Hello friends.
It’s been a while.
So much has happened over the last twelve months. Our start-up, Open, is on the verge of launching it’s first in-person studio in Venice, CA. Our digital app has been growing wonderfully, and a community of beautiful people have walked in and out of some of the hundreds of experiences that I’ve been honoured to lead. We ran private events, some for pro-athletes, Coachella, we partnered with Warner Music and some of their incredible artists and I had the chance to show up on every JetBlue airline screen in the US.
On a personal level, it was one of the hardest and most profound years of my life. I lost my mother, suddenly, to cancer last year. The misfortune of having to sit in a hotel quarantine whilst my mother had days to live is a story for another time. Nevertheless, the experience shifted how I wanted to live my life. It was also the year that I came into the remembrance of my own mortality. I faced a number of health issues, saw friends pass away and went through the ebbs and flows of navigating my own mental health.
All of this is scary to admit —to you. After all, I’ve felt I’ve had to carefully curate a public persona that exemplifies a conscious, healthy, and mindful life. After all, by the numbers, close to a million of you practiced meditation and breathwork with me last year. But I wondered if you would keep practicing if you knew how brittle my life has felt these past few months?
So this perhaps, is why I’m writing to you, good friend, today.
I am yearning for a deeper connection with my community. Alternate social platforms seem to bring out often the worst in us, in me, by generating more self-interest, and allowing me to sprinkle my image with new filters, clever angels and designer clothing. The instant likes and comments were great dopamine boosts that admittedly I couldn’t seem get enough of. It all has begun to feel empty. I started to notice my own ego become seduced by the bells and whistles of being someone that people ‘followed’. That said, I am here to begin to communicate with you all that lives beneath the surface.
Here is my attempt at creating a new way of engaging with my community this year. Firstly, after writing Still Together in 2020, I promised myself that I would not write again until I had something meaningful to contribute to the public discourse. I wrote Still Together in the middle of a break-up, a pandemic, quarantine, the closing of my first business, the starting of another one, praying for a visa and moving to LA. Here, now, I want to write in a way that I can be open, unfiltered and honest. I want to challenge the way we relate our wellbeing, what gives us meaning and humanity. I want to open up the constraints that have defined the wellness industrial complex. I hope to write in a way that inspires compassionate action, and in a way that unifies the chatter between the left and right hemispheres of our brain.
There is so much more to our wellbeing than meditation or yoga and even a spiritual practice. Growing up my teachers were all 30-40 years older than me. They never taught me how to navigate dating or social media. I didn’t learn anything about how to manage my finances, or how to navigate the anxiety of my google calendar. And in regards to health.. don’t get me started on navigating substances, sleepless nights and burnout. A mindful life shouldn’t exist at the expense of all of all the trappings of a modern one but rather as a way to make sense of it all.
With the creation of this Substack I want to offer you field notes from my life and the lives of the many people I’ll be in speaking with. We’ll explore mindfulness 2.0, art, culture, music, health and psychology and enlightenment (yes, enlightenment). There will be regular long form posts, short form contemplations, podcasts that i’ve done recently and the occasional community dharma talk and practice.
All that being said, I hope that you’ll join me on this journey. Field notes from samsara is an invitation to wake up to your own innate goodness and tap into the depths of our own potential, with all my gratitude to you and eagerness in our mutual discovery.
See you on the trail.
New beginnings and a life update
i love the rawness and the realness. lately i have struggled too with presenting on social media or just in life. some of my biggest fears and stressors are in the things you mention. no one teaches you how to handle emotions or feelings (whatever they are) around so many things in life. i’m excited to read and learn more about your perspective. to see the not so pretty parts of getting to the good. ♥️
Your vulnerability is beautiful. Thank you for sharing 🙏🏻