Whole Body Wellness Co.

Happy Friday eve!

Get after it 💪🏽🏋🏽‍♀️

Rooting for you 😘

🔊 *Sound on*

👋🏽 Welcome to all these new faces!

Thank you for being here.

My name is Ariel and I'm the single mama behind this little growing wellness company of mine.

When I started as Fitness by Ariel, I was working in a variety of mom and pop gyms, boutique studios, and athletic facilities... Personal training, teaching yoga, professional bodybuilding, and running wellness retreats.

Fast forward through a decade+ where I became a mom, survived(ing) stage 4 cancer, became a licensed massage therapist, moved states to be close to specialist care and grew into Whole Body Wellness Co - now established in Northern Utah!

We come into your home or gym or through your computer anywhere in the world. We meet you exactly where you are and treat you as a whole person. True health and wellbeing involves your whole person.

By the way - you are always a whole body (regardless of the organs you've had removed like me 🥴).

I can absolutely say that I have the best job in the world. I will forever be in awe of the human body.

Personal training I focus on functional movement and strength for the individual I have the honor of working with. Massage therapy I focus on root causes of pain patterns with a holistic and medically minded approach.

One-on-one, small groups, corporate, we are here to serve and that is the privilege of my life.

It's what I'm made for.

Thanks for being here ✨

This video was taken exactly 1 month before a grapefruit sized mass was discovered around one of my ovaries.

Metastatic high-grade stage-4 appendix cancer was growing and spreading throughout my abdominal cavity and I look at myself in this video - going on my merry little way working out in my driveway with no flippin idea what was going on with my cells.

If you asked me at the time of this video, whether I felt connected with my body, I would have probably said yes. Everyone who knew me at this time would describe me as athletic, healthy, thriving.

Sure I was stressed but I was doing what I thought I should be doing. Working multiple jobs, going to school to become a nurse, making time for workouts, trying my best to provide for my 18 mo old baby

This video is a reminder that we never know when life will change instantly. My life is forever marked with 'before diagnosis' and after.

A lot has changed in 5 years and a lot looks the same too:

I still workout in my driveway from time to time though I'm more flexible with my movement practice. I don't 'should' on myself. I move because my body craves it, because my body is asking to, and because it's part of my personal prescription and conviction for surviving. It's what I am made for. Sometimes that's lifting heavy for weeks on end progressively getting heavier and heavier. Sometimes it's taking a week off to hike and camp and swim. Sometimes it's Qigong shaking, riding my bike, or rolling around in the grass with my son.

There is a lot more listening now. A lot more pausing to reflect. A lot more speaking up for my needs and my boundaries.

Many people don't survive even 1 bout of chemotherapy. I am lucky that I was able to tolerate 25 rounds, 3 different cocktails and 2 bouts straight into the abdomen. I credit much of my recovery to the fact that this is what I was doing right before I was diagnosed. I was already on the path.

The path is unfolding as it should. We cannot live backwards but we can only move forward from exactly where we stand.

I'm so grateful for my body and for the incredible teacher that is cancer. It doesn't define me, but I can't imagine life without this lesson.

🌀