Chronicle of Experts - The Beauty of Wellness
From renowned thought and culture leaders, to members of our community, we learn about what gives them purpose.
We hope you are having a wonderful summer outdoors!
We have been busy preparing new features and getting ready for September - which from my years in fashion - signals the new year. Brian Chesky, the founder of Airbnb, recently celebrated on Twitter the 12th anniversary (of the third, and final, iteration) of the platform we all know today. We, too, feel that we are on a new iteration of MYKIGAI. With that said, I am glad that amid the exciting changes we are bringing, our first newsletter to launch our fall calendar is with two women who are wellness personified.
When I first forayed into the world of the older self, by some amazing stroke of happenstance I quickly found Ursula Beatt, who is our Community Member profile, below. Aside from her natural beauty, to me she embodies the ideal of how I wanted to look in the future; well, a tanned version of her! By ideal, I mean she has a look of health, and contentment with herself in the moment. Even in her emails, Beatt radiates an energy of happiness and balance. From her example, I look forward to a different possibility for my future self.
Moving forward, the MYKIGAI mandate will be refined. Did you know that the reason you feel “young at heart”- even if that is different from your physical age- is because you probably are? Our purpose is to help you stay closer to the age you feel, not the one on your birth certificate.
Looking forward to seeing you all this Fall!
-Laura Minquini, Founder, MYKIGAI
CALIFORNIA SWEET: An uplifting story of artistic reinvention
Ursula Beatt is as sunny as Southern California. The photographer and all-around inspirational personality makes her home in Los Angeles. Her artistic pursuit is new-ish, one of a series of leaps of faith Beatt has taken in her serendipitous life. Following a career in marketing at Porsche in her native Germany, she met her husband on a business trip to Los Angeles, and moved there to be with him and raise their two children. “It was a very fulfilling life,” she says now of that idyllic time. Her grown kids flew the cozy nest, and the marriage ended in divorce, but Beatt took the pivot as an opportunity to turn a difficult life phase into a reinvention.
“I always try to beautify experience,” she says. “But first I had to answer the question, who am I after 25 years of marriage?” She moved to Bali after separating from her husband. There, she says, “I grew wings, I danced, I made wonderful friends, and I decided to create my best life.” The pursuit of a joyful and purposeful life became her mission.
She began taking pictures to capture her newfound joy, and people found them to be “visceral, full of emotion. It became a means of communication, to capture life around me,” she says. When she was asked to participate in a 2016 exhibit benefiting artworxLA, her work had the highest sales. Beatt had found a new calling: from geometric puzzles of architectural elements to slices of street life, food and nature still lifes and abstract pieces, her work all shadows the state of evanescence.
She sums it up this way: “Through photography the impermanence of life becomes permanent,” a possibility she finds both moving and artistically motivating. Looking through her new lens on the future, Beatt found a way to pause and find peace within the little things of life: the indefinable things that add up to a greater whole.
BEATT on:
MIND I look for joy and and surround myself with beauty and remember to be grateful for what I have.
BODY I walk a lot, I eat well and when I feel like it I do yoga and pilates. And I dance the 5 rhythm dance (Gabrielle Roth) whenever and wherever I can.
PURPOSE: To inspire and encourage others to live life to the fullest and in the moment.
Glamour
Abstract - Brush VI
Her artwork is found at UrsulaBeatt.com
A PURPOSEFUL SPIRIT
Healing mind, body and soul with an arsenal of modern science and ancient wisdoms.
Tihana Deanovic is a healer with a whole lot of tools in her toolbox. She began her career as a nutritional practitioner, then found some clients needed help with their underlying mental health issues once their diet concerns and deficits were addressed. So she pursued post-grad qualifications to become a registered psychotherapist, and found that the two fields had synergy. But as her practice grew, “I could only help clients up to a certain level,” she says, so she began to look more broadly for alternative techniques, training as a hypnotist to tap into the subconscious and a reiki master practitioner to work on energy balancing.
Then, seeking help for her own chronic, untreatable migraines, she further undertook training with renowned psychiatrist Dr. Brian Weiss, who works in past life therapy. She found that option was useful for clients who had otherwise hit a wall. “It literally blew my mind,” she says, and her own headaches were radically improved. “I’m pretty open-minded,” she says of the metaphysical experiences, though she says she remains primarily science based in orientation. “Whatever it is, whatever your spiritual or religious beliefs, past lives are debatable. But the images you uncover are an abstraction of the conscious mind. And facing them seems to work.”
At the mind-body-spirit health and wellness studio Spiritlicious, on Toronto’s Danforth Avenue, she combines all her experience in one space, with highly customized treatment plans. During the pandemic, she conducted online classes in hypno-breathing as part of her commitment to Community Social Innovation (or SCI, socialinnovation.org), to help people decompress amid the stress of the pandemic. She plans to host an exclusive hypno-breathing session specially for the MYKIGAI community. DETAILS HERE.
“There is an increasing demand,” Deanovic says, “as people are looking for spiritual answers. Looking to figure out: ‘Who am I, How do I fit into the world, What is my purpose?’”
Hypnotherapy is about relaxing the conscious mind so you can get into a different brain state--the alpha brain state--she says, similar to the effects of meditation and mindfulness, which she also teaches in person and online. “The wisdom comes through when we can be still and present.”
Her integrative and strength-based approach to healing is framed in clinical experience. “We don’t need to know all the details of the source of our pain. In some ways,” she says, “it is too much for our stubborn mind and ego. The stories we tell ourselves become part of our identities, so we can’t move forward in a way that is productive or healthy.”
Doing the hard work of clearing up your issues, Deanovic says, “is the way to clarify your purpose. Do the inner work and you get a sense of fulfillment that comes from being at peace with yourself, a sense of balance that comes with accepting yourself. When you see beauty in yourself, your purpose comes from self-love and self-compassion and being integrated into the world.”
DEANOVIC on:
MIND I say yes to myself at least once a day.
BODY Stretching has become a huge part of my life with the lack of movement these days, I do a specific chest stretch with a bolster that I love, it helps me to keep my heart open and grounded during the pandemic.
PURPOSE To spread love, light, and joy!
The MYKIGAI Hypno-Breathing Masterclass is on Tuesday, September 15th at 7pm ET. Sign up below or at MYKIGAI.com
Remember our Virtual Wine Tour to Saint Tropez this Thursday, August 27th, at 10 a.m. ET/ 4 p.m. CET.
Interviews by Leanne Delap who has been both the Fashion Editor and Fashion Reporter for the Globe and Mail and was the editor-in-chief of FASHION Magazine.