I once got caught searching for tattoo inspiration on the front desk computer during my shift at TruFusion. My boss, Catherine, respectfully told me that was not work appropriate and I respectfully shit my pants out of fear. At 16, there is nothing quite so fear provoking as adult authority that isn’t your parents.

Moving forward, I made a mental note to be on my best behavior around Catherine, standing up a little taller and smiling a little wider when she was there. I think she liked me. I was never sure. We didn’t speak much outside of formalities, and I didn’t foresee a scenario where that would not be the case. She was the general manager of a workout studio and I was her high school employee that’d be gone soon enough.

…

We have not a fucking clue what’s to come. It doesn’t matter how sure you might think you are of a certain partner, job, place, or time. The future, it doesn’t care about your sureness.

People try to reason with this fact in all sorts of pretty ways:

And although these quotes are popular on Pinterest, they are not so popular in practice.

Most people don’t walk through life with utter trust and surrender in the universe’s planning abilities.

It’s a hard thing to do, because most people walk around thinking they’re much smarter than the universe, and wouldn’t it make sense for the smarter being to be in charge?

Yes. That logic does make sense. So what’s the issue then? Well, we have the roles reversed. Our cognitive mind is not as smart as the relationship between flowers and bees, the tides of the ocean, or the carbon cycle. Though the mind may infringe from time to time with supposed insight, it can only ever offer us a viewer’s guess, never a controller’s decision.

As a result, we take on jobs we don’t have to. Like meticulously washing the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. I always thought it was so dumb when my mom did that, but then I got to college and did the same thing; spending a good chunk of my time stressing over where I’d end up after graduating.

But right under all that stress, the universal dishwasher was at work for me. Hell, if I’d known earlier, I probably would have mastered various time consuming hobbies like hacky sack, baking sourdough, and another language.

Thank god I figured it out. Now I play hacky sack, bake sourdough, and speak Spanish.

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…

Catherine and I have been to Panama and Nicaragua together. Come this time next year, that list will also include Bali, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Peru.

We have reels in our Instagram chats that depict the never ending battle of learning to surf and the beautiful places we want to go next.

This week’s episode of my podcast, TunedUp, is an interview with Cat, which we filmed in San Juan del Sur at her company, Seek Yoga Collective’s most recent 200 hour yoga teacher training. We talk about the natural unfolding of life, sitting there as two people who met in a timeframe where the folds of life covered the present moment quite immensely.

If you would have told 16 year old me that Cat, the woman that caught me looking for tattoos, would become not only my post-grad colleague, but my mentor and friend, I’d have been very confused. I think she would have been equally confused if told the quiet, late to puberty teen with bad posture at the front desk would become part of her (at the time uncreated) international yoga brand.

In 2022, neither of us had the capacity to conceptualize how our paths were going to divulge, cross, then align.

And life is a repetition of the above.

A never ending cycle of things coming to be that we don’t have the capacity to understand when they aren’t yet here. When we let go — not of our goals and dreams, but the specificities of how, when, and where we reach them, we find we don’t have to be in charge of so damn much.

As Catherine says in this week’s EP:

The Divine Mother: She is my account, she is my scheduler, she figures out the how and the when; I just show up and make the next best step I can.

Listen to Cat and I’s convo :)

ep7- Trust: The Universe is my scheduler 

also available on Apple Podcasts and Amazon

updates

1. curious about anything I said? check out my podcast, Instagram, and TikTok —where I post lots of related content

2. want to get away? come with me to Bali this November for an unforgettable wellness retreat - use my code ADDIE for $250 off

3. interested in becoming a yoga teacher? join Cat and I in the Sacred Valley of Peru July, 2027

Leave a comment

With love,

Addie

I was dancing reggaeton to Ya Voy, feeling and receiving so much love that my heart was faster than Daddy Yankee. A mix of the freedom to be out and about in a foreign town, the godly Nicaraguan surf instructor whose 6-pack abs were sweating against my chest, and a friend back home who loves the song.

It wouldn’t have been possible to separate what my heart was beating for — my own independence, the romantic passport stamp, or the people I left behind.

I did not try to break about or dissect my heart; instead allowing for all the beats to create a new rhythm, sending my friend love through the sky, the boy love through my body, and myself love through my breath.

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Loving myself

I set off for my first solo trip as an 18-year-old American with a good pair of headphones, lots of daydreams, and an everlasting desire to write. Loving so many things without an end, the premise of lonely hours didn’t scare me too bad.

In fact, I came to find it empowering: navigating foreign towns, transportation systems, and cultures with only my own head and feet. It reminded me they too needed time to get to know each other; finally able to make myself laugh, smile, cry, break, and start all over again.

In a world where we squeeze into the lives of loved ones, public spheres, and other connective constraints, the relationship to the self is often thrown on the back burner, treated as if it didn’t function on the same reality plane as any other kind of relation.

Many people miss out on a best friend, simply because of the arbitrary social norm that fun, comfort, and good company requires another person.

This is bigger than having the billboard self love with the different sized models and bright colors. It’s a love for who you are, not what you are, and how you are, not where you are.

Every time I’ve strapped my backpack on and headed away from home, I’ve somehow simultaneously walked closer to it.

Loving romantically

I’ve never had a boyfriend.

The reason why would differ based on who you asked. My best friend would say I’m too picky, my Dad too busy, and me, well, it depends on the day. Most days, I swear it’s by choice and I kiss the ground for all the freedom I’ve had in my youth. But other days, I swear the reason is a defect of mine and I curse the ground for being robbed of a beautiful part of youth.

The premise of “your person” is alluring. To be put above nearly everything else, carried in another’s pocket, as the seasons change and layers come and go.

Without ever having experienced such a thing, it was easy to resent some of my layers and seasons. The rhetoric equating completeness with a partner is quite hard to avoid out there in the world.

However, I learned a lot about having a partner because I never had one: going about romantic love like a kite — chasing missing wind, taking big falls, and occasionally feeling like I’m flying.

Many people miss out on this spectrum; too afraid or attached to one part or another.

This is bigger than having the romantic love that sells out theatres and wets middle aged women’s pants. It’s a love for what is, not what could be, and for choosing to be one, instead of two.

Every time I’ve taken a chance on someone else, I’ve somehow simultaneously gotten a once and a lifetime chance for myself.

Loving platonically

Coming from a high school circle so tight knit even adolescence couldn’t run its seams loose, I feared I was shit out of luck for college.

But after the initial sorority rush fail and a quick breakdown on my uncarpeted dorm room floor, I found my people in California. Or better said, California became my people.

With the space of the brand new state, each corner of my soul spread its wings — embracing people so different that perhaps their only common factor would have been knowing me.

My circle was not tight knit, but pure strings, sprawled across the various goals, dreams, and values I had.

Many people miss out on this vastness; too distracted by commonality, proximity, and a mental scheme of who they think they’d like.

This is bigger than having the platonic love that accompanies matching BFF necklaces. It’s a love for being here together, not separate, and being the same, not different.

Every time I’ve extended olive branches out to everyone, I’ve somehow simultaneously gotten closer to my own roots.

Loving scarcely

Love is the most powerful thing that we have to both give and receive. It’s not limited, as many of our other resources are. But for some reason, we are more scarce with our love than with our material world.

Counting friends on one hand, partners with rings, and the self only when no one is watching, before using 28 paper towels to clean up one tiny spill.

But love doesn’t work like that.

No matter the kind, quantification will always soil it. We don’t grow up and learn to love; we love to learn to grow.

It isn’t immature to love easily, multitudinously, and loudly. Thinking so, perhaps explains the corollary between age and loneliness, or the horrifying sight that is the GEN Z dating scene.

Many people let this world outline how they love — comparing what the love they have to an elusive timeline, guarding the love they have to avoid vulnerability, and saving the love they have as if it were going to run out soon.

But when you start to truly lead with love, this jig is up.

Loving always

Dancing to Ya Voy, I connected to a deep rooted sense of home in my body and a pride in all I’d come to learn and do on my own. I felt alive, happy, and radiant, emitting and receiving so much love for myself.

Dancing to Ya Voy, I connected to a very beautiful man who had shown me a lot of beautiful parts of Nicaragua. I felt grateful, in awe, and a little bit turned on, emitting and receiving so much love for him.

Dancing to Ya Voy, I connected to a friend who would scream the lyrics as loud as she could out her car window as we drove through SLO. I felt nostalgic, lucky, and silly, emitting and receiving so much for her.

I felt and emitted all these loves at the same moment because love is not scarce. It isn’t subject to time, place, or circumstance.

Love is an embodiment of what it means to be here. The heart’s rhythm doesn’t have to only come from a few sources — it is always there, as long as we are, reminding us of our connection to source.

updates

1. curious about anything I said? check out my podcast, Instagram, and TikTok —where I post lots of related content

2. want to get away? come with me to Bali this November for an unforgettable wellness retreat - use my code ADDIE for $250 off

3. interested in becoming a yoga teacher? join me in the Sacred Valley of Peru July, 2027

With LOVE,

Addie

We don’t do that, because we are much too smart for the tips and tricks we learned when learning to read.

So instead, we skip over words, paragraphs, and consequently, ideas; both the authors' and what could have been our own.

The question remains at such: is learning even why we read anymore?

Or do we read solely for a taste of that delicious grammatical signifier?

The period, exclamation point, or question mark that tells our lovely little ego, “hey, you’re done! You did it. You read.”

Well-read VRS Reading Well

After having been on Substack for about a month now, it’s become evident that there is something wrong with my reading habits. I no longer mosey my way through a page, but inspect it, as if reading one more word than I need to is an unforgivable waste of time.

I do read a lot, but I don’t think I’m well-read, because truly, it’s been a while since I’ve read well. I haven’t exerted the proper effort; creating the unfolding space in which others’ words can become your own. I do want to be well read, so it’s time to go back to reading well. Let’s refresh the basics.

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How to read…again

1. Use your finger

Trace the words with something besides your eyes, ensuring you genuinely grasp each and every one.

2. Stop in confusion

When you come across a word you don’t know, remember the concept of context clues, and put on your detective hat. If all else fails, remember the resources in your detective hat now include the usually lexically correct AI overview.

3. Re-read

It’s annoying, and sometimes belittling, but unwaveringly necessary. Most of us are unfortunately not smart enough to digest instantaneously like a spider.

4. Pause to gather thoughts

To understand what you are reading, you must actually come to a point of opinion on that which you are reading. If you're not metacognitizing, chances are words are going in your eyes then out the back end.

5. Read out loud

Sound out long words. It’s fun. Remember what your voice is like. Hear the tone of the piece dressed in your own.

6. Bring it up after the fact

Reflect what you read back into the world; to your journal, friends, and family. You may think you understand something until you go ahead and try to articulate it yourself.

It’s truly worth the time

Reading is a transmission of soul, and with cheap reading, we will never find the riches that lie within others’ souls.

NEW EP: Tuned up

Capital T Truth: How to find your own

In this episode, I dive into…

• The basics of Western epistemology and its modern manifestations in terms of wellness, personal identity, and joy

• Eastern concepts of what valid knowledge can be, direct sense perception, and the Jain doctrine of truth

• The space for individual belief, collective consciousness, and compassion for difference

• 5 tangible ways to remember how to trust yourself + what it’s like to live with trust

check Tuned Up out on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon

updates

1. want to get away? come with me to Bali this November for an unforgettable wellness retreat - use my code ADDIE for $250 off

2. curious about anything I said? check out my podcast, Instagram, and TikTok —where I post lots of related content

3. interested in becoming a yoga teacher? join me in the Sacred Valley of Peru July, 2027

Leave a comment

With love,

Addie

Contrary to popular belief, I’ve found that the ocean is quite the confabulator. You might disagree, which is also okay. It isn’t uncommon for the best conversationalists to stay quiet in the midst of people who wouldn’t listen to them. Most people choose not to hear the words of God.

…

The Spanish verbs “conocer” and “saber” both mean “to know” in English. Conocer refers to a more relational knowledge—of a person, a place, or a concept. This knowledge won’t be what Generative AI comes up with during a Google Search; more so, what comes up in the heart before you begin any intermedial searching.

Saber, on the other hand, is your generative AI response. It is the facts, the yes’s/no’s, and the skills of rote.

There were a lot of linguistic differences to grasp when I learned Spanish. How was it that one could ‘know’ in two different ways? Perhaps it was the epistemological empiricism of the West that made it difficult for me to remember when to use conocer and when to use saber.

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…

I’ve never really believed in anything. I went to public school and only my grandpa went to church; but he died, and before he died he had broken hearing aids that made it very difficult to converse.

I did try tarot cards in 8th grade. My best friend Fiona was going through a hippie phase and read them for me under her culturally appropriative tapestry. She told me I was going to find my first love soon.

She was wrong. I met a boy who was bipolar and left me alone at the skate park because I could only do a pop shove-it and not an ollie.

I stopped believing in tarot, and belief in any religion went to rest with dear Gramps.

…

The ocean in Bocas del Toro, Panama, was different from the one I’d been to in California. There were the obvious differences—the temperature, color, location- but there was something else too—something I could not put my finger on.

I spent two summers living on the islands, learning about this different ocean of Bocas. I learned the facts—where each of the beaches were. The yes’s and no’s—you can swim in the storms, but you can’t do it blindly or you’ll step on stingy ocean dwellers. And of course, the relevant skills—a channel makes surfing a hell of a lot easier. I learned enough to unanxiously go in and out, day in and day out, without the guidance of locals, the weather app, or Surfline.

Sabía suficiente, or at least I thought I knew enough.

…

When the ocean and I speak, you might be curious as to what we say. Even if you don’t believe we speak, you’re probably still curious because people love to know the details of their disbelief, solely to disbelieve it even more.

So I’ll be very clear in illustrating this to you.

We didn’t start talking from the get-go. The ocean did not tell me good job when I cannonballed in off the plane. In fact, I went in the ocean many times before I ever introduced myself. I was a rude guest, wasn’t I? A visitor who never once did the courtesy of saying their name.

No wonder it took so long for us. I was twenty, and still nameless.

…

Learning a new language is a lot harder than Duolingo makes you think. Not only are there new grammatical rules, words, and structures, but there are new meanings. You must wipe your slate of conversational basics clean—relearning how to talk as an adult, not an infant. I fear it was not the same childlike cuteness when I mistook parajo for pareja and asked the lovely couple if they were birds.

Beyond the forgivable vocabulary errors, I experienced errors of meaning as well. The corners of a language hold more than letters, because the corners of the place where that language is spoken gets nuzzled between each one. What the place values, when they value it, and why, is everywhere. Some hints were rhythmical, some were of grandeur, and some didn’t appear to be hints until hindsight.

The Spanish concept of knowing was the biggest hint to the Panamanian way of life I found. It was more than just understanding when to use saber and conocer, it was understanding the plurality of things that could be known by each term.

I thought I knew many things—like the new Caribbean ocean I swam in—but I didn’t know who this ocean was, what it meant to the people who surrounded it, and why it breathed life into the small islands of Bocas del Toro.

No conocí el mar.

…

We wear shoes in the US. Obviously. In liberal California, you can get away with Rainbow flip-flops, but even in California, there are sneakers in the sand at the beach.

You do not wear shoes on the islands of Bocas. Not to the beach, the restaurants, or even, occasionally, the clubs. It might seem like an infinitesimal change—one that is grounded in the comparative modernization of the US—and while it’s fair to say it has grounds in such, it has grown to be way more.

The two places have grown in opposite directions, starting from their feet.

See these barefoot Panamanians touch the Earth all day. It gets stuck in their toes and trails into their homes. Their feet are callused from coral and caminando, marked by the means of the world that surrounds them.

On the other hand, Americans, we prefer to remain unmarked. We have water spouts at the top of every ocean to rinse said feet; so those who were bold enough to take their shoes off, can put them back on. We wear slippers in our own backyards. Very ugly slippers.

…

I went into the ocean every single day that I lived in Bocas. During the storms, the sun, and the brutal hangovers. I went in when I was so happy to be traveling and high on the adrenaline of a hostel life, and I went when I was so tired of traveling and desperate for the comfort of the life I lived at home. No matter the circumstance, the ocean washed it from me—leaving me clean of any attachment to pleasure or pain, free to experience both as nothing more than one of its waves.

You see, I realized all this quite starkly. I realized that even in this brand new place, completely alone, behind a language barrier, and surrounded by more germs than soap, I had not gotten sick, depressed, anxious, overstimulated, or bored for more than a thirty-minute period.

The changing factor was not what was around me, but how I knew it, and therefore engaged with it, thought about it, and loved it. I had the world’s greatest medicine at my fingertips. God under me while I slept. A hostel that floated on the ocean.

…

I was sitting on my surfboard at La Punta, looking down at water so clear I could see my feet, fish, and the ocean floor.

My feet looked terrible. The polish had well chipped off, and coral had cut shapes into the sides. My grandma would have been rolling around in her grave if she had seen — Grammy thought pedicures were a girl’s best friend. But Grammy also believed in God. So maybe she would be okay with my feet, as they were the result of understanding God for myself.

I don’t believe in God in the typical theistic sense. I’ve taken the word to what I’ve felt it to be—something much bigger than me, that loves me, and holds me, and is me. There is nothing that fits that criteria as perfectly as the ocean.

The ocean loves me. It gives me waves to play on, gravity to forget about, and people to meet.

The ocean holds me. It surrounds me with its arms, so I don’t feel so alone.

The ocean is me. We both express, and eventually fizzle out. We both get big and scary, but also flat and tired. We can do the same thing, and that same thing will make some people angry and some delighted. We can try our very best, but at the end of the day, we will be nothing more than each very moment, before we rise and fall and retreat, into the same matter from which we came.

Ahora, conozco el mar.

…

I don’t tell people I believe in God, because well, I don’t believe in God like they would think. I don’t tell people I talk to the ocean either, because most people don’t think the ocean talks. I understand disbelief. I thought my grandparents were holding onto religious hearsay and I really missed wearing shoes at first.

The thing is, experience changes belief; it changes what you think you know, and my experience is proving there was so much I didn’t know. It’d be impossible for me not to feel it now. This imminent, powerful, omnipresent love that nature has for me.

Nature is the only form of God we can see with our own eyes.

Even the oblivious and disbelieving are held within its arms. Trees give air to everyone; the dull, the doctoral, and the deities.

If this sounds too woo-woo, you could try to understand nature using studies, quantitative data, and biochemistry, finding a saber-akin knowledge of why it heals and publish said findings in academia. Or, you could simply sit back and relax, appreciating the fact that you are always surrounded by something that even academia can’t understand.

…

I still talk to the ocean all the time, even back in California. The ocean isn’t quieter or less responsive there, as I feared it’d maybe be on the plane ride home. It follows that there must have been some other reason why I missed its voice for the first twenty years of my life in the States.

Oh yes, the language. I almost forgot about it.

The space between letters, the simple linguistic difference of two knowings, perhaps could explain all that I missed. The West is in love with a certain kind of knowing and with our own shoes.

But thankfully, you can begin to know differently and find places to not wear shoes. I walk barefoot along the grass, the sand, the hills, and I thank God—what is beneath and around me. I know that people see my lips moving and judge to their hearts’ content, but if that’s what makes their heart content, it’s nothing that concerns me. My heart is held elsewhere. And it always will be.

Conozco más de lo que sabía.

And I’m so grateful to know more than I ever knew.

updates

1. want to dip your toes in yoga too? come with me to Bali this November for an unforgettable retreat - use my code ADDIE for $250 off

2. curious about anything I said? check out my podcast, Instagram, and TikTok —where I post lots of related content

Leave a comment

With love,

Addie

Bad rhythm.

Lack of coordination.

No ass.

Plain bad at it.

All of the above may contribute to why you won’t ever be in the Nutcracker, Shakira’s music videos, or Broadway, but no, those aren’t the real reasons you can’t dance.

Your ass can’t dance because…

1. You're afraid of looking dumb

Your body is serious! It does serious things like going to work, exercising with intention, and having sex. If you danced, and somehow, someway, your extremities made a weird shape or took an offbeat, then the jig would be up. You’d get fired from your fancy adult job, lose any sense of pride in your physical form, and having a partner, you could forget about that. So, you don’t dance, because if you did, there is a good chance you would look very dumb trying, and your life would end after.

2. You don’t want to be perceived

People are always judging you. They will measure how you move meticulously and correlate that to your values, talents, and life trajectory. So be careful, because one wrong move and you’re a girl without the ass to twerk or a nerd still doing the lawnmower in 2026. It’s a slippery slope, and there is little wiggle room. So, you can’t dance, because if you did, there is a good chance people would see it and think something about you.

3. You forgot how to act before thinking

Your expressions must be cognitized before they are expressed. You must have your mind dissect your movement to make sure it’s just right; otherwise you face the risk of trusting your body. Clearly, it’s better to be paralyzed by decisions that don’t need to exist. So, you can’t dance, because if you did, there’s a good chance you’d have to move without having the time to think about it first, and lord knows the body can’t be that free.

4. You don’t know how to connect without words

You find it way too intimate to look someone in their eyes, let alone find a way to correlate your movement to theirs. You’d fail at it. You wouldn’t match the people around you, or you’d match them so well it’d seem like copying. It’d be so awkward your hands would clam. So, you can’t dance, because if you did, there’s a good chance you’d see someone wholly; they’d see you; and there wouldn’t be words to stop either act of seeing.

At the end of the day, your ass can’t dance because you can’t allow yourself to.

You can’t give up this false idea of correctness within your body. You can’t surrender to looking dumb, being seen, thinking less, and connecting more.

Agree to disagree, but I think everyone knows how to dance.

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TUNED UP

NEW EPISODE - Practices to set you free: Shake Rising, Human Design, and Liberation

A conversation with Kitania Nottke

updates

1. want to dip your toes in yoga too? come with me to Bali this November for an unforgettable retreat - use my code ADDIE for $250 off

2. curious about anything I said? check out my podcast, Instagram, and TikTok —where I post lots of related content

Leave a comment

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The people I surrounded myself with in my later molding years were similarly unaffiliated, some carrying much stronger opinions than me on the opposing side of any belief. Although I was not particularly bothered by their opinions, they did deter me from ever giving my own a second thought—an adolescent girl does not look for things that will make her stand out.

I arrived at college without much attachment to anything in the matter of belief; a subject both untouched and untethered.

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…

It is very hard to believe on your own, and I often wonder if anyone really could. If Christianity or Hinduism would be withheld by only one Christian or only one Hindu. As close to our hearts as our beliefs lie, they tend to only grow in connection with others. An idea is presented, then supported and validated and shared, given sanctuary in our brains only when it feels there is enough substance to make the dubbing ‘belief.’ Belief doesn’t usually blossom in a brain per one’s own rationale alone.

Personal rationale like that expired a while ago, when we started believing anyone else more than ourselves.

Maybe that’s why now, belief is so malleable, and why I only began to find mine when surrounded by other beings embracing spirituality. Although there had been moments in my life that sparked deliberation before — coincidences which created a small feeling that they could not have been just that —I pushed the feeling away because even out of my teenage years, I still wasn’t looking for reasons to stand out; especially after becoming aware of how bitter a topic belief could be. So I settled on the fact that it didn’t really matter what I believed; life seemed to happen all the same.

…

Yoga asana is the physical practice of yoga on the mat. It is the shapes and the flow and the crazy arm balances. When I started yoga, that’s all I thought it was, which turned out to be really really wrong. Much similar to why people look to religion, yoga offers a framework for how to live life—one filled with the most beautiful concepts that can be spiritual if you choose them to be. That’s what eased me into believing in yoga. No one forced any ideas upon me, or presented undeniable truths that I must live by. Rather, yogic philosophies were sprinkled in and around my body, and I got to choose which to pick up, flip over, or hang to dry.

Some things immediately resonated, some made me want to laugh, and some had such long names I missed what they actually were. I’d originally signed up for yoga teaching training to add another notch to my fitness instructor belt, but what I received had little to do with fitness.

I received a feeling that I am not and will never be alone. That I am the same energy as the sky, stars, and mountains, being channeled into a quaint little human form. I am small, but I am not separate. I think if everyone realized this — that we aren’t so different from what we hate, and we are much related to the Earth we often forget to love, a large array of worldly issues would cease. Simple as the idea might be, remembering this connection in a materialistic, ego-filled world isn’t easy.

What is easy is entanglement. Becoming blinded by identification to only physical manifestation and personal expression.

I am a student, I am a fitness instructor, I am a woman…my own list could go on and on. I used to stress about the list, making sure it was prim and proper, impressive yet reasonable, sellable yet not intimidating.

I often chose to identify with what I did over what I was. I never would have felt complete if my list was I am here, I am love, or simple, I am. No, that shit was far too ooey gooey. It’s the kind of stuff I’d maybe say aloud in a group if asked, but wouldn’t touch myself with a ten-foot pole. Before YTT, I truly didn’t understand the difference between myself and my ego, so I had no problem riding titles of impermanent identification as far as they would take me.

Upon being able to separate the entities a bit, I’ve seen just how much their congelation suffocated me. An ego will forever protest being wrong — just look at the mass number of people who will trade their livelihood to prove their ego is right, and die having never met themselves beyond it. I think the fear of dying that way as well pushed me to give belief another chance. If there was even a small possibility I could know myself beyond the changing surface, find pride in more than what I could claim, well, I’d have been an idiot not to try.

…

The journey into spirituality was and still is quite a fucking mess. I mean, it’s spirit we’re talking about, so we don’t really know what we are talking about. Matters of divinity don’t take to being defined, and so, their definitions must come unconventionally. It is said that no matter the modality that hooks you, all spiritual paths lead to the same place. We simply all use different “definitions” to find our belief.

Yoga was what worked for me. Through practicing, studying, reading, journaling, meditating, questioning, and spinning that cycle over and over again, I finally arrived at a place where living in motion wasn’t as appealing anymore.

This was a grueling, rewarding, rollercoaster-like process in which I sometimes would pause and think “What the fuck am I doing?” while “breathing energy” into what felt like my asshole. But for some reason or another, I kept showing up to this foreign space that felt very ooey gooey, and eventually these moments of stillness came. So still, I thought I was malfunctioning.

Being motionless, yet full of movement, it was so blissful and natural and fulfilling. This mode of being trickled through my days more and more as I deepened into spiritual exploration — dripping like drying wet clothes, into the nooks and crannies of a life that somehow, someway, never had stopped moving before.

Like many people in our modern reality, I was a person who loved to know. Movement was always my best friend because cognitively, it seemed that the best way to know anything for sure was to exhaust every possible resource into the matter until either none were left or definiteness had been reached. I seldom arrived at the latter because definite does not match with divine, but hell, I still devoted myself to that damn latter, spending so much time searching for what I did not match. A divine and intuitive being looking for comfort in something that wasn’t that — like the ocean asking a pool for advice, I looked to less of me in hopes of knowing more, confused why growth never came.

I still am not certain on the individual “yes’s” and “no’s” of my yogic and spiritual beliefs. I learn some things and find my head shaking before the syllables settle, then learn others and feel they have always been in my head. Regardless of particulars, I’m certain I believe. Say it’s in yoga, energy, divinity; it doesn’t exactly matter. Named or not, I believe there is something bigger than me, and I believe that my small self is connected to whatever that big thing is.

I feel it in the ocean, on the grass, below the sun. In a tight hug, a laugh, or a smile. I feel it when I remember just how horrible yesterday was, how amazing today is, and how I’ll bounce somewhere between those two days for the rest of my life. Belief has come to comfort a girl who always needed to know.

I can’t say I know for sure that meditation accesses a higher consciousness, that the subtle body lives within us all, or that everything happens for some greater purpose. I don’t think anyone can truly know these kinds of things, so it’s really up to us to decide.

Divinity is at our door, asking us if we want it to be real, and many people shake their heads. I understand why. It’s scary to believe. I’m scared too because I know some people reading this will think of me just as I used to think of others, call me an ooey gooey, illogical, bonked-in-the-head person, who lives in Lalaland. But where I’ve come to is this. We are all here on this Earth, and while I’m here, I’d rather go about seeing that as magic. To be honest, the magical Lalaland I’ve created is fucking awesome.

I thank the ocean for being my friend, thank my friends for being my spirit, thank my spirit for being love, and thank love for being damn near everything. When you believe that all is connected, there is no other way to approach life than through a lens of love. Because looking out is looking in and looking up is looking through, and looking at all is a blessing.

It can sound crazy to virgin ears. Trust me, I know. But if everything happens all the same, which is what many people who argue against belief preach, then why not believe it, just for fun? What harm would it do to walk with a feeling in your heart you’re walking the right way?

I’m sure my beliefs will shift and slither with time as experience continues to shape me, but no matter what form I take, I don’t see myself ever losing this new belief I have. Belief has given me a life I can live instead of question, and that is the life I’m going to continue to choose.

updates

1. want to dip your toes in yoga too? come with me to Bali this November for an unforgettable retreat - use my code ADDIE for $250 off

2. curious about anything I said? check out my podcast, Instagram, and TikTok —where I post lots of related content

3. want the deep scoop? dive into yoga philosophy with some of the key historical texts like the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras, and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Sending love,

Addie

I’m embryonically on my way.

What started as a small fetus is now a grown woman—a body who has fought and clawed, cried and begged, and been so happy it didn’t know what to do. Having reached where I am now, in this grown woman’s body, I realize the work is to go back and return to what I was. The pure form before the shaping. For all the fighting and crying and not knowing what to do has made my life too staid; taken a once intrinsic rabidity and let it dwindle out each taken for granted limb.

I’ve always heard people complain about aging in the body, but our body is not what ages first—it goes second to the mind. Before people lose the physical ability to bend and cartwheel and dance, they lose the mental ability to believe doing so is worth anything at all.

It was my mind that decided I’d never bend enough to be a gymnast, that cartwheeling was an ineffective mode of transportation, and that I really didn’t know how to dance. My body itself never changed in its desire to see just what it could do.

The discovery of what it could do was exciting as a little girl—learning to walk, to swim, to bike. I can perfectly recall (if such a thing is possible) the park loop where I peddled free from training wheels and Dad. He swept me up to the ice cream shop for fries with a shake, and I drank in pride through the straw.

How proud of myself I was! How cool I thought my legs, for figuring out the task.

My body continued to figure out things as bodies naturally do. It learned when to run from my brother, that the texture of casserole is repulsive, and that the weird tingling feeling one gets in their feet can be relieved by stomping on the ground. Those same feet then learned to climb rocks and trees and roofs. Each limb began to discover its favorite expression, much like the sprinkled seedlings of a plant. And I was in love with every sprout that came to fruition, indifferent to any that didn’t bloom. I was so in love with what my body gave me that its physical form meant little.

Then it happened.

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The aging mind

Fast and finite, my mind started to age. It got so old it thought it was the wiser, the all-powerful and in charge force of my human manifestation. I began to grow out instead of solely up, growing in isolation from my own self because my mind decided it couldn’t be one and the same as my body. For my wise and all-powerful mind would have a body that obeyed, that looked and acted as it should—the one in the mirror, that had to be a mawkish stand-in.

We could co-exist, as my mind hadn’t conceived another option, but there could no longer be love. I mean, how could you love something you wanted to change so much? And how could something not accepted for what it was ever be able to emit any type of love?

Both are impossible propositions I can only see as such in recent light.

Embodiment

In this recent light, where I want to be has been illuminated for me. It’s a place I’ve been, but not one where I’ve ever had to arrive. I was born into my body, and now the task is to find my way back. I am almost too aware of our bifurcation, and I could duly trace the path of it, but unfortunately, the route is not a simple out-and-back loop.

I can’t turn around and run home the same way I came. My body, in all its infinite and divine wisdom, is far too smart for that kind of mockery. It’d never allow such a dangerous and frugal patron to know its source. Like kids hide from monsters, bodies hide from minds.

Without any contingency of permanence, my attempt to find my body again holds no more promise than fiddling with an old gadget one last time before sending it out with the next garage sale. My body must somehow be convinced that I will be there and stay there this time. That I will really love it this time, regardless of its physicality.

Perhaps the reason I haven’t been able to do this convincing is because my mind is still not sold. Surrendering to my body becoming anything it hasn’t yet been, giving it an open spectrum to dance in, is such a reverie I can’t even begin the process of dreaming it.

The love our bodies need

How could I promise my body that no matter what, no matter when, no matter how, I will love it, if matter is all there is?

My mind has never known such an immaterial love to be real. A truly unconditional, fully devotional, free-standing love that stretches beyond physical form. An “I am” not “what is” love.

Deep down, I know my body deserves to be loved in that way. It’s taken me through mountains and let me soar high in the sky. It has swum in both freezing and hot oceans, been summersalted under many waves, and still came out smiling. It has carried me to the arms of the people whom I’d die for, and allowed me to run from those who make me feel dead. My body has walked me through many parks, let me swing on many swings, and held farts in quiet rooms. It’s allowed me to travel and run and do it all again. I know I owe my life to my body—that it is my vessel in which all experience passes through—yet I can’t offer up the love it rightly deserves.

It follows then that I had it all wrong, and it’s my mind that doesn’t deserve my body, and it was never the other way around.

If that’s the case, how trivial a position I’m in now, both body and mind. Two manifestations abiding by subsistence, bound together in this finite experience, forever longing for an infinity neither can have. I am tired of dancing between the two and picking sides. I just want to go back home, where body and mind are one, and nothing has to hide. I swear if something can get me there, I’ll never long to be anywhere else.

Let me be a fetus again—take this grown woman’s body and allow it to rediscover the possibility of its own limbs; cry from hunger, simply fall over, and look at shifting sizes as nothing more than new shapes. In order to ever really live, my next stage of life must be embryonic.

Back home, I beg, but to where, I’m not sure.

Want to learn about embodiment?

Tuned Up - Episode 3 - Ghosts of Ourselves: The Rise of Western Disembodiment

What does it mean to be embodied? What does it feel like? And why is it one of the most powerful feelings there is? How can we return to our bodies in an environment that constantly regulates, limits, and dictates how we exist within them?

In this episode, I dive into

• The West’s mechanical body logic + how it’s conducive to disembodiment

• East Asian and Indian ideas of the subtle body, body as a gift, and body as cosmic intelligence

• Why embodiment matters day to day + tangible ways to get it back

We have been trained (whether known consciously or subconsciously) how to carry ourselves in public spaces, losing the senses of freedom, adventure, and joy that we have as children. We are so trained, we regulate our bodies in private too, living above them instead of within them, at mercy to them instead of in love with them.

True embodiment stands at the corner of understanding why we’ve been taken away, and making an active effort to return.

updates

1. Starting today (7/12) I’m teaching and traveling abroad until 2027 - follow me on TikTok and Instagram to keep up

2. There are still spots in my Bali yoga retreat for November, 2026

would love to hear from you all! have a beautiful day :)

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The word ritual is often tied up with far seeming religous and spiritual connotations, but rituals are something we use to find meaning in our everyday lives. Birthday candles, family dinners, pre-performance musts — all of these repetitive acts are ways we create frameworks to understand and add sacredness to our reality.

Choose something simple, practical, short, and authentic. It doesn’t need to be anything grandiose, nor spiritual, nor what Health Daily has just said is THE BEST WAY to start your day — just an act that you can always do, which hopefully, when done, reminds you how our capacity to do is sacred in itself. Begin the morning with that energy.

Examples

• sun salutations, walks, tea/coffee, journaling, affirmations, skin care, a cool dance move

Mine is doing a forward fold for the whole time that my tea water heats up!

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2. Send and speak gratitude messages

It’s quite easy to forget how INSANE it is that we have the opportunity to connect with what we connect with day in, day out. The people, places, smells, sounds — all of it, no matter how long it’s in our lives, is worth noting.

By acknowledging this fortune and putting it out into the world, we become a little closer to not only the current amazing parts of our lives, but everything that has passed and is yet to come.

Think deeply.

Have you ever thanked the ocean?

Your local coffee shop worker?

The smell of your favorite food?

Examples

• saying thanks out loud or in your head while eating, exercising, being in nature, doing your favorite activity

• saying thanks out loud or via message to the people around you

• having a gratitude journal or a happy notes in your phone

3. Conscious Breathing

We take around 25,000 breaths every day, most of them unconsciously. That is 25,000 opportunities to change our own energy.

Take at least a few minutes to purposefully and intentionally breathe, at a slow and consistent rate. Doing so regulates the nervous system, bringing us from sympathetic to parasympathetic, functioning as a built-in perspective shifter or slap in the face - reminding us, ‘hey, it’s really okay.’

When we are aware of the breath, we tap into the power of our subtle body and the rhythm of our own selves.

Examples

• intentional breath practices like meditation, pranayama, box breathing

• one-off expressions like a deep breath when you get home from your day, blowing out a candle, a breath before you ea

  

4. Spend time outside

The energy of nature is just as vital to our wellbeing as all the other resources it gives us. When we spend time in nature, we engage with a fundamentally different mode of (insert whatever you want to call it — consciousness, energy, form, spirit). It’s one less reflexive, more present, and a product of organic harmony.

When we are around this kind of energy, it’s easier to feel as if we too possess the above — the ability to be less reflexive, more present, and a product of organic harmony. And that shit feels great!

Examples

• going for walks/hikes, going to bodies of water, sitting in the grass

• doing work in parks, nature sanctuaries, backyards, outside at a coffee shop

5. Do something without extra noise

It is a habit for most of us to plug in headphones while we walk, cook, clean, drive, etc. And while this is not inherently bad and at times very much enjoyable, the extent to which we now rely on stimulus is depleting. Most of us already live in constant noise pollution, and are now adding to it ourselves.

Taking time to listen to the noise of the world brings you closer to it, whereas plugging into our noise of choice often pulls us away, into our own little worlds.

Examples

• go for a walk, fold your laundry, drive your car…with only the music of what’s around you

6. Connect breath to movement

Although the mind and body connection is intrinsic, practicing it sure as hell doesn’t hurt, especially when our world consistently sends us contradictory signals on its validity. We aren’t taught to move in alignment with our bodies, more so, to stay one step ahead of them.

When we move with our breath, we step back in line.

This connective feeling is one of the reasons many people love yoga “flows.” Flow feels fucking awesome. And the more we can invite it into our physical space, the more it will creep into our energetic space as well.

Examples

• movement, including but not limited to yoga, pilates, weightlifting

• breathwork, including but not limited to meditation, pranayama, kriya

• simple moments (a deep breath with a sigh, a stomp and an exhale, an inhale and a head roll)

7. Find an activity with 0 purpose

Life can almost always feel too serious. Too goal-oriented. Purposelessness is perhaps one of the greatest things we need. Many different spiritual and religious disciplines agree on this — that the material world is little in purpose compared to what is beyond it.

However, the material world has given us so much fun shit!

So find something, and enjoy the fuck out of it, without it adding to your five-year plan.

Examples

• drawing, singing, acting, dancing — any of the arts, FOR FUN

• picking up a toy (hacky sack, kendama, unicycle, rollerblades, puzzle, word search, etc)

• research something interesting to you, with no relation to your job, “self-help,” etc

Mine is going on the swings.

Why bother?

The above practices invite the feelings that accompany spirituality into your life, without tying you to that which might be traditionally considered spiritual.

Connection, trust, awe, love, curiosity, joy, scaredness; these are powerful feelings, and the thing is, we have the power to invite them into our lives way more than many think we do.

Dropping away all the political and societal connotations of the word, living a sacred life is truly living.

updates

1. New Tuned Up episode next Sunday, 7/12 on embodiment

2. Nicaragua retreat July 11-17th (Use code ADDIE for $250 off)

3. Bali retreat in November (Use code ADDIE for $250 off)

4. Wanna stay up to date on my upcoming travels? Follow me on TikTok and Instagram

5. New tier program for referrals! Share my Substack twice and receive a guided meditation 🧘

thanks for reading :) let me know your thoughts

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It’s only been over the last few years that I’ve truly developed my own sense of style. In high school, I had stylish friends and functioning eyes, so sometimes my outfits were cool, but they weren’t really mine — only on loan from various aesthetics. I veered my way through all the classics, playing around with rainbow hair, cargo pants, and very tall Mary Jane’s. For a small stint, I drew my eyebrows in the shape of blocks, with a black pencil, as a natural blonde.

I must say I’m grateful I left that in the past.

However, the rest, the youthful experimentation and frequent jumps between seemingly opposite ends of the aesthetic spectrum, I still have not left. In fact, over this past year, I’ve found that my style is my ability to do just that.

You see, when I get dressed, I feel the world is at my fingertips, which are usually painted sparkly hot pink or sparkly mermaid blue. Sometimes I dress like my nails — wearing all the bright colors I can, sickeningly conflicting patterns, and an insane amount of necklaces. I dress like a child dreams of dressing while watching Chloe’s Magic Closet or Shake it Up, and I’m happy dressing this way. I feel like me.

Other times, with those same sparkly nails of mine, I’ll reach for pants so big my belt gets tired. I’ll hide my form so much I could be a box or a rhombus underneath. I’ll wear the black choker that I wore in my old goth phase, and the shoes that my old skater crush would have said were cool. I dress like a girl who doesn’t care about dressing like a girl, and I’m happy dressing this way. I feel like me.

There are also the times where the world at my fingertips is way more exciting than how I dress. So I’ll run along in flip flops and whatever shirt permits me to be upside down without my boobs falling out. I’ll be very casual and bare. I dress like someone who hasn’t ever thought about how they dress, and I’m happy dressing this way. I feel like me.

@addieuhlRecent fits. New vibe is seeing how many colors I can fit in one outfit 🤪#ootd

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…

Non-duality is easy to reject. The saying that everything is one sounds like the three words that would lead you to slam your door right in the face of the next canvasser who decided to ring it. Our need for this — definitive answers and closed doors — coincides nicely with dualisms, as both appear concrete in nature; dividing two things, keeping what would mix from mixing, establishing difference with a permanent marker.

We form categories to help us all fit, even though much of history has proven doing so tends toward the opposite; confining us not only individually, but collectively, familially, and more than anything, consciously. The average Westerner’s consciousness is not at the level of one. Not yet, and maybe not ever, should we choose to keep on our path of finding peace through creating more and more categories, bringing us farther and farther from the most overencompassing one, that of which has no need to be created.

It’s a fair thing we are doing. Religions and philosophies have struggled over ‘what there is’ since time began. And as I’ve begun to investigate more religions and more philosophies myself, I’ve seen a trend in those of Western origin. I don’t think we truly want to find the one thing there is, despite claims we are looking. Because something that’s indescribable and ever intelligent, a substance or entity that is smarter than us and out of our grasp, that’s simply a secular nightmare. So we must run away, and whatever the one thing is will stay, still within us and under our noses, but disguised in the various categories of our Western world; appearing, very, very dualistic in nature.

You might be curious how one could even postulate this ‘one thing,’ if it were as great as I’ve described it above. Well, people have tried, yet they have admitted they will fail before they start, knowing the ‘one thing’ is beyond our things and we must leave it at that. It is in fact an answer, but it leaves the door open, instead of closed.

An example:

In Daoism, there is yin and there is yang. We all know the symbol. Yin is dark, yang is light. Yin is passive, yang is active. The list could go on and on, detailing the juxtaposing properties of the two energies that make up the world.

But here is the catch. Within every juxtaposition, there is the seed of its counterpart. Go back to the symbol. Do you see the seed?

What is that seed? The thing that connects opposites, the interplay between that which could never be the same but also must be — that’s the one thing. In Daoism, it’s called the Dao. For the US, we have settled on calling it coincidence, circumstance, or bullshit.

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…

I think the way I dress subconsciously reflects my energy, the energy of the world around me, and the energy I am seeking from the world around me. On days with dull skies and lots of shit to get done, I compile as much color as one could, almost as a shield to protect me from the inevitable mundanity of being an adult. I wrote the methodologies section for my current study at a coffee shop sitting crisscross applesauce, in a pink polka dot skirt, which I was wearing as a top, which was draped over a second blue skirt, being worn as an actual skirt. My zebra print shoes were beneath my chair and my socks had rubber duckies on them.

If I had walked past myself a year ago, I would have gasped — thrown the hideous shoes over my hideous socks trying to decide which was more hideous, as embarrassed as if I’d been caught in the nude. I’d have been appalled back then, because just who said I could do what felt good in my body? Just who said I could express using what made me feel happy? And last but certainly not least, just who in the hell said I could let the manifestations of the above change, not only across the societal milestones of a life, but across a damn day?

We all do it as children. We are allowed our tom-boy phases and Fancy Nancy ones, we dip our toe in X, Y, and Z, and leave our feet dirty after. Our caregivers sit back, waiting to truly invest in us until we land on what will stick, knowing the world is a good enough hose to rinse away the excess, so they need not worry about doing it. We tend to age in accordance with the world. The tom-boy becomes the skater, Fancy Nancy gets a Nordstrom credit card, and we settle on X, Y, or Z.

By the time we are adults, we have passed the point of decision, haven’t we?

It’s too late to take up dance. Come out. Move countries. Change fields. We must stay in line. We are not children anymore. Perhaps we even look back, and reminisce on the beautiful lineality that was our childhood. Ask yourself, at what age did you set your direction?

…

I was making the demographic survey for the study I mentioned earlier, and started by typing out all the most basic questions — race, gender, sexuality, age, etc. Then, my advisor asked me why I included each one, recommending I have a good answer because that would have to go in my methodologies section. I thought about it for a while. At first it appeared obvious. Our identities do very much affect how we show up in this world.

However, it got less obvious as I kept thinking. And that is because who we each are is so intrinsically dependent on the intersectionality of our identities, that them in isolation really doesn’t tell us much. In order for everyone to always know the most they can, we are encouraged to pick, choose, and stay; finding boxes of which we may fit into, but will never completely fill, letting parts of us slip through the cracks, be shut out, or maybe, never even come to see the light of day.

We grow up thinking we can only be one thing, and that our “things” define us greatly, definitively, and dualistically. We fear perception as if the goal is to be unperceivable. To fit so well into the boxes that life lays out for us that we disappear within them. To play our assigned roles with such high caliber, we forget the coolest part about theatre.

That at the end of the day, it’s all an act.

…

Growing up on Disney and duality, I could never decide if I wanted to be Liv or Maddie. I loved sports and my older brother and chicken drumsticks, so maybe Maddie fit me better. But I also loved sparkles and dreamt of being an actor, which was just like Liv.

I tried the whole acting thing. I was the Beast in Beauty and the Beast and wore a large, hard to breathe in mask that smelled like rubber and sad adults. When I took it off after a show, I’d gasp for air and thank God for my forehead, nose, and lips. I knew I had to wear the awful mask again, but only for the act; and it was worth it to play the part.

I think duality is a lot like me and Beauty in the Beast.

In a modern world, we might have to play our parts sometimes. We might even want to. Some situations require us to conform to categorical norms and sometimes leaning on our categories for structural support is a comfort. But the portion of situations in which we must do the above is like the portion of your life you’ve spent in the theatre. And for most of us, that isn’t too much time.

…

Non-duality in its various cultural and philosophical implications has led me to the following conclusion.

There is something which connects everything there is.

I don’t know what, or how, but I know why. Or maybe I don’t know why either, but I can feel it.

I’ve realized the act.

This world wasn’t made to be separate, or to separate. It isn’t supposed to displace its manifestations across a spectrum, granting them permission to move only within certain margins at certain times. No, this world was built to flow. And we as humans, come out of this world. We too, are built to flow.

…

I’m wearing quite boring athletic clothes right now. I just taught two yoga classes and want to starfish in the grass. Although it’s boring, it’s the right outfit for who I am right now at this moment and therefore it feels like me. In an hour, I might not be this same person anymore. I might feel like my sparkly nails or my older brother. I might reinvent the wheel, transcending language all together with how I show up aesthetically. Actually, I’d like to think that is my style — one that transcends the word.

My style is many things, sometimes corresponding to the categories one would infer from looking at me, and other times, well, I’ll listen to Chief Keef with my mala necklace and hot pink pants.

This spectrum we have, well, you can connect the ends, tie them together, and find the greatest trick of all — they form a perfect circle. And I must say, it’s very fun to live on a circle.

Interested in learning more? Check out the new TUNED UP EP

One or Many: What Non-Duality can do for the West

In this episode, I dive into

• The philosophical pioneer of dualism in the West + how his ideas continue to influence us

• What non-duality is and how it shows up in Indian and East Asian thought

• Evidence of non-dualistic energy transfers in day-to-day phenomena

• What non-dual thought conceptions provide us on a spiritual, personal, and relational level

(also available on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, and soon to be on YouTube!)

other updates

1. Last call for Nicaragua 200-hour YTT

2. Retreat spots are open for November in BALI

3. Last class in SLO is July 5th, 5 pm @The Center

feel free to reach out, let’s connect!

What is Yoga?

As a yoga teacher and practitioner, one would think I’d have a crack-a-lackin definition for what yoga is. A fixed, historically established, and authentic phrase or term that’s short enough to go on a business card, well-written enough to make it clear I know what I’m talking about, but still colloquial enough to be understood by any reader. A definition that fit for other people — fitting others into my understandings and experiences, molding my yoga to their bodies, then being confused when alas, something didn’t sit right.

It’s for this reason that many people pass on yoga. Or any sort of spiritual engagement, really. If we don’t resonate with the definition given by the teacher, book, or podcast, we move on — on the hunt for the next thing that will most certainly resonate perfectly, because surely that exists! If we are talking about yoga, perhaps one will flow between kinds — from Ashtanga to Bhakti, to Bikram, to Yin, landing each time not in a ‘comfortable seat’ as most yoga practices begin in, but one that’s very, very uncomfortable.

A seat that feels forced, coerced even, inauthentic, and foreign. I’ve felt all those things in yoga before. The teacher would talk about Tapas, and I’d think about the snack plates. The teacher would say Ujjayi breathing, and I’d hold my breath. It was not out of my own disrespect or a failure of yogic concepts that I felt this way and did these things. It was simply that during that time, yoga was nothing more than a type of movement that I didn’t feel the need to track on my Apple Watch. The first type, actually. Some yogis might deem that atrocious, but perhaps they have not been thrust through the turmoil of being a high school girl in a changing body. Yoga couldn’t have been anything more for me back then because I was not ready for it to be. Yoga grew with me, as I did. Now, yoga isn’t what my teacher taught me in YTT, nor what Patanjali, the Bhagavad Gita, Swami Vivekananda, or any of the many commentators, recent and ancient, have said.

Yoga is what it is to me, when it needs to be that, for the time period which is needed, until something changes.

During times of disordered eating and exercise, yoga was what gave me permission to rest. In times of nostalgia for childhood, it became my permission to play. Yoga has been my permission to be curious, naive, stupid, and wise. It’s brought me to philosophical concepts that resonated so deeply I felt as if I’d thought of them myself, and to ones so unaligned I wanted to argue with whoever thought of them.

Some people may not like this viewpoint. It isn’t uncommon for those on ‘spiritual paths’ to be upset with those who mix up lineages and intertwine modernity — not embracing the ‘totality’ of practices like yoga. Perhaps that’s why people will choose a specific kind, marry it, then die in its name. And that does not just go for yoga — but religion, politics, and ways of life in general.

Definitions give us ground. Identity. Evidence. They make it so we don’t have to think or try as hard for ourselves. They make us weary and fond of things. Definitions tend to set the parameters of our lives.

Just think about the different populations I would attract by advertising a yoga class with two different definitions.

Hot Yoga Flow - come get sweaty and strong!

Heated Vinyasa - come cultivate Tapas and rebuild yourself from the inside out!

And yes, these could be the exact same class. It’s only their definition that is different. For the person who has worked all day and never done yoga in their life, they may need to lean sweat it out with fast-paced movements and tune out any spiels about tapas. But if it’s a Vedantic monk stumbling into class, perhaps their needs would be different. Yet, neither one is right or wrong, better or worse. The overworked layman probably won’t be inclined to understand Brahman during class, and the monk probably won’t be inclined to pulse in warrior 2.

That said, on the International Day of Yoga, I don’t wish to define what it is we are celebrating. In fact, I wish for you to release all the definitions you have ever heard, leaving space for yoga to be what it needs to be for you at this moment, and for that to be open to change. I don’t by any means wish to condone cheapening yoga into a workout, as it is often done in the West. However, if that is the only application that feels resonant for you right now, start there, for it’s what you need to get you to what comes next — be that on or off the mat. No matter where we are, we deserve the time and fluidity that are required for one to find our own definitions.

So, regardless if you practice every day, have never tried in your life, or are somewhere in between, know that a definition awaits you. Your own experience will shape how you see what it is that you do, and as much as that can be influenced by texts and teachers, it ultimately resides in your own heart.

I suppose if I were forced to define yoga, I’d say it’s that journey — from the head to the heart.

my updates!

Feeling called for training…there is ONE more spot for July’s 200-hour in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua —> CLICK HERE

Missed last week’s episode of Tuned Up? Tune in before Ep3 drops next Sunday!

message me with any questions <3

Have a beautiful day,

Addie Uhl

I’m so lucky I can’t speak. I’m crying tears of pure love and they make my face this longing kind of dry. Like when you emerge from salt water and you’re reborn again. The water is what healed you, but you can’t stay underwater. You can’t stay with what healed you. I can’t stay here.

I’m going.

…

A different person than I was before who wears what she wants, says what she thinks, and dances at the party. She doesn’t want to be anyone else anymore. Not even the girls who she used to watch dance. She wants to be exactly who she is, surrounded by the people who have allowed her to find that out. She wonders, just a little bit, if without those people and this place, she can be that same person. What if out of the water, she changes?

She won’t. She will remember the lessons from every piece of the puzzle that put her together. She will see them in her reflection — in the parts of her that are borrowed. She won’t ever be alone, because she is made of the idiosyncrasies of everything she has known. These people that have crossed her path, no matter how far away they may drift, will never be fully gone. They will appear in subtle ways, quite close to her. She won’t always be cognizant of how. Sometimes a face will flash across her eyes, a quick familiar knowing, then a blink. Other times she won’t know anything at all. She will be the manifestation of someone else’s love and not think about it for a second. Both instances will be so beautiful that her heart will grow just a little bit bigger each time they occur.

The heart is the center of cognition in some philosophies. This makes sense. Because her heart will always know from whom she got what, and as their impact flows through her skin out into the world, it’s her heart that will remember to save just enough. She will let this world feel the love she has been so lucky to receive, but she won’t let the world steal it from her — just how it felt will forever be under her nose. She can come back to this love any time she slows down enough to do so. It’s only a trick that time moves fast.

Time moves her along, her puzzle pieces displacing across the globe again and again. She will find herself being the reason that two people who have never met are somehow changed by each other — the ones that changed her embedding into the ones she’s going to change. Her heart knows this to be true. It knows it has all it needs to move on. It’s gotten the bits and pieces that its cracks required to be whole. But at times it’s hard to trust the heart. So she will feel it hurt — a lot at first. It’s pulling away from her — touch and go, rampantly, like chopsticks in the hands of a bored child. She will splinter, edges showing, pieces finally out in the sun. She wasn’t ready to admit her insides weren’t all hers. The heart never told her that until now.

It tells her slowly. Lethargicly. One step at a time.

…

That’s when my tears stopped and I could no longer speak. I couldn’t look around me without seeing my reflection, without wondering if any pieces of myself were lodged inside others the way theirs were inside me. Wondering if when I left, I’d leave anything behind.

I’m leaving what healed me. I don’t want to go. I finally feel whole, after a long time of feeling half. I guess I just answered my own question. It is time. My heart has what it needs now. That’s all it was waiting for — cracks filled, it’s ready to bring the person I became in California out of California. To bring what California gave me to others. To form new cracks which will be filled by new people and places and moments.

Thank god my heart is so smart. Because if there was a chance I’d ever forget the love I have felt in California, I’d stake my heart into its soil.

Tuned Up - Ep 2: Impermanence: How to deal with change

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What’s to come?

1. 200-hour yoga teacher training THIS JULY

2. NICARAGUA yoga retreat THIS JULY

3. BALI yoga retreat in NOVEMBER

4. Episodes of Tuned Up, blog posts, and TikToks documenting my post-grad journey — teaching yoga, volunteering, and backpacking around Central America, Europe, and Southeast Asia - STAY TUNED

Message me with any and all questions <3

LISTEN NOW (link for Apple + Amazon)

What is Tuned Up?

Tuned Up is a space to breathe new air. It’s a multicultural exploration of philosophy, spirituality, wellness, and personal identity in a way that WON’T break your brain in half… a guide for a more holistic and open approach to living in our fragmented modern context.

Why I started Tuned Up?

I grew up like many people in the West, right under the nose of our philosophy and cultural norms. I was taught to detach from my body and what was around me — that the world was an artifact, and my job as a human was to get a firm grip on the damn thing!

This mechanical approach to life led me to struggle with not only my relationship to my body, but also my relationship to joy, curiosity, and personal identity. It wasn’t until I began traveling that I understood the world wasn’t an artifact everywhere. On a small island in Bocas del Toro, Panama, the world was the greatest gift we ever had, our bodies an extension. No one preached opposing spirituality, religion, or philosophy to me there. They simply lived the result of their perhaps unlabeled foundations of the three knowledge bases.

After spending months in Central America, I enrolled in Yoga Teacher training, which opened my eyes to even more concepts of the world apart from secular Western thought. Since becoming a yoga teacher, I’ve directed my work as a writer, researcher, and now podcaster, to accessibly transmitting some of the beautiful ideas that exist around different parts of the world to primarily Western audiences.

You probably don’t have the time to sift through thousands of pages of puzzle-like commentaries on the human experience, but that shouldn’t stop you from accessing ways of being that make our experience truly our own.

So…what can you expect from Tuned Up?

By-weekly episodes that educate, reason, relate, and reconstruct. Each will begin with

• Topic/theme in Western culture + explanation of its philosophical foundations

• Introduction to a differing perspective stemming from the East (think Yogic, Indian, Chinese philosophy)

• How to integrate the two! (ie. taking ancient/foreign wisdom and applying it to YOUR life)

READY TO GET TUNED UP BITCH?

Check out episode 1: What are we missing?

Hint: it comes from a 9-point Scrabble word

2. Last Drop In Class for this school year!

Want to unwind and move before heading into finals week? Come flow with me THIS FRIDAY, June 5th, at The Center SLO — a beautiful heated studio in downtown San Luis Obispo.

Heated power vinyasa. 4 pm. $12

Sign up now - Limited Spots Available

3. Special Offer

If you listen and rate my podcast on your preferred platform, your class will be HALF PRICED!

$6 for an hour-long flow! (one drop in at the Center goes for $33 😱)

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