Rise Women and Rise Studios, created by Tammy Rawstron and Rachel Kolisi, is more than just your average ‘lets-get-fit’ community. They offer personal encouragement, Rise & Shine chats with their followers, live workouts on Instagram, as well as awesome events to get the sisterhood together.
We had a chat with Rise and found out more about their famous 21-day program, as well as how you can get involved in their ever-growing community…
Who is Rise Women and why was this initiative started?
Rise was inspired by the comparison epidemic amongst women, the way women allow Instagram to leave them feeling inferior and the way insecurities cause women to break each other down to feel better about themselves. The struggle women face to maintain a health regime and the knowledge that holistic wellness can transform lives in a radical way. Rise women is a powerful community of like-minded, purpose-driven women focused on prioritising their wellness and living intentionally. We believe in the deliberate celebration of every little victory, breakthrough and anything that enriches your lives.
The concept of Rise women was first discussed in May 2019 When Rachel and I decided that we wanted to help women and since then, we have planned and hosted a variety of women’s motivational/fitness events across South Africa. RISE is a movement and a platform whereby we empower women to support each other as well as help people in general need. We strongly believe that your quality of life really begins when you start taking care of your health and fitness but most importantly, your head and your heart and we believe that you can rise, by lifting others!
Tell us more about your 21-day challenge and what sets yours apart from other health and fitness organisations?
Our 21-day transformation challenge was created to help you heighten your wellness focus and promote good habits that set a foundation for your health. We have seen some incredible results with an average weight loss of 3kgs during the 21 days. Our challenge is unique in that it was not primarily created to help you with weight loss, but rather to also act as a guideline towards developing a healthier sustainable way of living. What makes ours different from any other is the community that comes with the challenge and the fact that the Rise team will always be supporting you along the way.
It is very easy to slip out of routine. How do you keep your community engaged during your programmes?
We are continuously working behind the scenes to serve our women in the best ways that we can. We try to keep things new and exciting and we make sure we stay engaged with our audience through our social media platforms. Some ways that we stay connected are through our Rise studios Instagram free live workouts that take place Monday-Friday as well as our Rise & Shine chats with the community every Monday and Wednesday morning and giveaway competitions. We also encourage our ladies to tag us on their journeys so that we can be a part of it too and celebrate their victories with them.
With such in-your-face and photoshopped content on social media, what is your best advise for staying grounded?
The best way to stay grounded is to practise from a place of depth, to always be searching for a better you on the inside and always be evaluating your intentions. Behind every bit of content you put out there, there’s an intention and if you’re not mindful of it, this intention can begin to no longer serve others but rather promote comparison and leave others feeling inferior so you need to always evaluate the intention behind the content.
When it comes to Rise, we are always mindful about creating content that serves others, lifts others up, makes others feel great about themselves and that they can achieve great things- that makes people feel they have a purpose and places value on them. If that is your heart of hearts and why you do what you do, that message carries across in your content and ends up serving others as opposed to breaking others down so we just encourage and prompt all women to be mindful of the content that they put out there because we believe they’ll also be accountable for the effect that it has on the lives of others.
How can one get involved with the Rise community?
The best way to get involved would be to join us at one of our events to see firsthand what Rise is all about, however, we also have many tools available for purchase on our website which are a great way to get involved and to start your journey with the Rise community towards being the best version of yourself.
You can also follow our Instagram pages to keep up to date with all things Rise. (@risewomen__ and @rise_studios__ )
Thank you Rise! ❤︎
