Heartwork Podcast

Dr. Sara Nelson-Gray & Dr. Marisa Baumann

What if the key to a fulfilling life isn't about doing more, but about being more?  Welcome to the Heartwork Podcast, where Dr. Sara Nelson-Gray and Dr. Marisa Baumann invite you on a journey of self-discovery and authentic living.  Through raw conversations and real-life stories, two chiropractors and business owners discuss how embracing vulnerability and leading with heart can transform every aspect of your life and business. From personal growth to professional success, each episode offers practical insights to help you live with purpose and create meaningful impact.  Join us weekly as we navigate the beautiful mess of being human and learn to thrive from the inside out!

  1. 4 hr ago

    Ep. 88: Quitting, Pivoting, and Trusting Yourself Through Change

    Sara made a decision this season that looked, on paper, like going backwards. With one of her associate doctors heading into maternity leave, she chose to put herself back into nearly full time adjusting after almost two years of protected CEO time. It was the right call financially, culturally, and for the energy of her practice. And it still stirred up the old story: I'm not moving forward, I'm not good enough, real CEOs don't do this. In this conversation, Sara and Marisa pull apart where that story actually comes from, and it isn't the decision itself. It's comparison, the mastermind metric, the version of success built from everyone else's life but your own. 🔥 In This Episode: Why a decision that looks like a step backwards can be the most aligned move for your finances, your culture, and your energy, and how to tell the difference between retreat and stewardshipThe comparison trap that turns aligned decisions into evidence of failure, and why measuring your season against other CEOs will always make you feel behindMarisa's discernment question for every big decision: are you gathering information so your heart can feel it through, or is your ego collecting approvalHow "we're in a season of transition" quietly becomes a crutch that stalls momentum, and the question that stopped Sara mid sentence when she caught herself using itYour relationship with change is contagious: how Sara realized her team hated change because she was the one saying it out loud, and what that fear cost her practiceThe episode ends with a challenge worth taking seriously. Look back at every season of your life, the winters included, and name one beautiful thing that came from each. If you come up empty, that's not a failure. It's a signal to slow down, because you may be moving through your life without actually living in it. And if that's where you are right now, reach out to us. We're in it and we're here for you. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  2. 14 Jul

    Ep. 87: F the Success: When Society's Metrics Stop Working

    This episode starts with a hand on someone's back. Marisa walked into an adjusting room, felt something off in a practice member's energy, and asked her twice, are you okay today? The woman broke down. Fresh off a divorce and a morning masterclass about success, she said the thing so many people are circling right now: I've been living my life by society's metrics of success, and I just want to say F the success and take care of myself. What follows is a short, honest conversation about the difference between satisfaction and joy, why the things we do purely for love lose something the moment we turn them into a project with an outcome, and the strange, splitting feeling of looking at the life you built and not knowing if you still love it. 🔥 In This Episode: Why a life built on achievement can look successful on paper and still leave you living in constant striving with nothing that feels like arrivalThe research on satisfaction, joy, and meaning, and what happens to people who chase only one of the threeHow turning something you loved for free into a source of income can quietly drain the joy out of itThe disorientation of realizing you might not love the thing you built, and why that confusion is part of the journey rather than proof you took a wrong turnThe question Sara was gifted two months ago that reframes everything: what would it look like for you to fall back in love with what you do?This one is short, and it doesn't tie anything up. If you're in a season where you're questioning what you actually love, whether the thing you built still fits, whether the metrics you've been chasing were ever yours, this episode won't hand you the answer. It hands you the question. What would it look like for you to fall back in love with what you do, not because the P&L says you should, but because there's still something in it worth loving? Sit with that one this week. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  3. 30 Jun

    Ep. 86: I Felt Like I Was Being Punished: A Conversation About God, Identity, and Surgery

    This is not a polished episode. Sara is in the middle of something, not on the other side of it, and she shares it in real time. A health crisis that forced her into the hospital after eighteen years of refusing medical intervention. The badge of honor she had been wearing on purpose, the one she used to say "look at me, look at what I have done." The little girl inside her who had been working overtime to keep her safe. And the conversation with God she had in a hospital bed when she heard herself say "I feel like I am being punished" three times in a row.  We sit with what it actually means to do inner child work that does not throw away the version of you who got you here, and why some threads of healing do not tie up in a bow no matter how much work you have already done. 🔥 In This Episode: What an eighteen year badge of honor was quietly costing Sara, even when she knew she was wearing itThe moment in a hospital bed when "I am being punished" came out of her mouth and what it revealed about the God she was actually relating toWhy inner child work is not about getting rid of her, and what it means to start telling her she is safeThe threads of healing that do not tie up neatly even after years of doing the workWhat it sounds like when one friend gets to be a safe person for another to fall apart in front ofWe do not have a clean takeaway for you. Sara is still inside this. What we have is a real conversation between two friends about what it actually looks like to keep doing the work when life forces you to do another layer of it, and the quiet truth that the little girl who got you here is not your enemy. She is the one who has been waiting for you to come back. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  4. 16 Jun

    Ep. 85: The Productivity Hamster Wheel Running in Your DNA

    You are moving fast. Most of the people listening to this podcast are. The question we want to sit with is what you are actually moving fast toward, and whether the version of you who gets there will recognize the life she built. This pattern was not invented in your business. It was built somewhere a long time before that, and it has been running you ever since. Marisa is in the middle of a move and a major life transition. Sara is in a season of forced rest that has shown her how tired she actually is underneath all the doing. We talk about the hamster wheel that lives in our nervous systems, why a partner moving at a different speed is rarely just an annoyance, and the question Marisa's 90 year old grandfather could not answer without crying. 🔥 In This Episode: Why the speed you move at is data about something formed in you long before your business existedThe productivity hamster wheel that lives in your nervous system and what forced rest finally exposesWhat becomes possible when you stop seeing your partner's pace as the obstacle and start seeing it as the mirrorThe difference between a rich life and a busy one, and why most of us cannot tell which one we are buildingThe three reflection questions we are leaving you with about pace, partnership, and the days worth relivingYou are allowed to ask why you are in a hurry. You are allowed to wonder what your life is being built for. And you are allowed to be tired in a culture that told you tired was a character flaw instead of your body telling you something true. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  5. 2 Jun

    Ep. 84: The False Identity Hiding Inside Your Team Culture

    There is a version of leadership that looks like care and runs on something older. The boss who needs to be needed. The leader who quietly built her identity around being the person who holds everyone. The high vibe culture that turned, somewhere along the way, into a room where nobody can step into their own authority because she is already holding all of it. In this episode, we get underneath the language of "holding space" and "checking in" and sit with the actual identity that is often running the show. We talk about what changes the moment you stop performing care and start trusting the people in front of you. 🔥 In This Episode: What practice owners walk away seeing about themselves when they stop calling it leadership and call it what it isThe caretaker identity formed long before you ever owned a business, and how it followed you into the way you leadWhy over-accommodating your team quietly tells them you do not believe they can hold it themselvesHow to recognize the moment a daily ritual you installed for your team has started running you insteadWhat kind and strong actually look like in the same body, and how to stop using kindness as a place to hideYour team did not need you to mother them. They needed you to trust them enough to stop. And underneath all of it, the work is not about your team at all. It is about meeting the part of yourself that learned a long time ago that being needed was the safest place to be. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.com Support the show

  6. 19 May

    Ep. 83: Why Culture Is Felt Before It Is Spoken in Your Practice

    We thought our cultures were good. And then we started paying attention to what happens when we are the ones on the other side of the counter. The receptionist who looks up chewing gum. The company that goes silent for a week and a half after taking our deposit. The office that has incredible care but no music, no warmth, nothing in the room that meets you. None of these are big breaches. They are small, and they are everything. In this episode, we get into what these moments are actually exposing, and we sit with a deeper question underneath all of it: what does it do to a human being to be seen, and what does it do to a human being to be invisible. 🔥 In This Episode: Why your patients are reading your culture in places you stopped noticing a long time agoWhat identity itself does to a person who has been invisible day after day, and what changes when somebody finally sees themThe difference between a beautiful experience and a beautiful environment, and why one can carry the otherWhy customer care lives in your communication systems just as much as it lives at the front deskWhat it means that your practice might be the one room a person walks into already carrying everything elseYour patients are not only experiencing your services. They are experiencing what it feels like to be a human in your space. That is the work. And it is bigger than any standard or system you can write down. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  7. 5 May

    Ep. 82: Marriage, Expectations, and Letting the Grip Go

    Partnership is one of the most beautiful and most humbling places to do inner work. Because the person you chose does not stop evolving. Neither do you. And somewhere between the version of them you fell for and the version of them standing in your kitchen right now, expectations have a way of quietly turning into resentment if you are not paying attention. This episode is a real, unfiltered conversation about love, marriage, and what it actually looks like to release the grip on who you think your partner should be so you can finally see who they are. 🔥 In This Episode: Why expecting your partner to be 100% of everything 100% of the time is a setup for disappointment, and what a more honest and generous expectation actually looks likeHow Marisa's jealousy of her own dog became a portal into something much deeper about love, presence, and what she was really longing forThe moment Sara realized six years into marriage that her expectations had quietly shut her husband's voice completely downWhy two people do not have to grow at the same speed or in the same areas to keep growing together as a coupleWhat shifts when you stop trying to fall back in love with who you married and start falling in love with who they are right nowDoing your own work does not just change you. It changes what you are able to see in the person standing right next to you. And sometimes the most radical act of love is releasing the version of your partner that lives in your head and actually meeting the one who is right there. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.com Support the show

  8. 21 Apr

    Ep. 81: Romanticize the F*ck Out of Your Life

    At some point, even a life you chose can start to feel like it is just happening to you. The same drive to work, the same chicken in the pan, the same version of yourself showing up on repeat. In this episode, Sara and Marisa get into one of the most quietly radical conversations they have had yet: what it actually looks like to add flavor, fire, and presence to the everyday things, without blowing up your life to do it. From laundry in the basement to a conference room full of thousands of women dancing to a song that made everyone blush, this one is warm, funny, vulnerable, and genuinely useful for anyone who has been craving more aliveness in the life they are already living. 🔥 In This Episode: Why repetitive motion quietly kills your spark and the surprisingly small ways to bring sensation and joy back into ordinary momentsHow Sara and Marisa's first photo shoot brought up real insecurity, and what happened when they showed up anywayThe connection between getting out of your comfort zone and building the kind of self-trust that holds you steady when life gets unpredictableWhy your insecurities will not budge until you create actual evidence in your own life, and how to start doing thatWhat it means to live not just the length of your life but the width of it, and the honest question worth sitting with right nowThe version of you that you have not met yet is waiting on the other side of one uncomfortable, spicy, totally worth it choice. This conversation is your invitation to go find her. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.com Support the show

About

What if the key to a fulfilling life isn't about doing more, but about being more?  Welcome to the Heartwork Podcast, where Dr. Sara Nelson-Gray and Dr. Marisa Baumann invite you on a journey of self-discovery and authentic living.  Through raw conversations and real-life stories, two chiropractors and business owners discuss how embracing vulnerability and leading with heart can transform every aspect of your life and business. From personal growth to professional success, each episode offers practical insights to help you live with purpose and create meaningful impact.  Join us weekly as we navigate the beautiful mess of being human and learn to thrive from the inside out!

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