spring recs 03.25

on community building, intentional movement, and the most magical down pants

One of the biggest things I’ve been thinking about this year is boldness. How can I show up in a way that is more unabashed, where I take up more space — where I am more true to myself?

But each time I’m on the precipice of doing something a bit more bold, a familiar voice creeps in:

Could you doing this just be serving yourself?

What if you taking up space takes away from others?

But this past weekend, something’s start to shift. I attended the conference Asian Women Are Strong: Main Character Energy and stumbled upon a panel on “Owning Your Narrative”. One panelist in particular said something that really struck me.

Every time one of us succeeds, it actually helps us all. It doesn’t matter if it’s making it as an actor, a writer, or a CEO — when an Asian woman succeeds, it creates even more opportunity for the collective. It serves as yet another example to society (and to ourselves!) of what people like us are capable of.

It was eyeopening to me for two reasons:

1. It meant that my journey toward greater self-expression didn’t have to take away — it could actually contribute to the whole.

2. It meant that others’ success — no matter how similar they were to me in looks, personality, or domain — didn’t have to take away from my own opportunity.

Instead of feeling secretly jealous, competitive, or even threatened when I see cool people doing incredible things, I want to lean into celebration. I want to uplift, amplify, and increase the visibility of those around me doing cool shit. And maybe in doing so, I’ll finally give myself permission to take up more space too.

So without further ado, here are some of my favorite things I’ve come across so far in 2025.

Spring 2025 Recs

Learning

books, programs, newsletters, and experiences

• 📘 Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good - a very eyeopening book that normalizes the idea of pleasure in our lives. Such good and important unlearning happening here.

• 🗒️ Group Hug - my new favorite Substack that is about the ins and outs, ups and downs, and very human elements of community building. Super approachable and easy to read. Also I got to meet

  Elise Granata
  and she’s a down to earth, all-around 10/10 human.

• 👩🏻‍🏫 Levina Li’s Coaching Business School - the biggest game changer to building my coaching business so far. Levina is all about keeping things simple, and then practicing the shit out of those foundational concepts. She will both deeply care for you and challenge you at the same time. I’ve truly grown so much as a human, coach, and business owner in our time together.

• 👩🏻‍🏫 Movement-based meditation with Ben Lucas - I can get really in my head sometimes, so Ben, a fellow coach friend, kindly offered to walk me through a coaching+meditation session unlike any other. It was a journey of really big breathing, followed by crazy dance moves, grunting, yelling, traditional Chinese martial arts poses, and then finally settling into a place of quiet and rest. It was sooo good for recovering perfectionists like me who are deathly afraid of looking silly, but whose fear also gets in the way of them doing what they want.

Cool Community Creations

I love seeing the people in my community doing all sorts of creative and community building things. Here are some I’m most excited about as of late:

• 📒 Sarah’s Playful Perspectives Card Deck - an activity deck for team-building and fostering deeper connection in the workplace. Sarah’s a coach + improv queen, and it definitely shows in the mix of fun, creative, and deeply connecting activities she’s put together.

• 🎨 Khanh’s Meow Madness Commissions - this is some of the cutest, derpiest pet merch I’ve seen — and Khanh will make one specifically for your pet! Khanh is an MIT engineer turned artist and I love how her art is very much a reflection of her silly, imperfect, multi-faceted self.

• 🎲 Caner’s Disgraced House Card Game - I’m not a huge games person, but this card game was a ton of fun to learn and play. Also the cat art is so on point. Fun fact: Caner worked on this game for ~ 10 years before he finally got it published!

• 🕺🏻 Mason’s Wiggles & Feels Workshop - I’ve yet to attend, but this unique mix of movement and self-reflection looks super powerful and I can’t wait to go soon….. Mason is an MIT engineering manager turned coach and does awesome work coaching people around creativity and joy :)

Random things

• 👖This winter, I discovered the magic of DOWN PANTS. I always run cold, but with these, I felt unstoppable. A fun luxury item for the outdoors.

• ☕️ If you’re in LA, you have to try the Iced Breve Macchiato at Maru Espresso Bar.

• 🎵 I’ve been super into dance jazz house as of late. Here’s one of my favorites:

Things I’m checking out next

I love sharing what I’m looking into next in case there are people who are interested in coming along for the ride! Please reach out if you’d like to join me for any of it :)

• Die With Zero - a book about money

• 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership - a book about leadership (duh)

• Aletheia Coaching - a somatic and IFS-based coaching training program

• Pilates - I’ve heard it’s great for injury prevention sooo it’s gonna happen…

• Hyperion Climbing is opening in Redwood City soon!! Soooo excited to have a Touchstone climbing gym here ahh!