Chief of Staff Nicole Montano Powers Up Her Wellness in 2022

I’ve always been very com­mit­ted to my health and well­ness but like many oth­ers, these last two years have thrown my mind, body, and spir­it reg­i­men into a stag­nant lull. I found myself feel­ing real­ly dis­con­nect­ed to myself and over­all, very unaligned. Late last fall, after our team off­site in Zion, I start­ed to feel inspired to ele­vate my entire well­ness regime — no excus­es. I believe the exact phrase that came to mind was ‘no more slop­py agree­ments’.

Dur­ing our Pow­er­Plant off-sites we often dive deep into our goals and look at all aspects of how we want to show up in the world, so that we can help sup­port and hold one anoth­er account­able. I real­ized that I wasn’t ful­ly walk­ing the walk to feel opti­mal­ly ener­gized and well.  I made the choice that enough was enough and I was tired of hear­ing the neg­a­tive self-talk and excus­es. I was feel­ing the effects of eat­ing too much gluten, sug­ar and caf­feine which all result in inflam­ma­tion — the place where dis­ease can man­i­fest. I knew deep in my soul that I need­ed to do a major over­haul so I spent about a month research­ing how I want­ed to thought­ful­ly approach my well­ness. This list of 10 resources I’m using to reset my health is where I land­ed.

1. The Four Agree­ments by Don Miguel Ruiz

This book is a favorite oldie that is full of key prin­ci­ples for liv­ing an account­able and inten­tion­al life. I down­loaded the Audi­ble ver­sion so that I could lis­ten in the car. I took a week to only lis­ten to this right around the hol­i­days and revis­it­ing these foun­da­tion­al pil­lars shift­ed every­thing for me. A reminder that it’s nev­er a bad idea to go back to the basics.

The four agree­ments are these: Be impec­ca­ble with your word. Don’t take any­thing per­son­al­ly. Don’t make assump­tions. Always do your best.

2. The Nutri­tion­al Kick-Off: Kro­ma Cleanse

I decid­ed to do a major reset with my diet and nutri­tion to elim­i­nate any inflam­ma­tion, as sug­ar had become one of my dai­ly food groups. I was addict­ed to sug­ar and I was real­ly feel­ing it all- the ups, downs, dehy­dra­tion, fatigue, and brain fog. Cur­rent­ly, I’m on week 3 of a 6‑week jour­ney. I’m hap­py to report that I feel ener­gized and super healthy, which was the ulti­mate goal.

I’ve tried almost every cleanse out there over the years and my all time favorites are The Clean Pro­gram by Dr. Junger and the Pro­Lon Fast­ing Mim­ic­k­ing Diet. But in the end, Kroma’s brand­ing and mar­ket­ing real­ly spoke to me and I stalked my UPS guy every day until it arrived. I have nev­er been more excit­ed to start a cleanse so major kudos to their brand­ing team. Their pack­ag­ing is gor­geous and very appeal­ing, but the num­ber of dai­ly mix­es was over­whelm­ing giv­en my sched­ule, and need­ing to stop to mix a drink every two hours was too much.

The high­lights were their after­noon elixir lattes and since I did the lean pro­gram, a spoon­ful of cook­ie but­ter was a treat. Over­all, it did the trick and I felt very ener­gized and clear at the end of Day 5.

3. Meal Deliv­ery Phase

I’m cur­rent­ly in the phase of hav­ing meals deliv­ered and will be here for the next few weeks. My first deliv­ery week was from the Dai­ly Dose, Dr. Will Cole’s plan and I’m cur­rent­ly wait­ing for this week’s meals from L- Nutra, Nutri­tion for Longevi­ty or N4L. I’m real­ly excit­ed about this plan and hope it can be a good sup­ple­ment through­out the year when I’m not cook­ing or using our port­fo­lio com­pa­ny, This­tle Meal Deliv­ery.

N4L has three dif­fer­ent plans to choose from and all of their food is sourced from a regen­er­a­tive and sus­tain­able farm that is organ­ic and non-GMO. Their meals are curat­ed by a Miche­lin star chef and dieti­cian and gluten-free across the board. The last three weeks will be Sakara, which will not dis­ap­point, and I might try a local ser­vice, Organ­ic Oren for Week 6.

4. Keep it Mov­ing: Melis­sa Wood Health & Walk­ing

The past two years I put every­thing before mov­ing my body and it’s not only affect­ed me phys­i­cal­ly but men­tal­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly. This com­po­nent was the main cat­a­lyst for this new reset. I con­tin­u­ous­ly made slop­py agree­ments with myself to work­out every day. As I moved through the day I would put work or oth­er items first until I was too drained to actu­al­ly do a work­out. Does this sound famil­iar to any­one?

I recent­ly heard on a pod­cast that putting off self care or pri­or­i­tiz­ing oth­ers over our­selves is a past trau­ma sur­vival tac­tic. This res­onat­ed so deeply. We all have vary­ing degrees of trau­ma and I found it so inter­est­ing to hear that what I thought was healed trau­ma, was actu­al­ly resur­fac­ing in behav­ior pat­terns that didn’t serve me. It helped me rec­og­nize that I need­ed to make a change to have change. More on that anoth­er time.

The inter­est­ing piece is that on the days that I would wake up at 5am to work out, I felt so ener­gized and my pro­duc­tiv­i­ty was through the roof. Some­times mak­ing choic­es that we know will cre­ate pos­i­tive out­comes are the most dif­fi­cult because our brains want to slip back into what we know. I knew that if I bought a hideous look­ing tread­mill with a lap­top hold­er and stuck it in the mid­dle of my liv­ing room, that I couldn’t ignore it so I did just that. I now spend at least 40 min­utes dai­ly respond­ing to emails while I get my body mov­ing. I should note that my boyfriend is a fine fur­ni­ture design­er and to have this mon­stros­i­ty in the mid­dle of our home was a huge ask. Post tread­mill, I add in a Melis­sa Wood Health work­out that is under 20 min­utes. Her work­outs are so good and feel do-able when I have breaks in my day.

5. Men­tal and Spir­i­tu­al Well­ness: Dr. Joe Dis­pen­za 

I’m a trained Rei­ki prac­ti­tion­er and a cer­ti­fied med­i­ta­tion teacher and while I med­i­tate and incor­po­rate Rei­ki into my prac­tice dai­ly, I have been feel­ing an intense need to go deep­er in my spir­i­tu­al jour­ney. It start­ed to feel like I was just going through the motions when it came to my dai­ly prac­tice and I got the sense it was time to upgrade my spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion to self. I was first intro­duced to Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work in 2018 when I was under­go­ing alter­na­tive heal­ing treat­ments for a breast can­cer diag­no­sis. I lis­tened to his YouTube videos every day for 2–4 hours while I under­went these incred­i­ble heal­ing treat­ments.

I felt so aligned and sup­port­ed with his teach­ings as they cov­ered the spiritual/mental ele­ment of my heal­ing dur­ing my 16-week pro­to­col.  My approach to heal­ing is to look at it from 360 degrees because we can put a band aid over any­thing.  Def­i­nite­ly more on that jour­ney anoth­er time. I was recon­nect­ed with his work recent­ly through a pod­cast I lis­tened to and decid­ed to for­mal­ly take his advanced course in prepa­ra­tion for his next week long event in 2022. I am liv­ing proof that the mind­set shift is so real and this time around I pur­chased some of his medi­a­tions that I have been doing every morn­ing and evening. I can­not rec­om­mend them enough.

6. Waste Not: Lomi

IYKYK. This will be a game chang­er. I live in DTLA and an out­door com­post isn’t real­ly an option for us at the moment. Believe me I tried and it was a dis­as­ter. As I wait for my Lomi to arrive, I can hard­ly con­tain my excite­ment. I’ve learned so much while at Pow­er­Plant and while I’ve always been con­scious about my impact, being exposed to so many amaz­ing experts in our net­work has def­i­nite­ly helped me learn that I can do so much more. I start­ed real­ly pay­ing atten­tion to food waste when I got a prop­er recy­cling set up at home and saw that most of our trash is food waste. It’s awful. I try to repur­pose as much as pos­si­ble and know that the Lomi is going to help reduce our foot­print.

If you don’t know what Lomi is, it’s a coun­ter­top food com­post that turns your waste to com­post in 4 hours. They say that using Lomi twice a week can reduce your waste foot­print by 50%. 50%!

7. Regen­er­a­tion & A Pow­er­Plant Book Club

Aligned with my new Lomi pledge, a few of us at Pow­er­Plant are div­ing into Paul Hawken’s lat­est and great­est book, Regen­er­a­tion. It is a cap­ti­vat­ing, infor­ma­tive and empow­er­ing read that has us all equal­ly ter­ri­fied and moti­vat­ed to do all that it takes to help the future of our moth­er earth. I think if you are alive and breath­ing, you should read this book.

Lat­er this sum­mer, my part­ner and I are break­ing ground on build­ing a neg­a­tive car­bon home in the moun­tains of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. I intu­itive­ly knew we need­ed to cre­ate a space that was kind to our envi­ron­ment, but this book is pro­vid­ing me with all the con­crete why’s and how’s.

I invite you all to join our book club on Fri­days. If you’d like to join, drop a com­ment in the LinkedIn post and we’ll find you!

8. Well­ness Tech: Rem­e­dy Place

All my spa dreams were answered when they cre­at­ed this space. Rem­e­dy Place is a social well­ness club and the only club I’ve been to in prob­a­bly a decade. It’s per­fect with Hyper­bar­ic Oxy­gen Cham­bers, Med­ical Grade Lym­phat­ic Mas­sage, IV infu­sions, Infrared Sauna, Chi­ro­prac­tic and Acupunc­ture Ses­sions, Cold Plunge, Cryo, and Sound Bath Ses­sions. The list goes on and on. It’s pret­ty spe­cial and I start­ed off my reset with the Rem­e­dy IV that made me feel like super­woman.

9. Invis­i­ble Pro­tec­tion: EMF Mit­i­ga­tion & Fre­quen­cy

 With 5G and all the tech­nol­o­gy that I’m using, I want­ed to real­ly pro­tect myself and loved ones from any harm­ful EMFs. I feel pret­ty empow­ered with some great tools from Blushield at our LA office and my home office. I also use FLFE at home and recent­ly got dog col­lars, and fre­quen­cy cards from Leela Quan­tum Tech. If you want to know more, you can lis­ten to Luke Storey dive deep into the research around these prod­ucts. If I tried to explain these prod­ucts, I would make it sound too woo woo but Luke Storey dives into the sci­ence.

10. Cof­fee or Matcha

I can’t, no I won’t, live with­out my cof­fee so I have decid­ed that alter­nat­ing between cof­fee lattes and matcha lattes are a good bal­ance for me. My favorite cof­fee beans that we use at home are Life Boost, myco­tox­in-free, organ­ic, non-gmo beans that are deli­cious. Their dark roast is my morn­ing sun­shine. For my matcha lattes, I’m alter­nat­ing between Your Super’s matcha mix and the clean pro­gram matcha. I love Rise’s oat milk but it has a seed oil in it so I made the hard choice (“no more slop­py agree­ments”) to stop buy­ing it and now make my own almond milk using my almond cow machine.

Feel free to fol­low me where I will post more in depth about my jour­ney to recon­nect­ing with myself: mind, body and spir­it. Thanks for read­ing and I can’t wait to share more with you.