We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Elena Sonnino. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Elena below.

Alright, Elena thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

One of the perhaps small, but could be big in the future – risks I’ve taken has been to name one of my biggest dreams. The idea of opening a retreat center has been percolating in my heart and mind for a few years, and in 2022 – I gave that dream permission to be a seed that I’m nurturing. The thing about naming a dream is that it can feel scary, because once I name it – I have the choice. Will I nurture it? Allow it to take space? Or will I let it seem too big and scary and have it fizzle?

I chose to nurture this dream, allowed the future retreat center to have a name: the Flying Lion Sanctuay, and even found a potential location. With each step, including going to see the site and property with a builder – all the way to having an architect working on a proposal, has felt like nothing I’ve ever done before. Everything about this project seems like a fantasy including the dreaming of finding investors to bring it to a reality. There were several months where I started each day visualizing and embodying what it will feel like to own and operate this retreat center, in Venice Italy – and then if I’m being honest, the numbers started to feel too big and too scary. I could hear the voices of doubt take over and in many ways, did exactly what I didn’t want to do: stopped nurturing the seed.

Except that the seed of this dream lives inside me. And I’m realizing that whether it is this property or another, my most important task is to keep nurturing the feeling and the possibility, and allowing it to happen in the way it wants to emerge (rather than by force or by regret). What I know is that whether it is this property or another one, the Flying Lion Sanctuary is a risk that I’m all in for.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a life coach, yin yoga teacher, and author. But what most people say about me is that I bring delightful sparks of energy to everything I do. My core values of belonging, commitment, curiosity, delight, and freedom guide me in my work and life.

I am on a mission to help you transform the walls of survival mode into doors of possibility so that you can step into the spotlight of your life as your most rooted and nourished self. My work helps you get out of your head and into your body as your source of wisdom, and moves you from beyond shoulds and into curiosity and delight, one day at a time.

At home, I love watching the sunrise, tending to my many plants, riding my Peloton bike, wearing ALL the leopard print, and impromptu kitchen dance parties.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

One of the most important qualities that I think is helpful for succeeding as a coach is an ability to meet your clients where they are and release outcomes and expectations for their journey. What I’ve learned is that while my coaching and guidance can lead to massive transformations, each individual has their own journey – and is just right for them. What one person experiences will be different than the experience of another. I’ve led coaching calls where a client experienced a massive shift and others that felt more subtle – but what matters isn’t so much the shift that occurred during the coaching session, it is in the follow-through of each person. The indicator of transformation isn’t the massive “aha” during the call, it is the integration and embodiment of that self-awareness after the call and during the day-to-day moments.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

It would be easy for me to lean on my journey as a cancer patient and my recovery to illustrate my resilience, but another moment feels truer at the moment – in part because of the lack of resilience that it first triggered.

I wrote and published my first book in 2022. On the same day that the book launched officially, I broke my right wrist while walking my dog Jupiter. I’d never broken a bone, so at first I wasn’t even sure anything was really wrong, other than the pain. But sure enough, it was broken and needed a cast. The funny thing about this experience was that I’d written my book with the intention of creating a “whoosh” of energy in the world – but what happened instead was my own personal whoosh.

A broken wrist isn’t the end of the world, but I found myself struggling to accept and allow my body to be in the state that it was in. All I could focus on in the first few weeks after the fall was everything I couldn’t do. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t work out (because sweating in a cast – yuck). And as much as I talk about the practice of surrendering and allowing, I was finding it hard to give myself permission to truly rest and just be.

It took me about one month to see how I was treating myself and my body, before I stepped back into the role of narrator of my own story and the power that had always been inside me, broken wrist or not. Yes, my wrist was broken and many of the things that I’d been able to do in the past, weren’t possible.

Through the healing process I re-learned the power of rest, the power of truly listening, and the power of my intuition to guide me. In this re-awakening I remembered something my doctor told me many years ago, I had a choice to make. I could grieve. Or I could celebrate until the day I couldn’t. And though the circumstances were different, I realized that I needed to be my own light switch – and beam my light in the direction that I wanted it to illuminate.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.elenasonnino.com
• Instagram: @elenasonnino
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElenaSonninoLifeCoach
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elenasonnino/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@elenasonninolifecoach
• Other: Published in 2022! Inhabit Your Joy: A Book of Nudges https://sunriseinyourpocket.com/inhabit-your-joy-book Sunrise in Your Pocket podcast: https://www.elenasonnino.com/podcast

Image Credits
Darlene Shenier @darlene’s photography https://www.instagram.com/darlenesphoto/ https://darlenesphotography.com/