This episode features Laurent, a yoga and somatic teacher whose approach blends Scaravelli Yoga with Feldenkrais-based somatic work. Laurent has been practicing yoga for over three decades, starting in the disciplined world of Ashtanga in the 90s before discovering a more receptive, listening-based approach through Scaravelli and years of one-to-one study with teachers including osteopath John Stirk and a direct lineage holder of Vanda Scaravelli's teaching.

Recorded during Mental Health Awareness Week, the conversation explores what "action" really means when it comes to wellbeing, why self-care often needs to come before we can show up for others, and how Laurent builds a personal toolkit of practices, from cranial-sacral and fascial therapy to self-massage, foot care, cooking, and gardening, depending on what a given week calls for.

Laurent and Megan also talk candidly about the current shifts happening in the yoga and wellness world, the tension between traditional and evolving practices, and a shared feeling that a "post-pandemic energy" seems to be resurfacing in people right now. A grounded, thoughtful conversation about returning to the body as a place of safety, and why there's no single right way to practice.

In this episode, host Megan sits down with Olia Polyakova — Ukrainian-born, London-based movement artist — recorded live in Mauritius, where the two former London Contemporary Dance School classmates have been spending time together. The conversation is warm, candid, and deeply personal, touching on what it really means to build a life around dance.

Olia opens up about why she chose to spend holiday time in the studio, and how dancing without stakes or agenda feels less like work and more like taking a shower — something purely for yourself. She traces her path back to growing up in Ukraine, where the only visible models for a dance career were ballerinas or teachers, and how she chose dance anyway — not because she had a plan, but because she simply couldn't imagine anything else.

The conversation moves into the honest reality of freelancing: what a bad week looks like (bar work, job hunting, silence) versus a good one (extras work on set, life modelling, studio sessions, photo shoots, club dancing). For Olia, variety isn't stressful — the absence of work is. The two also dig into training, and Olia is refreshingly candid about needing to trick herself into going to class, whether through networking instincts or sheer necessity. Neither of them find showing up easy, and the difference between training inside a structured program versus navigating it alone as a freelancer is a thread that runs throughout.

On the creative side, Olia shares how her solo work lives in detailed improvised scores rather than fixed choreography, and how tangible objects — rope, clay — tend to anchor a piece before the meaning fully arrives. Visual and conceptual elements, she explains, emerge from opposite directions and meet somewhere in the middle.

It's a genuine, unfiltered conversation about the unglamorous grind and the quiet joys of a life built around movement.

Megan sits down with Priya Khan, a certified life coach and mindfulness expert, to explore how mindfulness can be a powerful tool for women navigating demanding, passion-driven careers.
Priya shares her personal journey from the corporate world to coaching — a path sparked by motherhood and her own experience of feeling overwhelmed. She introduces a three-layered framework for self-awareness, tuning into the mind, heart, and body's energy, and explains how this approach helps her clients make decisions that feel truly aligned rather than externally pressured.
The conversation gets especially real when they dig into the unique challenges faced by dancers and performers — how passion and identity can blur, how guilt creeps in when you need to rest, and how to tell the difference between a productive push and harmful burnout.
The highlight of the episode is a live coaching moment where Priya guides Megan through a mindfulness exercise in real time, helping her shift from frustration to clarity and practical action — a beautiful demonstration of how these tools work in everyday life.
The episode closes with Priya reflecting on how she finds joy amid personal hardship, offering a grounding reminder about the power of gratitude and intentional balance.