The Sacred Transition: An Adapted Aperitivo for Your Inner Alchemy
If you are brand new to holistic wellness and feeling totally overwhelmed by the noise, I want you to take a deep, slow breath right no
I know exactly how you feel. For those of you I haven’t connected with before, I’m Shaya Theres Taylor. Today, I’m a holistic chef and nutritionist living peacefully in the Italian countryside, enjoying clear skin, boundless energy, and a calm nervous system.
But not long ago, that reality felt completely unachievable.
I went from living a life of utter overwhelm in Los Angeles—bombarded by endless wellness “fixes,” overconsumption, and underlying anxiety, all while battling insane gut problems, extreme bloating, and a constantly triggered nervous system. When I moved to Italy, I didn’t just find a new address; I learned a simplified, elegant way of living that naturally integrates food, family time, and well-being.
To me, holistic wellness means treating your body, mind, and spirit as one connected ecosystem, rather than separate problems to fix. Today, I’m sharing the exact Italian-inspired foundational practices that worked together to transform my entire relationship with food and wellness. They are simple, mostly free, and you can start any of them today.
1. Eat Like an Italian: Prepare Your Nervous System Before Your Food
In America, we eat like it’s a side thing—in our cars, at our computers, while working on a demanding deadline. We are eating in a state of stress.
What Italians know is that you don’t just prepare your meal; you must prepare your nervous system to receive and digest that meal.
When you eat in stress, you are not in “rest and digest”; you are in “fight or flight.” Your energy system does not know the difference between running from a dinosaur or looking at an urgent email that causes anxiety.
This is critical: When our body is not calm and present, it shuts down 80% of our digestion. This is where issues like low stomach acid, pathogens entering the gut, and bloating from fermenting food all begin.
How I Practice This Now:
- Pause Before You Eat: Put away the TV and the phone.
- Heart and Breath Check-In: Place your hand over your heart and body. Ask yourself: how does my nervous system feel? Release tension. Take a few deep breaths from your rib cage, not your chest. Come into the present moment.
- Energy and Gratitude (Bless Your Food): This may sound spiritual, but it’s simply science. When we put happy, grateful energy into our food before we consume it, we help our body and nervous system start to release.
Fluid Joy: Intuitive Movement that Connects to Your Inner World
2. Embrace the Aperitivo Hour: The Sacred Transition to Rest
We’ve all heard of the Aperitivo culture, but it’s not necessarily about alcohol. It’s about the transition into rest. It’s the precursor to the meal that brings community, talk with friends, and simple joy. It creates the extra space so we don’t just rush from work into eating.
Personally, I stopped drinking alcohol officially in January. Alcohol tanks my energy and, for me, really dims that connection to sharing wisdom. But I love the Aperitivo finger foods—I’m clearly a foodie!—and I love the socialization and decompression it allows. It transforms the energy from work all day to “ah, now I need to catch up and decompress.”
How I Embrace This (Even Alone):
Even when I am cooking alone, I allow myself this space before I rush into making a meal. We need to stop the rush of work becoming the rush of cooking, which becomes the rush of eating. You must pause.
Try embodying this ritual with self-care:
- Use a red light therapy mask.
- Watch the sunset with a warm tea.
- Listen to calm spa music.
- Ground your feet outside.
This lifestyle creates deeper sleep, allowing your body to fully repair and regenerate overnight, rather than taking hours to relax because your nervous system was unregulated.
3. Move Like Your Ancestors (Ditch the “Beat Your Body” Culture)
Wellness culture, especially in America, seems to be a relentless loop of “workout, workout, workout,” beating our bodies with CrossFit, running, and heavy weights. While being fit is vital, you don’t have to kill yourself in order to have that. Sometimes, that does worse for your body than better.
Most Italians don’t necessarily exercise in that way. They move their bodies like their ancestors did—walking everywhere and doing yard work. Our bodies are meant to be fluid, not stagnant. People underestimate the power of walking and dancing, two of our oldest, ancestral traditions.
How to Move Intuitively:
- Move for Joy, Not Force: If it rains, go outside and dance in the rain or splash in the puddles.
- Dancing in the Kitchen: When I feel I need to move energy, I literally will just dance in my kitchen.
- Walk After Meals: Instead of sitting right after you eat and putting the TV on, go on a gentle walk around the block.
This natural, easygoing movement connects you to your body and makes you feel more joyful than any forced workout ever will.
4. Honor Your Body’s Cycles and Inner World
Italian women have always known something modern wellness forgot: Your body isn’t meant to feel the same every single day.
We must remove the guilt around not having the same energy all the time. As women, we are not on a 24-hour cycle like men; we have a magical 28-day cycle of hormones that change us. We really need to learn to honor ourselves where we are at.
I am very in tune with the moon and moon cycles personaly, and I work with planetary alignments to help me understand how I am feeling, which digests the guilt of feeling wonky or sensitive. We must accept that some days feel amazing, and others feel sensitive.
How I Tune In:
- Communicate Your Needs: Working with your body instead of against it means telling loved ones, “Can you give me a little bit more love today? I feel sensitive.”
- Daily Check-In Journal: This takes 2 minutes. Rate how you feel 1-10. Are you feeling emotional? Did you have bad dreams? Just taking that moment to be present with your state is powerful.
Recently, I finished a “8 minutes for 8 days” morning ritual challenge inside my community. The results women had from just dedicating 8 minutes to shifting their energy were honestly incredible, with many experiencing huge breakthroughs.