Back when I used to work as a TV producer in New York City I can remember feeling like my whole day revolved around screens. I woke up to an alarm on my phone and immediately checked my email, texts and IM’s from my boss (cue mild heart attack if I had one). My calendar was on my phone, last night’s sports scores, twitter feed to follow breaking news and on and on.  By the time I reached my desk I had already accumulated what would be an unhealthy amount of screen time for an entire day and now it was time to sit at my computer surrounded by televisions playing the latest news over severa ..read more

I think it’s important to try new things, especially in the world of retreats and wellness. I’ve tried to seek out at least 2-3 retreats and high level workshops every year to expose myself to things that will hopefully help me both personally and as a leader in wellness.  Recently I decided to take a last minute adventure to Portugal to attend an event that was framed as a “tantra and co-living retreat.” I’ve been intrigued by tantra but always found it to be taught in the west as a way to bypass emotional connection en route to what amounts to shallow feeling sex parties. At its core ..read more

When asking people about cell phone use, some surveys now only contain two options. Do you look at your cell phone before you go to the bathroom or WHILE you go the bathroom? Americans now spend a staggering amount of time on their phones, an estimated seven hours or more a day. The average American checks their phone 96 times per day, or once every ten to 12 minutes. Though, we actually touch our phones up to 2,617 times per day and unlock our phones 150 times on average. That's a lot. So what exactly are we doing to ourselves when we use our phones that much? The answer, also a lot.  Re ..read more

Like so many businesses, it was a real struggle to figure out what to do during the pandemic. This is especially challenging when your business revolves around people traveling and being together in groups. When the lockdowns started I was in Bali and lost money on a retreat that took me a year to plan. I was also furloughed from my other source of income, a yoga teaching and personal training gig. Month by month I watched my savings whittle down to nothing. Then came the decision to cash out my entire life savings to keep my dream alive, or head back to a 9-5 job.  Leading up to the pa ..read more

Recently I had a first on a retreat, a guest decided to leave early. When I was approached and told what was happening I felt the same emotions of getting fired back in 2014 begin to surface. Rejection, inadequacy, failure. I wanted to get defensive, frustrated and even mad.  In real time, I witnessed myself process and move through these emotions and immediately into kindness and empathy. The fruits of training my mind not to be a slave to my thoughts or my body, everything I try to teach to people on retreats and what I was trying to share with this person. I do my absolute best with ev ..read more

Where does inspiration come from? On fall weekends in America millions of people pack into stadiums to encourage a group of humans wearing one colored shirt to push a piece of pig intestine filled with air past a chalk line where another group of humans wearing a different colored shirt don’t want it to go. (I once laughed at this for hours while taking mushrooms) But what inspires all of these people to set aside an entire day, spend tons of money and yell until their lungs give out for something that has little to no impact on their actual life? Belief that what they are doing matters. Comin ..read more

I wrote recently about how the only thing I recommend people do everyday is to cultivate the relationship with themselves and set an intention of how they want to feel. This is a daily practice for me and I also spend a lot of time thinking about how I want to make others feel because #quantumphysics #lawofattraction  Part of what I love about SoCal Wellness Retreats is that it feels like summer camp for adults. There is excitement, nervousness, anticipation and when it’s all said and done, no one wants to leave. I want it to feel like family, inviting and warm while also challenging and ..read more

When I got called into HR on a Thursday at my “dream job” I was pretty sure I was about to get fired. I remember it unfolding like I was watching a movie, physically I was there but as my boss explained the case he had been building against me for months a numbness came over me. For a moment I began to plead my case and as the words tried to come out something inside me said “don’t even bother.” I walked out of the office and down to the street, called my dad and told him what had happened. He asked me how I was doing and I said something along the lines of, “I’m good, I think, I’m excited, I ..read more

This week I was invited to participate in a conversation with a group of entrepreneurs and tech leaders about AI versus the human spirit. As with anything that has and will fundamentally change our way of life, it was equal parts exciting and terrifying.  AI is here. We are interacting with it every day whether we like it or not. That sentence I just typed was finished by the AI in Google Docs. What you see on your social media feeds is selected by supercomputers whose job it is to get and ultimately keep your attention. In fact your attention span is now seen as the greatest commodity t ..read more

When I set out to learn about anything, be it wellness, spirituality, science, business, or one of the seemingly endless fascinations I find myself going down rabbit holes with, there’s always a hard “no” - a consistent red flag for me. When someone says you MUST do something. Especially if they say you MUST do it every day. Aside from breathing, there’s literally nothing you must do every day. As a teacher, I always try to offer people my greatest scientific understanding of a topic and then marry it where applicable to my own personal experiences. So if someone asks me, “should I go vegan? S ..read more