Coming Home: Pathways to Wellness

Welcome to Season 4 of Exploring Ways to Wellness. After three seasons and 30 conversations exploring different wellness practices, host Sarah Gorev has realised something: maybe feeling good isn't about adding more. Maybe it's about finding your way back to something that got lost along the way.

 This season is about coming home. Not in the literal sense, but coming home to yourself. To your body. To rhythms you'd forgotten. To wisdom that's been there all along.

Season 4 explores ten pathways home and this episode introduces some of what's to come. Perfect for: Anyone feeling overwhelmed by wellness advice, people tired of optimization culture, those seeking permission to do less not more, listeners curious about ancient practices meeting modern life, anyone wondering if the answer isn't out there but already within.

This podcast is here to inform and inspire curiosity, not to tell you what to do. Everything discussed reflects the personal experiences of our guests, and Sarah doesn't personally endorse any particular practice or approach. You're always in the driving seat — it's entirely your choice whether to explore further. Where guests offer the chance to try things for yourself, you'll find links below. And as always, nothing here is suggested as a substitute for personalised advice from your own healthcare professionals.

Thanks for listening.

Transcript

Coming Home: Pathways to Wellness

[00:00:00]

Hello and welcome back to Exploring Ways to Wellness. If you are new here, welcome and if you've been with me through seasons one, two, and maybe even three. Thank you. It's so good to be back.

I'm Sarah Gorev and I have to say, sitting here about, to launch season four. I'm feeling something I didn't really expect. Not nervous. Exactly. More like, um, sort of coming home after a long trip. You know that feeling when you walk back through your own front door and everything's familiar, but you're seeing it differently because you've been away.

I think maybe that's what this season's all about, coming home. Not in the literal sense though, we will talk about that, but coming home to yourself, to your body, to the rhythms you've forgotten, to the wisdom [00:01:00] that's actually been there all along.

And I know, I know that might sound a bit woo, but stick with me because I've realised that after three seasons and 30 conversations with incredible guests. We spend so much time looking out there for wellness, the next practice, the next technique, the thing we haven't tried yet, but what if feeling good isn't about adding more?

Especially if you're someone like me who always feels like they want to do everything and is trying to curb their fomo. What if it's about finding your way back to something that got lost along the way? Let me give you an example. A few months ago, I was having coffee with a friend who'd just started therapy, and she said something that stuck with me.

I don't feel like I'm learning anything new. I feel like I'm remembering who I was before everything got so complicated. [00:02:00] Before everything got so complicated, and isn't that it? Somewhere along the line, wellness became complicated.

We're supposed to optimize biohack, track, measure, improve. We've got all those apps telling us when to sleep, when to eat, how to breathe. And don't get me wrong, some of that's genuinely helpful, but somewhere in all the doing, we lost the being. We forgot how to just. be, appreciating what we have rather than yearning for what we haven't.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's fine to have desires, but not when you find yourself feeling like you focus on the fact you haven't got something or you aren't something. Sometimes what we need is to come home to ourselves and feel comfortable there. Then everything else is a bonus addition. So this season, that's what we are exploring.[00:03:00] 

10 conversations about different pathways back. Some might sound familiar, some might sound a bit more out there, but they all in their own way are about remembering something we already know. Let me walk you through some of what's coming. I'm so excited to share. We are starting with food and before you roll your eyes thinking, oh great, another diet conversation.

This isn't that. This is about coming home to your body through food freedom, not restriction, not rules, not the latest eating plan, but actually listening to what your body's telling you and working with that. Because here's the thing, I find working with clients with EFT Tapping, your body knows it really does.

We've just learned to override it, ignore it, not trust it. We've been taught that experts know better than our own hunger [00:04:00] cues, our own cravings, our own sense of what feels good. In fact, the voice that we can find we're listening to is actually our inner critic. Or a repeating message from a parent or a situation in the past, A voice

we wouldn't want talking to our friends, so why do we believe it about ourselves? This conversation is about getting that trust back, about using energy to understand our often unconscious beliefs and what your body's actually asking for. Rather than what diet culture's telling you it should have, it's about loving yourself, not fixing yourself.

And that might sound simple, but honestly, for a lot of us, eating without shame, eating without anxiety, eating because it feels good, that can be a complete shift in thinking. I am also looking forward to [00:05:00] exploring something I've been curious about for years, but never quite understood beyond reading horoscopes and hearing people mention they're having a bad day because of the moon. Astrology.

Your cosmic blueprint, if you like. I like many people, like things I can touch and see and measure. So astrology's always just been fun and interesting for me, rather than considering it impactful. But what I've learned is that whether or not you believe the stars influence your personality, there's something powerful about having a framework to understand yourself better.

I think this conversation will be fascinating and I can't wait to understand it better. Coming home to your cosmic blueprint might mean recognising patterns you've been running for years. It might mean permission to be exactly who you are rather than who you think you should be.

It might just be a really [00:06:00] interesting conversation about what ancient wisdom has to say about human nature. With the help of a fabulous returning guest, we'll also be diving into forgiveness and looking at this through the lens of a deep Hawaiian forgiveness practice called ho'oponopono, and I'm probably saying that wrong.

I apologize. But it's all about releasing what you've been carrying. The grudges, the hurt, the I'll never forgive them stories that we hold onto because we think letting go means they win. But here's what I'm learning about forgiveness. It's not about them. It's about you. And coming home to peace, to a version of yourself that isn't carrying all that weight around anymore.

And I want to be really clear, this isn't about toxic positivity. It isn't just forgive and move on. It's more nuanced than that. It's about what you are ready to release and what the [00:07:00] release might make possible. I think there's many of us carrying around the kind of baggage that could really do with that episode.

We're going outside this season too properly outside, so forest bathing, which isn't actually bathing obviously despite the name as well as enjoying our own green spaces, getting your hands in the soil, standing amongst the trees, remembering that you're not separate from nature. You're part of it As I'm hopefully going to Japan soon where forest bathing is encouraged.

This is gonna be a fascinating one for me too. The seasons changing here in the UK mean we've got longer days and more chance of sun. After darker, wetter, colder seasons where I've spent a lot of time indoors at screens in artificial light, I notice we all notice, don't we? That when we get outside, something shifts, we breathe differently, we [00:08:00] think differently, even time feels different.

Although shout out to the hay fever sufferers who might not actually really appreciate this. Coming home to nature might be the most literal version of what this season's about because we are nature, our bodies run on rhythms, circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms, lunar rhythms,

that we've mostly overridden with electric lights and central heating and 24 7 everything. What if coming home means remembering we are meant to slow down in winter that spring energy is real, that putting your bare feet on grass isn't hippie nonsense. It's grounding in both sense of the word. In fact, that reminds me of an episode on Ayurveda with Kaz in season two.

I actually went on one of Kaz's retreats and it's definitely shifted how I appreciate the seasons and my response to them. [00:09:00] I'm thrilled to say that Kaz is gonna be coming back. She'll be another returning guest where we're exploring something called Family Constellations. And I'll be honest, I don't fully understand how this works,

but I have seen it work well for others, which is why I am so curious. It's about patterns that run through families, not, oh, I will have my grandmother's nose patterns, but deeper stuff. The way trauma moves through generations, the roles we unconsciously take on and the burdens we carry that aren't even ours.

Coming home to your lineage, which might sound strange, but what if understanding your family system, seeing where you actually fit rather than where you've been trying to fit, what if that's part of coming home to yourself?

What if some of the things you've been working so hard to fix in yourself aren't actually yours to fix? [00:10:00] What if they're patterns you've inherited? And recognising that changes everything. There's also an episode coming up about women gathering together, this one feels really important for right now.

Drumming, singing, red tents, practices that have been happening for thousands of years in different cultures and different forms. Women sitting in circles, holding space for each other and before anyone thinks, this doesn't apply to me, whether you're a woman or not. There's something here about community, about being witnessed, about the energy that happens when people show up authentically.

Without performance, without having to be anything other than exactly who and where they are coming home to circle, to sisterhood and to the idea that improving wellness doesn't always happen alone. What else do we have? [00:11:00] Um, herbology is coming up too. Plant medicine. Not in the pharmaceutical way, but in the traditional sense.

The wisdom that's been passed down about which plants support which systems, how to work with what grows around you, how our ancestors, all of our ancestors, wherever we are from, knew how to use plants for wellness long before we had pharmacies. I'm fascinated by this one too, because it's so tangible.

You can grow these things. You can touch them, smell them, taste them. It's not abstract or conceptual. It's earth and roots and leaves, and knowing. Coming home to plant wisdom feels like coming home to something really old, something that connected us to the seasons and soil, and paying attention to what grows, where and when.

We'll be talking about animals, how they show up in our lives, especially during the hard times, how they hold space [00:12:00] without needing to fix anything. How they bring us back to presence in a way that's extraordinary. I bet when you think about it, some of your most grounded moments have been with animals, dogs who insist on walks when you'd rather stay in bed and can't bear the thought of getting out.

Cats who just sit with you when you're sad. Horses who mirror exactly what you're feeling. Birds outside the window who remind you there's a whole world happening beyond your worries. Coming home through animals might mean remembering we're part of something bigger. That connection doesn't always need words. And there are more in the works that I can't wait to share. So that's the season. 10 pathways. 10 different ways to find your way back. And here's what I want to say before we dive in. You don't have to do all of them. I think I'm talking to myself here. You don't have to do any of them.

Actually. This isn't [00:13:00] prescriptive, and I'm not telling you what you need. In fact, none of my guests are either. What I'm offering with the podcast is exploration, curiosity, and the chance to hear from people who found something that works for them and see if any of it resonates with you.

Because that's also what season three taught me in the end. Remember the finale, all the talk about choice and overwhelm, and how do you possibly decide what's right for you when there's so many options. The answer isn't to try everything. It's to pay attention to what you're drawn to.

What makes you lean forward? When you're listening, what makes you think, oh, I wonder that's your body telling you something. That's your intuition saying this might be a pathway home for you. You know what's interesting? Every single practice we've covered, every single one has been around for a really long time.

We are not actually talking about the [00:14:00] latest wellness trend or some new biohacking technique. We've been talking about things humans have been doing for centuries, thousands of years in some cases. Foraging for plants, gathering in circles, reading the stars, sitting with animals, and forgiving through ritual, being in nature.

These aren't new. We didn't invent them. We are just remembering them. And I find that really comforting actually. Because it means this coming home thing isn't about becoming someone different. It's about returning to something that's always been true about being human. We're in bodies that need to move and rest and eat, and gravity insists we touch the earth.

We are beings that heal in community, that find meaning and rhythm and ritual that carry our ancestors with us, whether we know it or not. We are [00:15:00] part of nature, part of cycles, part of something much bigger and older than our individual anxieties about whether we are doing wellness right? You can't do coming home wrong because home is where you already are.

You are just remembering how to be there. I want to tell you something else personal. When I started this podcast a year ago, I was looking for answers. I wanted to know what worked. I wanted to know the right practice, the best techniques, the thing that would finally make everything else click into place.

And I tried a lot. if you've been listening, EFT, that changed my life. Reflexology, Reiki, Pilates, Tai Chi, Crystals.... I made my own Oracle cards. I looked into my human design. The list goes on. In fact, my guests have often found my podcast is actually me shopping for wellness. Most things I've actually since tried [00:16:00] or are on my list to give a go.

Some things stuck, some things didn't. I'll come back to them when I'm ready. Some were exactly what I needed at exactly the right time. But here's what I learned. None of them were taking me somewhere new. They were all in different ways, bringing me back to myself, to trusting my body, to slowing down, to being present, to releasing what I didn't need to carry anymore. Coming home.

And that's what I hope this season offers you. Not a destination. There's no arrival point where you've done wellness and you're finished, but pathways back to yourself. To the bits of you that got buried under the shoulds and the stress and the relentless forward momentum of modern life.

The guest episodes will start dropping in the next few weeks, and we'll be going deep with each practice. You can hear from people who live and breathe this work, and [00:17:00] I'll be asking all the questions I imagine you want to ask if you're sitting there with us.

Some conversations might challenge you, some might make you roll your eyes. That's completely fine. Some might make you want to book a session or look something up or try something new. Some might just give you permission to do less, which honestly might be the most radical thing of all, whatever happens.

I'm so glad you're here. Whether you've been with me since the start or this is your first episode, welcome everyone. Pull up a chair, get comfortable. Let's explore what coming home might mean because here's the thing, I keep coming back to. We are all trying to find our way back to ourselves and what feels good back to some version of peace or ease or even just okayness, that some of us may not have felt since childhood.

And there's so [00:18:00] many ways to get there, so many practices and pathways and possibilities. This season, we're exploring 10 more of them, 10 invitations to come home. I'll see you in the first episode. Until then, take care of yourselves. And remember, wherever you are right now, whatever you are carrying and whatever feels heavy, or complicated, or far from home.

You are already closer than you think.