The Return to Real
So What Comes Next?
We rebuild. We recommit.
We remember.
We stop trying to fit spiritual work into systems that were never built to hold it.
We stop asking capitalism to give us permission to slow down.
We stop outsourcing our intuition to branding trends and sales formulas.
And we start leading from within.
The Question of Spiritual Sell-Out’s
I Sold My Yoga Studio Because I Refused to Sell My Soul
For years, I poured my heart into a space that was meant to be sacred.
But the deeper I went into my own embodiment… the more I woke up to how the system demanded things that didn’t align:
… Pack the schedule
… Chase the metrics
… Prioritize growth over integrity
… Water down the teachings to “meet people where they are” even if it meant never asking them to rise
It began to feel like I was running a business fighting for its soul, not holding a sacred space with spiritual reciprocity.
The business was ‘working’ but my soul was not okay.
And so, after 3 years… I walked away.
Not because I didn’t believe in the work, but because I believed in it too much to keep letting capitalism dictate its form.
Sacred Doesn’t Mean Soft
In today’s spiritual world, there’s a polished aesthetic of sacredness:
Neutral color palettes.
Whispered voices.
Soft, “divine feminine” branding.
Mantras over mirrors.
Incense and ambiance.
And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of this, it becomes a problem when softness becomes a shield.
When we confuse sacred with sanitized. When we hide behind softness to avoid accountability, rigor, or real transformation. When we think being nice is the same thing as being devoted.
The Rise of the Weekend Facilitator
You can memorize scripts. You can buy templates. You can brand yourself as a mentor, teacher, guide…
But energy doesn’t lie. Nervous systems tell all. The body, yours and your clients or students, always knows when something is missing.
And what’s missing is usually this:
Time. Mentorship. Embodiment. Lived experience.
Not performance, polish or hustle.
What’s missing is the depth that only comes from walking the path again and again and again, until it rewires you.
When the World’s Turbulence Meets the Mat
We’ve been conditioned to believe that “more is better.”
Hotter classes. Heavier sweat. Longer sequences. Faster flows.
But when your nervous system is already in survival mode, intensity via performance and unintentional guidance doesn’t help to heal, it actually has the capability to retraumatize and trigger the body into a trauma-response state.
When we’re immersed in global anxiety and personal overwhelm, we don’t need more fire.
We need water. Earth. Air. Space.
We need practices that cool, ground, and regulate.
Because if we enter the studio with the same agitated rhythm we carry through the rest of life… we will walk out just as disembodied as we walked in.
Healing Is Not Your Identity
The Rise of the Aesthetic Healer
The problem isn’t beauty. Or success. Or well-lit imagery.
The problem is performance without depth.
(read that again.)
Curation without embodiment.
Magnetism without nervous system regulation.
Words without lived wisdom.
And when people come into your space expecting transformation and instead receive marketing, mimicry or energetically unsafe containers…
That’s spiritual harm.
Even if it’s unintentional.
Especially if it’s unacknowledged.
The Responsibility of the Teacher
Leadership in Spiritual Work Isn’t About Being Seen
…It’s about how deeply you’re willing to see yourself.
The ability to sit with your own shadows.
The courage to confront your patterns.
The willingness to dismantle your projections and take radical responsibility for your impact.
Because if you haven’t done that work…
You will inevitably leak harm even with the best of intentions.
Unintegrated teachers don’t just stall healing, they distort it.
They unconsciously center themselves. Or create co-dependence with their students.
Or model nervous system dysregulation as leadership.
This perpetuates a shallow, performative spirituality that looks/sounds good… but leaves people starving.
From Practice to Performance: When Spirituality Becomes a Show
If we’re not careful, we’ll keep offering spiritual spaces that look beautiful… but leave people starving.
We’ll give students just enough dopamine to come back, but not enough depth to transform.
We’ll attract followers… but we’ll stop forming practitioners.
And that is a betrayal of what this work is meant to do.
What We Lost When We Stopped Breathing
Yoga was never meant to be escapism.
It was never meant to be used as a dopamine hit or a means of avoidance.
My understanding of yoga is that it was meant and intended to return us to the divine truth that lives inside of us – to yoke, to bring together, back home to our center, our breath, our sacred aliveness.
But now, I watch and witness students take consecutive classes, pushing past the edges of their body, skipping savasana, posting about the burn and I wonder…
Why isn’t one practice enough?
Why isn’t one deep breath, one embodied experience, one intentional session enough to shift something?
Because it’s not about depth anymore.
It’s about chasing a feeling. Or avoiding the obvious (life and all it’s challenges).
It’s about doing more, not being more.
Yoga is not meant to be an obsessive, over-used product of performance and postures. It was never intended to be that.
It leads me to ask… What have we actually created here?
What to Expect on the Sacred Intimacy Retreat in Bali: A Day-by-Day Preview
An immersive look at each day of the Sacred Intimacy Retreat — the rituals, breathwork, healing and sensual reconnection waiting for you in Bali.
How to Reclaim Sensuality & Sacred Intimacy Without Shame
This work is delicate and powerful. And it must begin with the body with consent, safety and deep respect for your pace. Here are three sacred starting points:
What It Truly Means to Embody the Sacred Feminine in a Modern World
It’s not about living in a cave or meditating for 10 hours a day.
It’s about remembering yourself while living in this very world.
It’s the woman who lights a candle before checking her phone.
Who breathes before she responds.
Who honors her cycle.
Who says no without guilt.
Who dances herself into aliveness instead of numbing out.
Who makes love with presence, with softness, with power.
