Life Is Happening Now
On life, loss, culture, and the moments that change us.
Vineyard in Sicily, Mount Etna in the background.
It may come as a surprise to some of you, but I've never loved talking about myself. I love people, conversation, hearing someone's story, and finding the thread that connects us. But opening up about the story behind my work feels different, so maybe the best place to start is here.
For a long time, I thought life would begin someday. After the right degree. The right job. The right relationship. The right moment. Then life kept reminding me, sometimes gently and sometimes brutally, that someday is not guaranteed.
I spent 14 years teaching mathematics, got divorced before 30, and lost my dad to cancer at 33 after being his primary caregiver. Somewhere in all of that, I learned that life is happening now. Not later. Not when everything is perfect. Now.
So I started traveling as much as I could. Not just for the beautiful places, though of course those came too. But for the people. The shared meals. The long conversations. The moments with people from different cultures, backgrounds, and ways of seeing the world.
Pinhão, in Portugal’s Douro Valley.
One trip to Porto, early in my travels, stayed with me more than most. My friend Allison and I met a woman and her son who invited us to Easter brunch at their friend's shop. Around that table, people spoke Spanish, Portuguese, Croatian, and English, and half of us couldn't fully understand each other. It didn't matter. Sometimes a smile and a hand gesture are enough. We are all more connected than we often realize. Later, in Peru, after walking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, I flew to Arequipa where almost no one spoke English and my Spanish was subpar at best. It still didn't matter. Again and again, travel showed me how little we actually need to connect.
That trip through Portugal is where my love of wine really began. I took the wine train through the Douro Valley and sat in awe of where I was: the terraced hillsides, the quiet, the history in every glass. I started learning not just the aromas and notes, but the story behind the vineyard, the love and the labor behind it. I realized wine was art, just in a glass.
Five years later, after many more travels and friends made all over the globe, I lost my soul dog, Hugo. His death broke something open in me, and in the middle of that grief I started yoga teacher training and began a WSET Level 3 course. I didn't expect to fall in love with teaching yoga, but I did. The exchange of energy in a room full of people, or in a one-to-one session, is something I still can't fully explain. It just is.
Hugo
My soul dog, who taught me about presence.
That is the thread behind EMBODY by Antonina: travel, gathering, movement, connection, and presence. I blend the cultural and the wellness because I don't think they are separate things. They are both ways of coming home to yourself. So much of modern life asks us to rush, distract ourselves, or numb what we feel. EMBODY offers the opposite: experiences that bring us back into our bodies, our senses, our surroundings, and our own lives. Everything is thoughtfully curated and elevated, while still feeling grounded, warm, and human.
What I Offer
I host small group cultural immersion trips, private and small-group yoga sessions, sensory wine tastings, and intimate local gatherings, all built around the same idea: that we feel most alive when we slow down enough to actually be somewhere, with someone, or with ourselves, fully.
What makes this different is how I build it. I spent years naturally building community and bringing people together, at a table, on a mat, across a language barrier. I love art, yoga, wine, and culture, and I create experiences I would want to step into myself. Every trip and every session is built by hand, around the people who show up.
Movement, wine, and connection at a EMBODY X Grippy Tannins gathering.
EMBODY is for people who are ready to step more fully into their lives. People who want to grow, shift the way they see things, feel more deeply, and be more present for the life they are already living. So often, we move through our days distracted, disconnected, or numbing ourselves without even realizing it. These experiences are designed to interrupt that.
Through travel, movement, culture, sensory wine experiences, and intimate gatherings, I create spaces for people to slow down, reconnect with themselves and others, and experience place, people, and possibility more fully. If you are craving something beyond the surface, a deeper conversation, a richer table, a way of traveling or moving through the world that changes you, this is for you. Whether through a cultural immersion trip, a private or small group yoga session, or a sensory wine tasting experience, the invitation is the same: to feel more, notice more, and participate more fully in your own life.
This year brought its own reckoning too, one I will write more about when the time feels right. But it only confirmed what I already knew.
Life is happening now.
And this is the work I am here to do: create experiences that help you actually feel it.
Planeta’s Ulmo Vineyard in Menfi Sicily
A small group cultural immersion trip in Sicily.
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