THE HAPPINESS PRACTICE: WELLNESS, REWRITTEN

Podcast host and wellness expert Josie Santi helps women rethink happiness, health, and the stories they’ve been told about both.

It was called The Happiness Club—an oasis of calm where North Shore Country Day School teens could hang out and watch videos of cute baby animals, listen to TED Talks on the psychology of happiness, or even hand out free cupcakes in the lunchroom.

“The whole reason we started the club was to lighten stress and just spread a little happiness,” recalls Josie Santi of her high school days. Now acclaimed for her insightful wellness talks as senior wellness editor and podcast host at The Everygirl, a national lifestyle media brand, it is no surprise that Santi has been dedicated to improving the quality of people’s lives from a very young age.

“I just remember feeling really inspired—even called, to do whatever I could to help others find happiness,” she says. “I saw a lot of people struggling with depression and anxiety—and I had struggled too, especially living in a very high-stress, high-pressure area like the North Shore. I felt it was worth our energy to find out what makes each of us truly happy, remove the blocks to that, and turn things around.”

“I think I was born asking the hard questions,” she laughs. “I mean, as a 6-year-old, I was wondering why bad things happened to good people, what happens to us after we die, and what our purpose in life is—all the existential stuff.”

Searching for answers, she dove into religious studies in high school and college. In fact, she took so many college religion classes that her advisor suggested a double major. “I used to joke about that,” she says, “because I was going for a career in fashion magazines and thought I would only ever use my English degree.”

Later, she realized that her health journey and her spiritual journey were deeply connected. “The biggest shifts in my life were rooted in what I learned while studying religion,” she says.

Her work with The Everygirl and Wellness by Josie, her lifestyle brand, strives to expose societal falsehoods. “There are so many things we’ve been taught that just aren’t true. For example, the idea that we have to accept life ‘as is’ rather than taking control and designing our own lives. Or the belief that our bodies are our enemies, instead of powerful, intelligent systems that use symptoms to tell us when something’s wrong, and the assumption that we must live a very individualized existence to be healthy, rather than embracing the joy—and the mess—of being in community.”

The core of her message is empowerment—helping women change how they think about their lives, their bodies, and their potential, freeing themselves from perfectionism and other traps that wear them down rather than building them up. Santi redefines wellness for her listeners and clients with refreshing directness. A few of her most powerful axioms are—“You were never meant to be perfect; you were meant to be free.” “True ease isn’t aesthetic; it’s messy and authentic.” “Real wellness is radical trust.”

Most of us, Santi explains, don’t consciously design the life we’re living because we are programmed to believe we have no control. “As women, we’ve been taught for generations that we are victims of our lives, that we cannot control the outcomes,” she explains. “I truly believe my purpose in this life is to flip that narrative, teaching women that they, and no one else, are the creators of their own lives.”

To explain the idea, Santi often uses the metaphor of life as a buffet. “We choose the best of what’s in front of us because it’s what’s offered, even if it’s not what we really want,” she says. “But visualizing what your soul actually craves—even if it’s off the menu—takes back your control,” she says. “Life is no longer happening to you; it’s happening by you.”

That shift, she says, also changes how women relate to their bodies. “Our culture has forever encouraged women to think of their bodies as the enemy and themselves as victims of symptoms,” she says. “But symptoms are communication. They’re the body saying, ‘Listen. I’m giving you the blueprint for how to live your healthiest, most vibrant, most abundant life.’”

Just as important, she believes, is understanding that wellness does not happen in isolation. “So much of the research I’m obsessed with shows that community, connections, and relationships are the biggest factors in health,” she says. “Yet our wellness culture doesn’t always embrace that. Having fun laughing with your friends or making time to connect with your partner every single day—those things are actually more important for overall wellness than getting your gym session in or eating all your vegetables or avoiding sugar.”

If she could offer one gift to women on the North Shore, Santi says it would be the practice of listening to and trusting their bodies. “Through every meal you have, every exercise you do, every moment of stress, or calm, or morning, or evening routine, just ask, ‘How does my body feel about this? What is it trying to tell me?’” she says. “Then wait for the answer.” At first, those answers may be quiet. “We’ve been trained out of body connection,” she says. “But the more you check in, you’ll be amazed at the answers that start coming through as you rebuild deep connection and radical trust in your body.”

“That’s how it was always meant to be.”

For more information, visit theeverygirl.com and wellnessbyjosie.com.