Clearing a resentment.
  • Clearing self-doubt.
  • Clearing physical tension from the body through mindful movement.

For those of us navigating healing, chronic pain, or recovery (as I am in this season), clearing becomes even more sacred.

We clear what we can.
We soften what we cannot.
We practice patience.

Why Clearing Supports Mental and Emotional Wellness

When we clear physical space, we create mental space.

Research consistently shows that clutter increases cortisol levels and mental overwhelm. Gentle organization and mindful routines can:

  • Reduce stress and anxiety
  • Improve focus and clarity
  • Support emotional regulation
  • Increase feelings of control and calm

Clearing is nervous system care.

And it doesn’t require dramatic change.
It begins with one breath. One drawer. One compassionate choice.

Clearing the Body Through Gentle Yoga

In adaptive yoga — especially for seniors and those with neurological conditions — clearing looks like:

  • Releasing tension through breath awareness
  • Gentle joint mobility
  • Slow, supported stretching
  • Reconnecting to the body with kindness

We clear stagnation.
We clear fear.
We clear the story that says “I can’t.”

Movement becomes medicine.
Awareness becomes healing.

Your March Invitation

Each week this month, we will explore clearing through:

  1. Physical space
  2. Emotional release
  3. Mental clarity
  4. Spiritual alignment
  5. A bonus integration week

You do not need to overhaul your life.

Simply begin.

Clear one corner.
Clear one thought.
Clear one breath.

And let that be enough.

A Reflection for You

Where in your life are you ready to create space?

Not because you “should.”
But because your spirit is asking.

Sit with that question.

Breathe.

And trust that small, steady clearing leads to spacious living.

Affirmation for March

I gently release what no longer supports my growth. I create space for light, clarity, and peace.

If this resonates, follow along this month at Embracing Spirit Yoga for mindful practices, reflections, and gentle guidance rooted in compassion and accessibility.

March is not about force.

It is about softening, clearing, and remembering.

And I am walking this path with you.

My Word for 2026: Presence

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An Intentional, Soulful Action Plan for Mindful Living

For the past 28 years, I have chosen a single word to guide my year. This word becomes a thread—quiet yet strong—woven into the tapestry of my life. It’s not a resolution or a goal to accomplish, but an intention to return to again and again.

My word for 2026 is Presence.

Presence feels both simple and profound. It asks nothing dramatic of me—only that I show up fully for the life I am already living.

Why I Chose Presence for 2026

We live in a world that constantly pulls us away from the moment we’re in. Even meaningful things—healing, relationships, work, growth—can become rushed or lived on autopilot.

Choosing presence is my commitment to:

  • Be where my body is
  • Listen before reacting
  • Noticing instead of rushing
  • Live my life instead of racing through it

Presence is not perfection. It is awareness. And awareness changes everything.

What Presence Means to Me

Presence means meeting my life as it is, not as I think it should be.

It is:

  • Breathing before responding
  • Listening without planning the next sentence
  • Caring for my body with attention, not impatience
  • Allowing my habits to be conscious rather than compulsive

Presence is how I want to live—in my health, my relationships, my work, and my daily habits.

A Soulful Action Plan for Living with Presence in 2026

Rather than setting rigid goals, I’ve created gentle anchors—ways to return to presence throughout the year.

Presence in My Health

My body has taught me many lessons over the years, and in 2026 I want to honor it with deeper listening.

My practices:

  • Daily check-ins: What does my body need right now?
  • Moving mindfully instead of pushing through
  • Resting without guilt
  • Choosing nourishment that supports healing and energy

Presence in health means responding instead of forcing.

Presence in My Relationships

Presence in relationships means truly being with the people I love.

My practices:

  • Putting the phone down during conversations
  • Listening to understand
  • Allowing silence without rushing to fill it
  • Speaking honestly and kindly

Being present is one of the greatest gifts we can offer another person.

Presence in My Work

My work is meaningful, and I want to meet it with intention rather than urgency.

My practices:

  • Beginning workdays with a grounding breath
  • Focusing on one task at a time
  • Creating instead of constantly consuming
  • Honoring energy levels instead of pushing productivity

Presence in work allows creativity and clarity to lead.

Presence in My Habits

Habits shape our days, and our days shape our lives.

My practices:

  • Morning rituals that begin in stillness
  • Pausing before automatic behaviors
  • Noticing patterns without judgment
  • Choosing small, sustainable actions

Presence helps habits become supportive rather than controlling.

How I Will Return to My Word Throughout the Year

A word of the year only works if we remember it.

Ways I will stay connected to presence:

  • Writing the word in my journal regularly
  • Asking, “What would presence look like right now?”
  • Letting it guide decisions both big and small
  • Allowing it to evolve as the year unfolds

This word is not a rule—it is an invitation.

An Invitation to Choose Your Own Word

Choosing a word for the year is a powerful mindfulness practice. It creates a compass rather than a checklist.

If you feel called, ask yourself:

  • What quality do I want to live with more deeply?
  • What do I need to return to this year?
  • What would support my becoming?

Then listen. The word often arrives quietly.

A Closing Reflection

Presence reminds me that my life is not waiting somewhere in the future.
It is happening now—
in this breath,
this body,
this moment.

And that is where I choose to meet 2026.

Teaching Yoga From the Heart: How Intentional Yoga Themes Shape Practice and Life

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Teaching From the Heart: How Intentional Yoga Themes Shape Our Practice—and Our Lives

There’s a quiet moment that happens before every class I teach. A pause. A breath. A soft tuning-in where I ask myself, What do my students need today? What do I need today?

For years, I have had the same monthly themes, and they flowed easily. Those familiar themes supported me through so much, but lately I’ve felt a deeper shift. A call to move beyond the patterns I’ve relied on… toward teaching with more intention, more presence, and a renewed sense of soulful planning.

It’s funny how yoga works like that.
We think we’re just choosing a theme, and suddenly we’re learning about ourselves.

When Teaching Themes Become Life Themes

What I’ve discovered is that choosing themes isn’t just about cueing a class. It’s about choosing the energy we want to cultivate—on the mat and beyond it.

When we guide students through grounding, we remember to root ourselves.
When we teach about softening, we start to release our own grip.
When we focus on balance, we begin noticing the places in our lives that feel uneven.

The themes we teach become tiny mirrors reflecting back what we, too, are navigating. And that’s the beauty of yoga—it never asks us to have it all figured out. It simply invites us to be awake to our experience.

Planning With Intention Isn’t Less Soulful—It’s More Meaningful

For a long time, I resisted planning too much. I prided myself on intuition, on feeling the energy in the room and following it. And there’s magic in that, yes. But now, as I grow and evolve, I understand something deeper:

Intentional planning doesn’t restrict the soul—it gives it a container to shine.

When we choose themes in advance, we’re not locking ourselves into rigidity. We’re choosing to approach our work with care. We’re giving our students consistency, nourishment, and continuity. And we’re giving ourselves a moment to pause, reflect, and ask:

What lesson is trying to be lived out here?

Practicing the Principles We Teach

Each time we create a theme, we apply the principles of yoga without even realizing it:

Ahimsa reminds us to choose gentle words.
Satya invites us to teach what feels honest.
Svadhyaya asks us to look inward as much as outward.
Tapas nudges us to stay committed, even when life feels heavy.
Santosha reminds us to find contentment in the simple act of showing up.

The way we plan is a practice.
The way we teach is a practice.
The way we live is a practice.

When we bring intention into our teaching, we naturally bring intention into our days. Our yoga themes become our reminders, our anchors, our quiet truths that follow us long after the class has ended.

A New Season of Teaching—and Living

As I move into this new season of teaching with greater intention, I’m reminded that yoga is always evolving us. It doesn’t just shape our bodies—it shapes our choices, our energy, our presence, our perspective.

And maybe that’s the real theme of all of this:

When we teach from a place of intention, we live from a place of intention.

And in that space?
Everything—your practice, your life, your purpose—begins to align with more clarity and more heart. I cannot wait to share each month’s theme with you!

A Year of Renewal: Reflecting on Change, Courage, and New Beginnings

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A Year of Renewal: Reflecting on Change, Courage, and New Beginnings

Every year, I choose a single word that becomes a thread woven through my life—my sankalpa, my heartfelt intention. This year, my word is Renewal, and as I close the door on another chapter, I can clearly see how life has been guiding me toward this exact moment of rediscovery.

2024 was unlike any year I’ve ever lived. It brought deep healing, unexpected shifts, and a powerful invitation to grow in directions I didn’t anticipate. After decades of helping others reconnect to themselves, this was the year life asked me to reconnect to me.

And I said yes.

Letting Go: Stepping Away After 18 Years

One of the biggest shifts—one that still feels surreal—was ending my 18 years of traveling to more than 50 assisted living homes. For nearly two decades, I poured my heart into teaching adaptive yoga, holding space for elders, and building community through mindful movement.

It was sacred work.
Beautiful work.
Exhausting work.

And it was time.

Pulling back to only a small handful of homes wasn’t just a schedule change. It was a soul-level shift. It was an act of honoring my body, my healing, and the next evolution of my service. For the first time in years, I allowed myself to loosen the grip on what I had always done and create space for what could be possible next.

A New Path: Becoming a Qualified Behavioral Health Assistant

This year also brought a huge professional pivot—one that aligned not only with my gifts but with my capacity.
I stepped into my new role as a Qualified Behavioral Health Assistant, helping people recover from trauma through skills, connection, and compassionate support.

This work is meaningful in a different way.
It requires less physical demand, but a deeper emotional presence.
It allows me to live my values without compromising my wellness.
And most of all, it lets me continue serving others in a way that honors my own healing journey.

Sometimes renewal doesn’t look like starting over.
Sometimes it looks like redirecting your wisdom where it can thrive.

Welcoming Rosie: Joy Arrives on Four Paws

Another bright spot this year?
I got a new puppy — sweet Rosie.

She arrived exactly when I needed a spark of uncomplicated joy, and she brought just that.
There is something magical about how animals help us stay present, soften our hearts, and remember to play. Rosie has been a daily reminder that renewal can show up in wagging tails, muddy paw prints, and early-morning snuggles.

She is a gift of pure delight.

The Big One: I Wrote My Book

And then there’s the part that still makes me say, “Did I really do that?”

I wrote my book.

After years of teaching, thousands of classes, countless conversations, and decades of lived experience… something inside me said now.
The words poured out—not from obligation, but from an inner knowing that it was time.

This book is the culmination of everything I’ve lived, learned, healed, and held.
It is a tapestry of wisdom and wellness, a snapshot of my heart in this season of life.
It is my offering.
My renewal.
My beginning again.

Writing it stretched me, surprised me, and awakened parts of my creativity that had been sleeping under the weight of survival mode. More than anything, it reminded me of my purpose—and my voice.

As I Step Into 2025

Renewal is not a return to who I used to be.
It’s an unfolding.
A softening.
A reclaiming.

This year brought endings, beginnings, and a lot of gentle in-between moments.
It taught me that clarity often arrives only after the letting go.
That healing isn’t linear.
That courage can be quiet.
And that renewal is a choice we make every single day.

As I step into 2025, I do so with gratitude, openness, trust and renewal.

My sankalpa of Renewal has been eye-opening and just rich. What is next? Stay tuned as I reveal my word for 2026! It is going to be a good one!

Seasonal Essential Oil Blends with Gemstones: A Perfect Companion to 52 Weeks of Wisdom & Wellness

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Revealing My New Seasonal Essential Oil Blends and Gemstones

A Beautiful Companion to 52 Weeks of Wisdom & Wellness

As I’ve been writing my new book, 52 Weeks of Wisdom & Wellness: A Year of Mindful Living, one guiding truth has woven itself through every chapter: our bodies, hearts, and spirits respond deeply to the rhythm of the seasons. Each season brings its own emotional tone, its own energy, and its own invitation for how we might move, breathe, and live.

This is why I created a set of intentional seasonal essential oil blends, each paired with a gemstone, to complement the journey of the book. These blends aren’t just lovely scents. They are seasonal anchors, helping you tune into the themes of renewal, radiance, gratitude, release, rest, and reflection as you move through the year.

Spring Blend: Renewal

Gemstone: Green Aventurine
Theme: New beginnings, emotional softness, gentle growth

Spring corresponds to Weeks 1–13 in 52 Weeks of Wisdom & Wellness, where the focus is on healing, compassion, returning to the body, and creating space for new energy. Spring is an invitation to soften, open, and begin again. The blend supports uplifting the heart, releasing heaviness, and stepping into fresh possibilities.

Essential oils: Lemon, Geranium, Eucalyptus, Frankincense 

Summer Blend: Radiance

Gemstone: Citrine
Theme: Joy, courage, vibrancy

Summer aligns with Weeks 14–26, a time focused on presence, energy, confidence, and living with intention. This season encourages expansion and warmth. The Summer Blend supports vitality, creativity, courage, and grounded enthusiasm.

Essential oils: Wild Orange, Jasmine, Lime, Ylang Ylang

Fall Blend: Gratitude and Release

Gemstone: Tiger’s Eye
Theme: Appreciation, clarity, letting go

Fall corresponds to Weeks 27–39. These chapters explore gratitude, grounding, awareness, and gently releasing what no longer serves. Fall invites us to simplify and return to the essentials. The Fall Blend supports emotional release, inner steadiness, and the practice of gratitude as the season shifts inward.

Essential oils: Cedarwood, Cinnamon, Orange, Clove 

Winter Blend: Reflection and Rest

Gemstone: Amethyst
Theme: Stillness, intuition, restoration

Winter aligns with Weeks 40–52. These final chapters center on reflection, deep rest, quiet healing, and reconnecting with inner wisdom. Winter is a season for listening, softening, and tending to the inner world. The Winter Blend supports nervous system calm, deep rest, and spacious reflection.

Essential oils: Myrrh, Sandalwood, Lavender, Juniper Berry  

How These Blends Connect to the Book

The book is intentionally structured by seasons, with 13 entries for each, inviting you to move through the year with presence and mindfulness. These blends were created as sensory companions to those themes, offering a grounding ritual as you read each week.

You can roll on the seasonal blend before beginning your weekly chapter and let the scent become a reminder of your intention for the season. This creates a layered, embodied experience of the book through touch, scent, breath, and awareness.

A Year of Wellness, One Season at a Time

My hope is that these blends help you feel supported as you move through your year. Whether you begin with Week 1 in spring or choose to start during another season, each blend offers a simple ritual to connect you back to yourself. They are gentle reminders to pause, breathe, and honor where you are.

They Also Make a Beautiful, Meaningful Gift

These seasonal blends and their gemstones make a thoughtful gift for anyone who values mindfulness, essential oils, intentional living, or emotional wellness. Paired with 52 Weeks of Wisdom & Wellness, they become a year-long offering of support, encouragement, and self-care.

This is the kind of gift that feels heartfelt, personal, and deeply nurturing. Perfect for holidays, birthdays, caregivers, teachers, friends, or anyone entering a new chapter of life.

Movement is Medicine

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We have all heard it before, but I am here to tell you there is so much truth to it. Movement truly is medicine in its most natural form.

For years and years I have struggled with the effects of fibromyalgia and I have learned the more I move, the less I hurt. Many people who live with fibromyalgia—me included—would probably rather lay on a heating bad and hope the exhausting pain goes away, but the reality is movement will in fact make you feel better.

When we live the yoga lifestyle and endure challenges like this it’s imperative to pull our awareness into the sutras, or principles that enhance how we show up in the world. For examples, living with truth means we listen to our bodies and only do what truthfully feels right. It’s about not stealing from ourselves by overdoing (or under doing) it and taking away from healing process. It’s also about non-harming and being intentional with what we say yes to.

Each day since coming home from the hospital I have made a deliberate and mindful choice to move my body. It may be that my six directions of the spine is my max, or a simpler morning sequence, or I might add onto my physical therapy exercises by grabbing my dumbbells for some upper body endorphins.

Besides the intentional ways to get movement, it’s so important to realize the simple everyday tasks that count towards movement! Think back to your first few days home from surgery, or when you were struggling with illness, and the small victories that came with making your own meal or even showering! I am so thrilled that I am not as exhausted showering and getting dressed as I was just a week ago.

All the ways we navigate our day also count as movement!

  • Showering and getting dressed
  • Preparing an easy meal
  • Walking to the mail box
  • Emptying the dishwasher
  • Doing a load of laundry
  • Making the bed
  • Walking around the yard
  • Tidying up your space
  • A short trip to the market

Of course deliberate and intentional movement is important, but during this recovery time be sure to pat yourself on the back for the small everyday tasks that require movement and congratulate yourself on a job well done. Try to incorporate the yoga principles into your daily life and opt for staying aligned with who you are, and not what you happen to be going through.

You CAN do this and you ARE doing amazing.

Watch this—

With over sixteen years experience, Stacie Wyatt is a E-500 hour Registered Yoga Teacher with Yoga Alliance, Certified Brain Injury Specialist, Certified Trauma Informed Coach, Life Wellness Coach, Senior YogaFit Instructor, Mind/Body Personal trainer, Stress Reduction and Meditation Instructor, Pilates Instructor, and Barre Instructor. Stacie is also certified in Integrative Movement Therapy™and is also a believer in the power and application of essential oils for health and wellness and proudly shares doTERRA essential oils.