2026 Ins & Outs
We’re back from our hiatus and with our first newsletter of the year, and one of our first “ins” is Substack, and one of our “outs” is Mailchimp. It felt like time for something fresh and new, and since we’re still in the Chinese year of the Snake (although it seems like everyone on the internet is continually referencing the year of the Fire Horse — we’re not there yet!!) it feels appropriate to talk about what we’re shedding and letting go of from this past year, and what we’re calling in for 2026.
We called on some special individuals from our Soul Collective community to share some of their “out with the old, in with the new” insights and intentions for this year which you can read through below:
Life Integration Companion & Experience Designer
INs
Digital Detox & Conscious Travel
Travel as medicine. Retreats and journeys where the phone stays at the door, along with shame, ego, and the need to document every breath. More nature, fewer crowds, slower mornings, deeper breaths, and a renewed relationship to life and technology.
AI-Powered Health & Life Support (with Awareness)
More people using AI as a mirror, guide, and companion for navigating life’s challenges with greater clarity, compassion, and self-understanding. When awareness leads the way, technology becomes a tool for self-discovery, nervous system support, and inner peace that naturally ripples outward into a positive behavior change.
Daytime Parties & Ecstatic Dance
Celebration without hangovers. Nights honored for rest and repair. Movement as medicine and dance as a prayer. Less alcohol and substances, more presence and connection. Community becoming the real reason people gather - and the energy lasting long after the music ends.
OUTs
Constant Social Media Self-Promotion
The endless meal pics, mirror selfies, and compulsive documentation of life for validation. The pressure to perform every moment instead of actually living it.
Premium Fashion Prestige
Paying absurd prices for logos while ignoring quality, sustainability, and ethics. Status losing its shine as conscious consumption rises. Owning less, choosing better, and feeling richer for it.
Superficial, Hyper-Trendy Healing Culture
Quick certificates, hollow titles, and polished brands without embodied depth. The ego game losing its audience as discernment sharpens. Integrity, humility, lived experience, and true integration replacing hype, shortcuts, and spiritual marketing.
Yoga Teacher & Bodyworker
INs
Acceptance
This past year I taught a lot from the teachings of Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance. Acceptance is a life changing tool that softens you into a state of openness that provides clarity, direction, and most importantly compassion. It radically makes the inner world and outer world a friendlier place.
Bringing Friends or Making Friends
Bring your friends to the experiences you like, and let them bring you to theirs! Or when someone sits down on the mat next to you, ask them their name, let them know that you care. Common interest is a very powerful tool in friendship, community, and effective change.
Rituals
I came across this beautiful phrase at the end of last year, “every ritual I do is a reminder of my worth.” Rituals are so potent with self love, clarity and devotion, and they can bring a much needed pause in life when it matters most. Whether it’s the ritual of sipping your coffee or using essential oils before bed, the more rituals you add to your day the more in tune with life you will be.
OUTs
Thin/Happy Yoga Narrative
Yoga and mindful movement are practices of presence—ways to meet all of life as it is. They invite us to question the stories we tell ourselves, to reconnect with truth, and accept our bodies moment by moment. Asana supports a real, lived understanding of health, not a narrow, monetized image of what health is “supposed” to look like.
Phone Usage
Phones first thing in the morning and phones by the mat, or mirror pics and health trackers can quietly pull us out of embodied connection. While technology has its place, deepening our relationship with our bodies and each other often requires stepping back from it.
Doing Without Understanding
Not every wellness trend works for every body. When exhaustion becomes a badge of honor, thinness a measure of worth, or happiness a performance, we lose the nuance of what real wellness feels like. Ask questions, seek context, consult trusted professionals, and most importantly, listen to your own body and inner wisdom.
Retreat Host, Breathwork Facilitator, Yoga Teacher, Sound Practitioner & Creative Branding Strategist
Photo by Ursula Karven
INs
More quality time than quantity
More friend dinners, cozy hangouts, getting ready together — like we’re living in a WG again. Not squeezing people in between things, but actually taking time. Less jumping from plan to plan and more depth. Just being together without needing a big reason.
Having fixed wellness dates with friends
Actually putting wellness into the calendar and treating it like a real commitment. Going to Jurten Sauna or Vabali together, lake days in summer, and phones completely off the whole time. Not talking about rest, but really doing it together and letting the nervous system calm down.
Gentle morning routines with less agenda + no phone after waking up
Starting the day slowly and consciously. Not checking messages or socials first thing. Letting the inner world speak before the outer world takes over. Drinking one cup of tea from a beautiful teapot or cacao and really indulging in it. Not doing five things at once, not rushing into the day, but letting the morning unfold without pressure.
OUTs
Stopping with catch-up culture (BIGGEST OUT!)
Have you noticed how friendship has started to feel like a series of status updates? We meet up, exchange what’s happened in the past few months, then leave for the next thing on our calendars. It’s become the default, and I think we’re all a bit exhausted by it. The shift I’m craving — and seeing more people want — is back to being in life together, not just reporting on it. That looks like unscheduled evenings, helping each other with random errands like checking out couches on eBay Kleinanzeigen, sitting on the couch with no agenda and no end time. We’ve let the hustle mentality creep into our personal lives without realizing it. I think 2026 is about reclaiming the mundane, beautiful moments of just… being together.
Hustle culture and constant intensity
No breaks, no pauses, always being in an intense work phase. Treating exhaustion as a normal state. Moving towards more balance, clearer structures, and work rhythms that feel sustainable long-term. Yes, loving what you do is sometimes tricky too! ;)
Quick in-and-out community experiences & fast-food style wellness formats
Showing up somewhere briefly, not really meeting anyone, and leaving again. Moving away from 45-minute classes without a proper arrival or integration phase and more towards 90–120 minute immersions, retreats, and experiences where the body actually has time to land and process. Less surface-level attendance and more intentional community events, workshops, and spaces where like-minded people can actually connect properly.
Founder of Psychedelic Bodywork
INs
Inner work
As the world we know tears apart in front of our eyes, we will need inner strength and focus to get through these unprecedented shifts. Our capacity to stay resourced, grounded, and clear will determine how we move through these times.
Presence
As we get more and more saturated with information, stimulation, and urgency, presence becomes a radical act. The biggest gift we can give ourselves and those around us is to be fully embodied, attentive and available in the moment, as much as possible. More of us will be spending a few days offline, or even just a few hours, to let our brains rest and recover.
Real community
Being in community asks us to step out of our hyper-individualistic society and remember what actually keeps us alive: connection & interdependence. True community begins with shared purpose, grows through acts of giving rather than transaction, and deepens through creating stories—being witnessed fully, and witnessing others deeply.
OUTs
Social media
While these platforms have played an important role in shifting global awareness, mobilizing communities, and bringing support, our human systems are not equipped to continuously absorb the informational and emotional bombardment that they bring. Stepping back will be seen as less a rejection of connection and more an acknowledgment of our current limits, and our desire to feel and connect deeply with each other in ways that feel more real.
Being apolitical
The idea that we can remain neutral or detached from the ideas and events that shape our world is increasingly unsustainable. Politics are not confined to institutions or elections: they are reflected within our bodies, relationships, and daily realities. As we start to unmask the true reality of what our social contracts and lifestyles are based upon, claiming apathy will be seen as a mask for privilege, distance, or exhaustion rather than true neutrality.
Performative Spirituality
When spirituality becomes a performance, it removes us from the messiness and reality of life. One can meditate, do yoga, take mushrooms, sit in ice baths, attend ceremonies, and still remain deeply disembodied, hiding behind a spiritual mask. Expect more call-outs of “spirituality” that looks good on the surface but disregards the full human experience, and doesn’t align with how we actually show up for ourselves, our communities, and the world.
Mobility & Strength Coach & Founder of the FLEX&FLOW® Method
INs
Training for real strength, not show
You’ve done the sports, gym, Pilates, and stretching, but your hips still ick or your shoulders feel weak. Real strength comes from light, intentional loads that challenge stabilizers and build usable control. Momentum and heavy booty bands don’t cut it. This is the kind of strength that actually transfers to real life.
Core as a system, not a six-pack
Knees complain, balance disappears, lower back quietly plots against you? Functional strength lives in deep layers like the TVA (your inner corset), rotational control, and whole-body integration. In 2026, we focus on building a core that works in every position, not just flexes for the mirror.
Nervous system regulation during challenge
Workouts that ignore your nervous system leave you feeling wired, not capable. Calm isn’t just savasana. It’s staying coordinated and present while moving, balancing, and building strength. The goal is to train your body and nervous system together to handle intensity with control, presence, and ease.
OUTs
Chasing aesthetic trends
Endless Instagram-inspired routines or trendy pairings might look appealing, but they don’t build capability. Trends cycle, but your body still needs consistent, thoughtful movement that actually teaches it to work.
Passive joint care
Supplements, collagen powders, and passive recovery won’t fix weak joints. Joints adapt to load and movement, not scoops in coffee. In 2026, we prioritize intelligent resistance, multi-directional loading, and mobility that sticks.
One-size-fits-all classes
Generic classes leave recurring aches, imbalances, and plateaus. People need personalized, science-backed movement that respects anatomy, builds usable strength, and finally lets their body move the way it’s supposed to.
Closing thought
2026 is the year we stop separating what should work together. Strength without flexibility leaves you stiff. Mobility without strength leaves you unstable. Real capability lives in the integration.
Marianne Abbott
& Natalie Herb
Co-founders of Soul Collective
Photo by Luca Vincenzo
INs
Unconventional retreats
Natalie: I feel like over the past year we’ve noticed retreats starting to include activities and workshops beyond yoga— things like working with clay or writing practices. For 2026, I think we’re going to see this go even further, with more hands-on experiences, skill-building, and a reimagining of what a retreat can look like. A perfect example of this is my dear friend’s upcoming retreat, Residence, which I’m so excited to experience this March. There will be a wide range of workshops, from butter-making to fynbos harvesting, intuitive cooking (with guidance from Timur Yilmaz, former chef at Berlin’s Michelin star restaurant CODA), and an essential oil workshop with my favorite scent brand, Tres Nagual.
Tea Ceremonies
Marianne: Last year, we observed a growing curiosity for TCM, Buddhist meditation and Chinese tea ceremonies. I even attended a tea ceremony at a halloween party last year which was the perfect way to find grounding before venturing into the night. I think tea ceremonies are going to be everywhere in 2026 and I’m not mad about it.
Collaborating with friends
Natalie: We’re entering in our 7th year of doing Soul Collective, and I’m so grateful for all the learnings, the growth, the challenges, and the connections we’ve made over the years. It’s so fun to work with your friends, to come up with ideas together and make them come to life. I feel like this ties in with Habiba’s and Alex’s answers — quality time with friends is so valuable, and why not create something together? I’m calling in more of that for this year.
OUTs
Matcha
Marianne: I know this is shocking coming from me but I’m so tired of the matcha hype. This year, I’m leaning into other coffee alternatives. I’m currently in Guatemala where a lot of coffee shops have ceremonial cacao which is grown locally and wayyy better quality than any matcha available.
Showing up sick for a yoga/workout class
Natalie: Is it just me, or does anyone else find it a bit shocking when someone shows up to a class coughing heavily, blowing their nose, and it’s clear that they’re sick? Especially with the flu being so bad this year and COVID going around - maybe it’s best to just stay home?
Loud music in yoga classes
Marianne: My nervous system is already on the brink of collapse, I don’t want to go to a yoga class and feel rushed and stressed. In Berlin, you can practice yoga in silence and actually hear the teacher and your breath at most Yellow Yoga classes.
