Dr. Hava Rose on Mindfulness, Reinvention & Building The Pause Experience

In this inspiring episode of Uncorked: Wine, Business & Life, Bill Green and Jerrold Colton sit down with Dr. Hava Rose, founder of The Pause Experience, a well-being agency focused on mindfulness, self-connection, and building intentional communities. From her disciplined beginnings as a competitive gymnast, to her journey through bodybuilding, Muay Thai, and chiropractic, Dr. Rose shares how she has continually reinvented herself—always leaning into challenges and going “all in.”

Today, she empowers individuals and organizations to pause, reflect, and reconnect with themselves in order to show up authentically in life and business.

Introducing Dr. Hava Rose

Welcome to Uncorked Wine Business and Life with Bill Green. I'm his co-host, Jerrold Colton. We are sitting in the tasting room at beautiful Saddle Hill Winery in Voorhees, New Jersey, on a gorgeous day. We have a very special guest, and I know this one's really personal for you.

I met Dr. Hava Rose through a family friend about two to three years ago. I was wildly intrigued by this young lady because she has had a number of career paths and changes. She is incredibly motivational. Her business is called the Pause Experience.

When she started explaining it to me, I realized Bill Green is not a good mindfulness guy. I tried, but I’m probably not going to be a client. But there are a lot of people who love what Hava does with mindfulness and building community.

You’re going to hear some amazing stories from Hava about how she travels to Nicaragua and Peru to get everybody engaged in this. Then we’re going to try to figure out how she’s getting rich on this. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Hava, welcome to Uncorked.

It's a pleasure to be here. You exude such positivity. I know you've had many different stages of your life, both professionally and personally. Professionally, there was chiropractic, although I think that’s a little bit in the rearview mirror at this point.

I say I’m a retired chiropractor now. I love when they can retire at this age. It’s just the shift, the pivot that happens. I’ve been in sports for most of my professional career, and they retire very young too. But there is a lot of life to live, and you have found many other things to do.

Your background sets the stage for where you are now. Besides chiropractic, you also competed as an athlete and did a whole bunch of other cool stuff. It absolutely is the framework of where I am now.

Early Discipline in Gymnastics

As a child, I was a gymnast. Starting at the age of three, my parents threw me in because I was flipping in the house on my own. They decided I needed structure. I was a gymnast at a young age with Russian coaches, so it wasn't a play-around experience.

It was very disciplined, maybe torturous at times, but I loved it. I did that all through middle school until I was about 13. I realized I was missing bar and bat mitzvahs because I had to be in gym practice for four hours on Saturday.

I wanted my social life, but that set the trajectory of my discipline and determination. I understood that if you put work in, whether you like it or not, things come from that. I've had many other athletic endeavors since then.

The Pursuit of Bodybuilding

Hava competed in bodybuilding. We should show this picture because it is absolutely amazing. You were seriously chiseled. Talk about how you got there.

At that point, I was a couple of years out of chiropractic school. I was running a satellite office within a gym in East Falls, Philadelphia. My son went to William Penn Charter School, so I’m familiar with the area.

The office was in a warehouse-style gym. It was an old-school, 80s-style place with new equipment and men wearing super tank tops and striped shorts. I was in this little cubicle watching all of it. They had pictures on the wall of past members who competed, mostly men.

Instagram had just come out around 2012. I found some female bodybuilders who felt much more feminine, and I was intrigued by the process. I was already in a gym every day. One of the guys who ran the gym had competed and encouraged me to do it.

It became my hobby. I jumped in, got on a crazy diet, and went full "meathead." I was eating the same meal multiple times a day. I wasn't single at the time, but my bodybuilding actually contributed to the end of that relationship.

I was training by myself, following workouts that were sent to me. By the end, I was training with a dear friend who had done bodybuilding. My partner at the time was already insecure, and perhaps I enhanced those insecurities.

Bodybuilding becomes very addicting, almost obsessive. It really took a toll. I only did two competitions. I won the first one, which propelled me to do more. I was the Philly champion in the bikini bodybuilding category.

That qualified me to compete nationally. I did one more competition in Pittsburgh, which was much bigger. Being backstage, I realized these people had nothing more to talk about than their body fat percentage. It felt weird.

I realized I was just being competitive and that wasn't actually why I was there. Coming out of bodybuilding, I had to do a lot of mental work. The discipline and rigidity of the program are wild. Your relationship with food and exercise changes.

Everything becomes calculated. I would look at a plate and think about how much I’d have to run to burn it off. It became an unhealthy obsession. It took a couple of years to get out of that mental anxiety around everything I was eating.

I've done triathlons for 33 years, and I had the benefit of a season that was only a few months long. You need a break. Is that not something you can do in bodybuilding?

With bodybuilding, it’s so imagery-based. It’s a visual. In Muay Thai or triathlons, it doesn't matter as much how you look as long as you perform. But in bodybuilding, you are being judged on stage for your look.

It’s a subjective judging process. You see yourself every day in the mirror and you’re constantly practicing posing. It makes it very difficult to fully let go.

A Transition to Martial Arts

What you do now deals so much with mental health. Your background encompasses being a model, the eating habits, the competition, and being treated as an object. I can’t imagine a tougher mental health challenge.

When the bodybuilding chapter closed, I looked for the next physical challenge. I was always intrigued by the culture of Southeast Asia and Buddhist traditions. I had patients who went to Muay Thai gyms and found one in my neighborhood.

I signed up and, coincidentally, planned a month-long solo trip to Thailand. Training there is affordable. You can get a Thai fighter to train you for ten dollars a session. I did it every day. I came back to the US and did one fight.

That was all I needed to experience it. I didn't win, but I went all the way through the fight. I fought a girl whose fifth fight it was, so I didn't feel so bad. They set up a ring at a rec center in Delaware, and my family came to watch. It was intense.

The Role of Mindful Journaling

We admire badass women, and you certainly fall into that category. All of this set the stage for where you are now professionally. It’s intriguing how you pivoted from aggressive sports to something passive, quiet, and mindful.

I really need to learn how to do that. I’m starting to toy around with Tai Chi because balance is important as you grow older. I tried meditation and you tried to get me to your journaling class, but I don't know if I could share my feelings in that setting.

Journaling is more about perspective than just feelings. It’s an opportunity to see your perspective, speak it, and hear others. It declutters the brain. It creates space in your body by taking the dialogue out of your head.

Tasting Saddle Hill Rosé

Before we go further, we should touch on the wine. We’re starting with the Saddle Hill Rosé. We have a beautiful retail line here. I wanted to tell a story with these bottles, using the horses and wildflowers of Saddle Hill.

This Rosé is dry and interesting. We use the Saignée method. We press the grapes and only let the juice touch the skins for a brief hour before extracting it into the fermentation tank. This is Cabernet Franc made using the Saignée method. It's a little higher quality than a lot of Rosés.

Core Philosophy of the Pause Experience

Your business is called Pause Experience, a well-being agency. Your philosophy is: "I empower individuals to show up authentically through curated spaces, self-reflection, and intentional community." That is a powerful sentence.

I have the capacity to allow people to be themselves in a full, empowered way. I’m able to create a space where people feel safe. I think most people show up as a half-self or a shrunken self in the world.

Through experiences that bring people together, one person's full expression allows another to feel safe enough to do the same. It’s about practicing that authenticity.

Humanizing the Corporate Workplace

In business, I’ve managed thousands of employees. Often, people who aren't performing well blame others or the company. 90% of the time, they need to look in the mirror. Is your program appropriate to get people to do that?

When I work with companies, I either work with leadership or the staff. It’s powerful in both cases. I often show up for staff retreats. In that hour or two, there is a massive exhale. People learn things about colleagues they work with every day.

It humanizes the workspace. It takes the hierarchical structures away and allows everyone to see one another as human beings going through their own things. When people only show up as a piece of themselves, they can't align with the structure.

We use journaling, sound baths, yoga, or team-building workshops to let people just be humans for a moment. That is the opening where you can then ask how to be better at work. There needs to be that opening first.

Addressing Disconnection and Mental Health

I believe mind, body, and soul all come together. Mental health in this country has gone downhill, whether due to the pandemic or politics. People have to be aware and do what they can. Taking responsibility is the hardest thing, being honest with yourself.

Most people today are disconnected. It’s disguised because technology provides mass connection, but people are disconnected from themselves. Everyone's agenda becomes yours, and you lose track of your own moral compass.

I talk about "whole well-being" versus just well-being. Whole well-being is when the circuits are connected. You could be eating right for a competition, but if you aren't mentally or emotionally sound, you are still disconnected.

I want to provide a moment where people taste what connection is. You can only connect to others as deeply as you are connected to yourself. If you don't know who you are, it’s hard to connect to anyone else sincerely.

Sauvignon Blanc and Published Poetry

Let's try the Tapestry Sauvignon Blanc. It has about 20% Chardonnay. I love Sauvignon Blanc, but I love Chardonnay more, so we added a fuller-bodied white to find the perfect balance. It lightens it up.

I also authored a book during the pandemic. It’s a poetry book called *Daydreams, Delusions, Disconnections*. I’ve kept journals since I was 13. When I turned 30, I read through them and found some great pieces.

I published words that were never originally meant to be published. Every chapter has photography that aligns with the words. You can get it on my website.

Embracing Curiosity and Self-Acceptance

You are the kind of person who goes all in. How does a high-energy, Type A personality learn to relax and chill? You have to stop telling yourself you don't know how to do it. Bill, you are actually very in tune with yourself.

Tai Chi is a movement meditation. There are only certain things I can do where my mind is off all the work I need to do, like downhill skiing. But even when I'm riding horses, I daydream like crazy. It’s a blessing and a curse.

The blessing is the 24/7 stream of ideas, but the curse is that I want everything done immediately. It’s hard on me because I can’t just lay on the beach and think about nothing. But you should give yourself permission to be a daydreamer. It's a gift.

You enjoy working, so why would you not do it? I think you just need a little more self-acceptance.

Scaling the Three Pillars of Success

I turned this into a business by recognizing a gap. I had been doing community events and retreats for seven years alongside chiropractic. During the pandemic, businesses started bringing me in for workshops.

I realized I could help humanize these workspaces. Now I’m targeting corporations and nonprofits for staff retreats, annual strategy meetings, or monthly wellness series. I also do speaking engagements regarding human connection, belonging, and burnout prevention.

Success for the Pause Experience looks like three pillars. First, a community pillar that turns into an app, similar to a training app but for meditations and finding in-person events. That builds a global membership.

The second pillar is the company side, with retainer clients and large-scale consulting. I want to be the person companies go to for building humanization in the workspace. The third pillar is the keynote side, where I travel the world speaking.

I like the idea of a business that can operate without me, but I recognize that initially, I have to be the one out there. People buy in because of the energy I bring. I have to own that.

Horizontal Leadership and Lasting Impact

We have one more wine: Renegade. It’s a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Chambourcin, Blaufränkisch, and Cabernet Franc. It was originally named after my sister, Lisa, who was a renegade. It’s smooth with a lot of fruit. It’s a great Jersey wine.

I’m currently leaning into speaking engagements. It’s the easiest way to bring the experience to companies because they get to build trust with me directly. I’m finally owning the stage and the energy I have.

When I work in a corporate setting, I also offer one-on-one coaching for leadership. It gives them a space to process without having to let their walls down in front of their staff. But there is magic when everyone is in the room together.

It creates horizontal leadership. Employees see their leaders in a human light, which reduces the blame and finger-pointing. I get letters years later from people who were impacted by a single moment in a workshop.

You come into this life to understand who you are, not to be understood by others. The best example you can set for your family is to show up as your full self regardless of what others think.

The more you know, the more you realize you don't know. The world changes so much, and AI is going to change everything again. Curiosity is what keeps you alive and young. It keeps you reinventing yourself.

Hava, you are intoxicating and uplifting. You make us want to be better. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for listening to Uncorked with Hava Rose, Bill Green, and Jerrold Colton. We will catch you next time.