10. From a Brooklyn Playshop to Walking on Fire
In Fall 2019, Clifton and I prepared my apartment for our first in person consciousness gathering. We'd blueprinted the vision for Conscious Playshop, an immersive experiential tour to expand your consciousness and support your nervous system. It was a donation based event we hosted where you can explore what it feels like to connect into a space of heart coherence with a HeartMath+ device trainer, drop into a state of flow on the vibroacoustic therapy bed, eat delicious plant based food, and then blow your lid off with the coconut rolling finale.
It was an homage to my journey that entire year as I upgraded my whole lifestyle and I wanted to share all of my new tools and findings with others. I was excited to share with my friends how I got completely over my chronic back pain and even healed my hypothyroid I'd had for the past 10 years where I was on natural pig desiccated thyroid hormone through lifestyle changes and spiritual practices.
I invited a handful of my open-minded friends who were curious to explore and support. I was excited and nervous at the same time. My perfectionist mindset was attached to how it would go. I envisioned it would run perfectly our first time (lol) and that everyone who RSVP'ed would show up and after the event would want even more. Well, several people cancelled last minute, the event ran longer than expected because of us trying to pack it with what we thought was insane value, but it was full and a lot to orchestrate in a short period of time and a handful had to leave before getting to experience it all. I also didn't have a clear next step from the event. You learn! Every iteration is a learning opportunity to build, measure and learn it better.
What we'd done from this experience though, and several following it afterwards was incorporate it into our business facilitation work the following year, and this is when the seed was planted.
Around this time, I was also recording video content to work putting my message out into the world. It has been a long journey for me of getting comfortable on camera teaching and sharing wisdom. The first few times, I would literally set up my tripod and ring light and stare into the lens frozen because I couldn't get my thoughts together to speak and then I would cry because I didn't know what to say. It's amazing what having more reps, more certainty and more nervous system regulation in preparation for doing something outside your comfort zone can do!
I was so comfortable at this point giving meditations at my hospital job, and saw what effect they had on my patients and their family members. Even the most skeptical would entrain with my energy and I'd see a shift within minutes as I would facilitate their induction from beta brain wave state to alpha brain wave state and a state of coherence. There really was something to that. I wanted to bring all of my quantum tech in as well as everything I'd learned and was frustrated that the hospital was not forward thinking in that way at that time.
And when I'd found out my program in India was cancelled, I was devastated. It was something I'd been looking forward to that entire year, to uplevel my depth of purpose, uncover my unique abilities and have a life changing experience connecting with myself and my spirituality. I couldn't believe it. I was frustrated I could not be the fullest expression of myself in my nursing role. And my plan had been to give notice of my resignation right before my program, that was my deadline. And then come back from my program empowered to start my next chapter.
When it was cancelled, it felt like the rug was pulled out from under me, and I didn't believe I would have what it takes to move on without it.
Instead Clifton and I planned a trip to the west coast for the holidays to meet his folks and then fly to Florida to go meet mine. While traveling the universe gave me no choice. I'd received a message from my boss about my outstanding flu shot asking if I'd planned on getting one. She said the hospital was no longer accepting us wearing a mask instead during flu season if we decline. That was my moment of truth, get a flu shot and return to my old reality after our trip, or resign and step into what I'd been wanting all along. To be free and to go all in. It was scary and a difficult decision to make, and it was great having Clifton and my parents support me in that challenging moment, but the universe had already chosen for me.
And it was a wise choice, because 2 months later the hospitals were in mayhem and the world was in a global pandemic lockdown.
We came back to New York and reality had hit me what was I going to do now. I have X dollars in savings, how long will that last me? I've got to launch an offer I can sell now. The pressure was on. I made an intake form that read like a holistic nurse turned life-coach form and began offering intro sessions to help my clients do a detox and develop their spiritual practices. And they would get to experience the vibroacoustic therapy bed too. I started ideating a longer 3 month transformation.
Meanwhile, Clifton was working on acquiring clients for his business facilitation service. He got called out for an opportunity back in California. Thing got messy and too entangled with us in all of our various roles, and the messages started coming in louder and louder that it was time to break up. It was not a relationship we'd entered from a place of wholeness and we each needed to stand on our feet in our sovereign responsibility.
The day before he left, I received a call about a new program with the guru launching next week. I was like wow can I really be this spontaneous, grab a last minute flight to India and get on a plane in two days? You bet. I was grateful I had somewhere to go and didn't have to be in my empty apartment with Clifton gone. Before I knew it, I was off.
It was my first trip in India. And I was completely immersed. I spent the whole day at the ashram doing meditations, activations, pujas, going to the temple, walking around the whole city barefoot, as they do there, eating the food that had been blessed with my hands, as they do.
For the first time in a long time, I felt free from my troubles back home, my anxieties for how I'd support myself and my recent breakup, and I felt blissful. I wore the saris, I put cum cum on my 3rd eye bindu point. I wore the malas. I hiked around the mountain barefoot on the full moon with my group. I did the traditional firewalking ritual, walking over hot coals transcending into oneness with the guru, and did lemon piercing (it is what it sounds like, lemons threaded through your skin with a needle to hang on a string and fall off). It was a very humbling experience not being able to transcend scorching my feet (they'd already been raw from all the barefoot walking) and I needed a bucket to soak them.
I was livestreamed on YoutTube with the other group members, with over 1M viewers sharing about this program that we were the first to experience. In the end, I worried that this was the path of a sanyasi or monk, and not for me, that I did not want to go too deep into it for too long, but it was a nice exploration. To me, it seemed like they were prisoners of the ashram who needed permission to leave to even go to the temple.
It was mid-March 2020 when I was there in my little bubble, I'd heard from our program that the world was in lockdown. I could not believe my ears. The guru said the firewalking and lemon piercing was to fortify our immunity. I questioned it at the time, but hah I also didn't get sick for over 2 years after that, so I guess it did the trick.
Even while in the program, I don't think there was a day where Clifton and I didn't exchange message. I asked him if the world was really locked down and he said yeah, he flew out to Salt Lake City for work and now had to quarantine there. I got one of the last remaining flights back home from India and sure enough, the entire world was on a 2 week quarantine. In that moment, the guru offered another program, remote this time. Not knowing what else I was going to do, I dove into more expansion.
