We recently sat down with Lacey White, holistic health guide, yoga teacher and psychedelic integration coach, to discuss her journey with holistic fitness, how we can build a nourishing relationship with movement and our bodies, and the path to leaving behind societal ideals around body image. We loved this conversation with Lacey and hope you do too! Catch the recording and blog summary below.
In this article, Lacey shares her transformative journey toward embracing a more holistic approach to fitness. Moving beyond traditional ideals centered around performance and aesthetics, Lacey reveals a deeper approach encompassing mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Here, we’ll explore various themes from her conversation, delving into the unique perspective she brings to fitness and wellness.
Lacey’s Journey to Holistic Fitness
Lacey’s path to becoming a holistic fitness instructor and health coach was far from linear. Her love for movement began early, inspired by her sibling’s active lifestyle. Over time, however, this passion evolved into a performance-driven pursuit shaped by societal expectations around body image and achievement. In college, her studies followed a traditional pre-med path that emphasized medication management over holistic wellness, creating a disconnect between a life of health and daily well-being.
This divide led Lacey to a personal crossroads, sparking questions about the nature of health. Her answer came in two pivotal experiences: psychedelics and yoga. These practices transformed her understanding of health, movement, and self-awareness, laying the foundation for a holistic approach. Choosing not to pursue traditional medicine, she shifted toward holistic fitness, blending her experiences in personal training, yoga, nutrition, and psychedelic integration into a comprehensive health vision.
Defining Holistic Fitness
Holistic fitness, the cornerstone of Lacey’s practice, is far more than aesthetics or performance. Traditional fitness often emphasizes appearance or athletic ability, yet a broader view of fitness rooted in evolutionary biology offers a fresh perspective. In this context, fitness means “the ability to survive and reproduce,” an interpretation that speaks to life-sustaining vitality rather than narrow physical metrics.
As Lacey explains, holistic fitness is about cultivating the vitality to live fully, engage meaningfully, and support life on a collective level. She explored this concept deeply in a workshop where participants co-created a definition of holistic fitness, recognizing it as a blend of personal growth, movement, community connection, and mental resilience.
Movement as Emotional and Spiritual Healing
For Lacey, movement is more than a physical exercise; it’s a path for emotional and spiritual healing. Different types of movement offer unique benefits. Yoga, particularly restorative and yin yoga, helps access deep-seated emotions and facilitates mental clarity, allowing the “mud to settle,” as she describes it, like sediment in a pond that settles to reveal clear water. In these moments of stillness, buried emotions surface, providing space for processing and healing.
Lacey also finds that vigorous activities like strength training release endorphins, promoting both physical strength and a sense of empowerment. Dance and unstructured movement can release rigid patterns and reveal areas of constraint or resistance. Across all practices, the focus is less about achieving a specific fitness goal and more about nurturing self-awareness, releasing emotional tension, and fostering a deeper connection to the body and inner self.
Moving Beyond Societal Conditioning
For many, fitness is shaped by societal conditioning that prioritizes aesthetics and calorie-counting over genuine well-being. Lacey’s advice for breaking free from this conditioning is to focus on deprogramming and discernment. By questioning whether beliefs around body image and fitness goals are truly ours, we can release patterns that don’t serve us.
A tool she recommends is Byron Katie’s “The Work,” a self-inquiry practice that invites individuals to examine beliefs that create suffering. This process involves asking whether a belief is true, exploring who we might be without it, and ultimately dismantling its power. Alongside this practice, Lacey encourages self-compassion and gratitude, which shift the focus from critique to appreciation for the complex processes that sustain life.
Practical Tips for a Nourishing Relationship with Movement
Lacey emphasizes that building a nourishing relationship with movement requires clarity, simplicity, and patience. To truly connect with one’s body, she suggests identifying root desires rather than focusing on superficial goals. For example, asking why we desire a certain look might reveal deeper needs for acceptance or connection. This awareness can help guide choices in movement that genuinely nourish the self.
Simplicity is key, especially in a world filled with information on fitness. Rather than feeling pressured to follow every trend, Lacey encourages choosing activities that bring joy and align with personal goals. Whether it’s a calming walk or a dynamic workout, tuning into what feels right and simplifying the routine creates a sustainable and enjoyable fitness journey.
The Role of Fitness Trackers: Helpful or Harmful?
In a world of fitness trackers, balancing helpful feedback with potential dependency on metrics can be challenging. While some benefit from tracking, others might feel constrained by numbers. Lacey tends to prioritize qualitative goals with her clients, encouraging intuitive understanding of the body’s needs rather than rigidly adhering to metrics.
For those who find wearables helpful, it’s essential to remember that numbers should serve as tools, not as strict measures of success or failure. Focusing on how we feel in our bodies, rather than meeting specific numerical targets, fosters a healthier, more flexible approach to movement.
Movement in the Workda
With more people working remotely, staying active during long periods at the desk has become essential. Lacey suggests tuning into body signals, such as tension in the shoulders or clenched hands, as cues to move. Brief breaks to stretch, walk, or shift positions prevent stiffness and support mental clarity. Keeping a yoga mat nearby or dedicating a small space for movement can make it easier to incorporate short breaks throughout the day, reminding us to nurture our bodies even amid a busy schedule.
Embracing the Journey
Lacey’s story serves as a reminder that fitness and well-being are ongoing journeys rather than fixed destinations. Releasing expectations around achieving a specific “ideal” allows us to enjoy the process, recognizing that each step toward understanding our bodies and meeting our needs is a step in the right direction. Embracing patience and self-compassion along the way can dissolve feelings of shame and cultivate a more positive, sustainable relationship with movement and health.
Ultimately, holistic fitness is about honoring the body, mind, and spirit as interconnected facets of well-being. Through her journey and expertise, Lacey White opens a path toward redefining fitness, allowing us to experience a richer, more fulfilling journey of health that empowers us to thrive and feel truly alive.
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