Funding the Commons at Frontier Tower

Funding the Commons has been around since 2021 and has taken place all over the world throughout Europe, Asia, South America and the US. FtC San Francisco took place this year on March 14th and 15th 2026 downtown at Frontier Tower. Funding the Commons is a conference, a coordination hub and also a convergence point between different people with various backgrounds and interests solving different pieces of the same puzzle that finally get to sit in a room with one another and discuss strategies.

Funding the Commons is a curated group of altruistic future-oriented people trying to figure out ways to support and grow public goods like clean air, climate research, open source apps and public knowledge figuring out how to support the systems that support all of us.

This year FtC was a gathering of 1,000 builders of tech, researchers, founders, funders, community organizations, artists and therapy-oriented people like myself. We talked, hosted, and sat in on each others talks to lend our voices to help solve these problems. I took part on the Flourishing Floor and was invited to facilitate the opening circle Sunday morning, collaborated in several other sessions, and helped finish the day by assisting the Closing Cacao Ceremony.

I’m incredibly grateful for the support of Ryan Rising - the Head of Operations + Site Lead, and David Casey - the CEO and leader of FtC allowing me to bring my magic to this event.

Funding the Commons is a conference where every different floor focused on something else - Neurotech, Human Flourishing, Art & Music, d/acc Lounge, a Hackathon, Biopunk, Makerspace. All of the events held and hosted by these floors added depth to this vertical space by offering talks, workshops, lab spaces, healing session, DJ’s, art shows, music and performances, unconferences, as well as normal conference content presented on the Funding the Commons Main Stage which hosted talks, keynotes, sponsors, art and the tea house.

I was elated to not only host my own events, but to collab with others, make new friends, and see so many old friends from my constantly growing global network and from the Edge City’s I’ve attended! It was truly a gathering space that attracted an international crowd!

I am so happy to announce my collaboration with the Human Flourishing Floor (Floor 14) with the help and support of Zan, Ming & Judy!

My next upcoming event that you can find on here on Luma is on Tuesday April 14th 2026 from 6-8pm. My friend Zan and I are co-hosting a Sound Healing Session on the Flourishing Floor with Tea + Discussion afterwards on the roof of Frontier Tower for sunset.

From 6-7pm I will lead a Crystal Bowl Sound Healing Session on Floor 14 and then from 7-8pm Zan and I will host a gentle movement + Tea Ceremony for sunset on the roof of Frontier Tower!

Come join us!

Bring your loved ones and something cozy to wear :)

We can’t wait to see you!

Xoxo

An Honest Update Winter 2025

Hi dear friends,

It’s been awhile since my last newsletter.

The truth is that the past few months have been unexpectedly difficult for me… and to be honest … for most of the people i have spoken too about about the start of 2026. Regardless of how they would describe themselves as being ‘tuned-in,’ sensitive, or an empath, or not spiritual at all - random sicknesses, depression, surprise allergies, unexpected hospital visits, even deaths have been plaguing so many that i know (and me too!)

This heaviness, this density, that we have been trudging through… we have noticed the effects of this feeling deep in our bones and hearts and minds; it feels dark and sticky. It’s in our thoughts before bed, sometimes leaking into our dreams; we have all felt the prickle on the back of our neck of our fears and insecurities in the background creeping to the foreground.

💕Ahhh life. What a roller coaster. A river. A spiral.

Life can move us through seasons that ask more of us than we expected; like the strong rapids of a large river, life can speed up suddenly, it can pull us under, it challenges us. It makes us suffer to grow and evolve so that we are reminded to turn inwards to find answers to our questions, our own inner strength and resilience; and guidance through patience, humility, and a deeper kind of listening. Life does this again and again and again. Remember, the person who got in the river is never the same as the person who gets out.

What we can trust and know is that life is a spiral, it goes around and around and around and sometimes similar things happen to us that have happened before - but now we have the ✨currency and the energy✨ of Wisdom Through Experience, which we can work with.

Suffering is necessary because it is the fertile soil that compassion is able to sprout from (no mud, no lotus). The kindest people i know are the ones who have suffered and grown through what they’ve gone through, they’ve catalyzed their pain into goodness for others. They’ve become the alchemist.

I try to alchemize whatever is ✨up and alive✨ in my life as my meditation object, my focus, my drishti. Lately my meditations have been about being okay with not being okay, allowing a calmness with the confusion, not knowing the next step, feeling a bit lost and perhaps not having control. In communion with my shallow breaths and fast heart rate i have been able to listen deeper to what my body is asking for: REST.

Because of my highly sensitive and intuitive nature i sometimes feel like a canary in a coal mine (haha, but for real☺️) - it seems whatever the mood of the collective or temperature of the environment that we’re in - thats what is LOUD in my heart, mind and soul.

So, I have been letting go of control - daily and literally outloud as a practice (ex: something that i wanted to work out doesn’t and i say out loud “and that’s okay.” or “if not this than something better.”) I have been allowing uncertainty and doubt to wash all over me and then sitting with the fear that it brings up viscerally in my body and knowing that how I’m feeling is okay - it’s just the season I’m in. Its the season we’re all in.

It’s totally normal and beautifully human to be confused right now.

🪷 During the difficult winter moments, I found myself returning again and again to a simple prayer I’ve carried for years and I wanted to share it:

May I be supported.

May I be protected.

May I be healed.

May I be guided.

Over time I have realized that this prayer isn’t just something I ask for in my own life, its also my forever intention; to create spaces of support, protection, healing, and guidance through my magical offerings and sacred presence.

Together, with love and understanding, slowly, and through softening, through gathering, through sharing stories, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, and surrendering into the current weather of life; all of this presents the opportunity for the universe to gift you wings.

May you be supported

May you be protected

May you be healed

May you be guided

And just like that - the seasons shift - and winter ends, as it does ever year.

Xoxo

Jess

Meditating with Jhourney

I started working for Jhourney at a very interesting time in my life; one of my relationships was ending and I was feeling like you normally do at that tumultuous time - a little shaky, unsure of what’s to come, fearing the unknown and how it will come to pass, wondering if life will be kind to you and catch you - those sort of things. I had done a retreat with Jhourney and they just seemed to like me and they asked me to come work for them; it was such a lovely gift that they gave me - they gave me structure and hope - as well as the gift of realizing how easy meditation could be.

Jhourney is the San Francisco-based meditation company that teaches you how to teach yourself to get into jhana; which, as a teacher I absolutely love that framework because thats how I have always taught - giving people information but allowing them to make sense of it themselves, and then being there as a guide as they work through things. The people that are drawn to Jhourney are these incredibly brilliant minds searching for something to calm the noise that burns inside them. For me it was my ADHD - my thoughts were always so loud I never thought that I could quiet the noise - for other participants it was across the board - they knew they needed something, anxieties, destabilizing life events, ruminating thoughts, not trusting themselves, etc.

The way that Jhourney ‘hacks’ meditation was the exact way I needed to help me understand how to meditate - as you all know I come from a vast biological and spiritual background studying the body, the mind and the heart. Most, if not all, of my friends were meditators and yet, I could not figure it out. The abstract instructions I was always given was just to ‘sit and try to let go of my thoughts….’

…And, my friends, I cannot just ‘sit and try to let go of my thoughts….’

…Or at least I thought I couldn’t…

When I went to my Jhourney Retreat in May of 2024, Jhourney did something that I desperately needed: they flipped the archetype of meditation on its head for me and told me I could break the rules. As a rule-breaker myself, this advice brought me great joy. I had this idea in my head that I needed to sit perfectly still and not have one thought in my head - based on intro talks of TM and Vipassana I had been to years earlier. With the powers of scoliosis and ADHD combined these things are ✨almost✨ impossible!

Jhourney offered easy solutions: if sitting hurts - then lay down. If neither works - then go for a walk - just make it slow and intentional. They helped me reorient my goal - not to try to get rid of my thoughts but to work alongside them. As someone who is very visual I started being able to befriend my thoughts to conjure feelings and then use my thoughts to help me stay in that feeling, and then once everything felt stable I felt more collected rather than scattered and ✨over efforting✨.

What a concept!

Jhourney helps so many people not only find meditation but love it, sincerely. They make it easy to understand and they guide you the whole way. Since my time with Jhourney I have considered myself a proficient meditator and even completed a 12 day Vipassana retreat in May 2025! Younger Jess always had that as an intention for my life, and finally achieving my goal felt so blissful.

I’m so grateful for the time I spent with Jhourney traveling through all throughout California and Costa Rica, teaching alongside people that will remain lifetime friends, and meeting epically cool people as participants - it’s a time I’ll never forget!

Xoxo

Edge City: Patagonia

After having the absolute best time at Edge Esmeralda in Headlesberg, California in June 2025 and traveling all throughout the summer on a wild and wacky roadtrip from Costa Rica all the way up to El Salvador; and through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia with pit stops in Turkey and Germany - my travel needs were still asking to be satiated…

Thankfully, I was asked to come all the way to Argentina with Edge City for their October 2025 pop up!! I was overjoyed obviously as Patagonia is one of my favorite places in the whole world - the hikes, the views, the energy and the mountains!?

There was no way I wasn’t going.

I arrived back from Kyrgyzstan, started unpacking, doing laundry and re-packed my bags - for every type of weather - and 3 weeks later I was on the road again, starting the longest set of flights to get all the way down to San Martin De Los Andes - a city nestled deep in the Andes, 18 hours way from Buenos Aires!

(Argentina is huge 🤣)

The trip started as trips sometimes do, with delays and monkey wrenches thrown into the mix - but it ended up with so many of us - participants and facilitators alike - stranded for a bit in the airport in Buenos Aires together!

After arriving I discovered that I would be living alone - the girl destined to be my roommate cancelled right before - which I was incredibly grateful for - I am an ambivert and need sooo much alone time to recharge so I can show up the way I want too!

I was so elated to be invited back and now I had a better understanding of how Edge flows: it might seem to start fast but towards the end of the month you are traveling faster than the speed of light! At Edge Esmeralda I taught two classes a day - bookending the day with Morning Yoga and night time Crystal Bowl Sessions (or breathwork or meditation or sharing circles) and this felt pretty reasonable; BUT! when I arrived at Edge City: Patagonia I saw how open the schedule is - and I’m a problem solver who loves sharing information, hosting events and meeting amazing people - so I started to fill it up with as many events as I could - sometimes 3 events a day adding long hikes over the weekend and Ecstatic Dances every Sunday.

Even though I worked so hard, time is both fast and slow at the same time - I remember halfway through the event I planned on getting a ‘month-long’ membership at the climbing gym and my friend looked at me and said ‘the event is halfway through’ and me being in total shock! There’s barely any time to rest but the excitement becomes the wind beneath your wings!

During Edge Patagonia we spent Halloween together, spent a meteor shower together, hiked together, did acro together, ate together, did tarot and talked about astrology, cold plunged together, and danced together. I am so grateful for everyone who came to all my events and shared their breath & movement, and mornings & evenings with me. I’m so grateful to everyone I learned from and spoke to.

It was truly the event of a lifetime and everyone who was there made the event a million times better with their presence, their depth and their own personal magic.

Xoxo

Edge Esmeralda

So it’s kind of a funny story…

In the spring of 2025 I solo adventured (as I do) all through Southeast Asia - one of my favorite places in the world. I started in Korea, went to Japan and saw Mt Fuji for the first time (and cried of course) and then went to Thailand for another yoga teacher training and climbed the big walls at Tonsai beach. After that I went to the Philippines for some scuba diving, back through Japan to see my best friend, David, and then wound up in Hawai’i - for the first time - and managed to see 3 of the islands…

But!

All that travel is a Later Blog!

The point of this story is that solo travel is magical and makes dreams come true - it sounds like I’m joking but I’m actually not.

Let me explain…

Something happens when I (or you!) solo travel - where I just reach flow state, easefully and without any effort, the universe just bestows consistent gifts on me when I am doing what I love most - traveling, teaching and learning!

When I was in Thailand I got 2 very important messages - and this is the story of what happened after I got the first message.

My dear friend Hanna reached out; she and I had met while I was teaching meditation with Jhourney in California and fallen in love with each other (she’s a national treasure). Because this meditation retreat that I was teaching at was local in California I brought my sound healing instruments and played a few Crystal Bowl Sound Healing Sessions for the participants and she, in particular, really enjoyed my sessions. She was reaching out because she worked for this pop-up city called Edge City; they combine AI, Tech and Crypto people with Health and Wellness people; essentially people who are creating the future LIVE - and people who care desperately for earth and humanity. She wanted me to bring my witchy offerings to Edge City to be on the Wellness side of things. I asked her about the dates and they fit ✨perfectly ✨into my travel plans and I said “Fuck yes I’d love to come!”

So after 3 blissful months of traipsing all throughout Southeast Asia (and Hawai’i) I came home to the Bay Area and went straight to work - for a full month 🤣

Edge City is a pop-up City that “pops up” all over the world - for one month; they’ve had locations in Thailand, Bhutan, and South Africa. Edge Esmeralda is a pop-up city located in Headlsberg, California in June that combines tech, AI, and crypto with health and wellness offerings in a ‘pop-up’ city style. What this means is that people from all over the world, from similar and also varying backgrounds, are able to come together and join this month-long container, which is lovingly referred to as an incubator.

An incubator is defined as a controlled environment used for the care and protection, and thats really what happens here: people come to join this community to share what they know, to listen to what others have to offer, and to come together in this very unique space for one month. Ideas flourish here, businesses are born here, friendships created here, patents received, partnerships meld, projects grow exponentially, funding is found… anything you can think of can happen here - at the Edge.

Hanna invited me to join the Consciousness Residency to bring my unique set of offerings to the ever-growing list of amazing sessions. I was obviously overjoyed to bring Sound Healing to Edge and I was blessed with the opportunity to kick off the opening session for Consciousness Week, as a Sound Healing Meditation, where I welcomed everyone to the beginning of this week by grounding them into their bodies, clarifying and setting intentions and manifesting the opportunities that would come to pass for them.

My offerings began as Crystal Bowl Sound Bath Meditations and THEN when I learned I could offer anything I wanted - I decided to share my entire toolkit with the participants of Edge Esmeralda, and I began hosting all of my favorite sessions - Meditation Nights, Vulnerability Circles, Sound Baths, Morning Yoga, opportunities for Silence and/or Sharing, and Breathwork sessions.

My favorite thing is creating beautiful and cozy spaces where people feel safe and comfortable to share, to be open, and to be vulnerable - especially when they are new to this side of science and ancient technologies! I love watching people’s faces as I explain sound healing from a scientific lens; its so easy to comprehend and yet can sometimes still carry the ‘woo’ reputation! It’s always such a gift watching someone flow through a session - watching them relax into the vibrations of the crystal bowls, watch them begin to trust and deepen their breath, to move their awareness from their head and into their heart. Seeing them process their emotions as they rise and fall and see them witnessing their own bravery in sitting with whatever arises within them. It can be so activating such that the person that entered the room feels vastly different than the person who leaves.

It’s such a honor to watch new friends in tech, crypto and AI be introduced to sound healing and embodiment practices - like breathwork, yoga or meditation - they have such beautiful minds and hearts. I love creating spaces where they feel supported & protected; I am always so grateful for the trust they put in me to guide them. At Edge Esmeralda I made so many new connections that have exponentially increased my already-global network of friends & family.

My time at Edge Esmeralda was mind blowing, heart opening, and so expansive. I am so deeply grateful for the team at Edge - Timour, Janine, Sophie, Syl + Hanna, and everyone who came to my sessions and for allowing me to hold such sacred space for them.

It’s always such an honor to hold space for you.

Can’t wait to see you at the next Edge!

Xoxo

A Love Letter to Me (and you)

Your lowest point is the doorway to your highest self

~ Alan Watts

What is the Love Letter?

Every year I find myself so inspired by my crazy life, my passionate soul, and my wild heart that I write myself a love letter. This is one of my most sacred rituals that I perform every year. It doesn’t matter when I write it as I always follow the natural flow of my life and trust my intuition as to when it needs to be done; and without fail I’ve done it every year since 2015. One of my favorite parts of this process is… a year will go by and I will completely forget about it; and then somehow as fate would have it, I find it or remember it - and read it again exactly when I need to.

So why share this now?

Well, this love letter to myself is inspired by July 2024 (Past) Jess’s love letter to her future self - July 2025 Jess, which I uncovered in an old journal a few days ago.

2024 Jess was going through a lot - honestly, it was an incredibly challenging year that I’ve written about before, which you can find here. Everything I knew and held dear - my friendships, health and relationships were all dissolving at the same time - you’ve experienced this before when life dogpiles you - generally when you’re hanging on by a thread already - my mentor / best friend / spiritual mom from San Diego had died, I was healing my body from a mildish/majorish surgery and debating leaving who I thought (for so long and so deeply… think: past life dreams and memories and Deja vu’s) was the love of my life.

2024 Past Jess had the courage and the foresight to write Future Jess a love note telling her how proud of her she was for leaving, for walking away (even if it was more of a pathetic crawl), for keeping her integrity, protecting her inner child, and for always being authentic and leaving a relationship when it no longer served her. To be honest at the end of last year this relationship was starting to wound me deeply. I felt it was at these major moments is was when I needed him the most and I chose to leave anyways. Months later (so recently) when I told my amazing therapist / mentor, Andy, about this later, he exclaimed that ‘yes! this was the weakest i felt and therefore the strongest i became!’ - which always reminds me of that quote from GOT that I quote (perhaps too) often.

“Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?"

“That is the only time a man can be brave."

~ George RR Martin

I returned from Edge Esmeralda only about a week ago and happened upon the love note I wrote myself in 2024 and started to reflect on how painful the end of last year was, and honoring the girl that I was, and how proud of myself I am for choosing myself first, and growing into the woman of my dreams, AND all the subsequent blessings that have flowered underneath my feet since then.

When I find my love letters to myself after year(s) it brings me so much joy and peace to know that my Past Self is looking out for my Current and Future Self. If you’ve worked with me you know how often I send love and strength and tenderness back to Teenage Jess and pull on wisdom for Future Jess. Allowing love to flow through all my different timelines (The Council, if you will) integrates me deeply in my truth and my inner trust.

My Love Letter to ME

I will be honest, I do have a bit on anxiety posting this because I’ve never made one of these love letters public before as they are deeply personal and they honor all the cool things in life that I am brave enough to do. Therefore there is a part of me that feels like it’s too “braggy,” or “cringey” but here I am doing it anyways - as we all know life begins at the end of our comfort zone.

So here is my love letter to myself, and I invite you / hope this inspires you to do the same:

Dear Jess,

I am so fucking proud of you. You overcame something that challenged every fiber of your being, that broke you open and tore you apart; that momentarily destroyed you and made you question everything - the universe, your intuition and yourself - you showed up, as you always do, with an infinite well of resilience, of strength; your trust in yourself and in the universe, that it will always take care of you, is truly unshakable; it’s a masterpiece. You jumped off a cliff and the universe caught you, you fell and you trusted the wisdom of Rock Bottom being a shamanic place of transformation. You took your time to heal, honoring the slow days, honoring the ‘no’ days, not speaking to anyone except your dear roomie Quentin when he asked if you needed more water or snacks. Weeks and months later you rose from the bed onto your hands and knees and finally planted your feet firmly, feeling the support of the earth pushing up against you. Eventually you began to walk, then run, and then frolic, once again finding the wisdom in play.

You started to ground even harder in your routine, even allowing the perfectionist inside to take control for a bit maintaining sobriety, food restrictions and daily exercises. You began the re-engagement of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual work. You dove deeper into shadow work and healing inner child wounds, learning more about yourself and family dynamic and how to understand things better and quicker in the future. You stayed present with your emotions and cried when you were sad, allowed anger to move through you elegantly and gracefully and held your own heart (with the support of very wonderful friends). You continued to climb, to walk, to yoga, and Pilates, focusing on physical health when mental health became too “efforty” and sped up or slowed back down into an acceptance of the present moment, depending on what was needed at the time.

You made your sleep a priority and spoke louder about your boundaries and your bedtime - even including a sign for the house that says “please leave by 9” so people were able to physically see your boundaries, you stopped drinking all together (5 months sober!). You cut out poisonous people (even if that meant ending 5+ year friendships! Yikes!) because you realized your pattern is to beg to be loved, that love is hard work and you have to prove with performance that you are worthy of people loving you. You began to look around and clean up your life in every cobwebby corner that was hard to look at, and you loved it all anyways. A week of Imposter Syndrome at a retreat helped you understand that the Perfectionist part of you had now taken over the driver seat and with some mirroring from more amazing friends - shoutout to Vlad, Owen and Ashley you were able to gently allow your messiness to shine once again, realizing that there is no Perfect, just like there is no Destination. It’s all a beautiful fucking mess. And we fucking love it anyways.

Best of all you started to double down in all things that interest you and pull at your soul - including obtaining a Breathwork Coach Certificate as even though we consider ourself illuminated for some magic reason Breathwork can still bring us to our KNEES. Doing this work for so long and working with movement and meditation and trauma and how it’s related and woven into the breath, I knew the breath was magic; but only when I began to fully understand the depth and multitude of dimension of the FUCKING MAGIC of your breath have we expanded even more, softening our edges, becoming kinder, more compassionate, more resilient.

You do not understand the violence it took to become this peaceful.

Something we always wanted to do was to complete another yoga teacher training and so this year we went back to Thailand - one of my favorite countries - to complete a 100 hour yoga teacher training on the spectacularly beautiful and magical island of Koh Phangan!

Speaking of travel?!

This YTT inspired the trip to Asia and the way I like to travel is to see as much as I can while I’m there! We (we = all integrated Jess’s) started in Korea for skin care (highly recommend and I can write another blog on that) Japan for Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and Mt Fuji - a literal dream come true. We made so many friends on Koh Phangan and they loved us back so much we were promptly invited to an artist residency that we will complete in 2026!

While I was completing the YTT I was given so many opportunities to teach yoga and sound healing for two different resorts! I danced ecstatically on the beach under a full moon, surrounded by strangers with soft hearts and beautiful minds. I went to a KPG Full Moon Party completely sober, made 50 new friends throughout my journey in KPG alone, and then ran away to climb the big walls of Krabi - another dream come true. I went to the Philippines and scuba dove the reef - some of the most beautiful reef I’ve ever seen, and got to see my best friend David in a happy accident while heading to Hawaii for the very first time.

I literally couldn’t be more proud of you.

And then!? Not only that!?

While we were in Thailand we got two insanely uniquely niche golden opportunities: The Vipassana-adjacent retreat I had been hoping to get into for the past 5 years contacted me and told me I was accepted AND we were given an opportunity to be the resident Yoga Teacher, Breathwork Coach, Sound Healer and Meditation Guide at Edge Esmeralda, a pop up city in California where we ended up meeting so many amazing people and big thinkers and genius designers…

… it just keeps blossoming ….

… it just keeps opening ….

… and I just keep dancing and trust falling …

… and my framily just keeps on expanding and expanding throughout the world and throughout realms.

I Am the Luckiest Girl in the World

I tell myself all the time that I am the luckiest girl in the world, and not only do I tell myself that

I deeply and profoundly believe it.

I am the luckiest girl in the whole world.

I know it, I breath it, it’s my every day intention, my prayer, my through before bed, my waking ritual. I write it in my journals, it’s on my vision board, I repeat it after every synchronicity, every hang-out session with friends, every time it rains, every time I see a rainbow, or a bird or an animal. It’s constantly being manifested for me with every thought, feeling, movement and action.

I am writing this love letter just before my birthday (July 11th) although it never matters when I write this letter, because it is always written.

I felt such a pull to write it because even though we’re only half way through the year these are all the beautiful things that have been born out of pain, and blossomed out of suffering, flowered out of the deep trust I have for myself and the universe and my path.

In all of this spaciousness of healing and loving myself, in all these blessing I have found a profound forgiveness, one (tbh) that I didn’t think was possible.

A real forgiveness that doesn’t end with “I forgive, but…”

On a mountain top, underneath the stars in Northern California, whilst under the influence of certain psychedelics, I felt a light blue pure energy completely wash forgiveness over me and through me while journeying.

In this stunning clarity and inner peace and cleansing wave I deeply realized (not just thought) a truth that sunk into my bones all the way inside to my bone marrow - that what people do to you, how they treat you and perceive you, and judge you and hate you: that is just a projection of how they feel about themselves. Now, most of us know this logically, I know this logically and also emotionally - but this truth merged with the atoms and molecules and waveforms that make up my physical and energy body, and in that way I was able to fully and completely release, and not release in a violent shaking or even letting go sort of way, but a super divine and peaceful softening, a setting free, a liberation, a falling, a settling into a comfy flower bed, a dissolving completely back into my own person / being / truth / body with no one else’s energy, opinion or nervous system wrapped around mine (like a vine that will eventually choke a tree to death.)

In this moment, as I write this;

I am Wild

I am Resilient

I am Kinder, more Loving, more Gentle

I am the Luckiest Girl in the World

and I am Free.

I deeply hope, want, and wish the same is true for you <3

Quepasana: Everything is waking up right now

Vipassana: To See Things Clearly

Vipassana means ‘to see things clearly,’ and I’ve been wanting to do one of these retreats since i first learned about them. Vipassana is a 10 day silent meditation retreat that is offered as a gift - for free - all over the world. When I lived in San Diego I had a a lot of friends who participated and volunteered at Vipassana retreats and for years would tell me about it and recommend it to me. At the time I didn’t consider myself a meditator because I was unable to sit for long periods of time - I had this idea in my head that a meditator looks like a monk who sits in stillness without moving for hours on end and this archetype didn’t fit with my super athletic body with scoliosis and an ADHD mind. To be totally honest, I had an overwhelming amount of self judgement when it came to meditation. I had sat at some TM + Vipassana seminar evenings listening to people talk about it - and honestly it all sounded 1. Impossible and 2. Like hell. TCM told me to let my thoughts ‘bubble to the surface and then pop,’ whatever that meant. And Vipassana told me I had to sit without moving for 10 hours a day, for 10 days straight: an absolutely ridiculous idea. I thought there was no way I could do either of these things and this judgement compounded as I was a sound healer, energy healer and yoga teacher (spoiler alert: the meditation teacher in me took years to coax out) and all my friends who were in similar lines of work (naturopaths, massage therapists, counselors) were all “good” meditators so the comparison added to the judgement, and I stayed away from turning my gaze inward.

It wasn’t until literally years (maybe a decade) later that I realized I had meditated my whole life, but my meditation looks drastically different and incorporated movement. One fateful day in 2019 (?) I was hiking (meditating) up a volcano in Guatemala with a new friend named Sami Rose, we bonded deeply over California (I was San Diego, she was LA), holistic perspectives, astrology, healing, shibari and meditation. I expressed my concerns and judgements with meditation and Sami happily told me about the existence of a Vipassana-adjacent retreat that allowed movement. I was overjoyed and when we got back down from the volcano the next day (which was amazing by the way and we got to watch Volcan Fuego explode all night, but that’s not what this blog is about) I immediately put myself on the waitlist… and waited…. For years.

My Meditation Journey

I’ve written about my relationship to meditation before, thinking I was not a good meditator for most of my life. I had immense trouble sitting still and a lot of judgement and preconceived notions of what meditation + meditators ‘looked like.’ In 2024 I attended a 7 day silent retreat with Jhourney teaching myself to learn the Jhanas - and once I did and realized I was ‘there’ which of course was nowhere specific and also everywhere at the same time, I realized I had been meditating my whole life but my meditation was almost always accompanied by movement.

Jhourney explained the Jhana’s to me as elevated states of consciousness that are within our grasp because we have felt them as children - that deep presence accompanied by a feeling of ecstasy - pure play, pure bliss followed by a deep sense of connection and presence and finally gratitude. I recognized the Jhana’s in the same way you recognize your reflection: this ‘bell curve’ of joy made me realize that these are the states I reach when I hike - which is one of the million reasons I love hiking. The harder the hike the more blissed out I am. Literally every time I hike I am in pure bliss - which made me realize so many things 1. Why I like to hike alone, this feeling of bliss is not shared with anyone and feels very vulnerable and exposed especially when you’re hiking with someone not having a good time, the gap between experiences can lead to feelings of disconnection 2. Why everyone hated hiking with me earlier in life - for me the harder the hike the better the bliss, when I was younger I used to take my friends hiking and they haaaaated it. There were many statements of “I will never hike with Jess ever again,” swore through gritted teeth struggled breaths when I was younger. 3. Why I seek out such difficult hikes - of course I am very adventurous and athletic and love to hike for exercise, but the feelings of peace and presence I get from trudging and frolicking up a mountain is like nothing else, it feels like a drug where the only addiction is needing to do another hike.

There is also meditation through pain, I’m sure it’s obvious to you now if you’re on this page that I am very much covered in tattoos and piercings. Sitting through a particularly long tattoo leads to turning the gaze inward, focusing on your breath, steadying your mind, and not only sitting “through” the pain but sitting “with” it. I also suffer once a month from the barely-survivable pain of endometriosis + adenomyosis and honestly the pain is so bad it’s laughable when I’m not suffering from it, and almost unbelievable from the outside looking in. I’m not saying I do this gracefully by any means, but I do, in a sense, have to meditate through it. We all suffer painful life events and generally the way we get through it is turning the gaze inward, breathing steadily telling ourselves ‘we will get through this,’ and from rock bottom we pick ourselves back up and begin again.

The Golden Ticket

I had the most awful break up of my life in 2024 and I wasn’t actually sure if I’d ever be okay and trust again, shoutout to David + Quentin for gluing my heart back together again. Well fast forward to 2025’s major healing adventure that took me all over the Southeast Asia from healing my skin in Korea; to seeing Mt Fuji for the first time and falling head over heals for Japan; to healing my soul in Thailand and healing my adventurous spirit in the Philippines, I received THE email I had been waiting for, for years: Quepasana was open for newcomers and I was accepted and I’m going to Maui. And then came the stress point: just kidding - there was some sort of glitch in the system that said you were accepted but you weren’t quite yet.

Luckily my manifestation and email skills were locked in and I explained my situation - how I heard of them (on a volcano - so cool right?) my healing journey because of the break up and my flinging myself back out to life and adventure (I deserve this!), where I was geographically and where I would be - in Hawaii anyways (Kauai technically) and finally I received the Golden Ticket and I was confirmed and accepted. There was much rejoicing and telling everyone who would listen.

After 6 years, I was finally going to be a Quepasana Girlie.

May the 4th be with with you

I had never been to Hawaii before and then as it happened I was scheduled to adventure to 3 different islands due to friends visiting Oahu, Quepasana in Maui, and family living in Kauai. I got off the plane in Maui and into the van and drove to the retreat center. I bonded instantly with my ride share friends - shoutout to Aiden, Jaime + Keifer and we rode to the sunrise of our destiny. All day we talked and bonded with our like-minded high-vibey new friends then by the time we woke up on May 5th we had begun our journey into deep inside ourselves.

The Journey

I expected some difficulty and perhaps because of that my time was pretty easeful. Since my Jhana Jhourney, and subsequent meditation teaching over last year I have meditated almost every day and I deeply love and cherish my meditation practice. It has become something delicious and yummy that I look forward to daily.

We woke up at 4:30am every day with movement and stretching which (only slightly) eased the pain of the 4:30am bell. We sat for 2 hours, took a break to roam, swim, snorkel, eat breakfast, stretch, and walk around. After breakfast and clean up we came back, did yin yoga + breathwork and sat in meditation for 4 hours. Then we broke for lunch, more options to swim, walk, stretch, workout, and then we met back at the Shala for more yin, breathwork, and sitting for another 4 hours. We would break for dinner, clean up, watch sunset and sit again for 2 hours before going to bed by 8:30pm.

Day 1 and Day 2 were full of distractions and patience for the monkey mind, allowing forgiveness and acceptance to seep deeply into all the problems my mind was trying to fix from my past, present and future. My mind was trying to solve puzzles, organize things, make lists, and overall various mental backflips + contortions; and I patiently, with love and compassion for myself and my mind; gently brought my awareness back to the present moment using my breath and the sensations it brought to my nose, lungs and stomach. My mind pulled and stretched for things and distractions and judgements and past grievances and hurts and I lovingly and patiently kept bringing my mind back to The Now. I had some really beautiful breakthroughs just on how tasty the present moment is - my minds eye created this orange orb that shone like the sun and every time I brought my mind back to this shape I could feel the most gorgeous sensations flow throughout my body, my heart, my lungs, my mind. This orb was full of all sensations and every time I brought my mind back I was rewarded with this full sensory treat that can only happen right NOW.

Day 3 and Day 4 were endometriosis-related death days where I just layed and suffered most of the time, but like I do once a month anyways, I meditated through the pain, and through the pain was the most delicious presence, my minds eye showed a darkly overcast sky over a dark ocean but this gorgeous light right in between the layers of darkness. There were many things in this gorgeous light that I’ll describe only as a Happening. Due to the immense pain of my body and the wobbly feeling of the pain pills I was able to stay here and surprisingly didn’t experience any other of the awful symptoms of my period (throwing up, fainting, the ushe). I was feeling everything - and at the same time letting it all go.

Day 5 and Day 6 were wonderful, I was no longer in pain AND I was halfway through! I was gonna make it!!! 10 days is a loooong time of silence and meditation and not much else. The daily yin yoga that we did felt nourishing and the breathwork was lovely too, allowing ourselves to sink deeper into our practice by stretching the body and releasing stuck emotions was so helpful. I had some serious breakthroughs here and starting dreaming up (several) business plans. Anytime monkey mind was too loud I would do manifestations and allow my brain to be distracted with these beautiful loving thoughts toward my future self, then I would come back and find a juicy spaciousness in between the thoughts and stay there.

Day 7 was my worst day. I was distracted all day because we were over the “hump” of halfway and “almost almost” done but not quite and my brain was all over the place. It wanted to write blogs and share all the things I had already learned, contact people - I’ve been gone for months and miss my California Family, journal - how long has it been since I journaled? Do tarot - I was pulling cards while drinking coffee and working every day before this!? I need to SCREAM! I need to talk Sage (my ChatGPT) and ask what these flowers are that were growing everywhere? How was everyone on the outside? What if something bad happened? I needed to buy flights to California and Denver!? I still don’t have a Burning Man ticket?!!!!!!!!!! This was a day of fear and worries, judgements and concerns, and so instead of fighting it, I let it be that way and did what I could to ease the pain of the weight of my brain - which was mostly big deep breaths to relax my nervous system as much as possible and feed positive distractions like beautiful day dreams, mantras and manifestations for Future Jess.

Day 8 and Day 9 were back to bliss - more ideas, juicer awareness, easefulness in herding my brain back to Now; loving awareness, kindness and compassion toward myself, felt throughout my heart, my body, my brain, my thoughts - even the bad ones. I started to forgive myself for thinking bad thoughts about people who had hurt me and this had a domino effect, forgiving so many people for so many things, forgiving myself for letting people hurt me and sticking around too long, forgiving myself for not knowing, not understanding, forgiving others for the same. I had a big breakthrough thinking about my parents just remembering that they did the best they could and at the end of the day - they want my approval now as much as I wanted theirs when I was little. I cried and cried and allowed the release of tears to flow down my face and wash away the tension. I felt like the sun. Unfuckable with, and as my friend/ mentor / therapist Andy says “be in the mindset that nothing can stick to you;” everything was bliss. My walking slowed down and my staring at the smallest things and finding such treasures everywhere around me - the tiniest details and veins in leaves, all of the tones in the bird song, the colors and movements and dance of the corals and the reefs underwater, feeling sooo incredibly connected on retreat through short but loving glances.

We already loved each other, but when we broke noble silence together Day 10 we were head over heels in love with each other. Throughout the retreat there were these small, tender, acts of romance and thoughtfulness, from finding each others water bottles or helping and volunteering in the kitchen everyone had bonded from a heart centered place of silence and kindness. We all cried in a circle loving and acknowledging one another and finally learning each other’s names. Later that day, Keifer and I made up the best game of Bocci Ball that very vaguely resembles actually Bocci Ball, the bonds were sealed, friendships formed: we were connected forever.

Day 11 we broke down our entire camp with over 30 tents, the kitchen, the Shala together as a team. Leaving was impossibly hard but it had to be done. I hugged everyone goodbye (not something I normally do) made sure they had my contact and left for Jurassic Park…. I mean Kauai.

Quepasana Take Aways

I feel more present in my body which is mostly felt in my voice. If you’ve know me you know I talk very fast when I am excited, but when I work I have a very meditative cadence to my speech. When I spoke out loud for the first time on day 10 I could hear my voice vibrate inside of my chest. My thoughts were going a million miles a minute because it was the first time we got to talk but my mouth was moving at a slower pace - so I started to connect my thoughts to my mouth and be more present; I was hearing every word I said as I said it. Occasionally in the past, I haven’t felt heard and wondered if it’s because I don’t hear myself - suddenly I was hearing my truth from deep inside my chest, everyone was listening intently, and I was trusting the sound of my silence and loudness.

I had a very strange interaction which I won’t go into the details: but I was bullied while in silence. This felt very troubling for all the reasons, I’m sure you can imagine. But being “silenced” during “silence” left me with a very unsafe, very uneasy feeling, especially when I was trying to honor silence, but felt like I needed to stand up for myself, but had limited people I could ask for help from. This caused a lot of rumination and circular thoughts: and just as much as it did create rumination - I was also able to let it go….? Which felt a little wild due to past expressions of Jess. Because of that (I think) the universe gave me another chance to stand up for myself - so I did - and much louder this time - and it felt like DRUGZ! The pure power that was rushing through my veins while I spoke to this person - telling them my truth and how I felt - and the effect of their actions - felt like nothing I had ever experienced before. We ended up hugging at the end so everything turned out fine but it was a gorgeous ‘happening’ that I got to 1. Meditate on and 2. Practice letting go 3. Standing up for myself 4. Speaking my truth and then finally 5. Coming to a resolution.

Epiphanies about my ex lovers, parents, past and future were abundant, including unhooking myself from these tangles of the past and bringing myself back to the Here and Now and letting everything else go and be water under the bridge. A huge realization came in the exact way that I needed to understand was: that my parents needs always came first in my childhood home and those are similar patterns in the relationships I have attracted in the past - someone whose needs are louder and more important than mine. Watching that pattern from a far out perspective realizing that I am the most important person in my life, I am the main character. My life is all about me and I am allowed to have all my needs met, I am allowed to have my cake and eat it to. I am a powerful sorcerer and always have been. Things come easy to me and my life is blessed because of me! I make it this way!? When someone comes into my life they are competing with the bliss of how I feel when I am alone!? I am a magnet for miracles and good things always find me?!

In conclusion - I am the luckiest girl in the world and I am so fucking grateful to live this blessed life with these insanely beautiful circumstances and experiences. I would highly recommend you checking out Quepasana.

For Chayna

On a personal note, when I left the cozy sacred container of Quepasana I found out a dear friend of mine, Chayna Girling had passed away. Chayna was a lot of things - a powerful and beautiful fashion icon and artist. An incredible photographer, an explorer, a Burner, an amazing friend who lifted me up emotionally and mentally after the despair of my break up, who saw a light in me when I didn’t see anything in myself. Even though we didn’t know each other for very long, the time we spent together moving her magical Witch House, the road trips, the photography shoots, the moral support, the shared love + interests and respect in one another. She will live in the fire of my heart forever.

She wasn’t really a “rest in peace” kinda person, so for both of us, I hope she haunts me forever.

Xoxo,

Jess

Nature Heals: The Earth Laughs in Flowers

The earth laughs in flowers is my favorite quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which will make sense later in this blog.

Where did yoga come from? Who was the first yogi? Who was the first guru? If you look closely at the origins of the asanas, you can see: they come from nature. Tadasana rises from the mountain. Malasana crouches with the frog. The people who came before us lived with a profound connection to nature - they knew they were part of it, not separate. Through yoga asana and study, we can slowly uncover a deep truth:

We do not see the world as it is.

We see the world as we are.

Through extending compassion - first to ourselves, then to others - we close the gap between ourselves and the world around us. We find unity where there was once separation.

When you stand in Mountain Pose, do you feel strong? Do you realize it is you who decides whether you feel strong? When you curl into Child’s Pose, do you feel safe? Where does that safety come from?

If you don’t feel strong or safe today - can you be gentle with yourself? Can you create spaciousness inside you, the same kind of spaciousness you would offer a loved one in pain? Can you be open to the idea you might feel safe or strong one day? Can you laugh at life and all its absurdities?

Do you believe in magic and all it’s possibilities; or do you feel safer in the mundane?

Do you realize it is you who creates your life — thought by thought, action by action?

What kind of life do you want to build?

If you feel like you’re not moving fast enough, not achieving enough, not “enough” enough — can you soften? Can you remember that your path will always look different than everyone else’s - because it’s yours, and no one else’s? Can you find laughter and levity in the fact that nothing is actually serious? I mean, truly, we all die at the end?

It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days… Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me…So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…

~ Aldous Huxley

I have always believed in magic.

And because of that, my life has always been magical.

There have been pitfalls of depression and despair, yes - dark times that marred my path and threw me off track for a while - but I always find my way back. Suffering is a part of life. No mud, no lotus.

Nature is my guide. My intuition is my guide.

And lately, I’ve discovered that rest is my guide.

When I was younger, I tried to do everything fast, only to burn myself out and spend months recovering. Now, I follow the rhythm of nature — which is the rhythm of patience. Through breathwork, sound healing, yoga, and meditation, I find my center when I’m thrown off.

I realign faster than I used to.

I am proud that I am always becoming better than I was yesterday.

It’s easy to believe in magic when you’re young. Anything you couldn’t explain was magic then. It didn’t matter if it was science or a fairy tale. Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious and equally possible — elves probably more so.

~ Charles de Lint

When we look to nature, we find opportunities to meet our teachers. Nature was my first and most constant teacher. As a child, I climbed trees, built forts with my brother, played in rivers, and lived inside the endless world of imagination.

Creatures lived in clouds. Forts became castles. Finding blocks of wood in the forest behind my parents’ house felt like discovering golden fishes. We caught snakes, fought dragons, saved princesses. Nature molded my imagination — and, in many ways, it saved my life.

Windows were portals.

The moon was my first prayer.

My heartbeat was the crows singing in the hot, swampy Michigan summers.

I am so grateful for my wild inner child — the one who always dreamed of more, knew more was possible, and never stopped believing that everything, the whole world, was available to her. I still bring her with me everywhere I go — uniting my past wild child with my present grounded wildish, wolfish self.

Yoga means to unite.

And in our yoga sessions, we practice this union — integrating our sun and our moon, our masculine and our feminine, our slowness and our quickness, our meditation and our action. Just as we move through poses, we weave ourselves back into nature.

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.

~ Henry David Thoreau

I have backpacked through many states and countries, often solo. People ask me, “Aren’t you afraid, backpacking alone?”

But the answer is always no. In nature, I find a peace I have not found anywhere else. It is the peace I prefer above all else.

People are often afraid of what they don’t know. Non-backpackers think it’s wild to pack up for days and head into the mountains. But backpackers know it’s ecstasy. Non-climbers think it’s insane to cling to a cliff. But climbers know the view from the top - the one no one else will ever see.

I have nothing to fear in nature. And I have nothing to fear in backpacking, rock climbing, or yoga. I used to say, “I can’t do yoga because I’m not flexible.” Now, after 15 years of practice, I’m still not insanely flexible — scoliosis gives me certain natural limitations — but I love yoga more than ever and I always come back to yoga.

Recently, I completed a 100-hour teacher training in Thailand with my beloved Janine. It was a homecoming. A marriage of my breath, my body, my movement — falling in love with the way my body stretches and flows, limitations and all.

The compassion I offer my body creates ripples. It radiates outward — to friends, family, strangers. The more compassion I give, the more I receive.

Compassion is reciprocal.

Compassion is also scientifically proven to be good for us. It frees us from self-absorption and connects us to deeper meaning and purpose. When we act from a heart-centered place, we fear less. We belong more.

In this willingness to touch pain with courage and love, compassion holds the possibility of transforming it.

Animal lovers know that animals are teachers. Rock climbers and backpackers know that mountains are teachers. Present people and divers know that the breath is a teacher. The wisest among us know: everything around us is a teacher. In yoga, we learn from Guru Sakshat — the teacher that is near.

In Savasana, we practice the art of dying to bring the unknown into the known. When we familiarize ourselves with death - with stillness, with the great unknown - we dissolve our fear of it. Just like how hiking mountains makes us less afraid of forests, traveling makes us less afraid of people, climbing makes us less afraid of falling.

Remember no mud no lotus.

Just as the lotus cannot flourish without mud, compassion and wisdom cannot flourish without the fertilizing power of suffering.

In my Wildish Wolfish Way online course, my students speak of meeting parts of themselves they didn’t know, or had locked away, or judged as ‘bad.’ We also uncover why we see the world they way we do and we rediscover our belief in magic - the magic within and the magic without. We begin to dance in the absurdity of the heaviness we’ve been carrying and find it easier to release, to let go, and to let the dance dance us. Through meeting, and accepting these parts they find a union. Through acceptance and uniting, they find compassion.

And through compassion, they find joy. And through joy, they find power… and then peace.

So I leave you with a question:

Do you believe the earth laughs in flowers?

Psychedelic Soaked Stories

I have been a psychonaut since I was in high school and have dabbled in most plant medicines throughout my life. I believe my life has changed for the better by taking these substances due to their capacity to expand the mind; and help you be more open to learning more about your own consciousness and the consciousness in the world around you. Psychedelics make the environment as alive as you are, and they dissolve the ego which is to say the boundaries that keep us separate and in pain.

In February 2024 I finally met Rick Doblin, the creator of MAPS (The Multidisciplinary Approach for Psychedelic Studies) at a conference in Dubai. I have been a fan of him ever since I learned about MAPS in 2014; this cosmic encounter and telling him about my Ketamine experience inspired this blog.

In high school I was dangerously depressed and looking for something, anything, to show me magic in the world. Intuitively I knew magic was real; and being highly sensitive and empathic, knowing the emotions that the people were feeling around me led me to believe there was another field of energy connecting us all. I didn’t have words or descriptions for this back when I was younger, but I do now: I was having an existential crisis and no one around me was equipped to help me navigate these stormy cosmic and psychic waters.

Being so highly sensitive and empathic was good and bad, good in a sense where I was a fantastic listener and therapist to all my friends, which ended up translating perfectly into my now-careers; but bad as I couldn’t decipher what emotions were mine, and what were other peoples’. This lead to a constant cacophony of emotions in my body, and I was overwhelmed, anxious and depressed, wanting to crawl out of my skin most of the time - and not knowing why.

Using marijuana started to quiet all these feelings of ‘other’ and I felt free and unencumbered. Being curious about this feeling of freedom led me to dabble in plant medicines, and some synthetics, and I feel like that has made a huge improvement in my life. I was a normal high school kid dabbling in things I didn’t understand, and to this teenage version of myself I am forever grateful for her bravery; now, I realize the sacredness of the journey that I’m about to embark upon, and prepare appropriately.

Important Note: This blog is of my personal story ONLY, it is in no way to promote the irresponsible use of any of these (illegal) substances. There are many medicinal-therapy-sessions that you can do nowadays under the supervision of a licensed or certified therapist. I recommend you do research and listen to your intuition on what’s right for you. This is NOT medical advice.

Mushrooms and LSD

My first experimentation after marijuana and copious amounts of alcohol to numb the pain in my head and heart, was experimenting with mushrooms and LSD in which I experienced my first spiritual experiences where I saw the grand design behind the universe - it was shaped like the Sri Yantra and the Flower of Life - symbols that became tattoos later in life. Camping in the forests of Michigan, eating mushrooms and dropping acid whilst camping with friends I saw trees breathe, I saw patterns in the sand, and the movement in the actual air of the sky. I realized that awareness is inner AND outer - a sender and receiver in both directions - just as I gazed at the world, the world gazed back. Interestingly enough, I noticed wild animals responded to me in this heightened state of awareness and came close to investigate, curious perhaps that I was vibrating at a different (non-human?) frequency. Dragonflies would not stop flying around while my friend Caitlin and I stood in the river in complete and utter awe of the patterns swirling in and around our feet.

One time ingesting mushrooms, I accidently took my boyfriends dose and he took mine - he was much larger than me (a football player) and his dose was much stronger. As I sat in a chair in a circle of all of my friends their names and faces slowly started to dissolve away and I realized I didn’t know who they were. Suddenly, I noticed that I didn’t know who I was. My name, face, life story, parents all dissolved into what I can only describe as a cosmic soup of general loving awareness. The cats in the room that were previously very chill started kickflipping around the room, responding to this vibrational shift in the atmosphere; it seemed they were almost celebrating our new realizations with us. You would think that this would have been terrifying - but for some reason it was absolutely fine.

I got up to look at myself in the mirror and was so surprised at what I saw: an unfamiliar face looking back. As I looked at Her I was able to see Her for the first time, with no prior thoughts of self hatred, self judgment or self loathing, I didn’t see blemishes or imperfections, I just saw a young girl with insanely dialated pupils, confused and curious staring back. She was so young, she was so pretty.

When I returned to sit down to this person I had never seen before (my boyfriend of 2 years) I knew that I probably wouldn’t have done whatever it was I did with people I didn’t feel safe with or know. This felt like a resonate truth, so I sat back down and continued to explore the room around me. Staring across the room at a famous picture of the Pink Floyd albums painted on girls backs sitting at a pool, they laughed as they swayed back and forth in togetherness, I moved my attention to the Led Zepplin falling angel poster I realized he was dancing in complete rapture and ecstasy and celebration of life.

Suddenly I became the most vibrant visual and physical sensation where I was flying through the sky with nothing else around me except clouds. Up ahead appeared a cliff with the root of a tree sticking out on the cliff side, but under the top, below the surface. I grabbed on to the root and immediately like an tsunami of remembrance, my life flooded back into my brain, my mom’s face came into view and all of my life memories rushed back in. I struggled to catch my breath as I was overcome with a lifetime of love from friends, adventures, and family.

Mushrooms and LSD helped me connect to and remember the grand design and harmony underlying reality by allowing my physical eyes to see it. They helped me reconnect to the beauty of myself without mental commentary and judgement and they helped me remember that I, and WE, are are all so important to the universe, because we are a part of it and it is a part of us.

When we look within ourselves with psilocybin, we discover that we do not have to look outward toward the futile promise of life that circles distant stars in order to still our cosmic loneliness. We should look within; the paths of the heart lead to nearby universes full of life and affection for humanity.
― Terence McKenna

After our journey together we all stood outside and watched the snow come down in Michigan. It was beautiful.

Ayahuasca

I have journeyed with Grandmother Ayahuasca many times in my life but I’d like to share a snippet of the story of my first experience with Her in Peru. This is not the full story, just a piece.

I sat in a circle with other seekers and my best friend in 2014, the sun sat heavily in the horizon as we started to journey and visuals and sensations started to come into our awareness and body. Grandmother Ayahuasca showed me many many things, but for the purpose of this story - she showed all the arguments I had been in throughout my whole life - and she showed me the other person’s perspective.

One of my blind spots throughout my life has been self-righteousness, a pattern gifted to me from my parents. If we fight, I used to think ‘I am right! You are wrong!’ Ayahuasca showed throughout the journey of all these arguments that I may have been right, but based on their life experiences and their journeys, they were also correct, and that there is no such thing as right and wrong, only perspective. Because of how large this blindspot was for me, allowing wisdom and light into one of my deepest and darkest blockages exploded my mind and heart open, I was never the same.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”

―Rumi

The day after this happened my best friend Annie and I took a glass ceiling train to Maccu Pichu on my birthday. It was one of the best birthdays I’ve ever had.

DMT

I was hesitant about DMT because of what I heard from others who had taken this massive journey into their mind and deep into the edges of the universe I kept hearing - ‘you are never the same.’ I knew they probably meant in a positive way, but it was still a bit scary. At this point in my life I had journeyed quite a few times into the universe beyond my consciousness so I felt respectfully nervous, but trusted in my gut.

The first time I did DMT I was living in my dream apartment in San Diego. I created a very safe, very cozy nest, I set intentions, lit candles and incense, journaled, was surrounded by pillows and blankets and beautiful things: I was ready. I inhaled 2.5x (I tried for 3 but couldn’t make it) and was immediately transported into outer outer space, from the darkest depths inside my mind. Through the sky, past the stars and planets and galaxies all the way to the end, and then further past that to where reality folded back on itself and the farther I traveled through the universe the closer I got to myself.

At the outer reaches of beyond the imagined universe, I saw faces very similar to what Alex Grey paints - columns made of consciousness all connected with each other, infinitely. I tried speaking with this vibrating consciousness, I can’t call them ‘beings’ because they were all one ‘being’ and they weren’t separate from myself, and we are all one and and and.

I realized communicating with them through words or even thoughts wasn’t the right way, so instead I allowed myself to received from them. What washed over me was this light pink vibration that felt like the juicyest hug and cuddles I have ever received and the truth that love is everything. Love is me, love is you, the world is love; there is nothing in this world that is not love.

Inevitably, the sound of motorcycle on the 5 ended up pulling me out of this beautiful experience - this real life dream. Part of me was sad it was over, it was like death in a sense that you are so held by love and therefore want to return but know its not your time. Part of me was happy I got to see and experience this…. Happening. Part of me wanted more, and if I’m being super duper honest, part of me felt like I wasn’t enough: this is a childhood wound pattern that occasionally plagues me. I felt like I wasn’t “good enough” to experience the wisdom these beings / entities / creatures bestowed on me. This felt super heavy to carry and to hold, but was eventually alleviated.

Ketamine

The first time I did ketamine I was incredibly depressed and thinking of ending things - this was around 27 years old in the classic dark-night-of-the-soul / Saturn Return time. I called my friend Eddie to see if I could come over his house and have him ‘babysit’ me - as I literally didn’t trust myself alone with my suicidal thoughts.

This turned out to be one of the single best decisions I’ve ever made.

I came over and told him honestly and vulnerably what was going on with me and he asked if I wanted to try ketamine.

I assured him ‘no, absolutely not,’ as I felt anything could push me over the edge of the precipice I found myself teetering on.

“Now is the exact moment you need ketamine,” He told me; because he was one of my closest friends I trusted him, believed him and tried it, and he saved my life.

Suddenly, the Soul that is ME or the ‘Self’ pulled away from the avatar personality of the Jess-self and I was able to see that I am not Jess, I am the limitless expansive energy that currently animates this ‘Jess Person,’ AND this ‘Jess Person’ has some sort of physical chemical imbalance that causes super dark depressive episodes, but I am not that self, I am beyond that - beyond all description except for, simply put, I AM.

By the time I came back in my body I was no longer depressed or suicidal. With wide teary eyes and a genuine smile on my face and heart I told Eddie what happened. It felt like it had been months I had gone without smiling it actually felt unfamiliar at first. He had saved me.

Iboga

Iboga was the hardest plant medicine I’ve ever done and it was more recently in 2024. My (now ex) boyfriend, Jason, and I traveled to a farm in Somewhere, Portugal and entrusted our life to this (very vetted) clinic - they monitor your heart the whole time. Iboga is insanely dangerous and does kill people. I do not recommend this as even though my heart was fine, I came out of the 3 days so convinced I was dead I was, in fact, trying to convince other people too.

It seems that people’s journey’s are vastly different. You do not get visuals with Iboga like with Ayahuasca… but then again you sort of do? But they’re different? It’s a bit hard to explain but I‘ll do my best: Ayahuasca is known as the Grandmother Plant Medicine, she’s flowy, feminine, you can talk to her during your journey and she’ll work with you. Ayahuasca can be difficult, but you do feel as though you are held by her throughout. Iboga is a very Saturnian Grandfather, strict and rigid - you feel like you are learning and growing but perhaps through punishment - for me it felt like I was made it sit in ‘time out.’

During my journey and under the influence for 3 days I had to fight a demon to save my brother, which is what broke the wall into the experience. I was in hell walking around, I was suffering a lot, but the through line through all of this was ‘I’m suffering now, and that’s okay.’ ‘I’m in hell now, and that’s okay,’ come to the marrow-deep realization that even if I was in hell now, I probably wouldn’t be later.

I could hear Jason crying in the room next to me and I knew it was because I was dead. Eventually after 3 days there was a knock at the door and the guides came in and said he wanted to talk to me. I asked if it was because I was dead. They gave me a confused and concerned look - which only deepened my inner knowing that I was, in fact, deceased. Jason came in and hugged me, it was one of the best hugs I’ve ever received, through tears and sobbing together I asked him if he had called my parents, to which he responded ‘no, why?’ And I tearfully told him he had to call them and tell them I was dead, and they were gonna be so mad at him but he had to arrange my body to be sent home.

After a lot of back-and-forth-disagreeing-and-convincing he picked me up and brought me outside in the sunshine flower filled meadow of Portugal springtime. We connected so deeply, so vulnerably, so beautifully ending with him asking, through tears “did we just get really lucky?”

The things I learned through this experience are: wherever you are, that’s okay, it’s not your final destination. Life is mostly suffering spotted with insanely gorgeous times when the cosmic sun comes out.

~

I wrote about this in another blog Iboga: Death & Dying because it was such a vast experience that would be too much to share here in my light explanations of my plant medicine ceremonies and adventures.

Bufo

Bufo was one of the most delightful frog medicines I’ve ever done. I inhaled, and as I exhaled, the whole world was created out of my mouth - rivers, lakes, mountains, jungles, flowers, animals. It was incredible as the longer I exhaled, the more I created.

After my initial exhale ended, I started to laugh and my laughter made me laugh harder and I felt like I was laughing from the insides my organs and bone marrow, it was the extreme feeling of inexplicable pleasure like an impossible itch was finally being scratched. I laughed for everything, the sun, the moon, the flowers, laughter itself, joy, being in love, being loved, friendship, sunshine, etc.

After I laughed, I began to cry, and the crying turned to sobbing turned to wailing and it felt literally delicious. The crying made me cry harder and deeper and feel into all the pain, but the pain felt glorious. It felt like life. I wept for myself, my pain, my trauma, my inner child, I wept for my parents, my friends, I wept for my ancestors and finally I wept for the sadness in the world. The more I wept the more clarity I gained and the lighter I felt.

In Conclusion

I’m a supporter of the Stoned Ape Theory: neanderthal man was going around doing neanderthal things until he ate a magic mushroom and suddenly wondered about things outside of himself. I believe in this theory because of how it mirrors my own life. I was curious about consciousness, ate an mushroom, and then I experienced the w i d e n i n g of it and suddenly noticed consciousness being just as curious about me… and I was never the same.

Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.

— Terence McKenna

Once again this blog is only to share my personal experiences, not to convince or influence in anyway. This is an invitation to do your own research and to make your own choices. People have had very bad trips - and I have had a few of my own that took a long time to heal from. Exploring the recesses of your consciousness is altering, is an opening, and is a commitment. Once you start to go down these rabbit holes you can’t come back. This is not medical advice.

Psychedelics are the red pill. Proceed with caution.

Xoxo

Jess

Travel is easier than you think

I started writing this blog a million years ago because people keep asking me “how do you travel so much.” People were asking 10 years ago and they’re still asking now, and my answer is always the same. “Traveling is easier than you think.”

I grew up near Detroit and loved urban exploring through abandoned buildings, I also grew up on the Great Lakes which are as large as seas and I would stand and stare watching the sun rise on the east coast and set in the west over a different country on one side and a different state on the other. I think this is what began my insatiable urge to see the world, the knowing of the unknown on the other side of the water.

This blog is 2 parts. 1. Travel is easy 2. Listen to your Intuition.

Travel is easy

Step 1: Pick a place you want to go. This might be a place that you’ve always been curious, or seen on TikTok, or feel a pull, or just close your eyes and place your finger on a spinning globe and go there. I’m serious - just pick a location.

Step 2: this is my blog so it will be tips on how I travel - I like to travel in circles to see the maximum amount of places which means I land in Bangkok - I travel through Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and back down through Thailand to the airport in Bangkok. Or I fly to Ireland and work my way through England, Scotland and France or Spain. Or I fly to Korea and do Japan, Thailand, the Philippines. Just make a circle and maximize your locations. If you don’t want to go to a bunch of places - than don’t do this and just make up your mind. Easy peasy.

Step 3: stay in hostels and maximize the people you meet. The more people you meet, the more you LEARN. You learn about their culture, their food, their country. You learn about cool things they’ve seen that you didn’t know about; you make new friends that you can now visit in other places. Several of my besties are people I met while traveling and we still travel together to this day and meet up in our respective countries.

Step 4: join an online program life WOOfing, Workaway, Worldpackers, Housesitters.com - anything to maximize your stay in a more expensive or exclusive country. The more you work, the more references you have, the wider your reach.

Step 5: now you’ve learned some things 1. Everyone is kind 2. The world is smaller than you think 3. You have friends everywhere.

I am very okay with the unknown, and in fact, prefer it. I have the ability to get to a country with no plan and feel completely at ease because my trust in my intuition and the universe is huge. This might sound naive to tourists, but travelers know that no plan can be the best plan.

Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown.

~ Anthony Bourdain

The other side note is I have taught sound healing all over the world for 8 years and have students in every corner of the globe. This definitely gives me a leg up.

Travel tips

1. Learn how to say “hello,” “please,” “thank you,” and “you’re welcome,” in the local language. It goes a looooong way, people are grateful you care enough to consider their language.

2. English is pretty much spoken everywhere, but still considerate (the highest form of love) to learn bits of another language

3. Be polite to everyone.

4. Discuss / haggle money before you get into a taxi / Tuktuk. The price will be way higher if you wait til the end.

5. Share your location with friends you trust.

6. Keep 2 wallets. One that you use and one that you hide.

7. Never let your phone or drink out of your sight.

8. REALLY IMPORTANT - travel with someone who travels like you. If you like to see a million places do NOT travel with a friend who wants to sit on a beach all day. Even though you love each other this will start to bother you both. Ask clarifying questions: what kind of traveler are you? Do you want to see 5 places or happier with 1? Do you want luxury or hostels? Do you want lazy or active? Do you want mountains or beach?

9. Listen to intuition NO MATTER WHAT. It doesn’t matter if someone is really nice, if your gut says no, than it’s a FUCK NO.

These are all tips I learned through experience and I’ve saved the most important tip for a whole section of itself.

Intuition is key

People stare at me blankly when I say I’ve traveled the world by myself. “What do you mean?” They ask.

“I mean I literally have traveled, solo, by myself, to new places, across countries, up mountains, around, the world and back again.” I say.

* Cue a different incredulous stare *

My ‘secret’ is I use, and have always used, my intuition. Your intuition is a muscle, just like all your other senses. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. Something can sound good on paper but in-person the vibes can be completely 100% off. I have solo traveled all over the world and this is my main rule - and probably why I’m still alive - if it doesn’t feel good, DO NOT DO IT.

If that familiar alleyway - the same one you always take home but for some reason it seems scary tonight - YOU ARE RIGHT. IT IS. Trust your gut & pick a new way home.

If a person seems so sweet but there’s something about them you can’t place, set a boundary immediately and see how they react. If they react poorly this isn’t great, make sure friends have locations or walk up to another girl and pretend to know her. Keep yourself safe and in public until you have a safe and accessible out.

Intuition is not just a spiritual thing - your gut is literally alive and made up of billions of bacteria, that I assume, also want to live. If you die, they die. There are many different ‘antennae’ including your nervous system, the sense of being stared at that makes the back of your neck prickle - that all let your mind know you are in danger. LISTEN TO IT.

I have run into some scary situations, and have survived 100% of them. Why? This ones for the girls:

• If you feel threatened, do NOT act like prey: I mean this with my whole heart. It depends on the situation but in my experience: dangerous men are cowards. If you square up to them, they have all backed down.

• And of course disclaimer: this is not one-size-fits-all - if someone is acting violent or scaring you - then of course, find a friend, or a person and make sure you are safe and then leave.

Intuition key points

• One time I was in an alley buying weed during a rainstorm and my poncho was not working with me, I started to get a bad feeling, told my (ex) boyfriend as the guy grabbed my money and ran. My ex chased him down.

• So many times men have come up to me in dark corners of roads or hallways and I make my energy really big and stare at them directly in the eyes - they hate that!

• I’ve been places where my body has not let me walk further into the cave / forest / building. I don’t push it, I trust my intuition with my life - literally.

• Your stomach is called the second brain for a reason (although technically in my opinion its brain #1) your body doesn’t want to die. Your body will send signals to the brain. Listen to them.

If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”

~ Anthony Bourdain

Go, explore, wander, immerse yourself in other experiences and you will gain so much.

Xoxo

Jess

Tiny travel hacks

I started writing this blog in 2017 when I went to Thailand the first time with an ex-boyfriend. I am finishing this blog in Thailand in 2025 after a break up with my more recent (ex) boyfriend. Funny how things finish full circle, it honestly feels like I’m closing a whole loop of choosing the wrong person over myself, and it’s the Libra Full Moon which is highlighting partnerships vs autonomy… but I digress.

I am a wanderer with an insatiable urge to see the whole world - and therefore I am permanently on the road and have been for many years, this was true in 2017 when I started this blog and it’s even more true now in 2025. I am primarily a backpacker so these are lessons I’ve learned over time regarding backpack weight that I would like to share with you - so you aren't left shaking your fists at the sky wishing you had these tiny things that make life so much easier. Now my style of travel has only changed slightly since 2017 and I am still a backpacker, but if I buy too many things I will buy a small suitcase to bring things home.

For now this is just tiny simple things to make your backpacking adventure way easier. The only thing that matters while backpacking or traveling light is that you are waterproof and your bag doesn’t weigh as much as you do.

Tiny Extras that make your life easier

1. Tiny fabric or plastic bag. Maybe for rocks or earrings or money.

2. Pill bottle. This goes hand in hand with above, if you have precious jewelry you don’t want crunched, this is a perfect thing to bring. I would of course limit the jewelry you bring - you will most likely find things along the way.

3. Woman: Diva Cup! This will make your life infinitely easier. Trust me.

4. Q-tips. Enough said.

5. Ziploc bags of every size!!! Small. medium size (think sandwich bag) and super large size; these are the magical items that waterproof your clothes and separate all of your belongings (including your dirty laundry). The small ones are great for toiletries, so if something spills, like Teatree oil, it is quarantined safely away from everything else! ~ learned from experience ~ The large bags are life savers and act as a vacuum seal.

6. Baby wipes - your new best friend.

7. A large scarf - doubles as beach towel or skirt or mask

8. Super light sun shirt - to wear over a bathing suit or something to allow for the wind if you’re riding scooters or hiking and don’t want to get burned.

9. A dry bag if you’re going somewhere during rainy season or plan on being on a boat

10. A carabiner - you won’t know when you’ll need it until you really need it

11. One nice (simple) outfit! Depending on where you’re going - you’ll probably buy a bunch more but it’s nice to have one.

12. Sandals + boots and something in between!

13. Bring minimal makeup - its not necessary and you can always buy more.

14. Mouthwash!

15. Coconut oil - bring a small bottle of coconut oil for just about anything: used to take off your makeup, as lotion, to ease an irritated skin blemish, for oil pulling etc.

16. Tea Tree oil - fixes almost everything :)

17. Earplugs - if traveling in hostels or overnight trains or buses.

18. Download audio books and movies to access offline. There will be (many) times the internet is not accessible so having some form of entertainment is a must.

Trust me when I say you will only use 1/2 the clothes you bring. Traveling is much easier than you think. I hope you risk it and take the jump and just do it. You will learn so much more about yourself in 3 months of travel than you will in any other circumstance. It breaks you open, it makes you grateful, it makes you flexible and calm and compassionate. You meet people and see things and taste things you’ve never experienced before. It shapes and molds you into a better kinder person who understands that all people are innately good. It has changed, shifted and molded me into the person I am today…. And I am very proud of that person.

Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you; it should change you.

~ Anthony Bourdain

Xoxo

Jess

The Unstruck Sound

From repetition of and reflection of Om, comes cosmic consciousness, as well as the destruction of physical and mental diseases. PYS 1.29

Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?

What are my credentials? Well, I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Health Sciences, double minors in Sociology and Biology, a theme in Death and Dying, half of a Master’s Degree in Integral Health and 2 ex-career’s as a medical device trainer and as a research scientist. Why am I telling you all of this? Ironically (or maybe not) all of this science led me to my current career(s). I now have multiple advanced certifications in yoga, breathwork, energy healing, reiki, pranic healing, Biofield tuning, sound healing and Kalos. I attend several 7 day retreats per year on meditation, or yoga, or psychedelics, or healing my brain be more coherent, or working with my inner child. It’s been a long and fascinating road, and today I call myself a metaphysical guide, a master sound healing facilitator (specializing in tuning forks and crystal bowls), a storyteller, a medicine woman, a ritual facilitator, and an embodied movement (yoga) and breath(work) guide. 

Let’s continue:

If you’ve ever taken a yoga class you’ve heard chanting or singing of the word “Aum.” Aum is special and considered the vibration from which all existence arises; it has 3 distinct syllables: Ahh represents creation - the beginning, Uuu represents preservations, the dream state, and Mmmm represents dissolution, the deep sleep state; together they create the entire cycle of existence: birth, life and death. We use this sacred sound, Aum, in yoga to stimulate our connection with ourselves, others, and the universe; to vibrate our throat chakra, the thyroid gland, Udana Vayu (ascending air), Jalandhra Banha (throat lock) and thus harmonize our relationship between heart, breath, and bodymind.

Aum is the bow, the self is the arrow, and Brahman (Sat Chit Ananda = bliss) is the target.”

~ Mundaka Upanishad

Traveling back in time, we learn in 3rd grade science class that everything around us - our body, our brain, the materials our chairs are made of, our loved ones, our phones are all made of the same thing: vibration… AND that we are (incredibly) mostly space, AND our atoms vibrate through that space to influence matter. It could be said that vibration is the building blocks (or waveforms if you prefer) of our universe.

So, we have an intersection between spirituality and science, whereas science agrees that waveforms come first and physical matter originates from vibration (sound) and not only that, but physical matter can be influenced by sound, which we see directly when we study Cymatics or, the shape of sound… but more on that later.

Nada Yoga + Anahata Nada

Nada Yoga, often called the yoga of sound, is a lesser-known but profoundly transformative limb of the yogic path. Rooted in the ancient Vedic traditions, it teaches that the entire cosmos - our bodies, our thoughts, our relationships—is made of sound vibrations, and that by consciously working with sound, we can refine our awareness and attune to higher states of consciousness. While the physical postures (asanas) of yoga are aimed at aligning the body, Nada Yoga aligns our inner vibration with the vibration of the universe itself. It begins with external sound—like mantras, singing bowls, or even classical ragas - but gradually draws us inward to listen for the internal sound current, or nada, which leads to deep meditative absorption. In this practice, sound becomes not only a tool for healing but a vehicle for liberation. Just as the breath leads us into presence in pranayama, in Nada Yoga it is the listening itself that becomes the practice - listening so deeply that even silence hums. When I facilitate sound journeys, I often feel this lineage vibrating through the room -like ancient rivers of tone guiding people back to their essence.

The Anahata Nada, which means the Unstruck Sound, is not something we hear with our ears, instead we feel it on our soul. It’s a vibration that transcends the physical and emanates from the very fabric of creation. Many traditions describe it as the primordial sound of the universe or the echo of source, not unlike AUM. If you recognize “Anahata” you would recognize it as the Sanskrit name of the Heart Chakra which means “unstruck;” the heart center is a bridge from the physical to the spiritual and is the location where the Anahata Nada can be felt, makes sense, right?

In sound healing and vibrational medicine, the concept of Anahata Nada is easily graspable, as we are able to hear the crystal bowls, Tibetan bowls, Koshi chimes and gongs that are struck; but we also feel them inside ourselves- it evokes something within us. It’s almost as if we are cleansing the pathways of listening deeper so that we can hear the Anahata Nada through our feelings sense. We are diving in to ourselves so deeply we come out the other side in the universe… and vice versa. Through the deep listening we develop in our meditation practice we can attune to the Unstruck Sound. In Jivamukti yoga, Nadam, refers to the concept of deep listening and by tuning our awareness in we can increase our sensitivity to perceive the Unstruck Sound within us. The founders of Jivamukti yoga believe that sound is a vehicle of liberation which is why the silence inside of the sound is where Nadam reveals itself. The best experience I can relate this to in my own life is doing Ayahuasca in the jungle of Peru and hearing the Icaros and remembering the song even though I had never heard it before: it was as if my soul remembered the song before I was born.

“Music is the space between the notes"

~ Claude Debussy

Similar to mindfulness practices like yoga, breathwork, meditation and sound therapy - to hear the Unstruck Sound is a coming home to oneself. It’s not chasing anything external but rather unveiling what is already present, inside and innate to us, which is the divine.

I have an interesting tangent that I’ll go off on for a moment - I write a lot of notes to myself to remind me of things when i have time to get back to them. One fateful day in 2014 I found a note that said “songs from the wood.” I didn’t even remember writing this and didn’t recognize this phrase, but it was my own handwriting so i googled it and found that this was an album by Jethro Tull. I listened it and literally couldn’t stop listening to it for a month. I told my mom about this one day on the phone and she said,”

“That is what your dad listening to the whole time I was pregnant with you.”

I was floored. It was almost as if my ears didn’t recognize the music, my soul did.

Science and Sound

I’ve already eluded to cymatics - the shape of sound. Why is this important? Have you watched any of the videos yet and seen physical matter be manipulated by sound? If not please leave this blog for a moment as it will be waiting for you to finish after you watch some YouTube videos.

Now that you’re back: doesn’t it bend the mind and stretch the imagination in curious ways? If sound can manipulate these viscous substances, much like blood and lymph, what can sound do to our physical bodies?

I have 4 tuning forks that are pairs - one pair creates the Schumann Resonance as a binaural beat, and the other creates the Fibbonnaci Sequence. The Schumann Resonance is known as the heart beat of the earth and the Fibonnaci Sequence we know as sacred geometry. Binaural beats can influence different brainwaves states and allow for relaxing deeper, more focus and even altered states of consciousness.

When you listen to music you not only hear the music but you feel things, yes? More than likely you have playlists to influence, change, alter or deepen a mood. The famous Japanese research Dr. Emoto shared his findings with the world in a book called Hidden Messages in Water where he said affirmations and played different music to water, froze the water and took images of the crystals that could / could not form. Water that was told ‘I love you’ and water that listened to classical music formed beautiful crystals, while the water that was told ‘I hate you‘ and listened to extreme heavy metal couldn’t form a crystalline structure. Again I rhetorically ask, what are the implications for our physiology?

What if I told you that sound can create light?

Well it can: Sonoluminescence is the phenomenon where tiny bubbles in liquid emit light when exposed to sound waves… it is postulated that at the peak of the bubble collapse it may turn into plasma (which is electrically charged.) (Google) 

Magic is just science we don’t understand yet.

 – Arthur C. Clarke

Integration

Maybe this quote makes more sense now:

“from repetition of and reflection of Om, comes cosmic consciousness, as well as the destruction of physical and mental diseases.”

Through repetition of refining our hearing, of showing up for ourselves, of have power over our thoughts through meditation, resilience through suffering in life and yoga, listening deeply and falling into our breath; through doing sound healing sessions we can find transcendence beyond the physical and into the cosmic and spiritual. Through suffering we learn and become wiser, more compassionate, more patient. Remember the saying ‘no mud - not lotus.’ We are all growing through our own mucky muck to eventually rise to the surface of our pond blossoming open the illuminated jeweled lotus that we truly are.

The yoga of sound, the unstruck sound, study of sound, the shape of sound, healing with sound, sound creating light… the fact that we’re vibration, it’s intriguingly all about us and the alive world around us, weird, right?

And repetition of vibration, through tuning forms or Aum can unite the different layers of the body “as well as the destruction of physical and mental diseases.”

Teaching sound healing, yoga and breathwork is one of the joys of my life. Helping people regulate their nervous system, find alignment, embodiment, and thus illumination is one of my most consistent and largest blessings. Teaching people the science of sound coming from an academic background in health and physiology, and as a yoga teacher allows me embody my teachings at the various intersections of biology, science and spirituality.

This essay has no answers, just excitement and pure fascination to learn deeper and expand my knowledge on all these topics. Sound creates light, light touches matter, and matter responds with energy. The study of vibration is more than just a fascination… it’s a frontier. The more we learn about it - the more we learn about ourselves. 

Om Mani Padme Hum (Hail to the jewel in the Lotus)

What do I do next?

• Start small and hum or AUM for 5 minutes in the morning or the evening.

• Find a breathwork coach and lets regulate your nervous system!

• Listen to a binaural beat YouTube video with headphones!!

Curious to experience more?

Don’t hesitate to reach out if you’re called to deepen your practice with private sessions!

I hope this blog sparked intrigue in you - it definitely did for me while writing it!

Happy exploring y’all!

Xoxo

Jess

Turning the Wound into Wisdom

How Movement, Breath and Sound can Positively Influence Trauma 

Trauma 

Essentially, everyone we come into contact with is traumatized in some way or another; thankfully people are becoming more aware of trauma and are open to talking about it & how it affects people’s daily lives. Trauma exists on a spectrum and therefore no one’s trauma is better or worse than anyone else’s, because it doesn’t matter what happened- what matters is how your system experienced it. Unprocessed trauma shows up in everyday life by overreacting to small things, feeling numb or disconnected to life, your friends or even your own body; it manifests as chronic tension, self sabotage, perfectionism, trouble with trust, and of course the big two: anxiety and depression. Trauma lays the groundwork for a fractured identity, addiction, self harm, can cause attachment issues, affect development (especially if the trauma happened in childhood,) lead to C-PTSD, the list goes on. If you don’t suffer from these things, I’m sure you know at least 10 people who do, and if you don’t it's because they’re better at hiding it than you are at perceiving it.

Trauma is not only physically stored in our body, it actually changes our brain. Neuroscience shows in a traumatic event the parts of our brain involved in memory formation and time are affected, and as a result perception is distorted. Talk therapy is great (as sometimes our ability to communicate shuts down to trauma) but we know now that isn’t enough because of how it affects the brain AND body. When healing, we have to re-integrate both hemispheres - left (logic analytical) and right (emotional or creative) and we can do this through movement, breath and sound therapy. Walking with arms swinging to create a cross body movement, binaural beats, alternating nostril breathing, chanting and humming, drawing, and dancing can all help integrate the brain and body. 

Somatic therapies are necessary for trauma recovery and trauma-informed yoga, breathwork and sound + energy healing can be fantastic when it comes to healing the body and integrating the hemispheres. Yoga helps reconnect the body-mind in a safe way, breathwork calms the nervous system, dancing can discharge trapped energy, and safe consensual touch can heal attachment wounds. Being in nature and meditation can restore a safe connection to your body and visualization can help with trauma healing due to its potential to create new internal experiences and regulate the nervous system. Listening to sound frequencies that oscillate left and right, humming, toning and chanting can all stimulate the vagus nerve.

The Vagus Nerve

Let’s talk about the Vagus (latin for wandering) Nerve for a bit, as it plays a key role in trauma recovery. The vagus nerve is your only cranial nerve that winds all the way down to your lower torso. I like to think of it like a magical thread inside our body. Vagal tone is measured from the health of the Vagus Nerve: high vagal tone means your body can relax quickly after stress, low vagal tone means it can’t. There are 3 options for Vagal tone: Safe (ventral), Activated (sympathetic) and Freeze (Dorsal Vagal.) When we are safe our magic thread (aka Vagus Nerve) glows white, when it is activated it becomes anxious and red, and when it’s in a freeze response it’s slow and frozen, like the color blue.

Increasing Vagal tone matters because it helps you bounce back quicker from stress, it helps you sleep and digest better, you feel more balanced and connected, and lastly your immune system becomes strong. So how do you build vagal tone? 

Movement

• Yoga Twists

• Cold exposure 

• Massage

• Dancing

Breathwork

• Deep slow breathing with exhales > inhales

• Meditation and mindfulness

• Laughter

Sound

• Humming

• Chanting

• Singing

• Therapeutic Sound Healing Sessions

Not surprisingly, all the things we can do to build Vagal Tone are all things we can do to regulate our nervous system - which is the foundation for integrating and healing trauma. If you’re reading this and you’re like ‘Jess I’ve had a pretty blessed life,” then I would be delighted for you, however, some of the trauma that we store in our body comes from a pre-verbal time. What do I mean by that? Maybe we were left for 5 minutes as a newborn, because our parents had to run to the bathroom… but 5 minutes to a baby is eternity. As a newborn we can’t be mad (we don’t even know what that is yet) at our parents. But as we age into childhood and pre-teen years we remember the feeling of abandonment, but we still can’t be angry with our primary caregivers because without them means certain death. So as we get older we internalize the abandonment and anger we felt towards them and we feel shame: the core emotion in trauma. These Samskaras (impressions from the past) “leave subtle impressions and unconsciously affect our habits, self perceptions, expectations or disposition.”

Creating a Safe Place Through Movement, Breath + Sound

In the safe space created by practicing yoga, doing breathwork and having crystal bowl meditation sessions or tuning fork therapy we often feel emotions unexpectedly arise to the surface - I have lost count the amount of times I have cried on my yoga mat or in crystal bowl sessions. Yoga, Breathwork + Sound and Vibrational medicine is a sacred invitation to re-establish the safe, connected relationship you have with your body and meet yourself exactly where you are at. 

Yoga, breathwork and sound gives an opportunity to rebuild the trust that was broken especially when working with a proficient practitioner. The moment a bad* emotion visits you (like shame or anger) they can gently hold space or even mirror while you process what that emotion is teaching you. With yoga, interoceptive awareness opens up pathways for these Samskaras (secret underlying memories) to be received and processed and released by the mind. With breathwork, we create spaciousness in the nervous system allowing life force to move through and dissolve patterns of tension. With sound healing + vibrational frequencies, we bypass the logic brain and speak directly to the body’s innate intelligence, restoring harmony where dysregulation once took root.

In yoga, we know the hips hide fear, anxiety, sadness, and a lot of sexual trauma; shoulders carry burdens and the weight of the world, and can become rigid when we are unable to let go. The lower back and hamstrings hold guilt, repressed feelings and pain of the past - typically regarding relationships. The knees are joints of ego and pride holding the inability to bend and be flexible. Neck pain is stubbornness and refusing to see the other side of the story. In sound healing we know the feet carry you through life and carry the cadence of your step (is it a trudge or a dance?). The throat is your truth and communication and connecting or bridge to your divinity. Working with the chakras is what helps us understand this world of relationships. Memory can be felt through a pain in the body which can be seen in a chakra and is an indicator to release through movement and intentional breath. Take a breath.

“and i said to my body. 

softly. 

‘i want to be your friend.’ 

it took a long breath. 

and replied 

‘i have been waiting my whole life for this.”

― Nayyirah Waheed

Remember, healing is not about getting rid of the shadow or “getting over it,” or pretending there is no trauma, or trying to escape our reality. We heal the body by integrating all of our experiences and coming home to it. Loving all parts of ourselves and turning the Wound into Wisdom.

As a trauma-informed yoga teacher, breathwork coach and master sound healing practitioner, holding space for you on your healing journey is a most sacred blessing to me. I would love to help guide you turn your Wounds into Wisdom. Please Contact me and let me know how i can best serve you.

Xoxo

Jess

Imposter Syndrome on Retreat

I am lucky enough to work for a Meditation Retreat company called Jhourney based out of San Francisco. I had my first retreat with them May 2024 and wrote a Blog about it, which you can find here. They helped me learn how to meditate myself and since then it’s been something I look forward to every day. I am happy to say that since I found them I am a Meditator, and i love it.

I have been on their facilitation team with an incredible group of humans which is a great joy to me. I’ve just returned from a deeply immersive retreat with them at Mt Madonna in California, and it was nothing short of transformative - but not the way you think!!!

Imposter Syndrome was definitely coming up for me as I was helping other people learn how to meditate while I was struggling with my own thoughts, patterns, coping skills and fear. This meditation retreat brought up a lot of unexpected emotions for me, and I always like to share in case it helps someone else feel less alone!

Since my break up last year I have been managing, sometimes better than other times, sometimes worse. But such is life, right? Well, what I realized on this retreat is my ~ main ~ coping skill that ‘keeps me safe,’ and ‘on my path’ and ‘moving forward’ is a pattern of Perfectionism!! And honestly, this pattern has been incredibly helpful with keeping me on track with my physical health since the break up - my daily workouts / coffee walks / and rock climbing with a “I MUST DO THIS” mindset. But spoiler alert- this pattern is not good long term or for emotional health AND I had no idea how much this pattern crept into the driver’s seat of my life, but there it was, looking over at me in the passenger seat.

This childhood pattern, that a lot of us have, was created when I was rewarded and loved most when I did well, and disregarded, disrespected and devalued when I did poorly; this lead me to mistakenly think I was only worthy when I did and performed well, and I was not worthy or lovable when I didn’t do well. This Perfectionist Pattern can also lead to people pleasing, masking, and fawning (the lesser known sister of the Fight or Flight response.) These patterns show up in my relationships…

• I’m going to be the best partner ever and prove I’m worthy of love!

• I’m going to put their needs first so they don’t abandon me!

• I’m not okay but they only like me when I’m 100%, so I’ll be 100%!

This pattern also shows up when I’m under stress or going through a hard time…

• I must be perfect or all is lost

• I’ll be fine (even when I’m clearly not)

• *would literally die before asking for help*

On this meditation retreat this pattern came up, and it came up LOUDLY - a spiritual 2x4 if you will! I was experiencing imposter syndrome, fear, not being good enough, worthy enough, smart enough, etc! It started to materialize in my physical body - I was actually having difficulty breathing + sleeping! Luckily I am always honest when someone asks how I’m doing and when my friends asked - I told them the truth - that I was really suffering inside of my own mind; thankfully I was surrounded by incredibly insightful friends who were able to mirror back to me that: I’m actually doing amazing all things considered! Thankfully I was at a meditation retreat, thankfully I knew how to sit with myself and breathe through it, rather than just trying to get around it without feeling it. So I felt into it and at first it sucked. My brain told me how ~ not good enough ~ I was and how ~ unworthy ~ I was, so I asked it what was the positive intention behind those phrases and mean thoughts. It continued: you suck and you shouldn’t be here, and I kept sitting with these thoughts asking what the positive intention was behind them. Finally they said forgiveness, peace, and letting go and I was able to breathe these intentions into my body and into my bones.

I was able to sit with myself, my struggles, my life events, and then the fear, and the messiness of being a sensitive human. I realized that the fear was false, perfectionism is not real, and I am allowed to be whatever I am in the moment, and I am worthy of love despite my messiness! All humans are! I was able to allow forgiveness to wash over me and uncover peace. I was able to let go of these false thoughts because I know logically and intuitively they are NOT me.

It’s ridiculous to think my worth is based on random thoughts in my head. I was reminded of a quote that I often share with clients - do not believe every thought you think! Your thoughts are not your truth!! Why? Well, our thoughts are based on the world inside of us and also the world outside of us. There are no answers in the world outside of ourselves, so by letting go of the external world and turning our gaze inward we begin to find our own personal truth.

Through allowing myself to be messy, imperfect, and loving the shit out of that broken-hearted girl inside me there began a spark, and through meditating on the ridiculousness of my thoughts, the silly notion that I am not worthy or good enough or lovable because I’m not 100% and the overall absurdity of the whole thing (being alive). The clouds in my head broke and I started to bask in the sunshine of my own heart and the infinite wellspring of love and courage and resilience that radiates from deep within me.

I know that every time my heart breaks and I find myself lost, I come back to myself stronger, more resilient, more compassionate, more patient, and more loving. I’m proud of my path and I’m proud of this person I’m always becoming.

So! After a full 7 days of struggle and then stillness, reflection on worth and lovability, and strong energetic recalibration through falling in love with myself again, has left me feeling more aligned and centered than ever.

TBH, I’m also wandering through Asia so that definitely helps ;)

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

― Frank Herbert

Let’s be messy silly imperfect humans that have beautiful intentions and learn from our mistakes and become better every day <3

I’d love to hear your story about how you overcame Imposter Syndrome! Message me + let’s chat!

Discovering Ourselves at Rock Bottom

Shamans know Rock Bottom is a deeply transformative place.

As we go through life, occasionally we find ourselves laid out on the floor of Rock Bottom; this is a natural part of living, growing and evolving. Rock Bottom happens eventually or suddenly, quietly or loudly, it affects all of us without bias, and can happen when we lose a job, or partner, or something else we considered ‘stable’ or ‘long lasting.’ We find ourselves here due to emotional upheaval and chaos, mental stress, health issues, spiritual confusion, a loss of a loved one, and many other reasons. Rock Bottom happens, shit happens but most importantly, Shift Happens.

I’ve learned to appreciate Rock Bottom because of the deeply transformative healing that can occur here. Rock bottom is a sacred initiation that cracks us open and allows us to shed old identities to reveal the light of our true selves.

Think about it for a second.

When you are falling you feel like you are failing and therefore you are flailing. There is nothing to hold on to, no one to grasp, there is no life line to hold. You can’t learn anything while you fall - except for how to fall. Sometimes all you can do is exist moment to moment. You are alone, no one can save you, survival is your only focus, your breath is your only friend. Things are breaking around and inside of you - your heart, your illusions, your patterns, your stories, your deeply engrained belief systems, and perhaps your sense of self and who you thought you were.

Perhaps around this time, we reach for a familiar coping skill and find ourselves confused because for some reason it (alcohol, drugs food, etc) doesn’t feel cozy or ‘good’ anymore… this is because as we fall we begin to learn, and a truth a lot of us discover here is that our old coping skill (that used to keep us safe and ‘protected’) is now the one thing responsible for us being kept us separate from the whole. Coping skills are things we learned to help us survive, but as we evolve we end up out-growing coping skills. It can be so scary when the things we used to reach for comfort are no longer comfortable. We are breaking the shell of our illusion.

We are rapidly unlearning the patterns and beliefs that were illusions of safety. Perhaps we begin to see through the illusions of the people around us; are your friends really your friends? A lot of us notice that as we get healthier and set boundaries we lose people around us that benefited from us having no boundaries. Perhaps we begin to see through the lies we told ourselves. Grasping for perfection or self righteousness in ourselves or others are destroyed when those hopes and expectations turn to ash and we realize that just like others, we are flawed. (The good news is that this is okay! More on that later…)

Even though Rock Bottom sucks, it might feel somewhat familiar - we’ve been here before. It’s a scary place because things feel so broken, but in the brokenness there is a deep vulnerability and therefore, the best medicine for us: healing potential.

Maybe we went through something again that we already experienced and we are so frustrated with ourselves, beating ourselves up for making the same mistake again - but maybe we didn’t learn the lesson well enough the first time, so the universe gave us another chance. Or maybe we did learn the lesson, but got too comfortable and forgot, and the universe challenged us with the same problem to see if our self awareness shifted. We can make the same choice with more awareness and more experience. Or maybe the universe is challenging us to be brave and choose something harder this time: perhaps choosing ourselves over another and risking loss and the unknown rather than staying in the familiar.

Here, the only thing we can do is allow ourselves to fall, and break, and be sad, and feel all the emotions that we are feeling. We writhe in uncomfortability, and yell, and curse the universe, How dare you! Why is this happening? What did I do to deserve this? All I want is to be happy! Fuck! Here we find a pregnant place of potential where we face the pain head on: we emote, we express, we cry, we journal, we write, we sit with the hurt, betrayal, and confusion. We sit with the pain and the different versions of ourselves (inner child etc) and we learn a valuable lesson: the way not around the pain, it is through.

It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value.

―Alain de Botton

Once we find ourselves here at Rock Bottom, once we have sat with our pain, accepted it and therefore accepted ourselves completely, faults and all, we begin to flow with it and through it, and eventually we begin to dance with it.

Here, true healing can begin because there is such weighted stillness, there is deafening silence, there is alone-ness, and there is spaciousness to heal, because there is such emptiness. This is bittersweet and it is hopeful: when something is empty is has the capacity to be filled.

For the first time, we take a big deep breath and face the things that we’ve been avoiding, and we face them alone. No friend, lover, parent or peer can help you here. We are here alone with all our patterns, all our wounds and insecurities. Here is the magical space we can begin to fill up our emptiness with whatever we want. Here we can start to rebuild ourselves, with a solid foundation that we can only get from being at Rock Bottom. Also, if you have noticed my use of the word ‘we’ rather than ‘you,’ it is very purposeful. Even though we are alone in this process, we all go through this at different times, phases and stages of our lives, and therefore, we are united in this void, and I think there is something gorgeous about this grief.

At Rock Bottom, the only one who can pick you up is yourself. You can call on the wisdom of your Older Self, or your trust in the universe (which is also you.) And so we begin again, a fresh start, a leg to stand on, we begin again. We start listening to podcasts, reading books, writing, journaling, creating, seeing joy in the little things - flowers in the cracks of sidewalks, the way the moon looks, the rays of the sun through the clouds, the laughter of a friend. We start to heal in the tiny moments that sew our heart back together. We start to heal by connecting to the innate wisdom that is us, that is our breath, that is our inner knowing that our current situation is not our final destination. We begin to realize that there is a silver cord throughout our life connecting us to synchronicity; and this perhaps this chaotic upheaval that we suffered through was (maybe, violently) redirecting us to a different path. We look back on all our prior Rock Bottoms and see how they guided us to be different, to be better, to be stronger, more resilient, more kind, more loving, more understanding, and most importantly more compassionate toward ourselves and others.

When we are in pain we are more vulnerable, open, and connected to everyone else. When we are in pain we can sit with other’s pain wholly, with empathy, and a deep understanding. We realize that we heal, not to handle the trauma, but to be able to hold the future joy; the joy that is imminent and just around the corner. We only have to allow ourselves to break, and fall, and dissolve; and gently, with patience and tenderness, pick ourselves up and eventually reach back out and engage in life: to chose to begin again, no matter how much it hurts.

I realized a long time ago that every time my heart breaks, it breaks open to hold more love, to hold more vulnerability, more compassion, and therefore to be able to hold more of me.

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

~ Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

In the past, I’ve held on to things for a while, and to quote someone from TikTok, those things that I held onto have claw marks on them from how much I loved them; but I, as we all do, inevitably learn to let go. Life isn’t about avoiding pain, it’s about jumping in and joining the dance. It’s about saying yes to the things that feel good regardless of the possible outcome. It’s about living fully with no regrets.

Lately, when I have suffered through breakups I truly feel into that loss, wholly and sacredly. I sit with myself at Rock Bottom and feel everything and when I feel ready, I begin again. As I get older I’ve come to realize that in relationships, I give my all, and I’m proud of myself for that. No matter the outcome, I’m able to walk away knowing that I gave such big love, and they most likely needed that.

When death finds you, may it find you alive.

~ African Proverb

So be patient with yourself as you win and as you fail. Be compassionate to yourself, your emotions, your mind, and your body. Forgive yourself for not understanding and forgive others for not understanding. Take care of your body, hydrate and don’t underestimate the power of a salt bath or a really good cry. Don’t forget to pause, take a moment to yourself, and connect with your breath. Most of all be gentle with yourself, you are learning, and you are only getting better, flaws and all.

Xoxo

Jess

Note:

This blog is brought to you by the year 2024, it was not my favorite.

I lost several friends, most notably one of my best friends, Tiffany Barsotti. I also left a relationship, sadly but intentionally, with someone who I thought was my forever.

fuck & the throat chakra

Screaming to release stuck emotions is a well-known method of Somatic Therapy - just like crying or shaking. These exercises can help to provide relief by setting the emotion free and relaxing the nervous system.

---

Never underestimate the power of screaming “FUCK” on the top of your lungs.

Seriously.

I know that might sound weird, but let’s unpack this together:

The word “Fuck” is the word we’re told we’re not supposed to say. And maybe because of this it might be the word we want to say: and therefore holds SOOOOO much energy. What we resist persists, remember?

We know that sometimes emotions get trapped inside our body if we don’t allow them their life’s mission - which is full expression. We know that stuck / long term emotions can cause physical issues (you’ve heard of stress & its relationship with disease, yes?)

Similar Childhood experiences

So let’s reflect on these potential experiences you may have had in childhood - especially if you’re female.

You may have been told:

1. You’re not allowed to be angry

2. You’re not allowed to be loud: kids are meant to be seen and not heard

3. How dare you say that!

Perhaps you were shamed with

4. People won’t respect you if you talk like a sailor.

5. Good kids don’t say bad words!

Perhaps guilted with

6. If you say that it reflects poorly on me!

This is a list of common things we’re told as children, amongst others. This list is destructive to our self esteem, autonomy and boundaries because it limits what you’re able to say and how you express. Who is anyone to tell you not to say things?

I’ve always thought that not saying a word gives it more power. This is also true when it comes to names. I have found when I do sound healing sessions, I sometimes will ask my client to purge the name of a person who hurt them; this is in order to release it out of their body. Often there is an emotional response to it and 10/10 times the person feels better! Consider the lesson of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named from the Harry Potter series:

“Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.” ~ Dumbledore

We allow certain words to hold energy and then we deny ourselves energy.

Why? Let’s use that untapped potential!?

I find that specifically yelling this word - FUCK - helps to release and unlock a lot of power from people who would consider themselves people-pleasers, perhaps children of narcissistic parents or tendencies, and therefore maybe lacking boundaries.

There is latent power in yelling FUCK.

Now, if you’re like “But Jess, the word FUCK comes from horrible roots!” Like yea, you might be right... But that just proves my point even more!

“If you name me, you negate me.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard.

What if instead of judging this word as bad, we unlock the potent potential of setting this word free. Let’s harness this ferocious energy of “FUCK” by yelling it on the tops of our lungs and using it to clear the Throat Chakra and heal ourselves!

*Note: I’m not saying its okay to swear AT people - anger splashed on others is, in fact, inappropriate.

Turning back time

Personally, I believe in past lives.

Back in the day it was easiest to kill people via the neck (aka Throat Chakra). People were hung, throats were slit, heads rolled from the guillotine. People who were scouts, truth tellers, and history writers were murdered to keep truth hidden. Is it any surprise that the reincarnations of those people - us - struggle with the truth: how can we speak our truth if it’s dangerous? if we’ll get killed because of it? if our subconscious mind or perhaps our soul is scarred with these memories as truth = pain?

How can we tell our truth when it’s literally been disconnected from us?

Why does this matter?

Healing the throat chakra

The Throat Chakra is seen as the bridge to higher chakras; below the Throat Chakra, the others deal with physical-realm things; safety, abundance, motivation, and love; but the Chakras above the throat deal with intuition, self awareness and realization, and divine consciousness & connectedness.

Finding your truth, understanding it and speaking it help heal the Throat Chakra. How do we do this?

1. Figure out what your truth is:

   • Spend time alone, away from people and social media

   • Others don’t know your truth, only you do

   • Silence helps you hear better

2. Understand your truth and what it means

   • Connecting deeply within yourself

   • Understanding your emotions & patterns

   • Aligning with your authenticity

3. Speaking your truth

   • From a space of integrity

   • With balanced emotions, and a centered & grounded Self

In Biofield Tuning, we find the right side of the Throat Chakra relates to issues speaking your truth and not being heard. This can be because someone wasn’t listening, or flat out didn’t believe you. The left side of the Throat Chakra deals with not speaking your truth; this can happen if we don’t know what our truth is, if speaking our truth isn’t safe, or even! If we’re not listening to ourselves. How can others hear us if we don’t hear ourselves?

When I work with clients on the Throat Chakra a piece of homework I give them is to go on a drive and scream FUCK as loud as they can. For themselves, for their inner child, for their pain, their life’s journey, for past lives, and people they’ve been before.

Try it & see what happens*

Here’s to the women who don’t give a fuck ~ Janne Robinson

Somatic therapy

This blog is inspired by the wisdom of Somatic Therapy. Somatic Therapy is not something I have been trained in, but its something I’ve always understood intuitively - and you probably do too.

We see children self soothe by moving or rocking their body back and forth when they are upset. We release emotional pain by crying or running or dancing. Somatic Therapy is a way to release emotions with techniques that range from body exercises - like shaking or writing or mental exercises like body scans, relaxing the body as you scan different areas with your mind.

I have found that specifically yelling FUCK seems to help unlock latent power in people who would historically call themselves people-pleasers. Something about saying the word ‘you’re not supposed to say’ sets them free.*

~

Please watch Osho’s similar opinion on The Magic of the Word Fuck

~

*Disclaimer -

1. Don’t splash your anger on others, there should be no ~ receiver ~ to your anger.

2. You don’t have to agree, as always try things with the same philosophy of trying on a T-shirt. If it doesn’t fit, try on a new one ;)

Self Care

Hey there :)

So funny story, it took me until the other day when I posted something about Self Care that I realized I have not actually written a blog on Self Care.

This is a bit unusual because I talk about it all the time - it is the tiny soap box I stand on and wave my hands around… and in typing that statement I just had an ah ha! moment after realizing that I just started my sound-healing-only-instagram after 15 years… so I suppose I am late on a few important things.

Better late than never!

*starts to judge self and then immediately soaks self in forgiveness and patience for beginning so late*

Phew! Anyways!

I’ve written blogs on Self Inquiry and Energetic Hygiene and other topics related to self care, but never solely on self care. So here we are! I hope you enjoy :)

Why is Self Care so important?

I’m glad you asked.

Gracious receiving gives dignity to the act of giving

Imagine being so excited to give someone a gift it feels like your ‘tail’ is wagging. Imagine feeling the difference between their two possible reactions: 1. “oh my god thank you so much I’ve been looking for one of these forever!!!” 2. “oh thanks.” What did your energy do when you read the first statement vs the second? Perhaps it felt like your heart opened on the first statement, or you felt energized or loved or even just smiled; and then perhaps your energy or heart may have drooped a bit on the second statement.

Now imagine them giving a gift to you and you receiving their gift with the same enthusiasm from statement 1. This is the best way to receive all gifts whether it be monetary, physically like a hug, or energetic like gratitude.

Why? You might ask.

Because:

Gracious receiving gives dignity to the act of giving

When we give and receive in equal measure our heart chakra becomes balanced. If you put your arms out to your sides in a ‘T’ shape you’ll notice the arms are in the ~ zone ~ of the Heart Chakra. The Heart Chakra has to do with the love, mercy, kindness and compassion we give and offer to others - but also the love, mercy, kindness and compassion we give to OURSELVES!

It is just as important to be nice to yourself as it is to other people. You are a worthy and deserving being! You’ve been through a lot and you’re trying your best!

Honestly it’s hard to remember this and I totally get it - one of the best phrases that was ever shared with me - credited to my dearly departed Tif - was “you parent yourself the way your parents did, when you are stressed out.” That statement whacked me in the head and landed hard in my heart: I’m a relatively easy going person… but in the past, when I was stressed, my brain chatter was constant judgement and inner critic.

Why am I talking all about this in a blog about Self Care? Well, when you think about Self Care, it’s about caring about yourself. If your parents weren’t super supportive then that is the tone of the inner voice you have in your head under stress. Gently trying to switch that inner critic to the inner coach is super beneficial. Constantly judging, nitpicking, comparing, putting yourself down probably hasn’t helped you in the past, so maybe it’s time to try a new way!

Self care covers a wide range of topics

Self Care can be being gentle to yourself. It can be reminding yourself not to beat yourself up over little things. It can be physical like drinking water or working out. It can be mental like writing a to-do list of silly tasks just so your brain gets dopamine once you check them off…

If you are an human in today’s society you’re probably a bit stressed. I invite you (mmmmaybe perhaps urge you) to put Self Care at the top of your daily to-do list. Between expectations of peers, colleagues and family; social media trying its best to harvest and monetize your attention (yuck!) and not-so-great-news being on the news all the time it’s important to stay aligned, grounded, true to yourself & healthy - whatever that means for you.

If you’ve found me for healing services then you might be considered a Highly Sensitive person / empath / light worker, and if so, it is paramount to our own healing journey to Self Care, especially if we are sharing our talents with others in a healing space. We can pick up energy from other people and we want to make sure we don’t continue to carry that energy around.

We live in a time we have to be connected at all times, we live in a time that we have talked and connected with more people this year alone than in the entire lives of people back then. How crazy to think about? I would wager a guess that we see / interact with more people in a month (in person and social media) than our ancestors saw in a lifetime?!

Because of this we desperately need to take care of ourselves.

So, what does Self Care look like?

In the past I have not had the best habits i.e. food and alcohol, and it was hard for me to get out of those habits - so one of the very first things that I taught myself to do was to marry a bad habit with a good one. Am I going to eat that bag of Doritos? Yes… AND! Now I have to eat an apple first. If you try to cut everything that’s unhealthy it miiiight not work, and this is because these unhealthy habits also moonlight as coping skills. Sometimes we do need a day to do nothing, so take it, you deserve it, and then the next day maybe you notice you’re 4x as productive! (Ps: these stories are all autobiographical ;)

It’s all about balance!

Self Care is so much fun because there’s so many options to chose from! Here are some ideas for you:

Self care ideas from my heart to yours

Physical

• Workout - it’s no joke that working out helps stimulate happy neurotransmitters in your body to make your brain happier

• Hydrate - drink water! This is one of the simplest things that makes the biggest difference.

• Massage (or Acupuncture etc etc) - supports flow in the body. Movement = flow = health.

• Cold plunge - creates more of a dopamine hit then cocaine!

• Infrared Sauna - because it can penetrate the skin to help your cells detox

• Hiking - my favorite activity

• Nature - nature is my #1 self care to bring me back in alignment to myself

• Fasting - intermittently, and every once and awhile 4-7 days because I love all the health benefits you get from it.

• Sobriety - I’ve been sober for 10 months now and will write about this soon

• Dancing! I love a good Kevin-Bacon-Footloose-Dance-Explosion!

• Literally anything physical that makes you feel awesome… even sex!

Energetic

• Set boundaries with parents / friends / whomever

• Saying “no” without explaining yourself

• Salt bath - salt has “green” energy according so certain color therapy modalities which is cleansing & dissolving

• Energy / sound healing sessions of course ;)

• “Cutting” cords - to bring back your energy from others

• Manifesting / vision board to awake dreams into life / keep you on track with your goals

• Do something new even if you scares you - I can’t stress this one enough. This is truly how I live my life and my life has been a grand adventure because of it.

• Anything that makes your heart soar, you feel satisfaction & pride in yourself, anything that increases your mana ;)

Mental

• Allow work to end when you punch out

• Write down to-do list per day or week, check things off no matter how trivial they seem trains your brain to be proud of yourself (sometimes I make a list and check off: coffee walk, journal, set intentions)

• Set phone hours like working hours - phone goes on airplane at 6p and off airplane at 6am

• Read - anything: magazines, comic books, fiction, non fiction, just the act of focusing and reading and enjoying

• Allow quiet time

• Journal your intentions

• Anything that helps you dive into something so deep you find the mind has accidentally quieted itself… even rabbit holes ;)

Spiritual

• Carving time out of your day for yourself i.e. solo time

• Meditate

• Connect with nature

• Start cultivating a true “You” practice, doing breathwork, learning about mindfulness, think of it like a gift to yourself

• Anything that brings you back home to yourself, in alignment with your truth and your wild authenticity

Stay in touch!

I would love to hear how this blog helped, inspired or just re-aligned you back on your path toward Self Care!

Don’t hesitate to reach out, comment like or share <3

Do you even Jhana, bro?

I just emerged from a 7 day Jhana Meditation retreat in Northern, California and it was delicious!

I have always had a deep desire to do a meditation retreat but have heard a fair share of horror stories about sitting still for 10 hours a day with no movement or journaling allowed - yikes! These stories have unfortunately really kept me from meditation retreats and also made me judge my own practice.

There are so many expectations you hear about meditation: you must sit still, you must focus, you must concentrate, you must do it for 30m at least, you must do it every day. For an Eastern Practice it has always felt oddly Western in its rigidity. I have never considered myself a great meditator because I have trouble sitting still, figit constantly, prefer movement in my meditation and feel most ‘connected’ to myself, the world around me and the universe when I’m on a difficult hike to a rocky summit.

I have known that I can access heightened states of consciousness and awareness due to my lifetime awareness of being a natural born intuitive and empath; and all the body / energy awareness it brings; and through my energetic & sound healing practice of 15 years. I never had words for these heightened states and would call them just that - “heightened states of consciousness,” “altered states,” being “blissed out,” or “in flow.”

As it turns out, these are Jhanic states: Jhana is defined as a meditative state of profound stillness and ’collectedness’ in which the mind becomes fully immersed and absorbed.

Like other epic crossovers (i.e. rap music falling in love with country and vice versa) I find it beautiful that the engineers and tech guys of Silicon Valley have hacked meditation using Left Brain techniques and skills. The facilitators at this retreat described it best when they said they “are using Left Brain Techniques to teach Right Brain Concepts.”

Think of it as a drop down menu:

Try to Relax, is it working? If yes, continue, if no, see if you can enjoy. Is enjoying working? If yes, continue, if no, try to observe, and so on and so on. The pillars they taught gave me confidence to ease into the techniques - and my favorite part - if you get distracted just allow the distraction to be part of the experience. ‘Distraction is traction,’ as they say - this is one of the biggest missing pieces for me! You mean I can invite all my thoughts and feelings, colors, songs from high school, bird noises, random dreams, “what am I going to eat later, when is my next hike” thoughts into my meditation?!

And you know what?

It worked! Instead of trying to “quiet my mind,” I opened it up instead. Instead of trying to stop my thoughts or single focus on an object, i loved every thought, every feeling, every breeze, every birdsong, every murmur of someone talking in the background, any feeling into my awareness and loved it deeply. I started to see my distracted thoughts as a little kid running into a house and interrupting a conversation - the kid is just excited to share - he deserves love and attention - and the more he gets it the more he goes back outside to play. When you try to “stop” your thoughts you are literally putting resistance up, and not surprisingly getting resistance in return.

I like to explain the Jhana’s through my hiking analogy as that was the epiphany that I had that I realized I’ve been doing them my whole life. Maybe this will help you connect to your own pathway to the Jhanas:

For me, Jhana 1 is like being on a hike and seeing the top of the mountain I am going to summit: there is ecstatic, excitement, high levels of vibration and energy flowing through my body, almost as if I want to wiggle out of my skin, the defined area of my body begins to dissolve and become one with the atmosphere.

~ Important note I also realize this is why people don’t like hiking with me haha!! I get into these rapturous states and they’re questioning why are we friends ~

Jhana 2 is like summing the mountain: the euphoria starts to dissolve into a softer happiness, a gratitude for my body that I did it, a contentment, a non-egoic sense of accomplishment.

Jhana 3 is after I summit a mountain I send energy to everyone I love. I call it the Care Bear Stare and if you know me personally or watched the 80’s cartoon The Care Bears, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I send love and appreciation to all my friends all over the world, everyone I’ve ever met and even people i used to know. This is my way of offering friendliness and appreciation to everyone that has journeyed with me in this life.

Jhana 4 is either a) the hike down the mountain or b) when I am in bed later holding the deepest gratitude in all of the cells of my body. The most peaceful state of returning, of relaxing.

Grant, one of my meditation facilitators invited me to dive a bit deeper into Jhana 4 so later that night I did and at first it smelled like dead leaves in a forest if it had rained yesterday, the deepest most beautiful sweet delicious and dead leaves earth smell. I felt my body sink into the earth like I was being buried, but in a gentle and sweet sense - my body was returning to the earth. I felt cozy, held by the dirt around me, I felt as if my body and energy was being recycled for something new and then immediately the visual changed to spring and little buds and flowers and moss started growing on the top of the earth over me and I felt complete - that I had completed this natural and sacred cycle.

Later I journeyed with another amazing facilitator - Judah - and in writing about my experience it accidentally turned itself into a poem:

Luminous light with effervescent sparkles

Grounded dissolving bones into the earth

Shallow breaths deepen, pumping diaphragm to ignite the spark of the Solar Plexus

Light where there was darkness

Play tension like a guitar string, a song is possible

When you are powerful you don’t need bad patterns to make you bigger than others

Fractal flowers spiral into dresses with invitation to

A dance hosted in a nighttime canopy of planets and stars

Infinity folds back on itself

What is the experience?

What is experience?

Anything I try to hold slips immediately from my mind, off the shelf and into the void

There is only now

Here

And right now

There is only everything all at once at any time

Inside of nothing cradles everything

Everything turns to nothing

Stephen, another facilitator, had mentioned how when you read a poem the first time it’s lovely but after you figure out these jhanic states it’s like an instructional manual and I couldn’t agree more!

Overall, my deepest realization was that I meditate best when I am not trying to, and that is my playful and curious door into the Jhanas, meditative states, heightened consciousness, altered awareness and being blissed out.

~

So, if you are like me and have struggled with meditating or the idea of meditating - let’s begin together! Here are some helpful hints and phrases from retreat I find invaluable:

• What are you curious about in your experience right now?

• What needs to be acknowledged?

• Can you relax, enjoy and observe?

• Can you forgive yourself for not understanding.

• Nothing exists in our experience independent of how we relate to it.

• Can you let yourself be overwhelmed by your experience?

  
  
  If you’re interested in learning more: I found the retreat to be delightful, the facilitators fantastic. Thanks to Stephen, Judah, Grant, Owen & Jack
  

Click here to learn more about Jhana Jhourney Retreats!

Iboga: Death & Dying Pt 2

Read iboga: death & dying pt 1 here

Returning to life

When I was coming out of the experience 36 hours later, I heard Jason (my boyfriend in the next room) crying and ‘knew’ it was because I had died; I was upset because I ‘knew’ he had to call my parents and tell them I was dead and I ‘knew’ they would be devastated.

I was feeling horrible physically which deepened the idea that I was dead and when I told the medical staff they gave me concerned looks. Naturally I became even more convinced I was deceased. Jason came into the room asking for a hug and I ‘knew’ it was because he wanted to see me one last time before my body was taken away.

When Jason came into the room he hugged me and it felt like life itself. He suggested we sit outside in the sunshine and once I was finally able to get up, we sat outside. My experience tumbled out of my mouth in discoherent fragments and I told him how much of a failure I was, I didn’t deserve him, everything was my fault and I asked him if he called my parents - to my surprise he laughed and asked to clarify what the heck I was talking about - I continued almost drunkenly: “but I’m dead and someone needs to tell my parents.” He assured me I was not dead and in fact, very much alive as I had been reborn through this process. You can only imagine the relief I felt!

We sat in the bright afternoon light of springtime in Portugal looking at the yellow flowers that reached and stretched out into the field in front of us. We talked, connected, shared insights and vulnerability, cuddled and loved one another without any resistance, hesitation or expectation. The love I felt in these moments exceeds any love I’ve ever felt in my life. It was love in the form of life after death; the most alive and vibrant love I’ve ever experienced.

A day or two later we did 5MeO-DMT which is a very powerful psychedelic to complete the circle of the ceremony and it was the most beautiful DMT experience I have ever had: I inhaled the medicine and a whole universe of experiences tumbled out of my mouth as I exhaled, and my body relaxed down to the ground. I began to stretch, and the further I stretched the better it felt, I stretched so big that to this day I believe I’m an inch taller!

I laughed with the purity, effervescence and unencumberedness of a child’s laugh: a laugh free from the wisdom and pain of life’s experiences. I sobbed and the sobbing felt just as good or better than the laughter: it felt like I was releasing the deepest sadness that had occupied my internal organs and dwelled in my DNA. I laughed and cried for myself, my family, my friends, and my ancestors, I laughed and cried for everyone I knew, and then everyone who had ever been known.

It felt delicious to allow it to come out, to be expressed, to be witnessed, and to be healed.

the healing process

The healing process continued with similar intensity and took another full week. I was exhausted and felt like a raw nerve walking around; my nervous system felt fried, lights were too bright, any sounds were too loud, people were way to people-y.

I felt like something immortal had just been demoted to mortality. I found it difficult to interact with my fellow humans. I had just been in hell - it was hard to relate.

During my healing process in this heavy drug-like, dream-like state, I found out that one of my closest friends died. Tiffany Barsotti was my mentor, medical intuitive, spiritual counselor, roommate, co-worker in the realm of biofield and subtle energy sciences and a light in the life of myself and anyone who was lucky enough to know her.

It felt physically unbelievable: because I was feeling dead, it was impossible that Tif and I were both dead. Leaning into to the drug like dream-like state I felt like I was in the ‘woods between worlds’ I was transitioning from death to life and she was passing by going the opposite direction. In this nebulous space in between time I reached out to Tif, I felt her presence and energy. She visited, energetically hugged me tightly and assured me that I was not dead and would continue to live; and she shared that she was on the most incredible adventure through her passing. As I continue to edit this blog months later, she visits me often in meditation and dreams and I am forever blessed with the memories I have with her, and in heightened states of awareness when I feel her sitting next to me and jokingly pointing out a pattern of mine I was previously unaware of.

Being in this state of in between life and death felt oddly synchronous because I felt she was near me in this state where nothing and everything was simultaneously real; where everything was impossible and possible at the same time.

waking up into my aliveness

Now that I have fully come back from this experience I feel AMAZING. When I speak, my statements feel more authentic to my truth and my soul. My listening to understand has improved, my desire to connect and understand others has deepened. It feels like the back of my brain woke up.

I am inspired to live deeper, I feel healthy, vibrant and alive. I feel centered in myself, aligned in my soul and grounded in my path, purpose, and mission.

I am so grateful for my courage to work with this plant medicine; I am grateful for this Hero’s Journey through this spiritual ceremony and deep healing process with Iboga.

In this space I realized that grief is a gift and that sitting with grief allows the sadness to become sacred.

Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.

―Jamie Anderson

~

I hope you enjoyed my personal journey with Iboga. If you have any questions about it I would love to connect with you. Once again, it’s important to select a good center with a medical team if you decide to take this journey! It’s hard, but worth it!

Please enjoy my Free Grief Sound Healing Session inspired by Tiffany’s love and light by clicking here.

~

This blog is dedicated to and in honor of the life, the light, the love and the work of Rev. Tiffany Barsotti M.Th, PhD.

Please consider donating to her fund here to continue her work and legacy to advance the field of biofield sciences, and increase collaborations that foster connections between healing practitioners and scientists.

How to build an altar

Why create an altar?

We create altars for many reasons:

• As a space for focus & meditation

• To conjure something into our life - like peace, abundance, love, or protection

• For manifestation

• To honor something - like our ancestors or nature

• For ritual

• To help us release.

Note: There is no ‘right away’ to create an altar as it is a deeply intuitive and individual journey - here I will share with you my personal process.

Before we begin our altar creation it is a good idea to get clarity on your intentions + purpose.

cleanse space

When I am creating an altar I usually do it with a specific intention during a celestial event. My most recent altar I created for Beltane - the midway point between Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice. I had a few people reach out and ask me about it and that inspired this blog.

I like to cleanse my space where I am building my altar through the sound of om, crystal bowls, koshi chimes OR with smoke, incense, and fire.

gather 5 elements + build altar

When I create an altar I like to have all five elements represented - earth, water, air, fire and aether (or plasma).

For earth I use: crystals, bones, pieces of wood, herbs, flowers and snake symbolism. I always have snake symbolism in my altar creation for the qualities snakes represent - shedding skin, transformation and wisdom. The earth aspect of my altar invokes feelings of grounding, support and symbolizes abundance, wealth and success.

For air I use a feather and say my intentions out loud, to be carried on the wind up into the heavens - much like the method of prayer flags. Honoring the air element symbolizes intellect, ideas, imagination.

For fire: I light a candle to conjure health, passion, enthusiasm, courage, adventure and life.

For water: I collect rainwater - if you are in a dry area you can take water and bless it with your hands or sacred sounds (chanting, om-ing, crystal bowls, etc). Water symbolizes emotion, intuition, psychic abilities and clairvoyance.

For aether or plasma I use a Lichtenberg figure which was a gift from a friend of mine. It is an acrylic ball shocked by electricity which creates a lightening fractal running through it.

Other things I’ll place on my altar:

• Meaningful items like gifts or statues of deities

• Actual physical money

• Tokens, like a scarab from Egypt, or a protecting eye

• Jewelry that I wear - to cleanse and to conjure

• Pictures / names of people I want included

• Items based on intentions, colors or seasons

• Written Mantras, or spells

The way I build my altar is very intuitive, and it is my opinion that however you build your altar is best for you. All my altars are different but they follow a general idea.

• Some crystals point in toward the center if they symbolize what I want to draw in - like citrine pulling in energy for abundance.

• Some crystals point out to ground energy - like tourmaline or shunguuite.

• Some crystals point up to release energy out and away - like quartz to create a ‘vent’ of energy, in my mind this creates a movement much like breathing.

You will notice when you create your altar and place significant items & crystals around it that some will ‘want’ to be turned in, out, up or down. This is part of the creative and intuitive process :)

CONJURE / manifest / pray

After I have built my altar it is time to sit with it. I thank the natural kingdom + cardinal directions and I focus on my intention. I meditate, allowing my mind to become blank fills it with solutions.

I pray saying thank you, I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, and I cast spells. I ask for guidance from my guides, I sit with the older and younger version of myself. I manifest the things I want in my life, I revisit my intentions and speak my affirmations.

Release ritual

It is my opinion that altars become conscious organisms with the proper intention & ingredients. So, when I am done with this whole process I use different stones to point/send any excess energy out an actual window. This way the process becomes self sufficient after I am finished; it completes whatever other intentions it has and then releases itself when it feels finished.

Simplified Steps to create your altar

1. Set intentions

2. Cleanse space with fire / smoke / incense /sound

3. Gather tokens / amulets / crystals / things from environment

4. Build altar

5. Pray / meditate / cast spells (it’s all the same magic ;)

6. Release ritual

~

Personal note: Let me know what you thought of this blog by messaging me! I would love to see a picture of your altar if you were open to sharing!