Addressing you through my one of many nicknames for you because

a) this is my first love letter to you… on Substack :P and the fact that you exist means that I know there is always a safe, equally enthusiastic space where I can bring in all my latest infatuations knowing that they will be met & added on to with the bestest of omg omg energy :D

b) I also wanna establish early on that there are many nicknames I will be addressing you through out this series since the number of nicknames is directly proportional to the amount we love you, in the Gowda household

So for our love letters I first started with directly replying to your intuition piece - I started writing it out and I was working on a piece that was inspired by that whole incident that happened with RBL bank coming after Amma.

Anchana

Love letter on Intuition

Dear …

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a month ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Anchana

I was imitating the format of our usual conversations, where you bring in the concepts or theories around things that make us go, “EEEEEKS!” and I try and understand how they fit into my life and bring you into how it made sense for me and then we squeal in nerdy joy about the things we find that also fit or feel similar to the topic of discussion :P

But… then I paused… because as usual, my art, in this case - the story and writing it, was making me process that episode on a level that my emotional self needs to do in parts. To do it in one go and on a public forum, though hidden behind the shroud of fiction felt like a lot.

SO INSTEAD :)

Lemme go with what feels more free flowy and come back to this when I’m ready :D First I ask that you listen to this song

Excuse me for sharing it on Spotify, I know artists earn more when we listen through YouTube or Bandcamp, I need to make that platform switch, will get to it soon :3 (I recommend opening it up on Spotify and listening to the song on full)

BUT, YEAH, SO!

I’ve been OBSESSED with this song for weeks now. Maybe it’s the handpan, lowfi mix. But more honestly, it’s the audio sample in the beginning that makes me melt every time I listen to it.

Sister Marie - “At the end of each day, I want you to tell me everything that you spoke about, and I’ll tell you exactly what it means.”

Cyril - “Can we give this puppet a name?”

SM - “Absolutely. What do you want to call it?”

C - “Jericho.”

SM - “Jericho? Why Jericho?”

SM - “Because the walls came tumbling down.”

The beauty of songs like this is that I can’t find their lyrics online immediately, I have to listen to it over and over again and type out the sample and find it through that. It’s usually a hit or a miss because Google won’t be able to find these immediately. So I sang it to ChatGBT and asked it to give me the full context of where this was taken from.

And I went down the rabbit hole of Oz, Cyril and Sister Peter Marie that I am attaching here

Jericho Oz Urbs Smaragdinae Context

94.9KB ∙ PDF file

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TLDR; Cyril is a prisoner in the Oswald State Penitentiary and is cognitively a severely regressed individual who portrays extremely childlike behaviours due to a brain injury, and his brother Ryan manipulates him to do all of his dirty work for him because Cyril’s adult body is physically capable of extreme violence.

Due to the course of everything that happens in the prison and in his life, Cyril ends up on death row. Now, Sister Peter Marie is a nun who’s also a psychotherapist who has been working with Cyril on his condition and gives him this puppet to act as his psychological intermediary to help him communicate and get in touch with his psyche that he can’t access normally. To allow him to understand the world through this puppet. Through Jericho.

So the walls that come tumbling down - are the walls around Cyril’s psyche, where Jericho is Cyril’s alter ego who CAN express all the rage, anger and contempt that’s trapped in Cyril’s mind.

The rest of the series follows the events around his death row and Sister Marie’s attempt at establishing the cruelty of a death sentence on a man who’s not psychologically fully present and hence cannot be held accountable for his actions.

CHILLS.

Since you know me, I won’t go into the details of all the dark places my mind went with this, maybe we discuss this more on a call.

BUT I came across this context right around the time, I was helping Rachi with her marketing for her workshop. We used the blob cards for the reel we were making. And I asked her what was the psychological concept around which these cards could be working with - because it always takes me by surprise how using an external stimuli to explain or examine what’s going on internally can be so much more revealing that attempting to process it purely through thought and dialogue that’s limited to the instance that I am facing.

And you know my affinity towards understanding what’s going with me through concepts or theories so I asked her as a psychologist what would this activity with the blob cards come under. She suggested externalisation, I dug into a little bit more through Chattu and came across Projective Identification.

Sooooo, Projective Identification as I understand it, is essentially referring to a loop that I could enter into if I’m not being careful with navigating the mental narratives my mind conjures up.

So for example, if I believe that X is a “bad person” because X always does abc thing then I’m constantly on the look out for proof that X behaves like that all the time. Kinda like what confirmation bias states.

Except with projective identification, it goes a step further, if I believe through and through that X “is only like this” then I will constantly be acting in a way that actually pushes X to behave in that way which gives me the proof that I want to vindicate my own hypothesis.

Now one thing you should know about me, is my absolute dissent for anything or anyone who states “Yeah, but he’s always like this only.” “These things will never for change her/them.” Ooooooh the rage it fills me with to hear that.

I was dissecting this in therapy yesterday.

There are, of course, certain realities that cannot be mutated to my whims and fancies :D

For example: the years I have spent learning hooping and Capoeira have taught me the amount of time it actually takes to be be able to pick up a skill, a style, a culture. In the sense of going into the depths of learning the theories actually beginning to inculcate the entirety of the practice. So as much as I would like I cannot simply become an expert Capoeirista in a matter of weeks.

And yet I still believe to place an extremity next the things we hope to achieve is neglectful. The always and nevers are where limitations start to creep in.

Eg: “I would never be able to learn a handstand.”

As opposed to “I think it’ll take me a long time to learn to do a handstand if I only keep training dynamically, what I should do is to focus more on the drills.”

How the restrictions I placed on the people in my life have been changing:

Now imagine the example with the relationships we are a part of (platonic, familial, romantic, colleagues etc)

When I was younger, I’ve caught myself doing this sometimes, expecting people to behave a certain way and almost goading them to prove me right. You’ve seen me still behaving this way when it’s a stranger I’m interacting with and my guards are up for whatever reason.

But something I’ve been extremely grateful for getting the chance to experience - over the last couple of years - to be surprised by the people that I love.

Trusting and holding onto the belief that they are capable of change, that they like me are extremely human in their mannerisms. And that they in no way mean to be malicious in the things that they do that irk me. But instead to be genuinely curious about where that certain part of them might be coming from. And when I explore that, of late, I’ve been discovering such wholesome similarities as well, if not the intention to do better.

Often I see that it’s teenager Yami who has these unrealistic expectations of them and Overly Protective Yami judging them and putting the walls up around her to keep “them” far far away.

Through various practices - sometimes it’s softer moments of reflection and self talk to understand what parts of my insecurities are coming up.

Sometimes it’s radical shifts in the way I interact with them - taking space, holding my ground, being firm about the way I want to be treated - and allowing myself to be fluid in my responses to their responses that’s helped me to create space for them to be their actual, present self… instead of the version in my head.

Seeing the amount of effort I put into this with my interpersonal relationships, I’ve also been toying around with the idea of what this looks like when I apply it to the voices in my head.

My different personalities are sometimes engaged in deep conflict with each other when it’s to do with aspects of my life that are overwhelming.
For example: With my career - because I tend to place a lot of value on purpose and the meaning that my job holds. But I also want the job that I do to provide a lot of financial stability since I like to enjoy the freedom that comes with that. - being able to travel, and give time to the other pursuits in my life.

So what I’ve been playing around with is bringing in more awareness to these different personalities and being patient with their ability to change. Essentially using what I know could happen with this concept of Projective Identification and consciously slowing down around… what it would look like if I stopped believing that certain parts of me could only act one way.

Some of the things I’ve been working on, in that sense, is from the smallest of things:

“I’m a forgetful person, I’m an unpunctual person, I’m a scatter brain.”

Instead thinking:

My memory works on context and needs that as a trigger to be able to recall the finer details of an instance.

I'm actually extremely punctual when it’s for the things that I love.

I like to do a lot of things but it’s just that I need a system for keeping track of my priorities.

What would it look like if I were to do this for the voices in my head that fight way dirtier?

Seeing the way in which this revisioning of myself was taking off, I started applying this little trick to bigger things I wanted to chip away at.

“I can’t be an entrepreneur, I don’t have the will power to train by myself”

So every time I see that thought passing through, feel that procrastination in my body, I bring in the awareness to sense that it’s just one part of me goading me to behave this way, and there’s actually a very vibrant “other” in me who can do anything she wants without settling for the pattern that was being projected.

Of course, this is coming off the back of a lot of self reflection - tuning the negative into the positive, some intense inner critique Smash Bros work with Daga, one round of therapy and continuous days of showing up to prove one part of myself wrong. :P

But yoooo, it’s been working wonders with how I’ve building out my free lancing journey and associating on the No Pin Code projects (more on this in the next letter) or amping up self training sessions to 2 hours a sesh :D

I gotta say though, the ULTIMATE validation for proof of concept came during this Kovalam surf trip.

With hooping and Capo, it’s been 6 years of chipping away at the blocks that keep me small but with surfing, this was only the 3rd time ever that I was trying it. So I used the same process each day when I wanted to work towards something.

AND YOOOOO PANCH! That immediate gratification (hard earned and soooo soooo worth it) of hitting the shoreline was insane!

Usually it would have been self critique shrouded as an urge to get better that would have had me falling off the board or demeaning the things I was learning. Fixating on all the things I should have gotten already.

Instead I focussed merging the mindset (that I’m good at surfing - kept it easy) along with Appu’s (my coach’s) specific instructions. And kept things super fun and light when I went in to catch that wave. Conscious rewiring sent me straaaight to the shorelines <3

The walls are crumbling down, indeeeeed.

Excited to see all the portals and doorways that are going to be opening up with this, tell me more about what you were saying on magic backfiring? :P orrrr anything else that catches your fancy?

Love always,

Yami

The word “Recreate” is from the 4Rs framework (The Theory of Tranformation concept) at the Queer Jam (a 5 day community building retreat I helped facilitate) that I disappeared into for the past week. My understanding of the framework is that it helps one identify what their preferred form of engagement with a revolution is.

If you look up revolution on Google, you come across 3 ways to define it.

A political overthrowing.

A drastic change or a profound shift in culture.

A circular motion or a movement arc an entity can take around a central point.

Before you continue down the rest of this newsletter I want you to take a moment to think about whether you are participating in a revolution of any sorts in your life.

Maybe it’s a tiny act of rebellion.

Perhaps a big one.

Maybe you’re undergoing a significant change right now, leading your way up to one or have been thinking about one for a while now.

Which ever it may be, ponder upon it, all the ways that you’ve interacting with it, engaging with it, communicating about it, finding community around it.

Even if you had a glimmer of an answer, a reply to the above statements, congratulations! You’re part of a revolution! Keep that example in mind and proceed forward 🪄

If I had to help you figure out where you fit in with the 4 Rs from The Theory of Transformation:

1. Recreate

1. Reimagine

2. Resist

3. Reform

(if you need it, here’s a few examples of what systems (apart from the usual - political, educational, healthcare systems) could be:

• Your family

• Your friendship group

• Your workplace

• Your relationship

• Your creative practice

• Your relationship with your body

• Your relationship with money

• Your relationship with time

• Your relationship with nature

Here are some questions I would ask you:

1. Do you like to reimagine systems? Reimagine ways in which to live, interact, earn, belong? Maybe it’s reimagining a communication style, or what it means to belong to a sacred space? Maybe it’s reimagining the way we tell stories or something more complex like innumerable ways in which they or a special gift can be delivered to another.

2. or do you prefer to recreate systems - to be better than they already are or to be more inclusive, resilient, maybe just marginally different to be more enjoyable?

3. Do you like to resist a system just so there’s enough space and time for the other Rs to kick into action? To be the wall between what you believe is good and evil? Or maybe sometimes, you just like to be an obstacle in the way of a policy, a change, a defect coming into play so that there’s more time for reflection or slowness?

4. Do you like to reform the way some systems are run or work? To look at a political system, family systems, cultural systems and work from within them to find new ways of bringing out all the best parts of that system? Of finding fixes for maybe just a few of the creaky parts so that the whole can still be salvaged?

Whichever R you fit into, even if it’s none or many… welcome :D

Welcome to the my recreated world of existence. Where there is unconditional love and acceptance.

While I was at this 5 day community building Queer Jam, I was asked if I truly believe love can be unconditional.

I took a few seconds to pause to sense into if anything had changed since I first came across the words to describe a superpower I had long held and protected in me.

As usual I got the same response from my heart.

Of course I do.

Because for me, for love to be unconditional, it does not need to exist without boundaries. It does not need to bend to another’s will, or to be only accessed from a space of martydom. It does not yield it’s power to another’s hurt nor does it disappear after responding to every beck and calling.

For my love to be unconditional, I simply need it to come from a place of non-judgmental acceptance. Without hatred, jealousy, fear or anguish, to be able to look at a place, a being, a organisation even. Just as it truly is in that moment.

And to simply witness.

The actions that follow post that witnessing will depend on our unique perspectives, situations, dynamics and realities.

But for those moments that I was able to hold that entity that needed that particular form of love — in a suspended space and time of simply ‘being’ — I rest easy knowing that I loved them/it/that place. Truly and wholly. No matter how long or for how briefly. (Although in my case, with people and places that I’ve had a close enough bond with it’s usually unfalteringly forever)

And that’s what Queerness means to me. It isn’t about which letter on this beautifully ever expanding rainbow my gender identity or sexuality fall into. Although that was a part of it when I first began this journey.

Right now it’s about having discovered a love - this kind of love - that I can hold so purely for anything or anyone that needs me to.

And I’m grateful for the Queer Jam India for reminding me of the strength of this power. For expanding the space inside of me within which this love can be held. And for allowing me rest for long enough to remember to be in awe rather than hold with shame - the durations for which it sustains as well ☺️

I realise unconditional love is what I’m taking into my fights against the systems that no longer serve me. It is how I’m partaking in revolutionary joy. Because to do so from a point of rage or anger means that I could slip or falter into mistakes that have already been made.

Maybe it won’t work out, maybe the systems I build will be unstable; or need more time to take shape, to hold steady. But that’s okay, because at the end of the day when I look at them, I’ll know that I built them with love.

and soooo….

Ask not what your mind wants of me but for what your heart really needs <3 and know that I will be here for you. Because all that you are, just as you are, is magic ✨

Xx

Yami

But I’m doing it because it’s completely aligned with everything that the natural world (life at the farm, being a flow artist and a facilitator has taught me)

Considering this the live update from Hoopinkai’s

Unfiltered.

First of all, here’s the question I would be asking if I got this email: Wtf is Hoopinkai’s?

Aren’t you Hoopinkai?

And here’s the short answer to that:

Hoopinkai’s is the community, the collective, the land, that entire ecosystem that starts there and that has lil fireflies all across Bangalore - that’s behind every cool f**king thing you see happening at the farm.

How can one person be behind all of that?

I mean, just look at everything that went into the Soul Flow Fest’s last edition. Spot the fireflies I was talking about! Context - It was an inside joke that came up after the flow fest when a few of us from the core team - Anch, Sups, Myke, Aprita stayed back - and we got to watch the most wholesome mating ritual that the actual fireflies at the farm put up for us as a private show for us. We started calling ourselves that :3

Anyways, here’s the longer answer to the previous question:

Establishing clearly that it’s the collective.

It started about 7 years ago because that’s how long it actually took us to build our lives here. And we want to share it as many of you as possible.

Why?

Because we know what it’s like to really want a safe, convenient space to run to; away from the city whenever we want to.

Buuuut we also know what a pain in the ass it is to take care of AND grow a place like that.

I know every founder usually has a blood, sweat and tears story so here’s ours.

BACK STORY TIME!

The idea for the collective comes from watching my dad crash and burn through 400 crores to build up that place.

Just to land up with no savings, debts beyond despair, completely destroyed relationships with his entire community, a now healing but previously severely wrecked relationship with his kids, and a once genius brain that’s fully lost cognitive and memorial functioning from all the stress he took.

One single person cannot take care of that entire place. Financially, emotionally, or intellectually.

And no matter how much my avoidant, hyper independent, overachieving ego wants to, I refuse to repeat that same mistake.

Instead I build community with a fever. Support systems who tell me when an idea is great and what to consider and rework when it’s shit :)

I’ve met a few others who do the same thing as well.

And we’re all collectively vying for the same thing.

A grounded, stable sense of community that’s thriving. A safe space for us to come back to. To create in.

Rich because our days are free for us to decide what to do with them.

Rich because there’s fresh air, abundant space, new connections, clean swimmable water, loud over enthu birds, scarily thrilling wildlife spottings and looooooong loooooong hours spent living how humans were originally meant to.

I spent the last 7 years hustling between a corporate job and all my side projects because I wanted to get to this dream life ASAP. And to continue to grow this, instead of continuing to operate in a system and society that I can no longer advocate for. Something had to give.

So I started studying other people who were doing the same. Folks with independent alt lifestyles but who still seemed to be a part of a great network.

They spend 10 minutes on their phones or 4 hours a day working and living in remote, luxurious places. Not just the known names either, even lesser known individuals.

But for some reason they all happen to be white people.

Or people like Suniel Shetty.

So then, I took another loop around because I figured money can’t be the only thing that unlocks these lifestyles.

I’ve seen other celebrities making millions but stuck in a senseless controlled loop where they’ve written over their entire being to the capitalist system.

So money’s not the only thing that can grant a free, pleasurable life.

Is it that then that it comes from being around the right kind of people who genuinely care about your well-being while also being able to take care of themselves and grow with you?

Could access to this kind of a group flow be more valuable than just earning in millions but not having the freedom to build the kind of life we actually want?

Here’s one more thing I explored. The importance of inquiry and experimentation.

Our Indian education system definitely effed us over big time. Colonised mindsets were drilled into young impressionable minds to follow that one set format. I applaude alternate schools that taught kids differently. The ones that showed them the value of art, music, nature.

Of holding onto the build forward innate mindset that kids have. Have you ever let kids play by themselves? I learnt this through a friend who works in that space. Kids have this special ability to create toys and imaginary worlds out of thin air or whatever is around them.

I refuse to believe that that side of me has been conditioned out of me. Maybe it’s just been suppressed. And the more I believed in my ability to unearth it, the more I started seeing the opportunities around me.

There’s something about being at the farm that allows for this expansion also. And I’ve seen it usually hits after I get over the initial slump of arriving there. Those first few hours, sometimes, first few days are/were sometimes hard for me too. My overstimulated brain can’t fully rest in the silence. It can’t stand the fact that I actually don’t have anything to do. So it goes into emulating it’s usual city behaviours. But after a while it settles, it… I slowly start to actually interact with the environment. That’s when I really feel like I’m connecting back with my build forward mindset.

I start making connections I hadn’t before. I pull at threads that are creeping up from the reccesses of my mind and I begin to build the world I want to be in. Which is where the idea for the Founder’s Circle came from.

See, because I can tell you about this same idea and tell you to try and access it while you’re visiting the farm for one night. But I don’t know how much of difference that would make.

Being the farm owner, mindfullness overloaded, mind-body control freak that I am, I can’t even immediately sync into nature’s natural cycles. So I know the importance of structuring a package that allows for folks to really sink into the farm’s ecosystem.

While this was for the personal level, I also started imagining what it could be like at the interpersonal level. I’ve learnt everything I can from 3 distinct industries and institutions of how communities need to operate at large scale to sustain.

To have enough to live by their values and say NOPE to norms that’s aren’t helping them do that. To have plenty of free time to actually celebrate and take pleasure in the life that they’re working towards.

Time and again, the one simple rule I keep finding at the heart of it all is integration.

What we need to buckle down into is investing in a system that has enough inlets and outlets for everyone to bring in their unique, creative skills. And we do that through various means. Through time, effort and consistency. Essentially through.. showing up <3

Because when systems and spaces exist that are what we want, it allows for us to expand to our fullest. ✨

ASK FOR MORE

ASK FOR ALL THAT YOUR HEART WANTS

AND WATCH AS THE UNIVERSE BRINGS IT

ALL BECAUSE YOU HAD THE COURAGE TO STAY WHILE IT MADE IT’S WAY <3

1. People are kinder than you think.

   When I first started the farmstay back in 2020. It was a rickety old building with no wifi, no 24 hour power, heck, barely even had a fully functioning fridge. So how the f**k did all of that turn into the vitally thriving space that it is today?

   Through the power of community.

   Through the kindness of countless number of friends and family who wanted us to do better in life. They passed on their feedback and ideas in gentle tones. Listened with patience while I told them what my vision for the place was.

   Hell, even the actual owners of the land (my dad had given away the cottage as collateral for a loan and my brother got it back 2 years ago) didn’t interfere with my business. Sure, they had their vested interest in seeing where this would go so they could get their money back, but for the most part they held onto the space because they had “given word” to my mum that they would never sell it. They made back their interests through other means but it always blew my mind that verbal agreements still held any value at all in this day and age.

   

   Random strangers started flowing in and out of the space, falling in love with the idea of being a part of this farm community (linked to our Founder’s Circle initiative if you wanna join in), recommending it to their friends, offering services in exchange for being hosted there. Some are even in touch with me now, 6 years later (we just celebrated her birthday last month at the farm <3), still gliding alongside as I figure out how to take all the emotional alchemisation I went through at the farm and create a structure to help others who need similar interventions as well. Healing in nature is one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had the blessing of being witness to.

2. Make more intentional time and space for the spiritual experiences to flow through

   When I was a teenager, every time I came across an eye lash or a 11:11 on the clock, I made the same wish.

   “I wish that magic exists and that I get to experience it.”

   As a voracious reader, my world was filled with fantasy but limited to the printed pages of the books I held in my hand and confined within my imagination.

   The first time I actually got to witness it was when we held the Shamanic Retreat at the farm. I meant Kiara Windrider at a Beings of Bliss event back in 2022, when I was on the verge of starting my spiritual journey. I just didn’t know it then. I was always in awe of mindfulness but breath-work and meditation were only just entering into my consciousness. I still remember the exact moment; I was in an extremely noisy studio in Indiranagar, bus brakes screeching in the vicinity and lil ol’ me wondering how on Earth we were going to find peace and solace in that moment; when suddenly I was pulled out of my body and projected into the other dimension through my breath. I’d finally gotten to experience what it meant to enter into the void.

   Fascinated by what I had felt, I met him after the event to tell him about the farm-stay I had recently started running, and wondered if he would be interested in hosting a retreat there. It’s usually the smallest of things that signal authenticity to us. For me, it was the fact that I finally understood what they meant by “eyes are the mirrors into our souls.” During that conversation, simply looking into his eyes revealed to me, the latent power that lay in his soul, not to mention the fact that it pulled up to my surface every hidden insecurity and tiny fears I kept away secretly in the depths and recesses of my personality. Fascinating that this man’s eye contact could yield so much vulnerability.

   

   The most powerful session for me was the Inka energy centres, when I was sitting by the lake and I got to meet the spirits who protect this land that I call home.

   Another one was when it started pouring that day and we all came back to the cottage, huddled around the dining table to continue the sessions while Gowri was cooking in the kitchen. Meditating when the mixie is blaring in the distance is a strange experience but something about the whole situation, blasted me out of my body again. I distinctly noted that it was the moment I gave up control, and surrendered to the practice that Kiara was guiding us through. Maybe it was because that was the moment I distanced myself from the ego and the identity of “the perfect set up can only be done by the perfect hostess” and sunk into being.

   Although, I’m hoping my malleable 20 year old mind isn’t the only one that can experience these sorts of distortions and dimension jumps. We have two retreats coming up that Gowri (the yoga hooper a.k.a Gow.With.TheFlow) and I are basing on the Ashtavakra Gita.

   I love when life comes a full circle and this feels a lot like that. The Ashtavakra Gita is a radical and uncompromising classical text on Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism). Structured as a dialogue between the sage Ashtavakra and King Janaka, it asserts that the true Self (Atman) is pure, unbounded, and ever-free consciousness, and that liberation is not an achievement, but an immediate realisation of what already is.

   Shivers and giggles of how this exploration will unfold over the next couple of days. :D

   (our Instagram will have more information about the retreat, btw)

3. Seek Support In The Right Spaces

   Communication has never been an issue for me, only trouble with it was that I would zone in on having my needs met only by a few safe spaces or people. Took me many years to distribute that need across many different kinds of people. And even more to realise how deeply impacted my energies can be by the people I surround myself with. Still rewiring soooo soo many of the unconscious habits I picked up from folks. I hadn’t taken into account that even if I had the awareness of the fact that these behaviours weren’t something I wanted to emulate, it didn’t mean that I was immune to subconsciously storing it in the back of my mind for it to come up later.

   I’ve seen this especially when there were new habits I was picking up - learning music in a specific environment meant I unconsciously picked up the nervousness embodied by those who were exploring it themselves.

   Building businesses without mentorship or a diversity of voices meant that the controlling parental voice in my head would often take over - not allowing me to take risks, prioritising hustling as the only form of security, thinking that a business meant only focussing on the transactional aspect instead of viewing it as a part of the whole livelihood. Livelihood in terms of the intersections with my pre-existing networks of community, purpose and pleasure.

   All because I didn’t have access to the knowledge hidden in lived experiences of folks who’ve explored alternative lifestyles and were also building it out.

   This has defo been the inspiration that I’m leaning on while I set up the Support Circles I wish I had back then. In fact, though I’ve thought about these from a what-would-my-20-year-old-need lens, I realise the relevance of it in my life even today.

   Pattern periodicity; I went through an entire loop over the last decade. From when I first started the farm stay to where we are now; in the restructuring of it. SO many of the characters have found their way back to me, just that they and I are in different forms now than we were at that time.

   

   A lot more things I would address in this particular section itself but pausing here for this newsletter given the present day’s attention span. <3

   Till next time!

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

I’ve thought about this phrase often. Modernism has reduced this sentence to

They say it takes a village.

It fits

Because for just about anything I’ve set out to do in my life, I’m landed at this exact realisation.

It takes a village.

And to truly truly build something worthwhile it takes a lifetime 🫶🏽

And I say that with a lot of love

I adoooore that it does

That I can sink into a lifetime of exploring the things and people that bring me joy

It used to drive me crazy when I was younger*

My new favourite word is precocious.

A child who develops certain abilities, mental aptitude, or behaviours at an unusually early age.

From the time I was 12 till I hit 25 I’ve felt that way

*I say this because when I came across a lifestyle, a thing, a book, a person that I liked, it often meant that my precocious energy would let me know that I would be comfortably settling into it for life. And it used to drive me crazy because with people that I felt that intuition about, it would take them forever to understand it. And I’d get sick of waiting for them to get it :P

Clarity is not something that is easily accessible. Some times it’s as elusive as clairvoyance.

I truly believe there is a beauty in being able to pick apart life. One tiny bit at a time. Melting into the melancholy. Grappling with grief. Emerging with joy. And most importantly doing it all over again until the day we die.

There are so many different, ever changing characters; roles that we have to play, roles that were handed down and roles that we are curious about.

Except that there is only this one life that we apparently have. And so, I often sit to wonder, what about all the roles I didn’t get to play? All the roles that piqued my curiosity and felt like they got taken away.

Not. An. Option.

I pull up my socks and I go after the long chase.

Sometimes, I pass the opportunity by.

Sometimes, I slip and go astray.

Most times I land up in my little corner, a cove. Taking cover and drawing up elaborate plans, shaking and quivering with fear and joy at what a blessing it is to be able to create.

Create the world we want to be a part of, create the circus we are but monkeys in.

Maybe it takes a village to understand that everything we’ve ever needed has always been within us, and surrounded us.

Imagine being given the world and leaving it to look for something more.

Imagine being given the world but sinking with the feeling that I don’t deserve this because I have not fought for it; to earn it.

Why did I not build it? Why could I not hold on it?

But isn’t that the point of it all? To be shimmering characters who come and go while the village lives on.

Forever embossed in gold.

I was running around my sister’s wedding, when I got accosted by my uncles wanting to have a discussion about what’s going to happen with the world with so many people losing jobs and AI taking over.

I said, humans are wily lil creatures. I for one can’t wait to see what they get up to when they’re pushed out of their plushy comfortable paychecks and asked to level the f**k up when it comes to the kind of lifestyles they live.

I’m an extremist in that sense. I’ve seen the kind of batshit crazy things my family and I have achieved when we were in our survival modes.

Since the time I was 10 years old I had been taught to look at the world through assets, losses, liabilities or opportunities. My dad was grooming me to be the business tycoon he was. Ironically, all that actually happened was that I was able to see how completely hollow the capitalistic world was.

Because while he obsessed over me understanding The Blue Ocean Strategy, my mum taught me to tune into a situation, to discern what was being said in between the lines and to most importantly stick with that gut instinct no matter what anybody said. She was a history major but something about her emotional intelligence, and maybe being the wallflower to dad’s million and one business meetings had given her the distinct ability to call out people’s bullshit. Too bad he never listened to her. And she doesn't stubbornly stick to her insights. Might have gotten a lot of that from her ☺️ of giving people innumerable second chances.

Anyhow, she did teach me to never back down from a fight when I know I’m right. To never be dependent on anybody financially and to never ever put all my eggs into one basket.

Don’t get me wrong, these exact traits have gotten me into a few points of trouble here and there :D

Bur for the most part it means that I have little to no patience for people who get stuck in loops or who portray archaic behaviours of unnecessary victimisation.

Here’s what I choose to believe: Any trait we possess has the potential to be changed and swapped out - it just depends on whether or not we can find the motivation and the right tools to do it.

And I don’t listen to that sorry excuse of - “it’s a point of privilege” either that my brain dishes out sometimes either.

My personal opinion is that privilege makes you lazier. It doesn’t leave you protected or allow for you to magically pick up skills that are “kept away from the others”.

Those are things you have to do for yourself.

To choose consciously the life you wanna be living, and work your way towards it by figuring it out your own way.

The farm gives me space to stay connected with the natural order of things while retaining access to the online world.

Is AI going to change the way in which we work?

Absolutely, is it going to take over our jobs? Maybe not. Human beings are deeply interconnected nodes in a vast ecosystem. Cultural contexts, ancient wisdom, intangible intelligences are all a large part of what we’re made of. Not just static knowledge that can be referred and spewed on command.

If the anxiety is getting to you, then take a break and reconnect with the REAL world. Even in the smallest of moments, sitting down in a garden to work, might help in rewiring what you’re feeling.

And if that doesn’t do it then go create. Create something that makes you laugh or giggle or fills you with joy.

Create something that feels cathartic or something that’s insanely easy.

Complexities won’t influence the intensity of the feeling of reconnecting with that part of you that’s innately human.

Just make sure that it’s something that truuuuly feels like it’s yours ✨

PS:

Psychhhh, this emailer was written fully by Chattu and Claudette, your favourite AI authors.

With the sole intention of showing you just how good we’ve gotten at mimicking your language.

JK. :P

Love,

Yami 🤖

I may not have the direct answer to that but I can tell you the story of how it started for us

I was just a 23 year old, bright eyed and bushy tailed as ever with a “I can do anything” attitude. And oddly enough, it started with sneaking my brother in to an girls night out to meet his future wife to be. It was the first time all the girls at the permaculture and marketing studio where I had my first job were catching up after work one day and we slid into the usual conversation of “who do you think is the ideal guy for you?”

When I heard my SIL’s description, my fixer brain immediately went, “Hey! I know someone who fits that descriptions.” So I snuck away to make a quick dramatic phone call declaring to him that if he doesn’t get his ass over to the karaoke bar we’re heading to, he’s going to miss out on meeting the girl of his dreams.

He promptly showed up, romcom style and croaked his way into her tipsy heart with a rendition of “Hey Jude” that we still tease both of them about 7 years later :D

Life on a farm very often starts with the people you dream it up with rather than immediately looking for the land.

Here’s another kicker… looking back, I realise this story has almost nothing to do with karaoke.

It’s about the qualities I’ve repeatedly seen in people who manage to build something that lasts.

Whether that’s a marriage.
A farm.
Or a community.

1. Tenacity

All 3 of us now lead a double life between the farm and the city. It’s arduous work but that’s what it takes. I hear a lot of people saying they want to quit their jobs and go become a farmer. Privileged folks who don’t understand how difficult that side actually is. Believe me, I’m one of y’all.

Corporate life was child’s play compared to figuring out life on the farm. I spent 6 months setting up the farmstay, sitting through the discomfort of it all. No wifi, no 24 hour power, no city conveniences to escape behind. Mother nature is a fieeeerce teacher, but man, is she generous. Once that was done, I craved the ease of working for the big corp. Having the paycheck flowing in and passing on the costs of living to the unknown. So I shifted over to the gloomy side for the past 9 years and I’m slowly transitioning back there full time now.

My brother spent a year showing the woman of his dreams that he meant business because that stubborn boss babe friendzoned his enthu-cutlet ass immediately. I see that same tenacity being the sole reason why that crazy dude is able to figure things out at the farm. He’s built a fully functioning farm from all the broken pieces my dad left behind. Even managed to get back our land that was given away as collateral as part of a loan.

That’s a story and a masterclass for another time, though.

2. Patience

Now in the midst of all of this, because of our various forms of attachment to the land we would spend a few weekends over at the farm in the beginning before I set up the farmstay. We would talk a lot about the potential that it had. I eventually decided to act on it and open it up through word of mouth, listing it on Airbnb etc to our inner circle. Friends referred it to others, offered to host workshops with me and we started off our first set of retreats. Coincidentally all of this was also when COVID hit. I lost my job, had hours to spend on the terrace with my hoop thinking about what I wanted the future to look like. I stood my ground wanting to see everything that the farm already is and taking my time falling in love with it before rushing to change it. I know I wanted to build a home at the farm, one that was so so different from the one I barely remembered from my childhood. And luckily for us, the trend for travel at that time had also shifted to people just wanting simple wanting open spaces to frolic around in.

While trends help build momentum, maintaining it takes patience.

Time at a farm operates very differently from city time.

Cities teach efficiency.

Farms teach real timing.

Things just move slower because nature teaches you to be present in real time. There’s no rush, there’s no hurry. Trust is what actually moves things along. This is something I continue to carry with me as I build the community around the work that I do there. I know that word has lost it’s meaning in a lot of places, and I sympathise with why that happens. It’s hard maintaining connections in a disenfranchised state of being. Real communities need common goals, common ground and common meeting spaces to keep the bonds alive. An authentic sense of community takes time to build, takes strength to set aside egos to check in on people, make plans. Come together.

Saw the real impact of on the smallest of scales very early on with my fav couple as well <3 they were taking their time to build and rigorously test the foundation that would last for the years to come. It was beautiful to witness.

One important caveat I’d like to leave you with. The role that communication plays in all this.

Communication

I learnt a lot simply by watching my dad operate at what was probably one of the largest scales this region had seen. Tenacity is built into my bloodline. Patience, on the other hand, is something I’ve had to work tirelessly to cultivate.

Appa was one of the greatest communicators I’ve ever known. He could move people, inspire them, and paint a vision that made others want to build alongside him. But I also watched what happens when communication outruns patience.

It made me realise why time and space have always felt like two sides of the same coin. Space without time rarely transforms anything. Time without space rarely allows anything new to emerge.

Communication carried with compassion is what binds the other two together. It’s what allows tenacity to remain steadfast without becoming forceful, and patience to remain intentional without becoming passive.

More and more, I’ve come to believe that’s the formula I’ve been searching for all along.

And so as I move back to the place where I truly feel at home, I’m also sitting with what is the kind of work that I want to be doing moving forward. How do I lean on these traits that I’ve honed to hold space for difficult emotions.

I truly believe everything we've built at the farm stems from creating an emotional container where fear slowly transforms into trust, urgency into presence, and isolation into belonging.

The more sensitive of our guests have been able to feel this transmuted energy of the farm. Those who can feel the fluctuations that happen within them and recognise the role of the biome in this. They notice themselves sleeping more deeply, breathing more slowly, having conversations they'd been postponing for months, or finally hearing thoughts that the city had been drowning out.

The retreats we’ve held so far have danced around this concept.

This year I’m digging my heels in and deep diving into the world of support groups and outdoor therapy.

I’m curious to see how the impact it can have on everything that the collective of humans who are really going through it in the city bring into the space.

To see if I can use everything the farm and life in the semi wilderness has taught me to help countless others who need that extra mother nature magic to guide them on their healing journey. <3

This year has been about shifting through the stillness to see what lies underneath it all.

I hear the irony in the statement.

But that’s my reality.

When I was fully in the midst of the corporate world, people would often wonder what I was doing there when I had a big beautiful farm to tend to.

When I’m at my farm, flailing around, I personally would often sit down to wonder what the fuck I’m trying to figure out.

See.. because the thing that nobody tells you about living in the midst of nature, in the calm, zero-figs-given environment of the village where the days amble on… is how that inherent sense of zen gets ingrained into you.

Those who have moved to smaller towns understand that aura.

It truly is on the edges of society because it lives so surreally out of the anxious microclimate that haunts a city.

There’s an irresistible understanding that dawns on you when you’ve spent enough time out there that everything… everything you’ve ever TRULY wanted… is always within your reach if you give it enough time.

Another version of that same statement is that nothing is ever truly unsolvable. Most things if you let them be, work themselves out. The universe, including your world, that problem, that annoyance, that situation - is in a constant state of motion. Sometimes I like to think of my issues through the second law of thermodynamics :P

Particularly the part that states that natural processes always proceed in a way that increases the overall entropy (disorder or randomness) of an isolated system.

And when I look at the issue at hand as the isolated system then whether I fret about, stress about, engage with it, fix it, argue with it or ignore it, it will inevitable end up in a state of disorder anyway. :D

So why not choose to be calm about it and let it be whatever it needs to? Do what’s in my control and leave the rest up to the frequencies beyond us to entropise.

Sometimes it’s fun being a monkey in some random else’s random circus.

To dissolve the ego of - this is MY world and MY situation to fix and to just chill on the sidelines. Be the sidekick, the beta character, the NPC (non-player character)

For 9 years I spent a massive chunk of my time chasing the next big goal, the next achievement, the next new version of myself. My natural, meurodivergent disposition can’t help it.

After finishing this newsletter, sometime today I’ll probably go sit on working on the timeshare investor deck for the farm so I can bring in the right kinda community while redoing the cottage. I hope to someday get to the true do nothing mode that I laughably strive for buuuut until then…

My life’s work has been understanding how to step out of my compulsive flow zone and go into rest mode. So I found the loop-hole in my system to make it a goal to take one full year off - to meticulously plan a sabbatical where I had enough saved up that I didn’t need to be earning to survive. (I’m wondering if a session on this financial planning would be helpful to others as well - drop a message if you’re interested)

This is slowly allowing me to re-evaluate all the different ways in which I value my worth, my purpose, my identity. Interestingly the best realisation so far has been what I always had a sneaky suspicion about - that no matter where I go, it’ll always feel like there’s a better life on the other side.

Which is why I stay hinged to that big beautiful land I call home. Because that soulful circus is always patiently teaching this monkey to make peace with myself once I actually get the myriad number of things I go after.

To not surrender but to hold steadfast as the whirlwinds of productivity kick up again.

To work against the wiring that even though the next achievement, the next version of myself is always within reach.

To slow down the chasing so that I may sieve through the love, care and comfort given to me… to sit with the stillness.

Because my nervous system can only truly relax in the presence of that bountiful abundance. To surrender to the vastness of a biome that instantly interacts with me through the flocks of birds, the thunder clouds that put on a lightening show while I watch safely from the dry roads and the distant bewildered shouts of a barking deer being chased by a great dane.

To remind me that there never will be a greater high that I experience than one of sitting on the banks of a little check dam, with some of the most talented flow artists in the country whom I’m happy to call my homies… and watching the best damn performance that any of us have seen in a while; by the friendly neighbourhood fireflies.

And you know what the absolute killer part of it all was?

They gave zero figs that we were there. <3

Leaving you with a song to match this vibe <3

Daydream in Blue

May we always float in & out of each other lives while continuing to be witnesses to the growth we know is awaiting on the other side of these crashing waves.

Is This Even A Flex Anymore?

Hitting nearly half a Cr in a year by the time I turned 30 feels both deeply meaningful and completely unremarkable to me at the same time :P

Maybe that contradiction is the whole point.

Because the older I get, the less I care about numbers in isolation. Been a wallflower my whole life in two distinct worlds. One filled with luxury and material success, the one rooted in artistic explorations or in natural, alternative lifestyles. This has made this modern day success feel strangely hollow. Every other day there’s another article about someone building a 7 figure business from a beanbag chair with ChatGBT and “just consistency”. Random person sitting in front of the laptop and smiling at you from the ad filled article desperately trying to convince you that post has value. Zero insight into who that person actually had to become in order to build that life.

And I think that’s the part that interests me now.

Not just what people build. But what expands within them while they’re building it.

If there’s anything I’ve learnt over the past few years, it’s that most growth comes from learning how to hold contradictions without immediately trying to solve them.

I’m going to leave with you with just two major concepts to sit with and try out because otherwise this will also just be one more of those random listicles that gets you nowhere.

1. Honing My Ability To Hold Dualities

But the more personal version of this lesson arrived through a series of situations that completely shattered my nervous system last year.

Legal cases and arrest warrants against my mum sent me crumbling last year. Nervous breakdowns, & falling prey to irrational financial decisions. Ones that I had steered clear of my whole life!

I realised that when it comes to the people I deeply love, my rationality sometimes dissolves. I become reactive instead of grounded. Protective instead of perceptive.

For a long time, my way of coping with difficult people or uncertainty was simple. Block. Distance. Isolate.

But eventually I realised that strategy was also keeping me emotionally and professionally stuck. It kept me safe but it also kept me small.

That period taught me something I don’t think I could’ve learnt any other way.

That's what capacity actually looks like when it's being built. If you stick it out through the messiness then there’s a stronger version of yourself on the other side of the chaos. One who finally understands one more thing about how they're wired.

When it comes to building capacity there’s two things I’ve realised.

Life will keep teaching you the same lessons till you learn them in as many different forms as it needs to.

The pattern I’ve stopped punishing myself for is that I need constant change in my life when it comes to the things I’m working on. Whether that’s work, relationships, my art forms. But at the same time I need a lot of stability in these spaces as well.

Settling into this contradiction made me understand the right balance that works for me.

For the longest time, I thought those desires cancelled each other out.

Now I understand they can actually work together.

So instead of trying to become infinitely scattered, I’ve learnt to root deeper into chosen forms while still evolving within them.

With hooping, that looked like exploring fire and LED flow instead of abandoning the practice altogether.

With Capoeira, it looked like moving toward music and rhythm alongside movement.

This also applies in the way I approach my careers and businesses or even relationships. Fewer roots but stronger branches.

Events excite me - so currently I’m working on ones that are deeply meaningful and bring about change in a person’s life like Hoopinkai’s Flow Fest. And ones that are joyous, high energy and bring many different people together like the Hoop Jam Party.

If there's one thing I want you to take from this, it's not the numbers in success or the two frameworks. It's this: the most underrated thing you can do, whether it’s for your career, your business, your life, is to become someone who can genuinely witness their own growth without either dismissing it or performing it. Because when you can do that for yourself, you become the kind of person others trust to witness theirs too.

Do this long enough and you'll start moving through the world like a native tree in an urban forest :P One that is in constant quiet conversation with the entire ecosystem around you. <3 You nourish it, it cares for you. And as you build the life you're meant to be building, you'll find you were never really doing it alone.

There’s a part of me that’s sitting with what it means to be sharing this particular creation of mine with you.

For me, it’s the same as sharing a video of me hooping, or doing that cool trick in Capoeira in my style, or bringing you home to show you how I’ve set up my space.

In so many ways, this is the full showcase of who I am as a creative or an artist and I wanted to deep dive into it with this newsletter since this space has been about exploring and sharing those sides of me with you.

Curating the Flow Fest is always a test for me to look at which of the patterns I’ve outgrown and which ones I still need to rewire.

When I first started curating this event, it stemmed from my best friend asking me to envision what my ideal birthday party would look like and to tell myself that I could easily create that space. And so I told her about how I had recently met all of these people (artists, facilitators, performers) who were so giving when it came to sharing their art forms that I wanted my birthday to be a celebration of all of these folks coming together to experience that sense of community. Skill sharing was the core concept. And my way of thanking them was hosting and creating that space.

There’s two major patterns I always revisit through the course of planning this fest.

1. What Does Partnership Mean?

When I decided I wanted the Flow Fest to be more than just a birthday gathering, I was faced with the dilemma of who do I work with to make this happen.

For me, partnership has always meant, digging into a connection and building it out in areas that hold both our interests that enables us to move forward in life (be it through travel, financial stability, emotional stability or spiritual exploration)

I sat with that intention and somehow found my path crossing with Anch. It’s been a crazy few years since we started working on this and through observing everything that comes up for us, it’s given me a deeper understanding of what a healthy partnership looks like. A physical manifestation of watching this partnership grow has been seeing the ways in which we’ve been able to bring in so many new concepts into the fest and our work without burning ourselves out.

We’ve also made it travel size to enable us to visit different festivals and work with various themes to test out our concepts. During these times, I also get to notice a lot of what comes up with relationship building outside of the meetings and event spaces.

Not just with her but the fest really pushes my boundaries on understanding how to build community. To not just be complacent and push the word as a fluff piece but really step into the core of it and co-create this experience with our fellow facilitators and participants. (I use a lot of Ecojam practices and tools here, Anch also went for the jam recently so it’s gotten much easier for us to pull together the frameworks to build the community container)

2. What’s Stopping Me From Working On My Dreams?

Flagship events like this are by far the easiest way for me to evaluate myself based on this question. Because creating something like this in an ideal world should be one of the easiest things to do. Since this is basically an amalgamation of all the things that I love and people that I interact with within my community. Where there is discomfort or gaps in performance is what I note down and mark as areas to be worked upon - this isn’t just for the fest but often is very relevant for other aspects of my life as well.

If marketing is flowing easily, that’s an indicator that that focus has been strengthened over the past year, if admin is feeling messy then that means focus on processes has slacked.

These patterns then help me zone in on what I work on in the next year - if fixes can be made in the present, then I obviously work that in too.

I’ve seen this be helpful - this practice of noticing - across different art forms. I have 100% certainty that despite the art form you pick, your inherent strengths and weaknesses, personality traits will show up in them. And these then become great safe spaces to understand yourself better in a depressurised way without the help of an external evaluator.

Awareness leads to action and action leads to motivation.

Trust in the power of creativity ( form agnostic :P ) to spark, reignite or supercharge your personal development process <3

If you’re curious to see what our latest creation looks like - go check it out and lemme know what you think :)

Hoopinkai's Flow Fest

I love how the farm always pulls in just the right people that I need for where I am in my life’s journey. It did that with Anchana, my Flow State partner, many years ago and again with Myke last year in Jan.

Wild to think that in just a year, we’re coming back for Hoopinkai’s Flow Fest to create even more magic together! You’ll see more on that on our socials so let me give you the story behind this in this one :)

Soooo, I met Myke many years ago at one of Eshna Kutty’s Flow Jams.

I remember being glad he was there that day. I didn’t know anyone else too well as it was at the start of my flow journey. & he had all the character traits of someone I usually vibe with.

Artistic, funny, deeply intuitive in his craft, and the kind of person who holds space without overpowering it.

It was a murmur of a connection and I remember walking away knowing our paths would cross again when it was time.

Last year I reached out to him to get a tattoo done. A piece I had been holding onto for a while. It was inspired by my first time scuba diving. I was doing my certification with a funny French man who was an excellent teacher, two days in the pool acing the theory and day 3 we headed out to the deep blue for the real deal.

So I’m down there in the ocean for the first time in my life, all at the ripe old age of 26. Mind blown by how I can stay afloat with nothing but the focus being on my breath.

And the first thing I see is this massive jelly fish making its way through the ocean like it was a small floating world. It had a school of tiny fish circling inside it and a mackerel fish casually catching a ride as the jelly huffed and puffed its way across this gigantic ocean.

I saw that jelly at a time when I was justttt starting to discover the power of being able to carry the weight of the multiple worlds I was swimming in. 26 and I was already and juggling my farm, my family’s troubled cases, my first big job at an MNC, my flow & Capoeira journey, all kicking off at the same time. I was young and confident of mirroring the jelly’s way of life. Floating along with ease while all of the entities that needed me hitched along for the ride. Unbothered and unaffected.

I wanted that jelly as a reminder that the power within me came from something as simple as anchoring myself to my breath. To know that all I needed was a minimal action to lock into that would tell me that I am a part of the universe & that there is a universe inside of me.

That no matter what was going on any of in my worlds, if I just remembered the funny way in which life works, then I can stay buoyant. As long as I’m breathing then I always, always, always going to stay afloat.

That’s the philosophy the jelly was going to represent.

& Myke was the only one whose artistic prowess I trusted to capture all these complex notions into one single, permanent tattoo.

Now when I look back at the jellyfish, I realise it’s also representative of how there are so many of us in our different creative fields, emerging into one floating ecosystem. <3

Incidentally, he was also looking to tattoo in the great outdoors for the very first time, a dream he too had been holding onto for a few years now. & so we decided to plug in a 4 for 1 family discount edition and curate the entire experience at our farm.

While we were there at the farm with my fam - my brother and sis-in-law - getting their tattoos done too… it made me realise; while I loved the idea of my tattoo, the jelly would have to wait… because it just wasn’t feeling *right*.

It wasn’t capturing everything that was going on in that present moment and the weight of what it carried.

Even with a 100 newsletters I wonder if I would ever be able to capture what it means to have this direct connection with the land that we do. So much of it has given way to spiritual explorations I could have thought were only possible much much later in our lives.

Important life lessons around resilience, love, community, earth care, individuality, dependencies, transience and a myriad of other concepts that I can get spend a lifetime in deep commune with BECAUSE of my connection with this space.

I only mentioned this once to Myke. He didn’t even budge an eyebrow about having to redo the entire design, all he actually did… was ask me what I wanted the tattoo to be about instead.

& so I told him. About the significance of this farm as my safe space. The emotional alchemy that it’s helped me access. How it finally felt like there was a place that matched my freakishly ancient frequency. Where my thoughts and dreams didn’t feel absurd because there was this space that would not only hold all these manifesting realities but at times out do them and show me what I truly deserved.

How sometimes, I only to think about what I need or want once and the next day my biome (the farm) would have responded with a person or an opportunity arriving to solve for the need.

He patiently listened while I told him about the magical way in which the hoopoe appears when the universe needs to tell me I’m headed in the right direction.

Despite his own mind-blowing flow skills, he hyped me up when I showed him my LED hoop tricks & 4 hours later he emerged to present this magnificent being that encapsulated everything that flows in my spirit.

In so many ways, he saw my dreams - ones that I hadn’t even allowed myself to imagine - and brought them to life.

That day at the farm wasn’t just about a tattoo. It was the beginning of a creative partnership, the kind of energy I knew to protect and be around & thus began our grand friendship of witchcraft, wizardry and transmutation.

The thing with Myke’s magic is that it’s never self imposing. Nor does it traipse around pretending to be sourced from rainbows, butterflies and unicorns. It’s subtle but it’s unwavering. It’s self aware and fluid in its light & dark states. It draws you in but leaves you with just enough space to still experience & enhance your own powers.

There’s something about being around experienced artists like Myke & Supriya (another prominent character & facilitator) - who have fully given themselves to the creative pursuit. It shifts something inside of you. They're projectors of a certain frequency if you’re open to receiving it.

So naturally, Anch & I decided we really wanted them to be a part of this Flow Fest. Because this edition isn’t about cramming in tricks or leaving with a checklist of skills. It’s about slowing down, tuning in, and exploring your creative essence in a space that meets you where you are.

Over the last few months we’ve been spending time supporting each other in our artistic endeavours <3 Through a lot of dialogues, conversations but also at times, through simple presence. Spending quality time and allowing the unfolding to naturally happen.

I’ve come into the realisation of late of the need for intentional community building. With slow, revered steps. Of the importance of hosting community spaces with varying intensities and Myke’s been fully participative in this exercise. Meeting it with trust and openness and his ever present child like wonder yet grounded presence.

And if this story resonated with you even a little, the connection to one’s breath, the land, the serendipity of it all, then you’ll probably feel right at home here. <3

We’d love for you to come experience it with us in June. :)

I sit here grinning because my chaotic little mind has found its shiny new toy to obsess over.

For you see.. about a month into my sabbatical, my highly trained pattern recognitions skills have had more leeway, more space, more time than ever to grind and grind their unwinding gears. Little cogs of the tiniest machine, the human brain, working over time to understand what role this tiny membrane in the universe’s brain, little old me has to play.

How does one play this game of life?

Well it’s simple. You sit down, you shut up and you listen.

You listen to everything that the universe is trying to communicate to you.

You listen when reading the works of a writer who was also the product of a narcissistic, trail blazing parent lights a fire in your neurodivergent brain like no other. (Highly recommend Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes To Me, btw)

And you DEFINITELY listen when it tells you it’s okay to not be able to fit into the popular matrix or cliques and to find your own niche.

You listen when it urges you to push your boundaries and go explore the reason why you were put this great green earth.

You listen when it tells you to stop wasting time on people, places, & problems that aren’t your monkeys or your circuses and to instead go on the eternal quest of finding your one true purpose in life.

You listen when it asks you to figure what your art looks like & you DEFINITELY listen when it tells you that perhaps your creative powers don’t fit into the formats you’ve seen around so far.

Over the last month, that’s exactly what I’ve done. The shiny new toy has been this game of life that I play where I push myself out of my comfortable little corporate cocoon into the alternate universe I now wholly inhabit, which is teeming with real life & real talent.

If my fear had any semblance of logic to it, I would be sitting around wallowing in streams of irrational fears of doomsday & deathly scenarios.

But like Octavia Butler said

So let’s go poke the Fear bear that lives deep inside of us all.

Nature or Nurture?

The last time I set out on my quest to reinvent myself; I was 23, and drawn to the farm that I now call my home. I settled into the delapitated cottage and got to work questioning everything I knew about safety, security & systems.

7 years later, I’ve set about to do it again. The last time around, what worked was obviously nature. The environment I was in greatly dictated the habits I was forming.

Limited network accessibility meant deep flow states to think, plan & organise.

This time around, the theme is full blown nurture. The farm is still around, of course, but the fuel to my fire is community.

Senior managers during the exit interviews from my corporate job telling me they’re excited to see all the craziness I’m about to unleash onto this world when I don’t have corporate structures limiting my creativity.

Flow Community members openly communicating their love for my unique approach to community building. Trusting me with their most vulnerable sides by showing up to the spaces I’m curating.

All of this in essence means that I’ve been able to let go of a lot!

Girl with the scarcity mindset of structured organisations being the only way to have reliable income? Gone.

Girl who thinks there are only a few people in the world who she can become friends with or fall in love with? Gone for decades.

Girl who thinks her unique power can only be shared with the world once they hit a certain level of refinement? Most definitely gone-serino.

My last therapy session, I sat down with Simran to say, “I’m ready to deal with the darkest fear that I hold in the deepest parts of my psyche.”

I’m ready to deal with the part of me that thinks I’m not and never will be enough.

You know what the truly f**cked up part was?

Being a personality development & mindfulness nut for over 10 years means that I’m intimately in touch with the demons in my head.

Word for word I know the ratchet sh*t they say & EXACTLY when they will say it. So the I’m not enough binder wasn’t a new revelation. I’ve done the heavy lifting needed to exorcise those lil b*tches.

You know… the baby ball pit demons who try to come at you with sad excuses for self sabotage like,

“You’re not good enough to be loved.”

“You’re not a good enough friend/daughter/sister.”

Scoff. I smiled at them and said, “You really think that’s enough to keep this raging hellhound of energy down? Try harder.”

So over the last year, they had upgraded a little to

“You’re pathetic at your job and you’re going to fail at anything else you try.”

Planned and executed my corporate exit strategy so well that it was on the dot for my 30th birthday with enough savings to pay my rent & sustain my lifestyle for a year.

Next!

“You’re a wind up toy version of an artist, the kinds who can only perform under pristine conditions.”

Puh-lease. Easy peasy solve. Sat through the discomfort and expanded my definition of an artist and realised my true artist prowess lies in curating community experiences.

“You’re a shell of a woman who can’t even nurture her own family.”

Protected my mum from yet another arrest warrant and liaised with my brother to ensure everyone’s emotional stabilities while also making space for my own.

What else you got?

Sufficed to say pretty much whacked those pathetic attempts at self sabotage out of the park too.

Like I was saying I saved up enough for a year so I don’t have to do my previous job.

This allows me to explore what my creative side looks like beyond the monochromatic lens my perfectionist side has been comparing myself to.

Which enables me to be more present with the fam bam and work through my existing avoidant tendencies. Expanding my self limiting beliefs of success, value & worth.

Did all of this (it’s a continuous process but for now we pat ourselves on the back for a job well done) & looked my ego dead in the eye to ask, “Is that the best you got?”

If you’re confused about why I said ego, let me transcribe a conversation a good friend of mine & I had.

I love that this man is a celebrated mutlimedium artist, dad of 2, and fellow flow artist who can articulate mid convo all the convoluted thoughts I’m expressing as a stream of consciousness.

I was telling him about how frustrating it is that every time I sucker punch these khidas/oolas/worms out of my brain, fresh new ones take their place.

He replied with a matter of fact, “Yeah, well that’s because every time you are learning to deal with your demons, your ego is picking up the same skill.”

Casually dropping these truth bombs and then going back to painting his damn mural. <3

Okay but let’s get even more real for a minute. Despite the excessive number of cuss words I’ve used in this post, my internal voice is actually really calm and caring.

In the past that’s been the method that I’ve been using to identify whether it’s a demon voice or my voice communicating the thought.

If it speaks in extremes,

“You will NEVER be able to figure this out.”

“You ABSOLUTELY effed up this friendship to irreparable proportions.”, then it’s the demon babies talking.

If it speaks in neutral yet rational tones,

“Yo, maybe this is one of those things we just have to sit with for a few years for it to get better.” then I know it’s my caring consciousness.

Of late, what blew my mind was sitting down with the fact that, at times, my ego manages to manipulate me so well simply by using that same calm, caring voice.

Subtly saying things like,

“Deep down, you don’t even think you’re good enough to love yourself.”

No extremities but doubt masked as care that has me crumpling into a pile of to do lists that run kilometres long.

An explosive attack that used to keep me at achieving only 80-90% of my potential. Pulling me back from satisfyingly reaching that 100-120%.

I know chasing that 120% is maybe a trauma induced behaviour but I also ask what’s wrong with that equation.

We’re here only for one lifetime. At least in the current versions that we’re in, so might as well stretch the limits and find out, what the F it was all for.

Which brings to me to

The Ability to Take Rejections in Stride

I present to you, the love of my life failing to connect with me over and over

and over…

and over again :P In the span of 3 minutes, you probably watched me fail 8 times, but you also saw me go to pick up that hoop just as many.

Stretch that metaphor to an essential life skill that I’ve trained myself to pick up over the years.

The disheartening thing is I see this trail a lot with the people I train - the ones who give up after the first go have a lot of internalised fears of how they’re perceived when they fail.

From the moment we enter school till the day that we die, we’re conditioned to only showcase ourselves through signals of success.

Continuously curating to only put our best foot forward. But the alternate worlds I live in have showed me time and again, that true joy… True powers of creation, love, fulfilment lie in the cracks of failure.

Fall on your ass, pick yourself, try again.

Ask that person out. Put yourself on the line for that job. Take a risk on the upgrade you’ve been vying for a while.

Anyone can be happy when life is a breeze. The real test lies in enjoying the pursuit of happiness against all odds.

All those annoying self-help gurus who ask you to go out there and face your people-pleasing fears by throwing yourself into situations that make you want to curl up into a ball - and overthink that one thing you did that no one else even remember - are frustratingly, annoyingly, actually right.

It’s one of the BEST ways to build your capabilities and capacities. It’s only something that will be uniquely yours to figure out. Things that come easily to you will be the thing that terrifies another.

Ask me to get up on stage and talk to a 1000 people I’ve never met before? No problem.

Ask me write my heart out to someone I’ve only just started to get to know? Here’s a 800 word, double sided letter :D

Ask me to ask someone to spend time with me when I don’t know if they’re free or to ask someone I love for help with something I’m struggling with?

Quivers & my chest tightening up like it’s going to burst.

Ridiculous, I know, but that’s my cross to carry.

I’m happy with the things I’ve done by the time I’ve turned 30 & I think a big part of that is because I consciously make sure I keep my neuroplasticity malleable.

Here are someways that I make sure to regularly step out of my comfort zone:

• trying out new movement styles before I’ve even mastered my own

• hanging out intensely with a wide range of people instead of sticking with only one group

• speaking my mind in meetings about sustainability and green washing

• community organising queer resource groups at work

• exploring the performance side of my beloved hobbies

• expanding my thought processes around communication techniques or relationship hierarchies

• teaching myself to be a good host and run a farm house

This process has revealed to me the areas on which I needed to work on myself that I would have 100% never come across had I been sitting in smug in my safety nets.

Some parts were sticky icky pasts, some were fluff berry easy present pickings.

Most of them were actually just mindfulness rewirings about the ways in which I thought about myself. Or updating the outdating resources and frameworks I had used to understand my psyche.

The art of letting go used to be about beating myself up for not knowing how to keep the people I loved dearly around for longer, or in ways that I wanted.

The art of letting go is actually, truly, about slowing down & growing enough to release identifies and parts of myself that I have outgrown & to deeply believe in the fact that that which belongs to you will find it’s way back to you.

The art of letting go lies in one’s ability to clear the airways for a breath of fresh air. <3

“What will you do?” Everyone asks when they first hear the news.

Well… maybe I want to sort out 6 different parts of me into neat little boxes and watch to see the ways in which each one grows.

We are, after all, the stories we tell ourselves and others. So here are the

Narratives That I Love

& hope to nurture, instead of being in a never ending pursuit of finding ‘The One”.

If this particular newsletter is the anti-romcom then do note these are all the characters that have merged into one to write this piece: hostess, facilitator, performer, entrepreneur, marketer, bunny.

I ask myself why I do any of the things that I do. Is it simply because of the years spent romanticising alternative lifestyles that made me think life can have true purpose and meaning? Or is there something darker driving all of this?

I was 21 years old when I got this tattoo. It was a collaboration between two artists. A consistent theme in my life has been Duality so it feels symbolic even now :D

My name means “The Night” in Sanskrit. I had asked the artist to fill the moon with visual representations of nature, filigree (a vintage decoration motif alluding to being an old soul) and crashing waves - all elements that I thought I embodied and wanted to have more of in my life. I was pleasantly surprised by the organic addition of warrior spikes and Anime clouds.

Yamini.

Most everyone I introduced myself to would say, “What a pretty name.”

After hearing it often enough I decided I wanted my name to be more than pretty, I wanted it to be meaningful.

These were my favourite discoveries for describing what The Night meant.

While the Sun has its ever present solar energy, the Moon through its cycles and tidal influences has its own power. Both of these need to be balanced for the Earth to thrive.

“Make the moon bigger than the Sun, please, I need it to serve as a reminder.”

While the Sun (and all that I loved/ was pouring too much into at the time) is at the centre of my universe, only by exploring, healing & falling in love with myself will I be able to fix the world.

^Probably the first documentation of me redirecting my fixer complex.

I am the one who creates my world. And so if there is something “wrong” with it, then there’s something off balance inside of me.

A decade later, I can see the lil pearls of wisdom in that process. But also… woof, I can see why the critique in me can easily take the reins from time to time!

Ok, so… I was all set and ready to “write a hard hitting piece” on how I have written off love.

About how I had rewired my brain to systematically rip apart all the benefits of being in love. How I assigned those isolated pieces to different people so as to not have dependencies on any one person or any one thing. And then, further splitting apart the after effects of love - joy, pleasure, fulfilment, etc - and placing them carefully amidst passions and business plans.

I even had the perfect click bait header all picked out.

How I rescued myself from falling in love.

There’s a little part of me that’s dramatically rolling on the floor, cracking up at the semantics of this. That part is always highly amused with how after 30 years of being me, I’m still able to convince myself of these imaginary inaccuracies for brief periods of time.

Every day that I wake up, I’m falling in love a little bit more with a different part of the world.

No jokes.

Every single day.

This was actually a trauma response to a dark part of my life that I will skip over. I will just leave you with a short context of the fact this response was a defence mechanism from growing up watching a loved one deal with clinical depression and an almost daily dose of suicidal thoughts.

Growing up around this means that there’s a persistent dark cloud that hovers over my head that makes me want to build a world full of rainbows, sunshine, butterflies & beastly birds.

A world with only vast starry constellations, cool waters to daily dip in and fresh, green, grass to roll around on.

To forever view the world with undiluted affection. I learned to fall in love with anything and everything that gave me that glimmer of hope that there’s still magic in our lives.

This is also where my irreversible ickiness for, “The purpose of life is to find your one true love”, comes from.

On Figuring Out What Are Things Worth Falling In Love With

Consuming mainstream media to the extensive degree that I did without parental supervision or guidance, left a world of problematic fantasies to undo.

Thank goodness, I came across the works of adrienne marie brown, bell hooks and Jane Goodall to swiftly repair some of the cis-het damage.

Powerful writers who decentralised romantic love by offering alternatives that broadened my horizons.

adrienne marie brown in Pleasure Activism uses her conversational, liberated voice to speak of how revolutionary it is to fully feel, & to operate with unhinged passion when it comes to our bodies of work, play, politics, friendships, families or even organisations.

bell hooks does the same with a gentle, easy going tonality in All About Love dwelling on the importance of prioritising love across different kinds of relationships. Removing the limitations around hinging one’s support system onto a solitary bond.

Jane Goodall, oh what a loss to society her death was. My most favourite naturalist who used field notes and observations from her time watching apes, langoors, chimpanzees and bonobos to question pillars of patriarchy and mating rituals.

So as a giant FU to the notion of “the one purpose of life is to find your one true love”, my current purpose in life (and to be honest, it has been for the past decade now)… is to revel in discovering what love, pleasure, joy and fulfilment could look like across work, play, relationships, wellbeing, careers & friendships.

Truthfully though, the aforementioned piece of writing (on how I rescued myself from falling in love) specifically came to a crashing halt after spending an evening with my brother at the hospital. That big bear holding my hand dearly to assuage his pain squished out any notion of having my emotional walls up this season. I was swiftly brought back to my default system of loving kindess.

Now that we’ve expanded the definition of it, let’s rumble into the world of

Love Languages & Lived Experiences

I prefer operating on the fringes of society. Carefully curating - with whom, how often, in what ways I spend time with them. I haven’t fully understood the fearful spaces most humans operate from with their approaches to life. It saddens me to watch people restrict themselves to the tiniest versions they can be. And all because they’re convinced that’s all they’re worth.

I don’t blame them either. I’ve experienced the dampening effect the city can have. It kills my spirits, makes me feel small and constantly anxious. How could it not with the constant influx of stimulation, and cross overs of energies.

Being permanently back at the farm has made me notice how closely I’ve learned to live with magic. The things that are meant for me find me. And the things that aren’t… drift away.

My feelings and senses have the freedom to unfurl and be highly attuned. My love languages evolve beyond the 7 that we know.

And I’m spending a lot of time programming and decoding what being on the farm does to me so I can build and curate experiences for others to step into their power too.

A lot of that has been to do with understanding the love that expands beyond these 7 love languages. What that love is can only be explained by going into the details of a movie I watched recently.

The Wild Robot.

& let me tell you;

I WAS NOT READY FOR THE SMASHALASHING MY WALLS GOT FROM THAT MOVIE.

The last time I wailed like that was probably when a piece of my soul moved on from his doggy body to my ethereal dream world.

I’ve made my peace with this since his majestic new form finally feels like it’s expansive enough for the legend that he is.

But back to the what opened up those floodgates.

So the premise of the movie goes like this.

There’s a robot stranded on a strange far away island because of a shipwreck. She’s the sole survivor and she gets activated in the wilderness.

The robot was programmed to always complete its tasks and to assist others.

But of course, there is none who speaks its language in the great outdoors, and so none who can ask for assistance. And so it goes into hibernation, observing and learning while staying completely still. It eventually has the ability to translate all the different animals sounds into coherent strains of thought.

I obviously projected myself onto that empathetic little robot. Conditioned to act with systemic kindness. Sometimes making mistakes in an attempt to be protective or proactive. But always remaining fixated on productivity.

I think back to the time I spent the day on a tree making noises at the giant scouting langoor. Teddy and I chased it around the front yard and I finally settled into the tree because the staff told me what would happen to the harvests and with our guests if the langoor decided this was a good place to raise his family.

He was on one tree, me on the other. Each of us slightly afraid but unwilling to show it. Sparring instead with superficial acts of aggression. He more patient that I, or perhaps… it’s that dang empathic conditioning that got activated.

“What is he going to do if he can’t settle in here?”, I wondered as I climbed the tree slightly higher hoping that my scaling prowess would signal some hidden alphaness and chase him away without any actual confrontation.

Suddenly, I felt a new set of eyes on me and I looked up to see an owl amused and slightly irritated with my debauchery.

I’d be annoyed too if someone disturbed my resting hour. But I couldn’t help myself from oogling at its fine feathers. It’s not often that I get to see these nocturnal creatures in such distinct lighting. I soaked in the sight and made my way back down the tree.

Mama nature has her ways of signalling to me when it’s a job well done.

I think back to all the countless ways in which the universe has conversed with me over the years. Expressing her love in this unique way. Forcing me to reprogram my wiring. Her love and languages are never directive. They feel like invitations to look beyond the existing conditioning and expand my horizons. To think beyond task and outcome. To live my life as the mystical beings that we are instead of numbers slotted into walls, cubicles or bank accounts.

I rescued myself from fairytale love. From versions of highly curated and scripted narratives that sold us a fantasy. And instead I’m learning to lean back into my ability to fall in love with reality. The little moments that give me hope of staying in touch with my wild side.

As I grow older, I feel it getting slightly harder but I hold on to hope that I have yet again found my way back home. And perhaps this time I’m more ready to take some of you back with me.

You who made it to the end of this convoluted love letter. I know who you are. <3 And I cherish you too. :) :*

Ever think about how the mind is the greatest weapon we possess?

The way in which we sail through the world,
or get stuck in the ditches,
is singularly because of one thing.

Sure, you can argue with me saying,
“What about external circumstances, faith, luck, influences, influenzas? :P”

All of it will circular back to how you react to it.
What you make of it.
How you’re perceiving it.

During three weeks of travel, I found myself ripping apart what lies at the core of my motivation matrix.

That exercise threw up one major revelation:
my mind is often building makeshift enemies at varying degrees.

At first, I tried to understand it as a useful mechanism.
“It’s doing this to keep me driven.”

Every story needs a villain, doesn’t it?

But something about the way it was going about this made me realise it wasn’t coming from a neutral place.
It was coming from somewhere darker.
A place that had quietly permeated every nook and cranny of my life.

The scary part?
Sometimes I wonder if I catch it in time before it messes with my system.

How Comparison Seeps Through Our Ego Into Our Minds

It started innocently enough.

I saw an Instagram story of a female Capoeirista.
In the middle of a skatepark.
Unfazed by skaters flying around her.

She was throwing intense kicks and acrobatic movements I can’t even explain in words, let alone imitate with my body.
All while another experienced player was attacking her at the same level.

Oyeeeee vey.

One part of me was excited.
Our paths were going to cross soon at a Capoeira gathering at Shaka Surf Club.

Another part of me, one I could clearly notice and not take too seriously, got extremely competitive.

And I let it.

Because I knew it would fuel my handstand practice.

This was envy.

Side note: That persona I had created in my mind turned out to be someone else entirely (as usual), they had been training for 19 years compared to my meagre 5, OF COURSE their body knew how to move like that - they would have trained in a completely different environment as well and at a much younger age.

I’ve noticed this happening time and again where the situation turns out to be completely different from what I would have imagined. Thankfully years of catching these through practicing mindfulness means, I’ve stopped reacting to them as I would have earlier.

Envy vs Jealousy (and Why One Is Trickier)

Setting some context on the dictionary difference between the two:

Some instances leave far less space between trigger and reaction.

Jealousy is one outcome of comparison that I need to put concentrated effort into diffusing.

Envy, I can play with.
Envy says: I want what you have.

I want to be better at my game.
I want more control, more flare, more power, more command.

Jealousy, on the other hand, is slippery.

Jealousy can turn the sweetest humans into enemies if I’m not careful enough to ground myself back into my self-worth.

Because that’s the thing with jealousy.
It drags out dirty little secrets from deep, dark corners of our insecurities.

The ones we’re often too ashamed to admit we even have.

For me, I sometimes avoid them because I label them as… basic.

“Scoff. I cannot be a basic b*tch who has insecurities about her looks, intelligence, humour, or talent.”

That’s my ego talking.
Keeping me in a bubble.
Protecting me from confrontation, not growth.

The Comparison Wheel We’re All On

Envy, jealousy, frustration.
All feelings born from comparison.

We evaluate ourselves constantly.
As friends, leaders, managers, partners, parents, artists, creators, troubleshooters.

I’ve only spoken of the range that comes up for me.

I invite you to pause for a moment and ask:
When was the last time comparison caught you by surprise?

Tracing that moment might reveal more than you expect. Leaving the emotions wheel below. Also, see which ones came up for you when you think of that moment.

Enter the Container: EcoJam

Two years ago, I attended a five-day community-building retreat called EcoJam.

Calling it that is understating it at best.

It was a marvel.
A convergence of tangents that tangle up society, paired with tools that showed us, in real time, how those tangles can be loosened.

It’s geared towards changemakers.
Driven, empathetic, slightly off-tilt from the “normal” world.

People working on causes, projects, identities that aim to make the world gentler, fairer, more alive.

Being there made me feel calm and energised at the same time.

For the first time, people were speaking languages I already knew, but in a way that was structured, shared, and accessible.

The Three Circles of Change

One framework we worked with still sits with me.

SYSTEMIC | INTERPERSONAL | PERSONAL

We spent those five days building a container.
Not a physical one.
A psychological one.

A space with real safety. No performative niceness. No lies.

Emotions we’re usually taught to suppress, envy, jealousy, irritation, frustration, were welcomed.

And more importantly, we were shown how to work with them.

One key practice was speaking from the “I.”

It grounded us in the present.
Kept us close to truth.
Pulled us away from assumptions and generalisations.

This practice quietly shaped my writing and creative style today.

Comparison, Reframed Through the Circles of Change

Let me borrow from Brené Brown to land this.

PERSONAL
“Comparison says: be like everyone else, but better.”

INTERPERSONAL
Comparison crushes us between conformity and competition.
Trying to fit in and stand out at the same time.

SYSTEMIC
Comparison both oils and clogs the creative industrial machine.

From time immemorial, it feels like comparison has been sussing out the weakest among us.

Unchecked, it leaves me with two extremes:

• consumed by ambition and vengeance, forgetting to live

• or so detached that I avoid honestly evaluating my value altogether

I know there’s an in-between.

Choosing Curation Over Competition

Systemically, for me, that middle path looks like this:

I want to operate within society, but not through product competition.

I want to minimise resources while maximising impact.

Because unchecked comparison bleeds into materialism.
I need this to look better. To be better. To hold attention.

Instead, I choose:

• Curation: sharing experiences and spaces with transparency

• Creation: gatherings rooted in sustainability and honesty

This is what Hoopinkai’s Farm Retreat represents for me.

Competition was killing me because I was drowning in numbers.
Until I stepped out and watched value flow instead.

An Invitation, Not an Escape

I’ve come to believe that no matter where we run,
the things meant for us will find us.

Sometimes as situations.
Sometimes as comparisons.
Sometimes as inspiration that drums through our heartbeat.

EcoJam was one such mirror for me.

If you’re at a place in your life where you feel called to step back,
to examine your patterns,
to sit with envy, jealousy, ambition, and possibility
without judgment,

EcoJam is currently taking applications.
I cannot recommend it enough for anyone looking to engage deeply with themselves and the world they’re shaping.

Invite: https://tinyurl.com/EcoJam2026Invite

Application: https://tinyurl.com/EcoJam2026

And if what you need first is distance, quiet, and a safe container in nature
away from the humdrum of city noise,
to simply pause and evaluate where you are,

Hoopinkai’s Farm Retreat is open to you. Just drop a message on WhatsApp for more details.

Sometimes clarity doesn’t come from pushing harder.
It comes from changing the container.

Until next time,

Hoopinkai <3

What’s coming up for me right now is the quiet work of learning how to differentiate myself from the fantasies I’m being sold. The world around me is changing at a pace none of us can even fully comprehend. We’re surviving in little silos. Looking at parcels of our lives through tiny peep holes.

I’m sitting with the importance of recognising how much actual labour goes into building each part of a life.
To hone the skill of seeing the far-reaching consequences of my actions.
Because only then does the totality of what it takes to reach an “ideal life” become visible.

Before we get into this, let’s acknowledge something uncomfortable.

Most of us are sitting around waiting for the next big thing to finally make us happy.
The promotion.
The relationship.
The move.
The glow-up.

We reach it and crash straight into the reality that the goalpost has shifted again.

The big bad wolf in this fairytale is none other than our own minds.

The Need for Stronger Pattern Recognition

Living on the fringes has given me a deeper understanding of the patterns with which I operate in the world.

What exactly do I do with these witchy pattern-recognition skills?

• Do they stop me from falling in love with my usual type of dangerously talented little lost boys
  Absolutely not. Where’s the plot if I stop doing that? :P

• Do they catapult me into obnoxious amounts of material wealth and luxury?
  Laughably not.

So what are they even useful for?

This deep connection with my mind, body, and spirit, serves as a visceral warning system. It also lets me live more intertwined with the world. Nary a moment of losing the plot or being bored.

It tells me when the space my mind is fantasising about as “safe or successful” is actually a dark hole packed with the very toxicities I’m trying to avoid or “has potential” to be all that I’m making it out to be.

We like to believe we’re smart enough to recognise when we’re being sold to. Our screen time tells a very different story.

A Sign of Power

I’ve spoken before about the heaps of debt my dad accumulated.
What I haven’t fully addressed is how much the rest of us had to bear it too.

One of the most powerful moments of my life was realising, at 23, that I had protected my financial future.

It’s strange living in this era.

In my parents’ generation, by that age, my family would already have been looking for a man to marry me off to. Against my wishes, of course, but under the “noble” guise of protection.

A stable life.
A “home”.
Financial security.

Which really meant a husband at work while I slaved away in kitchens, fields, and emotional labour. Raising kids. Caring for his bitter parents. Becoming infrastructure in someone else’s story. Property that was evaluated and sold off for a proper price.

Instead, in 2017, I was staring at a piece of paper.

My dad assured me it was routine.
Just another company.
Just a signature.

But I knew that signing it would be the same as signing away my future.

This was peak darkness era. Crores of debt. My mum and brother wondering when life would go back to “normal.” And both of them having already been cosigners of debt and hence eager for me to be the saving grace for the full fam.

To this day, I don’t know what “normal” even means.

We are all living infinite lives through the infinite bonds and versions of ourselves scattered across the world. How do you standardise that into a single template? Which is why I believe the best way to live is to constantly re-evaluate our perspectives and present moments. What are the hidden signals being sent out to us? Are we in states of survival or have we transitioned to thrive?

Pattern Recognition as Survival

That particular company though was yet another episode of my dad selling a fantastical project that would definitely fix everything.

He came armed with every manipulation tactic:

• A pot of gold at the end of this Podunk rainbow

• Titles like “youngest managing director”

• Being on the Forbes 30 Under 30

• Promises of Harvard and Stanford

• Finally having my mum and me in our barbie dream house

Every fantasy asks for a signature. Not always on paper. Sometimes on your time, your body, your attention, your life.

But pattern recognition saved me.

I knew these were empty promises designed to line us up behind one person’s dreams, not solve all of ours. But to prolong our nightmare.

Knowing the power of my signature saved me.

Knowing that, for all our cynicism about this country, I still had fiduciary rights over my own identity.
That my name carried legal weight.
That consent is binding. And if I chose not to give it then that was the end of my fiscal responsibility in this chaos. That my 2 year old professional career would remain mine to flourish instead of figuring out how to pay back a debt I didn’t ask for or have a say in.

That saved me.

What This Extrapolates To

Trademarks.
Logos.
Brands.
Partnerships.

All tangents of the same tale.

Not knowing who you are or making peace with the demons inside and around you is one of the greatest downfalls of this era.

Who are you getting into bed with through the hours you spend with them. This could be through work, through the content you consume, to the brands you buy from.

What I want you to walk away with is this:

Learn to notice when an offer actually has standing.
When a negotiation is real.
When someone’s promise is structurally sound or emotionally hollow.

This applies to:

• Business deals

• Collaborations

• Therapists

• Shamans

• Communities

• Lovers

• Friends

• Neighbours

• “Opportunities”

Pattern recognition is not cynicism.
It is discernment.

It is how you tap into your power and come into deeper communion with the universe.

Energy as Currency

Many people who are awake to the endless pursuit of happiness eventually realise this:

You must know which relationships to invest in.
And which ones to walk away from.

Romantic.
Platonic.
Professional.
Spiritual.
Communal.

From choosing neighbours on farmland to spotting a hoax healer.
From sensing a friendship at its burning tail end to knowing when to exit gracefully.

Building this skill brings us closer to managing the finite physical, mental and emotional energies we have.

If I can walk into my 30s with what feels like the radar of a business-bludgeoned billionaire, it’s because I spent years doing it for the plot.

Carelessly.
Messily.
In the dark.

Trusting that on the other side I’d find my footing.

And in months like these, when the space between reality and fantasy starts slipping, when my body barely anchors me to the world, I know this:

I’ve trained my spirit.

And it knows how to keep me safe.

It’s been gently pulling me towards finding the kinda community and purpose I’ve been building for my whole life, and it will continue to do so till the day I die because I repeatedly return to it with trust.

I hope this year is the year your instincts and powers strengthen too. That you get to glide through this dimension with the magic and grace you have within you. And that you get to witness the fire you have in you forge the culture that you live in.

Until next time,

Hoopinkai.

Surrounded by greenery on all four sides.
No other family or human settlement nearby for another 100 acres.

My dogs beside me.
Speakers playing my favourite music.
My hula hoop to keep me company.
My staff prepping a warm meal downstairs.

Honest truth behind this illusionary thriving bliss?

I was in full survival mode.

Legally, I was a trepasser on that land. My dad had bought it all those years ago but given it away as collateral for a loan. We had no documentations that showed that we “owned” that space.

I was banking on the the invisible yet strong bonds of family and a sense of community amongst the village that allowed for me to try my hand at being a steward of the space. To care for it and be taken care by it.

To be brought into it’s folds.

Surviving mode meant that it was on me to build the relationships that were needed with the staff there to ensure my nourishment, safety and to gently guide the space back into thriving mode. With zero capital and only a network in the city.

10 years of no significant work happening on the land meant that systems were falling apart everywhere. 100 acres of land that had reclaimed it’s wildness but was on the brink of encroachment. And no one tending to it.

At the start of all this, all I had to work with was a cottage that was an abandoned, dilapidating building and my adorably, delirious goal of making it a homestay.

Basics of surviving to thriving? Zoom in on Zone 0 - STRENGHTEN the f**k out of your home base.

And that was the smallest but strongest part that I could work with. To protect and create a biosphere means I need to be able to house the best warriors that it needs. Subtle segue to say it’s now houses one of the youngest powerhouse couple in the regenerative agricultural space and a little monkey witch who you’ll get to know more of through these newsletters :)

Survival Mode vs Thriving Mode

Transitioning from survival mode to thriving mode is often life’s work.

And by life’s work, I mean the things that take us a lifetime to figure out—and sustain.

I can almost hear Gnarls Barkley going,
“HAHAHA, bless your soul.”
in his infamous song Crazy.

Rewiring Your Inner World (The Real Work)

Yet… this soundtrack is the perfect background score if you’re the kind of person who wants to reconfigure your entire thought process to make that shift happen. To create the world you wanna be in.

I respect that.

Because that means you’re taking on the mammoth task of understanding your psyche and making peace with it.

Sometimes that means:

• accepting certain traits

• showing them love and compassion

Other times, it means deciphering how to bring about that change discreetly.

Because the minute your ego and your survival instinct realize what you're up to?

Trust me.

They. Will. Fight. Against. You.

When Your Ego Fights Back

Sometimes the fight looks like emotional warfare.
Other times it’s self-sabotage, isolation, procrastination, victimisation, demonisation… and the list goes on.

If you’re skilled enough, you’ll catch it.

If you aren’t—start practicing noticing the ways in which you’re stopping yourself from living the life you want. It’s a darkly delicious way to understand just how f**ked up the human brain really in.

Five Years Later: Redefining Thriving

Five years in, and now I’m finally at a place where I can properly evaluate what thriving looks like in my life.

What it means to balance:

• my entrepreneurial side

• my corporate self

• the artist

• the facilitator

And this is just on the public front.

Why Your Primal Brain Works Against You

I know it sounds contradictory to say your ego and survival instinct work against you—but it’s a reality of the world we live in.

Our primal selves were conditioned to hyper-fixate on provide and protect in an era that revolved around food and procreation.

I don’t need to tell you how much we’ve changed since then. Sucky part is that our egos were built to help us survive in those conditions.

Every day now demands that we operate on multiple evolved layers (personal, interpersonal, systemically); often without being taught how. Which is the real work that needs to be done when it comes to understanding your mental health.

Stick with it long enough and you’ll get truly skilled at peeling back these layers to know how you show up in those worlds.

A Cautionary Case Study

In the case of the genius who took on ₹400 crore of debt to move from surviving to thriving…

That inner fight looked like unfathomable levels of narcissism and dissociation.

Which meant his mind actively worked against having any real failsafe.

At least it makes for a good case study when I sat down 20 years ago to notice:
“What could go wrong if money wasn’t the obstacle—and your brain had the ability to process seemingly infinite volumes of information?”

The Farm, My Father, and the Blueprint I Deciphered

The farm is the space where I watched my dad attempt to create his version of a haven but in a manner like he didn’t have a lifetime to do it.

23 unique business models.
All running simultaneously.
All hinged on one person.

I watched him burn through community after community—back when long term relationships were deeply integrated into everyday life.

Today, I watch him suffer because his mind didn’t act as a guardrail to prioritise each member of those communities for the long run.

Intentions vs Impact

Logically, it wasn’t his intention to operate this way.

Perhaps the blueprint for balance and empathy was simply missing from his downloads.

(I suspect he has some form of antisocial personality disorder—undiagnosed and untreated. A label I needed to help me forgive the years of emotional and financial survival mode he had my family in. )

Ironically, he was generous.
He truly believed in abundance.

But he often operated from ego rather than authenticity.

With near-religious vigour, he chased the idea of a self-sustaining farming community that was also a luxury housing project.

Highly ambitious.
And dangerously unbounded in the way in which he was going about it.

Life Lesson No. 1

Define What “Thriving” Means For You

Watching my family’s lives unravel because there wasn’t a clear end goal made me realise the importance of structure. Listing down a process I’ve put together that helps me ground myself across different aspects.

First: define your parameters with clarity.

What does thriving actually look like for you?

This becomes your Destination.

Next, evaluate your:

• personal strengths and limitations

• interpersonal dynamics

• systemic capacities

This becomes your Journey framework.

A Simple Goal-Setting Framework

One thing I do every year is define my goals across six buckets:

• Personal

• Work

• Relationships

• Health

• Financial

• Wellbeing

A helpful lens for this is SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

It forces clarity—and clarity creates momentum.

The Inheritance I Had to Question

Appa was the first-born in a family of seven—often expanded to crowds of twenty under one roof.

Run by a powerful, illiterate matriarch.
Sustained by two cows and a meagre government salary.

I see where his ambition came from.

I understand it.
I even internalised parts of it.

But I also took the time to rip this dream apart at the seams so I wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes. So I could truly understand what was the drive behind it.

What Thriving Looks Like for Me

Thriving for me means:

• being surrounded by nature

• having stable, steady incomes

• exploring the world—slowly, intentionally

Thriving also means creating magic daily!

• through movement

• through community

• through shared joy

Community Over Short-Term Gain

For my brother and me, thriving also looks like inviting the right people into our farming community and empowering them to live the life that we have fought hard to gain alongside us.

Sometimes that means saying no to a sale, because protecting our ecological biosphere—and thinking long-term—matters more. And through years of experimentation & exploration, we also know the power of our unique proposition and to value it for all that it’s worth.

Life Lesson No. 2

Use Prioritisation As Your Quiet Superpower

My brother and I build differently—but we meet at one truth:

We know when to stop pumping capital or resources…
and start fixing processes. A rule of business that is just as important in other parts of life.

When I’m back up on my terrace nowadays, I stand there knowing the power of currency. Social currency that is the quiet power of choosing the spaces you want to show up in. I look around at the people who join me on that terrace and see the strength I have when I choose kindness over rudeness in building relationships. I notice the time I have to observe the silence being broken by bird song, the cackle of our staff, the annoying hum of farm machinery (that my brother and I will have many many discussions on in terms of working timings :D)

Most of all I rest easy knowing that I earned my right to thrive in that space. Knowing that I can go back to my core beliefs of

• absolute minimalism

• ikigai

• permaculture

• slow living

and all the other luxuriously magical soft concepts of power reclamations & anarchy I come across simply because I choose to.

Every. Single. Day.

What happens if you pull apart what’s happening in the 6 buckets you’ve chosen for your goals and

It reveals:

• what gives returns

• what drains energy

• what needs letting go

Would you say you have the gumption to go through with it till the end?

Have you noticed what your patterns look like around success in those 6 buckets?

Can you articulate the strange ways in which you start to behave? How do you manage your actions during this stage?

Or are you strong enough to not care but to just be fully in flow with however life leads you?

Manifestation, Redefined

Manifestation, to me, isn’t magical thinking.

It’s believing something will happen, seeing that vision as clear as day —
and then working toward it.

Staying with it through the grungy, sloppy, messy bits knowing that there will be glorious, rainbow days.

Building

Slowly.
Meticulously.
Consistently.

That’s thriving.

Not loudly.
But regeneratively.

Even now, my body hasn’t forgotten what it felt like to be in those moments. My chest tightens. Tears well up my in eyes at the helpless frustration I feel but can’t express. My jaws clench as I take a deep breath to enter into a state of faux calmness so I can go speak to these people.

Because see the thing is when money or power are involved in the mix, nobody’s paying attention to whether or not they’re “trespassing” into a little girl’s house. They’re just “doing their job”. In other instances, they’re just here to “take what’s rightfully theirs”. And I put these words in quotes and Italics because that’s all they are. Just words. Shifting actions and roles depending on who’s perspective you’re reading the story from.

And that was the first time I realised.

We’re all just players in a game, far beyond the expanse of our imagination to interpret. Actors in a karmic play who’s script we no longer have. Although at some point, we had probably read through and signed up for it before entering into this world.

I stood there in my too white formal shirt and baby blue school skirt, my chin held high as I lied through my teeth that my dad wasn’t at home.

“We know he’s here, girl. His car is parked outside” they said in Kannada.

‘Scoff, good job detectives, what’s got you still stuck in the recovery department?’, my mean girl mind thinks. Instead, I square my shoulders and fake some ounces of naivety while I shyly flip my long mane and intentionally drop my voice to it’s softest tones as I pretend to have been lost in my silly little world. Hence the confusion.

A few years later, as a young adult, I step down from a stage after emceeing for an event with at least a hundred attendees and I hear the compliment, “Your voice modulation is impeccable!” I bite my tongue to not spill the truth of where the years of manipulation practice came from. Instead, I give them my signature 100 giga watt grin and bear a toothy THANKS.

Sometimes in life we are asked to play roles, we might not be ready for. But what we learn from when we step into those roles is what sets the stage for the purpose we seek.

The second lesson from that day was about understanding the power or knowledge of what is or isn’t within our rights or limits.

Let’s look at this intellectually first.

Constitutional freedom. Any lawyer worth their salt will tell you the below fun fact.

Growing up with my dad, was chaotic for sure, but woof, did he blow apart any falsities I held on the notion of security. He was always adamant that I learnt the value of challenging anything and everything. Essentially honing the skill to know how to

Everything was within our reach or just outside of our limits. The constitution has institutionalised that freedom for us!

That’s the beauty of the world that we’re in.

Here’s one more perspective.

The second law of thermodynamics is my favourite one to live by. It talks about the concept of entropy — a measure of disorder or randomness.

• In every real process, the entropy of the universe increases.

Which means we’re all perpetually in a state of flow. Which is why change is the only constant.

So if something in your life is not the way, you want it to be, it’s most probably because you haven’t been putting in the energy to f**k that shit up. ;)

Learn to step in and out of different roles in your life.

The worst that’ll happen is that you’re as bad an actor as Joey Tribani.

The best thing?

You get to live the life you’ve dreamed of.

This is my stance when there’s too much chaos:

Don’t take things personally.

Don’t box yourself into one identity.

And never ever allow yourself to stay in a state of wallowing for long.

Pity parties usually just have an attendance of one.

Friends and family are important but only you can pull yourself up outta a hole you dug. Whether it’s by extending your arm to reach out to the rope they throw you or to stop running around long enough to realise you’re in too deep in the sink hole. It’ll always come back to

Awareness, Acceptance, Action.

You wanna know how the story ended? My dad didn’t miss a beat when he noticed the cops were outside. He stepped in to the bathroom, locked the door and got on the phone to call up his brothers and friends to let them know what was going on. He bought himself time. He put things in motion to protect his safety. He went into the Pune jail and was out in 2 days with a story to tell of how he made friends with his prison mates.

This is my strategy when things are too stagnant:

The skeletons in your closet are actually just cloth racks for the many hats you can don as an individual.

An analogy for getting ready to do an excavation on certain parts of your psyche to pull out those shadow sides that could be your secret super powers.

You are now privy to one of my deepest ‘darkest’ secrets. Here’s how it helped me through what was the hardest part of my short lifetime.

When I had to shift bases to the farm, it was a scary thought. My mum would constantly question my considerable lack of personal safety. I was just a wimpy, 23 year old woman taking on an abandoned 100 acre farm that wasn’t even in her name. Barely any work happening on the farm, no electricity through the day (it came in spans of an hour or two sparingly through the day), no WiFi connection, no call or sim signal inside the cottage. No fences, no security guards, no grills on the windows. No farm managers/staff quarters within a 1-2 km radius. Even now, as I write this listening to Angel by Massive Attack, there’s a feral part of me that’s thrilled with the psychotic ambition we had to start a farmstay in these conditions.

There was a rickety old building, with none of these amenities or a working kitchen, a Gowri who was just as crazy as me to join in on these dreams, and most importantly a Sir Theo and Madame Juno to keep me company.

But it was a role the demon child in me wanted to play. My brother and sister in law had already their wedding at the cottage. Which meant it had potential. It just needed someone to consistently show up, gently effin shit up. Nurturing it to what it could be.

Protector. Host. Hermit. Planner. Financier. Family Mediator. Emotional Alchemist.

Roles that set the stage for 3 raging avatars to step in and create a new home. With secured lands, all the amenities one needs to lead a healthy, rooted lifestyle. A biosphere with a fully functioning farm that can provide for a thriving community. Through developed farm plots that have ecological landscaping and a wholesome society to engage with.

Pause for a moment to think about what some of the roles you play in your life look like. (Teacher, Parent, Facilitator, Artist, Marketer, Entrepreneur, Community Builder…)

No, really. Pause for a few moments and deeply think about this before moving ahead.

People mostly expect that staying at a farm is waking up to birdsong, warm sunny days, accompanied with cool breezes. For the most part it is. For the rest of it, it’s having slow, comical conversations with the monsters in your head. Coming to the unwavering realisation that NOTHING YOU WORRY ABOUT REALLY MATTERS.

The Sun will always, always, always, shine the next day. And the night. will. follow.

And in the same way, your brain will always pick up a new problem for you to solve, a new wrong to right.

So just for a few months, what if you woke up each morning with a clear plan?

Or the mischievous courage to wear any hat you feel like?

To step up and play out every role you’ve ever dreamed of.

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Out here to answer the most FAQ - How do you do it all?

Sometimes mediocrely, other times with the flare of a goofball, but mostly… calmly, patiently, with community, and a whole lot of fun =D

The first and biggest learning I had was to let go of doing it all perfectly and immediately. Growing up I had the privilege of closely observing and reflecting on the life of an evil genius as he built and crashed an empire in the span of 2 decades. It taught me a lot about the truth behind success and made me to build a purposeful life intentionally and with grace.

People often look at the life my brother and I live at our farm, tucked away in a 100 acre estate, and assume that it was handed to us on a silver platter but the truth is, we fought and carved it out of the absolute mess left to us as our materialistic legacy.

Very early on in my childhood, I started meticulously noting away the life lessons that now help me settle so many modern day anxieties. At that time I obviously had no idea that this was what it was leading up to, I just remembering training my brain to look at every traumatic experience as a chance to learn something. Grounding myself in the belief that all of that HAD to be part of something bigger.

Good things really do take time to build and even more time to unfold and teach. I thought this newsletter would be a fun way to answer the big Q of how to live a financially stable life that is filled with creativity, community, and commune with nature.

So here I am breaking down the steps I took (and continue to strengthen) as I cultivate this life.

Step 1: Before setting out to hit that penultimate goal of nirvana :P

I started to enjoy the mini capsules of purpose and fulfillment that life had to offer

First, start with finding it in its smallest possible unit. Second, always with some main character energy background tracks - making this life count is a non-negotiable :D

New age spirituality is battling it out with capitalism for your mental anxiety bandwidth. Selling faulty narratives of you not being radical enough, or mindful enough. Questioning why you haven’t already figured out how to be a self sustaining, community building, agricultural, off-grid yogic shaman who conjures up potions made of their grey water and time travels using their chakras.

As a genuinely curious person with a discerning ability to make people drop their guards and share their authentic stories, let me reassure you that we are all on our respective journeys at the same, messy pace. You are neither far behind or way ahead of anybody else. SO… relax, and breathe into the realisations of what is working for you. Slowly make more time for that. Your sense of alignment is really the only thing that matters.

Step 2. Be a Yes Man and a Baddie Bitch

Life’s all about that duality so lean the f**k IN.

Structures and routines are important but one thing I’ve learnt is to be able to take up as many opportunities that come your way as possible while maintaining strict boundaries within that space to protect your sanity. You’re never going to know what life has in store for you if you’re going to be isolated and boxing yourself into a “this is all I am and this is what life is about” space.

Andrew Huberman talks about this in his podcast episode on setting goals - your neuroplasticity stays fluid when you’re allowing yourself to be challenged 15-20% of the time - in other words, the key to mindset or identity shifts is going to come from becoming comfortable with experimentation, new experiences or making mistakes.

The confidence to do this at micro and macro levels comes from the attacks I keep tucked away to hammer my inner critique when it comes out. Spend some time getting to know what these unique pillars are you.

I’m about to hit 30 in another 2 months & in the short span of time that I have spent on this great blue planet, I have managed to

Punch #1: Get a job that pays me well enough that I can use the financial stability to grow the other aspects of my life while being at a company with the most chilled out work culture (no jokes - last month I went on an all expense paid trip with my partner to one of the biggest sustainable music festivals in India. My company bartered with us to do a workshop which is actually part of the passion projects that I run - the whole trip costed them upwards of 2 lakhs and they didn’t even blink an eye because they had already seen the work I do online and trusted my process.)

Punch #2: I continue to sustain a killer fitness routine that helped me find and build my passion projects. It also allows me to be a part of a community that keeps me inspired and motivated.

Punch #3: Start my very own farmstay/retreat space that’s a big pillar of my ‘gives me a sense of purpose’ world - and I did this by putting in a lot of work to restructure chaotic family structures and dynamics. Being an active part of the solution in whatever ways I could. Thankfully it paid off in many folds and now I continue to do the work to maintain healthy relationships with as many of them as I can.

I keep these punches tucked away for when the voices that question self worth and timelines get too loud.

These punches are also pre-requisites for building my main character energies.

The first is the yes man, he’s the side of me that’s always ready for adventure. He’s also my ironic psychological response to generational patriarchal oppression. Anytime I start to think in extremes that look something like, “It’s too late in my life to try that.” or “There’s too many dependencies/responsibilities now and what would people think?” - I ask him to come out in all his glory and take center stage. (Used to be a max enthu cutlet named Naruto but is now an unapologetic sinister badass called Sukuna, good to watch some well made anime and have some fresh voices in our heads for these instances)

Now, you maybe thinking, “But doesn’t that dilute your focus and derail you from the path you’re meant to be on?” That’s where the Baddie B* comes out to play.

Look, life is always going to be throwing curve balls at you, and the point of growing as a person is to be able to hit those curve balls out of the park no matter where you are. A lesson I learnt after multiple attempts to isolate myself at the farm and trying to be in a little bubble of my own. Your problems don’t stop existing just because you run away from them and exist in a state of delulu.

Which brings us to

Step #3: Find A Few Communities To Belong To

A surreal oddity in my life is that I do not struggle to make new friends. I know as an adult that’s something people constantly complaint about but I think it’s more because they get stuck hanging out with the same riff raff instead of clearing space for the upgrades. Contrastingly though, I also think the nicest people are incidentally the ones that leave you. The best ones are the ones that do stick around and grow with you or loop around when both of you have grown into newer versions of yourselves - more on this later.

Find people who inspire you, and find a few communities because being around people is messy. And it's good to have multiple support systems.

Meeting new people is taxing work, getting close to them even more so. But at the end of the day, after carefully observing the most eccentric or successful people, it's fairly obvious that's what it’s all about.

A life that is rich and fulfilling because I’m spending it surrounded by the people that I love and respect. That's going to be me at my farm with the coolest community around. So that’s also what I’m hoping this newsletter does for me - that brings in the right kind of people who would fit into an ever evolving farming community that cares deeply about movement, music and cultures. Who are on the journey themselves to be valuable, productive members of this *New Earth society* that we’re building from the ground up. So if you know anyone who's looking to buy some farm land, and have a safe haven outside of the city at a well taken care of permaculture farm then hit us up.

Step 4. Tie together all the littler units of fulfilment to build something studier

There’s going to be a voice in your head, telling you what a failure you are - questioning why you’re starting yet another thing when you couldn’t even do the last one well. Or maybe it questions your credibility, talent, self worth in more creative ways. Like I said earlier, it’s definitely worth the effort and pain getting to know what your inner critique sounds like because, honey, let me tell you, the more you ignore it, the more you’ll stop to notice where that voice ends and you begin.

Over the course of the next few newsletters I’m going to be sharing snippets and practical reflections from my life that I hope spark something in you.

Unhinged but carefully curated episodes that bring you insights from a real person as opposed to AI data points that are half off the hilt and only telling you what it thinks you need to hear.

A spark that I hope fuels the fire in you to bring together and power up all those wonderful things that already exist in your life that bring make you feel aliveeee!

Some of the notable themes we will be exploring are:

• Shifting work cultures in corporates to make sure they're supporting you instead of burning you out

• Building emotional support systems to catch you when you fall

• Finding relationships that are healthy yet charged with chemistry and growth

• Figuring out what's keeping you from developing healthy habits or sustaining them

• Gradually working our way up to creating the life that we've always dreamed of

Sign up if this sounds good

What else is in store?

Basically I’ve figured out that the name of the game is consistency and community. This newsletter also gives you exclusive access to events I'm planning at the farm or outside. And it gives you first preference to the flow or farm community we’re building. In time I hope that this emailer becomes a safe space for you to come back to when something's going on in your life and you want to feel just a little less lonely. <3