#66: Emma Glenn Baker

"I feel the most alive and free near-naked by the ocean."

#66: Emma Glenn Baker

Emma (@emmaglennbaker) is a personal trainer and the creator of the podcast STARGIRL. I first discovered her on an episode of Nymphet Alumni, where she spoke on stretchy clothing and the cultural status of fitness. Today, she’s here to spill her Health Gossip (stay tuned for a kettlebell tutorial at the end).

Health Gossip with Emma
Sagittarius/Virgo/Cancer
📍 New York, NY

What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

Being healthy means feeling completely at ease in my body. I want to have the energy, confidence, and capability to pursue anything (physical, creative, social, etc.) that I desire.

How would you describe your current lifestyle?

I’m a girl on the go! I’m always hauling around the city by train, foot, ferry — from training clients in the gym, to teaching Pilates, to heading to the yoga studio, to meeting with collaborators, to spending time with family and friends. I feel like I was a pack mule in another life: I have a change of clothes, a full makeup/hair/skincare bag, my computer, journals and a book, snacks, and a huge Hydro Flask on me at all times.

The ends of my days are more spacious: a home-cooked meal, catching up with my husband, stretching and toe spacing.

How do you start and end your days?

I have to be out the door between 6 and 7am most days, so the mornings happen fast. I’ve pared down to the bare minimum: I get up, take my supplements (Promix debloat and creatine), make coffee, pack my husband’s lunch, tongue scrape and brush my teeth, put on some sunscreen and concealer, pack my bag for the day, and I’m off. It’s not luxurious, but it’s its own little ritual.

The ends of my days are more spacious: a home-cooked meal, catching up with my husband, stretching and toe spacing.

Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

The critical inversion point in my life happened my senior year of college when my boyfriend at the time introduced me to powerlifting. Up until that point, I had been relatively active but totally undisciplined. I grew up a ballerina but had since abandoned/rejected all that I had learned about how to treat my body: I ate and drank with abandon, and was totally unregulated in terms of sleep and stress management. Unsurprisingly, my inner emotional and social lives were a mess, too.

Lifting weights didn’t change everything overnight (and it’s still not a linear road to capital-h Healing), but it gave me the first glimpse into developing a real practice around health and my body. It was a watershed moment — from there, diet, sleep, stress, and overall wellness took their shape. I’ve been lifting weights consistently for almost 10 years now, and it’s the joy of my life to share that practice with other women in my work as a personal trainer.

Do you have a spiritual practice?

I’m at the very beginning of my formal spiritual path. I’ve always felt “in touch with the universe,” but I grew up in an atheist community and didn’t have any friends who identified as religious until college.

Despite that upbringing, spirituality slowly found me. I started speaking directly to God in 2024. It happened quite organically as I was feeling called to up-level several aspects of myself at once: my friendships, career, connection to the natural world, relationship to drugs and alcohol, and comfortability with visibility. The miracles I’ve experienced since then are countless, and I’m excited to keep going deeper and formalize my spirituality with further study and community.

What’s your relationship to self-healing?

I’m fortunate to not have any chronic or acute health issues. So when my body is yelling at me — acne flare ups, weight gain, inflammation, pain, fatigue — I first take inventory of how I’m managing what is in my control. What (and how much) am I eating? How’s my sleep? What’s going on with drugs and alcohol? Am I spending too much time alone? Is my body craving more movement? Am I hydrated? Almost always, cleaning up those things regulates whatever imbalance I was dealing with. I very rarely go to the doctor or take medication.

Spirituality slowly found me. I started speaking directly to God in 2024.

Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?

I currently work with a mindset and business coach and have worked with a physical therapist and strength coaches in the past. I love one-on-one mentorship and the classroom setting in general, and make it a point to invest in myself through this type of coaching. I also consider my favorite yoga teachers to be some of the most influential women in my life — in almost every era of my adult life, I’ve had a couple teachers who serve as role models for the type of sensual, ritualized, regulated woman I want to move through the world as.

In terms of physical modalities, I coach powerlifting, kettlebell skills, and strength and conditioning in my work as a personal trainer. I am also certified to teach Vinyasa yoga (RYT-200) and Pilates (IM=X), and have recently reconnected to my ballet and modern dance practice.

For self-care and rehab, I’m a big fan of massage, sauna/cold plunge, and daily stretching/mobility work.

I feel the most alive and free near-naked by the ocean.

How do you reset?

A weekend day alone in my beautiful home! I’ll clean, prep food for the week, light incense, play music and dance in my room, talk on the phone to my family or best friend, go for a walk or a run, shower, and stretch. I love when I have a wide open Sunday to reset from the inside-out and set up me and my husband for a calm, focused week with enough space for spontaneity.

When do you feel the most nourished?

I feel the most nourished after a day at the beach. Sun fatigue brings me into a state of total receptivity and openness and I feel the most alive and free near-naked by the ocean. My dream is to live in a place where I can walk on a boardwalk every single morning.

What types of foods are you typically drawn towards? Do you have a favorite meal?

I grew up in Seattle, and lately I’ve been seeking inspiration from the late 90s/early 2000s health goddesses of my youth — the early wave of sexed up yogis who lived to share the grand message of world peace & lentils. As part of this, I recently dug into the history of the “Green Goddess” salad, a staple of health food cafes everywhere that I was not aware had an actual singular history. The first Green Goddess salad “happened” in at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco in 1923: the defining characteristic is the dressing, which is made of any and all fresh herbs but *critically* with tarragon and anchovies (when the vegans got ahold of it decades later, they swapped in capers).

I’ve been making my own and putting it on everything: salad, eggs, chicken, with carrots and chips as a dip. Having a vat of homemade anything in my fridge (pickled onions, iced tea, and, yes, Green Goddess dressing) makes me feel like I’m participating in the lineage of my eternal North Star: the earthy-glam yoga mom.

My other favorite food is a piña colada but we have to save that for special occasions (like my wedding after party, which we threw at Connolly’s, the best bar in NYC).

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Get in the ring girl! Stop strategizing and analyzing from afar. Today I live by the mantras “the only way out is through” and “it’s gonna get weirder before it gets less weird.”

To the person reading this?

Pick up heavier weights. Aside from the numerous physiological benefits of strength training (longevity, injury prevention, body composition, metabolic function, posture/spine health, etc.), lifting helped me take responsibility for my life, take greater risks, and let go of a feminine ideal rooted in fragility and vulnerability.

What would you like to see or create more of in the world?

Primal vibes! I love how culture has been trending more earthy in the past year or so (alternative medicine, somatic therapy, psychedelics, the rejection of ultra-processed foods, general Third Eye Open vibes, etc.). I keep feeling like we need to harness this energy and make a full return to the Jungle: animal instinct, elemental horniness, and radiant warmth.

Book a free personal training consult with Emma here.