A lot has happened since. 40+ intentional journeys with mushrooms, ayahuasca, huachuma, 5-MeO-DMT, LSD, MDMA, ibogaine, and eventually Iboga. Hundreds of therapy sessions. Silent retreats. Several trainings in therapeutic modalities. Guiding and facilitating. Years of integration. A roller coaster of ups and downs.

Now, it feels like an era is coming to an end. My life looks very different these days. Healing and self development, at large, are no longer the focal point of my life. I can’t remember the last time I read self-help. I’m not in therapy. I haven’t meditated in ages. I had a little LSD microdose a few months ago and it felt… redundant?

This work has gifted me more than I could have hoped for. Most days, I already feel like I’m on a microdose. The world is all sparkly again. I’ve Benjamin Buttoned my way back to the free-spirited child that is once again enchanted with the simple wonders of the world. Emotions flow through easily, too easily you could say. Nothing seems to be lingering beneath the surface, clogging up the system. Is this what untroubled people feel like? Either way, it’s marvelous.

Maybe one day I will feel adventurous again and hit the DMT vape that’s been sitting in my pantry, unopened, to check in with the machine elves. But for now, my appetite to transcend 3D reality has waned. I just want to roll in the grass and stare at the trees and lay in the sun and write poems that are prayers and grow a garden and wear outfits that bring me joy and eat delicious foods and experience art and cuddle the humans and animals I love. I don’t want to endlessly contemplate the unseen but be so utterly present with the things I can sense that my mind dissolves into the present for split seconds at a time, time after time. Which is transcendent in its own ways.

I feel this very deeply. And I got here thanks to one medicine in particular—Iboga. Iboga has woken me up to the rich realms of the senses and the transcendent bliss found in direct experience of the often mundane. It has woken me up to the miracle that is life to which the only appropriate response is utter gratitude. The Bwiti only have one prayer: Thank you for this day.

A year into my integration, this truth has landed in my soul. Most days, I wake up thrilled to be alive which is in stark contrast to where I was seven years ago before I started this journey, which was…. well, the opposite. I owe all of this to plant medicines, and that awareness is constant and omnipresent. It is why any and all nature fills my heart with pure joy.

This gratitude is accompanied by a piercing awareness of how limited our time on earth really is, and that we honor the gift of life by choosing how we spend our time. I’m still figuring out what that means. Still learning to lean into my sensitivity and design a life that feels full, even if it looks different. To express my authenticity and create not just from wounding but from essence.

The psychedelic path has brought me home but sometimes it feels like this home is a little island I share with just a few people, far away from the hustle and bustle of big cities, cluttered digital spaces, boozy social settings, and corporate America. I don’t mind it.

When I sit with the question of what wants to come through, I only get one answer: joy.

Joy! Joy! Joy!

I have absolutely no idea what that means.

When you spend so much of your time and energy on inner work and get to a place where it fades into the background, it leaves a void. Old identities are dying but new ones haven’t been born yet. For now, I’m simply called to lean into joy. All else shall flow from there. I wish to be of service, but I’m still unsure what that will look like. So instead of forcing it, I will wait for guidance.

The Journey is having somewhat of an identity crisis, too. I built this space to explore consciousness and the inner realms—so now what? Of course, the path from the mind to the heart will forever be a guiding force in my life, and there is always more work to do, but my interest in these topics, for the first time in a decade, has dried up. Maybe it’s just a phase, maybe it’s the new normal—who knows. Only time will tell.

In an age where any information can be delivered and tailored to you via AI, I also question the role of non-fiction online writing. Tim Ferriss just wrote about how AI is impacting self-help authors. The one thing AI can’t replace is our stories, but my desire to just write about myself is limited. I have several personal essays sitting in my drafts but none of them feel essential to share. Maybe I just had to write them for myself. The flood of AI content continues to push me to detach from creative outputs and anchor into the process as the primary purpose. Which doesn’t come naturally.

What’s next? As unsettling as the liminality is, I trust that my creative callings will return if I give things some space. I’ve decided to take a little break from writing as I figure out what’s next. (Paid subscriptions are paused for now.)

Wherever you are in your process—I’m curious: What have been the biggest obstacles? What do you need (and perhaps struggle to find)? What topics are most on your mind? Feel free to comment or respond to this email directly. I still wish to share what’s genuinely helpful however I can. I so appreciate your readership.

Gratefully,

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The specific desires have waxed and waned, but the underlying fuel remained the same: the need to be exceptional.

Until now.

With each passing month, the attachment to greatness further seeps out of me. Dozens of half-finished articles sitting in my drafts. Over a hundred poems waiting to be edited. Several book concepts. A notes app filled with visionary ideas. A graveyard of outgrown legacies. Last Sunday, I sat outside in the sun for an hour making a beaded necklace although I’m behind on my posting schedule and the house was a mess and there were a dozen things to do for the start up I’ve been building.

Ambition is just trauma in disguise, my little neurologist sister joked. A senior physician at her hospital asked her what she didn’t understand about the complex statistics he wanted to discuss. I could get to grips with it, but do I need to? she posed. Nope.

A softer, more nuanced way to put it is to say that the more you heal, the more type B you become. Many of you seem to agree.

My type A nature, which has driven every single accomplishment in my life (including that of ridding myself of the predicament to begin with) grew out of a deep-rooted belief that things are not okay as they are. That I was not okay as I was. A belief I unknowingly carried into adulthood, as we so often do once little-t-trauma swaps our free-spirited innocence for well-intended but limiting beliefs.

It shows up as competitiveness, perfectionism, hyper-accomplishment, and workaholism. When I worked in management consulting, we had a term for this: we called ourselves insecure overachievers. (Which happen to be the perfect employees—until they burn out, which many of us did.)

In my case, it looked like this: graduating top of my class, getting a job at 22 that even my family didn't think I could get, plus two graduate degrees from prestigious schools. It also looked like this: dieting my way into a decade-long eating disorder so severe my body became convinced it couldn't bear children, working out excessively until injuries forced me to stop, attending four ayahuasca retreats in one year to get my mental health in order pronto, and spending much of my free time building a start up while writing online next to a full-time job.

The final belief to go was the most disguised one: that I had to create great impact to make it all worth it.

It was already worth it. I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful for all of it.

Because now, I get to be ordinary.

Am I hiding in fear or resting in freedom? Is my great surrender of the tired-and-giving-up kind, or of the relieved-and-finally-free kind?

I will never know for sure. All I know is that a year ago, I was technically happy and finally healthy but I could barely rest or breathe or just be. The pressure to write some grand finale into my hero’s journey was hovering over me like a thumb pressing down.

The internet has made scale the guiding principle of our era, which is rocket fuel for the ego. We are inundated with aspirational stories of rags to riches, or in my case, suffering to impact. We do great things and make them look even greater online. But with that pressure comes urgency, impatience, and rigidity. And ultimately a conviction that for as long as things haven’t fallen perfectly into place yet, we’ll sacrifice the mundanity of the now for the promise of a better future.

There was a lovely lady in the deli in my old neighborhood. She prepared breakfast sandwiches with such care, and delivered them with such joy and lightness of being, that it always stopped me in my tracks. It made the day better and I imagine it did so for everyone she encountered. I bet she has some of the answers I’m looking for.

Now that I’ve rung in my ordinary era, I’m enjoying something even more precious than drive: space. Space to just enjoy life. Space to just be and lean into what delights. Space to take a whole day off each week for rest and pleasure. Space to do things that aren’t productive. To read fairy fantasy instead of self-help. Poems in the morning instead of the news. Space to forget what day it is—in a good way. Space to linger.

I’m done pushing. I’m done rushing. Now that there is space, I can do something else: listen. I can gift myself the patience to wait and see what my soul feels pulled towards, without expectations or timelines. That’s the difference between being driven and being called.

The liminality is uncomfortable: old ways are dying but the new still hasn’t fully formed. The space feels unfamiliar and almost lacking. Even though it is the opposite: Most days are filled with gratitude. I find myself marveling at the world again, like a little child.

I will never stop dreaming or creating. I still hope to leave the world a better place. I’ll still draw on my Type A toolkit when it serves—intentionally now, not by default. But as the attachment dissolves, I find myself more at home in the moment than ever. There I find her, the little girl, enchanted by the world again. As it is, not as I wish it to be.

Thanks for reading,

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Prompted by a growing awareness of what modern life does to us, I went looking for solutions. One came in the form of John Mark Comer’s book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, which suggests four practices for a spiritual life: sabbath is one of them.

Comer is an evangelical pastor who speaks to it from a Christian lens. The roots, though, lie in the rich Jewish tradition. Shabbat comes from the Hebrew verb shavat, which means to cease, to stop. Not to rest in the sense of recovering for more work, but to stop, full stop. As the story of Genesis goes, God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. The deeper framing in the Torah ties shabbat to liberation: the Israelites, freed from generations of slavery in Egypt, are commanded to rest—because slaves don't get days off, and free people do.

In secular terms: rest is the mark of a free person.

And I'm not interested in spending my precious time as a slave to the modern world.

What sabbath is (and what it isn’t)

Sabbath is not just a day off. You take a day off when you’re exhausted. Sabbath is a day you take to remember why you are alive. A day to remember that you did not come here to work every minute of every day, make as much money as you can, spend every free minute consuming brainrotty or agitating media, or optimize every area of your life.

You came here to enjoy the improbably rare gift of human consciousness and the uncontainable beauty of creation. You came here for long meals, nature strolls, and slow mornings. You came here to explore and create and love. That's what sabbath is for. We may aspire to have these things sprinkled into every day, but sabbath makes them a definitive priority. That means anything in the way of enjoying life must go.

While religious sabbath centers not only on rest but worship, the pillars of secular sabbath are rest and delight.

Here are the guidelines I’ve been following (which borrow from the religious roots):

• A fixed 24 hours, same time every week. We don’t take sabbath when we can or when it’s convenient. We plan for it and design the rest of the week around it. We’ve chosen Saturday. Sabbath begins Friday after dinner. It can also be Sunday, but what I love about Saturday sabbath is that when it ends, you still have Sunday.

• No work (absolutely none). Work here does not just include your job and the obvious culprits such as email, laptops, or calls. It also includes errands, chores, inbox cleaning, or any efforts related to productivity or self-improvement. I usually (and happily) spend some time on Friday afternoons to take care of any final chores that will allow us to fully relax for the next 24 hours.

• No phone (or minimal screens). Digital sabbath has gained momentum as an antidote to screen overload, and for good reason. If you can, put your phone away in a drawer for the full 24 hours. I have a Brick setting for sabbath that disables most apps on my phone, but I can still look stuff up and use Maps if needed. The absolute minimum here is no email or social media.

• Limited media. In addition to no social media, I like to add in the rule of no media—period. Sabbath is not the day you want to immerse yourself in the worries and aches of the world. It will not help you rest, or be delighted. The world can wait. A day binge watching Netflix on the couch is also not an ideal Sabbath activity, it may be restful but it will not spiritually fill you up.

• No commerce. This is a day to cease, which includes consumption. I’m not strict with this guideline. I won’t do grocery runs, errands, or online shopping, but if my sabbath activities happen to take me into a cute boutique, I might treat myself.

• Small rituals to mark the beginning (and end). You could light a candle or play a song to ring in sabbath every week. Comer’s family makes the same cookie skillet after family dinners on Friday, an image that’s stuck with me. We started naming gratitudes at the end of the 24 hours, which feels like tying a bow on this beautiful gift we’ve given ourself.

Now, this is a long list of what not to do during Sabbath. So what do you do instead? In short, anything that promotes rest or delight. Here are some examples:

• Long, delicious meals

• Time with the people you love

• Walks in nature and general time outside

• Reading, board games

• Creative activities (that don’t feel like work)

• Listening to music or attending live concerts

• Exploring new areas of town or taking day trips

If you’re not sure about whether something is a good fit or not, just ask yourself: will this feel restful and delightful? If the answer is yes, you’re good to go.

Sabbath is a practice of reclaiming your birthright of joy. It is one day a week where you say no to all that makes modern life hard—the work, the productivity, the overconsumption—and YES to all that makes life rich—relationships, play, pleasure, joy, and aliveness.

The point of sabbath is the day itself—not what it does for the rest of your week. But the spillover is real and worth naming: you'll probably feel more rested, more grateful, less reactive. The screen break tends to make the other six days of screen use more intentional. Looking back, sabbath may become your favorite part of the week. As Comer puts it, it's basically like having a full day of Christmas with your family—every single week.

Most of us are already making an effort to enjoy our weekends. To do fun things and relax. But there is a subtle but profound nuance I’ve observed in intentionally making one day a week holy. Take it as spiritual or as secular as you will: the truth is, life is meant to be enjoyed. When we clutter our days too much with duties and constant stimulation, we lose sight of that fact. When we stop the doing and drop into being, we remember why we are here.

May you rest and be delighted this week,

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Because I couldn't waste the first sun in weeks, I packed up the dogs and drove to a quiet river spot nearby. Instead of walking along the beach per usual, I let my body fall heavy to the ground. It was just me and the thrumming river. The birds were chirping. The sun painted love letters all over my skin. The dogs were digging and running and chewing and swimming (and shaking their wet bodies right over mine, of course).

It felt good. I didn’t bring a book, the phone stayed in my pocket. I just laid. I laid for half an hour until I realized how rarely I do this despite how good it feels. How rarely we all do this and how this was how we spent the majority of our time until just a few hundred years ago.

I also realized I wasn’t tired from anything I’d done.

I was tired from modern life.

For weeks, I’ve ventured deep down the rabbit hole of how exactly modern life diverges from the way we evolved to live. The picture that emerged was worse than I expected—but also strangely validating.

So many of us feel perpetually tired, irritable, or mentally fragile. We try to fix it with self-care, supplements, therapy. But if we don't address the root, we're mopping a flooded room with a piece of toilet paper.

We are living in a way that our biology actively protests.

The evidence is mounting.

And it goes far beyond the smartphone.

We sleep 20-30% less

We now sleep on average 6-7 hours1, which is about 20-30% less than we used to. Until the arrival of the light bulb in 1879, we retired and rose with the natural rhythm of the sun. When researchers placed modern people in 14 hours of darkness—mimicking pre-industrial winter nights—subjects slept 11 hours on the first few nights and took nearly four weeks to stabilize at about 8.9 hours.2 Many of us are carrying so much accumulated sleep debt that it takes weeks to clear it. We all know this phenomenon from vacation, when for the first week, you just feel more exhausted: the body realizes it is finally time to catch up on rest.

Sleep compression results in higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, depression, cognitive decline, weakened immunity, and early death—which is to say, nearly every modern epidemic we're scrambling to solve has a sleep debt sitting underneath it.

We work more (and rarely switch off)

Charles Darwin worked about four hours a day in three 90-minute sessions with walks, naps, and family time in between. On that schedule, he wrote 19 books, including The Origin of Species. He wasn't the exception. Dickens, Poincaré, and Thomas Mann kept similar hours.3

Studies show hunter-gatherers spent only about 15-20 hours per week on food acquisition.4 When food processing and domestic chores are included, hunter-gatherer adults spent an average of 30-40 hours per week on all activities combined.5 Similar to our modern workweek on paper, but radically different in character: intermittent, outdoors, self-directed, with built-in rest.

Now, we work a 40-hour work week, which with commute and extra hours pushes closer to 50-55 actual hours devoted to work. That’s before chores. Hunter-gatherers worked in bursts with long stretches of nothing. For the modern human, the work day never really ends. The smartphone has dissolved the boundary between work and leisure, and the rise of remote work post-pandemic hasn’t helped, either.

We shrunk our communities

For most of human history, we lived in bands of 25 to 50 people who hunted, ate, slept, and raised children together, nested within a broader community of around 150. This is the famous Dunbar number that captures how many personal relationships we can realistically manage.6 Back then, you knew everyone in your tribe. Everyone knew you. You were rarely unwitnessed.

Now, the default unit is a single-family household—or, increasingly, living alone. This life model, combined with the rise of the internet, has given birth to an unprecedented loneliness epidemic. 17% of Americans report having no close friends at all7—a figure that has more than quintupled since 1990, when it was 3%. The share of people with ten or more close friends has collapsed from 33% to 13% over the same period.8 We went from being embedded in a web of faces we'd known since birth to navigating cities of millions where it is entirely possible—common, even—to go days without a single meaningful interaction.

For 99% of our species' existence, isolation was a death sentence. Even worse, the things we turn to when lonely, such as social media, provide a false sense of connection while simply further isolating us.

Human connection is sparse; emotions are blunted

Meals used to be the social architecture of the day, shared with our community. Now, many of us scarf down food alone at the desk or in front of the TV or TikTok.

We’ve largely replaced face-to-face conversation with digital communication. We text, email, perhaps call. There is minimal co-regulation. We maintained the appearance of connection while losing the embodied reality of it.

Social media provides the illusion of hyper-connection while eroding our capacity for empathy. We scroll past images of war, then a meme, then an ad, then someone's baby. Algorithms spread emotionally-charged short-form videos—the more emotional, the more viral—and leave us with an emotional imprint of the lives of hundreds of strangers each day. The brain is not designed to process emotional material at this volume, so it does the only rational thing: it goes numb. Researchers call this psychic numbing—not the disappearance of empathy but the brain protecting itself from input it was never designed to absorb.9 We end up mentally overstimulated but emotionally flat.

Cities have become the new norm

In 1800, only 3 percent of the global population lived in urban areas, while most lived in rural areas. By 2008, this number had jumped to over 50 percent.10 Now, 84% for Americans live in cities.11

In hunter-gatherer times, we had about 1 person for every 6 square miles. Now, midsize cities like Portland accommodate 26,000 people per 6 square miles.12 (That’s not even counting denser cities where that figure easily increases tenfold.)

I've lived in cities all my life—Vienna, Munich, Paris, New York, Los Angeles. The past few months in the mountains of British Columbia have left me with no doubts about what feels better in my body (and soul). One afternoon in Vancouver proved to me that with a regulated baseline, the noise pollution of cities is overwhelming.

We spend very little time outside

Americans spend about 87 percent of their time indoors and another 6 percent in vehicles13 —so roughly 93% of life is spent in enclosed environments, leaving just 7% outdoors. That’s about half a day per week outside.

We used to spend all of our time outside, but now we spend most of it in an air-conditioned, artificially-lit spaces, much of it in front of screens. We’ve eliminated nearly all sensory variability from daily life. The body’s primary way of locating itself in the world is through sensory contrast, and we’ve engineered almost all of it away. The natural mechanisms that promote recovery (daylight, darkness at night, time outside) have been almost entirely removed from daily life.

What’s the cost? Our indoor lifestyle lowers heart rate variability, elevates cortisol, delays melatonin, shallows sleep, impairs glucose control, and promotes weight gain. We feel “tired but wired”—exhausted but unable to rest.

Nature feels so good and healing because it is our original home. Now, we might go forest bathing once a month, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that we used to live in the forest. We’re animals after all.

We eliminated thresholds, boredom, and transitions

Boredom used to be an unavoidable feature of life. We had natural threshold moments throughout the day that served as pauses for the nervous system to recalibrate. We worked, then rested.

Smartphones have eliminated gaps in our days entirely. We wake up, check our phone, listen to the news while eating breakfast. We commute to work listening to a podcast, work all day, eat dinner, watch Netflix, more phone time, rinse and repeat.

The default mode network (DMN)—the brain region that activates when we’re not focused on a task—comes online during mind-wandering, daydreaming, and staring out windows. In default mode, the brain still uses about 95% of the energy it uses during focused thinking.14 It’s not idle, it’s doing essential background work: memory consolidation, identity formation, creative connection-making. Every time we pick up the phone (a staggering 205 times per day on average15), we interrupt the DMN before it can do its work.

Research proves that boredom fosters creativity.16 Sadly there is only one place where we let our minds wander these days: the shower.

We stopped moving the way we're built to move

Hunter-gatherers were estimated to walk 6-10 miles daily as baseline—not for exercise, but as a byproduct of living. The average American walks about 2 miles.17 Few of us achieve the recommended 10,000 steps a day, which is still less than what we evolved to walk each day. Rather than walking outside, many of us choose a treadmill instead, even further removing us from our natural habitat.

Exercise, as a concept, is a modern invention: the attempt to compensate for our sedentary lifestyle by scheduling movement between long stretches of sitting. No other species needs a separate activity to stay physically functional. That alone tells us how far we have drifted from our nature.

All these shifts may not be too life altering on their own, but stacked up, they create lives that feel continuously exhausting for seemingly no reasons. Maybe these are the reasons. Maybe we don’t need to heal more, maybe we need to drastically redesign our environment to get as close as we possibly can to a way of life that nurtures our evolutionary reality.

In most ways, the conveniences of modern life make things easier for us. It’s not that modern life is harder. It’s that modern life systematically severed us from the ways we used to feel ourselves, each other, and the world.

I think about that morning by the river. How half an hour on the ground felt rare and liberating—in a way that none of my other self-care activities could. How unremarkable it would have been to any human who lived before us—and how extraordinary it felt to me.

Until next time,

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Now, there are two scenarios for how this could play out:

Scenario 1: I spend the remaining 58 minutes wondering why I feel this way, what is going on, and what I should do about it. Then I go home still feeling icky and irritable. I mindlessly snack or scroll or work to distract myself. Maybe I ask Claude what to do. It gives me an answer (AI always has an answer) and I end up with some type of plan that I might act on or not. In all likelihood, the ickiness will linger, and if it leaves, return.

Scenario 2: I spend a few minutes actually letting myself feel the ickiness. Not analyzing it in my mind, but feeling it in my body. I use the undisturbed opportunity on my mat to observe the sensation and make space for it. Within minutes, it fades. Then, clarity arrives. I reflect and make a plan. I may still use Claude to do so. But I’m not chitchatting with AI to escape the sensory discomfort, I’m using it to turn the message from the ~completed~ feeling into a plan of action.

Scenario 1 is how I lived most of my life (minus Claude). I didn’t feel much but when something knocked on the door, I did whatever I needed to do to avoid it. Luckily, what happened this week was the latter. While it may sound straight forward—if you at times feel numb or disconnected or not in control of your emotions—you know that it is not.

If this is you, this is for you.

The skillset of actually feeling my feelings is the single most important thing I’ve learned in the last decade (perhaps ever). It has allowed me to drop a host of unhealthy habits, build healthy relationships, reorient my career towards purpose, and build a life I no longer need to escape from.

Most of us never learn how to do this, because most of our parents have never learned how to do it properly. As a result, we overwork, burn out, scroll, drink, eat, shop, fight, flee, or become chronically ill. Life lacks a certain depth. We feel that something is missing. Because it is.

I did not learn how to feel my feelings growing up. I also did not learn it during my eight years of talk therapy. Rather, I learned it through 400+ hours in dialogue with psychedelic medicines, an extended outpatient addiction treatment, a somatic therapy training, and years of observation, trial and error.

Here is everything I’ve learned.

Why you’re struggling to feel your feelings

There are three main forces that prevent you from feeling your feelings.

The first one is the over-reliance on the intellect in modern society. We’ve crowned genius as our greatest virtue and reduced intelligence to our cognitive capacities. As a result, there is a lack of emotional education in homes, schools, and everyday life. Once we realize something isn’t working, we go to therapy which teaches us to intellectualize our feelings and rarely helps us feel them. This is relatively new. For most of human history, the wisdom of the body was taught alongside the wisdom of the mind.

The second force is the numbing nature of modern life. Modern life overstimulates the mind and under-stimulates the body, which perpetuates excessive thinking and blunts the senses. Social media, smartphones, productivity culture, indoor living, noise pollution, overconsumption, and the lack of solitude and silence are eroding our capacities to feel deeply. When the nervous system is dysregulated and overstimulated, the body prioritizes coping over sensing in an effort for survival.

The third force is developmental trauma which also dysregulates your nervous system to the extent that your body might suppress its natural emotional processing powers. Growing up with caretakers who do not have healthy emotional coping and/or expression can result in unconscious beliefs that feeling is not safe, allowed, helpful, or desirable. Such beliefs will lead you to suppress your sensitivity and often result in addiction or depression.

How to know that you’re feeling something

Some emotions are obvious. You know that you’re sad when you’re crying or angry when you’re yelling. But that’s just a small fraction of your emotional landscape. Most emotions are subtle—unlike thoughts, which are loud. Emotions operate below the threshold of recognition and burst up only when ignored for too long.

This is especially true if you’re walking around with a low-grade emotional fog that modern life has subjected most of us to. You don’t register something is brewing under the surface until it turns into a behavior and you snap at someone, withdraw, or doom-scroll. When you befriend the subtlety, you can catch feelings before they become disruptive. That’s why we start here.

Catching feelings earlier

There are the obvious signs that you’re having an emotional experience, such as physical sensations in your gut, chest, or limbs, racing thoughts, or automatic behaviors like crying or yelling.

But there are also more subtle signs that you’re either unconsciously responding to an emotion or avoiding it altogether. Some common examples include:

• Scrolling more than normal

• Mindless snacking or stress eating

• Drinking too much

• Online shopping for things you don’t need

• Staying busy for the sake of staying busy

• Chatting with AI all day long

• Picking small, irrelevant fights

• Being judgmental of others or gossiping

• Chronic pain, commonly in back or neck

Resist the urge to analyze

Whether you know you’re sad, simply feel off, or suspect you’re avoiding something — the first question is always: what is going on? Your natural impulse is to make sense. It is important that you park this desire to understand what exactly you’re feeling (and why) until you’ve completed the full cycle of the emotion.

Mental interpretation interrupts the emotional process. A process that, according to Harvard neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, lasts on average only about 90 seconds. Yes, you read that right. An emotion lasts only a minute or two in the body (if uninterrupted). If it persists longer, it’s because you are consciously or unconsciously re-triggering it through mental intervention.

The goal is to first feel the emotion completely, then analyze. If you don’t know right away what you’re feeling, you don’t need to know yet. Clarity will come when the emotion has moved through you, so be patient. And even if it doesn’t, you’ll be much more clear-headed to figure it out then.

How to feel the feeling

Emotions consist of raw energy in the form of sensation, accompanied by thoughts in the form of stories which the mind crafts in an effort to make sense of the sensations.

The key to feeling your feelings is to stay at the level of sensation as much as you can. As soon as your mind intervenes, you move from sensation into story, which contaminates the present moment with past experiences or future fears. To be present with your experience, you need to quiet the mind. Your unobstructed sensations are the closest you can get to truth. They are your compass. If you stay with sensation without story, the raw energy can move through you freely (and often quickly).

This sounds simple but can be incredibly hard, especially if you have unhealed trauma that interferes with this natural process by triggering memory. The way out of this loop is to learn the language of your body. When you do this, even a nervous system that has never learned how to feel safely can learn. It’s never too late.

Here's what the process actually looks like.

Notice

Pay close attention to what exactly you’re feeling. Tightness in your chest. A lump in your throat. Heat rising. Heavy limbs. Get meticulous about observing the quality of the sensation: What is the texture? Is it warm or cold? Expansive or contracting? Fast or slow? Electric or soft? Close your eyes if helpful and sit still for a minute so you can devote your full attention to simply observing.

Neutralize

The mind will be quick to come in with craving, aversion, judgement, or curiosity. The key practice here is to redirect your attention from thought to sensation every time you notice a thought. Notice what thoughts arise, but don’t indulge in them and move back to the sensations as soon as you realize you’re thinking. This gets easier with practice. Every time you have a thought, you mentally say stop! let me just feel this for now. That’s how you neutralize and experience the sensation to its fullest. That’s how you cut down the time to a minute or two, instead of hours or days.

Regulate

At this point, your nervous system might intervene if it deems the experience too intense. That’s why you’ll want to self-regulate. The goal is not to calm down or get rid of the sensation but to get your nervous system into a zone where it feels safe to allow it fully. You can slow your breath and extend your exhales. You can place your hands on your body or introduce gentle, rhythmic movement to soothe. You can play a piece of music that helps you feel held or release the energy. If the sensation is charged, you can shake your hands or limbs or use any other way to move it. Let your body show you what to do and do it until the sensation subsides.

Name

Name what you’re feeling along the way but do it in a way that avoids identification with the emotion. For example, instead of I am angry you would say I am noticing anger. You are not your emotions. Instead, view the emotion as a visitor with a message. If you don’t know what the emotion is yet, simply label the sensation. I am noticing a warm rush of energy from my belly to my head. You can do this out loud or in your head at any point of the process. It helps validate what is happening which is the single most important thing when it comes to feelings: they just want to be seen.

Here is a visual summary that you can save and return to:

If you follow these four steps, the sensations will subside in just a few minutes. You have felt your feeling and can then move on to analyzing it.

Back on my mat, the ickiness passed in under two minutes. What followed was clarity I couldn't have thought my way to. The feeling had done its job. All I had to do was let it.

From my heart to yours,

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There it was — the pattern underneath the pattern. The compulsion to do everything right. Healing had become another form of control, and I’d been running it like a project for years. A quiet knowing woke me up from my trance that day, as I realized there was only one thing left to do: surrender. After all this work, it was finally time to just let myself live. To accept the possibility that I might never change again — and that I would be okay.

So I stopped everything. I stopped meditating. I ate pasta and pizza and multiple desserts every day. I swapped self-help for romantasy novels. I took a long break from psychedelics. For the first time in a decade, I let myself be a person instead of a project. Slowly but effortlessly, my eating normalized.

It was only then that I passed the threshold from healing into living and entered my post-healing era. But I’ve seen over and over that not everyone makes it. Not because they “can’t heal”, but because they get stuck in the never-ending hamster wheel of self-improvement. If you’re not careful, the work that liberates you becomes a cage.

There comes a moment in the healing journey where you remember your wholeness — where you see, clearly, that you never needed fixing in the first place. I've had that moment dozens of times. In crowded ceremonies. In a random church in Pasadena. In the shower on a Tuesday. Each time it felt final. And each time the old stories and patterns crept back in. My eating always told the truth: If it wasn’t normal yet, it meant I was still coping. Until the main thing I was coping with became my inability to just let myself be.

That’s the threshold you eventually pass: your flaws will stare you in the eyes and you choose — will you continue trying to eradicate them, or can you surrender and let them be? Deep healing work is episodic and catalytic. It may take months or years or even a decade, but it’s not meant to go on forever. If you never stop renovating in there, you forget that outside your four walls, there’s a whole world waiting for you.

This is the biggest pitfall of inner work: healing perpetuates a sense of deficiency. Because acceptance is the hardest thing to practice, we instead look for things to change. And we will always find something. As a facilitator in psychedelic ceremonies, I’ve witnessed this again and again: The people who come to ceremony every single month without an end in sight. I’ve also seen it on social media, where in an effort to eradicate stigma (admirable) people tie their mental health diagnoses deeply and permanently into their identities (unhelpful).

When self-development becomes compulsive, what feels like an act of self-love becomes an act of self-abandonment. Because the perfection we seek is impossible to achieve. Healing becomes a coping strategy. It helps us avoid a fundamental truth about human existence: we are flawed creatures.

After a certain amount of conscious effort, the antidote is often not more healing work. We don’t find wholeness by going and fixing the parts that don’t feel whole, we learn to be with the sense of lack, which is part of the human experience.

This is the paradox of change: you only move forward if you truly accept where you are. It was only when I completely surrendered control over food and my body that, within months, the fight was over. It was only when I unleashed my flawed self onto Hinge after a decade of isolation in the name of healing that I opened myself up to the relationship that would usher in my next stage of growth.

It doesn't mean patterns won't return. It doesn't mean you’re off the hook. Inner work doesn't end — it just changes shape. You stop excavating and start noticing. You stop trying to fix what arises and practice being with it instead.

My big surrender didn’t end my inner work. For years to come, I experienced nervous system dysregulation and shame spirals that didn’t resolve until I mustered up the courage to sit with Iboga. But healing no longer dictated my life. I tended to it when needed, without attachment. But I also devoted more time to all the other things that make life worth living: relationships, rest, work, play, and creativity.

There's always more inner work.

But there's also life — and at some point, living well becomes the work.

With gratitude to your journey,

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Turning my phone into a dumb phone has made me more aware of my moods throughout the day and taught me how to attune in ways that are more nourishing — by meeting the actual underlying need, not avoiding it or fake-meeting it.

But even if you’re not ready to dumbify your phone, you can still practice scrolling curiosity. That’s the whole premise of sober curiosity: you don’t need to quit drinking, just ask yourself why you want to drink and then decide if drinking is the best answer. If you do this often enough, you’ll change your habits automatically.

The first step is simple — when you reach for your phone, pause and ask yourself: how am I feeling and what do I need?

Based on the answer, you can figure out if there’s something to do instead that more deeply addresses the underlying need. Below are some ideas I keep coming back to. You can still scroll, if you want to. But if you do — at least you checked in with yourself and know why. This is not about rigidity but awareness and experimentation.

If you do feel ready to turn your phone into a dumb phone — here’s my guide:

“I’m bored and restless”

When you’re bored, you’re under-stimulated. Which is not a bad thing. Boredom is your friend. Really. It is the birthplace of creativity. Eliminating boredom from your life is an act of cruelty to the soul. The phone is the easiest way to avoid boredom but you already know it is not the healthiest one. Better ways to stimulate yourself: read a book, tidy or reorganize your home, make a list of places you want to travel to, find new restaurants in town, plan a trip or fun weekend activity, declutter your photos, or watch a longer YouTube video about something you’re interested in.

“I’m anxious and can’t sit still”

When you’re anxious, your nervous system needs a reset, not more input. Scrolling in 9 out of 10 cases will simply make you more anxious. Instead, try going on a quick 10-minute walk without a destination, take a cold shower or splash cold water on your face or wrists, dump your worries into your journal, do some quick breath work (inhale for 4, hold for 3, exhale for 7) or yoga, bake something, learn something new, make something, or just listen to immersive music.

“I’m sad and want comfort”

Scrolling mimics comfort but doesn't deliver it in the way your soul needs it. It will eventually only make you sadder. Make yourself a warm drink (tea or cacao are elite options), re-read a favorite passage or poem from a book you love, text or call a loved one, listen to bittersweet music to create space for your tenderness, grant yourself couch time with a cheesy romcom, cook or order a comfort meal, take a candlelit hot bath with a book or magazine, or book yourself a massage.

“I’m avoiding something”

The infinite feeds and endless rabbit holes of the internet foster procrastination. If you have work to do, go to a nice coffee shop and leave your phone at home. Put on a playlist that induces flow. Define your top 3 priorities for the day. Start with the quickest one on the list. Bribe yourself and set a small reward after two hours of work. If what you’re avoiding is emotional, the best thing you can do for yourself is to pause everything and make space for it. Have the conversation you don’t want to have (with yourself or another person or your therapist — or even with AI, if needed).

“I’m lonely”

Watching other people live their lives online can deliver an artificial sense of parasocial connection. It does work a little bit in the moment — but the problem is that it’s not actually a solution, and it keeps you from doing what would actually make you less lonely in the long run. You’re better off calling your mom, sending a voice memo to a friend, searching for a local group, event, or meetup based on your interests, writing a handwritten letter, strolling through a bookstore, or just hanging out somewhere with ambient people like a café, library, or park.

“I'm overstimulated and burnt out”

More screen time is the last thing you need when you feel flat. Try lying on the floor for a few minutes (seriously), staring out the window, taking a bath, putting on one song or album and doing nothing else but listening to it. Go outside and let your feet touch the grass. Go on a hike or any other nature activity. Bring a blanket and a book to a park. Take a nap. Take a slow walk without headphones. Do a body scan or mini meditation if you don’t want to leave your house.

“I’m feeling creative but stuck”

The scroll is eating any creative impulses alive. If the creative gods are ringing your doorbell you do not want to turn them away. If you’re inspired but blocked, take a page out of Beethoven’s book and go for a long walk to see if any ideas come. Create something, even if it’s the worst thing you could possibly create. Make a mood board on Pinterest (or even better, on paper with real magazine cutouts). Find a simple crafty activity like junk journaling, watercolor, or embroidery.

“I’m angry or frustrated”

If you want to be mad at the world, the internet will give you a plethora of reasons. Anger and frustration are surplus energy in your body that want to be moved, not spread across the internet through ragey clickbait. The best thing you can do is literally shake it off — the right music can help you release all that extra energy (if you need inspo, we have a specific toon for this in our app). Or a good old pillow punch, or a scream in the car. Those always work. If those sound too silly for you and you consider yourself more civilized, try a hard workout, run, or even walk. You could also channel that extra energy into cleaning or tidying your home.

“I just want to feel good”

You’re chasing a dopamine hit. There’s nothing shameful about it. We’re all just human. What you’re after is reward and novelty. Here are dopamine hits of better quality than the digital ones: do a workout, clean or tidy your home, make love or cuddle, go on a joy walk or ride with a banger playlist, get some sunlight, make an indulgent meal, play games, sing a little, discover a new part of town, make somebody you love a gift, go to the spa, do a cold plunge (sorry but it works), buy yourself flowers, get tickets for live music, or plan a trip.

The point of this isn’t to be anti-phone. Your phone is fine. You’re fine. The problem is that scrolling has become the default answer to every internal question — bored? scroll. restless? scroll. avoiding something? scroll. And it almost never actually answers the question.

Most of the time, what you want is simple and already within arm’s reach. You’ll notice the repeats in this list: A walk. Downtime. Hobbies. Calling someone.

Next time you feel yourself reach for your phone, just ask yourself: what am I actually feeling right now? Then pick something from the list. Or don’t pick from the list at all — just do literally anything else with your hands and see what happens.

You might be surprised how little you needed the scroll in the first place.

Until next week,

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Two ceremonies, three cups of medicine each night, and—nothing.

I flew to Costa Rica and spent thousands to lie on a mattress and listen to strangers around me throw up all night. Great.

During our daily integration workshops, miracle stories are being rubbed into my face. The elderly woman with the crutches who can suddenly walk. The middle-aged bald man who got alien surgery on his brain and is no longer depressed. The father-son duo that made up after seven years of not speaking. Everyone’s gotten their miracle—except me and a handful of others.

As I’m lying on my back hours into that third night, once again three cups in, bored as hell and sober as stone, tears begin knocking on the glassy doors of my empty eyes. Here I have my proof: I’m a lost cause. Not even ayahuasca can salvage me.

And now, the cherry on top—cramps rumbling through my belly. There she is, my period, on her way to make sure I don’t enjoy this week the least bit. This whole trip was a mistake. Maybe I should have thought harder about this. It’s just been four weeks since I watched the documentary that made me book the trip the next day. What a colossal failure.

Heat is rising to my chest. The woman in front of me is moving through some weird exorcism. Her glitter-painted face and flowing gown can’t save her from whatever terror she’s experiencing. I’m in sweatpants but at least I’m contained. Across the room, a man is yelling and cursing so violently he gets escorted out of the room.

Why not me? That’s all I can think as I look around the room, with everyone screaming and crying and purging their guts out. Why can’t I be healed? That’s all I want—what everybody else is having. I’m not asking for anything extra.

Why not me? Why not me? Why not me?

I wallow in the unfairness. Single tears turn into silent weeps. Soon, they become desperate wails. Why not me? turns into Why me? and suddenly I’m no longer twenty-seven. I’m six years old and just got punched in the stomach.

A helper rushes over to sit down next to me. Intricate braids hang down her white maxi dress as she begins stroking my side body. Let me take you outside, she whispers as she reaches for my hand, we will bring your mattress. Now I’m getting kicked out, too. The ceremony is winding down and I’m ugly crying, keeping everybody up.

Within minutes, I carry my wails under the stars. The cramps in my stomach turn into stabs. The braided girl rushes in to get the shaman. She returns with the elderly lady who opened the ceremony. Her long, grey hair shines under the moonlight as she kneels beside me.

What is happening for you? she asks.

My stomach is hurting, I say, and I know why.

She fishes a little canister out of her pouch and asks if she can lift my shirt to apply it. I nod. Her warm palms rub the balm in slow circles across my abdomen. I tell her what happened. What did you make that mean?, she asks.

Kids always ask why. They don’t let go until they have an answer. So the best I could come up with, I realize as I tell her, was that something was wrong with me and that I probably deserved it.

Intermittent weeps cut between my words as I speak the truth my conscious mind has spent a lifetime trying to conceal. Accolades, perfection, achievement—all of it built to help me forget this one thing. But here it is. My truth, staring down at me.

The shaman leans forward and whispers, Keep crying. Let it all out. You will know when you’re done. Then, forgive. Don’t forget, you can always ask the medicine for help.

She gets up, along with the rest of the helpers.

I continue sobbing for another hour or so, until I run out of tears. My insides are dried up but I’m still starving for reconciliation. I can’t see how this could possibly resolve.

Still curled up in fetal position, I begin whispering to the medicine. Please. My hands are gripping the grass. Please help me. I don’t know who or what I’m speaking to. Nothing has shown its face. There’ve been no visions, no alteration in my consciousness, no grand entrance of the mother spirit, no dialogue or instructions. For all I know, I’m just having a little meltdown. Except I haven’t cried in years.

A breeze blows me over and turns me around on my back.

There they are, the stars.

I’ve never seen a more mesmerizing image. I can see every star. I feel them. I feel their light shining down on me.

Like I just came up from the water to escape my own drowning, I take a long, deep inhale. With that one breath in, I inhale all the love from the stars which is now streaming down straight into my heart, filling the void I’ve lived from all my life.

Later I write in my journal, love is the fabric of the universe.

The next day, I wake up and all is forgiven.

Within two weeks of returning home, COVID hits.

Within six weeks, I relapse in my eating disorder.

It won’t be the last relapse, either. It will take three more years, dozens of ceremonies with different plants, and various other forms of support to recover.

Ayahuasca gave me a miracle—but not the one I asked for.

It didn’t heal me. It showed me the moment I first learned to believe that something was wrong with me. A belief so deeply unconscious I might never have uncovered it otherwise. But it didn’t erase the belief. It returned, over and over. Only now I could see it. And because I could see it, I could work with it.

This is the gift of medicine work. It takes you to the root. Plant medicines are not the end all be all. There are gentler methods. But there are few tools that so reliably and clearly show you the map—the long path back to yourself is still yours to walk.

With gratitude to nature,

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For a brief second, the room disappeared. It was just me and the traces of sandalwood, lavender, and palo santo. It was one of those brief but complete moments of sensory absorption that have quietly infused my everyday with meaning. I realized then that this is the practice that has changed me most this past year: living sensually.

When you’re fully immersed in your senses, time stands still. You know this if you’ve ever had a bite of food that stopped you mid-sentence. You pause. There is nothing but you and the explosion of sensation unfolding in your body. Everything else can wait.

This is the miracle of our sensing capacities: the mind dissolves inside direct experience. There’s no space for the constant ups and downs of mental chatter. If you are truly inside your body’s senses, you cannot simultaneously be inside your mind’s stories.

Ancient Eastern wisdom teaches that the density of moments spent in direct experience is one of the best proxies for a free and happy life. But modern life has stripped away sensory richness while systematically feeding the mind.

What was once our default is now something we have to actively reclaim.

an evolutionary mismatch

For most of human history, life was sensorially dense. You woke and immediately felt the air on your skin. You smelled the morning. The smoke from last night’s fire. The damp earth. Your body was in constant conversation with the world.

Now most environments are engineered to be neutral. Climate-controlled. Odorless. The same bright lighting. The same sterile desk. The same hum of electricity.

Very little ever presses itself into your awareness strongly enough to fully absorb you. And when nothing absorbs you, the mind fills the vacuum. Thought becomes the dominant texture of your life—not because you chose it, but because sensation no longer interrupts it.

Screens have accelerated this shift. They didn’t just change our lifestyle. They changed how we experience reality. They pulled us away from the three-dimensional world and into a flat, virtual one.

Screens are sensorially impoverished by design. They give you sight and sound—only two out of dozens of your sensory capacities.1 There’s no experiential depth. You can spend three hours moving your finger across glass without a single minute being summoned into your body.

Screens overstimulate the mind and understimulate the senses. This creates a split: the mind becomes hyperactive while the body is underfed.

And an underfed sensory system produces a restless mind.

This loop is the dilemma of modern life.

life in abstractions

We now live more conceptually than sensorially. We interact with representations of reality instead of reality itself. We watch instead of do. We text instead of call. We scroll images and videos of people instead of feeling their presence. Even money—when is the last time your hands have touched cash?

Your nervous system evolved to interact with physical reality. Instead, it spends most of its time interacting with abstractions. And abstractions never fully satisfy—leaving you in a constant state of low-grade incompletion. The mind keeps spinning because nothing has fully landed in the body. You think about life more than living it. You become a commentator of life instead of a participant.

The senses collapse that distance. When you are inside a sensation—a smell, a sound, a sight or taste—there is no narrative. There is only experience. And experience is always now. Presence, then, doesn’t have to be forced. You don’t have to sit cross-legged and reach for it in the muddy waters of your mind. It can be entered.

Your senses are the doorway. That’s why living sensually is a spiritual practice. When you are in your senses, you are in intimate relationship with the present moment. Not in the past. Not in the future. Not planning, not worrying. Just here.

the world that’s waiting

There are endless ways to return to sensing. Living sensually is not something you do in isolation—it is a way of life. It is woven into the fabric of your days.

It all starts with a clear intention to peel yourself away from screens more often. A rich life is built from small, ordinary moments—if you make space for them, and if you let them matter.

Light incense and candles. Let the scents fill the room. Walk barefoot on the grass. Feel the ground beneath your feet. Take an extra minute in the morning to absorb the sun on your skin. Slow down when you eat. Let yourself fully taste your food. Do one thing at a time. Extend hugs and surrender into them. Wear fabrics that feel soft against your skin. Call instead of text. Meet instead of call. Close your eyes and dissolve into music. Take the time to look at nature, really look.

These moments may seem small. But they are portals. They bring you back into direct contact with reality. And when you are in direct contact with reality, the mind quiets.

Let your senses guide you back into the dance between your body and the world around you. Feel yourself dissolve into the present moment. This is where you will find your freedom, and happiness, and safety. This is your home.

Now put down your screen. Reality is waiting.

With love,

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Within days, the algorithms chewed me up and spit me back out. I felt anxious, hollow, and nostalgic for all the lives not lived. I allowed this downward spiral to happen because I sensed what was really going on.

This was an extinction burst.

Extinction bursts occur when a habit flares up right as you are getting ready to kick it. Like the strict Keto-Fasting protocol I went on weeks before I dropped all restriction for good and became a normal eater, at last. Or the hazy New Year's in 2019 which nudged me into sober curiosity.

This was my social media extinction burst.

But it’s really not just social media. It’s the damn phone. I’m so over this device monopolizing my attention, fragmenting my memory, and derailing my peace.

I just can’t do it anymore.

And if you’re reading this, you probably can’t either.

Here’s the good thing—we don’t have to.

Most people diet, drink, and scroll. Which makes it harder to resist. You opt out of common culture. But I’ve learned the hard way that my nervous system is just too damn sensitive for this stuff. Maybe everyone else can do it. I just can’t.

More and more people realize that they don’t have to keep doing the things that make them feel like shit—even if everybody else is. Millenials and Gen Z are drinking less and even scrolling less. Everybody on the internet right now is talking about going analog. It’s the trend of 2026. Chronically offline is the new cool.

Two years ago, I first wondered if social media was still worth it. It’s been an on-off since then: periods of abstinence followed by moderation and eventually, overuse.

I’m ready to take my relationship with digital minimalism to the next level. I want to find an equilibrium I can sustain. I don’t need another reset, I need a new way of living.

So, I ran an experiment: What would a steady relationship with screens look like that I can envision myself keeping for the foreseeable future?

The blueprint below is the answer to that question. It’s a culmination of everything I’ve learned over the last two years. These shifts have slashed my screen time by 80% over the past few months, and gifted me undeniable levels of creativity, focus, and wellbeing—and I know they can do the same for you.

Why can’t you just moderate?

Before we get into the how, let's address the obvious question: why can't you just moderate?

Not all addictions are created equal: Most are rooted in the user’s psyche, which is proven by the fact that other people can use the substances in question and not get hooked. This is true for food, alcohol, and most drugs (yes, surprisingly).

But phones are different. They're engineered to hijack our neurochemistry. Billions are invested every year to make these devices as addictive as humanly possible. That's why your uncle who never had compulsive tendencies is now scrolling Facebook for hours every afternoon. That’s why 40% of kids have high or addictive use.

Modern life puts us into a chronic state of nervous system dysregulation, then engineers our phones to be pacifiers to stop us from crying about it.

So please: don't feel bad if you haven't been able to "self-regulate."

It's not you.

It's the damn phone.

A simple, 3-step protocol to redefine your relationship with screens, for good

This is a sustainable blueprint to redefine your relationship with technology. It’s not about perfection. It’s about finding a structure you can actually live in. In other words: this is not a diet, it’s a lifestyle change.

Here’s what you can expect this protocol to do for you:

• Get more deep work done

• Stand in line without reaching for your phone again

• Actually follow the shows you’re watching

• Feel more regulated and relaxed in your body and mind

• Lean into boredom as a birthplace for creativity

• Feel your emotions instead of numbing them

• Be more curious and immersed in the real world again

Step 1: Make your phone BORING

Dumbify your phone

You don’t need a flip phone. The goal is not to limit convenience and cut access to things like your camera, Spotify and Google Maps. Modern dumb phones have those, but are overpriced. You don’t need to get a dumb phone, either.

Instead, you can “dumbify” your smartphone at minimal cost following this tutorial. You’ll block most notifications and social media and simplify the interface. You’ll also disable algorithmic recommendations for things like YouTube. You can also block your browser. If you keep it, you’ll still block social media sites so you can’t access them via the browser, either. My phone has been “dumb” for the majority of the past year and that alone has made a big difference.

Add a screen time widget to your home screen

Next, you’ll add a screen time widget that shows you how much time you’ve already spent (and how). You will see this every time you open your phone, which is very motivating. I suggest you set yourself a directional but realistic limit. Mine is under an hour a day. I say directional because not all screen time is created equal. If I’m Face timing with my family for a while one day I don’t care if I exceed the limit. Think of it as an average.

This only works if your phone is already boring. Intention alone is not enough. But if your phone is boring enough, you’ll have little desire to engage with it. Beating your screen time will become a game you look forward to each day.

For iPhone: Long-press an empty area on your home screen until apps jiggle, tap the + (Add) button, search for “screen time,” select your preferred size , and tap Add Widget.

Consider getting a Brick

I tried all sorts of screen blockers and have found the Brick to be the superior option. Forget about the phone’s built-in screen time limits, they do nothing. Blocker apps are better, but still conveniently adjusted “to just quickly check something”.

The Brick is a physical gadget that locks and unlocks certain apps on your phone. You can place it anywhere, I have it stuck to my fridge. I used to “brick up” after dinner to be offline between 9pm and 9am, but now I’m actually always bricked. I’ve decided I don’t need social media or email on my phone. When I first deleted social media, I was instead compulsively checking e-mail. That’s neither helpful nor necessary. I can check my emails on my laptop.

Turn your phone on greyscale

This is the final straw in making your phone incredibly lame. In your iPhone’s settings, you can toggle on “color filters” and select “greyscale” which turns your phone black-and-white.

This one can be a little inconvenient because there might be times when you want to look at an image in color—but I don’t mind quickly toggling it on and off from time to time to keep that lame-factor extra high as the baseline.

I also use a matte screen protector which makes it even more old school.

Once you’ve done all these things, this is what your phone will look like:

Step 2: Set boundaries with your other screens

Now that your phone is boring as hell, you’re halfway there. You’ve dealt with the main culprit. But of course you still have your other screens: probably a laptop and maybe also a tablet.

You’ll be inclined to use them for things that you otherwise would do on your phone—and that’s OK. The goal is not to permanently cut you off everything, but to change your default setting. You’ll need to set some boundaries to stay true to your intentions.

Create a schedule for checking e-mail

I used to check my emails throughout the day as they came in. Inbox zero baby, any time of the day. I could not go to sleep before that little red bubble disappeared.

Now, is there a valid reason for this? Absolutely not.

There is no reason to be responsive to your email at all times. It’s a maladaptive behavior many of us adopted because that’s how software engineers wanted it to be.

Depending on your work, you can likely opt to check e-mails only a handful of times a day: in the morning, mid-day, early afternoon, and before the end of the work day. If your work requires you to be more responsive, you can still set the boundary to not check work email outside your job hours. And you can still set the boundary to only check your personal emails once a day. (And/or not at all on weekends.)

What I want for you is what I want for myself: when we close the laptop, we’re offline. Both personally and professionally.

Consider limiting news

If you consider yourself rather sensitive, I suggest drastically cutting your news consumption, if you haven’t already. I’m happily off news for the majority of the time, but I understand if that’s not an option for everyone.

If you want to stay up-to-date, you can do so by setting a dedicated time each day to watch news or scroll your favorite outlet. There are also a ton of well-curated newsletters to keep you up-to-date, like as seen on for pop culture, Feed Me for business, and Letters from an American for politics.

Prioritize algorithm-free, long-form media

I won’t tell you not to check Instagram for a few minutes on your laptop each day. You can. But the more time you spend offline, the more you realize that most things happening online are not that interesting. You’re really not missing out on much. And you won’t be scrolling endlessly because it’s kind of inconvenient on your laptop.

I’ve made an intentional effort to replace short-form with long-form where I can: YouTube over Reels and TikTok for video. Articles over scrolling Notes. Pinterest over Instagram for visual inspiration.

And then, of course, we have movies and TV! Since Netflix is dumbing down shows for “second-screening” you probably don’t want to watch any of those new Netflix shows. But there’s still so much good entertainment. (Pro tip: our phone-ruined memories means rewatches feel fresh.)

Step 3: Have more fun in real life

This is a big and final step because if you don’t replace poor habits with a better ones you’re much more likely to revert back. Here are some things that have helped me lean into my new, chronically offline existence.

Spend more time in nature

I don’t need to say much here. Just get more nature in. Leave your phone. Eliminate any stimulation and let yourself just be. You’ll find the creative juices flowing once you let your mind wander in the backdrop of all the natural beauty that surrounds us.

Read more books

Reading builds memory, improves focus, cultivates empathy, supports meaning, lowers stress and creates an inner silence that we lack so greatly in modern life. This is one of the best uses of all that newfound free time. Why not make yourself a little reading list for the year (AI can help) so you have a curriculum to look forward to.

Write more by hand

I used to favor typing because it’s faster and more retrievable, but handwriting has many benefits over typing: You retain more and have a deeper sense of emotional connection with what you’re writing. I longhand journal a few pages every morning and am experimenting with moving my task planning back into a physical planner which has allowed me to stay off screens even longer in the mornings.

Find ways to participate in culture (IRL)

Since you’ll be less involved with internet culture, you’ll need to find new ways of connection. Some ideas: Join a weekly class like pottery, dance, yoga or meditation. Attend standing events like book clubs or open mics. Go to more concerts and live music. Become a regular at your favorite café or market. Bring a book and just sit and read in public, even if you don’t talk to anyone. Host dinner parties.

Try new hobbies

There are so many good resources on the internet to find new hobbies if you’re looking for inspiration. Ask AI to curate you a list based on your interests and restrictions (geography, cost, and so on).

The point isn't to find the perfect hobby—it's to give your hands and attention something other than your phone. I’ve dabbled in embroidery, punch needle, calligraphy, pottery, flower arranging, poetry, painting and watercolor, dance, yoga, and outdoor activities. Some stuck, some didn’t.

Listen to immersive music

Immersive music experiences are one of the most effective ways to break free from dopamine culture. Whether you have a break in your day or are looking for a new way to wind down at night—listening to captivating music with headphones and eyes-closed gets you out of your head and into your deeper self, while simultaneously developing your ability to focus (especially relevant if you don’t like meditating).

I believe in this so much that my I helped build an entire app for it. It’s called Atoon, (you can try it for free here)—but any deeply engaging music that you already know and love will do.

Regulate your nervous system

A dysregulated nervous system mistakes stimulation for safety. That’s why the escape into the phone becomes so compelling when things are off balance. If you remove the phone as a tool to regulate you need to replace it with other, better tools. Many of the things listed above already help do that (nature, movement, connection).

Here are a few more, all-time favorite nervous system regulation tools: Co-regulation through 20-second hugs (the best!!!). Extending your exhales. Restorative yoga. Orienting into your senses. Humming or chanting. Rocking and shaking. Somatic tracking (observing sensations without judgement). Cold plunges. Hot baths.

Here you have everything you need to commit.

The goal is not restriction but restructuring. Social media is mostly junk food for your brain and so you need to treat it as such. It doesn’t mean you can never have it. It just means it’s not healthy as large share of your daily diet.

Freedom comes from setting yourself up in a structure that feels healthy and sustainable. There’s nothing wrong with crashing out one day and going down a big internet rabbit hole. This is about making your digital diet balanced and sustainable, not perfect.

This commitment is the greatest gift we can possibly give to ourselves in this day and age, and I hope these tips will help you do so.

Happy living,

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Compulsion was the undercurrent of my life. How I did one thing was how I did everything. I’d wake up at 6am to sprint intervals on the treadmill, work for 14 hours, eat either 1,200 calories or 10,000, and slurp down a bottle of wine without blinking.

I thought this was just who I was. The kind of person who can never get enough.

One time, I dialed into a virtual Overeaters Anonymous meeting. We were lectured on how food addicts simply cannot have sugar or refined carbs. Empty eyes floated around the little squares on my screen. Everybody was beaten down by their fate. A life without pasta and pastries, ever again?

The meeting left me with a pit in my stomach. God bless twelve-step programs and the tremendous impact they’ve had on so many lives—but something about this didn’t feel right. I didn’t know what, back then, but many years of experience, research and education later, it is crystal clear.

For many of us, food is not the problem.

Alcohol is not the problem.

Neither are narcotics, or cannabis, or porn, or video games, nor any of the other things that quietly usher us into the hollow corridors of excess. Whether we fall into the bottomless pit of addiction or simply battle with unhelpful habits we can’t kick: our compulsions are not the problem.

They are the solution.

The solution to a sensitive nervous system that never learned how to feel safe.

sensory processing power is a real thing

I now eat everything, stop when I’m full, never restrict, and maintain a healthy weight. Alcohol has lost its appeal. Same with cigarettes, drugs, and grueling workouts. I’m not perfect. Sometimes I still throw myself into work, scroll mindlessly, or shop too much. Being very sensitive and very sober is hard.

Highly sensitive people are a different breed. We can’t watch violence on TV, small talk all day, and startle so damn easily. We absorb energy, get drained in crowds, flinch at noise, and love being out in the world to observe but can’t wait to go home.

We live an extraordinarily porous existence. This porosity can be as enriching as it can be unbearable. Until we learn to tend to our sensitivity like the delicate flower it is, we will rely on ways to escape our senses. Sensitives often become artists. Or addicts. Or both.

About 15–30% of people carry a trait called Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS). It means deeper processing of sensory and emotional input, stronger emotional reactivity, and quicker overstimulation. It often shows up early in life and can run in families. Brain imaging studies show greater activation in regions linked to emotional processing, empathy, and threat detection. Physiologically, highly sensitive people often show stronger stress responses and sympathetic nervous system activation.

Being highly sensitive is not a condition of our imagination.

It is lived reality with real, physical roots.

the “window of tolerance”

Polyvagal theory offers a framework that can help illustrate this lived experience.

The “window of tolerance” describes the zone where your nervous system feels safe, curious, and focused. If you move above it and become “hyper-aroused”, surplus energy floods your system and leads you to become anxious, hyperalert, and uncomfortable. If you move below and become “hypo-aroused” you shut down and feel numb, exhausted, and checked out.

Everybody’s window of tolerance is different. If you’re highly sensitive, it’s noticeably narrower. It can feel like you’re navigating a single track trail on a unicycle, with cliffs going off to either side, while the rest of the world is cruising along on a four-lane highway.

You don’t necessarily know that you’re constantly tipping into fight, flight, or freeze. You just know that certain things help you feel less on edge, so you reach for the glass, the cart, or the cookies. It happens automatically and quickly. These behaviors numb you just enough to feel safe again in your body.

Unless you learn to be with the edges of your energy in your body (which most of us don’t because nobody teaches us anything about embodiment and nervous system regulation), you’ll be left with no other choice than to escape your direct experience. Throw in the effects of developmental trauma, and you may find yourself with a nervous system that is chronically dysregulated and has never developed a baseline of safety. Numbing agents become your lifeline.

If you only take one thing away from this article, let it be this: these habits, however unhelpful or destructive they may appear, are trying to protect you. You don’t have to feel grateful, but I hope this can help you at least feel less judgement and shame.

Compulsions are not a matter of choice. They are a matter of survival, driven by forces so unconscious you can talk to therapists all day long for the rest of your life and you might never reach the parts in charge. They don’t speak language. They speak sensation.

your survival brain (aka, why willpower doesn’t cut it)

Different parts of your brain process experience differently. The circuits responsible for survival and threat detection move much faster than your reflective, thinking mind.

The amygdala—part of your brain’s emotional processing system—continuously scans for danger. It reacts in milliseconds, long before your rational mind has a chance to weigh in. So while your prefrontal cortex can plan, reason, and make promises— your survival circuits don’t operate through language. They operate through sensation.

They respond not to what you tell yourself, but to the state of your nervous system. If your body feels overwhelmed, your brain will prioritize relief over discipline. It will reach for whatever has previously brought you back toward safety.

In addition, the brain responds not to objective but perceived threat, which can lead it to misinterpret internal overwhelm as danger. If your window of tolerance is narrow, that alarm system fires more often. No amount of willpower can override a nervous system that feels unsafe.

Many forms of conventional therapy focus primarily on cognitive processing: our ability to reflect, reframe, make meaning, and set intentions. Which is helpful but not sufficient. That’s why 70-80% of people with alcohol use disorder relapse within a year and half of the people with eating disorders never fully recover.

Compulsions only become redundant once you’ve established a baseline sense of safety in your body and learned alternative, healthier ways to return to your window of tolerance, over and over again.

To regulate your nervous system, you need to learn the secret language of your body.

tending to your orchid-nature

Psychologist Thomas Boyce developed a framework that categorizes children into dandelion and orchids. Dandelion children are resilient. They can thrive in any condition. Orchid children are the opposite. They are highly sensitive to their environment—emotionally, physiologically, and neurologically. They don’t just react to conditions; they absorb them. In perfect conditions, they can achieve excellence. But if needs are neglected, they suffer greatly.

Orchids are hard to keep alive. They need extra care.

This is the extra care you need to learn to give to yourself as a highly sensitive person. This care is two-fold: lowering stimulation from your environment, and expanding your capacity to self-regulate in healthy ways.

This doesn’t mean you have to go full Walden and move to the woods. Limiting stimulation starts with your media and news diet, your technology habits and boundaries, and your time and productivity management. You need less input, stimulants, and stress and more contemplation, stillness, and space.

To self-regulate effectively, you need to learn to read the early warning signs of dysregulation, so you can intervene before more drastic measures are required.

Some of my favorite means of intervention are breathwork, movement, shaking, grounding, humming, chanting, immersive music, co-regulation (20-second hugs!!), restorative yoga, somatic tracking, hot/cold exposure, and nature.

By signaling safety to your body, you expand your capacity to be with the felt sense, however it manifests. When you’re able to stay in your body, you no longer rely on habits that take you out of it.

Once you learn to ride the unicycle, life becomes enchanting.

You become the person who breaks into tears of joy in the most ordinary moments. You feel love pour into you—and out of you—more easily. The border between you and the world dissolves. You become attuned to those around you and can step into helping professions. You can observe the hidden realms of existence and give form to them through the arts.

You live life as fully as it can be lived.

A few years ago, I got a tattoo of a hummingbird and orchids on my arm. It marked my recovery and served as a reminder: as long as I honor my sensitivity, I remain free.

In the end, my pursuit to break free from compulsion gifted me much more than I could have ever imagined: not only the absence of certain habits, but the presence of everything.

I wish the same for you.

Thanks for reading you lovely fellow sensitive soul,

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Here are more specific tips and practices for how to self-regulate:

P.S, If you know anybody who struggles with compulsive behaviors, my greatest wish would be to consider sharing this article with them.

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Thoreau’s words echoed through my head. Was I sucking all the marrow out of life? For weeks, existential questions have been hovering over me like a cloud holding its breath, accompanied by a piercing sense of mortality, striking at random times.

Am I living life to its fullest? Or will I be one of the many who, on the deathbed, mourn their lack of courage to live a life true to themselves?

I just left LA for a quiet little mountain town. A few months ago, I was sitting on the beach, imagining myself on cross country skis surrounded by trees. But either it’s too grey, there’s not enough snow, I’m too tired, or work keeps me home. There’s always a reason to postpone.

Instead, I daydream about the days I can step outside bare-armed again, sun blasting in my face. I might not even look back at life with regret. I’ll be busy wondering what it’d be like to cross over from a different hospital bed.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived with this sense that real life is waiting for me just around the corner, sometimes many miles away. Once I’d arrive, I’d get dressed fabulously every morning, hit the trails on all the days, write my way through dawn, host dinner parties, bake on Sundays, and dance on my lawn.

I’ve been going in circles: painfully aware of the predicament but unequipped to change it. Until I learned there was a name for this pattern: inauthentic futurity.

Inauthentic futurity is a way of living in which life is never fully chosen but continually put off. The concept was coined by existentialist philosopher Heidegger.1 It’s when you treat the present as a waiting room—sensing that your real life is somewhere else, later. You don’t reject your life outright. You delay inhabiting it.

Kierkegaard saw this predicament as the central sickness of modern existence. Once I understand myself more… once conditions are right… once I feel certain—then I will live.

But that moment never arrives. And so existence is indefinitely deferred.

Existentialism doesn’t just diagnose the problem—it offers an answer. And it’s disarmingly simple: commitment.

Kierkegaard saw commitment as the moment when existence becomes chosen rather than postponed. It doesn’t eliminate longing; it gives it somewhere to land. Longing isn’t asking to be solved. It’s asking to be answered. Commitment answers by saying: I belong here now.

When you commit, life stops being hypothetical. Identity stops being imagined. Meaning is no longer anticipated but created.

Attachment theory mirrors this insight. When care has no consistent object, the psyche stays in a state of search. The energy turns inward and hardens into ache. But when you channel this energy into devotion, you soothe the “something is missing” loop. It gives your care a home.

Longing, then, isn’t lack.

It’s love without an address.

Social media doesn’t just show us a plethora of potential lives—it fragments our ability to choose one. We get stuck in fantasies as perfect as the content that planted them. We can do anything so we end up doing nothing except watch everybody else do something. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, Kierkegaard says.

There is no perfect life waiting somewhere in the distant galaxies of the future. The perfect life is the one you’re living your way into in the now. It’s the one you choose to commit to. It’s with the kids you raise even though you could have travelled the world or had a bigger career, it’s the small business you start even though you work twice as hard now, it’s the novel you labor even though it means you can’t also paint and teach.

No choice will ever be perfect because there are endless possibilities for how your fate could unfold. There is no singular best way for how to spend your time. But there is a guaranteed way to waste it: by romanticizing futures you never end up choosing. Your task is not to find the most perfect version of your life but to find what feels true and commit to it. Perfection lives in the commitment to what’s imperfect—but undeniably yours.

Now what?

To get concrete, here are a few simple ways that are helping me decode my longings and turn them into commitment.

1. Choose your devotion. Complete this sentence: If this longing were allowed to take shape in my actual life, it would ask me to show up for ____ regularly. If the answer feels vague, keep refining until it’s concrete.

2. Make a vow. Choose a time frame. Decide how often you’ll show up. Remove mood from the equation. Don’t wait for the right conditions—let commitment create them. For me, it’s writing at least three days a week.

3. Discipline the mind. Whenever I catch myself wondering if real life is elsewhere, I try to interrupt the daydream and remind myself: this is just misplaced energy. Then, I ask myself: What action would move me 5% closer—today?

4. Fast from comparison. I’ve been limiting scrolling and other media inputs most days. It helps me tend to what’s already here and keeps me focused. Even if you commit to just one day a week without input, that already creates some space.

Turns out, I don’t need a better plan. I just need a place to land.

For now, that’s the page.

Until next week,

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More from my universe

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The Breeze at Dawn

The breeze at dawn
has secrets to tell you.

Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.

Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth

across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don’t go back…

Read more

I've lived with this insatiable longing for the better part of my thirty-three years. When I was little, I learned to call it drive. "She's very driven," people would say. So driven I sprinted through life checking off boxes—until I ran empty and had to stop.

Now I know that drive is just longing in disguise. And I’ve longed for it all—every version of success, every body except my own, all kinds of cities and places. I wanted to make it big and be somebody, I wanted to become nobody. I wanted to be by myself and find someone else. I wanted to travel, dwell, settle. It’s never long until a new flavor of longing comes along.

Since I’ve gotten most things I strived for, I also know that’s not the antidote. After a brief blink of satisfaction, the part that longs always returns. It’s like a little being with infinite arms—when one gets a hold of something, another one sprouts.

It leaves me alone when I am in nature, connected to loved ones, engaged in my work, or immersed in stories. Those are the moments when I can feel every ray of sun on my skin and I can look at flowers for hours and make time stop and feel irrevocably at home in the moment.

But then there are those empty moments of boredom when it always sneaks back in. I have your best interest at heart, it tells me, trust me, this is your path. But how can I trust when it never lasts? I’ve courted and ghosted a million dreams, but this little being? It never leaves.

It makes me reach for the glowing pacifier in my pocket. My thumbs fly over the flat surface as the hours pour away. I peer into a million lives, none of which are mine, hypnotized by how everybody else is spending their days. The endless possibilities stream past in currents too fast to ever enter. Everybody has already built their boat while I’m still watching from the shore, searching.

How do I know which longings to trust? Not all of them are created equal. There are two types: the ones that come from deeper truth, and the ones that distract from it.

The deeper longings are never sudden or transient. They might come and go, but they always return. Some never leave. There aren’t many of them. They also don’t tug and nag at me, give me this! give me that! it’s now or never! They are subtle and patient.

They push me into the world rather than pull me out of it. They nudge me to simplify, slow down, stop hiding, and mother one day. There is no urgency, only knowing. Knowing that there is a life I fully belong to, a life that will find me in time. I just have to get light on my feet and let the winds carry me in the right direction once I stop gripping to all these distractions.

I’ve put the pacifier away. I left the city of longings, the city of angels, where everybody arrives with the grandest of dreams. A city that flaunts wealth like nowhere else, with seventeen year old boys driving Ferraris, ring lights in every window and the hunger for more silently carved into every other door.

Now, I am in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, and I am not sure the current of longing has made its way here. There are fresh streams everywhere, but nobody seems to be in a rush to get anywhere, people are quietly building their lives. There are fewer screens and simpler dreams. It is silent. So silent I am beginning to hear myself again. Maybe there are still places that can teach me how to be.

If I could speak the language of the longing, here’s what I would tell it. I know what you are looking for. You just want to belong. I’d pull it into a hug, let all its arms wrap around me, all infinitely many of them, and whisper: You once were one with everything, every big and little living, breathing thing. The world was yours until you began to believe that parts of you were no longer free to simply be.

Then I’d squeeze it closer and invite it into my heart—making a home for it, right there—all one again, at last.

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More from my universe

• Download Atoon for immersive journeys to transcend your mind and feel more

• Get on the waitlist for upcoming yoga and medicine retreats

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Everything Is Waiting For You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at …

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Rest

Rest is the conversation between
what we love to do
and how we love to be.

Rest is the essence of giving
and receiving.

We often refuse to rest
even when it is calling us
through fatigue,

because rest asks us
to confront the quieter unknowns
in ourselves.

– David Wh…

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With That Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a…

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It Acts Like Love

It acts like love – music –
it reaches toward the face, touches it, and tries to let you know
His promise: that all will be okay. 

It acts like love – music and,
tells the feet, “You do not have to be so burdened.”

My body is covered with wounds
this worl…

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Go To the Limits of Your Longing

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big sha…

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In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matte…

Read more