Vitality Isn't Energy.

The Lavish Well | Issue 04

THE PULSE

This is what matters this week.

Vitality Isn’t a Lifestyle—It’s a Life Force

My son turns nineteen today.
He moved out a couple weeks ago, and every time I walk past his room—bare mattress, a few empty boxes—I feel the ache of change.
The missing. The remembering. The unexpected relief.

I didn’t want him to go.
But he has lessons to learn that no amount of guidance from me can replace.

Since he left, my nervous system has softened.
Years of holding the field around his becoming—clenching down to keep him safe—
have finally eased.
The release has felt like a settling I didn’t know I needed.

This is the part of vitality we rarely acknowledge.
It doesn’t emerge from perfect conditions or the moment everything slows down.
It emerges when we stop gripping so tightly.

Chronic bracing is a nervous system pattern that quietly drains life force.
Hyper-vigilance depletes mitochondrial energy, disrupts hormonal cycles, and keeps the body in a loop of survival.
The tension of always scanning for what could go wrong eventually becomes the baseline.

In my experience, vitality is the return to a steadier ground.
The quiet exhale after years of holding more than one person’s safety.
The realization that life force is not something to earn, but something to remember.

This season of life feels different.
There is more space to notice my own aliveness.
More room to tend to the parts of myself I had set aside.

Vitality lives here:
In the exhale.
In the release.
In the choice to let your body feel safe enough to restore what was spent.

Keep reading.
This is the real work of replenishment. 👇

THE DEEP TAKE

Where we go deeper—science, story, truth.

The Anatomy of Real Vitality

Vitality is not energy.

It isn’t the buzz of caffeine,
the adrenaline of a deadline,
or the surge of dopamine you get from checking a box.

Those are short-lived hits—the illusion of aliveness.

Real vitality is the cellular hum of coherence.
It’s the body and the spirit in quiet agreement:
We are safe here.
We are clear here.
We are fully inhabiting this life.

Biologically, vitality is your mitochondria doing their sacred work—
turning nutrients and oxygen into ATP,
the fuel behind every heartbeat, every thought, all cellular repair.

It’s your nervous system oscillating between activation and recovery with grace,
instead of staying trapped in the static of chronic stress.

It’s your hormones moving in their natural rhythm,
not marching to the drumbeat of someone else’s expectations.

Spiritually, vitality is your connection to the animating force that moves through all living things.

Call it Source. Call it Life Force.
Call it the remembering that you are not simply alive—you are Life itself
expressing through a human form.

I learned these truths the hard way.
We adopted my son when I was still in residency.
I was young, determined, and working around the clock—
delivering babies, caring for patients in the ICU, taking call in the middle of the night.

I thought my resilience was limitless because my purpose felt clear.

But even purpose has a cost if you never pause to restore yourself.
I didn’t know then that vitality is cumulative.

You don’t lose it in a single season of depletion—it drains slowly, over years of saying yes to everything and no to nothing.

When I look back, I can see the exact moments I had to choose:
Stay on the path of overextension, or change direction.

So, I left jobs, stopped delivering babies, and stepped out of roles I once believed defined me.
Each decision felt like a small betrayal of ambition and momentum.
But every one was very clearly an act of reclamation.

Vitality returned in the spaces I made for my own humanity.
In the slower mornings.
In the meals I ate sitting down.
In the choice to let my nervous system unclench, even when it felt unfamiliar.

This is what vitality looks like now:
Quieter.
Less performative.
More sustainable.
It’s the discipline of caring for my life force with the same devotion I once reserved only for others.

Vitality isn’t a mood.
It isn’t something you chase with protocols or perfect routines.
It’s an ecosystem—internal and external—built on trust.

Trust in your body’s signals.
Trust in your capacity to regenerate.
Trust that you don’t have to go big in every area of your life at the same time.

Vitality is your birthright.
It’s not something to earn, prove, or perfect.
It’s the quiet, continuous pulse of life that has always been there—waiting for you to remember.

IN REAL LIFE

What it actually looks like.

(Reclaiming Your Life Force)

Vitality isn’t created in grand gestures.
It’s rebuilt in the small, often invisible choices you make every day.

Here’s how it looks in real life:

🖤 Protect the quiet margins.
End your workday 20 minutes earlier and resist filling the gap.
Sit in your car before you walk into the house.
Notice the impulse to check your phone—and let it pass.
When you create a real pause between what you just carried and what you’re about to hold, your nervous system can recalibrate in a way that rebuilds the capacity to stay engaged without depletion.

🖤 Notice the clench—and release it.
Most women hold tension in the jaw, belly, or pelvic floor.
At least once a day, pause and scan:
Jaw: unclench it.
Shoulders: let them drop.
Belly: soften the grip.
Pelvic floor: imagine your sit bones widening gently and the base of your pelvis softening down toward the chair. Let your belly draw in toward your spine on the exhale.
Exhale fully, like you’re emptying a cup.
This is the body remembering it doesn’t have to hold everything all the time.

🖤 Eat in a way that stabilizes, not stimulates.
Stop skipping meals or grazing all day to stay productive.
Sit down to eat.
Make your first meal of the day rich in protein, healthy fats, and fiber so your blood sugar stays steady.
When blood sugar swings wildly, it triggers a cortisol response—the body’s major stress signal.
Over time, this constant spike and crash keeps your system in survival mode.
Nourishment is essential to vitality.
Give it the attention and time it deserves.
Vitality doesn’t require restriction—but it does require consistent, high-quality fuel so your body knows it has what it needs.
You are its most trusted partner. Act accordingly.

🖤 Do less, but mean it more.
Identify one area of your life where you can consciously release the pressure to excel.
Decide, on purpose, what you are willing to let be imperfect.
The laundry can stay unfolded.
The inbox can stay messy.
The errands can go undone for a day.
The group chat can go unanswered.
Vitality is built when you reserve your capacity for what feels most essential.
When you engage with fewer things—and bring your full presence to them.

🖤 Give yourself permission to need help.
Outsource something small before you convince yourself you have to earn the support.
Order groceries.
Hire a babysitter for a standing hour of solitude.
Ask your partner or a friend to carry a piece of the load without apology.
This is one vital way we lead ourselves first.
When you allow yourself to be resourced, you model a new standard:
That strength isn’t measured by how much you carry alone.

🖤 Make space for pleasure without justification.
Create moments that feel good for no reason, and let them count.
Slip between freshly laundered sheets in the middle of the afternoon.
Run oil over your skin before bed like you’re preparing for something sacred.
Eat something decadent without negotiating it away.
Play a song that makes your hips move, your chest lift, your pulse quicken—and dance without documenting it.
Pleasure is not frivolous.
It’s a signal to your nervous system that you are safe enough to feel good again.

Every time you honor these small recalibrations, you rebuild the capacity to stay connected to yourself—without burning out in the process.

Vitality returns when you choose reconnection.
When you allow pleasure back into your cells.
When you create space to breathe and soften.
When you stop performing wellness and start living well.

FROM THE WELL

What’s supporting the rhythm.

Simple Luxury as a Return to Vitality

Vitality doesn’t require a week away.
It often starts in the smallest acts of caring for your body—without apology.

This week, create a ritual that reminds you: you don’t have to earn rest.

Run a bath with mineral-rich salts—Dead Sea salts, magnesium chloride, or Epsom salts.
Add a few drops of essential oil:
Frankincense to anchor.
Geranium to lift.
Lavender to settle.

Lower yourself in slowly.
Feel the water hold your weight so you can finally put some of it down.

When your body has softened, take your Gua Sha stone and run it along your neck, your shoulders, your jaw.
Each stroke releases what you’ve been carrying by default.
Each breath signals your system that it can recalibrate.

This is not a luxury reserved for when everything is handled.
It’s how you rebuild capacity while life keeps moving.

Vitality lives here—
in the choice to treat your body as something worth tending, even when nothing else is finished. Just because…especially just because.

Lavish Items I Recommend

These are tools and products I personally use or trust for their quality and integrity. (Some links are affiliate links.)

Bath Soaks
One With Nature 100% Dead Sea Salt — mineral-rich replenishment
OSEA Gigartina Therapy Bath — ultra-luxurious soak

Essential Oils
Vibrant Blue Parasympathetic Blend
Amrita Organic Aromatherapy Oils - Pure Lavender and Pure Joy

Body Gua Sha Tool
Rena Chris Jade Body Gua Sha Tool

THE LAST WORD

Vitality isn’t something you find when everything else is handled.

It’s what you reclaim when you decide to stop abandoning yourself in the name of being good, productive, or needed.

Life will always have demands.
People will always have expectations.
But no one else can give you permission to tend to your reserves.

Sustainable energy isn’t built in a single season of rest.
It’s built every time you choose your well-being over your performance.
Every time you feed your body instead of punishing it.
Every time you let something be incomplete so you can stay whole.

You don’t have to go big in every area of your life at once.
You don’t have to earn your right to feel good.
You don’t have to prove that you deserve to rest.

Vitality is what’s left when you let all of that go—
when you choose to belong to yourself first.

The fire of vitality has to be stoked from that place, again and again, until it becomes the resource you can draw on no matter what life is asking of you.

That’s the shift.
That’s the medicine.

Until next week…

Be well. Be fierce. Be lavish.