The Nourished Woman with Keri Marino

New Beginnings Aligned with Your Body and Soul

• Keri Marino • Episode 23

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If you’re feeling the pull to begin again — but not from pressure or perfection — this episode is your invitation to start fresh in a way that actually feels like you.


Together, we’ll explore how to set the tone for your year from your body’s wisdom instead of your mind’s expectations. 


You’ll learn how to work with your nervous system to create calm, lasting change and how to use small, meaningful actions to build self-trust and peace from the inside out.


We’ll talk about drishti — the perspective you have— and how choosing where you place your attention can shift your energy, relationships, and sense of purpose.


If you’re ready to stop chasing “New Year, New You” and start creating a future your body and soul can trust, this one’s for you.


About Keri Marino

Keri is the founder of The Nourished Woman and a Somatic Yoga Therapist who supports women in feeling more alive, grounded, and at home in their bodies. Through a calm, gently spiritual approach, she creates spaces for women to explore healing, reconnect with themselves, and move through life with greater ease and confidence. With over 16 years of experience, Keri guides yoga and somatic practices that honor the nervous system, the body’s wisdom, and the fullness of being human.

Find out more about Keri on her website or Instagram. 

If you love the sound of short daily somatic yoga rituals that help you become a more radiant woman, with bottomless pleasure and aliveness. 

Get instant access to 150+ nervous system practices made for women on everyday topics like: digestive health, back care, period relief, core strength and emotional well-being. 

Try a 7 day free trial of The Nourished Woman Sanctuary here. 

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Nourished Woman Podcast, a space for women who've been doing the work to grow and heal and are ready to feel good again, body, mind, and soul. I'm your host, Carrie Marino, somatic yoga therapist of over 16 years, mentor and mama of three. I help women like you fall in love with how yoga makes you feel. Alchemi the hard things you've been through and experience more pleasure and aliveness in your body and relationships. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dive in. I just know I can't survive without mysteries. Before we dive into today's episode, if you're in a position where you can, go ahead and put both of your hands over your heart center, or one hand on your heart and one on your belly. And if that's not possible, and maybe you're driving, maybe you're folding some laundry, whatever it is, then just really focus on what you're doing. Be even more present in what you're doing. Take a few slow breaths and simply arrive. Return to yourself. Turn your attention into yourself. And I don't know about you, but I have needed a lot of moments like this lately. And I mean, truthfully, always, if I'm being just like deeply honest. I always find value in little moments like this. I want you to notice how that felt for you. Did that feel nice to settle in? Did that feel kind of hard? Just tuning in. And today we're gonna just kind of kitchen soup our way through this episode. I have a lot of things that I want to say to you, share with you, tell you about, like help you learn about as you start this new year. And maybe you're literally listening to this right after it releases, and which is January of 2026, or maybe you've found this episode at a later date, but you're in a sort of personal new year. You're in a space of new beginning. And just kind of clearing the path for what you want for yourself and where you are, and that period of reflection that so intuitively happens for the average conscious woman. And I know that that's you. You're a you're a conscious woman. So let's dive in, love. So, first off, the things that I'm gonna share with you, they're aspirational and they're meant to be inspirational. So I do not expect, and please do not expect you to master every single thing on this list ever in your lifetime, or like right away. Just focus on what you intuitively feel drawn to, and then put the other stuff on the back burner, or maybe even just never come back to it ever. Because the best way for you to live is the most intuitive way for you. That's uniquely your way, right? Like that's when things flow, is in your in your expression, not just, I mean, it is important for you to obviously be accepted and part of a community. And also we want you to stay true to yourself. And so as you listen to all of these ideas, as you listen to the stories that I've prepared for you and the invitations that are here, just really making room for you to be curious about what you hear and then to see what sticks for you on some level. Maybe you feel a reaction in your body, maybe you feel an inner knowing, maybe you feel warm energy move through you, whatever it is. Just really noticing, okay, oh, there's something there for me. So the first thing that I want to talk about is this concept of Dursti. Durshti, you'll frequently hear, most commonly hear this talked about when you're in a yoga class experience in person or online or through a video, and you're in a balance pose, and the teacher wants you to look a certain way. She's like, turn your eyes, or he's like, turn your eyes towards this. And then you're told to focus your eyes on a stationary point. And so that's the drshti that you're gonna hear of most often. And then what I have learned through further yoga study is that Dursti actually means so much more than the literal looking of what you're looking at, that looking at one point in space. Dirshti is actually how you're looking. So the perception that you have, the lens that you are seeing through. And so as you start this new year, I want to invite you to look at your dirsti. How are you looking at things? What are the perceptions that you have? The what's the lens that you're seeing things through? My experience, just being human and also guiding hundreds and truthfully just thousands and thousands of women through journeys like this, is that oftentimes our drishti is not by conscious choice. And so what I mean by this is that it may be that the perspective that you have, the lens that you're seeing things through, is not actually of your highest self. So it's not you consciously choosing what how you want to perceive things, the lens that you want to view through, how you want to make sense of your experience. Oftentimes that durstti is not the one you chose for yourself. It's just more the one that has become the habit for you. And so as you start this new year and you're getting really clear intuitively on what is for you to focus on, what is important for you to pour your energy and time into, and also like where you've been, how far you've come, what you've learned, where you see the growth opportunities are, where's the friction, like really knowing yourself so deeply, and then choosing from your highest self, from your spirit, from your soul, from your intuition, your inner knowing, your witness, then you're choosing, like, okay, this is the Durshi that I am going to channel in my life. I am going to choose to perceive my life through this lens and this way of believing and this level of trusting and timing and people and love and whatever it is, that trusting that you're safe in this world. A lot of that boils down actually to what you choose for your Drishti. And so I really just want to root you in that right from the beginning of this episode. That you hold so much power, and we're going to come back to this later on. The next thing that I wanted to talk to you about was this idea of the new year, new you. And oftentimes it comes from this very beautiful desire within you. And that desire is to be even more healthy, even more organized, even more wealthy, even more engaged in community, or giving back, or being a better friend, or taking on projects or responsibilities that excite you. Right? Like there's all of that stuff that tends to get focused on this time of year. And all of those things, don't get me wrong, they're incredibly important. And obviously, you want to focus on them. And I also want to give you a different model of how to look at and assess and also spend your time in terms of showing up in an even better aligned way in the year before or than you did in the year past, and that you want to in the year ahead. And so this model is rooted in the pancha maya kosha philosophy that comes from the yoga tradition, and it really identifies that we have these different layers of our being. And so, oftentimes, if you want a visual, you can think about this like the layers of an onion. And so, if you were to actually peel, depending upon how pliable the onion is, if you peel the layers back, you would find that there's a bulb at the very center. And so these the pancha myakosha represents these different layers of your being. And at the core, there is your soul. Like that's the bulb of the onion. That's the core of you, is your soul. And I'm not going to get into a lot of the details upon the pancha on the pancha myakosha in this episode. But I, if you're interested, let me know, and I will definitely cover it in a future one. So the Pancha Mayakosha are these layers of you, and at the core is your soul. And if we were to quickly run through these layers, they're things like your life. That's one my teacher, Harshita Wagner, who is actually on this podcast, look back through the episodes and find his if you want. Harshida taught me that the first layer, and I think he's right, is really your life. It's your experience of your work and it's your home and your money and your vehicle and all those just day-to-day life responsibilities and opportunities like parenting and grocery shopping and taking all the leaves out to the street for the leaf sucker trucks. Like all of those things, that's the layer of your life. And then there's your body, and it's literally your flesh and your bones, and it's the blood pumping through you, and it's your arteries, and it's literally just your physical body, all the pleasure sensation your body can have. Yes, that too. And then there's your energy, energy layer, your energy body. That sheath of you is really all about the energy moving through you, where it's not moving, where it is flowing, how to get it going, all of that. And then there's two layers of you, tooth sheaths, that are really about your mind. And one's about your emotions and your thoughts and your past experiences and your desires and all of that stuff. And then the other one is about your wisdom and your knowledge. It's everything you've learned, it's everything that you know. It's those areas that you have developed some degree of expertise around. And then there's the anandamayakosha. This is the bliss part of you. And this is this is that soulful connection layer. You are fully in it without analyzing that you're in it. And when you're in anandamaya kosha, when you're in bliss, when you're in connection with this part of you, you're neutral and you're observing, and there's this openness, and it's like being a clear channel, and there's a connection to something bigger than you. And it's that layer at the center of you that represents from the yoga philosophy, Atman, or I really like to call it Atwoman. And that's that highest self-view. So as you're looking at your wellness this year, and as you're reflecting on what your values are and what your intuition is pulling you towards, you might ask yourself through this lens like, what part of the kosha am I not showing up in? And I want to show up in this year? Do I want to be more working with my thoughts and emotions this year? Do I want to really hone in on my relationship to my body this year? Maybe you've been feeling disconnected from your body. Maybe you want to connect with your body, but it's hard for you to actually do it. I see you, if that's you. Or whatever layer it is, maybe you really want to work on your life category. Maybe it's the year you get your money stuff together. So, really viewing in a more holistic way your wellness and then using your power to direct it towards these areas and these priorities and values of yours that are really heart-led and soul-rooted so that you can really nourish yourself in the year ahead. All right, there's a few different things that I wanted to talk about that are gonna really help you set the foundation for maybe a different and perhaps better. I hope so. I hope you have an even better year than the year before, no matter what comes your way, because it won't all be sunshine and butterflies. It's just being human, right? It's messy and beautiful and raw and real and vulnerable and gosh, just such a gift. Okay, so those three things are first thinking about the future. So automatically you're gonna be hardwired to be focused more on past experiences and how they've informed your dirsti, your perception of things. And that's not your highest self, that's your protective self. That's your nervous system wanting to look out for you and steer you towards things that are going to be perceived as safe and acceptable for your nervous system. And the reality is that sometimes growth requires you to show up differently. And so that means really choosing for yourself to be more future-oriented in your actions and your thoughts and the choices that you're making. And so I want you to think about your future self and where you'd like to be at some point in the future. And it may be by the time you go on a trip to Costa Rica, or it may be by the time you reach retirement age, or like whatever it is, the different goals that you have for yourself that you want, you know that are meant for you and your future self. And by meant for you, I don't mean that you necessarily trust that you can have it, but you know on some sort of soulful innermost truth level that there's something there for you and that it's pulling you towards it. So you can think about what does my future self want to be living as? How does she want to feel? How does she want to express freedom in her life? What kind of freedom does she want? Does she want more time freedom? Does she want more freedom to communicate different things in relationship? Does my future self want more financial stability? Does it want to run around in my yard and garden until I'm 80? Like, what does my future self want? And then think about the choices that you make on a daily basis and ask yourself, am I going to feel good in the future about this decision? So if I make this decision at work, or if I decide to put this food in my mouth, or if I decide to go to that thing that my partner wants me to do, even though I kind of really don't want to, like, will my future self feel good about this decision? And seeing where the energy is in that. Like, how do different decisions feel to you? How do different choices feel to you? And how do they support the future outcomes that you want to have? And how can you move towards those outcomes through small actions and choices on a day-to-day basis without coming from the energy of trying to control? So, one of the aspects of yoga philosophy that I just find so aggravating and constantly humbling and just showing up everywhere in mine and my clients' lives is this idea of non-attachment. And so, non-attachment asks us to be neutral. It asks us to be open and spacious and available without trying to control everything. And so this thinking future is really about getting clear on where you want to go with your life rather than just operating in protection mode based on the past. And you're resourcing that future idea of what you're what you're wanting for yourself based on your own intuitive inner knowing that comes from a deeply resourced place inside of you. Okay, the next idea that I want to talk to you about is showing up for the granular in your life. And I literally mean like these small things in your life that you're avoiding doing. Do those things. So it may be that you have a cluttered drawer. I might be calling myself out with this one, that you just, it's just time to go through. Like stuff is accumulated. It's time to go through that drawer. It may be time to become more structured about rolling out your yoga mat and really being clear about how often you're gonna do that realistically and aspirationally, and how those practices will make you feel when you're done with them and just really being more solid in choosing to practice yoga, even if it's for like 15 minutes. It may be that you really want to have regular money dates with yourself and your partner if that's part of your life. It may be that you really want to make decisions around food that help support great health and leave you feeling nourished after. And it may be that I know one of my goals for myself is to really pay attention as I'm eating to when I'm feeling full. And I think that all, like, what is it about food for you that you just want to be really in tune with? Maybe it's the kind of food that you're eating, maybe it's the quantity of food that you're eating. One of my dear friends is really working on increasing her food intake this year. So, just what is it about food? And then are you wanting to meditate? So actually do it. Don't just think about it. Like, show up in the granular, do it. If there's some project around your house that's just annoying you, like we have a drawer in our kitchen that just opens itself. How can you show up for the granular and deal with the things that are actually energy leaks in your life so that you can free up more energy to feel the way that you want to feel in your life and show up for your people in the way that matters? And really embody that radiant, nourished woman that I know you are inside. So show up in the granular, actually follow through and do the things that are gonna give you energy, like your yoga practice, and are gonna clear out energy like your yoga practice, and you getting clear on your money or focusing on that food thing that you want to pay attention to or whatever it is about health or life. All right, the last one is owning your power. And all right, like you know, full circle. I was harping on this a lot. Gosh, I hate that word, not harping, really teaching on this a lot early in our episode. And it's basically this idea that you are listening in to your body, that you are tuning into your own inner knowing, pausing before you make decisions. You're really just giving yourself a chance to anchor into yourself on a frequent basis. And I don't just mean like once a day. And I do mean as often as you can. So, how often can you really just come home to yourself over and over again? And so that's a huge part of owning your power, is just being really tuned in and connected to yourself. And when you're like that, you can really listen to your body and your intuition on a whole other level. And so this is another way that you are going to own your power because it is so much easier to go into what is in alignment for you. It will be much more flowy than it is for you to push upstream against some cultural idea or community belief that's really not meant for you. And so when you've got that connection to your body and your inner knowing, you'll be able to feel when you're getting a no from within yourself. And you'll be able to really intuit and confirm when you're getting those yeses in yourself. And so, this owning your power piece is a being able to be an instrument, really, that is dialed in and in tune with your intuition and your body wisdom, because your intuition is not separate from the communication that your body is giving you, right? Like it's all part of the soul's expression through you, and it includes these layers. And so the more you can really tune in, the more you can listen to that intuitive wisdom from with inside you, the more you can actually align with things that are going to be even more flowy for you in your life. And then it'll also open you up all of the other layers, the thinking of the future, the showing up for the granular, the owning your power, it really gives you the opportunity to play with energy. And so this world that you are living in is literally energy. Everywhere you look, everything you see, including yourself, your physical body, is energy. And so if everything around you is energy and you are an expression of the divine, right? Like you are, God lives in you, with you, as you, and in everything and everyone that you see, then why can't you direct energy towards what is in the best interest of you and your highest self? Why can't you focus on what matters most? Why can't you hold incredible power without control and fear that like entangles and ensnares you? You're gonna have some of it because let's face it, you're honest, but you don't have to get ensnared in it. Why can't you just really send your energy towards all of what is in alignment for you? What is in your best interest? What is calling you towards it? What is meant for you? Right? So owning your power is about listening in. It's about being aware as that instrument that can really play the note that needs to be heard. And then playing with energy. What do you want to move it towards? What do you want to put it into? What are you gonna say no to? Very importantly, what are you gonna just like return that to the sender? No, thank you. That is not for me. All right, my love. We have covered a lot of ground in this episode. I've given you a lot to chew on here. And I can't wait to hear what this episode stirs for you. So happy new year to you all. And know that I'm so grateful that you're here. This podcast would not be possible without you, as the listener, taking time to let this be a part of your day and your life. And so I just want to thank you for sharing your time with me and sharing your life with me in some small way and let you know that I'm grateful for you. Thank you so much for listening to the Nourished Woman podcast. I would love to hear what resonated with you and what you're carrying with you out into your life. Send me a message on Instagram at the Nourished Woman or even in my email. Your messages really mean the world to me, so don't be shy. The beautiful music that you're hearing is by Sean Johnson and the Wild Lotus Band. You can find them on all streaming platforms. I'll see you next week for another episode.