Most men are taught the body is a machine to push and the brain a problem to solve. Jon Butler learned something different. After twenty years in some of the world's best kitchens, he left one of the most physically demanding careers there is for one of the most mentally demanding: finance. What carried him through both was not mindset or strategy. It was his body on a trail, on a rock face, where the only thing that exists is the next thing to hold. Jon is our first male guest, and this conversation about the body and brain is one few people are invited to have.

We get into:

• Why leaving a twenty-year career felt less like quitting and more like outgrowing it
• How the body tells the truth when your working life is telling you who to be
• The kitchen as constant fight-or-flight, and what happens when the stress never stops
• Matching your outlet to your load, so the reset is as big as the pressure
• Taking one small action when you're frozen at a crossroads

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why your body knows you've outgrown something before your mind admits it
• What happens when chronic stress becomes your baseline, not an emergency setting
• How choosing a hard thing shifts what your brain believes you're capable of
• Why settling the nervous system first leads to clearer decisions at a crossroads

🎙️ GUEST:
Jon Butler is a mortgage broker and former chef in Southern California. Before finance, he spent 20+ years in hospitality, with apprenticeships at Arzak and Noma and leadership roles at République, 71Above, The Rose Venice, and the Michelin programs at Sparrows Lodge and Holiday House. Today he helps clients navigate home financing and complex lending. Outside work, he climbs and pursues alpine adventures worldwide, volunteers with the Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit, and spends time with his wife, Laura, and their French bulldog, Nico.

⏱️ CHAPTERS:
[00:00] Welcome Jon Butler
[3:45] 20 years in the kitchen and chasing the next challenge
[8:42] Realizing he'd outgrown the profession
[19:42] Taking one small action to bring the prefrontal cortex back online
[23:02] The kitchen as chronic fight-or-flight and what constant stress does to the brain
[32:09] Building your own prison and holding the key out
[44:08] Why a challenge you choose rewires the brain: allostatic loading in reverse
[45:35] The dopamine, norepinephrine, and endorphin hit that makes it stick
[50:22] Starting small when a curb feels like a mountain
[59:16] Settling the nervous system before the big decisions

🔗 CONNECT WITH JON BUTLER:
Website: jon-butler.com
Email: jonb@barrettfinancial.com
FB/IG: @jonbutler84

🔗 CONNECT WITH US:
The Raw Onion: https://www.therawonionpodcast.com

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE:
Let's Talk: https://scheduler.zoom.us/stephanie-ohannesian/30-mins-discovery-zoom

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOSHIE:
Let's Connect: https://lotusflowerjourneys.com/contact

They handed her a cake. They sang. Then they asked her to bring a pen and paper into the other room and hand over her laptop and her phone.

Stephanie got fired for calling out a toxic environment. A few months later, the exact people she named were fired for the exact things she named them for.

This episode is about what made her speak up the second time when she stayed silent the first. Same kind of company. Same behavior. Completely different response. The difference was not courage, and it was not willpower.

Discipline is downstream of regulation. When the body does not feel safe, the fastest route to relief wins. That is not weakness. That is biology.

We get into:

• The ER visit that ended the first chapter
• Why self-discipline rises and falls with your nervous system, not your resolve
• The moment she named what was happening to her team
• The birthday cake, the laptop, the escort out of the building
• The people she named getting fired a few months later
• A new job forty-eight hours later, and eventually Triage

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why willpower is the wrong explanation for standards that collapse at work
• What chronic stress changes in the brain, and why silence starts to feel like the only option
• How the same environment can show up twice and land completely differently
• Why sleep, connection, and a sense of control are conditions for repair
• What it cost to speak up, and what staying silent was already costing

⏱️ CHAPTERS

0:00 I got fired

3:30 The burnout that started it all

6:58 Discipline is downstream of regulation

12:03 What chronic stress does to the prefrontal cortex

16:23 Sleep, connection, and a sense of control

19:00 Calling it out: not on my watch

20:57 The birthday cake and the firing

22:26 The irony a few months later

31:04 Forty-eight hours later, and how Triage was born

🔗 CONNECT WITH US
Website: https://therawonionpodcast.com

Email: hello@therawonionpodcast.com

IG: https://www.instagram.com/therawonionpodcast

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE:

Stephanie works with high-performing individuals and teams to understand what is actually driving the loop, and reset it at the level where it began. Neuroscience-based, practical, and built for people who have already tried everything else.

Website: https://triagebalancedlife.com/

Let's Talk: https://scheduler.zoom.us/stephanie-ohannesian/30-mins-discovery-zoom

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOSHIE:

Yoshie Barnett is a Crossroads Coach and the founder of Lotus Flower Journeys, working with high-achieving women in midlife who are meeting a crossroads and finding that perfectionism no longer gets them through it.

Website: https://www.lotusflowerjourneys.com/

Connect: https://www.lotusflowerjourneys.com/contact/

Everything on the outside can be faked now. The one thing that still can't lie to you is your own body. This week, yoga instructor and Yoga Moxi founder Michele Carrión Yopps joins us to talk about what happens when we stop trusting ourselves, and how to build that trust back.

We get into:

• Why corporate environments are built to numb the body's signals
• The heart's own nervous system and what that means for "gut feeling"
• The eight limbs of yoga
• Why chronic burnout physically changes brain tissue, and what helps it rebuild
• Inherited stress and where the body stores what the mind forgets

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why your body may register something before your mind catches up
• How corporate spaces are structured to quiet the body's signals
• What the gut-to-brain pathway means for how you process the world
• How chronic burnout changes brain tissue, and what helps reverse it

⏱️ CHAPTERS:
0:00 Welcome and the question of trust

6:16 Meet Michele Carrión Yopps

10:05 The crossroads: burnout hiding in plain sight

15:31 The heart's 40,000 neurons

18:32 How corporate spaces numb the body

20:55 The eight limbs of yoga

24:50 About Yoga Moxi + coming soon: a collaboration with The Raw Onion

26:31 The gut-brain highway, 80 percent starts here

37:25 Joseph LeDoux high road/low road

43:26 Flow state and breath

53:00 A hospital bed and shrinking gray matter

57:00 Fascia, memory, and inherited stress

1:03:56 One breathing hack to leave with

🎙️ GUEST:

Michele Carrión Yopps, founder of the Yoga Moxie app. Certified in Hatha Alignment Yoga, Yoga for First Responders, and Yoga Nidra. She has also trained with Master Paulie Zink and Gioconda Parker. Spent over 20 years in corporate media and marketing before crossing into yoga full time.

🔗 CONNECT WITH MICHELE CARRIÓN YOPPS:

Website: https://yogamoxi.com/

App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yogamoxi/id1639610883

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yogamoxi/

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE RAW ONION:

Website: The Raw Onion

Email: hello@therawonionpodcast.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

Follow us on Substack

Follow us on Instagram

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE:

Website: Triage Balanced Life

Let's Talk: Free 30-min call

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOSHIE:

Website: Lotus Flower Journeys

Let's Connect: Free clarity call

We spend years optimizing everything on the outside while ghosting the one relationship running underneath all of it.

This episode kicks off July on The Raw Onion: the relationship between your brain and your body, the one most of us were never taught to notice, let alone tend to.

We get into:

• The vagus nerve and why most of its signals travel from body to brain, not the other way around
• The three nervous system states behind Dr. Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory
• How stress patterns get passed down through generations without a single shared experience
• Why the high achiever who undercharges or overdelivers might be running on inherited wiring rather than a confidence problem

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why your body registers the truth of a room, a person, or a meeting before your conscious mind catches up
• The three nervous system states (green, yellow, red) and how to notice which one you're running on most days
• How epigenetics allows a stress response to travel from one generation to the next
• Why familiar does not always mean safe, and how that shapes who and what we keep choosing
• What it actually takes to start listening to a body you've been overriding for years

🎙️ HOSTS: Stephanie Ohannesian, founder of Triage Coaching and Consulting, and Yoshie Barnett, Crossroads Coach at Lotus Flower Journeys

⏱️ CHAPTERS:

0:00 Welcome to July's series: The Relationship You Can’t Ghost

5:12 The brain and body as a two-way conversation

6:39 The vagus nerve and the 80/20 signal split

9:16 Polyvagal theory and the three nervous system states

11:10 Why so many of us live permanently in yellow

15:56 Epigenetics and inherited stress

20:09 The professional whose body panics before logic can step in

21:27 The entrepreneur who can't stop undercharging

23:49 A simple way to start listening again

25:27 What's ahead this July

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE RAW ONION:

Website: The Raw Onion

Email: hello@therawonionpodcast.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

Follow us on Substack

Follow us on Instagram

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE:

Website: Triage Balanced Life

Let's Talk: Free 30-min call

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOSHIE:

Website: Lotus Flower Journeys

Let's Connect: Free clarity call

#BrainBodyConnection #NervousSystemRegulation #InheritedStress

We talk about voice like it's a soft skill. It isn't. It's wired into the nervous system, and for a lot of women, being seen has never felt safe.

Marta Spirk is a strategic speaking advisor, TEDx speaker, bestselling author, and professional singer who helps women entrepreneurs use speaking, storytelling, and visibility as tools for authority and business growth. She came on The Raw Onion to talk about what actually happens in the body when a woman tries to take up more space, and why "confidence" was never the real problem.

We get into:

• The neuroscience behind why women hesitate before self-promotion
• The difference between confidence and self-trust
• Why the voice is the only instrument controlled by both the voluntary and autonomic nervous systems
• The signature talk versus the elevator pitch
• Why repetition, not talent, is what actually builds the kind of presence people trust

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why women show higher amygdala activation around visibility, and why that's conditioning, not biology
• The difference between chasing confidence and building self-trust
• How the body gives away a dysregulated nervous system before a word is spoken
• How cultural upbringing shapes a woman's relationship with being seen
• Why repetition, not waiting to feel ready, is the actual bridge to feeling safe

🎙️ GUEST:

Marta Spirk, Strategic Speaking Advisor, TEDx Speaker, Bestselling Author of The Empowered Woman: The Ultimate Roadmap to Business Success, Professional Singer, Host of The Empowered Woman podcast

⏱️ CHAPTERS:

0:00 Meet Marta Spirk

3:44 Growing up loud

5:38 Becoming trilingual

8:21 Women and visibility

12:18 The amygdala and self-promotion

15:02 Confidence versus self-trust

16:52 The signature talk

20:19 The inner critic

23:30 Vulnerability in groups

30:43 Knowing your own content

37:23 The body and language

39:47 Discomfort and the real pain point

44:33 Cultural conditioning and saying no

52:35 Repetition and safety

59:10 Where to find Marta

🔗 CONNECT WITH MARTA SPIRK:

Website: MartaSpirk.com

Book: The Empowered Woman: The Ultimate Roadmap to Business Success

Podcast: The Empowered Woman

LinkedIn: Marta Spirk

Facebook: Marta Spirk

Instagram: MartaSpirk

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE RAW ONION:

therawonionpodcast.com

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE:

triagebalancedlife.com

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOSHIE:

lotusflowerjourneys.com

#PermissionToBeSeen #MulticulturalVoices #SelfTrustOverConfidence

You've worked twice as hard to get half the credit. You sat in rooms where no one looked like you, no one led like you, and no one understood what it cost you to show up. And you did it anyway.

Adyna K. Pressley is a global women's leadership architect, award-winning author, keynote speaker, founder of Queens Royale, and host of the Pressley on Purpose podcast. With more than 30 years of corporate leadership experience, she built her life's work on one truth: leading from truth, not performance.

We get into:

• What it felt like to be the only Black woman in executive leadership
• Why performing eventually became physically unsustainable
• The moment she chose to speak up knowing it might cost her everything
• The science underneath why generational elevation happens in the body first
• What it sounds like when Oprah gives you eight minutes she only promised you two

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why the brain learns that performing is safe and authenticity is risky
• How exhaustion signals that two versions of you are running in opposite directions
• Why speaking from truth does not mean starting over

🎙️ GUEST:

Adyna K. Pressley, Global Women's Leadership Architect | Founder, AKP Inventions and Queen's Royale | Author, Rise Into You: Reclaiming Power, Love, Life and Legacy | Host, Presley on Purpose Podcast

⏱️ CHAPTERS:

0:00 Meet Adyna K. Pressley

5:08 Who were you before the title?

7:40 The only Black woman in the room

9:03 When he performed as a teammate

13:40 The system is the problem, not the woman

17:43 Hospitalized. Burned out. Done.

21:07 How she stayed grounded in the chaos

27:32 Never changed who she was, not once

33:17 "If he gets this job, I quit."

40:00 Generational elevation starts in the body

43:39 The science behind what she was already doing

48:22 Queens Royale: identity you can wear

59:43 A solo train ride and a book was born

1:01:52 How she ended up on Oprah

1:06:43 Adyna's closing message

🔗 CONNECT WITH ADYNA K. PRESSLEY:

Book: Rise Into You

Website: adynakpressley.com

Queens Royale: queens-royale.com

LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube: Adyna K Pressley

Podcast: Pressley on Purpose

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE RAW ONION:

Substack: therawonion.substack.com

IG: @therawonionpodcast

Contact: hello@therawonionpodcast.com

Work with Stephanie: Free fit call

Work with Yoshie: Free clarity call

#AuthenticLeadership #TruthOverPerformance #WomenAcrossCultures

Reece Soltani was at the top of the table at a billion-dollar organization doing serious work for refugees on a global scale.

And she still felt like she couldn't make a dent in it.

"So why am I here?"

That question changed everything.

She did everything right. Master's degree. Fortune 500 consulting. Billion-dollar nonprofit. But she felt very unhappy and purposeless in a way she couldn't fully explain.

So she left.

"I want to build something with my hands and feel it and literally be able to see what I just made."

And that became Chachi's.

This one goes into the places most career conversations never touch. The hollowness behind the highlight reel. The cost of impact you can never see. And the quiet courage it takes to start over.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why achieving everything you were supposed to want can still leave you feeling empty
• How unfinished stress cycles quietly fuel burnout from the inside
• What it really costs to stay in a life that fits on paper but not in your body
• Why walking away from security can be an act of honor, not betrayal
• How connection and community become the unexpected bottom line in business
• Why a little productive delusion might be exactly what your next chapter needs

🎙️ GUEST:

Reece Soltani is the founder of Chachi's, a Los Angeles sandwich shop building toward franchise expansion and retail. Prior to Chachi's, she spent nearly a decade as a consultant and strategic advisor to Fortune 500 companies and executive teams before burning out and making a hard pivot into entrepreneurship.

⏱️ CHAPTERS:

0:00 Introduction

2:10 Meet Reece Soltani

3:37 What Success Was Supposed to Look Like

8:40 Living Inside the Picture-Perfect Life

9:50 The Feeling of Never Making a Dent

16:29 Stress Cycles and the Dopamine Connection

18:27 Wanting Something Tangible

21:15 Making the Leap

26:55 The People Who Made Chachi's Possible

28:21 The Line Out the Door on Day One

30:53 Universal Act of Care

36:28 Building a People-First Business

38:00 Heart, Soul, and the Loneliness Epidemic

39:27 Two Sides of the Same American Dream Coin

43:04 Building With a Village

46:09 Productive Delusion

50:30 Step One and Cutting Through the Noise

54:00 A Word For the Family Who Worries

56:14 Where to Find Reece Soltani and Chachi's

🔗 Connect with Reece

Website: www.eatchachis.com

Instagram: @eatchachis

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE:

Website: Triage Coaching and Consulting

Free fit call: tidycal.com/sohannesian

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOSHIE:

Website: Lotus Flower Journeys

Free clarity call

🔗 The Raw Onion:

Website: The Raw Onion

Email: hello@therawonionpodcast.com

#WomenInBusiness #PeopleFirstBusiness #MultiCulturalWomen

The pressure to keep performing can make you forget who you are. In this episode, Renee Coover joins The Raw Onion to talk about what happens when career success, motherhood, and self-worth collide, and what it looks like to choose yourself before your body forces the issue.

Renee shares her journey from high-stakes legal work to a more aligned life, including the moment she realized that burnout was not just emotional, it was physical. We talk about career transitions, the illusion of safety, self-advocacy, and the courage it takes to rebuild after everything you thought defined you starts to fall away.

This conversation is for anyone who has ever questioned whether the path they are on still fits. If you have been pushing through exhaustion, doubting your next step, or wondering how to trust your inner voice again, Renee’s story offers both honesty and hope.

We get into:

• Career transitions and self-identity.
• Overcoming fear and self-doubt.
• The importance of self-advocacy and boundaries.
• Building confidence and resilience.
• The role of support systems and community.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why burnout can show up in the body before it shows up in your decisions.
• How to tell when success no longer feels sustainable.
• Why a “power pause” can become a turning point.
• How yoga and meditation helped Renee reconnect with herself.
• What it means to bet on yourself and build something new.

🎙️ GUEST:

Renee Coover is the founder of Engage Law, a fractional outside general counsel who helps growing businesses navigate employment, regulatory, and operational matters with clarity and practical guidance.

⏱️ CHAPTERS:

00:00 Introduction

05:13 Renee's Story: From Big Law to Yoga Instructor

11:07 Listening to the Body and Making Decisions

19:52 Recognizing Opportunities in Life's Moments

25:06 Embracing Change and Taking Risks

37:20 Overcoming Fear of Risk and Embracing Change

47:22 Armoring Up for Yourself

55:28 Advocating for Yourself in the Workplace

01:05:52 Finding Your True Identity

🔗 CONNECT WITH RENEE:

LinkedIn: Renee Coover

YouTube: Engage Law

TED Talk: Taking Back Your Pregnancy Rights

Website: EngageLaw

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE:

Website: Triage Coaching and Consulting

Free fit call: https://tidycal.com/sohannesian

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOSHIE:

Website: Lotus Flower Journeys

Free clarity call

🔗 The Raw Onion:

Website: The Raw Onion

Email: hello@therawonionpodcast.com

#WomenInBusiness #PowerPause #CareerGrowth