Have you ever felt a yearning to live a life brimming with vitality and purpose? In this post, Mystic Mag meets Riikka Jalasvirta, a Certified Holistic Lifestyle and Nutrition Coach who helps people unlock their potential for optimal health and well-being.
When did you first know that being a Holistic Lifestyle and Nutrition Coach was your calling and how did it come about?
Prioritizing my health and becoming a Certified Holistic Lifestyle and Nutrition Coach was not a spontaneous endeavor. My interest and engagement in wellbeing began already two decades ago. It was initially triggered as a result of my mother’s life-long passion for complementary therapies and traditional Eastern holistic practices, as well as having lost many family members at young ages due to preventable lifestyle-related diseases. After losing my father to brain cancer in 2011, this led me to engage increasingly deeper in the world of holistic health and naturopathic healing, which unveiled the significant role that diet, lifestyle, and the state of your internal environment, in particular, play in our wellbeing.
Since then, I have been profoundly influenced through various sources, including my sister and mother who are both Certified Nutritional Therapists, the many other holistic health practitioners I have worked with over the years, as well as the holistic wellness education I have undertaken. Additionally, my background in fast-paced, corporate settings allowed me to see how so many people who work in such jobs can easily get unwell. All of these experiences combined not only prompted me to implement significant changes in my own lifestyle that have led to positive and lasting results, but also inspired me to begin supporting others on their wellness journeys so they can become empowered leaders of their own lives and supercharge their vitality.
What services do you offer?
I offer holistic lifestyle and nutrition coaching services. This includes working with individuals on a one-to-one basis, groups, as well as organizations. For example, it might be an individual that would like to reduce stress in their life; or a group of friends wanting to establish healthier eating habits; or a company that needs support to take better care of their employees’ wellbeing. For individuals and groups, I offer single sessions, as well as packages of 6 or 12 weeks which are highly recommended for best results. I also organize one-off and recurring events, online and in-person, which aim to combine and shed light on multiple holistic wellness themes.
What is the secret behind achieving the optimal work/life balance?
“Balance” is a tricky word in this context, because it tends to assume that we invest equal amounts of time at work as we do in our personal lives, and in an organized, compartmentalized, almost utopic way. However, we go through many different phases in life which require us to adapt differently.
For example, new parents that have just returned from parental leave might need much more flexibility with their work schedule and work location than they did prior to having children. Or they may even need to reduce their working hours altogether. Life also throws unexpected events our way, for example we may suddenly lose and grieve a loved one, which may require us to take extended time off. Therefore, a more useful term might be work/life “integration”. Meaning, how do you integrate your job into your lifestyle in a way that works best for you. When employees are given the flexibility and autonomy to work in ways that suit them the best, this tends to enhance not only their productivity, but also their creativity, work satisfaction, and overall wellbeing – a virtuous cycle for any organization.
This requires, among others, clear communication of needs and working styles with one’s supervisor; setting clear expectations for the job; as well as maintaining boundaries between your personal and work time (which in some contexts may require more rigidity, whereas in others it could be thought of as a constructive two-way conversation with one’s stakeholders).
How can you help a person become a true leader in their life?
The first step to implementing any change and becoming a true leader in one’s own life is mindfulness. In other words, meta-cognition – the practice of noticing your own mind and its internal thinking. This is the gateway to conscious and empowered living, because if we do not first become aware of and critically evaluate how we are living our lives, then it will be difficult if not impossible to take steps to change it for the better in the long run. Therefore, through my coaching sessions, I work with my clients by first examining their internal environment (thoughts, beliefs, emotions, feelings) and resulting behaviors.
This allows us to identify root causes of imbalance – for example limiting beliefs, old narratives, maladaptive programming, and/or other obstacles that might be preventing them from living the lives that they truly desire. Once the client is aware of their unique obstacles, change becomes a much more approachable and focused task. In this way, clients become much more empowered to learn, do, be, have, achieve, release, and/or overcome whatever it is that will enhance their wellbeing. My role as a coach, therefore, is to support the client on this journey by providing guidance, accountability, resources, and tools, so that they can move from idea to implementation to self-empowerment.
What can a person expect from your sessions?
My goal is to support you to become an empowered leader of your own life so that you can supercharge your vitality and attain more joy, peace, and freedom. My approach is holistic, which looks at an individual as a whole by considering mental, emotional, physical and spiritual aspects; preventive, where root causes of imbalance are addressed; as well as forward-looking, to help move you from where you are, to where you want to be. Themes covered in my coaching sessions include: nutrition, movement, rest, stress, habits, productivity, career, purpose, creativity, fun, leisure, and many other topics of wellbeing.
Certified Holistic Lifestyle & Nutrition Coaches are change agents, accountability partners, and personal guides that help empower clients to achieve their desired health and wellbeing goals. I help clients with self-awareness, mindset shifts, behavior change, and self-responsibility so they can begin making more informed, conscious, healthy, and sustainable choices that serve both them and those around them.
In my 6 or 12 week coaching packages, each week is guided by a specific theme and coaching objective as it relates to the client’s desired health and wellbeing goal(s). The general structure can be found in the Outline of coaching session packages.
For more information on what to expect in my sessions, see my Testimonials for past clients’ experiences.
What do you love most about your profession?
The best part of my work with clients is the moment that I witness the first signs of self-empowerment as it relates to their desired wellbeing goal(s). For example, this might be the moment when a specific conversation allows the client to become aware that their past no longer dictates their present or future choices and possibilities; or a particular resource that was recommended in-session which has provided them with the courage and inspiration to instill a new healthy habit; or a specific question that has triggered them to critically evaluate a maladaptive behavior that they have never even previously thought about.
These are very powerful moments because when the client themself begins to connect mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually to their desired change, they are essentially embodying it, taking ownership of it, and becoming one with it (rather than someone else forcing change upon them externally – a strategy that rarely works because it undermines the individual’s own agency). This is the starting point for clients to become empowered leaders of their own lives, allowing them to supercharge their vitality and begin building a life that they themself truly desire.
To learn more about Riikka and her work, visit www.infinnateholisticwellness.com
