ℱ𝓇𝓸𝓂 𝓂𝓎 𝒽𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝓉𝓸 𝓎𝓸𝓊𝓇𝓈… 🫶💌☕
Today is Monday 29 June, 2026.
If you’re new here, I first introduced Dana’s Diary on 30 March as a space for my behind-the-scenes reflections.
An unintentional rhythm has formed this year without much intention behind it. Four “bonus” Mondays (or rather, the months with five Mondays, so to speak) have become moments where I pause and take stock.
The last three months have passed SO quickly, but things have been shifting with my nervous system and somatic offerings:
Some of you might remember that Dreamweaver was part of Dana’s Diary until December 2025. I haven’t shared new pieces since then. If there’s any interest, I might publish a series of standalone posts (without email delivery), for those drawn to that subconscious layer of the work. Let me know if these interest you.
This Substack is now known as Dana Somatics (relating to my business name). What began as The Grounding Guide has become a wider ecosystem that includes The Somatic Lab and Dana’s Diary. Bringing everything under one name created a sense of coherence that I didn’t realise I was missing, and the content now sits in clearly defined sections within the platform, that you can choose to opt out or in from.
Weekly Grounding Letters (as they were) have become monthly Grounding Guides. Each one is now centred around a theme, weaving simple nervous system education (embodied anatomy without the jargon) with two-minute somatic snacks (body-based micro skills). Our first learning arc will close at the end of August, and I’m planning something exciting to celebrate (before moving onto the next learning arc), so… keep your eyes peeled!
The Somatic Lab is currently in transition. I’d been shaping it into a membership space for those who want more depth than micro-skills, but not the intensity of my six-month immersive. For now though, I’ve paused development while I reassess timing and capacity (especially with the summer holidays coming up). I’m a great believer in synchronicity though, so I’m allowing that reality to inform what unfolds next.
I’ve also been working with Morgane, an SEO strategist (AKA micracle worker!), who has helped me to start build a website and write copy through her programme, Sold Out SEO. It's been a real learning curve, but one that's brought so much clarity to both my tone and direction. I highly recommend working with her.
Most of my energy over the past few months has gone into developing the curriculum for my six-month group immersive. It’s been one of the most meaningful and demanding parts of my work. There are always more ideas than there is space for them, so the process has become one of discernment — what takes shape, what’s held for later, and what remains unformed.
That tension between creativity and capacity has been a consistent thread, and it’s also been a teacher.
A note on 1:1 work. I’ve had a few recent enquiries, but I’ve decided to pause this for now. When I work with someone, I tend to go all in, and I want to protect the depth of attention that requires. In the future, I may offer 1:1 sessions as a more contained deep-dive for people who’ve already worked with me in a group or workshop, rather than as ongoing support.
Over time, I’ve learned that support only remains sustainable when capacity is part of the structure, not something added afterwards.
This year, I chose the word “promise” as my anchor… as something that I return to repeatedly in small, quiet ways throughout daily life.
With that said, let’s move into my April, May, and June!
What follows is three individual wellbeing warrior entries from each month; so take your time, make yourself comfortable, and we’ll begin ⤵️
𝔸ℙℝ𝕀𝕃, 𝟚𝟘𝟚𝟞
🪷 Wellbeing Warrior:
A wellbeing warrior is someone who takes a proactive, intentional approach to supporting their physical, mental, and emotional health… becoming a champion for positive change, grounded in self-care, mindfulness, and resilience.
Throughout 2026, I’m intentionally adding practices into my daily routine that reflect this, alongside my word for the year: Promise.
Here are a few practices that I’ve been returning to throughout April, when keeping things simple mattered more than anything else (including videos from Mindful Magazine, Eline Kieft, Ph.D. and Nicola - Yoga Teacher):
This month it’s fair to say that I’ve been feeling wired but tired. Rather than pushing through or asking more of myself, I’ve been leaning into smaller, gentler practices.
Alongside my own daily applied somatic practice, I’ve also added shorter, but more regular sessions — small pockets of practice that meet me where I am, rather than asking me to step away from life in order to do them.
As I often remind others, returning to yourself doesn’t require the perfect window of time, only a willingness to pause for however long is possible.
There can be a sense that practice only counts when it’s an hour long, complete, or uninterrupted. But the nervous system responds to repetition, familiarity, and brief moments of safety that accumulate over time.
And people sometimes assume that because I’m an embodied facilitator, my own practice is always structured and consistent. In reality, it isn’t. Many body-based practitioners don’t talk about this openly, for fear it undermines their credibility.
I don’t really hold that belief. I don’t think in terms of experts, because I’ve never really found the word particularly helpful, and I think that goes back to my nursing days. I remember a senior nurse once saying to me (when I’d entered a new setting and had to be buddied again) that none of us were experts because nobody can know everything, but you can find the thing that is your thing and specialise in it, because everyone has a thing. I remember telling her that I didn’t know what my thing was. She said that in time it would unfold and become clear, and I thought that my thing was maybe wound care (at that time).
Now I can see that I specialise in neuro-myo-fascia repatterning, I teach what I know, and I work as a guide and educator rather than anything more fixed than that.
And if I’m being completely honest, I often follow other practitioners’ sessions in my own personal practice, because there’s something so grounding about being guided, when I don’t have the capacity to hold everything myself 🙏
𝕄𝔸𝕐, 𝟚𝟘𝟚𝟞
🪷 Wellbeing Warrior:
This month, I stopped writing in my A6 Moleskine. There wasn’t a conscious decision or a dramatic reason as to why. I just simply… stopped. A couple of missed days became a week, and before I knew it, an entire month had passed without opening it.
What surprised me most was that I didn’t really miss it.
Journalling has been part of my life for years, so instead of forcing myself back into the habit, I became curious. Why do we drift away from something that once supported us?
Research offers plenty of explanations: lack of time, perfectionism, losing momentum after missing a few days, emotional resistance, or feeling as though there’s nothing worth writing about. But none of those felt quite right for me.
Then I came across another possibility: sometimes we outgrow the purpose a practice once served, and that really resonated with me.
Over the past few years, my journal has helped me make sense of my perimenopausal and chronic illness symptoms. It’s held my overwhelm, frustration, tears, questions, and the days when I simply needed somewhere safe to place everything that I was carrying. Looking back, I’m incredibly grateful for those pages, because they held what I couldn’t.
But lately, I’ve realised that I no longer want to keep revisiting this chapter. And, more than that, I don’t feel the need to write negatively anymore because (although perimenopausal and chronic illness symptoms don’t just disappear overnight), I’m starting to get used to it, and, in a way, I’m starting to heal.
I’d like to mention that it’s not because my life has suddenly become easy, but it’s more that something within me has shifted. Instead of filling blank pages with everything that’s weighing on me, I’m finding myself drawn to journal prompts that invite reflection, curiosity, and possibility. They help me notice where I am now, rather than continually revisiting where I’ve been, which has become hard to read back, and most recently, harder to write in the actual moment.
When I trained in expressive arts within the caring context at university, we explored how writing, art, music, and play can all therapeutically support emotional wellbeing. One lesson that stayed with me ever since is that our creative practices are meant to evolve alongside us.
We don’t have to keep doing something in exactly the same way simply because it once helped. Sometimes the practice stays the same, but the way we engage with it changes.
Perhaps that’s true for journalling.
Perhaps it’s true for wellbeing itself.
I’m learning to let my journal meet the person I am today, instead of expecting it to serve the person I used to be.
And, that feels like progress.
P.S. I’ve found journal prompts from Michelle R. Smith, LIMHP and Daily Dose of Nature very supportive this month 🙏🤍✨
𝕁𝕌ℕ𝔼, 𝟚𝟘𝟚𝟞
🪷 Wellbeing Warrior:
This month I decided to address my coeliac disease (CD), and when I say address, I mean properly so… I’ll provide you with the backstory for context. I was diagnosed with CD in the 1990s, although looking back, the first symptoms appeared in the 1980s. The first signs weren’t digestive, they were neurological — tingling in my hands and feet. At the time, everything neurological was investigated apart from CD, and it would be another decade before I was finally diagnosed.
Eventually, I learned about gluten ataxia, where CD affects the nervous system. Some people experience neurological symptoms, some digestive symptoms, and some, like me, experience both. Looking back, I can see that I’ve experienced almost every symptom associated with gluten ataxia. This month, the dizziness was so bad that I walked into stationary walls/doors, and struggled to stand up or walk in a straight line (not much fun in the supermarket).
Over the years, I also discovered just how much I hadn’t been told when I was first diagnosed. I knew to avoid wheat, barley, and rye, but no one explained cross-contamination, “may contain” warnings, temporary lactose intolerance while the gut heals (because the lactase enzyme is produced at the tips of the damaged villi), or that some people also react to gluten-free oats because of a protein called avenin. Without realising it, I spent years exposing my body to things it simply couldn’t tolerate.
The effects have reached far beyond my gut. Years of malabsorption left me severely deficient in essential nutrients. At its worst, it affected my thyroid, first presenting as myxoedema during my teens. I became bedbound and was given a prognosis of just three months to live — a chapter of my life that deserves its own story.
Since then, I’ve lived with chronic fatigue, debilitating neurological symptoms, digestive problems, skin reactions, severe vitamin D / iron deficiency, and low vitamin B12 and folate. I’ve also lost four molar teeth, which I personally believe was another consequence of my body simply not absorbing the nutrients it needed.
I’ve been six stone, and I’ve been thirteen stone.
I’ve come frighteningly close to losing my life more than once.
Looking back now, in my forties, I can see how CD has shaped almost every chapter of my life, often in ways that weren’t recognised until much later.
Take infections, for example. Over the past couple of years, I’ve realised that I seem to pick them up more easily than most people. I’ve also experienced countless episodes lasting anywhere from 24 to 72 hours that felt exactly like the flu. For years, I assumed it was just one of those strange things my body did.
Then I discovered that many people with coeliac disease describe the same experience, often referring to it as “gluten flu”.
Having a name for something you’ve silently lived with for years doesn’t change the experience, but it does make you feel a little less alone.
Yet the hardest lesson so far hasn’t been understanding the condition. It’s been learning to stop abandoning myself for something that many people simply don’t understand.
People often tell me how much easier CD must be now that gluten-free food is widely available compared with when I was first diagnosed. I know they mean well, but my biggest challenge has never been finding something labelled gluten free (GF). Many processed GF foods don’t agree with me anyway, and accidental exposure through cross-contamination (even whilst eating GF when out and about) has become increasingly difficult for my body to tolerate as the years have gone by. What I tolerated in my teens is no longer tolerable in my forties.
Interestingly, it wasn’t until the pandemic that it became impossible to ignore.
Because I was spending most of my time at home, my health actually began to improve. That simple change forced me to ask myself a difficult question, and then have to sit with the answer.
Why had I spent so many years taking risks with my health?
The truth was uncomfortable.
I didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.
I didn’t want to seem difficult.
I didn’t want friends, family, or colleagues to feel awkward because of me.
I was exhausted from constantly having to explain myself, only to feel dismissed, misunderstood, or told I was overreacting.
And, looking back, I can see that I wasn’t protecting my health… I was protecting everyone else’s comfort.
So, although I’d stopped eating gluten per se years ago, I still kept saying yes to the things that hurt me relating to that. E.g. “may contain” and cross contamination in my own home, eating out with friends and family, and attending mixed grill bbq’s… all whilst my body kept paying the price.
This month I decided enough is enough, so:
I’m no longer eating out.
I’m no longer taking chances at shared bbq’s.
I’m pressing pause on dairy while I give my gut the chance to heal before gradually reintroducing it.
And, most importantly, I’m no longer making decisions based on whether ignoring my health will make life easier for everyone else. I’m making decisions based on what my body actually needs to heal.
Perhaps that’s what being a wellbeing warrior really means, for example:
Not fighting harder.
Listening sooner.
Honouring your body before it has to shout.
Sometimes that means disappointing other people. Sometimes it means setting boundaries that should’ve been put in place years ago. And sometimes, it means finally believing that your own health matters just as much as everyone else’s comfort.
That’s the promise I’ve made to myself this month.
And, for the first time in a very long time, that decision feels lighter than any burden I’ve been carrying, as I feel like my healing journey has come full circle.
Wishing you all a wonderful summer, full of lightness and brightness!
Until next time,
Take care.
𝒲𝒾𝓉𝒽 𝒢𝓇𝒶𝓉𝒾𝓉𝓊𝒹𝑒,
🙏 𝒟𝒶𝓃𝒶 𝓍𝑜
