For years, women have been taught to move in pursuit of one thing: becoming smaller. Fitness expert Kim Strother believes it's time for a different conversation. Ahead of her return to Alma Frequency in Sicily this September, she shares how Lyme disease transformed her relationship with movement, why strength has become one of the greatest predictors of healthy ageing, and why the real goal isn't to change our bodies, but to trust them again.
There is a reason so many people instinctively head for the sea when life feels overwhelming. Not because salt water is a cure-all, or because cold-water swimming has become the latest wellness obsession, but because the ocean demands something increasingly rare: complete attention.
It's free. It's always with you. It can change your physiology in seconds. So why do we ignore it?
Mediterranean wisdom is finally catching up with modern neuroscience. Far from being a sign of laziness, the afternoon nap may be one of the simplest ways to improve brain function, emotional resilience and long-term health.
As the summer solstice approaches, communities around the world will gather around music, movement, fire and ceremony, participating in rituals that predate organised religion by thousands of years.
In the wellness world, we talk endlessly about sleep, nutrition, exercise, meditation and stress management. Yet one of the most powerful drivers of human wellbeing may be something far less obvious: awe.
As Sicily’s Caltabellota region emerges as contender for Blue Zone status, Alma Frequency announces the 5-star Rocco Forte Verdura Resort as its base for the 2026 edition of the festival, with a theme of ‘optimal living’.
The founder of Rewilding Tribe on food as medicine, female sovereignty, mineral depletion, raising children close to nature and why humanity’s future may depend on returning to a slower, more nutrient-dense way of living.
The designer, photographer and eternal seeker on skin, frogsong, silk slips and why she’s no longer interested in defining herself by one thing.
There are certain women who seem to exist in permanent dialogue with summer. Mara Hoffman is one of them. For years, the legendary designer built a world of sun-faded sensuality through her eponymous swim and resort wear collections: clothes designed for saltwater skin, late nights and bodies in motion. Then, at the height of the brand’s success, she chose to walk away from it. Not out of failure, but out of instinct. A desire to move closer towards a life and creative practice that felt slower, more mindful and more emotionally honest.
Now, Hoffman is entering a new chapter, one less concerned with selling objects and more interested in image, feeling and memory. Her latest project reframes more than a decade of photography, visual language and art direction through a different lens. “It’s not about the transaction anymore,” she tells me. “It’s about the feeling and the imagery and the emotion of it all.” But for Hoffman, this evolution is not about stepping into some neatly packaged new persona. “I’m actually very uninterested in declaring some fixed new identity through it,” she says. “I’m much more interested in the idea of ‘and’ instead of ‘I am.’ Everything feels iterative to me right now. I don’t want to get locked into the density of one thing.”
Speaking from her home in upstate New York, Hoffman describes a life lived close to nature and even closer to intuition. Summer, for her, arrives not through calendars or holidays but through sensation: the sound of frogs outside her window, orange lilies appearing beside the road, the return of a worn black silk slip dress, warm skin in the midday sun. Here, she shares the rituals, scents, objects and small sacred moments that signal the changing of the seasons for her.
In an age of aesthetic intervention, an ancient Japanese facial massage is making a remarkable comeback.
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© 2025 ANIMAFREQUENCY – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
