So this is September. Feeling a lot of gratitude these days as we enter a new moon and an opportunity for a reset. I don’t know about you, but August was rather tumultuous for me with Mercury in retrograde and a swirl of emotion that had me contemplating a lot of personal decisions about career, family and…purpose. Like, am I mindlessly climbing the ladder…or am I truly following my passions, the things that light me up? It reminded me that what truly excites me is not random. It’s connected to my purpose. And I needed to follow those passions. Like reigniting my passion for travel, my passion for driving innovation and my passion for creating connections. Read on for what sparked my clarity and creativity while in Venice Beach.

What better way to express gratitude than through food? At Cafe Gratitude all of the plant-based dishes are named for inspiring feelings like “Nourished”, “Bountiful” and “Restored”. Flavorful dishes like the “Evolved” bowl (shown above) feature local, organic produce like the oyster mushroom bulgogi, daikon, cucumber, kim chee and chickpea frittatas that top the crispy brown rice with bibimpap sauce. So much texture and flavor going on! These dishes live up to their names. But also, isn’t it amazing how just a name like “Restored” can reset your entire mood?

My lust for travel…and ice cream was fulfilled and then some at Wanderlust Creamery. This artisinal ice cream shop on Lincoln features flavors inspired by global travels. Each scoop takes you to a new destination like the Ube Malted Crunch (above, purple) inspired by the Philippines and featuring sweet purple yams with malted milk pieces. The bottom layer (green) is a Japanese Neapolitan with layers of matcha, hojicha (a more mellow green tea than matcha, with a slight nutty flavor) and black sesame seed ice cream. I have no desire to site on a flight for 10+hours to visit Japan, but I will take a walk to this ice cream shop again!

If you’ve been watching my Instagram feed, you know my new obsession with Erewhon Market. This pizza is what raw food dreams are made of. Erewhon may be “nowhere” spelled backwards, but the name of this organic grocery store and cafe might as well be spelled h-e-a-v-e-n. The crust is a crispy blend of buckwheat, sunflower seeds and flax that is topped with a creamy cashew “ricotta”, walnut pesto, cherry tomatoes and olive tapenade. This is the kind of pizza you could eat every dang day.

This gourmet grocery store is a Mecca of healthy foods that’s named after the book with the same name in which the world is a utopia where everyone is responsible for their own health. The market continues to be a pioneer in functional foods with a tonic bar (where I ordered an activated coffee of ghee, collagen peptides and…), raw food bar and aisles filled with everything under the sun from local produce to every adaptogen you can name.

The Class by Taryn Toomey may have a generic name, but it’s anything but generic. This was my second time returning to The Class, this time at The Space, formerly know as Cardio Barre. I wanted to see if it could carry the same luster the second time around and whether it would be as insanely hard, or if that was a one-time event at Wanderlust Hollywood. The verdict? Just as mentally, emotionally and physically exhausting…in a good way. Check out my prior post for a low down on what to expect.

The Butcher’s Daughter featured vegetarian fare just as clever as the name. I’ll be dreaming about the Spaghetti Squash Carbonara for days. Carbonara is a classic turned plant forward with a bed of “angel hair” spaghetti squash layered with the most decadent and creamy cashew “ricotta”, adzuki “bacon” and a soft poached egg nestled amidst spinach and seared cherry tomatoes.

Adzuki might sound like something you would sneeze, but it’s actually a red bean that is indigenous to the Himalayas. It has a relatively neutral flavor that pairs well with buckwheat and liquid smoke to create a bacon-like flavor and texture. It’s not quite as crumbly as the real deal, but I can’t wait to try making it on my own!

The Venice Canals were my serenity on this vacation. It was a quiet and calm oasis of gorgeous homes lining these man-made canals off the coastline. The canals were developed back in the early 1900’s, but were left to erode. In the early 1990’s they were resurrected to their current state of beauty for the public to wander the sidewalks and dream of Italian Villas.

The theme of my trip was really wanderment (yes, I made up that word). I so often plan every minute detail of my life, and my trips, that it sometimes takes away the joy of discovery. I happened upon this exotic sausage shop and beer hall on my way back from yoga. Now that I’m working in innovation again, I take every opportunity to discover new foods, like this rattlesnake rabbit jalapeno sausage. Like I’ve heard before, the rattlesnake tasted surprisingly like…chicken. And the jalapeno was just the kicker to spice things up.

Usually when I run out of time during my weeks, the first thing to go to the wayside is yoga. On this trip, I cultivated the time for some much-needed introspection at Love Yoga. The practice at Love Yoga is a blend of Katonah Yoga, Iynegar and Vinyasa with inspiration-laden narrative winding through challenging poses. The hands-on practice made it personalized and was especially needed for some of the unique movements. Ultimately, I left feeling radiant, transformed and ready to take on September!

The post Venice Beach Favorites appeared first on The Shooks Life.

Awww…snap! Summer is in season, my friends! Before we jump into June, let’s rewind on May. Check out the list below of my May favorites – places, products and passions. As per usual, if you have a suggestion of a workout, product or recipe I should try in June, let me know in the comments. Happy kick-off to summer!Roll out the red carpet, here’s the top 10 places, products and pastimes from May!

1.) Favorite Places to Lolly Dolly: every spring I look forward to the opening of the Green City Market Lincoln Park. It’s my favorite farmer’s market in Chicago for the rows of fresh produce, divine bits like fresh tamales and a great spot for Moose to meet new pooch friends. I love how the market evolves as new produce pops up throughout the season!

2.) Favorite Brunch Spot: Mindy’s Hot Chocolate is a staple in Wicker Park and while it may be most famously known for the rich cups of hot cocoa and decedent desserts, it’s one my absolute favorite brunch spots for its rotating seasonal menu of fresh fare like the creamy spring pea risotto I had there recently. My husband is a die hard french toast fan and inhaled the strawberry rhubarb french toast with sweet cream. I’m more of a savory brunch fan, but it was hard to keep my hands off that french toast.

3.) Favorite Workout: with all that brunching, something needs to offset the decadence. This month, the first of my favorite workouts was flowing to Cardi B at Y7Studio in NYC. This hip hop yoga studio gave me all the positive yoga vibes.  And I absolutely NEED every piece of apparel on their racks, including the “I make yoga moves” tank.

4.) Favorite Workout Jams: nothing gets the body moving like good tunes. Get my personally curated playlist featuring my favorite mash-ups of May on SoundCloud. Catch these songs as I return to teaching spin as a guest instructor at Cycle X Studio Monday mornings in June! First class is free!

5.) Favorite Beauty Hack: when you’ve got a 9-5 and side hustles as a blogger and spin instructor, time is a hot commodity. Thanks to Amazing Lash Studio Lincoln Park, I can roll out of bed looking gorgeous with lashes for days.

6.) Favorite Indulgence: my willpower may have been at a low, but I did not regret stocking up on a stack (literally) of Vosges Haut Chocolate Bars at O’hare earlier in the month. I wouldn’t have expected it, but my favorite of the bunch was the Coconut Ash & Banana Super Dark Chocolate Bar. It was just the right amount of island sweet to offset the bitter, but rich dark chocolate. Close second was the Matcha Green Tea & Spirulina Super Dark Chocolate Bar. Give me all the antioxidants and superfoods!

7.) Favorite New Product: The Trader Joe’s Cauliflower Gnocchi is worth the hype peeps! Seared in a pan, it had the perfect crispy exterior and pillowy center. Paired with a simple sage butter and…perfection! Get the sage butter dEATs here.

8.) Favorite Workout: there were too many favorites this month to pick just one, but the Peloton Tread class absolutely killer! I literally booked the class before I even booked my flight when I had a business trip to NYC earlier this month. Now the wait begins until the new tread is released this fall! Check out my blog post on the class and treadmill here.

9.) Favorite Way to Restore: Chill Meditation + Massage in Chicago’s River North turned this busy bee into a believer. Living in the moment and tuning out the noise is not my forte, but Chill helped me to see the light and pause in the moment. Walked out feeling the sweet sweet nirvana of a mind at rest. For more on my experience, check out my post.

10.) Favorite Recipe: it’s always SO HARD to choose just one because I love all of my babies! But, if I had to pick (which I force myself to pick just one), it’s hands down the vegan red pepper crema that I paired with everything from fresh veggies, to strips of baked avocado in tacos and even pasta. This one is a must try, my friends!

I hope you enjoyed these May favorites. Excited to see what June brings and hope you are too!

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“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around every while in a while, you could miss it.” Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?

After a hectic two weeks of workshops and travel, I was swimming in a bottomless abyss of emails. Rather than continue to tread water, I hopped out of the endless pool of email to take a chill pill. Quite literally, at Chill Meditation + Massage in River North. The studio opened in Chicago about a year ago and hosts yoga as well as mediation classes that offer a bit of stillness in an urban oasis just down the street from the Merchandise Mart.

I’ve always been one to fight stillness – with the mindset that stillness means you’re not moving forward, progressing, driving towards your purpose. So needless to say, meditation was not my jam and even the thought made me a bit twitchy with anxiety. But, I’m also a big believer that the most uncomfortable situations offers the biggest opportunity for growth. So, here goes nothing with this meditation massage studio.

Given my angst about mediation, I chose to do a combo yoga + meditation class so I could at least flow through some of the jitters before sitting in silence. When I entered the studio, I was immediately welcomed and offered some relaxing tea to enjoy before class. Once I was settled, Darrell, the general manager, gave me a tour of the space, which included the retail space upfront filled with reads about finding calm and fun swinging chairs, a tranquility room with loungers and a flowing fountain for relaxation pre/post class, a dimly lit yet airy yoga room with mats and head rests already laid out, as well as a few curtained spaces for chair or table massages.

I enjoyed a bit of peppermint tea while I waited and since I’m a bit challenged to just do nothing, I chatted a bit with Darrell. I mentioned my meditation angst and that I couldn’t fathom completely shutting off my brain. He had some helpful advice that meditation isn’t about stopping. It’s about pausing to take in the moment. Your brain is like a spring, so it’s near impossible to just stop, but we can slow down the vibrations, allowing thoughts to flow in and out of our mindset. When we choose to rejoin the rhythm, we enter back into the story with intention – whether that be an intention to be more present, calm, understanding, loving, etc. I thought to myself, “pausing, I can do”.

The yoga plus meditation class was 30 minutes of restorative yoga, followed by 20 minutes of guided meditation and 10 minutes of, basically savasana. Rajni, the instructor, led us through something similar to sun salutations to warm up our bodies and build awareness of the present moment and how our bodies were feeling. As she phrased it, “we build heat from within so we can purge our bodies of everything that is unnecessary.” It was just the right amount of movement to feel worked and open to the next stage of stillness.

During the guided meditation, we sat upright on pillows with eyes closed as Rajni shared some mantras about breath and accepting the fact that stories might flow in and out of our mindset, but to let them pass through. I breathed a mental sigh of relief. I wasn’t the only one who was fluttering between restful meditation and my to-do list. It was more restful vs to-do’s though. The time flew by – though my feet did start to fall asleep towards the end. I was sitting cross-legged, so perhaps I’ll try another pose next time.

Following the class, I indulged in a quick 20-minute chair massage. The meditation massage studio offers an express recharge package for $50 that includes 1 class plus a 20-minute massage. Jose, my massage therapist, was fantastic. Despite the fact that we were in a curtained area vs separate room, I really didn’t notice my surroundings. And it was just the right amount of time to loosen up the constant stress that I hold in my shoulders.

While I feel like I “cheated” a bit by taking the yoga + meditation class, I left feeling much more grounded and open to the idea of taking a full 30-minute meditation class when I come back. Notice the phrasing “when I come back”. It’s active language like this that sets you motion to act. While I’ll always be an action-oriented person, I hope that I’ll have a little less angst, and a little more patience, next time I’m behind a slow-walker on the sidewalk.

Happy National Meditation Month. Take some time to accept the pause, knowing that it’s not setting you back, it’s clearing away the obstructions so you can run that much faster in the direction you choose.

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