2024 End of Year Reflections and Favorites
Reflections and Favorite Podcasts, Articles & Programs
Reflections on Vitality, Well-Being, and the Power of Practice
Once a year, I travel to Arizona to visit my family for the holidays. This yearly visit always shocks me as I watch them, watching television and commercials. The relentless selling of band-aids for chronic illness, stress, and unhappiness—pills for every pain and promises that a new home or car, or lottery ticket will bring happiness—is staggering what a booming business scarcity is.
People spend so much money on things that don’t teach them how to cultivate their own vitality or tenderly address the root causes of stress and anxiety. And I am reminded, that part of being in business is showing up - and sharing that the solutions we seek are in our own cellular make-up. The roots of stress and anxiety live in the fascial system of the body, shaped by thought patterns and emotional habits. Especially, repeated ones. Just like the commercials, who bank on the hypnotizing capacity of repetition. What we repeat becomes a belief.
I pray for a day when we center and value the time and reorientation it takes to participate in pathways to holistic well-being.
Thankfully, I also have pretty badass sisters here, who I hike with when I come to the desert.
Who, like me, share a certain disdain for mainstream American culture which we are actively learning to reorient towards the EXACT things we want to see more of.
Yesterday, on a hike with a dear sister outside Tucson, we unpacked one of life’s ironies: that when we create our versions of our art and sell them at high-ticket prices, people buy.
They take the work seriously and pay attention. It’s ironic but makes sense—money is currency in our culture. It grabs attention, secures bonds, and symbolizes freedom while also being a practical tool for protection in life.
Over the past 3 years, I’ve experimented with pricing in my own work. I had to set my flagship program at a $12,000 price point (celebrated by some, scoffed at by others, and leaned into hard by those who said YES).
I have sat with the women who said yes - 2 years later - who are living their best life. Women who are more financially secure, some who are taking bold action - flying to foreign countries to speak on big stages, or at water protection conferences. Some who moved into the mountains into aligned, safer spaces. One woman, an elder and teacher of mine, is finally finishing her book. I have sat with Women who have become liberated in voice and sexuality. And I am grateful for that chapter.
I can feel good about that choice to hold a higher price point for the 6-Month, high-touch program in 2023-2024 because of the results.
Last Summer (after some critique from men on the price point of my course for women last spring) I was having a hard time sharing and selling my course. I struggled with shame at charging for my work. Then, this summer - I offered my work by donation only (because I felt inspired, but also introspect because I felt guilty for asking for more).
While I worked with an incredible number of new clients, and provided immense service, loved every minute… my business bottomed out the following quarter. Perhaps I didn’t hold the pose—I didn’t remain steadfast in valuing the work I’ve spent over two decades cultivating.
I’ll be the first to admit I struggle with placing myself in an authoritative position within the (predominantly white) wellness field, despite my education and experience. I struggle with self-promotion on Instagram, even though people come up to me at the grocery store, and offer thanks for the content. I feel caught between two truths. One part of me desires to use my gifts and education at the highest professional capacity, while thriving financially as a result. The other part believes none of this wisdom is mine and should be freely shared. This creates a catch-22 where I often stand, unsure of how to proceed with sharing my work.
I remain insanely grateful to have my practices of CHOICE. And the power to reset, and listen, and align - over and over again.
Especially when my inner world impacts my business, as described above.
I hope that it is gained from this share: that we have the privilege to wake every day and make a choice, to live towards the highest feeling thoughts and emotions we can for that day. And that many factors in life influence how we feel, because we are not individuals without a network of being. When we open to the universe in the form of freeing ourselves from our own negativity and fear - we can take the NEXT BEST ALIGNED ACTION.
Which is how I came to the MOST ALIGNED Collaboration for me, for 2025.
And gave myself permission to move from JOY in my work again, and quiet the external voices and re-invest in my inner states.
Returning to Core Practices
Through this year’s business experiments, I’ve returned to the practices that anchor me when life feels out of sync. Mostly, I have been reminded, and remind practitioners that often the “unknown” feels like failure, or depression or a death cycle because our CAPACITY AND VISION HAVE INCREASED - leading us to feel metaphorically empty again (after so much “work” to find fullness).
The very practices which create safety and inner fullness are the foundation of the NEWEST Radiance 100-hour yoga teacher training module. Designed to help individuals understand how to do the practices, why we do them, and how to teach them, the training ensures participants never forget these tools.
I recently listened to a favorite podcast, Know Thyself, which reminded me of the importance of teaching. When we teach someone what we know—how and why we do it—we anchor it in our being. This is why the teacher training is not about producing yoga teachers alone but creating individuals who make these practices unconscious habits of being.
Understanding Suffering and Well-Being
This training helps people understand the thinking, emotional, and fascial correlates to suffering. It removes the mystery of how stress, chronic illness, and pain develop. It teaches what we can do at subtle levels to master our health and well-being, as sovereign beings!
Importantly, this work reminds us that personal health is inseparable from the health of our environments, relationships, and focus. This isn’t about creating a narcissistic bubble of well-being that is impenetrable from outside circumstance, but about enhancing our capacity to engage, imagine, and contribute.
It’s about co-creating solutions for global, interpersonal, and leadership crises - by naturally aligning with the universe. It honors the very latest science which says: the brain is not central to consciousness, but is actually instructed by the neurology of the heart, which is picking up signals from a universal field.
It helps us release what is stopping and blocking us from our next best action, by creating emotions and thoughts consciously. Which makes humans so wildly unique.
Building Resilience and Imagination
The 100-hour yoga teacher training module is a roadmap to anchor people in physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual practices. It fosters an exponentially beautiful quality of life. This isn’t just about surviving life’s challenges; it’s about thriving as imaginative contributors to an unthought future.
As I hiked in the desert, I was reminded of the grounding wisdom found in movement, connection, and reflection. While our culture’s values can feel ironic, they also strengthen my resolve to create transformative spaces - like the founders of Brave Earth. These are spaces where people reclaim their vitality, and participate fully in their well-being beyond western cultural norms.
Sending loads of love, and prayers for a truly wonderful and engaged quality of life in and through the worlds unrest…
Jenna
Some of my Favorite Articles of 2024 (I have about 100 others, in case you have a particular wellness curiosity):
1. Review of Transformation Beyond Greed: Native Self-Actualization - Unpacks the way in which Maslow’s heirarchy of needs was actually a Blackfoot path to well-being that was inverted improperly - thereby, placing individual actualization at top of pyramid instead of at the base.
2. Beyond White Mindfulness: Critical Perspectives on Racism, Well-being, and Liberation - Compiles multiple studies on groups and people using value-based, integral and earth based spirituality as cornerstone for well-being which incorporates land, community, and non-human kin. Also critiques the use of secular mindfulness, as being at once less effective and culturally insensitive.
3. Emotional Sources of Dysfunctional Breathing - Very simply outlines how trauma and stress are locked into the body and breath via emotional experiences and how certain common breath patterns (even in yoga) reinforce that distress when using upper chest and shallow breath methods (or when contracting core, using non-diaphragmatic breath) to initiate movement.
My Favorite Book of 2024:
Loved it on Audible!
My favorite Podcast of 2024:
Know Thyself Podcast - concerned with the intersection of spirituality, neuroscience, and psychology (and beyond).
My favorite New Programs created in 2024:
Radiance 100-Hr Training in Costa Rica - This 8 Night Journey unites the healing frequency of the Jungle, Ayurvedically prepared meals, sacred-geometrical lodging and complete 100-Hr Yoga Teacher Training Module with Jenna McDonald and Aimee Huffman for $3666. Jenna brings a speciality in decolonial somatics, breath science and transformative leadership to support her 500-hr Experienced Yoga Teaching credential. Aimee Huffman brings years of experience as 500-hr Experienced Yoga Teacher in Austin, TX and her Yoga Therapy specialization in pain management and adaptive yoga to the course. Together they are creating a powerful healing space, capable of trauma-informed, quantum healing yoga practices for quickly sifting the quality of consciousness to sustain long-term growth through truly transformative yoga. Students can Apply or place a Deposit to save their spot today. All lodging is shared with one other person, so consider joining with a partner or friend to study with. Travel with us April 18-26th, 2025!
Breath Intimacy: 30 Day Challenge and Training - This comprehensive course taught last month - blends post-traumatic growth tools, neurobiology, and embodied techniques to expand the breath’s role in shaping consciousness and well-being. Participants of last session mentioned the course helped: Restart daily meditation practice, increased focus, release of addictions & find emotional correlates to relational patterns. Hire Jenna to teach this course to your team, family, or group - Private Facilitation Option.
Sacred Sundays Winter Online Yoga Series - A Pathway of commitment to unwinding fascial patterns on weekly basis through yoga. Every class will offer nuggets of wisdom for unraveling tension in physical body, spine and low back. Starts Jan. 19th, 2025!
