We Are Taking A Summer Break To Come Back Aligned

A weekly schedule can be a comfort blanket, but what happens when your soul asks for something different? Nikki shares why we’re taking a summer break until after Labor Day and how that choice is rooted in the same holistic living, spiritual alignment, and personal growth we talk about all year. We’ve both got beautiful, full lives unfolding, and we don’t want to “power through” and put out episodes that feel forced, faint, or out of sync with our purpose.

Nikki digs into the idea of intuition “pings” the quiet hits, downloads, and inner nudges that tell you when to move and when to pause. She reframes joy, gratitude, humor, and sovereignty as a radical act in a loud world, because inner peace is not passive. It’s a choice that changes your energy, your nervous system, and how you show up for others. If you’ve been doing something only because it’s familiar or because consistency feels like safety, this conversation offers permission to release, pause, and explore what’s actually calling you.

You’ll also hear a story about a healer who stopped following the “3D matrix” social media playbook and grew fast by sharing in real time from her pings, plus Nikki’s own shift into a teaching era through power yoga, hot yoga, Pilates, Reiki, and mindfulness. We close with the unforgettable butterfly story a reminder that your strangest pull might be the truest. While we’re away, you’ve got 140 episodes to revisit, including Arcturian channelings, meditations, and practitioner interviews.

If this resonates, subscribe so you don’t miss our return, share it with a friend who needs a pause, and leave a review to help more people find the show. What’s one “ping” you’re willing to listen to this summer?

Transcript

Welcome To Modern Zen Collective

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Hi, I'm Lizzie.

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And I'm Nikki. Together, we welcome you to the Modern Zen Collective Podcast, a space where we explore holistic living, spiritual alignment, and personal growth.

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Each week, we'll share conversations, practices, and wisdom to help you live with more joy, purpose, and connection.

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From ancient wisdom to modern mindfulness, we are here to help you connect, expand, and come home to yourself. Let's elevate mind, body, and spirit together.

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And now on to today's episode.

Announcing The Summer Break

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I am Nikki here with a short solo episode for you. I hope everything is going well. You're prioritizing yourself, your self-care, your happiness, traveling, maybe, reading, getting outside, moving your energy, all of those things. We are taking a summer break, and I am doing this short podcast to explain the summer break, the reason, etc. We, Lizzie and I decided to look at everything that we're doing. And we took a pause and we thought we should really be practicing what we preach. We are both starting to feel that we have a lot personally happening in very good ways, where we are juggling, prioritizing, doing things that are, and I don't want to say pulling our energy because we love everything that we're doing. We're really in, you know, enjoying gratitude, perspective, et cetera, whether it's personally something we're doing in terms of um vocation or the podcast, et cetera. And we decided, what if we took a summer break and just worked, you know, on ourselves and not even work on ourselves in a way of, you know, digging up the shadows, do your shadow work, all of these things. We mean working on ourselves where we are enjoying life, prioritizing these pings that are coming to us, these intuition hits that are coming to us. What are we being pulled towards? How are we being shown the path for our best self, for our purpose, for our inner peace to fully enjoy

The Radical Act Of Enjoying Life

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life? Because the most radical act right now that we can do, with so much chaos being thrown at us and so much negativity being thrown at us, is to know that you have the universe, the stars, everything inside of you. You have inner alignment within you, you have inner peace within you. So the most radical act is being sovereign and enjoying life, having fun, be humorous, be in gratitude. That's what heals the world. So Lizzie and I have been looking and talking about everything going on in our lives. And you know, we're both so excited for each other and everything that we're doing. Lizzie's in Alabama, I'm up in Illinois, and we're looking at everything that we're doing, and we had a pause and thought, wow, we are real, we're we're almost running this like a corporate function. We're we're we're almost thinking, no, we can't take a summer break. That's ridiculous because of X, Y, Z. Well, you know, we have these shadows within us, not even shadows, we have these uh tendencies within us, these habits within us that come from our experience, that come from our childhood, that come from work, et cetera, what we're told. So within Lizzie and I, we have these programs, same because we also, you know, worked in corporate for a long time. Why would we take a summer break? What does that mean? That that, you know, what if that does XYZ for the business? Or whatever, what if this happens? What if that happens? And we remembered we own the business. We don't have to report to anyone. If we're feeling this intuitive hit to take a summer break, there's a reason for it. And the reason why we started the company, the reason why we release the episodes that we do, the reason why we do the Arctorian channeling, the reason why we do all of the things we do, the reason why we created the collective with our practitioners that we love and adore, and we want to show you and share is because we want to make holistic wellness accessible for everyone. And we want to help you find that inner purpose, that inner peace so that you can fully live embodied and feel and breathe every day that you are elated, excited to be here on earth and you love everything that you do. And we decided we followed our intuition to launch this together. And we are following our intuition now to not stay for the summer because of habit, because of, you know, what we think expectations

Choosing Authenticity Over Cadence

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are, a cadence of, you know, delivering an episode once a week or twice a week, whatever that is. If we show up now and we show up and we create what our episodes are, et cetera, they're not going to feel authentic. They're not going to feel like us, and they're not going to have that energy of our passion, of our purpose, of our fire. And that's the energy we need to bring to the earth so that we can share our gifts, our purpose, what's going on within us. If we, you know, just bring up episodes to bring up episodes and share things to share things just to have something every week on the podcast. That's not serving anyone. It's just be creating more noise. So we are following our purpose, following our intuition, and following this ping that we are both going to work on what's going on in our personal lives, the things that are really bringing us joy, the things that we love doing, the things that are drawing us, the things that we want to take some time for inner peace, to be the student, to enjoy life, whatever that means for both of us, right? We're we're both embarking and doing different things in our life right now. And it's such a beautiful time. And we have the energy of the sun, the energy of the summer solstice coming up. And we're going to use that. We're going to use that and take a pause. We'll be back after Labor Day. We wanted to explain this to explain why, you know, there's no episodes throughout the summer. We have 140 that you can go back to because we've been so disciplined, so on top of it, so having so many pings. This is our episode, this is our episode, this is what we should share. And all of a sudden, those pings kind of stopped or started to get a little more faint where we had to search for them a little more. And that's where we knew it was time for us to take a step, keep everything as it is. We have the collective, we have our website, we have our podcasts, we have our free library of things that you can access. But we're going to take some time to just enjoy and be with ourselves and come back with new experiences, new ideas, new energy, new fire, new perspective, all of the things that go along with that.

The Instagram Story About Pings

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I was on Instagram last week and I saw a woman who popped up in my feed about a month ago, I would say. She's a healer. And it, you know, it didn't, it wasn't strange to me that she popped up in my feed because a lot of my feed are collective yoga teachers, Pilates teachers, healers, et cetera. And she popped up and her video was about how she moved from uh, I think a thousand followers to 100,000 followers in a very, very, very short time. And she explained how what she was doing to start her Instagram. She knew she felt the pull. She felt the pull to share her voice. She felt the pull to share her healing, her Reiki, her sound healing, etc. But she was following the 3D matrix way to do it. She was following what the masses are told to do to grow your Instagram. And it wasn't working for her because it doesn't work for everybody. We're not all supposed to be the same. So she said she took the courses, she paid for the courses, she found ways to grow. She was posting at this time of day and then following up at this time of day and then doing X, Y, Z, and then making sure everything was polished and brand looked good and this looked good, et cetera. And nothing was moving. And she said, she thought, well, what if I, if I, if I just, if I just act as myself and share who I am, what do I got to lose? I haven't grown that much at all. Let me just try it and be vulnerable and share myself. So she threw out all the playbooks she spent, I think, thousands of dollars on, to be quite honest. She threw all those out. She decided to just go with what she was being pulled to from her highest self and those pings she was getting within. So anytime she got a ping, she felt it. She went live, she talked about it. A ping is that intuition hit, you know, where something just like comes in and you get downloaded of, you know, what's going on or you get goosebumps, however it is that you have your Claire, your Clair sentient, Claire audient, um, clairvoyant, et cetera. So when she got her ping, she did her download, she talked about it, she um showed herself, she decided not to worry about branding, not to worry about this or that. She decided not to worry about what she looks like. She just showed up as herself, makeup or no makeup, showing up outside, inside, walking, having coffee, et cetera. And she grew exponentially. She felt the energy that she was sharing, the pings. As soon as she got the ping, she was sharing it. And that she realized, she made the click, the connect that, oh, when I get this ping and I have this pull to be seen and show on social, I feel a purpose here that my ping is meant to share in that moment to the broader, to the collective. And she grew by not doing what the 3D matrix collective, et cetera, is meant to be. And it's so funny because we're all so interconnected. We're all so interconnected with our energy and how we are growing and evolving. And when we tap in and we feel those intuitive hits, we feel that energy, we're tapping into that same energy of, you know, focus on yourself, follow your

From Hustle To Intuitive Flow

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intuition. Right now, we're moving from that energy of masculine to feminine as a collective. And that's been talked about for centuries, talked about for civilizations over and over. That means we are moving, whether whatever gender you are, we have both within us, we are moving from go, go, go, uh, effort equals reward. You have to push, you have to push, you have to push to we're actually supposed to be following our purpose. We're actually supposed to be following what we came here to earth to do, to serve. And everyone's purpose is different. And following that and taking risks with that and jumping through the fear with that and sharing ourselves with that is more of that intuitive flow. It's that flow of you're following your intuition and you're following your intuition, and it might, your follow your intuition might, you know, have you meet or reach out to someone, and that brings you a huge, you know, windfall of money or a new job, et cetera. But it's the intuitive feminine world that we're moving into as we move into the new earth that's being talked about, you know, all over the spiritual communities. And with Lizzie and I really loving what we do and being in this field, what disservice would we be giving if we just continued to power through, power through, power through, put an episode every Tuesday, every Friday so that we could just keep our cadence, make sure our numbers get up, make sure that we're, you know, not losing our energy or this or that. If we weren't actually following what our intuition is telling us, and our intuition's telling us like, take a pause. It's time to really lean into what you're doing for yourself, for your inner purpose, for your inner drive, for your inner

Nikki’s Teaching Era And Purpose

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feel. And for me personally, I won't speak for what Lizzie's doing right now, but for me, this feels a lot like my teaching era, I'm moving in a lot into teaching power yoga, teaching hot yoga, teaching Pilates, teaching mindfulness, teaching ways to tap into your body. I had a Vedic reading years ago, and she saw that this era of my life would be the era of me teaching others to be in their body, embody their body, whether that's through my Reiki healing, through embodiment, through yoga, through Pilates. And I'm really leaning into that, plus my recruiting agency with aligning so uh purpose with career. So we're taking a pause and we will be back after Labor Day. And we wish you nothing but the best if you're celebrating summer in the area of the world that you're in this summer. We hope you can enjoy have the sun on your skin, enjoy the vibrancy of this energy, summer solstice giving you this energy as you move forward and listening to those tiny pings that are telling you maybe something you're doing right now is not serving you. And it can be a low hum of something you do every day or every week or every month that you just keep because of habit. Feels good, dopamine to get that off your list and to just keep doing it. But what if you released that or paused it? It doesn't have to be gone forever. And what if you explored other

The Butterfly Calling And Letting Go

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things coming up? I've talked before with my coaching groups when I would do group coaching about a woman who had a full-time job, very successful, but she kept having this intuitive hit of butterflies, butterflies, butterflies. And she kept talking herself out of it because she was an adult and she said, You have no purpose or no business worrying or learning about butterflies or trying to make that a career. That is ridiculous. She finally, the pings, as they do, could not get any louder and she could not ignore it anymore. She started to learn about butterflies research. She started to find her own research, find migration patterns. She found migration patterns here in the Midwest. She started to write papers about it. She started to just do these things on her own to grow and to share and to learn. And she was finding webs that no one else was finding about butterfly migration patterns. She was actually picked up by universities to speak on it. She was um promoted in a way to be able to write a book about it. So she grew into what she felt in her soul that she was meant to go. But on paper, in the 3D collective, butterfly master is honestly not a job your guidance counselor talks to you about, right? Or whatever it is. So we bring this up because we are taking a summer break to follow those pings for ourselves and talking about it in a way to maybe inspire you to release things that feel that they are just on your to-do list, just to have, just to keep because consistency is safety, the familiar, the repetition is safety. And look at where you're being pulled to do something because that is what the world needs. That radical act right now, follow your purpose, have sovereignty, follow your inner peace, and laugh and have fun as you do it. So we send you so much love.

Back After Labor Day And Links

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We will see you after Labor Day. And that is it. We hope you enjoy the 140 episodes we have available for you. Many of them are Arcturian channeling, many of them are meditation, and lots and lots and lots of practitioner interviews. We send you nothing but the best. We wish you well. We hope you have a wonderful, healing, beautiful, impactful, fiery, loving, peaceful, happy summer. Sending you love. We'll talk to you soon. Bye, everyone.

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Thank you so much for spending time with us on the Modern Zen Collective Podcast. This podcast is at the heart of everything that we do, created to guide, inspire, and walk alongside you on your journey. If you're ready for more, explore our Practitioner Collective, a trusted resource of experts in healing and wellness to help you deepen your practice for fast track transformation. And be sure to join our Intel community to get first access to new offerings, challenges, and exclusive websites. You'll find all the links in the show notes.