Introducing Josephine and Fiona

Fiona: 00:02

We often think of wellbeing as one-dimensional. What if we look at it from a different perspective?

Josephine: 00:08

The possibilities are endless. All we have to do is step outside the square.

Let's walk this walk together and hold on tight for the ride.

Fiona: 00:16

My name is Fiona. I'm a corporate wellness facilitator, body image and eating psychology coach and a lover of joyful experiences.

Josephine: 00:24

And I'm Josephine, a dietitian, somatic release therapist and a recovering people pleaser and perfectionist.

Fiona and Josephine: 00:30

Welcome to Outside the Square.

Fiona: 00:35

Welcome! We’re finally here.

Josephine: 00:38

Wow, we're doing this. This is going to be fun.

So if you don't know either of us, welcome today. This episode is for you. We're going to share a little bit about our journeys so that you know why we're doing this podcast and can connect with us before the rest of the episodes.

Fiona: 01:01

We’ve got a jam packed season. We I think, are so excited about all of the episodes. We've been chatting about all of the topics that we want to share with you and be able to share our expertise and our knowledge in ways that work for you.

So let's get into it.

Josephine: 01:21

So Fiona, would you like to start by telling us a little bit about how you started to work in nutrition or the emotional space and how you got to have such a deep understanding for the nuances of wellbeing?

Fiona: 01:38

It feels like a series of things that have brought me to where I am now in being the coach and the facilitator that I am.

I have always been a foodie. There is a photo of me somewhere, well, it's not a photo of me, it's a photo of my feet as a toddler inside the pantry.

So you see the pantry doors. I think I'm hidden because I've hidden in the pantry eating peanut butter straight from the jar, which was my favourite thing to do as a kid.

Alas, I was not hiding and my feet were sticking out at the bottom, as we know toddlers are not great at hiding. Or they're great at hiding in plain sight. So that was my little thing, hiding and eating. That was always something that I did.

I used to hide food, I would collect it so that I always had it there. It was a really, really good emotional crutch for me for pretty much my whole life, and still is in ways that I think are really mindful now and really purposeful in a way that they didn't used to be.

So I've always loved food. I have always loved the experience of eating. So not just the food itself, but setting the dining table and putting the nice glasses out and folding the napkins in a different design and all of the other aspects that come along with the experience of eating.

And through my own healing work of healing my relationship with food and moving it from a space of being an emotional crutch to something that is more mindful and more purposeful, I discovered how big our relationship with food is in the way that links with the rest of our lives and the rest of wellbeing and the rest of everything else that's going on.

So, there were so many other aspects of my life that I discovered were playing out in my relationship with food and that was mind-blowing to me. So I was so excited to move into the space of learning how I can help others to think about their issues with food, with body image, with weight, with diet, with emotional eating, with overeating, binge eating.

How can we help look at the bigger picture and heal what's going on in the other aspects of our lives that are actually being reflected through that relationship with food?

So I did that, I started coaching in that space, probably five or six years ago now and that journey in itself has been massive and huge and I'm a very different coach than I was back then starting just with focusing on food and it has expanded to become much more about wellbeing and life and emotions and releasing and connecting back to ourselves and really looking inwards for the answers rather than outwards.

Josephine: 04:58

Yeah, beautiful. I love actually love hearing your full story because there's so many similarities with mine. I hadn't heard that before.

So, thank you for sharing Fiona.

Fiona: 05:08

Tell me where are the similarities with yours? Because I know we connected, you know, for those of you who, you know, a lot of you won't know us yet, but Josephine and I met doing an emotional release and bodywork course together.

And we connected about our shared love of food and of emotions, but I think the last time you told me your story Josephine, there was a lot more about how we actually really had similar journeys. So I would love to hear about that.

Josephine: 05:42

Yeah, so the, when you mentioned the photo of you as a child in the pantry, I have an equivalent photo, but I was, couldn't walk, I had crawled under the netting of our family grapevine at the end of the property.

And Mum had lost me. I had just been there for so long, just staffing my face with grapes, and Mum tells the story that as a child, I had a sensitive bowel and I was there to heal myself, that I was eating to heal like, you know, and that's persisted throughout my life that food has as you say been a comfort and yeah, also something that supported my digestive health, either it's exacerbated it or it's smoothed it.

So as a baby, we're so intuitive I knew that I needed to have a whole lot of grape skins probably to get things moving. but as an adult it got so much more complicated full of overthinking food. Got to not, yeah I would phrase it orthorexia as a teenager where I constantly thought about food and what was healthy and what was not and how much exercise I should do each day.

Like I remember being on holiday as a teenager and in my diary it wasn't “we had a great day today”, it was “I went for a water ski, I went for a run, I played backyard cricket”, so I was recording the things that we use in calories as a record of my holiday and like just yeah how much joy did I miss from that period of my life by focusing on that.

And then when I left school I wanted to be a doctor, and I was from my medical family so there was never ever an expectation said that I should go and study a medical profession, but there was one that I sort of felt myself because I've become, that's my personality, perfectionist.

And so off I went to medical school and at that point, you know, binge drinking comes in as well. So there was binge eating and binge drinking and a lot of anxiety that I didn't know what to do with, like I was numbing it with those things, and, yeah, med school wasn't for me. The pressure to get in was so extreme and I didn’t know what to do with those emotions.

And because of my love of food, everyone around me was saying, study to be a dietitian or a nutritionist. You love food. And yeah, I did, and came into this profession with not a good relationship with food and with the idea that I was going to heal it and the program didn't heal it at all.

I then went on to study like yourself, body image, mindful eating and started to share some of those tools with my clients around how to change your relationship with food, yeah and see it in a whole new way.

Yeah.

Fiona: 08:45

I have to say, I have a journal that is very similar.

Josephine: 08:49

There you go.

Fiona: 08:53

Yeah, it says, you know “I did so well, I ate this and I didn't eat this and then it all fell apart but I'm going to start again tomorrow”.

Josephine: 09:00

Yeah, and surprise, surprise, we were the era of the ‘80s and ‘90s dieting moms. Like this was just the environment we were brought up in, that yeah, it was pretty prevalent.

Fiona: 09:16

I suspect that many of you listening right now will probably be relating hard to some of what we've shared, you know, that we're just discovering this between ourselves right now, Josephine, and you know, we're not unique in that space, which is really why we want to be here sharing, you know, the door, the doorway that our relationship with food is to everything else that's going on as well and they're the spaces that we're so excited to explore.

Josephine: 09:48

Mmm, yeah. And then how did you get into the emotional work from there, Fiona?

Fiona: 09:53

Oh, the emotional work was really a space for me after I did my original eating psychology work, because I could identify what was going on for a client and I wanted to be able to help them release that and work through it straight away.

So, really then becoming more in tune with what our body is telling us, what our digestive issues are telling us, what our physical issues are telling us, even if they're not digestive, and making that connection and being able to process that and move forward.

Josephine: 10:41

Yeah, we do so, I think what I loved about starting to do emotional release work, or facilitate emotional releases for people, is that you don't need to refer out to a psychologist or psychotherapist or another form of coach. That we are teaching clients a skill where they can process any emotion in their own time, safely, and there’s so much power there. That once someone knows how to do that, whether they learn it from us in person or from even a video on YouTube, if you practice that skill yourself, you're no longer externalising your need to help to an expert, right?

It's your body, your body intuition and understanding that language.

Fiona: 11:30

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, that type of work, that type of education, the type of coach that you and I are and the healers that we are, we're part of that team, you know, so you can be working through other things while also learning that skill and using that combination as well.

I always have, always talk about, I have, you know, a whole team of people who are my healers. I have my body workers and my emotional coaches and my networking in my coaching space as well, so.

Josephine: 12:04

Yeah, the perfect compliment.

Fiona: 12:07

I want to know, Josephine, what is one ritual or practice that you do that supercharges your wellbeing? If you had to pinpoint one that you thought was really valuable. What's the what's the one practice that you do?

Josephine: 12:23

It changes for me. I think the practice I do is getting up early when the house is quiet before my husband or son awakes.

So I have like an hour, sometimes I'm just using the 15 minutes for something for me, but it could be an hour if I want, but I have that time to do what ever I want and that's going to ground me for today, for the day.

So this morning it looked like pouring hot water over cut up ginger in a tea pot and making a ginger tea, but not to drink, it was for my feet.

So the ginger tea goes into the foot bath, heaps of hot water into the foot bath and I just sit, I sat with my feet in the ginger foot bath, I hate the cold, it's freezing here at the moment. So I literally absorb that heat through my feet and just use it as a grounding practice to feel my life force energy from the earth coming up and attempt to start the day turning my brain off and just being in my body.

So there's usually a common thread. I'm usually making sure I keep my brain off and just starting that day by being really present with my body. And there’s no surprises that’s the time when all these little downloads land that I'm really grateful for in that stillness.

So yeah, it's that space in the morning that I really love.

Fiona: 13:50

That sounds divine. I'm going to try that. A ginger foot bath.

Josephine: 13:54

That's beautiful.

Fiona: 13:56

If you think about how we breathe or some of those breathing exercises or some of those body scans for yoga, we always start with the feet and absorb and move upwards, so I love that, that it’s sort of grounding because you're feet are in that water with the ginger and absorbing upwards in the morning.

Josephine: 14:15

Yeah. And then I put a little bit of oil on the bottom of my feet to like, keep the heat up for the day. Socks, shoes, you know it's, yeah, it's really nourishing for the cold days.

Fiona: 14:27

Love that.

Josephine: 14:28

What about you?

Fiona: 14:30

One of the practices that I've put in place that is, I think, has been the most powerful for me has been practicing gratitude.

So right before bed, when I'm sitting in bed, I have a notebook beside my bed, and I write down in a journal three things that I was grateful for that day.

And I think one of the things that makes that a really powerful practice, is that once you start and when you know that you have to find three things at the end of the day to be grateful for, you start looking for them throughout the day.

So it brings your focus and your attention throughout the day to finding those things that you can have gratitude for even when you're in a space where maybe you're not feeling emotionally as strong as you would like to or you, you know are having a really bad day when everything's going wrong or you feel like the universe is against you.

When you have that challenge to yourself knowing that you have to find something to be grateful for, you go looking for it.

And that can be just the really small things, but it can bring a lot of reflection back particularly to those days that are a struggle, you know, some days where things going right and you're celebrating and you're having those really wonderful times is really easy to find things to be grateful for. But in those, on those other days where things are harder, it gives you a focus.

And so that's been a really, really powerful thing that I've put into place.

Josephine: 16:23

Hmmmm

Fiona: 16:25

And also, the people who are going, I don't journal, I don't like writing stuff down, don't ask me to do that at the end of the day, we can practice gratitude without journaling as well.

So even having that reflection to yourself, you can say it out loud at the end of the day, “I'm grateful for those, whatever it might be”, without having to write it down, it can just be released straight out into the world.

We can also practice gratitude just with others. So instead of saying, “I'm so sorry I'm late”, you can say, “thank you so much for waiting, I'm grateful that you're here. I'm grateful for your patience”.

So in that vein, thank you all listeners for being here today in our first episode.

We are really grateful for you. And to be sharing this journey with you.

Josephine: 17:24

I agree. We are so grateful to have you all here supporting our podcast and learning with us, we have seven episodes planned after this one, which we've tailored to make sure we talk about food, but more importantly than that, the emotional patterns under our ability to nurture ourselves.

And that means it's not going to be just about food, it is going to be about nurturing yourself and your soul deeply. So you can find us at Outside the Square Podcast on Instagram, or Outside the Square podcast on any podcast platform.

We would love you to follow us on whichever platform you use. Like, share, subscribe if anything resonates with you, so that other people in your life can also hear this information, which we know is going to be so valuable.

We cannot wait to that with you.

Fiona: 18:24

So until next week, let us know your questions. If there's something specific around food or wellbeing or body or emotions that you want to hear about, reach out, let us know.

And try a wonderful morning or evening routine before next week. Give it a try. Tell us how you get on. I'm going to certainly try having a ginger bath, so tune in next week to see how my foot bath goes, and yeah, we can't wait to see you then.

Josephine: 18:59

Before we finish up for today, we would like to acknowledge the original custodians of the lands on which our podcast is created, the Ngāi Tahu people of Aotearoa New Zealand,

Fiona: 19:08

and the Cammeraygal people of the Eora Nation Australia. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging and to all our listeners who identify as Aboriginal, Torres Straight Islander, or Maori.

Josephine: 19:20

We love connecting with you, our listeners and talking about the topics that mean the most to you. Reach out to us on Instagram at Outside the Square Podcast and let us know what you want to hear more of.

Fiona: 19:31

Until next week, keep stepping outside your square.

Josephine: 19:36

And that’s a wrap. We did.

Fiona: 19:38

We did it.

Josephine: 19:40

First podcast done.