The holidays can be magical—or overwhelming. Whether they feel like "holidays" or "hellidays" for you, this week guest contributor Jennifer Thomas explore five ways to navigate the season with grace and balance.
All in Mental Health
What’s Inside Your Mental Health First Aid Kit?
Feeling a little frayed around the edges? This week. Cathy shares her secret weapon: a mental health First Aid Kit. This personalized toolkit, filled with mindfulness, community, and creative outlets, helps her navigate life’s challenges. We want to know what’s in your kit?
When the Rug (and the Floorboards, and the Earth Itself) are Pulled Out from Under You
Fresh from a workshop with writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, Cathy shares her profound insights on creativity and purpose. In times of upheaval, the importance of breath, recalibration and making the right steps.
Change: Getting Out of Our Own Way
Change is a constant. So instead of fearing it, we observed, leaned in and became more curious? That’s Cathy’s offer to you this week. Curiosity and adventure, that’s when real change happens.
Volunteering to Be Vulnerable in the Wine World
Cathy considers how the act of being vulnerable — especially in public — can offer opportunities for deeper and more lasting connection.
Noticing the Rituals of Fall
This week, Cathy considers the habits and rituals we create and revisit as the seasons change:
It’s September. Welcome to the Grind, and Also Its Antidotes
Yup, it's BUSY out there in the world! This week, Cathy offers ideas to find respite from the madness.
How Small Gestures Can Become Healing Acts
It can feel like humanity is tearing itself apart with division, anger, angst and anxiety. While it may feel like there is no end or easy way out of the malaise that we find ourselves in, Beck offers one idea to help ease things a little…
In Favor of Nuance
This week, Cathy considers the importance of focus, perspective, and the nuance and subtlety of our behaviors in daily life.
Looking for Mental Health Resources? Keep this List Handy
May is Mental health Awareness month, and this week, Beck shares a refresher on some of the new resources and support tools we look to for support.
Have Sex, Dance More, and Other Suggestions for Happiness
When was the last time you felt GREAT? This week Cathy offers some ways to help get back in the body.
The Breath Refresh That Helps Clear Your Mind
Feeling a little more foggy mirror than clear windshield? This week, the ABG community teachers offer up some options on breath techniques that may help clear things up:
The REAL Reason We Take Mental Health Breaks
This week, Cathy considers how taking a mental health break is just as much about everyone else as it is about ourselves - in a good way. Check it out.
Survey Says! ABG Community Responses for ABG: A Preview
This week, we preview the responses from our short and anonymous survey that will help us present our session at this year’s wine2wine Business Forum.
The Antidote to Anxiety, and How to Use It in Our Everyday Lives
For Cathy, this past week was a first for Beck and I, twice over. The “first first” was co-leading a wine tasting in North Carolina, and the “second first” was co-presenting a mini-workshop to teenagers and parents on how to manage anxiety. Know what they had in common? Taking a pause.
5 Ideas for Balancing Deadlines with Self-Compassion
Deadlines are inescapable. Which, in the interest of our personal mental health, also means that self-compassion is not optional. This week, Cathy Huyghe offers up ways to go a little easier on ourselves if we miss a "D" date:
Why We Retreat - Stepping Back to Move Forward
In business, the concept of ‘retreat’ can carry a negative connotation – a failed deal, not fulfilling obligations, stepping back from the opportunity, and ultimately not winning. But in a mindful practice, where we observe both the human self and the spiritual self, to retreat gives us the opportunity to step back, check in with our emotional state, and rebalance to find the clarity to move forward.
Olympic-Level Self-Talk, and the One Word that Makes All the Difference
The thing about self-talk for Olympians, is that It’s off-camera. It’s subconscious. It isn’t visible, yet there is no action without it. Self-talk has also been with those Olympic athletes their whole lives as well. So what’s the difference between their self-talk and ours?
Setting Boundaries and Other Herculean Feats
The decision of Simone Biles this week at the Tokyo Olympics to withdraw from the US Olympics gymnastics team is, to me, one of the most inspiring feats in athletic history. While her decision may seem incomprehensible to some, may Biles’ decision inspire anyone to say, in their own way, stop.
A Too-Good-to-Be-True Tool to Navigate the Chaos
This week, Cathy explores a technique for calm that has been described as “an apparently pointless process” and “pivotal to creative recovery,” - check it out!