In this first conversation, we explore astrology, Carl Jung, nature, and the hidden patterns that help us see ourselves—and the world—with fresh eyes.

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In this episode, we get personal and explore what keeps us stuck—and what helps us imagine, trust, and step into a fuller version of ourselves.

You might find it surprising. So, get ready for an unexpected personal reveal.

I love money. I love high tea. I love fashion.

And for a long time, I kept those things quiet. My friends know this about me. But I’ve never shared it here, with you.

Not because I was ashamed, exactly. But because I was aware of the image. The woman who has been on a deep mystical path since 2004. The space holder. The beholder of spiritual wisdom. And, somewhere along the way, I absorbed the unspoken rule: spiritual people aren’t supposed to love luxury. They’re supposed to be above it.

So, I kept those parts of me in a private drawer.

The investor Anna.

The woman who orders the full high tea with savory sandwiches and scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam and feels genuinely delighted by every single bite.

The former fashion model who still asks herself every morning: what colors and clothes will best support what I want to express today?

This week, in the spirit of Independence Day (in the USA), and what I’ve come to love calling Interdependence Day, I’m pulling open that drawer.

Consider this my independence: showing you the parts of me I’ve been quieter about.

And the interdependence? That’s what comes next.

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Through the Lens of Expansive Living

One of the foundational principles of the Expansive Living Method is this: the spiritual and the material are not opposing forces. They are one continuum.

Everything that exists, including money, food, clothing, is an expression of consciousness.

And the quality of consciousness we bring to our material world determines the quality of what we create, what we experience, and what we leave behind.

With that as our lens, let me show you what’s actually in that drawer.

Money and Investing

I invest in companies. Real ones, with unconventional ideas and founders who think differently. I am currently considering investing in a women-owned AI company that is working to bring individual voice back to writing, so that AI becomes a tool that draws out your uniqueness rather than flattening it.

That, to me, is consciousness applied to technology.

And while we’re on the topic of investing, I want to talk about what money actually is to me.

It is a bearer of freedom, of abundance, of generosity, of service, of pleasure. You can have those qualities without money. But money can carry them in a big way.

This is not a popular thing for a spiritual teacher to say. But it is true for me. And I think the split, the idea that spiritual people should be indifferent to money, or suspicious of it, is one of the more damaging splits we carry. Because we all need money.

And when we relate to it with shame or distance, we cut ourselves off from one of the most direct expressions of freedom available to us in material life.

I ran an immersion workshop earlier this year on exactly this: how to shift your relationship to money and wealth. As a spiritual practice, not a financial strategy.

What’s your relationship to money and wealth?

High Tea

I love high tea. I love the feeling of material luxury it affords me. Specifically, I love the savory sandwiches, the small, precise, surprising ones where someone thought to put this with that and it works in a way you didn’t expect.

I love the scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam. I love that everything is bite-sized, so you move through a multitude of flavors rather than committing to one big dish with one flavor for an entire meal.

What I love most, though, is what preparing a high tea requires: attention.

Someone had to think about each detail. The size of the sandwich. The color on the plate. The pairing of flavors. That attention, that care, is a form of consciousness expressing itself through the material world.

High tea with my niece in New York City June 2026

This is not indulgence for its own sake. This is the spiritual made material. The care, the creativity, the beauty: these are sacred qualities that someone chose to bring into a very ordinary act of eating.

Are you a high tea person, as well? Or, what is your favorite drink or food ritual that brings you fully present?

Fashion

I was a fashion model in my 20s. A very successful one. And fashion has never really left me, not as vanity, but as presence.

Every morning, I ask myself: what do I want to express today? What colors, what shapes, what quality of movement do I want to feel in my body as I move through this day? And then I choose accordingly.

Clothing, for most of us on this planet, is not optional. We live in cultures where we dress. So, the question isn’t whether to wear clothes. It’s whether we’re going to treat that daily act as an expression of who we are, or just a task to get through before the real day begins.

In a Chanel outfit for a shoot for Japanese Elle in my late 20’s

Do you use clothing as expression? Or has fashion felt like it belongs in a different category from your spiritual life?

The Thread That Connects Them

Money. High tea. Fashion. Three things you might not expect from someone who has spent 22 years on a deep mystical path.

But here is what I want to share: none of these are departures from my spiritual life. They ARE my spiritual life, expressed in material form.

When I invest with consciousness, I am bringing spiritual intention into the flow of resources in the world.

When I sit at a high tea table and feel genuine delight at the creativity on the plate, I am having a direct, unmediated experience of beauty, which is, by my own definition, a spiritual experience.

When I choose my clothing with intention each morning, I am beginning my day as an act of self-expression, not an afterthought.

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For the Space Holders Among You

If you work with people, as a coach, therapist, healer, guide, or any kind of space holder, this matters beyond your personal life.

The split between spiritual and material is not just a philosophical inconvenience. It is a wound that shows up in the people you hold. It shows up as a crisis of meaning. As depression. As overconsumption. As a persistent sense that something is missing, even when life looks fine from the outside.

And here is what I want you to see: every one of those wounds has a material expression. And every material expression holds a hidden spiritual need waiting to be named.

Take the accountant who feels their work has no meaning. They sit with spreadsheets all day and feel nothing but emptiness. They come to you in a crisis of purpose. And what they don’t yet know is that what they do for their clients every day, creating order, providing a sense of safety, making intentional and responsible growth possible, these are the very qualities people travel to retreats to find. Peacefulness. Order. Calm and ease. The conditions for something to grow well. Those qualities live inside accounting. They were there all along. When you help that accountant make that connection, they don’t just feel better. They show up differently at work. They serve their clients differently. Their spreadsheet becomes a spiritual practice.

Or take the person who is depressed and living in a home that depletes them. Clutter everywhere. Furniture they don’t connect to. Objects collected over time that carry no feeling. They come to you exhausted, and part of what is exhausting them is their physical environment, a place they park themselves rather than a place that holds them.

Now imagine helping them ask: what does this chair actually give me when I sit in it? Does it offer comfort? Does it hold my body in a way that lets me exhale? What about that painting on the wall, the one from a magazine or from your great aunt? Does it inspire you? Does it make you feel connected to someone you loved? And that plant by the window, and the way the afternoon light falls across the room, and the color of that pillow. What do those things do in your body?

When someone begins to ask those questions, their home starts to shift. Not because they bought anything new. Because consciousness entered the room. And what was depressing can become a place of comfort, creativity, connection to ancestors, a sense of being genuinely held. That is a material environment becoming a spiritual one. And you, as a space holder, can open that door.

Group created altar for my workshop “Live a Spiritually Guided Life”
at Schumacher College, Devon UK, 2011

Or take the person carrying high credit card debt from overconsumption. They keep buying things, another pair of shoes, another thing they don’t need, and they don’t know why they can’t stop. They come to you ashamed. But there is always a why. Maybe that second pair of shoes was bought right after a promotion. And what they were actually buying in that moment was a feeling. Pride. A sense of their own power. Playfulness. Sensuality. Excellence.

They were reaching for something real, something they deserved to feel, but they didn’t know how to name it or hold it consciously. So they needed another pair. And another.

When you help someone see what they are actually reaching for in the buying, something shifts. Those shoes become imbued with that quality. They become enough. Because the real need is finally being met with awareness. The loop of more slows down. Not because they denied themselves, but because they finally received what they were looking for in a pair of new shoes.

These are not edge cases. They are the everyday costs of a split that most people don’t even know they are carrying.

And the opportunity for you as a space holder is this: as you begin to do your own work of integrating the spiritual and the material, you can see this split in your clients immediately. You know what it looks like. You know what it costs them. And you know how to help them find the thread that connects what they do, what they own, what they wear, what they spend, back to what they most deeply are.

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Try This

I invite you to bring these three questions into your own life:

Money: What is your honest, unguarded relationship with money right now?
Not what you think it should be, what it actually is.
Do you feel free with it?
Contracted?
Ashamed?
Curious?
Just notice.

High tea (or your version of it): Where in your life do you allow yourself material delight, the kind that requires someone’s attention and care, including your own?
And where do you hold back, as if material enjoyment lacks any emotional fulfillment or spiritual inspiration?

Fashion (or how you show up): How do you relate to getting dressed each morning? Is it an act of intention, a task to get through, or something you’ve decided doesn’t belong in the same category as your spiritual life?

You don’t have to overhaul anything. Just bring a little more consciousness to what you’re already doing.

I’d love to hear from you.

Are you also a lover of money, high tea, or fashion?
Does one of these feel charged for you?
Comment and tell me. These conversations are some of my favorites.

I send your way blessings of delight-filled freedom.

With love,
Anna

The kind that finds you — in the middle of an ordinary Wednesday.

You press play, and something in your body remembers what it feels like to be fully alive.

I was thinking about this a lot as I was preparing for the June Maven Circle Immersion workshop, where the focus was on exploring what it really means to befriend our being — to come into partnership with our body, mind, and spirit.
As a relationship to tend.

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Through the Lens of Expansive Living

We spend so much of our lives relating to our bodies as something to manage.
To fix.
To push through.
​
Wellness becomes a project.
Self-care becomes a to-do list item.

And somewhere in that effort, we lose the thread of actual partnership — the felt sense of being with ourselves rather than working on ourselves.

Befriending our being starts with the small things.
The things that don’t feel like effort.
The things that light us up before our mind has a chance to talk us out of it.

And one of the most direct paths I know to that kind of partnership?

Music.

Specifically, the songs that make us feel high on life.

When I speak about expansive consciousness, it is not some abstract state, or something extraordinary, or special that needs a rigorous practice, or becoming very spiritual.

It is something accessible, practical, readily available to each one of us — in today’s world where we have access to any song we want in an instant.

A single song — the right song, YOUR song — can shift your mental and emotional state in seconds. Not minutes. Seconds.

The melody comes in, the rhythm gets into your body, and something opens. You feel lighter. More alive. More you.

That is what expanding consciousness actually looks like when it lands in real life. Not always a retreat or a practice. Sometimes it is just pressing play.

And if you hold space for others — whether you’re a coach, a therapist, a facilitator, a teacher, or simply the person in your circle who everyone comes to — this is a practice worth offering.

Put on a song at the start of a group session and let everyone move.

Invite a client who’s been carrying something heavy to take a break from the weight of it and just listen to something that makes them feel alive.

In a world where the news is relentless and the weight of things can feel crushing, sometimes the most expansive thing you can do is give someone permission to feel joy for three and a half minutes.

Profoundly simple. Profoundly accessible. Profoundly real.

So I made you a list.

These are four songs from my personal happy place — the ones where the rhythm gets into my body before my brain even has a chance to weigh in.

The melody just takes over.
I feel pure joy.
I feel vitality.
I feel like the world is, despite everything, still miraculous.

​September — Earth, Wind & Fire​
​Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing — Stevie Wonder​
​Blame It On The Boogie — The Jackson 5​
​Overjoyed — Take 6​

These songs are my self-care. Because they nourish something real in me — my love of rhythm, my love of melody, my love of feeling completely and unapologetically alive.

That’s what befriending your being looks like in practice.
Knowing what you love.
Knowing what lights you up.
And then — this is the part we often skip — actually doing it.

Just press play.

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Try This

What is your happy place song?

The one that gets into your body before your mind can catch up?

Put it on today. Right now.

As a gift to yourself.

Notice what happens in your body when the first few notes come in.

What does it evoke in you when you hear it?

What state does it put you in?

What does it open up?

After you listen to it, come back here and share your happy song.

I’d love to know what song makes you feel high on life.

Sending your way blessings of finding your happy place,

Anna

One evening, we found ourselves at the opening night of the Tribeca Festival’s 25th anniversary, watching a documentary about Earth, Wind & Fire, with Robert De Niro on stage to open the night.

I have always loved Earth, Wind & Fire — their horns, their rhythm, the way their music moves through you.

But I didn’t know the deeper story until that evening.

Maurice White, the band’s founder, was a very spiritual visionary.

His music was meant for everyone — joy, spirit, unity across all people.

But for the Black community, his story carried something extra. He had built something extraordinary — and for a community that had been told for generations what they could not be, that mattered deeply.

For all of us in that room, the music was pure joy. But I was aware — sitting there as a white woman — that for the Black community in that audience, this story carried a weight I can only partially understand. When you grow up in a world that has historically told you what you cannot be, a voice rising from that same world saying “yes, I can” lands differently. It lands in the body. It lands in history. And Maurice White knew that.

After the film, the band came on stage. The Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side was sold out.

Everyone on their feet, singing, dancing, clapping. My spouse had found the last two available tickets — we didn’t know what we were walking into. By the end of the night, we were standing with a room full of strangers who felt like family.

It was electrifying.

The Obamas were part of the documentary. They spoke about the lyrics and deeper messages of the songs. At some point, Barack Obama said, looking at the stardom and influence that Maurice had created with the band, he asked himself: If he can do this, what can I do?

One of Earth, Wind & Fire’s most beloved songs is “Shining Star.” One of the verses in it goes: Why don’t you listen to these words of heed. Be a giant or grain of sand. Words of wisdom, “Yes, I can.”

And suddenly, the dots connected!

Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign slogan was: Yes, We Can.

A seed Maurice White planted in his music traveled across decades and took root in ways no one could have imagined.

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Through the Lens of Expansive Living

In my book Shift Calling, in the chapter You Are a Pollinator, I offer this expansive perspective:

“Like bees, we pollinate others with our thoughts, insights, conclusions, and creative ideas throughout the day, whether with a colleague at work, a friend during lunch, the cashier in the store, or a family member at home.

Conversely, we are like flowers, receiving pollination from everyone and everything around us. That same colleague at work, friend at lunch, cashier at the store, or family member share their thoughts, projects, and opinions on the state of the world.

It’s a constant exchange of pollination that connects us to new ideas, trying new things, or taking action in a new and improved manner.

I don’t want you to think of all this as a metaphor.

Instead, I want you to consider it possible to practice seeing yourself as a pollinating bee and a receptive flower. If you do it with a sacred intention, then you are like the bee, gently pollinating nature, humanity, and our planet.

It’s a simple shift in our perception of ourselves. Accepting this shift leads to an openness and confidence to be of service and be served.

It’s a beautiful shift with massive rewards!”

It is a constant, invisible exchange.

Most of us move through our days without realizing how much we are giving and receiving at every turn.
A conversation that shifts someone’s thinking.
A sentence in a song that plants a question someone carries for years.
A moment of presence with a stranger that they remember long after you’ve forgotten it.

What moves me most is this: we rarely know the full reach of what we give. Maurice White didn’t know his “yes I can” would echo in a presidential campaign. He was just writing from his truth, his spirit, his vision.

Our influence travels further than we can see.

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Try This

Pick someone from your childhood — a teacher or mentor, a family member, or a friend — who inspired you and who still influences you today.

What was the gift that stayed with you?

Likewise, can you remember someone telling you that you had an impact on them without you knowing it at the time?

You are always pollinating and always being pollinated. The more aware you become of this, the more intentional and alive your connections feel.

I’d love to hear from you.

Has someone ever pollinated you in a way they probably didn’t know?

Or have you discovered that something you shared long ago took root in someone else’s life?

Leave a comment below — this feels like a conversation worth having.

Sending your way blessings of earth, wind, and fire,

Anna

Maybe with a partner. A friend. A colleague.

You say your piece.

They say theirs.

And something in their response tells you they didn’t really get it. Not fully. There’s a gap between what you meant and what they heard — and you can feel it.

So you try again. More carefully this time. More precisely. Surely if you find the right words, they’ll finally get it.

They respond again. Louder. Or quieter, which somehow feels worse.

And something tightens in your chest. Not just frustration. Something closer to loneliness. Because you’re right there, in the same room, and you still feel completely unreachable to each other.

You’re not fighting about the thing anymore. You stopped fighting about the thing a long time ago. What you’re really fighting for is to be seen. To be heard. To matter to this person.

That’s the need underneath. In almost every conflict, that’s the need underneath.

And there’s a way out of the circle. But it requires expanding.

Through the Lens of Expansive Living

When we expand our perception of a conflict — when we pause the ping-pong and ask what is the underlying need here? — we do something radical. We increase the field of available information. And when we have more information, we have access to a wider, more creative field of possible solutions.

That is the Expansive Principle at the heart of this framework: expand your perception, and you expand what becomes possible.

Here’s what I want you to really sit with, because this is the point of this piece:

This is not a communication technique. This is not a conflict resolution hack. This is an act of evolving consciousness.

When you stop defending your position and get genuinely curious about the need underneath — yours and theirs — you are no longer operating from the same level of awareness that created the conflict. You have expanded. You are now holding a larger, more inclusive view of reality. You are seeing more. Feeling more. Working with more. And that capacity to expand your perception in the middle of friction is precisely how human consciousness grows. Not in meditation retreats alone. Not only in moments of quiet insight. But here, in the mess of a real relationship, in the heat of a real disagreement.

Space-holding, done this way, is the practice of evolving.

What This Actually Looks Like

This works in two directions.

You can ask it of yourself: What do I actually need here? What is the need underneath my reaction?

That question is an act of holding space for yourself. You become your own container. You stop demanding that the other person decode your pain and instead get curious about it yourself.

And you can ask it — genuinely — of the other person: If you got your ideal outcome from this, what would it be?

When someone feels truly asked — not interrogated, but genuinely invited to name their need — something shifts. They stop fighting for position. They start speaking from a softer, more honest place. And now both of you are working with real information instead of defended positions.

A need, once named, can be met in a multitude of ways. It opens the field.

And here’s what that actually does for both of you:

Each person has to show up and take responsibility for their own need. That alone is enormous. Instead of waiting to be decoded, instead of hoping the other person finally gets it — you get curious about yourself first.

And when you ask the other person what they need, you’re no longer guessing. You stop over-giving based on assumptions. You stop missing each other. You can offer exactly what’s needed — and receive exactly what you need — instead of circling the same unmet place again and again.

That is not just better communication. That is a more conscious way of being in relationship.

Just to be clear:

Being an endless container is not healthy space-holding. It is depletion wearing the costume of generosity.

Many of us — especially women, especially highly sensitive people and empaths — were conditioned to be the emotional carriers of our relationships. By nature, by nurture, by the quiet but persistent message that our job is to hold everyone else together.

And so when I speak about space-holding as an act of evolving consciousness, I am not asking you to hold more. I am asking you to hold differently.

For Those Who Are Already Exhausted:

If you are the one who always holds — hear this:

Naming your own need is holding space. Setting a boundary from that need is holding space. Saying “this is what I need from this relationship” is not a failure of generosity. It is the most honest, most spacious thing you can do.

Because when you name your need clearly, you also give the other person permission to do the same. You model what it looks like to be a container for yourself first. And you stop the slow leak of resentment that comes from giving what was never actually yours to give.

The goal is not that you hold more. It’s that holding space becomes something that moves in both directions — between two people who are each learning to be containers for themselves and for each other.

That, in the deepest sense, is how consciousness evolves. Through two people, in the middle of a real moment, choosing to expand instead of contract.

Try This

The next time you’re in a moment of friction — pause before responding.

Take a breath. Not to calm down. To expand.

Ask yourself: What is the need underneath what I’m feeling right now?

Don’t rush the answer. Let it come from somewhere honest. It might surprise you.

Then, when the moment feels right, ask the other person: If you got your ideal outcome here, what would it be?

Not as a technique. As a genuine question. As someone who actually wants to know.

Notice what shifts — in them, in you, in the space between you.

That shift? That’s expansion. That’s consciousness moving.

I’d love to know: does this land for you?

Are you someone who tends to be the container in your relationships?

Or are you learning — maybe for the first time — to hold space for yourself first?

sending your way blessings of spaciousness,

Anna

I open a small book (Opening Doors Within by Eileen Caddy) and read the day’s meditation.

Then I pick a card. A quality to carry with me as an ally through the hours ahead.

This morning, the card said: Motivation.

I held it for a moment. Motivation. Not inspiration, not discipline: motivation. The inner yes that moves you forward.

And then I read again Eileen Caddy’s message for the day. I’ll share it with you in a moment. But first, I want to ask you something.

Did you watch the morning show today?

Not the news. Not your phone. The actual morning show: the one that has been running every single day without a break, without a sponsor, without a missed episode, for as long as there has been a sky.

The morning sun coming up. The light shifting through the trees. The first birds. The dew on the grass, or the frost, or the blossoms, depending on where you are and what season is holding you right now.

Pretty dramatic, wouldn’t you say?

We forget to watch it. We wake up and reach straight for the human drama: the headlines, the devastation, the scroll. And there is real pain in the world, no question. We can hold that and still turn toward the beauty. We can grieve and still notice the light.

The news will always give you reasons to feel helpless. The morning sun will always give you reasons to feel alive.

The question is which one you feed.

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Through the Lens of Expansive Living

Eileen Caddy’s message today stopped me. Here it is:

“Bring down My heaven upon the earth. It is up to you to do it by the way you live and by your attitudes towards life. Life is wonderful, but you have to open your eyes and see the wonder and glory of it. You must be willing to see all the good in life and to concentrate on it, ignoring the bad, the negative and the destructive and giving them no life force. All around you are the wonders and beauty of nature, and yet you can go through a whole day without even noticing what is around you. What a lot you miss in life by simply shutting it out of your consciousness and by refusing to raise your consciousness to the state where you blend with all life! Take time to stop, look and listen, so that you miss nothing and can enjoy everything. Then give eternal thanks for it all. Start this day to create a better world around you.”

What she describes is active gratitude. It is a daily decision about where you place your attention and what you allow to move through you.

And here is where motivation comes in.

We often wait for motivation to arrive. We think it will show up on its own: that one day we will wake up feeling ready, feeling clear, feeling called.

Motivation is something we create by choosing, consciously, what we feed.

The morning show does not motivate you by accident. It motivates you because you turned toward it on purpose. That turning, that small, deliberate act of choosing aliveness over drama, IS the motivation. It does not come before the choice. It comes from it.

Here is the thing: we are being pulled into drama all the time. The world is very good at that pull. And the drama is often real: it lives in the news, in the body, in the places where old wounds still echo.

So you need inspired motivation to choose wonder. To build the muscle that says: not today, not this moment. This moment I am turning toward the awe.

What you focus on grows. When you turn toward beauty, the world shows you more of it. When you stay in the drama, that too grows.

I cycle between healing when I need to heal and choosing wonder when I am ready.

If I stay only in the healing, I risk getting stuck there. If I skip the healing and jump straight to wonder, I am bypassing. The two work together: that is the rhythm.

One way to find that rhythm is exactly what Eileen Caddy describes: turn toward the wonder. Let the awe in

.

The other way (and this is something I explored in the article — Healing Backward. Living Forward — is to choose which origin story you are standing in.

The short version: you were born before you were born.

Because the story you call your beginning shapes the fuel you have available to you right now.

In Healing Backward. Living Forward., I asked you to sit with two origin stories as a felt experience.

Story One: your life began at birth, and the wounds of those early years are the master file.

Story Two: you were born before you were born: before the womb, before the family, before the name, as part of an ocean of conscious, creative energy.

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The question was never which story is true.

The question was: which one gives you access to motivation? To joy? To the sense that something alive and possible is available to you right now?

When you stand in Story Two (even for a moment) you are not waiting to be motivated. You already are. You came from something that was never wounded.

That is the experiment. To remember that you came from somewhere larger than the wound.

You need to build that muscle: the one that remembers who you are at source. Because from that place, the wonder is something you already have.

It is already there. Every morning. Without fail.

Try This

Tomorrow morning, before you check your phone, before the news, before the noise, set a timer for just three minutes.

Stop. Let your body be still.

Look. Find one thing of beauty. One.

If you can step outside or stand at a window, let it be the morning sun, the light on the trees, the sky.

If you are inside, let it be a meaningful object in the room: something that holds beauty or memory or warmth for you. One thing. That is all.

Listen. What do you hear beneath the human noise?

Then ask yourself:

What is this morning giving me?

That is the whole practice. Notice what happens to your motivation from there.

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I Would Love to Know

Did you watch the morning show today? What did you notice?

I send your way blessings of inspired motivation,

Anna

In a world that can easily pull us toward fear or discouragement, this practice is an invitation to reconnect wit…

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Walking into it felt like being received. Like stepping into a womb.

A group of people gathered there with me for four hours.

We talked about the poly crisis we are living through — economic instability, housing, political divisiveness, war, ecological collapse.
Heavy things.
Real things.
But I offered them a frame: beneath all of these crises, there is one that gives rise to all the others. A crisis in consciousness.

Then, I sent them into the garden.
They came back quieter.
Slower.
Something had shifted in their faces.

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We talked about the consciousness of nature — the intelligence that moves through every root, every leaf, every climbing vine.

Drawing on the messages received by Dorothy Maclean, co-founder of the legendary Findhorn Community and Gardens in Scotland, I read them transmissions from the Devic realm — the realm of consciousness that holds the living pattern for each species in nature.

Then I led them through a guided meditation and sent them back in among the trees.

They came back smiling.
The smile of someone who had been held.
The noise of the world — the technology, the urgency, the relentless hum of the news cycle — had receded. Not because we ignored it. But because something older and larger had come forward.

Everyone left deeply nourished.

Wisdom In The Wild Workshop at Western Hills Garden, Occidental, California

Through the Lens of Expansive Living

I want to tell you something I haven’t shared publicly before about the Expansive Living framework.

Nature has consciousness. And it is in constant communication with us.

I know that might ask something of you — a willingness to sit with an idea that doesn’t fit neatly into the rational mind.

But stay with me, because what I witnessed on Sunday was not metaphor. The people who walked into that garden distracted and heavy walked out of it changed. Not because of what I said. Because of what the garden did.

In the Devic realm — the realm of consciousness that overlights each species in nature — there is a language being spoken at all times. 
Not in words. 
In resonance. 

In the way a bean plant spirals upward toward light, the way snow peas send out delicate curling tendrils that find and grip their trellis with surprising strength, the way a stone spiral holds stillness at its center.

The entrance to my back yard

One of the messages I read to the group on Sunday came from this realm:

“Tune into nature until you feel love flow. That feeling is your arrow into the angelic world. Always it is your state of being that the nature world responds to — not what you say, not what you do, but what you are.”

—The Devas, pg. 24, To Honor the Earth: Reflections on Living in Harmony with Nature

Read that again.
Not what you say. Not what you do. But what you are.

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This is not a passive invitation to go smell the roses. This is a call to a different kind of relationship — one where you bring your whole self into contact with a living, responsive world. Where your inner state is not just your private experience, but the signal you are sending into a field that is listening.

Through the practice of Immersive Presence™ — one of the core practices of the Expansive Living Method — we learn to slow down enough to actually receive what nature is already offering.
Not as metaphor.
As contact.

Flower and herb spiral in my back yard

segment of flower and herb spiral in my back yard

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On Saturday morning, the day before the workshop, I stood in line at the farmer's market. A local organic peach farm was back for the first time this season — earlier than expected — and the line was long.

I chatted with the person in front of me, the person behind me. I waited to taste a peach that was cold and sweet and so full of water it almost undid me. Then I bought local feta from a man who keeps goats.

Snow peas in a vegetable bed in my back yard

This is also nature. This is also nourishment. People’s craft. People’s devotion. The land, made edible, made shareable, made into a reason to stand in line and talk to strangers.

The more I turn toward the living world, the more it turns toward me.
That’s not poetry.
That’s what I keep experiencing.
And it’s what I watched happen in that garden workshop on Sunday.

A new meadow garden under birch trees planted
with grasses, poppies, and clover seeds

I invite you to notice:

This week, find one moment to step outside — into a garden, a park, a patch of grass, a single tree on a city street — and practice Immersive Presence.

Don’t go to think. Don’t go to decompress. Don’t go to take a photo.

Go to be.

Bring whatever you are carrying — the heaviness, the worry, the fatigue — and let yourself arrive. Notice what is alive around you. What moves. What holds still. What reaches toward light.

Then ask yourself: what is this place responding to in me right now?

Irises in my garden

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What Inspires Me

The Miracle Inside a White Bean

This year I planted flat beans I saved from last year’s harvest — small, hard, almost weightless. And from that bean, something wondrous is happening. A full plant is emerging. Tendrils reaching and green leaves unfurling.

I cannot get over it. I don’t want to get over it.

That a single dry bean holds the complete pattern for an entire living plant — that is not ordinary. That is the miracle I want to keep noticing.

To quote the poet Mary Oliver, “who made the world?”

I ask myself that every time I look at a dry white bean sitting in my palm.

Trough with flat beans gathered from last year

I’m curious — has nature ever spoken to you in a way you couldn’t quite explain? I’d love to hear your experience in the comments below.

Sending your way blessings of rootedness,

Anna

In this video, I explore a practical shift from overwhelm into relationship — a way of meeting your work, your body, your healing, and your daily life as part of a living world that can respond, collaborate, and nourish you back.

I also share a simple Immersive Presence practice you can begin using immediately with one thing you are carrying right now.

And if you’d like to go deeper into the ideas behind this conversation, you can also read the full article: It Doesn’t Have to Be Overwhelming.

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I studied feminist theory in college to dismantle the sexism I had absorbed at home and in the culture around me — raised by a father who saw me primarily as an object of desire for men, and a future wife whose purpose was to care for a home and a husband.

I spent decades in bodywork to heal a stutter so severe it made me want to disappear.

And I have done nearly thirty years of psychedelic work — slowly, carefully, courageously — to find my way back from the low self-esteem, the shyness, the dissociation, the relentless feeling that I was never quite enough, and at the same time at risk of being too much. The madness of that.

I have done the work of returning. Of excavating. Of holding the younger me with a tenderness I didn’t know I had.

And it has helped tremendously. It genuinely has.

And yet. All this work also keeps me anchored to a story — that the original version of me is flawed, broken, damaged. And that my life’s work is to repair it.

What if that’s the wrong reference point entirely?

Many of us are doing this. Quietly, persistently, often heroically. We go back. To the childhood dinner table, to the classroom that humiliated us, to the parent who couldn’t see us, to the moment we first learned that something about us was wrong.

We do it in therapy, in ceremony, in bodywork, in breathwork, in the pages of journals we fill and fill and fill. We do it because we were told — and believed — that healing means returning to the source of the wound.

But what if version one was never the source?

Through the Lens of Expansive Living

What the Greatest Performers Know That the Rest of Us Forget

Watch the greatest athletes in the world and you will notice something. Serena Williams, in the middle of a match, is not thinking about the twelve-year-old version of herself who double-faulted on match point.

Michael Jordan, preparing for game seven, is not returning to the clumsy teenager who got cut from his high school team.

Simone Biles, standing at the edge of the mat, is not referencing the earliest version of her body learning to tumble. They are referencing the last best version of their performance. And the one they are about to create. The direction is always forward. The reference point is always the most refined version, not the most broken one.

We accept this completely when it comes to athletes. We celebrate it. We call it mastery.

And then we go home and spend years trying to repair version one of ourselves.

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Version One Was Never the Master File

Think about your smartphone for a moment.

You are probably on version 15, 16, 17 of whatever device you’re holding right now. And that current version can do things that version one could never have dreamed of. The camera is sharper. The apps are richer. The whole experience is more fluid, more connected, more alive.

Here is what we don’t do. We don’t hold version 17 up against version one and say — see, this is the problem. This is where it all went wrong. If only version one had been better, version 17 wouldn’t have these limitations. We don’t go back to version one as our reference point. We don’t mourn it. We don’t try to repair it.

We keep building forward. Each version learning from the last. Each version more capable than the one before. The reference point is never where we started. It is always where we are going — and how we can improve on the latest version of ourselves, not spend our lives held hostage by the first one.

So why do we do the opposite with ourselves?

We treat version one — the first years of our life, the earliest wounds, the original damage — as the master file. The thing we have to get back to in order to get it right. As if the goal of a human life is to restore a corrupted original rather than to keep evolving into something more whole, more expressed, more alive.

And here is where it gets interesting. Because there is a flaw buried in that assumption. A quiet but consequential one.

The assumption is that version one — the moment of birth, the earliest years — is where we originated. That this is the starting point. The source.

But it isn’t.

The Origin Was Never Your Birthday

We live in a vibrational, conscious universe. Quantum physics is slowly catching up to what mystics, healers, and contemplatives have known through direct experience for thousands of years — that the most fundamental unit of reality is not matter. It is energy. Intelligent, alive, aware energy. And we humans, across cultures and centuries, have called it consciousness.

We come from that consciousness. Before we were born into individuation — into this specific body, this specific life, this specific name — we were part of something vastly larger. Like the spray that rises from the surface of an ocean. For a moment, those drops are distinct, separate, individual. They catch the light in their own way. They arc through the air in their own direction. And then they return. They were never truly separate from the water they came from. That spray — distinct, luminous, briefly individual — is us. Coming from the ocean. Living our arc. And made, always, of the same water.

The internal GPS is not pointing back to childhood. It has always been pointing back to source. To the ocean. To the energy and consciousness that you came from and that you still, in every moment, are made of.

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A Word to the Skeptic — and the Healer

None of this is to minimize what happens at birth, and in those first tender years.

Coming out of the womb is not a small thing. It is, in its own way, like a spaceship entering the atmosphere of a new planet — a dramatic, irreversible, world-changing event. Those first years of landing on planet Earth matter enormously. The love or absence of love. The safety or the fear. The way you were seen or not seen. These things shape us. Profoundly. And the work of clearing what got blocked, wounded, or distorted in those years — that work is real, and it is sacred. I am still doing it. I expect I always will be.

But here is what I want to suggest. A reorientation. Not a dismissal.

Because we were born before we were born.

Before the womb. Before the birth canal. Before the first breath and the first cry and the first moment someone looked at you and decided what you were.

We came from somewhere. From something. From an ocean of intelligent, conscious, creative energy that is the actual origin story of every human being who has ever lived.

And that origin story — the one that predates your childhood, your parents, your wounds, your name — is more true to what you actually are than anything that happened in the first five years of your life on this planet. Not less important. More true.

So the reorientation I am offering is this. Not to stop healing. Not to bypass the work. But to change the reference point. To ask not only — how do I repair what broke in version one?

But also — how close am I, right now, to the source I came from? What is the next version of me that is trying to emerge? What would it look like to iterate forward from wholeness rather than backward from damage?

We are not broken originals. We are exquisite, complex, wondrous constellations of energy — ingeniously assembled, endlessly evolving — that have temporarily forgotten where we came from.

The Origin Is Not the Destination. It Is the Fuel.

But remembering is only half of it.

Serena didn’t just remember she was gifted. She showed up and played the next match. Jordan didn’t just reconnect to his love of the game. He went out and won the next championship. The origin is not the destination. It is the fuel.

We are here to do both. To remember the source we came from — that ocean of intelligent, conscious, creative energy — and to use that remembering as the launchpad for what we build next. The next version of ourselves. The next expression of what we are capable of. The next iteration of a species that is still, gloriously, figuring out what it can become.

We have a GPS built into us that never stops pointing toward our immense potential. Not toward who we were in version one. Toward who we are still becoming.

That is the experiment. That is the invitation. Not just to heal. Not just to remember. But to co-create — with full awareness of where we come from — the next most alive version of ourselves.

This matters especially for those of us who hold space for others. When you sit with a client, a student, a patient, a friend who is suffering — and you reach inside yourself for what they need — you are not accessing your wound. You are accessing your source. The intuition that arrives, the knowing of how to hold them, the sense of exactly what this moment is asking for — that is not your trauma speaking. That is consciousness moving through you. That is the ocean in the wave.

The healing work you have done matters. It clears the channel. But you were never broken at the source. And neither were they.

Try This

Find a quiet moment. Sit comfortably. Take a few slow breaths.

Then try on two different stories of origin. Not as a mental exercise — as a felt experience. Let each one land in your body before you move to the next.

Story One. Your life began at birth. The first years — the family you were born into, the love that was present or absent, the wounds that formed early — these are your origin. This is version one. The master file. Everything since has been shaped by what happened there, and healing means returning to repair what broke in those early years.

Sit with that for a moment. Notice what happens in your body. Does your chest tighten? Does your breath shorten? Notice what you believe about yourself from inside this story. About life. About what is possible. About how much energy it takes just to be here.

Now gently set that story down.

Story Two. You were born before you were born. Before the womb, before the family, before the name anyone gave you — you were part of an ocean of intelligent, conscious, creative energy.

You came into individuation the way spray rises from the surface of the ocean — distinct, luminous, briefly individual, and made entirely of the same water as the whole. That is your actual origin. That energy is still what you are made of, right now, in this moment.

Sit with that. Notice what happens in your body. Does something soften? Does your breath deepen? Notice what you believe about yourself from inside this story. About life. About what is possible. About who you are at your core.

Now ask yourself, from each of these stories in turn:

• How do I feel about the rest of today?

• How do I feel about this week, this year, my life?

• What is my level of motivation? Of joy? Of creative desire?

• What feels possible from here?

You don’t have to abandon the first story. The healing it points to is real. But notice — just notice — what becomes available when you add the second one. When you let the origin be larger than the wound.

That noticing is the beginning of the reorientation.

I’d Love to Hear From You

Which story of origin have you been living from? And what shifted, even slightly, when you tried on the other one? Share in the comments — I read every one.

Sending your way blessings of finding your way back to the ocean — and forward into the next most alive version of yourself.

Anna

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There are moments when I doubt whether what I have to offer is relevant right now.

We are living through times of real suffering. Wars that don’t end. Fear that has settled into people’s bodies like a permanent guest. A world that feels, on many days, like it is breaking faster than it can be repaired. And in those moments, I wonder: are people really looking for spiritual wisdom? Or are they looking for something more concrete, more practical, more immediate?

Maybe spiritual depth feels like something to return to when things settle down. When there is more time. More space. More calm.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe, with everything in me:

That moment may never come. And we cannot afford to wait for it.

Through the Lens of Expansive Living

I want to offer you a different way of seeing this. And it lives inside a single word.

Matter.

We say we want our lives to matter. We say we want our work to matter. But I think we rarely stop to notice that this word carries two distinct and equally important meanings.

To matter – as in: to be significant. To count. To make a difference.

And matter – as in: the physical world. The tangible. The real. The stuff of daily life.

Your calling lives at the intersection of both.

Here is what I know to be true: each of us carries a soul essence. A quality of being that is distinctly, irreducibly ours. It is not a job title. It is not a role. It is not something you find by searching hard enough in the right direction.

It is already inside you – it has always been inside you – steadily shaping what lights you up and what leaves you cold, what calls you forward and what never quite fits.

And the act of expressing that soul essence – in your daily life, in every area of your life – is how you bring something ephemeral and invisible into matter. Into the physical world. Into reality.

Not in grand gestures. Not in a single defining moment of purpose. But in how you show up for the next conversation with someone you love. In how you approach the task sitting at the top of your to-do list. In how you handle a financial decision, tend to your body, move through a difficult day.

And this – this is precisely why it is not a luxury for quieter times.

When the world is in suffering, the most radical thing any of us can do is refuse to be pulled out of ourselves. To stay rooted in who we actually are. To bring that quality – your quality, your irreplaceable essence – into the way we live each ordinary moment.

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Every moment you express your soul essence – in how you relate, how you create, how you show up – you are bringing something into matter that would not exist without you. Something the world needs precisely because it is yours alone.

That is not spiritual bypassing. That is not retreating from the world’s problems. It is not turning away from what is hard and real and painful.

That is how the world changes.

Your soul essence is not only yours to keep. It is your gift to the world. To your personal life, to your immediate circle, to humanity and to this planet we share.

Think of nature for a moment. Biodiversity is not decoration. Every species, every organism, every living thing carries a function that the whole depends on. Remove one, and the ecosystem weakens. The web of life holds together precisely because of its diversity – because each element is irreplaceable, essential, present.

It is exactly the same with human essence. The world does not need us all to do the same things. It needs each of us to bring our unique quality – fully, consistently, unapologetically – into everything we do. Not what we do, but how we do it. That is what makes the whole whole.

Every soul essence that goes unexpressed is a gift the world never receives.

It is what a better world is actually made of. That is how you make your calling matter – not someday, not when the world settles down. Now.

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Try This

Take a few quiet minutes with these questions. Don’t overthink them. Let what comes, come.

• What makes me come alive?

• What am I passionate about?

• What makes me feel whole?

• What makes me feel fulfilled?

• What is a gift I was given by the Universe to share with the world?

Now look at your answers. But don’t stop at the activity you might have named – look for the quality underneath it. The essence you tap into when you are doing that thing, being that person, living that moment.

Is there a common thread running through your responses? A single word, or a few words, that seems to appear again and again?

That thread is the beginning of your soul essence.

I’d Love to Hear From You

Have you ever had a moment where you caught a glimpse of the essence underneath your doing – a quality that felt unmistakably, deeply you?

Or maybe you’re still searching, still turning the question over. Either place is a good place to be.

And if the “Try This” questions surfaced something for you – a word, a thread, even just a feeling – I’d love to hear that too.

Share in the comments. I read every one.

Sending your way blessings of soul essence,

Anna

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This week I was the client.

As part of my training to become a Compassion Key™ master practitioner, I sat on the receiving end of a session — not as the guide, but as the one being guided.

I chose to work on something that has followed me my entire life: the feeling of inadequacy that surfaces every time I step into something new.
A new program.
A new relationship.
A new challenge.
The nervous system fires up and suddenly I am back in that old familiar place.

You don’t understand this. You never will. You are on your own.

I knew exactly where it started.

The Classroom

I was six years old, sitting in the front row of my first-grade classroom. The teacher called on me.

How much is five plus five?

I looked up to the left — and I remember this clearly, even now, sixty years later, the exact direction my eyes moved — turning the question over in my mind, visualizing it, feeling my way toward the answer. I was pretty sure it was ten.

Before I could speak, my teacher’s voice cut through the room.

“The answer is not written on the ceiling.”

Something hit me in the chest. Shame moved through my body like a wave and I froze. Completely froze. The word was right there — ten — and I couldn’t say it. I had lost my confidence in a single moment.

She waited a few more seconds, then moved on to a boy at the back of the class.

He said ten.

I sat there. I knew it was ten. I had known it was ten.

What NLP Revealed Decades Later

Years later, I learned something that reframed that moment entirely.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) teaches us that we each have a primary way of processing information — visual, auditory, or kinesthetic. It maps the relationship between how we think, how we feel, and how we express ourselves. And one of the things it reveals is that our eyes move in predictable directions depending on what the brain is doing in any given moment.

Looking up to the left is associated with visual memory recall. The brain reaching for something it has seen before. Something it is trying to picture.

That six-year-old girl looking up to the left?
She was doing exactly what her brain was designed to do.
She was visualizing five plus five.
Trying to see what ten looked like.

She wasn’t lost. She wasn’t slow. She wasn’t avoiding the question.

She was thinking. In her own way. At her own pace.

Fast Forward to Today

You might wonder why someone in their sixties is still working on something rooted in first grade.

Because it never really left. It showed up when I left high school swearing I would never step foot in a classroom again.

It showed up fifteen years later when I enrolled in a PhD program in Transformative Learning.

It showed up at the start of this very training in the Compassion Key modality.

Anything new has the potential to activate the whole cascade. The nervous system remembers.

So there I was in the session, being guided back toward that original moment.
The classroom.
The ceiling.
The shame.
Ready, finally, to let it go.

Except I couldn’t.

Through the Lens of Expansive Living

As I was being guided through the process of releasing the shame and pain from that original moment, something stopped me. I didn’t want to let go.

I paused. I turned my attention inward, trying to understand what was going on. And then, suddenly, I got it.

In that classroom, when the shame moved through me and no one came — no teacher, no adult who said “don’t rush, take all the time you need, I will help you think it through” — I was left completely alone with my feelings. And those feelings, as unwelcome as they were, were the only ones present with me.

They were the only witness to what had actually happened.

Shame had stood by me when no one else did. And some part of me, without ever knowing it, had been loyal to it in return. To release it felt like abandonment. Like betrayal of the only friend who had shown up for me in that moment.

We spend enormous energy trying to release the things that weigh us down. We do the therapy, the journaling, the breath-work, the healing retreats. And sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn’t. And when it doesn’t, we wonder if this particular thing is simply ours to carry forever.

What if the reason it won’t release is not that we haven’t worked hard enough?

What if we are holding on — not to the wound — but to the only witness we had in the original moment?

What contracts us is not always an enemy to defeat. Sometimes it is a part of us that needs to be honored before it can release. The path through is not always force, or excavation, or harder effort.
Sometimes it begins with dignity.
With acknowledgment.
A moment of genuine respect for what has accompanied us, however painfully, through a long stretch of life.

What I Did Instead

I stopped trying to let go. And I honored it first.

I gave the shame and the pain the respect and dignity they deserved for having been my truthful and loyal companions for all these years.

Not because shame had served me well.
Not because I was grateful for the years of self-doubt and hesitation it had seeded in me.

But because it had been there. It had accompanied me. And it deserved to be acknowledged for that — the way you acknowledge anyone who has walked beside you through a long stretch of life, even if the relationship was complicated.

I thanked each of them for being my witness. For being present when no one else was.

And as I did, something shifted. The grip began to soften. Not all at once. Slowly. The way something releases when it finally feels seen rather than fought.

There was still grief in the letting go. A kind of emptiness where something familiar had lived. I honored that too.

And then — and this is the part I want you to stay with — something else moved in. Not immediately. But it came. A sense of ease. Of possibility. The exhale, followed by an inhale that felt different. Lighter. More curious than afraid.

Try This

You might be reading this and thinking of something you have been trying to release for a long time. Something you have worked on, circled back to, made progress with, and still found waiting for you.

I want to offer you this not as a prescription, but as a process. A way in.

Recognition — Bring to mind the thing you keep returning to. The wound, the pattern, the feeling you thought you’d be over by now. Notice it without judgment. Let yourself say: this has been with me for a long time.

Reframe — Consider that you may not be broken for holding onto it. You may have been loyal. This pain, this shame, this fear — it was present in a moment when you were left completely alone. It witnessed what happened when no one else did. You didn’t fail to release it. You honored it, without even knowing that’s what you were doing.

Permission — You don’t have to rip it out. You don’t have to re-live the original story or sob your way through it. You only need to acknowledge this companion for what it has been: your witness. Give it the dignity of being seen. Thank it — not for the suffering it brought, but for the loyalty it showed.

Opening — In that acknowledgment, something may begin to shift. The grip softens. Not because you forced it, but because it finally felt honored enough to let go. And in the space it leaves behind, something else becomes possible. A new thought. A new feeling. A new way of moving through the very thing that used to stop you.

You don’t have to keep the friendship. But you can honor it before you say goodbye.

And in that honoring, something that has been frozen for a very long time might finally be ready to soften.

I’d love to hear from you.

What stirs in you as you read this?
What do you discover about yourself in the process, and how does honoring your own pain deepen the way you show up for others?
Leave a comment. These conversations matter.

I send your way blessings of compassionate witnessing,

Anna

May LIGHT be your ally today and throughout this week.

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Someone I couldn’t simply remove from my world—and honestly, didn’t want to.

I loved them.

But something would happen every single time we were together for too long.

I’d lose myself. I’d get reactive.

And being a Sagittarius, I’d say my truth—loudly, at exactly the wrong moment.
Which would create more conflict.
Which would leave me feeling worse.
Which would start the whole cycle over again.

This went on for years.

Through the Lens of Expansive Living

Then one day, when I felt particularly upset about this relationship, I asked myself:

What is the one thing you can change right now that’s going to change everything?

I sat with it.

And what came back was simple.

This person knocks me off center.

That’s it.

I can’t change them.
I can’t change the situation.
But I can notice when I’m off center—and do something about that.

Because off center, I’m reactive.
And reactive, I’m not who I want to be.

So the question became:

How do I stay in relationship without losing myself?

The answer was even simpler.

See them the right amount. Not more.
Be fully present, fully loving, fully myself—for exactly as long as I can hold my center.

And the moment I feel that familiar tipping point, I step back.

“Thank you, it’s so good to see you.”

And I’m done.

They get to be who they are.
I get to be who I am.

And everything changed.

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This is what I want to point to.

Because we often think change comes from fixing the situation.

But more often, it comes from shifting the track we’re on.

When your attention stays on what already happened—the conflict, the pattern, the outcome—you stay on the same track.

And that track keeps generating the same experience.

Not because something is wrong with you. But because where your attention lives shapes what comes next.

Shifting tracks doesn’t require a big overhaul.

It starts with one honest question.

And one small move in a different direction.

Right in the middle of real life.

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Try This:

Think of one situation in your life right now.

Something that feels stuck.
Repetitive.
Familiar.

Notice where your attention has been going.
​
The problem.
What keeps happening.
The other person.

And then ask:

What’s the one thing I can change right now that would change everything?

Don’t force the answer.

Let it come.

And when it does—take one small step in that direction.

That’s how you shift tracks.

If you try this, I’d love to know how it went and how you found relief.

Sending your way blessings of steady footing,

Anna