Hey HEY Rocking Eagles!!

Life can be tricky sometimes. Full of stress, unpredictability, and uncertainty. We move quickly through our day, rarely taking time to pause, breathe, and appreciate our surroundings. In other words, we fail to practice mindfulness in our daily routine. Given that we all could benefit from a lil’ more mindfulness in our lives, we decided to team up with Splendid Spoon this March during their “Mindful Movement” project for a super dope giveaway.

The Mindful Movement project is designed to reorganize the popular perception that mindfulness is limited to sitting in meditation for 30 minutes every day. Mindfulness (having good health benefits) can take many forms, movement being one of the most powerful. Whether it is focusing on your breath during a yoga class, being aware and grateful of nature when taking a brisk walk outside, or even staying present while doing burpees - we always can find something in the current moment to focus on. And since WERKSHOP pants are made for movement, this union of awesomesauce was too groovy to deny!

Before getting into the giveaway deets, we’d love to share a little more with you about Splendid Spoon and how this collaboration came to be (plus a rockstar interview with their founder and CEO). Splendid Spoon is a company dedicated to making life less stressful and more mindful through easy breezy (and deeeelicious) soup based nutritional swaps. Believe it or not, the CEO and owner of WERKSHOP, Tina Z, stumbled across this unique company while pursuing her own personal interest in mindfulness and was so blown away by the positive changes she experienced while Souping that it seemed like a no-brainer to collaborate with this group of nutrition imagineers. 

Splendid Spoon aims to make mindfulness accessible to everyone. Their flagship program is a weekly delivery of 5 soups (so you can swap a soup with one meal each day of the week) plus a soup cleanse day full of drinkable soups to take advantage of the benefits of intermittent fasting (click here to read even more about the program!). As a sneaky bonus, they include a mindful meditation practice in each delivery for you to try! Their soups are vegan, gluten free, and delivered nationwide. Given that this SOUP’ed up company has had a really positive impact on the WERKSHOP fam (I too have jumped on soup bandwagon!) we wanted to learn a little more about the story behind the spoon and connected with the CEO and founder Nicole Centeno for a Rocking Eagle Interview. Peep below to see what Nicole has to say about mindfulness, being a girl boss, and the origin of Splendid Spoon: 

1) Mindfulness seems to be a very large component of the Splendid Spoon culture, what inspired you to connect souping with mindfulness when you originally started the company?

 I have always been super in love with food and how it grows and connects us to one another around a table. I studied nutrition in college and went to The French Culinary Institute to become a chef. In spite of all this know-how I struggled with finding the right balance of nutrition and convenience. When I became pregnant with my first son, it seemed critical that I figure this out, and I created our Soup Cleanse program to create not just the “what” of eating, but the “how.” I found the simple act of being mindful during my lunch breaks to be truly transformative. Mindful lunches became the foundation for a more peaceful and stress-free life, and I credit this little bit of meditative action to keeping me centered through running a business, writing a book, and being a single mom to two young boys. Food and mealtime rituals are pretty magical opportunities to invite more peace into your life.

2) What is your favorite advice to give to someone looking to add more mindful activity into their daily routine?

Pick an unavoidable daily activity that lasts 20 minutes or longer. For example, your commute or a lunch break. No matter what, this activity will be there every day. It’s not like a yoga class or a tea ritual - you may love these activities but they can get kicked aside due to higher priority things like a last-minute request from your boss. Mundane activities like an “annoying” commute or “boring” lunch break are perfect as mindful activities. Once you have selected your unavoidable daily activity, turn your phone onto airplane mode, shut the computer, and eliminate any other distractions that distract you from this core activity. Set a timer for 20 minutes and tell yourself all you have to do is focus on this one activity. When your attention wanders (and it always will, this is totally normal and healthy!) simply guide it back to the activity. You can also have a number that helps you stay present. Any time your mind wanders, count up to your number, then repeat.

3) Are the soups your original recipes or is it a team effort? Also, were you a big soup maker before launching the brand?  

Most of the recipes are mine - many come from the 75 recipes in my Soup Cleanse Cookbook! Creating rich, flavorful experiences that are also clean and dense with nutrition is a really fun part of my job. There’s a big team effort to decide how to add more interest and excitement to the mealtime experience. These days we call in support from a few chef friends as well as several nutrition experts to make sure we are always improving.

4) Which pair of WERKSHOP pants do you connect with most and why?

Galaxy!! As a kid one of my greatest fears was space. It may sound silly but a lot of my childhood fears manifested in anxiety-related problems like migraines and asthma. When I learned to be more present I found that my fears were all in my head...and the anxiety-related problems disappeared. I look at the galaxy and space as a reminder of facing my fears.

5) Like Splendid Spoon, Eagle Rock WERKSHOP is a girl-boss owned company, what nugget of wisdom would you offer to young women looking to start their own company?

  1. Experience is the best teacher. 

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Ayyy aren’t those some super DOPE and thoughtful answers? We sure think so! Nicole really has such a great perspective on life, food, and how they can work together to create perfect harmony...no wonder her program works so well! 

Now, for the EXTRA fun part: our GIVEAWAY! Starting TODAY and going through Monday April 3rd, WERKSHOP and Splendid Spoon are holding a joint giveaway on instagram! Make sure to check both accounts (@werkshop and @splendidspoonny) to see all the deets. *HINT* one lucky hOMie from each account is gonna win a pair of fancy pants AND a week of free souping. Sounds too good to be true? Don’t worry, you aren’t dreaming =P

One of the many things WERKSHOP and Splendid Spoon have in common is our desire to spread love and happiness in anyway we can, so giving out product that will help you both move mindfully (helloooo fancy pants) and eat mindfully (soup soup soup!) seemed like a gosh darn good idea to us! TALLY HO :) 

P.S. You may also like our collections:
Cherry Blossom and Parrot

Ciao for now and much love,

Bay

March 27, 2017 — Bay McCulloch

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