Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Eva. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Eva, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Our Little Secret is the home to Holistic Hairdressing. A self-defined concept that evolved from the evolution of my skills and Professional Curriculum In relationship with The 16 years of practice of running my business, building relationships and Sustaining a community.
The combination of artistic and managerial roles, which I’ve honed over the years, has been instrumental in shaping my approach to Holistic Hairdressing. These roles have allowed me to understand and navigate the longevity aspects of interpersonal, transactional, and social dynamics. They’ve also supported my interest in merging my knowledge and skills in Art History, Image, psychology, anthropology, Yoga Philosophy, and coaching, creating a unique blend that I bring to my hairdressing practice.
I understand life as a practice that requires us to be conscious, self-reflective, and aware of our own evolution in parallel with the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual realities.
The expansion of capitalist values, particularly in the marketing dimension of social media, has significantly influenced our self-image and how we define and promote new work avenues, connections, and relationships. Our visual representation, especially in the context of hairdressing, plays a foundational role in determining our class, status, group belonging, and transactional relationships. This influence has made hairdressing an ideal tool to redefine ourselves in relation to our life demands and states of living, well-being, and projection with the passage of time and age.
We’ve learnt to live disconnected from Nature and our bodies, overwhelmed by the anxiety of our responsibilities and lacking the time to foster deep and meaningful connections with the self and others. However, these foundational needs allow us to have a mindful and thriving experience in life. Holistic Hairdressing is the product of understanding the challenges these issues promote and proposing a fun, dynamic and deep methodology to interact with them.
The intention is to redefine hairdressing services as rituals that can lead to profound transformation for the individual and society. This approach aims to inspire and promote hairdressing as a rich therapy for shaping our self-evolution.
Eva, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Explaining who we are to others is a fascinating opportunity to recognize how far we’ve come in life. Our lives are projects for overcoming struggles and transformation that require personal recognition as much as the external validation others may give us. No one can use against ourselves something we have acknowledged and integrated as ours, and that is the ultimate power we all have for our living.
I like to describe myself as a Migrant and self-made woman, a deep thinker, a healer and passionate about transformational tools such as speaking, hairdressing and coaching.
I understand life as a practice, and I focus on connecting and interrelating opposite fields of knowledge to make sense of complex ideas in a way that can be explained to a broader public. I aim to inspire and give ownership to others to become empowered in their own bodies, for their own thinking, and to be in charge of choosing with awareness of the habits, beliefs, and body experiences that enhance their lives.
My work dwells on acknowledging the subconscious, recognizing the patterns it produces in our lives, and providing an external translation that allows us to navigate life and change mindfully to achieve our optimal potential.
I weave my passion for connecting the inner with the outward, the subtle and unconscious, with the tangible effects of curated and personalized experiences that build a better understanding of the self and how our image interacts with our internal dialogue and with others in ways that can be sustained for the upgrading of us, our long-term vission and relationships. These are key elements that support our thriving in life.
My work focuses on reclaiming our personal beauty and power in relation to what’s optimal within us. I Invite others to accept themselves fully and apologetically and to bathe in the richness of their lives and personal beauty, avoiding the copy-and-paste of fashion or recreating social models that consistently demand us to overperform or mask our insecurities.
I mindfully direct each of my interactions with others to uplift, inspire, and ground one another.
In Yoga Philosophy, it is said that “a teacher can only take you as far as they have gone.” Therefore, holding and embodying this Holistic Practice with stoic and humble diligence is the foundation for my existence and living.
It is also said that “a teacher shows when the student is ready”. My understanding is that in life we are all both teachers and students simultaneously, so to model, teach and coach not only with transactional value but for the love of living and giving. My work aims to acknowledge our individual and crucial role in shaping the evolution of our lives. Providing an alternative avenue to re-discover how to interact with the rapid changes in society and the impact of global and increasable technological living. Reconnecting with our bodies and how we aim to represent ourselves through our hair, which defines our face as the main space for communication with others.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
To me, the most meaningful way to experience life and make of our lives a purposeful experience is to create a legacy and improve the conditions for others to inherit a better opportunity for progress and evolution.
I grew up trough the crucial transition from the dictatorship that ruled in Spain, the wounds left by the civil war and the trauma inherited during the world wars. My generation holds the knowledge and responsibility to describe the legacy of the rapid transitions to democracy, the effects of the industrial and the technological revolutions together with the effect of the spreading of capitalistic values from the external to the personal to provide perspective in the consequences on the rapid change of our psyches, social shaping and the way it challenges our inherited conditioning.
I feel we need to revisit and understand with urgency the changes and impact represented with the massive incorporation of women to work. How those have shaken family dynamics and interpersonal relationships between men and women. The shift in power dynamics, the weight of our inherited social conditioning through patriarchate, and the many ways in which we see these issues being recharged in our political climate nationally and internationally as they endure the impacts of geopolitics. The idea that we live in “equal society” lead by democratic processes that provide equal opportunities is indeed and area that requires the use of critical thinking theories to address the inherit truth and bias in which we operate.
This is the first step to unlearnt what has been conditioned to us and produce new models that support us in the new reality we all live in.
On a personal level, learning that having a skill does not guarantee everything that is needed to run a business around it. We are interconnected and interdependent in a world that consistently demands upgrading our capacities and optimizing our relationships. This is key to sustaining balance and promoting success.
Reconnecting with our purpose and purposely interacting with others is key to sustaining a healthy lifestyle and stopping the increasing pressure of pursuing an individualistic living in isolation where happiness is at the spend of others’ loss. These are fundamental steps to relearn through critical thinking.
We must look back in history and recognize the patterns and how they return in fashion. To learn how to understand our emotions and illnesses are messengers from our bodies, intimate and related to our origin stories and the beliefs that sustain us. This is key to assessing our responses, avoiding being reactive and promoting more anxiety and disconnection from others and our own bodies.
We must look to our past with the intention of understanding it, healing it through unlearning its mistakes and upgrading it, validating the efforts of our ancestors, and engaging diligently in creating a mindful way of reprogramming society so that inclusivity reflects the integration of our different needs and wants, supporting all benefits and not just a few privileged.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
In my humble opinion pivoting in life is an essential tool to balance and recalibrate ourselves and our living with our optimal (not desired) potential. This is an essential tool for transformational coaching. A consistent method to process the effects of minor and major changes in our lives and how they impact on the personal, interpersonal and professional.
An illness, the loss of a loved one, a relationship rupture, the volatile effects of economic turmoil, political pressures, the loss of our jobs, etc. can turn our vision of ourselves and the future pear-shaped. I like to think these manoeuvres are essential tools in the art of living.
More so than to focus on a simple example in my life I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge myself for surviving the years of unpaid work through COVID, rebuilding my business from the ground in the mist of recession, enduring the impact of the incredibly cost of living in a city like London while retain independence and autonomy. Honour how I survived an unpredictable divorce, the effects of ghosting and social exclusion while overcoming the natural depression that followed while separated from my family and love ones. These are challenges I faced in the last five years and I am proud to gone trough them able to learnt valuable lessons that supported my healing, transformation and inherited wisdom. And to know that I still envision my life trough a non dualistic experience supported by love and a stoppable desire to make a difference and impact others positively.
As much as to acknowledge the courage I needed and be grateful for those that supported me in this journey. I would like to extend an invitation to the reader to reflect and acknowledge their own experiences in the past years and to assess their own steps taken in pivoting their lives so as to progress with awareness mindful of how our present dedeterminates and shapes our future.
The main areas of our lives: work and love are long projects that require for all of us to reconsider when living in a fast paced society. Learning and modifying where possible as with a long term vision for the self and how that affects our environment and contribute to shaping our future.
Today, more than ever, the art of pivoting and redirecting our thoughts, habits and interactions mindfully is a daily task that helps us to asses how to make use of our private and collective spaces and assist in our own and collective regulation. This is essential to living a healthy life and producing better opportunities for all in the future.
The reason why my work focus is dedicated to conceive practices and services curated to lead each person to the understanding and harnessing of their origin story. To reconnect to their own bodies and emotional experiences with integration. Shaping interactions that generate the foundational bonds that allow us to thrive, excel and live in supportive relationships engaged in positive mirrowing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ourlittlesecrethernehill.com
- Instagram: @estoeseva & @ourlittlesecretisus
- Linkedin: Check out Eva Espinosa’s profile on LinkedIn
