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Dr. Julia Colangelo 𖣠 Flow Educator & Writer 🌊 Lahaina, Maui

@drjuliacolangelo

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Flow is the most aligned state for your nervous system.
✺ I write, teach, & speak about how to live there.
𖦹 Fiercely progressive ✺📍Maui 💕mom 🌊

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If you’ve been in the lineup since 2016, you know the drill.

This is just the beginning. yes we voted and that matters.

But every surfer knows one good wave isn’t the whole set.

Now paddle out past where it’s comfortable.

that’;s where the transformation happens and that’s where you’ll find flow. Out past the break where the water’s bigger and the noise from the shore fades. Where you see what’s unfolding, these changes in real time and really move with the water...flow with the water as it’s changing and as the environment around it, in this case, those leading the us government are shifting,.

Flow isn’t the absence of effort. It’s what happens when you stop fighting the current and let your effort meet it.

That’s what this next stretch asks of us: stay in the water, keep your eyes on the horizon, and don’t paddle in just because the last wave was a good one. This is where you stay the course, and keep rising with the tide.

The ocean rewards the ones who stay out there, and I’m going to endlessly nudge you to stay in the lineup and fighting for justice nad change.

See you in the lineup. 🌊

Reshare if you’re celebrating the blue wave/tsunami 💙🩵💙🌊🩵💙

#bluewave #bluemind #surferlife #surftherapy #surftherapist by @drjuliacolangelo

shout out to the surf sister who offered to take my photos in front of today’s spectacular rainbows after a day of sun, surf, crafting and quiet creative flow.

I’m not sure exactly what November will bring but I’m here for living life and flowing like water 🌊✨🐚🌸

#lahainamaui #mauisurfergirls #mauinokaoi🌺 #womenwhosurf #surfmom by @drjuliacolangelo

For anxious high achievers running on fumes, flow offers another way to work 🌀🩵

Hustle culture runs on cortisol and caffeine.
Flow harnesses the innate capacity of our nervous systems.

Flow is total absorption in an activity where the challenge and your skill are matched, and time falls away.

Too much challenge for your skill and you get anxiety. Too much skill for the challenge and you get bored. Flow lives in the narrow band between them.

It's a state where you're rooted in the present moment, time loosens, self-consciousness softens, and the work is rewarding in itself. It's an enjoyable way to work👀

Dr. Julia relocates flow in the body: the most intelligent and aligned state our nervous system can enter and expand from. It's wild and innate ~ we just have to clear enough space to let it move through us.

Comment FLOW and I'll send you the link to my full interview with Dr. Julia on Substack. (ps: it's free!) by @drjuliacolangelo

when I was an undergrad at NYU, it was fairly common for Gloria to turn up. Down on Wall Street, around the Village, at whatever was happening that week. There was a quiet, radical omnipresence to her that was present in the same way water always is.

This was before smartphones (I know, I know, elder millennial here). Before streaming, before live location, before you could soft-cancel by text an hour out. We would hear about a rally, make a plan, and then follow through on the plan. That was the whole technology. Nineteen, twenty years old, crossing the city for women, for cyclists, for the environment, against toxic masculinity, showing up with our whole bodies and spirits because showing up was the only way to be counted.
This is one of the ways Gloria moved like water, and led a flow movement.

And as a twenty something that’s the energy I felt at protests, standing in my values, because a nervous system with no gap to maintain has an enormous amount of capacity left over to take big action.

Gloria ran that at scale for seventy years. Quiet (yet radically impactful) and subtle much of the time, paired with loud and completely out about when the moment called for volume. She could hold both because she was in flow and dialed in to what her flow was calling for in that moment.

One of the things I loved about Gloria’s presence was she was famously unimpressed by women who were publicly for women and privately not all in.

This season I’m in deep contemplation (and action) around the theme of what it means to be all in with your energy. About what radical alignment actually does to a woman, privately and professionally. When you are not hiding, not holding back, not routing every decision through fear, flow is not something you are greeted by and invited into regularly because that’s what your nervous system does automatically when creativity meets you like water.

Rest in power, Gloria and thank you. ~

#gloriasteinem #gloriasteinemquotes #oceantherapy #millennialfeminist #feministtherapist by @drjuliacolangelo

there’s nothing quite like a rolling wave that almost seems to keep the pace with your heartbeat as you’re surfing down the line to remind you that you’re right on time.

Water keeps the pace and this season feels like one when everything is going to fall into place because of the cadence of the new month and season on the horizon.

For me, September has a heartbeat that reminds me of new life and chances, shows me a way forward around and through elements and circumstance that may have used to baffle or overwhelm me,

I’m calling in a season of a steady nervous system, and a creative flow that arrives like a familiar friend. cozy, and already knowing your rhythm.

The type of cozy flow that just meets you, without any pressure and almost like a homecoming. It just matches you and your truest essence.

That’s this season for many of us, riding the wave without the rush, just with flow ~

What are you calling in this month? Comment below

Relate this to spread the flow 🌊🌊🌊

#oceantherapy #bluemind #bluemindlife🌎💧❄️💙🌊 #oceantherapist #millennialtherapist by @drjuliacolangelo

something ended this summer, maybe it was a cycle, a way of being, a block that lifted or a version of you that kept negotiating for less than she wanted.

now the rebuilding starts, steadily and right here, right now. a pattern doesn’t just stay broken once you have awareness. it only ends when your standard sits above the pattern you can reach

september isn’t going to force your nervous system to try harder but it’s nudging you to meet the water line and release whatever subpar standards wash out with the tide.

Salt air, low light, the ocean doing what it has done and always will do: bring what matters into actual focus and offering your body (and hear and soul) conditions to pattern so your sparkly comes back and your standards don’t just get raised once but stay there.

i look back to months ago when I claimed this would be a cycle breaking summer for many of us, and it sure has been. maybe it was something you internally shifted, or something that rose up in the water for your soul. whatever it was, your flow is ready to meet you in September, meet the new creativity that’s rising up to this standard that’s aligned with what your inner child and future self have been asking for.

reshare the slide that lands for your soul this september ~

#septemberintentions #septembervibes #millennialtherapist #nervoussystemhealing #nyctherapy by @drjuliacolangelo

raise your hand if the last month or two had you second guessing half the choices your past and present self made

if you felt half floaty with moments of steadfast certainty but then rocky again.

I know thanks to my friend and teacher KJ atlas @kj.atlas and 4 years learning from her that eclipse season always brings out depth in my chart, and the aftermath of eclipse season means I tend to simmer into a new sense of knowing and trusting.

that’s why I don’t hate eclipse season, but rather I really appreciate what it gives me. it’s like a chapter from years past opens again, I see things, I trust myself to move through the portal, and relieved on the offset to get my flow back again.

anyone who tells you flow is meant to be one and done doesn’t understand what flow really means.

a flow state that is regenerative means that every season, action, choise experience you have is part of a cumulative greater, deeper experience that means you’re able to embody and tap into flow more regularly, more predictably, and with your authentic self. It’s not starting from zero every day or month. That’s why as we wrap up an eclipse season that may or may not have had you questioning everything in your life you actually can feel closer to your flow state when you simply activate it again,

one of my favorite ways to do this and get my flow back is to meet my shadow and my emotions post eclipse that are still reoverin bck from the darkness with some half moody and half mellow songs that remind me of my youthful inner child who definitely made it through the mud and laid the bedrock for who I am today.

As we prepare to wish August goodbye, this is the playlist to accompany your intentions and wrap up this eclipse season before the next one flows our way.

Comment eclipse and I’ll message you the spotify link ~

reshare with love to remind a friend they’re not alone this eclipse season either

#eclipseseason #eclipsevibes #musictherapist #musictherapy #millennialtherapist by @drjuliacolangelo

a book arrives at my house every month with my daughter’s name written beneath the imagination library emblem.

it comes from the beloved program dolly parton started in 1995 for the children of one county in tennessee, because her father never learned to read and she believed it cost him a life he was smart enough to have had. the first order was 1,760 books. mine is one of hundreds of millions that arrives and ripples flow in our lives. Our family has been sitting with dolly’s passing the last 24 hours.

i have spent seventeen years studying what lets a human stay in creation, and she is one of the clear examples women can really look to to see sixty years of flow, a body of work she never let go of and generosity built into the work she lived and the walk she walked day after day, flow state after flow state.

dolly parton was a living example of flow and will continue to be a light in the flow world for her artistry, creativity, and genius flow state that will continue to positively ripple in her legacy that lives on.

reshare with flow ~

#dollypartonforever #creativityunleashed #millennialtherapist #millennialtherapy #bluemind by @drjuliacolangelo

last night a turtle tried to high five me while I was riding a wave to shore.
from where I was gliding down the wave, this majestic green turtle seemed to jump halfway out of the water as the wave moved me down the line. it seemed to meet the wave, the water, and look right at me with a gleeful joy and ease.
in that moment, I knew without a doubt it was my dad giving me another nudge of encouragement.
it felt just as sweet as the high five he would give me after a soccer game
or when I became a licensed therapist which was a lifelong dream,
or when I stood up for what was right even if I got detention for it,
or when he celebrated that I sold my first friendship bracelet at the jersey shore as a kid.
my dad didn’t always have the words, but he always had the actions to show his care and encouragement, which was his version of love. he would celebrate the smallest things, things other people wouldn’t even notice. he saw them and would make it something worth seeing, recognizing and naming.
he loved that I researched flow, which was something I loved, while it was also something I naturally struggled to enter and sustain and really had to challenge myself to find.
flow was one of the threads that always connected us.
flow in the water flow as artists flow as waterpeople flow as crafters and builders
he was the one who taught me that the small things count. that you don’t wait for the big moment to celebrate someone. you notice what’s in front of you and you name it.
maybe this summer wasn’t exactly what you expected, maybe you’re not sure what to make of what’s unfolding. this is your nudge that it’s not your summer project to figure it out, but rather to flow with whatever is coming your way, and to trust that the quieter seasons bring you the light just as much as the louder ones.

this your high five to take things one day at a time, putting one foot in front of the next and moving with the rhythm and finding your own flow. without putting more pressure on yourself, without falling into compare & despair, but rather trusting that the small actions will bring you closer to flow, closer to your blue

#surftherapy #bluemind #surftherapist #lahaina #mauinokaoi by @drjuliacolangelo

i know this to be true for many of us ~

if July felt like thunder

... August is your lightning.

July may have been rocky. High-highs, low-lows, and just enough of the in between to keep you moving, and enough in flow that you built something and reclaimed a part of yourself that had been hidden and got clear on at least one thing. That is a real month. Count it

maybe you came out of a hard stretch, and you’re slowly inching towards clarity with a felt sense of conviction.

lightning means you’re moving with precision. Lightning arrives at the higher of the charge, when you need it most, often after thunder which moves you to wake up, and see things for what they are.

it;d be nice to walk into a new month and season with everything tied up perfectly in a bow but most of us are arriving with something in between. July gave you something to move through and now the light and lightning power of august will accompany you deeper.

the practice of being human is this dance between thunder and lighting, water and earth, fire and air.

You are made of water and you have been in the sun.

Be the light.

Move like lightning.

reshare with love ~

want to learn more? comment signals for the free 20-page flow signals guide

comment what your august lightning is ~

#augustintentions #august2026
#oceantherapy #bluemind #millennialtherapist by @drjuliacolangelo

This month marks one year of being a dadless daughter.

One year this month since I lost my sweet, loving, kind dad. The carpenter and artist, waterman and sea glass finder who measured twice and cut once as any woodworker would, and who taught me that precision is a form of love. He taught me that you measure twice because the material deserves your attention, that you can build something that outlasts you if you’re willing to be patient with the wood.

And I was one of those lucky daughters to also have a beloved stepdad who raised me, and who passed away 6 years ago today.

I’ve spent seventeen years teaching people about the nervous system and I still wasn’t ready for what grief does to one. How the body keeps absorbing. Your nervous system reads coming alive and coming apart as the same event. Both are activation. Both are the system saying, this matters, stay with it.

The ocean taught me this before the science did. Water receives what enters the water. Water takes in the light, keeps what the depths need, and returns the rest as the most beautiful color we have a name for.

So if your aliveness looks like loss this month, you’re doing what water does. Absorbing what’s heavy. Returning what’s light. Becoming blue.

If you want to sit with this in your own body, here’s where I’d begin:

What is your July absorbing this year, and what is your July returning?

Where in your body do you feel aliveness and grief sharing the same frequency?

What have you survived that turned into something beautiful only after the absorption was complete?

Gentle reminder to myself today on this anniversary as we start to prepare for August: I’m still here. I’m still blue. Both things are true, and both things are alive.

I’d you’re in the blue: you are alive, I see you and something beautiful is on the horizon.
Reshare with love 🌊✨

#bluemindlife🌎💧❄️💙🌊 #oceanhealing #oceantherapy #surftherapy #surftherapist
Julia by @drjuliacolangelo

the state everyone is trying to engineer is the state your body produces on its own at the water, with no instruction at all.

i’ve watched brilliant, high-achieving humans try to hack their way into flow. the plunges, the protocols, the stacks, the optimization routines. and i understand the impulse, because flow is worth pursuing. it’s the most intelligent and aligned state your nervous system can enter, and once you’ve felt it, you want a reliable way back.

but here’s what i know from the research and from a lifetime beside the ocean: your nervous system was reading blue long before anyone built an industry around your stress. blue light reaches the eye and the alert chemistry eases. the waves break at the pace of a resting breath and your exhale syncs without being asked. open water gives your brain nothing to scan, and a brain with nothing to scan is a brain that can finally create, connect, and think at its full range. that’s not wellness language. that’s mechanism.

the humans i teach always describe the same moment. they get to the water and something lets go before they’ve done a single thing to make it happen. they say it almost apologetically, like it doesn’t count because it was easy. it counts more because it was easy. effortlessness is the signature of flow. if you’re forcing it, you’re not in it.

so this is your permission to stop treating flow like a project. you don’t need a colder plunge or a better stack. you need proximity to the signal your body has trusted since before you could speak. get to the water. let blue do what blue does. then learn to carry that state into the rest of your life, because that’s where the real work begins, and that’s the work i teach

Reshare to spread the blue 🌊🌊🌊🌊

#bluemind #oceantherapy #oceantherapist #surftherapy #surftherapist by @drjuliacolangelo