Islay Sarah Wellness

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Islay Sarah Wellness ✨ Wellness for your actual brain, body & life
🧠 Evidence-based • ND-friendly • no wellness BS
🦄 MSc • RYT-500 • CFT • ADHDer

09/18/2026

As a health-conscious individual… and as someone who tends to try really hard 🤣… I know it can sometimes feel like if we’re not wrangling our brains into submission and focus, that’s on us. We just need to try harder! Focus better!

But sometimes our brains don’t need us to try harder—they just need the right conditions for attention to settle. 🪼✨

So this is my invitation to let go of effort a little bit. Let yourself be. Instead of pushing harder, find something that captures you, engages you, settles you.

For me, these jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium were pretty entrancing—and absolutely meditative. 😂

But if you don’t have an aquarium handy, 😆 and you’d like to learn more about how to create the right conditions for focus and train your attention without constantly fighting your brain, I’m giving a free workshop next week: Training Attention in a Distracted World.

We’ll talk about what gets in the way of focus, learn some practical tools, and meditate together.

Free + virtual. 💛 Link in bio to register. Hope to see you there!

09/16/2026

Getting distracted during meditation doesn’t mean you’re bad at meditating. In fact, noticing that your attention wandered—and gently bringing it back—is part of the practice.

Meditation gives us a place to practice working with our attention, so we can become more aware of where it goes and how we respond when it wanders. There are also some specific practices we can do that have been shown to improve attention and focus.

Want to learn more and practice with me? Join my FREE virtual workshop next week: Training Attention in a Distracted World. We’ll explore the neuroscience of attention, focus, and meditation—and we’ll practice together.

✨ Register through the link in my bio.

These workshops are a little passion project of mine. 💛I love teaching, and I really believe that wellness tools shouldn...
09/11/2026

These workshops are a little passion project of mine. 💛

I love teaching, and I really believe that wellness tools shouldn’t only be available to people who can afford a premium program, a membership, or one-on-one support. There are simple, evidence-based tools that can help us feel better, understand ourselves better, manage stress, and navigate everyday life a little more easily—and I want more people to have access to them.

So, once a month, I host a free virtual workshop. They started as meditation workshops, but this fall I’m broadening them into wellness workshops—where we take one topic and make it practical, approachable, and actually useful in real life.

Here’s what’s coming up:

🧠 Sept 22 — Training Attention in a Distracted World
⚡ Oct 14 — Why Am I So Tired?
🌱 Nov 18 — Why the Bad Stuff Sticks
🎄 Dec 9 — Healthy-ish for the Holidays

They’re all free, live on Zoom, and you’re welcome to join one or join them all. Replays are available if you can’t attend live (but registration is required to get the link).

Save this post so you have the dates, send it to someone who might want to join you, and sign up through the link in my bio. 🦄✨💕

09/09/2026

😁🌲🌳🤸🏼‍♀️

09/08/2026

No need to take ourselves too seriously, right? 🤣😂

09/02/2026

Sometimes it feels like the easiest option is what your nervous system wants… but sometimes what feels easiest in the moment isn’t what makes us feel best afterward.

Getting yourself outside, into the sunshine, into the water—even when your first instinct is to stay put, do nothing, keep scrolling, or what I call “cocoon” in the house lol—can really shift things in a powerful way.

Being outside in nature is a proven stress relief and nervous system regulation strategy, as is reducing screen time! Getting outside also in known to boost mood, and support our overall wellbeing. 🍃😊✨ And there’s something especially powerful about being near (or in) water. 🌊

Did you know that water therapy, ocean therapy, and forest therapy are traditional health modalities with ancient roots across multiple cultures? And today, there is promising research supporting them!

So when it feels tough to get yourself out of the house and away from your screen, remember: you don’t have to do anything huge.

Step outside. Feel the sun. Put your feet in the water or sand or grass or even mud (ok messy and a little weird I know, but also therapeutic and oddly satisfying 😂). Or just go for a little walk. Get some fresh air (old but solid advice haha).

Sometimes your nervous system just needs a different kind of input.

And it will pretty much always thank you for choosing the water instead of the doom scroll. 😊💕✨❤️

Follow for simple ways to support your nervous system and your wellbeing. Plus you can find free resources, workshops, classes, and more through the link in my bio. 🦄✨

Every week, I am apparently convinced that THIS will be the week I effortlessly fit 47 things into the capacity of appro...
08/31/2026

Every week, I am apparently convinced that THIS will be the week I effortlessly fit 47 things into the capacity of approximately 12. 😅

And while I fully support the optimism… let’s chat about capacity…

Because our capacity isn’t a fixed number.

How much we have available on any given day or week is not static. It’s affected by sleep, stress, sensory input, emotional load, executive functioning demands, social demands, movement, recovery — and just, you know… life… and being a human with a nervous system.

(And for neurodivergent folks in particular, accurately predicting how much energy, focus, and bandwidth something will require can be tricky sometimes.)

So sometimes we make plans based on the capacity we hope we’ll have… rather than the capacity that actually exists.

Then when we can’t do everything we planned, it’s very easy to turn that into:

“I need to be more disciplined.”
“I should be able to handle this.”
“Why can’t I just keep up?”

When maybe the more useful question is:

“Was I asking more of myself than I realistically had available?”

I’m not saying we should get rid of the optimism. 💛

We just need to make sure we’re building a version of wellness that leaves room for fluctuating capacity, imperfect weeks, changing needs, and the occasional wildly ambitious Monday-morning version of ourselves. 😆

If you’re looking for a more realistic, flexible approach to wellness, you can find free resources, workshops, classes, and ways to work with me through the link in my bio.

Feeling stuck in a stress response? 💜Try these 3 simple nervous system regulation tools: slow breathing, grounding throu...
08/27/2026

Feeling stuck in a stress response? 💜

Try these 3 simple nervous system regulation tools: slow breathing, grounding through the senses, and mindfulness.

Simple doesn’t always mean easy — but small moments of regulation can help us reconnect with the present and create a little more space between stress and response.

✨ Save this for the next time your nervous system needs some support.

The nervous system can be a little dramatic sometimes. 😅Because here’s the thing about our stress response: it isn’t sit...
08/25/2026

The nervous system can be a little dramatic sometimes. 😅

Because here’s the thing about our stress response: it isn’t sitting there thoughtfully assessing the situation like, “Hmm, yes, technically this leaf blower poses no meaningful threat to my survival.”

It’s designed to detect potential danger and respond — fast.

And sometimes the “danger” is a lion (or a real threat that requires an immediate stress response to overcome).

But most of the time, in today’s world, it’s not.

It’s a sudden loud noise. Or an overflowing inbox. Or being late. Or conflict. Or too many demands. Or plans changing unexpectedly. Or a sensory environment that’s just a little too much.

Either way, the body can kick into a fight-or-flight response: heart rate increases, muscles tense, breathing changes, attention narrows, as your system prepares to deal with a threat.

Even when your thinking brain knows you’re safe.

For people with particularly sensitive nervous systems — like many neurodivergent people — sensory input and everyday stressors can often create a disproportionately large, but very real physiological stress response.

That doesn’t mean a leaf blower IS a lion. 🥲

It means our bodies don’t always know the difference.

Our mental and physical state influences how sensitive the nervous system is. 🚨 And that’s an important piece to acknowledge…

Because nervous system regulation ISN’T about shaming ourselves into believing something “shouldn’t” bother us.

Instead of asking, “Why am I reacting so much to something so small?” we can get curious about what our system is experiencing — and what might help it feel a little safer.

Even if we do occasionally have to remind it:

No, really. It’s just landscaping. We’re okay. 😅😆🌿

And if your nervous system could use a little more support navigating wellness in a way that actually works with your real life (and your real brain), I have free wellness guides, workshops, and other resources waiting for you on my website! 🦄💖✨

Head to the link in my bio to explore.

08/24/2026

I’m being silly…but I’m also not joking. 😂

Moving your body, getting outside, playing, laughing, doing something just because it feels good—these things count, too!

We have a tendency to make wellness, fitness, and health just another thing we have to be good at. The perfect workout. The perfect morning routine. “Get your steps!” “Drink more water!” “Meditate every day!” Another list of things we’re SUPPOSED to do.

But listen up! For real: taking care of yourself doesn’t always have to look so serious!

Sometimes it looks like a workout.

Sometimes it looks like a walk outside.

And sometimes it looks like being a grown woman doing something mildly ridiculous in public because it made you happy. 😆

🚨✨Because guess what? Movement (and not just the kind that involves activewear 😂), being outside in nature, social connection, play, laughter—all have proven benefits to your physical and mental health. And joyful self-expression can be a beautiful way to support nervous system regulation and wellbeing. ✨

It all counts. 💛

If you’re looking for ways to make health and wellness feel easier, more realistic, and actually doable in your real life—that’s kind of my whole thing. 💖✨

You can find free wellness guides, free monthly workshops, and more on my website!

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Laguna Niguel, CA
92607, 92677

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