Walking Each Other Home: From Burnout to Belonging
Dear Budding Tree,
Here in the wild Northeast, we’ve made it to Spring.
May you feel the lightness of presence as you see the buds returning to the trees, hear the sweet songs of sparrows filling the air with melody, and feel the gentle kiss of Spring’s breeze upon your cheek.
Life returns once again, reminding us that the death of Winter is an illusion.
What a gift it is to live in union with a land that teaches us the lessons of impermanence with every passing season.
Take a moment to congratulate yourself for reaching this Here & Now. The human journey is a challenging ride, and you continue to show up. Thank you for being here.
The reliable Crocuses, whose rebirth arrives before the world feels ready, reminding us that life does not wait for perfect conditions to begin again. Inviting us to tend to the hope and gratitude in our hearts, as we embrace the uncertainty of transition.
Emerging before they are guaranteed consistent sun or warmth, they risk the cold sting of snow upon their vulnerable petals. And still, they trust their own timing. Insistent on their own tempo. Unwavering in their strength of devotion to bringing joy as we grow weary of winter’s relentless reign over Mother Earth’s dominion.
Thank you, sweet Crocus. We rejoice at the sight of your understated beauty.
What’s Inside This Month’s Newsletter:
The True Nature of “Home”
Let’s explore the deeper longing many of us feel, and what it means to return to Heaven on Earth through reconnection with Nature.The Split Between Mind and Body
A reflection on the imbalance between our intellectual minds and instinctual bodies, and how to restore harmony between them.Artificial vs. Organic Living
Where we’ve replaced what is embodied with what is convenient, and the invitation to return to what is alive, felt, and true.Reharmonizing with Mother Earth
Not rejecting modern life, but learning how to let intelligence serve life, rather than override it.Why We’re Not Meant to Do This Alone
A new chapter: our application to anchor a Love Serve Remember Satsang, and the fresh call toward shared spaces of presence and restoration. Where those who choose healing arts as our vocation go to heal.Compassion, Boundaries, and Sustainable Service
Exploring compassion fatigue, discernment, and what it means to serve without depletion.Upcoming Offerings from Feedback Loop Coaching
Opportunities to deepen this work together through virtual spaces, workshops, and local community experiences designed to support alignment, regulation, and embodied leadership.
That perpetual homesickness shared by so many seekers…
What if it’s not for our stars of origin?
Or for familial love?
Or a sense of belonging within a community?
What if the home for which we yearn is
Heaven on Earth?
And we cure the homesickness by tending to our Mother. Regenerating her body.
Listening to her languages.
Admiring her beauty.
Breathing through our feet and feeling the minerals of the planet buzzing with excitement as we remember our home. Placing a gentle hand on an ancient tree and feeling the vibrations of her powerful life force. Receiving her intelligence through touch. Squeezing fertile soil in our bare hands. Smelling the sweet aroma of organic matter.
We’ve strayed so far from home, as the acquired mind has grown increasingly fascinated by the artificial.
Artificial sweeteners,
artificial flavors,
artificial light that could never replace the sun,
artificial timelines that manufacture anxiety around the natural unfolding, artificial connection that imitates belonging,
artificial medicines that desecrate the sacred,
artificial stimulation that overrides subtle sensation,
artificial validation that substitutes for inner knowing,
artificial noise that drowns out the quiet intelligence within.
This, too, is part of who we are.
Something we are invited to embrace with radical acceptance. We are unlike any other sentient being on this planet.
We create beyond necessity.
We extract beyond balance. Neglecting our responsibility of offering gestures of gratitude to the Earth.
We generate waste while keeping landfills out of sight, out of mind.
We seek answers outside of ourselves.
We default to convenience instead of cultivating discipline.
We show shockingly little restraint.
We’ve built lives so separate from Nature that sterile high-rises and ticky-tacky subdivisions have become our symbols of success. We would need to enroll in wilderness courses just to remember how to survive within Mother Earth’s original design.
And yet…
we are wild.
Our Mother Earth has gifted us these primal, sensual, instinctual bodies. Bodies that know how to listen. How to regulate. How to belong to a land.
Bodies that sniff out danger and melt into safety.
Bodies that remember.
And our Father Universe has gifted us something entirely different. As The Kybalion reminds us, “The All is Mind; the Universe is Mental.”
We have access to the infinite, yet we confine our thoughts to the habitual, the logical, the known. Our fear of the unknown limits our capacity for infinite thought.
And therefore, infinite realities. Infinite timelines. Infinite solutions. All within the mind.
A mind that can abstract, simulate, project, calculate, design. A mind that can build worlds without ever touching the ground.
An architect of an invisible grid.
This mind is electric. Linear. Quantifying.
It defaults to pattern, prediction, control. Progress, production, and innovation. It is the part of us that can conceptualizing turning minerals into microchips, ideas into infrastructure, vision into form.
Is this not God-like power? How often to we acknowledge this incredible asset to humankind?
Yet, without the guidance of the body, without the wisdom of the Earth, the mind forgets its temple. Its home.
Aye… here lies the source of our homesickness.
Summer of ’74, Ram Dass taught a course entitled ‘The Yogas of the Bhagavad Gita’ at the Buddhist-inspired Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.
This mind optimizes without feeling, extracts without listening, and accelerates without integrating. It worships scientific advancement without honoring all life as sacred.
And so we find ourselves in the most unique position, staring down the pipeline of the 4th Industrial Revolution. With the mind of a supercomputer, the body of an animal, and a heart of gold.
And we are called upon at this time to embrace it all.
The deviation is not that we have this mind. It’s that we have allowed it to govern without balance.
This computer-like mind was never meant to replace Nature. It was meant to serve her. To translate her intelligence into form. Her language into lexicon. To build in harmony with her rhythms. To nurture and tend to life, not override it.
When the Father (yang) operates without the Mother (yin), we fall into distortion, overproduction, overconsumption, overstimulation, disconnection.
Because the mind moves fast. It gets impatient when matter doesn’t catch up.
But matter is meant to move at the pace of Nature. Nothing is to be rushed. All unfolds in divine timing. As Treebeard reminds the Hobbits, “You must understand, young Hobbit, it takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.”
Our divine Mother holds the keys to our optimal relationship with the material world.
When Mother Earth and Father Sky move together…
mind bows to body,
intellect bows to heart,
creation bows to life,
structure bows to rhythm.
We remember our ancient roots.
We are not separate from Earth.
We are Earth…
with the ability to choose.
The same mind that learned to dominate…
can learn to devote.
Matías De Stefano describes humanity as the artificial intelligence of the mineral world, a consciousness arising from Earth’s elements, capable of shaping reality itself.
In a recent podcast, he shares that this insight came through a direct experience, where the atomic realm communicated to him that humans, plants, and fungi are expressions of its intelligence. From this perspective, humanity becomes a way for the mineral world to learn, evolve, and express itself.
We are not artificial as in false, but artificial as in constructed, self-aware, capable of choice.
We are Earth, learning how to create.
And like any civilization who forgets our roots, we have at times created in states of chaos and discord. We’ve built patriarchal towers of hierarchy, striving for more power, more money, more control. Such a system has tricked us into idol worship of celebrities whose words on global stages feign values that stir inspiration within our hearts, while their lifestyles and actions reveal deep fear of appearing as though they are aging, unbalanced obsession with youth, and addiction to excess and extravagance. And through observation and viewership, we consent to such misguided leadership.
And because our symbols of what we’ve been conditioned to admire are so far outside of ourselves, so unattainable, we reach for the nearest escape. Drawn into cycles of stimulation and numbing, dopamine and cortisol, that offer brief relief, yet reinforce the very sense of lack we’re trying to outrun.
Over time, these patterns shape us. Our posture curls inward, our attention fragments, and our nervous systems acclimate to constant input until disconnection begins to feel normal.
We have deviated far from the human beings who less than a century ago, cultivated mastery through repetition and presence. Blacksmiths shaping metal with rhythm and heat, farmers reading the land and seasons, artisans crafting with care and intention. Bodies engaged, senses attuned, minds trained to sustain focus over hours, not seconds.
And that’s okay.
The invitation here is not to reject what we’ve become.
Not to shame our patterns.
Not to exile the part of us that reaches for ease, speed, and certainty.
But to bring awareness back to our original design. Back to the creator within us and around us. To remember that the same hands that built the artificial can regenerate the organic. The same minds that could market microwaves and TV dinners are now rediscovering a love for quality ingredients and the artistry of cooking.
We are not here to erase the artificial or whitewash generational initiations and deviations.
We are here to radically accept where this paradigm 10,000 years in the making has led us. Why radical acceptance?: Level 5 Energy.
Imagine the possibilities when we each are able to cultivate a foundation of Level 5 Energy. No more depression over the past, anxiety over the future, or blame toward who or what has caused the problems we face today.
Just pure willingness and openness to a grand collaboration. Inner peace and trust that solutions exist. Taking action instead of watching the news and virtue signaling.
When we link arm in arm from a place of inner peace and calm, what becomes possible?
And from this place, an ancient remembrance begins to reawaken within us. A lesson carried throughout the wisdom of the ages, echoed throughout all the ancestral lineages, guiding us back to the same truth:
Inner peace is the path.
From peace, we become present.
From presence, we learn to observe.
The first principle of all living systems, as permaculture reminds us.
These design principles of Permaculture used to come naturally. Intuitively. They seem like no-brainers.
Though to incorporate them today requires a great deal of rewiring the brain. To teach our intellect to prioritize the ethics listed above.
To train intelligence to serve life.
To allow creation itself the space and conditions to regenerate.
To steer awareness back toward our hands, the soil, our breath.
The same species that learned to manufacture is now learning to listen. To observe and interact.
To step gently and walk quietly.
This way of being is not something we can think our way into. We do not return to alignment with Nature through intellect, but through sensation. Through presence. Through feeling.
Embracing the slow and simple. Placing vitality on the altar of our civilization.
This is how we return to planetary wellness, and in doing so, channel Heaven on Earth. In and through our bodies. Engaged hands, disciplined minds, and pure hearts.
And as Level 5 Energy indicates, we don’t do it alone. This vision occurs through collaboration.
And yet, collaboration is complex.
In any group, not all members are resonating at the same level of energy. And that’s okay. Each of us plays a different role within the whole. Different capacities, different seasons, different levels of awareness, all moving together. Not always in sync, but offering the exact experience each individual needs to grow. This can complicate communication and distort the path forward.
Chris and I have been initiating community gatherings since our respective adventures at the Creative Zone in Boston, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s this: community in collaboration is nuanced. It asks more of us than passion alone can sustain.
Especially when passion is overextended. When the desire to give, serve, create begins to outpace our capacity to replenish. This is where compassion fatigue can take root.
Answering the call to share healing modalities requires a sharp sword of discernment.
Where the Level 5 mindset of “We all win or we don’t play” asks for honesty from the generous heart. “Bleeding heart,” the mind asks, “Are you really winning too?”
For Chris and me, having been called to the healing arts as our vocation, we’ve learned through fire how to hold both devotion and practicality. To honor the work, while also honoring our humanity. To ensure our basic needs are met, while discerning which offerings to make accessible, and how.
The Universe keeps teaching us that generosity without structure leads to depletion.
And over time, we’ve come to understand the importance of boundaries. Not just externally, but internally.
Perhaps because we’ve hosted so many gatherings and events, there is an expectation that we will continue. People reach out, asking about specific offerings. Wondering when we’ll host something like 108 Sun Salutations or Cacao Circle again. Which is such an honor. Ideas not only became roots, they grew into gardens that actually contribute. And we feel genuine desire within to say yes to it all. To continue watering those gardens.
And yet, it’s not that simple.
There is so much that happens behind the scenes. Logistics, energy, resources, timing. All of which shape what is actually possible.
We’ve learned that our ability to create is not just determined by inspiration, but by capacity.
And that honoring our human limits is not a failure of service, as much as our hearts break when we take a step back.
Though it’s this very action of stepping back, remaining still, meditating, and allowing the path to reveal itself that ensures our service remains true.
And even with this awareness, we’ve found ourselves meeting deeper layers of this dynamic. Patterns that don’t just live within us, but within the spaces we co-create.
Something that is not new for us is the pattern of passion being overextended or exploited, followed by depletion, and at times, a sense of feeling undervalued and discarded.
We’ve noticed this pattern within the greater wellness space as well. A space rooted in healing, yet not immune to the very human dynamics of scarcity, comparison, and competition.
We’ve felt it in ourselves.
At times, loyalty to one organization or vision has subtly pulled us into ego traps, where collaboration gives way to competition, and connection begins to fracture.
And to be clear, I love competition. It’s why I love card games. Why I push myself to “beat” my pose holds from last yoga practice. Why I miss playing hockey.
In contained spaces, it can be energizing. A spark. A way to ignite and expand.
But when competition begins to seep into a community, it can create isolation. It can pull us out of the heart. Trust begins to erode, making true collaboration feel just out of reach.
And without trust, community becomes fragile.
We don’t claim to have all the answers to compassion fatigue, passion overextension, or the subtle isolation that can arise for facilitators in the wellness industry.
But we do feel called to create spaces that expand beyond that paradigm. Spaces that can hold it all, because we place unity on the altar.
Our vision to initiate a Love Serve Remember Satsang is a start.
A place where healers can soften and let our guards down. Where we can meet not as competitors, but as stewards of the sacred.
The realm of the soul.
The truth is, we are drawn to the healing arts for a reason.
Something within these modalities touched us. Opened us. Healed something within us.
And from that direct experience, a natural impulse arises:
To share.
To extend.
To ripple that healing outward.
Yet even the most practiced facilitators are still human.
We have egos. And that’s not a flaw.
Our ego holds the essence of our individuality. It reminds us that we have something meaningful to offer. Something worth sharing.
But when competition begins to separate us, we can forget what we fell in love with in the first place.
The oneness.
I’ve been sitting with my options lately. Daydreaming of a different life. My Virgo rising has thrived in the past within the structure of an office, the clarity of administrative tasks, the simplicity of a more predictable rhythm. A steady paycheck.
I wonder about stepping away from this path of service. About how easy it might be to let my empathic heart rest. To give myself permission to reject my life purpose, which points its arrow directly at the star of compassion.
Because this path asks a lot.
It’s a life of devotion. And at times, a life of sacrifice. When I start counting all the weekend adventures we’ve missed due to our Sunday commitments, all the exhaustion we’ve accumulated from pouring our blood, sweat, & tears into a mission, all the calluses on my fingers from handwashing hundred of mugs, I wonder, “What’s the point?”
And yet, even in those moments, I can hear Ram Dass laughing, saying, “perfect perfect.”
From the Ram Dass book, “Be Here Now.”
And I hear Trevor Hall’s voice singing,
“Treat it like a weight or treat it like a never ending dance
All the laughter all the tears are just a part of the romance.”
Really driving the message home.
And I remember to be still. To let it all flow through me. It’s all part of it. “It’s part of nature to hold a bit of pain.”
This edge where service meets self is a place every facilitator eventually meets. As we ask, “How do I give from love without abandoning myself in the process?”
The reciprocation for this work is not always material. It’s not something we can see or touch.
Often, it is subtle. Energetic. Spiritual.
And still, we continue.
Because something in us trusts that this matters.
That each gathering, each circle, each practice, each moment of presence contributes to a more peaceful and loving world.
When we connected with the Love Serve Remember Community Outreach, Education, and Inclusion Director, she offered something simple, yet profound:
“Ask for help.”
She reminded us that holding a service-based community is not meant to be done alone.
It requires support. Structure. Shared responsibility.
And over time, we’ve begun to see that sustaining this work asks for more than passion.
It asks for:
support systems
internal boundaries
honest communication
shared ownership
rest as a practice
aligned reciprocity
conscious collaboration
And perhaps most importantly,
A shift in inner dialogue.
From:
“No one supports what we do.”
To:
“Where am I already supported?”
“What evidence of care, reciprocity, and resonance is already here?”
Because what we look for, we find. We build from.
We are not alone in this. And maybe that’s the deeper remembering. Not just love, serve, remember… but receive, too. To trust that just as we are experimenting, initiating offerings, seeing what resonates… community is also asking:
How can we advocate in support of what is being created?
If we are honest, many of us who hold space are depleted. Not because we lack passion, but because passion without discernment can be consumed.
This is where the path calls for refinement.
Devotion does not mean depletion.
Service does not mean self-abandonment.
Love does not require us to carry what is not ours.
Compassion, in its truest form, includes discernment.
To feel deeply, while also honoring capacity.
To meet suffering, without overriding our own inner knowing.
Because not all suffering asks for the same response.
And timing, readiness, and objectivity matter.
This is how we sustain the work.
This is how we remain clear channels.
For me, that clarity comes from returning to the body.
To the Earth.
To stillness.
To remembering that I am not the source. I am the channel.
And from this place, giving no longer depletes.
It flows.
My own personal practice of returning to source, cultivating moments of joy, connecting with the sacred, invoking the muse, giving back to the beloved, has me wondering…
What if we created spaces where nothing needs to be performed, produced, proven, or marketed?
Only remembered?
Not as teachers and students, but as humans sitting in shared presence.
A space to be filled until the cup overflows.
This is the spirit of Satsang.
A coming together in the presence of truth.
A shared devotion to the beloved within.
A space where the heart leads, and identity softens into union.
Inspired by the teachings of Ram Dass and the Love Serve Remember Foundation, Chris and I have taken steps to begin anchoring a local fellowship here in our community.
A place for connection.
For reflection.
For simply being together on the path. Walking each other home.
We’ll be gathering for our first Satsang on April 19th, honoring Bicycle Day with a viewing of Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary, a documentary exploring the lifelong friendship and spiritual journeys of Ram Dass and Timothy Leary.
From there, we’ll sit together. Reflect. Share. Be.
No pressure. Just presence.
Stay tuned for details.
Upcoming Offerings from Feedback Loop Coaching
We will be gathering virtually on April 29th for a special Taoist Qigong community class.
This offering is held in dedication to our teacher, Jesse Lee Parker of the Immortal Arts Academy, who has recently experienced a serious injury requiring surgery and will be unable to teach or earn income during his recovery.
This practice is an opportunity to come together in support of our teacher and in honor of the living lineage he carries forward.
The Art of Mindfulness
We’re opening a 4-week live journey this May called The Art of Mindfulness, guided by Chris who earned his Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification through the Sounds True program from 2021-2023.
Wednesdays in May from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.
One More Thing…
Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all who have been supporting my return to Instagram. I’ve embraced the cyclical nature of expression. Recognizing the call to short form creativity, I dipped my toes back in the waters of social media. For the first week, I went a little wild with freedom, devouring as much content as possible, resulting in my iPhone’s notification that my screen time had increased 199%. I have since set an app limit of 11 minutes a day. Finding grace in discipline. It’s been pure delight expressing in that space again, and that’s thanks to you and your engagement.
Thank you for being here.
For receiving.
For reflecting.
For walking this path alongside us.
You exist, and we are in awe.
With love,
Rachel (and Chris)