Moving into 2026 with Roxy Romaniuk

Happy New Year! And welcome to Season 3 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast!As we move into 2026, am delighted to share my (Eve Menezes Cunningham, author, podcast host, columnist, trauma-informed and neuro-affirming therapist, Self care coach and senior accredited supervisor – https://selfcarecoaching.net has more information) interview with yoga teacher, Roxy Romaniuk.I adore her yoga classes and really loved our conversation and her honesty about moving through difficult feelings, emotions and situations by paying attention and moving them through her body with movement and journalling.I know yoga students and groups have often called me serene (and that I so often feel anything but!) AND while I don’t know how Roxy feels on the inside while she’s teaching, I do know that she wouldn’t embody such serenity as a yoga teacher if she wasn’t doing all this inner work.Nothing’s good or bad. Everything is simply information. But we all need support (compassion for ourselves as we face challenges, the courage to ask for help and support and community around us to offer it when we can’t ask).JOURNAL PROMPTSAs you watch or listen to our interview, ask yourself: How might you make more space to process, reflect and work with ALL the feelings in 2026? How and where might you access support and that essential feeling of being held we all need in order to co-regulate and thrive? Maybe there’s a yoga class local to you where you feel able to exhale deeply and let go? Maybe a great friend or loved one you don’t have to mask around? A therapist or coach? Some other kind of relationship?Let me know in the comments or by email – [email protected] if you’re feeling sad reading this because you can’t think of anything that supportive, let it be a cue to encourage you to be open to more of it in 2026 and beyond.THE SOLE TO SOUL CIRCLE IS EVOLVINGWhereas before, the deeper dive exclusive content would go out on Wednesdays, this will now be an additional bonus for my Míle Buíochas Mondays newsletter subscribers (as well as the regular polyvagal-informed journal prompts and some of the things I’m most grateful for and delighted to share with you). If you’re not already a subscriber, you can sign up for free at https://feelbettereveryday.kit.com/f7f730d651And I’ll share more about the evolving Sole to Soul Circle soon.Happy New Year!Le grá (with love),[email protected] – check out their upcoming open weekend with free classesCHAPTERS(0:03) Difficulty expressing “negative” emotions(2:07) Introducing guest Roxolana Romaniuk(3:47) Ideal vs actual self-care through my Feel. Love. Heal. framework(6:00) Small daily rituals and intuitive movement(8:13) Expressing anger and difficult emotions safely(12:21) Community, belonging, and collective careFULL TRANSCRIPTDo you struggle to express yourself when you’re feeling really sad or angry or hurt or any of the so-called negative emotions?Today’s guest is an absolute delight and while she’s one of my favourite yoga teachers, I especially love what she shares about her own self-care in terms of giving space, making space for messy movement and expression.I hope you love listening to her as much as I enjoyed talking to her and I’d also love to hear from you in terms of maybe the emotion you struggle most to process and what you’re going to do differently, what you’re going to try as a result of today’s episode.Welcome to episode 92 of the Feel Better Every Day Podcast and I look forward to hearing from you.I’m your host and producer Eve Menezes Cunningham. I’m an author, columnist, trauma therapist, self-care coach and senior accredited supervisor specialising in ADHD and AuDHD friendly trauma-informed neuro-affirming and transpersonal and somatic approaches. I help people heal through self-care practices that honour your body and your brain and your nervous system as well as yourself, that highest, wisest, truest, wildest, most joyful, brilliant and miraculous part of yourself.With new episodes every Tuesday you can either subscribe or follow to make it less likely that you’ll miss new episodes but you might also enjoy some of the older episodes and access deeper dives with the Sole to Soul Circle, access free resources and more information at thefeelbettereverydaypodcast.com.Welcome Roxolana Romaniuk. Thank you so much for joining me.Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you, Eve.Roxy is one of my favourite yoga teachers at The Yoga Root and when I joined, I think it was in August, September, I changed my schedule to enable me to attend her Monday morning classes and it’s just such a gorgeous start to the week.It was like a gift to myself to really and just like I really appreciate that every week. So where can people find you? What are you working on at the moment?Sorry, I was so happy to hear all of this and I think my face is red now. Yeah, so I’m working in Yoga Root now and that’s where people can find me. Yeah, I’m planning to do my YouTube channel with short practice to make it accessible for everyone but at the moment I don’t have any progress on it so maybe in future this channel will be named Yoga with Roxy but at the moment. OK, and what about on Insta or anywhere else you want? Oh yeah, my Insta is @yogawithroxy but I anyway not posted that much so the place where you really can find me it’s theyogaroot.org. So that’s theyogaroot.orgI talk to everyone about ideal and actual self-care because we all struggle with it. We all know what we wish we could do every day and then the reality hits and something has to give. So I go through my Feel. Love. Heal framework.The Feel bit is like the regulatory self-care: It might be breath practices, it could be going for a swim, it’s something you need a bit of, you have to do something, you’re changing the way you’re, you might be working with the way you’re sending those signals of safety or confidence or whatever come but it’s something you’re doing to help regulate, help yourself feel better.Then the Love bit is the more kind of accepting, recognising you don’t have to do a thing, you’re perfect just the way you are, you’re part of nature, part of the divine but also that can be more challenging. I know that’s the part I find most challenging, I’d always rather be doing rather than accepting myself how I am.And then the Heal bit is the collective care where it might be about community and it’s where you, as well as you’re holding space for others obviously with your work, but where you receive that for yourself.And it might be that you’re not at the moment but in each category I kind of ask about your ideal and the reality. So if you’re happy to say, what would be your ideal in terms of that kind of lowercase self-care, the regulatory, the Feel better?Yeah. So my ideal, which has never happened, but it’s I’m waking up at 6am and I’m just seeing how the sun is rising, doing my yoga outside, doing some journalling and planning my day and decide how would I like to live that day.But my actual routine is I find that it’s important to have at least one small thing which you will repeat every day like day by day. So my small things which I do every day if I’m sick or like I can do this every day actually it’s just a glass of hot water. Yeah I’ve got a mug of hot water here now.Yeah same. So that’s how my body understands I’m waking up and it helps my body waking up, my mind and also I’m doing like some it might be not something that some movements that I repeat but what I do. Just moving somehow. Like sometimes I’m playing the music and just allow myself to move however I feel to move right now. Like yeah.That’s fantastic and what about the I always start by introducing it is when you don’t have the bandwidth to do something that kind of that accepting yourself where you are that kind of recognition that you don’t have to do a thing you’re part of the divine you’re part of nature and I also realise that can be so much harder especially for people with AuDHD.What helps you or what would be your ideal in terms of connecting with that highest wisest truest part of yourself? Yeah so in this part I think meditation is helping me a lot to feel that I’m enough that everything is all right. Yeah, I can’t control everything what happens around me in the world but in meditation I can feel like the connection with something bigger and the feelings that I am enough and I also find that it’s important to see where you are to understand what you feel right now and try to express it somehow and I just creating some space in my house and just playing music and allow myself moving like horrible like strange like I don’t know no one can see me and I can be like how I feel now and at least have one place in the world when I can be anger when I can be like anyone.Have you come across five rhythms?I’m not sure.So Gabrielle Roth she died but for decades she basically it would be a playlist and I did some when I was doing my psychosynthesis training and I was so disembodied back then and I was like I can’t dance sober everyone else was sober as well but I was like oh yeah but it would be like songs music that would deliberately provoke the kind of anger or sadness or grief or joy or I can’t remember the five specific rhythms but I remember anger was one of them and I think what you’re describing is absolutely gorgeous because you’re accepting how you’re feeling and you’re allowing it to move through you rather than suppressing it or telling yourself I should be feeling.Yeah yeah yeah yeah