After months of dreaming, planning, and more than a little trusting the process, Wise Body Women’s Health has a new home in the Flatiron District—and I am now accepting new patients.

If you’ve been waiting to work together, or if you’ve been quietly wondering whether this kind of care even exists for you, this is your moment.

Why This Feels Important

When I left corporate healthcare, I wasn’t just leaving a job. I was leaving a model of care that I believed—and still believe—was failing women. Fifteen-minute visits. Rushed explanations. Symptoms treated in isolation from the full human being who was experiencing them. A system that often treats our bodies as problems to be managed rather than as the wise, complex, self-healing organisms they are.

Opening a new space in Flatiron is, in some ways, a small act of resistance to all of that. It’s an expansion of something I want more women to be able to access: care that actually has time for you.

What We Do at Wise Body

We work at the intersection of evidence-based medicine and the deeper intelligence your body already carries.

My background is in midwifery and women’s health—I’m a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner and Certified Nurse Midwife with over a decade of experience—but what I bring to each appointment goes beyond credentials. It’s a commitment to listening. To making space for your full story. To honoring the body, heart, mind, and spirit as one interconnected whole.

What we treat:

• Preventive care and sexual health — Paps, birth control, UTIs, chronic vaginitis, sexual wellness, and more.

• Perimenopause support — Comprehensive care including both non-hormonal options and HRT.

• Menstrual health — For those navigating painful periods, PCOS, irregular cycles, or other cycle-related concerns.

How we work:

• Longer visits — Because your story deserves more than ten minutes.

• A midwife’s approach — Evidence-based care that also supports the body’s innate capacity to heal itself.

• Practical mysticism — We hold space for your intuition alongside your medical options, because intelligence comes in many forms.

Where to Find Us

The new Flatiron office is located at 928 Broadway, Suite 703, New York, NY 10010.

Appointments are available in-person or via telehealth for anyone in New York State if you’re not able to come in.

To book visit www.thewisebody.co

A Note to Those Who’ve Been Waiting

I know that for many of you, the healthcare system has let you down. You’ve been dismissed, rushed, or handed a prescription when what you really needed was someone to actually listen.

That’s what Wise Body is for.

If you’re ready for care that sees all of you, I’d love to meet you.

— Jane

Jane Riccobono, WHNP, CNM is a nurse practitioner and former midwife with specialties in reproductive health and perimenopause care. A lifelong meditation practitioner, her approach to women’s health is both feminist and spiritual.

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In yoga philosophy, Shiva and Shakti are inseparable. They’re energies that exist within each of us and we also relate through them. Shiva is pure consciousness—the ultimate witness, presence itself. Shakti is creative energy, the life force that animates everything. Together they form a divine union: Shiva giving direction and structure to Shakti, and Shakti making Shiva come alive.

These energies speak to what makes a good doctor’s visit. I write a lot about the shortcomings of the medical industrial complex. Another way to describe what needs to change in healthcare is to say we need more Shiva and Shakti in our healthcare.

Presence is one of those words we use without really knowing what we mean by it. We know presence when we feel it, and we like it when we feel it from our doctor. But what is it actually? Presence, you could say, is Shiva. He is the ultimate witness. When a doctor or nurse practitioner brings Shiva energy into a visit, they also invite in Shakti. The doctor holds the witness role, creating the container for the patient’s story to be heard and for their body to be understood.

This is true in the dynamic between doctor and patient, and also within each person. Presence generates access to the shakti within, allowing for a more creative approach to the patient’s problem. The more access a doctor or nurse practitioner has to their own inner shakti, the more they can be guided by intuition, recognize patterns, and connect dots that aren’t so obvious. Shakti is both a goddess and creative energy itself. She is aliveness. What could be more important to health and healing than cultivating aliveness?

These concepts are vast and I’m only touching the surface here. But I find it genuinely useful and exciting to think about Shiva and Shakti as a framework for what we’re missing in modern healthcare.

So the next time you leave a doctor’s appointment feeling unheard, unseen, or like your symptoms were just plugged into an algorithm, know that what you’re sensing is real. And it’s important.

You deserve a provider who shows up as a witness and applies their full human capacity to their work. Not someone who just mindlessly orders tests according to the protocols. Not someone who could be replaced by AI (and probably soon will be), but someone whose presence creates space for your body’s intelligence to be heard.

That’s what I’m building at Wise Body. If you’re ready for healthcare that includes both the rigor of modern medicine and the aliveness of Shakti, I’d love to meet you.

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Photo: Souvik laha

It changed everything.

There was something about having more people there that softened the whole dynamic. The visit felt less transactional. I learned more about who this person actually was — their life outside this appointment, the people who mattered to them. Meeting someone’s family is humanizing in a way that a chart never is.

It also kept me sharper. More eyes in the room means more heads in the game. I was more present, more accountable. The patient was calmer. There was a palpable sense of safety that I couldn’t manufacture on my own, no matter how warm I tried to be.

I’ve thought about this a lot since then. What those families were doing, without knowing it, was acting as doulas.

Most people associate doulas with birth. But the research on doulas reveals something more universal: even just having someone physically present for the entire duration of a labor — sitting in the corner, not trained, not doing anything in particular — leads to measurably better outcomes. They don’t need to coach or advocate or even say a word. Their presence alone is the medicine.

I’ve found this to be true for all kinds of medical appointments, not just birth. As both a patient and a provider, I’ve watched the energy in a room shift the moment someone brings a friend. The provider becomes more human. The patient becomes less afraid. Things that might have gone unsaid get said.

So here’s my suggestion: bring someone with you to your next appointment. Your Pap smear, your annual physical, your follow-up with the specialist you’ve been dreading. It doesn’t have to be your best friend. It just has to be someone on your team.

And if you’re the friend being asked — say yes. It costs you an hour. It might mean everything to your friend.

We are wired for far more communal living than modern life provides. For most of human history, the healer came to you. For an “appointment” you were on your own turf, surrounded by your people. The medical system as it exists today was built around efficiency and liability, not around the nervous system of a human being who needs to feel safe in order to heal.

Bringing someone into that room with you is a small act of resistance. It’s a way of saying: I’m not just a patient. I’m a person. And I brought a witness.

About Me

I’m Jane Riccobono, WHNP, CNM — a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner and Certified Nurse Midwife with over a decade of experience in women’s health. I work with women who feel a disconnect between the care they’re receiving and the care they need.

I went into healthcare thinking I could change things from inside the system. But after years of watching myself become what I didn’t want to be — rushed, burned out, unable to provide the care I knew women deserved — I had to choose.

I could keep trying to fit myself into a system that treats women’s natural cycles as inconveniences to be managed. Or I could step into what I know to be true: that women’s bodies are wise. That our cycles are sacred. That the pain we experience often carries messages we need to hear. That healthcare can be both scientifically sound and spiritually profound.

This is healthcare for women who know they deserve better. Book a call to learn more — I’d love to meet you.

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Ritual, though serious and meaningful, is a form of play to me. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why. Perhaps it’s the impracticality of it. The way it exists outside of the pursuits of the ego or of survival.

At a weekend retreat I attended last Fall, we did 108 prostrations for the maiden, the mother and the crone. As we bowed to each archetype, we honored her role in our life. We said goodbye to the phases we’ve completed, and embraced the phase we were entering. It was led by fellow Substacker and teacher of ancient spiritual traditions Greg Cascale (check out ). At one point he proclaimed, “We are starving for ritual.” That hit home. Even as I write this I feel the truth of it deep in my being.

Ritual is deeply nourishing and yet how many rituals are practiced in the dominant culture? We have weddings, funerals, birthdays, the Super Bowl, and a few Hallmark holidays. Compared to so many other cultures that are filled with rituals and sacred celebrations, mainstream culture feels depraved and empty.

Despite being outside of day-to-day life, ritual does have a practical effect on our lives. When I was on another retreat a year and a half ago, I had an insight about a healing ritual that I myself needed. It came to me during meditation like a craving, a need. You could say it was a ritual I was starving for. I needed a ritual to help me heal from a surgery I’d had. Physically my body had long since healed. But I still felt the ghost of pain where my scars were. It was a dull ache I’d felt almost daily for a year.

A few months later on New Year’s Eve, I performed the ritual that had come to me on retreat. I gathered a couple of close friends and a pile of flower petals. I set up an altar and we held a ceremony to honor and bless the site of my surgery. After that, I never felt that ache again. I’d felt it every day for a year, and then poof it was gone. This is the power of ritual.

The ritual I held for myself was inspired by a postpartum ritual called “The Closing of the Bones.” It’s an ancient ritual from Central and South America to promote healing after childbirth. It assists the mother in reclaiming her body, processing the childbirth experience, and healing physically, emotionally and spiritually. It’s a specific thing, but the wisdom within it can be extrapolated to other situations. I created my own ritual from the bones of that one like a witch making a brew. I kept many of the same elements and added new ingredients sourced from my own intuition and experience.

When I told my friend who’d had a double mastectomy about my ritual, she lit up. Here was a missing piece in her healing process. Something that needed to be done to help her move forward after breast cancer. Something she was starving for.

How many others need something like this? For those who hear the call, I offer healing rituals for postpartum and post-surgery. The rituals are lovingly created according to your needs, whether you are a “ritual person” or not. In fact especially if you’re not, but there’s something in you that says yes to this or yearns for this, I want to hear from you.

The rituals happen within a sacred container and include intention setting, mantra, and the opportunity to be held in loving presence as you process your experience. We take it seriously, but we also invite in play and joy. If you’d like to know more, reply to this email or send me a message on my website. We’ll schedule a time to have a no-pressure conversation and explore whether you’d like to do a healing ritual. Ritual is serious medicine—and also, I believe, our birthright. If some part of you is starving for it, let's talk.

Photo 1: Brandy Cunningham

There is a power dynamic built into the doctor-patient relationship. The patient is sick or injured and needs help. Even if they don’t have a health problem—at an annual check-up for example—they’re sharing intimate details about their health and allowing the doctor to see and touch their body. Being a patient requires surrender and trust, and it’s vulnerable.

But despite all of Brené Brown’s efforts, we don’t like vulnerability. There is a tendency in the culture to replace that which implies weakness with something not just neutral but emphatically strong. Somebody who has experienced sexual assault isn’t a victim, they are a survivor. Someone with autism doesn’t have a disability, they have superpowers.

It’s not necessarily wrong to re-frame a painful or challenging dynamic to make it more empowering. But I worry that we sometimes do so as an avoidance tactic. On the surface it seems like we’re supporting the injured party, but on a deeper level we’re ignoring their truth. It puts a pretty bow on something difficult and messy, and sends a signal not to talk about such things.

A friend of mine was in a terrible accident. I sent her a care package in the hospital with a note telling her she was strong. She came out with a song years later called “Strong.” It was about how, at that time in her life, everyone kept telling her she was strong when she truly did not feel that way. I realized how crass it had been of me to tell her she was strong. What I meant was I believed in her ability to get through that hard time. But “strong” was not the word for that moment. I was skipping ahead to something easier for me to handle, and in the process making her feel more alone.

Once we’re able to be with the truth of vulnerability, then we can begin to actually support someone. What we long for when we’re sick or injured is not just to be well, but to be cared for. That’s part of being human. It’s also part of the healing process itself. When we shy away from using the word “patient,” we send a subtle message that it’s shameful to need others and it’s shameful to be weak. It’s a vestige of the patriarchal “boys don’t cry” idea.

Another part of the move away from “patient,” I believe, is that many have felt mistreated by the medical system. In an effort to acknowledge patients’ dignity in a system that often exploits or diminishes them, well-meaning marketing people attempt to elevate them by making them clients instead of patients. A client is a more like a customer than a sick person. But the problem was never their vulnerability; it was our failure to meet them in their vulnerability.

Whether we like it or not, there is a power differential between doctor and patient. Calling someone a client doesn’t take that away. What patients need, and what we all need (because we’re all patients sometimes), is doctors who take responsibility for their power and treat their patients with care and respect, without missing the truth of their vulnerability.

In my practice, I understand how vulnerable it can feel to be a patient. I pride myself on inviting my patients to bring their whole selves to appointments, tears and all. I see patients for a range of different women’s health concerns, including perimenopause, painful periods, birth control, vaginitis, UTIs, and more. If you’re exhausted by a medical system that treats your body as machine and your symptoms as noise, reach out. This is healthcare for women who know we deserve better.

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Photo: Nathan Dumlao

As a midwife, I know how often the body is blamed for a problem that our culture created. I know about the preventable vaginal tears that happened because male doctors wanted to be able to sit down when they delivered babies. This forced women to give birth on their back, which is usually the last place the body wants to be when pushing out a baby. And that led to more injuries, more stalled labors and cesareans, and more “evidence” that we need medical interventions to safely have a baby.

I’m wary of just chalking brain fog up to aging when we’re in the midst of an unprecedented ambush on our attention spans. Maybe we should look at how our environment is affecting cognitive function before we throw hormones at the problem.

Let’s face it: most of us are addicted to our phones. Discomfort is part of the human experience (see the First Noble Truth in Buddhism). Smartphones act as a numbing tool for this discomfort. Whether it’s via scrolling, answering texts, or taking in too much news, in the digital age we have constant access to distraction.

And that’s just in our free time. Many jobs these days require you to be checking Slack or email throughout the day. The appearance of working—by being in touch with colleagues—takes precedence over doing actual work. AI is compounding the issue by making everything go faster and faster. All of this is bad for our quality of life and bad for our attention spans. Brain fog anyone?

There’s a better way. In the same way you can cut out junk food from your diet you can cut out junk internet from your day. The book Deep Work, by Cal Newport, is a classic on this topic and has lots of great suggestions. The one that stuck with me the most is to literally exercise your attention span.

To do it you designate a couple of hours as screen-free time. For example, you decide that for the next two hours you won’t look at any screens. The most important part of this is the moment that you want to look at your phone. That is the moment in which you can strengthen your attention span. Biceps get stronger when you lift heavier and heavier weights. It’s the same with attention. Each time you want to abort ship and check your texts—and don’t—you strengthen your ability to focus.

I’ve been incorporating as much phone-free time into my day as I can manage, and I can’t recommend it enough. It’s a vital way to reclaim our lives from the hungry ghosts of the digital age, brain fog or not. But especially if you are experiencing brain fog, it’s something to look at.

Hormones are one possible cause of brain fog in perimenopause. Stress, lack of sleep, and nutrient deficiencies are also possibilities, among many others. Beyond the physiologic reasons, we need to look at what role phone and internet use is playing. It’s so entwined with how we live that it might be hard to see and almost scary to contemplate. But we owe it to ourselves, and our bodies, to do so.

If you’re exhausted by a medical system that treats your body as machine and your symptoms as noise, reach out. My practice, Wise Body, is healthcare for women who know we deserve better. Who are ready to trust our bodies again while having the medical support we need. Who refuse to sacrifice our wholeness on the altar of efficiency. The witches are returning. And we’re bringing both the ancient wisdom and the modern science.

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Photo: Carly Seller

I recently came across the work of Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, in which she describes the Shambhala warrior prophecy. It’s a Tibetan legend about a time when “all life on Earth is in danger. Barbarian powers have arisen. Although they waste their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable devastation and technologies that lay waste the world.”

According to the prophecy, at this dire moment the Shambhala warriors emerge to dismantle these destructive forces. These warriors don’t wear a uniform or carry guns. It’s not easy to tell they’re warriors just from looking at them. They have two weapons: compassion and insight into the interconnectedness of all things. They use these weapons to dismantle the barbarian forces, which as it turns out, exist within all of us. It’s a beautiful and inspiring story about being a force for good. I highly recommend reading it.

It got me thinking about interconnectedness, not just as an abstract concept but as a practice. What does interconnection really mean in our day to day lives? How do we practice interconnection in our relationships and in the way we live in the world?

When I think of interconnection I think of strengths and weaknesses. Everybody has ways they contribute to the world and areas in which they need help and support. Truly everyone. Someone who seems very high-powered and successful needs entire teams of people to run their life. Conversely, someone who seems like a total failure has beautiful gifts once you get to know them better.

As I see it, interconnection in action is giving what you have to give, and being open to receiving what you need. The first part—offering your gifts—requires courage and vulnerability. This second part—receiving—requires humility and honesty with yourself about your weaknesses.

Interconnection as a practice of giving and receiving is weaving and creative. It’s a practice of healing one another. What is required of us changes depending on the circumstances. One moment calls us to act, to give to another. Another calls us to accept help.

There are millions of ways to take action, millions of ways to receive. But there is always a best way. The best remedy for the moment is always changing because each moment is unique. So we need to honor that with openness, space, and allowing for not knowing and for mystery.

Interconnection cannot be standardized. Just as the Shambhala warriors don’t wear a uniform—i.e. they are not standardized like a product made on an assembly line—the practice of interconnection is never quite the same twice. It’s always flowing, moving, changing.

I practice interconnection in my work with patients. Healthcare as usual wants you to fit into a neat little box so it can ship you off efficiently, lower costs, and increase profit. Standardization is a hallmark of corporate medicine (and of corporate anything). My method is not about standardization. It’s about creating the conditions for compassion and interconnection. Because from there, solutions arise that neither of us could have predicted. From there, the magic happens.

But I got ahead of myself. The prophecy specifically says not interconnection, but insight into the interconnectedness of all things. The insight is the weapon. That is a subtler thing than the actions we take out in the world. Those actions must start with the insight, and be imbued by it. To live that way is truly the way of a warrior.

If you're exhausted by a medical system that treats your body as machine and your symptoms as noise, let’s talk. My practice, Wise Body, is healthcare for women who know we deserve better. Who are ready to trust our bodies again while having the medical support we need. Who refuse to sacrifice our wholeness on the altar of efficiency. The witches are returning. And we're bringing both the ancient wisdom and the modern science.

Learn More

Photo: Anis Rahman

If the kind of care I’m offering resonates, reach out. I’m a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner and I treat a range of different women’s health and reproductive health conditions, including painful periods, PCOS, irregular cycles, menopause and perimenopause. My approach combines clinical expertise with intuitive and spiritual guidance. If that sounds like something you need, I’d love to hear from you.

Learn More

It made me nostalgic for a bygone time when there was more collective support to rest, when deep rest was built into mainstream culture. Yes, we can rest on our own. We can turn off our phone and close the blinds and retreat from the world. But it takes more effort when you know that the world is still humming outside your window, and it’s lonely to do it on your own. There’s that nagging sense of pressure to check things off the to-do list, and of fomo.

In January I went on pilgrimage to India. One of the many gifts of the trip was that for two weeks I barely looked at a screen. Every five days or so, I checked my phone for 10 minutes. That’s it. I can’t overstate the depth of peace I felt when I returned. The meditation and spiritual practices I was doing undoubtedly contributed to how I felt too. But the time offline was huge. Together, the spiritual practice and the withdrawal from busyness provided essential nourishment that I believe humans need on a regular basis. Taking time for deep rest keeps us sane, in our power, and free.

Lots of spiritual and religious traditions acknowledge this. Gandhi used to meditate for an entire day each week. Because otherwise, he said, he would not be able to listen to others for the other six days because he’d be distracted by himself (I’m paraphrasing). Shabbat is the Jewish weekly day of rest when you abstain from work or taking action on the world. One full day every week! When I did an Ayurvedic retreat many years ago in India they advised me not to read anything or write in my journal for the entire two weeks I was there. I was shocked. I considered reading and journaling to be relaxing activities. But there they were considered work that could impede the healing process. When they said “rest,” they meant it on a whole other level from what I was used to.

It’s easy to lose sight of what rest truly is. Given how fast things move these days and how ingrained phone and internet use is in our daily life, the idea of turning off your phone for twenty-four hours, or even three hours, is almost inconceivable.

Also, “rest” is only half of it. This is not only about what you’re not doing. In the examples above and across so many cultures and traditions, the reason for disengaging from daily life is not simply to rest. It’s to turn toward God. Or, as in Buddhism, to turn toward your true nature. Taking time away from the endless stream of busyness gives us space to reflect, connect with what’s truly important, and perhaps redirect our energy when we step back into the flow of things. Popular discourse on rest often talks about it in terms of being anti-capitalist or generally wellness-related (good for your nervous system), but leaves out the spiritual side of it.

It’s also important that we do this together. When we turn inward alone, maybe we find the Divine within. When we do it together, we meet the Divine in one another. We inspire one another. The togetherness is as important as the rest and the spiritual connection. Meditating together, or praying together, is one of the key aspects of spiritual community.

In my first month back from India, one of my main takeaways is a strong desire to de-prioritize virtual “connection” in all its forms—text messaging, Zoom, Instagram—in favor of in-person interactions.

I don’t like how silicon valley has co-opted words like “social” and “community.” The online version of “connection” gives us much, much less than in-person connection. So much less that it almost seems unethical to use the same words to describe these things. And virtual “connections” harm real connection by siphoning off our energy, shortening our attention spans, and bamboozling us into thinking we’re doing something meaningful. The result is that less time and effort is available for building real bonds.

Who in your online community is going to visit you in the hospital? Or give you a hug? Which of them is going to help you shovel your sidewalk? It’s not a community unless you’re breathing the same air. It’s a network. And that’s fine, but it’s a completely different thing. One of my first meditation teachers said that in his lineage, they taught via heart to heart transmission. The teachings were taught in person, straight from the teacher’s heart to the student’s. Where are you getting your heart to heart transmission? Where are you giving it?

At the end of my walk yesterday I passed by a restaurant that had left the “d” off its closed sign. Instead it read “close.” And maybe that’s where I’m heading with all of this. How can we get close to people, to wisdom, to truth? One good way is to turn off our phones and turn inward, together.

If you’d like to take a deep dive into rest, and feel a disconnect between the healthcare you’re receiving and the care you need, reach out. I’m a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner and I treat a range of different women’s health and reproductive health conditions, including painful periods, PCOS, irregular cycles, menopause and perimenopause. My approach combines clinical expertise with intuitive and spiritual guidance. If that sounds like something you need, I’d love to hear from you.

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It was heartening to have a conversation with people who share my values and are doing a version of what I’m doing in healthcare, but in their own industry. I have been connecting with a lot of people lately who are showing up in their lives and their work in a new way. Taking better care of their mental health, taking better care of their relationships, pursuing their dreams while remaining practical. I really believe this is the path to a better world. Not revolution, but evolution.

In an old interview, spiritual teacher Ram Dass was asked what the hippies got wrong in the sixties, and why they hadn’t created more change. He said—and I’m paraphrasing—that they were focused on revolution when they should have been focused on evolution. Revolution, in my view, has the feeling of a forest fire. It’s a short burst of surface-level destruction with no thought of the future. Evolution, on the other hand, is deep and lasting change.

In my conversation with Phil and Carolina we spoke about my choice to stay in healthcare after getting burned out, rather than walk away. In some ways it’s easier to leave, in career matters and also in life. It sounds more exciting to start a new career, a new relationship, or a new life in a new city, than to tough it out and work through the problems of your current situation. In some cases leaving is the best choice. But often it’s avoidance of problems which are sure to arise again. Often it’s better to stay and evolve.

I’ve been following the “Walk for Peace” that a group of Buddhist monks recently completed. They walked across the United States with a message of peace. At the closing ceremony in Washington, D.C., one of the monks spoke about how their walk won’t bring world peace, but if everyone in the world practices mindfulness every day, then that will bring peace. It’s up to each person, within themselves, and in their own corner of the world, to make things better.

Today is the Lunar New Year and the beginning of the Year of the Fire Horse. I love the Fire Horse as a symbol of evolution. It’s about both independence and rapid change, about each of us changing in such a way that dramatically alters the landscape of the world we live in. Wishing you clarity, courage, and a balance of independence and interconnectedness in the year ahead. We’re each forging our own path but we’re in it together.

If part of your path this year includes more support with a health issue you’re facing, reach out. I treat a range of different women’s health and reproductive health conditions, including painful periods, PCOS, irregular cycles, menopause and perimenopause. My approach combines clinical expertise with intuitive and spiritual guidance. Working together starts with a free introductory call in which I learn about your needs and share how I might be able to help. If that sounds like something that could be supportive, I’d love to hear from you.

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The continuity helped her learn. She could observe how the stitches she gave someone were healing, and how the medication she prescribed was working. It allowed her to refine her care plans and also learn from her mistakes.

That private practice closed. A big healthcare company moved into town and the small practice couldn’t compete. Giant healthcare corporations make deals with insurance companies that smaller practices can’t get. So they close. It’s the same thing that happens with any big chain out-competing the mom-and-pop shops.

The same fate has befallen dozens of birth centers. When I graduated from UCSF in 2018, there was only one birth center in the city of San Francisco. You would think that San Francisco, mecca of hippie culture, would be a a hub for midwifery care. When I talked to people who tried to start birth centers, they said the lack of birth centers isn’t due to a lack of a demand. It’s because of money. The finances of a birth center simply don’t work in the context of a corporate medical system. And that’s what dominates the US medical system: corporate healthcare.

The big hospital systems don’t tend to offer continuity of care. Instead of being able to book appointments with the same doctor every time, patients are shuffled around among everyone on the team. There are a number of terms for this, all of which I believe are marketing-speak meant to divert attention from the fact that nobody wants this.

Sometimes it’s called “team-based care.” Or it’s explained as a way for patients to meet all the doctors in the practice before they give birth. That way, they’ve met the person who ends up delivering their baby. But that doesn’t make sense. The value of seeing the same person throughout your pregnancy is so much greater than having met someone once who delivers your baby, and meeting 5 other people briefly who you never see again.

Continuity is better for doctors and midwives too. It eases the work load. Every time you see a patient you’ve never seen before, you have to read their entire chart to get up to speed. If it’s someone you already know, there’s much less catch-up time required. It’s a more efficient use of brain power.

For both patients and providers, there are so many benefits of continuity of care and almost no benefits of doing it the other way. And this isn’t just an issue with pregnancy and birth. I’ve experienced a shocking lack of support for continuity of care in other specialties as well. So why is continuity of care going the way of the dodo bird? My spidey sense tells me to follow the money.

I don’t fully understand how, but continuity of care must hurt profits. Scheduling is part of it. It’s easier to pack a schedule if you don’t have to worry about continuity. I believe indifference is probably at play. The people making these decisions don’t work with patients, don’t understand the value of continuity or don’t care because they’re only thinking about business interests.

There is also the question of power. Strong patient-provider relationships give more power to the provider. I doubt it’s an explicit intention of corporate healthcare decision-makers to weaken our relationships with patients, but it does serve their interests to do so. It’s in step with the ethos of industrialization: make the doctors cogs in the machine. Make sure they can’t start their own practice and take their patients with them. Make sure they’re not too empowered within the system to make changes that hurt the bottom line.

So what do we do about this? First we need to name and acknowledge that continuity of care, and the relationships that go with it, are not just fluffy add-ons to “real” healthcare. They are absolutely essential to it. We have reached a point of diminishing returns with healthcare these days. It has to be about more than saving time, billing insurance and avoiding a lawsuit. Just like there are essential nutrients we need from our food, there are some essential ingredients to good healthcare that we’re currently missing. Ingredients like time, presence, relationship and community.

We’ve allowed the human elements of medicine—trust, relationship, the ability to witness and learn from our own work—to be sacrificed in favor of efficiency and profit margins. The path forward requires us to reject the premise that healthcare can operate like any other industry. We need to support independent practices and birth centers through policy changes that level the playing field with corporate systems. We need insurance structures that value outcomes and relationships, not just volume. And we need to empower patients to demand continuity of care as a non-negotiable standard, not a luxury.

This isn’t about nostalgia for some idealized past. It’s about recognizing that some things in medicine—like knowing your patient’s story and being able to follow your own clinical decisions through to their outcomes—cannot be optimized away without losing something irreplaceable. The question isn’t whether we can afford to prioritize continuity of care. It’s whether we can afford not to.

About Me

I’m Jane Riccobono, WHNP, CNM. I’m a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner and Certified Nurse Midwife with over a decade of experience in women’s health. I work with women who feel a disconnect between the care they’re receiving and the care they need.

I went into healthcare thinking I could change things from inside the system. But after years of watching myself become what I didn’t want to be—rushed, burned out, unable to provide the care I knew women deserved—I had to choose.

I could keep trying to fit myself into a system that treats women’s natural cycles as inconveniences to be suppressed. Or I could step into what I know to be true: that women’s bodies are wise. That our cycles are sacred. That the pain we experience often carries messages we need to hear. That healthcare can be both scientifically sound AND spiritually profound.

This is healthcare for women who know we deserve better. Who are ready to trust our bodies again while having the medical support we need. If you’re interested in working with me, I invite you to book an introductory call. I look forward to meeting you.

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Your physical health is a part of this. Your physical health is also connected to every other area of your life. So in our visits we will talk about many things besides physical symptoms. Here’s a broad map of the different aspects of well-being that we’ll address:

• Body: In-depth review of your physical symptoms, medical history, and health goals.

• Heart: We’ll look at joy, pleasure, play and relationships—including your relationship to your body and the medical system.

• Spirit: We’ll take an inventory of what helps or hurts your connection to Spirit, and find ways to strengthen that connection through meditation and ritual.

Everyone has a next phase in who they’re becoming, and sometimes we need support to get there. This isn’t about constant growth in a capitalist, colonizer sense. It’s not about getting more and being bigger just for the sake of it. It’s about evolution. In fact, often the next step in who you’re becoming involves rest and slowing down.

In our visits, I hold the vision of fuller self expression and better health for you. Sometimes we need somebody else to hold that vision until we get there ourselves.

It starts in the first visit, and it also builds over time. You’re layered and multifaceted. Your body moves more slowly than your mind. To fully honor the complexity of who you are and your body’s state, it takes time. As I get to know you more, I can guide you more deeply. You deserve that and your body deserves that. But it does require patience, commitment, and faith that a divine unfolding is taking place. Needless to say, spending more time in a healthcare visit is a revolutionary act these days.

If this resonates, I’d love to meet you. Book a call with me and let’s figure out together what your body is trying to tell you, and how your heart and spirit yearn to grow.

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In case you’re new here…

I’m Jane Riccobono, WHNP, CNM. I’m a Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner and Certified Nurse Midwife with over a decade of experience in women’s health. I work with women who feel a disconnect between the care they’re receiving and the care they need.

I went into healthcare thinking I could change things from inside the system. But after years of watching myself become what I didn’t want to be—rushed, burned out, unable to provide the care I knew women deserved—I had to choose.

I could keep trying to fit myself into a system that treats women’s natural cycles as inconveniences to be suppressed. Or I could step into what I know to be true: that women’s bodies are wise. That our cycles are sacred. That the pain we experience often carries messages we need to hear. That healthcare can be both scientifically sound AND spiritually profound.

This is healthcare for women who know we deserve better. Who are ready to trust our bodies again while having the medical support we need. We’re in this together. I look forward to meeting you.

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The UTI That Changed Everything

Right before entering the nurse practitioner program at UCSF, I took my first trip to India. During a road trip, I got sick. Really sick. Burning pain when I peed. Fever. Full body aches. I didn’t know what was happening—I’d never had a UTI before.

If I’d known then what I know now, I would have been scared. Today, if a patient comes to me with those symptoms, I send them to the ER. But I was in rural India, unsure how to find medical care, and was not yet a nurse practitioner.

I arrived at an Ayurvedic retreat and tearfully told the doctor my symptoms. His response shocked me. He wasn’t just unconcerned—he was almost joyful. His manner conveyed absolute confidence that I would heal. He gave me some herbs and told me to rest.

Within a week, I was fine. No antibiotics. No vital signs monitored. Not because I was against medical intervention, but because it simply wasn’t available.

That experience didn’t teach me to avoid medicine. But it did teach me that healing is possible in ways we’ve forgotten. Up until then, I’d never truly taken the body seriously as a self-healing organism. I learned through experience to respect the body’s intelligence first, and to support it with whatever tools are appropriate. Whether that means herbs, meditation, or yes, even sometimes antibiotics. I’m not anti-medicine, but I’m pro-body wisdom. Medicine is just one tool in the toolkit.

From Burnout to Pilgrimage

The second time I went to India, I was burned out. I’d finished my degree. I’d worked in healthcare for several years. I’d tried everything to make it work. And I was heartbroken, hopeless, and exhausted.

At that low point, I had my “come to Jesus” moment—except it was a “come to yoga” moment.

I’d been meditating for years and was a mindfulness teacher. But something clicked during this time that made everything come together. I had just completed a yoga teacher training and fallen in love with yoga philosophy. I studied classical Tantra and the Goddesses of Tantra. I was captivated by the idea that in Tantra, the material world and the body are inherently feminine. When we honor the body, we’re honoring the feminine.

Suddenly it all made sense.

No wonder healing modalities that honor the body—like midwifery and Ayurveda—have fallen out of favor under patriarchy. They’ve been replaced by the top-down, controlling, medicine-as-warfare ideology we see in modern medicine because those are the qualities that thrive under patriarchy.

I remembered a feminist book I’d read in college: Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English. It’s about how the modern medical establishment is built on the demonization of women healers. It details the persecution of witches, midwives and nurses during the rise of modern medicine. And I realized with pride that I was all three of those things: a nurse, a midwife, and a witch.

The Calling

This second trip to India wasn’t tourism. It was pilgrimage.

In the depths of the despair of burnout, I committed to my spiritual path. And I realized that the same thing that brought me to yoga is what brought me to midwifery: the belief that our lives are sacred. That the body’s cycles, including illness and healing, are all part of each person’s becoming. It’s all part of our Divine path.

This isn’t separate from the healing process—it is the healing process. And it must be part of how we care for people.

Midwifery understands this. Ayurveda understands this. Many ancient healing traditions understand this. And finally, deep in my bones, I understood it too.

I stopped thinking of myself as just a nurse practitioner or midwife. I started relating to the archetype of the wise woman healer. The one everyone in her community turns to when they need care. The one who combines practical and mystical knowledge passed down through generations. Who knows medicines to heal the body as well as rituals to heal the soul. I choose to be the nurse, midwife, and witch.

Reclaiming the Witch

Not witch as in charlatan or villain. Witch as in the wise women healers who were persecuted for their knowledge. The ones who understood that bodies and spirits are intertwined. The ones who knew that transformation often requires us to go through, not around.

I bring my medical training—detailed knowledge of hormones, anatomy, pathology, and pharmacology. But I also bring what the medical system tried to train out of me: The ability to sit with someone for more than 15 minutes. To light a candle and begin with breath. To recognize when someone needs meditation practice as much as medication. To see menopause as initiation, not disease. To honor pregnancy as sacred transformation, not just risk management.

You Have a Choice Too

You can keep trying to find answers in a system that sees you as a collection of symptoms to suppress. You can keep accepting that 15-minute appointments where you’re not truly seen are “just how it is.” You can keep believing you have to choose between legitimate medical care and honoring your body’s wisdom.

Or you can work with someone who refuses that false choice.

Imagine healthcare that gives you time. That starts with deep listening and sacred space. That combines real medical expertise with spiritual wisdom.

Imagine a provider who helps you understand your symptoms as messages, not just problems—while also offering appropriate treatment when needed.

Imagine moving through perimenopause not as slow decline but as initiation into your wisdom years. Understanding your monthly cycle as sacred rhythm, not inconvenience.

Imagine healthcare as partnership. As a long-term relationship. As both practical and mystical.

An Invitation

• If you’re a woman who feels the disconnect between the care you’re receiving and the care you truly need...

• If you’re exhausted by a medical system that treats your body as machine and your symptoms as noise...

• If you’re seeking a healthcare provider who sees all of you—body, heart, mind, and spirit...

Then reach out. This is healthcare for women who know we deserve better. Who are ready to trust our bodies again while having the medical support we need. Who refuse to sacrifice our wholeness on the altar of efficiency.

The witches are returning. And we’re bringing both the ancient wisdom and the modern science.

Welcome home.

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In my next newsletter I explain how my approach is very different from healthcare as usual. Stay tuned!

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Whether I was working in a Federally Qualified Health Center or a high-end private practice, I could not deliver the kind of care I wanted to. No matter what I tried, I always had to hide an important part of myself to fit into a medical system that didn’t have space for all of me.

When I gave thoughtful, detail-oriented care, I ended up exhausted and resentful. In an effort to preserve my energy, I tried to be less empathetic. My thinking went like this: “People need healthcare and this is the system we have. Better to be here as some limited version of myself than to not be here at all.” I tried to become less relational with patients, to feel less, and deliver care as dryly as possible.

As I write this, I realize it’s almost like I was trying to be burned out. I wanted to stop caring about people. That didn’t work at all. I’m not sure that’s something you can do on purpose.

I tried moving to new workplaces, to companies that claimed to be “reinventing healthcare.” It was always the same story. At first, there would be something special about it, like longer visits. Inevitably, as financial pressures mounted, the qualities that made the company better would get whittled away. The sixty-minute visit would get cut down to thirty minutes, and then fifteen. The extra time for education would get cut. If a company survived to fulfill its goal, it was only a matter of time before it got sold to a big corporation and became a hollowed-out version of its former self.

No matter what I tried, I ended up sacrificing my own health and happiness for work that wasn’t even fulfilling. Most days I’d come home from work and lie face down on the floor, waiting to feel like a person again. Weekends were never long enough. I used up all my free time to recover and then I’d have to go back to work. I loved my patients but I hated my job.

I know what it feels like to really show up for a patient—to be the one who actually listens, thinks creatively, and goes the extra mile to truly make a difference for someone. I also know what it feels like to utterly miss the mark.

I remember one patient in particular. It was a few years ago when I was working at a busy gynecology practice. She came to me for pelvic pain. She was maybe the tenth patient that day out of twenty. I rushed into the room with a million things on my mind. She told me her story. I suggested a few tests and an ultrasound, and was on my way out the door when she started crying. “So how would I know if it’s time to go to the ER?” she asked me.

I had totally missed how much pain she was in. And I had done exactly what I’d vowed never to do, because I hated it when doctors did it to me as a patient. I had broken down her unique situation into pieces, fed them into an algorithm in my mind, and given her a regurgitated plan. The plan matched a medical decision-making model I was trained to use, but it didn’t address what she was going through. She had come to me in pain, seeking help. Instead of helping I’d added insult to injury by dismissing her experience.

Everyone messes up sometimes, but what became intolerable to me was the fact that the system does nothing to support the human side of healthcare. When I was able to bring humanity and creativity to the care I gave, it was in spite of the system—not because of it.

After years of watching myself become what I didn’t want to be—rushed, burned out, unable to provide the care I knew women deserved—I realized that the problem isn’t me. The problem is a system that doesn’t have space for all of me.

In Part 3, I’ll share how I journeyed through time and halfway around the world to find myself again.

Let’s Connect

I went into healthcare naively thinking I could do it better than the doctors I’d had as a patient. I now know that the system is just as dehumanizing for the doctors and nurse practitioners as it is for the patients. I created Wise Body Women’s Health to bring humanity back to healthcare. I created it for you, and honestly I also created it for me. We’re in this together. If this resonates, book a call to discuss how I can support you.

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I watched a woman in perfect rhythm with her labor—slow dancing through contractions, surrounded by love, completely in her power—until a nurse walked in and shattered it all with one sentence: “Why would you endure the pain if you don’t have to?”

The woman lost her resolve. Her beautiful ritual crumbled, and she opted for an epidural that she had intended to avoid. There was only so much preparation she could do, only so much support she could gather to protect herself from an over-medicalized birth. At the end of the day, the medical system and its industrial values overpowered her.

The birth was still beautiful and life-changing not just for her but also for me. The baby was born safely. Everyone was overjoyed at her arrival. But within the beauty I also saw the potential for more. For a more empowering experience in which the woman doesn’t just leave the hospital with a healthy baby and healthy body, but with the deep, irreplaceable transformation that comes from experiencing a rite of passage.

That moment taught me something that goes far beyond birth. It taught me that every major transition in a woman's life—first period, pregnancy, menopause—is a sacred passage. And most of us are walking through these passages alone, without witnesses, without ceremony, and without the support we deserve.

What many people don’t know is that midwives care for women throughout life—not just during pregnancy. Midwife means “with-woman.” I don’t work in birth anymore but I am still a midwife.

I became a midwife and a nurse practitioner to be “with-woman” throughout the lifespan. To protect them from within the system and honor the sacredness of not only birth, but of every stage of life.

I was heartbroken that this mom’s right to experience birth as a rite of passage had been violated. But I was also more in love than ever with the power of birth. Not just the incredible physiology of birth, but also the way in which body, heart, soul, and relationship are all integral to the birth process. Amidst the epic failures of our current medical system, birth retained its profound beauty. And I knew it was worth fighting for.

Stay tuned for Part 2: my story of trying to change the system from within.

Let’s Connect

Body, heart, soul, and relationship are integral to healthcare at every stage of life. Whether you need support with menopause, painful periods, or another phase of your medical journey, reach out.

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I believe we’re all born with unique gifts—certain qualities and skills we’re meant to offer to the world. Some people are gifted artists or writers. Others are gifted in business or politics. Some are gifted at creating a home or caring for others.

Now that the season of gift-giving is over, I want to talk about this other kind of gift. The gift you were born with, and that the world is dying for you to give. I want to encourage you to really connect with your own gifts, celebrate them, and ask yourself what you’re yearning to give more of.

This is not about over-giving or depleting yourself. It’s not about giving out of guilt or desperation or unworthiness. Inherent in true generosity is a sense of abundance. There’s a way to share your gift in such a way that it’s a win-win. You give what you have more than enough of, like a tree giving fruit. When we express our unique gifts, we uplift others and we get to enjoy a deep sense of satisfaction.

You probably have many gifts and a lot to give. What and how you give changes depending on your circumstances. Sometimes you have extra time and food, and you make somebody dinner. Sometimes you have extra lightheartedness, so you give out smiles all day. There are humble gifts, like the ones I just mentioned, and there are capital-G gifts that are deeper and more unique to you.

AI holds a mirror to our gifts and challenges us to express them more than ever. Having seen how poorly AI writes, I have new appreciation for my own writing ability. I’m not the only one who has seen what AI makes and thought, “humans do it better.” But AI’s existence also makes it all the more essential that we express our gifts, lest the world get covered in AI slop.

The only thing fending off the slop is you. If you have a gift for drawing, draw. Take up space with your art. Take space away from meaningless, unnerving images created by robots. Whatever your gifts are, share them. We need all hands on deck.

It’s easy to deny your gifts. To think that AI or some famous person can write better than you, draw better than you, think better than you. It’s not true. As the Christmas lights are coming down and the presents are getting stowed away, don’t lose faith. Instead, light a candle in your heart and remember the gifts you carry within.

Practice: Claim Your Gifts

Here’s a contemplation practice for claiming your gifts. Read the questions below, then take a few minutes to journal about them. Or you can simply close your eyes and contemplate the answers in your head. Allow yourself free reign to consider all kinds of gifts, and to come up with as many as you want. No gift is too big or too small.

• What have you always loved to do ever since you were a child?

• What’s something you do effortlessly that others seem to labor at?

• What’s something you’re naturally drawn to do that others really appreciate?

• What do others frequently compliment you on that you feel you didn’t earn?

• What has always been true about you, but seems to have come out of the blue, because it’s not connected to anyone or anything in your upbringing?

You might get emotional doing this practice because it gets at our sense of worthiness. If you have gifts—and we all do—it means you’re valuable. That’s a tender truth if you often live with a sense of unworthiness. It’s also painful not to share our gifts. By identifying what they are, we may also notice how much more we could be sharing. So go easy with this. If you’re having trouble coming up with your gifts, ask for help from people who know you, and/or your therapist.

Once you have a sense of your gifts, take a moment to take them in. Let your heart be warmed by the truth of your own goodness and how much you contribute to the world. Take a moment to wonder at the mystery of how you got to be who you are. Really take it in. Feel it in your heart, your belly, and down to your toes. Cry and dance and revel in it, if you’re moved to.

Now choose. One of those gifts, or maybe a constellation of them, is rising above the rest. There’s something so very important for you to give. Claim it. Install it in your heart. Carry it with you into this year, letting it be the engine that moves you forward.

Let’s Connect

One of the ways I’m offering my gifts this year is through my private practice, Wise Body Women’s Health. I became a Certified Nurse Midwife and Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner thinking I could change things from inside the system. But after years of watching myself become what I didn’t want to be—rushed, burned out, unable to provide the care I knew women deserved—I had to choose.

I could keep trying to fit myself into a system that treats women’s natural cycles as inconveniences to be suppressed. Or I could step into what I know to be true: that women’s bodies are wise. That our cycles are sacred. That the pain we experience often carries messages we need to hear. That healthcare can be both scientifically sound AND spiritually profound.

If you’re looking for a different kind of care, then I invite you to book a Foundation Session. Ninety minutes where you’re fully seen and heard. Where your medical history and your life story both matter. Where we start figuring out together what your body is trying to tell you and what you truly need.

Book a Session

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I ignored it. My inner taskmaster said, “No. You have to write a newsletter.” It listed all the reasons I had to sit down at my computer right now. And all the consequences I’d face if I didn’t.

So I sat down. After an hour of staring at the screen, I was frustrated, angry, and foggy-headed. I hadn’t written a single word.

The request for yoga resurfaced. This time, I listened.

Within five minutes on the mat, this entire newsletter came to me so clearly that I had to stop and rush back to my computer.

The Body Knows

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Every moment of inspiration I can think of throughout my life has been connected to my body. The body holds tremendous wisdom. It speaks to us and guides us—if only we will listen.

But listening requires faith.

When I walked away from my newsletter this morning, I had no guarantee that doing yoga would lead me back to it. In fact, choosing my body felt like giving up on my work. Like a failure to perform, a failure to be disciplined, and a waste of time.

And yet.

A Story About Devotion

Many years ago, on my first trip to India, I did a Panchakarma retreat at an Ayurvedic center. It consisted of two weeks of a special diet, herbs, and daily purification practices. It was an important initiation into healing for me. I learned deep lessons about the power of intention, the role of mantra, and the healer’s role as someone who holds the possibility of your healing even when you cannot.

One of the other people on the retreat told me a story. It was about a man who had performed perfect yoga postures on his first try, through the power of devotion alone. Before starting his yoga practice, this man devoted it entirely to the Divine. Then, despite having no experience, his body moved like a master—effortlessly twisting into all kinds of difficult shapes.

I don’t know if the story is true, but I believe it. I think about it all the time because it speaks to the power of devotion to help us do what we think is impossible.

Acting Without Attachment

One of the central lessons of the Bhagavad Gita is to take action without regard for the fruit of the action.

What I understand this to mean is that there is always a best next step to take. But we may not understand why it’s the best step or what it will lead to. We need to listen closely, to feel deeply, in order to know what the best next step is. The message comes from a subtle place—some call it the “still, small voice,” others call it the inner guru or the Divine. It’s a wise inner knowing. It doesn’t explain itself.

To act without regard for the fruit means to act without seeking a prize or fearing negative consequences. To be guided by neither attachment nor aversion, neither greed nor fear.

The man in the story didn’t do yoga to get admiration. He didn’t do it for health, longevity, or endorphins. He did yoga with total devotion to the Divine. He surrendered his actions without wishing for any particular outcome. And then a miracle happened.

But the point isn’t the miracle. I believe the depth of his devotion was itself the reward. We need the spectacular yoga postures to give the story legs (no pun intended). The wonder of the Divine can’t be put into words, in the same way that trying to explain a dream always falls short. The perfect yoga he was able to perform is a metaphor for the flow state that we can access through devotion.

Discipline vs. Control

There’s a difference between what I did this morning and having a strict yoga practice that you do every day, come hell or high water. But the two aren’t mutually exclusive either.

We often relate to exercise as a highly disciplined activity and do it with a forceful, controlling attitude toward the body. This approach may yield results in the body, but it often harms the spirit. It can also lead to short-term physical gains while causing long-term damage.

My approach—in my own life and with patients—is to be in conversation with the body. To listen to the body, because one of the ways the still, small voice speaks to us is through the body.

There’s a place for discipline here too. But not discipline as evil dictator or taskmaster. Rather, discipline as a container within which the body has freedom to communicate. Perhaps discipline is showing up on your mat every day—but after that, your body has free reign to move however it wants.

A Different Kind of Resolution

It’s that time of year when we set New Year’s resolutions. The fitness industry will tell you to commit to working out five days a week, to finally get those abs, to transform your body into something “better.”

But what if we made a different kind of resolution?

What if, instead of another plan to control, fix, or punish your body, you resolved to listen to it?

What if your resolution wasn’t about how your body looks or performs, but about deepening your relationship with the wisdom it already holds?

This kind of resolution isn’t about discipline as force. It’s about discipline as devotion. Not “I will make my body do what I want,” but “I will show up and listen to what my body needs.”

The irony is that when we stop trying to control our bodies and start listening to them, we often end up healthier, stronger, and more at ease than all our forcing ever achieved. But that can’t be the goal—that would just be another fruit we’re grasping for. The practice itself has to be the point.

A Practice for You

I invite you to start this new year with a practice in listening:

Body-Led Yoga

• Roll out your yoga mat in front of your altar. If you don’t have an altar, use a candle.

• Light the candle.

• Close your eyes and connect with your body in a spirit of generosity. Dedicate this time to your body. Thank your body for so often following your commands and doing whatever you want. Give this time to your body. Set the intention to surrender how you think you should be moving, and instead follow the impulses in your body.

• Set a timer for one hour. No less. A luxurious amount of time is required.

• Follow your body’s impulses to stretch, sway, or move in any way it wants. Maybe you’ll do forward fold for 20 minutes. Maybe you’ll do a complex yoga series. Maybe you’ll wiggle your butt for 10 minutes. You can literally do anything. It doesn’t matter what it looks like. It doesn’t matter if it’s going to make you stronger or more flexible. We’re not looking for any fruits. This is a practice of devotion to your body as sacred.

Important: Stay engaged with the sensations of your body. If you’re not moving, make sure you’ve chosen the stillness and you’re actively feeling it rather than zoning out. Whether moving or still, avoid absentmindedness. Keep bringing your attention into the sensations of your body. If you’re very tired and your body pulls you into sleep, that’s okay—but try to make a conscious choice to follow your body into sleep.

Maybe your New Year’s resolution this year could be to practice body-led movement once a week. Or once a month. Not because you should, but because your body is asking you to listen.

Let me know how it goes.

With love,
Jane

Let’s Connect

If you’re a woman who feels the disconnect between the care you’re receiving and the care you truly need...

If you’re exhausted by a medical system that treats your body as machine and your symptoms as noise...

If you’re seeking a healthcare provider who sees all of you—body, heart, mind, and spirit...

Then I invite you to book a Foundation Session. Ninety minutes where you’re fully seen and heard. Where your medical history and your life story both matter. Where we start figuring out together what your body is trying to tell you and what you truly need.

This is healthcare for women who know we deserve better. Who are ready to trust our bodies again while having the medical support we need. Who refuse to sacrifice our wholeness on the altar of efficiency.

Book a Session

Follow me on Instagram

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