There’s a conversation I’ve been having with myself since we landed in Mallorca, and it starts with “You’re where you want to be in the world, so why aren’t you happy?” It’s triggered when I’m smiling watching the kids play in the yard or lying uncomfortably on our mattress on the terracotta-tiled floor at night. I’m starting to realise why I haven’t had clarity about it because the reason is more complicated than being happy or not happy.

New here? Read the full story of our journey to Spain:

The transition has been challenging in all the predictable ways any international move is challenging, but I’ve also found it to be an incredibly valuable exercise in developing the exact qualities I could use more of in my life, like patience, surrender, and the ability to stay present when nothing feels settled. In our first six weeks here, these capacities have been tested relentlessly, and even in the midst of the storms, I can feel how it’s shifting something in me. I’ve been describing it to friends as a feeling of spaciousness, which sounds contradictory when I’m also telling them how uncomfortable everything feels on the surface. But that’s exactly what it is, this internal expansion happening while the external circumstances feel constricting and incomplete.

The list of discomforts is long. We don’t have our home fully set up yet, so we have a relatively empty home with makeshift furniture arrangements. I don’t have steady in person clients established here, which creates its own sphere of uncertainty. And then there’s the language barrier, which has become its own special source of comedy and panic. Every time a Spanish number rings on my phone, my nervous system goes into immediate fight-or-flight because I know it’s a delivery man trying to drop off an Amazon package, and I’m about to spend the next ten minutes trying to buy time on the call while frantically Google Translating everything I want to say to him, filling in the blanks with my Spanglish or even Italian because at least that’s closer than English. I have, however, successfully learned how to say “just throw the package over the fence,” which feels like a huge linguistic achievement.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment has been the amount of time I now spend in a car. In Byron Bay, school pickup and drop-off was a ten-minute round trip. Here in Mallorca, it’s two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. Four hours of my day, every single day, just driving back and forth. Surprisingly, I’m actually enjoying it. The morning drive to school is filled with curious conversation from the kids, this uninterrupted time where we’re all together and talking about whatever’s on their minds. And then on the way back, I finally get real alone time. I thought I’d use it to catch up on phone calls with friends and family, but nature had other plans. I can’t stay on a call for longer than three minutes before it cuts out, so I’ve completely given up on that idea. Instead, I’m just driving solo in silence, or listening to podcasts, music, teachings—currently working through Jonni’s Living the Veda course again. It’s establishing a new kind of stillness and I’m finding that I actually love it.

The mattress on the floor situation is another thing entirely. This is not my idea of a great sleep setup, and yet I’ve somehow fully surrendered to it. If you told me this is how I’d be living for the rest of my life, I’d probably just shrug and say okay, sure, I can do this. When I look up from that mattress in the morning and watch the kids playing in the yard, when I see them trimming roses from our rose bush to decorate the table or picking lemons from the tree or drawing in their books outside with a sea breeze while looking at the mountains, something deep in me settles. These idyllic moments are everywhere. I’m exercising in the backyard and getting wafts of rose and lavender. I’m seeing beauty and feeling beauty in a way that feels really good and really right, even though we still don’t have our visas confirmed and we’re facing a dozen other challenges I won’t even list here.

So why, in the middle of all this rightness and beauty and spaciousness, is there still a heaviness inside me?

The heaviness is actually more noticeable now because of the spaciousness. It’s like when you finally clean out a cluttered room and suddenly you can see the one thing that doesn’t belong, there’s this feeling that’s been there for as long as I can remember, and now I cant ignore it. I’ve been sitting with it, trying to feel into it to understand where it’s coming from, and this has brought up something I’ve struggled with for years: the question of how to actually feel a feeling. I’ve talked a lot about using Jonni’s Golden Sequence technique throughout this whole Spain transition—Surrender, Accept, Feel, Connect, Respond—but I’m always wondering if I’m doing the “feel” part correctly. I’m the kind of person who likes a method with clear steps, something I can check off and know I’m executing properly. Abstract concepts with no measurable outcome make me twitchy. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a gotta-do-it-right kind of gal. When people tell me there’s no right or wrong way to do something, I’m very vocal about my disagreement. There is absolutely a right way, and I will find it.

Jonni’s definition of feeling is to be all-inclusive in your awareness—to allow all feelings to be present, to sit with them without trying to change them, and to know that the truth of your divine light will naturally dissipate anything that isn’t resonant with that truth. According to his definition, I have been doing it right. And yet this particular feeling won’t dissipate. What I’m learning is that it has layers, and dealing with it is a constant process of meeting each layer as it surfaces and peeling back to the next one.

I’ve always had this heaviness at my baseline. For as long as I can remember, it’s been there. Even during the happiest periods of my life when I was doing everything I wanted to be doing, even then, it was still present underneath. It never obstructed me from living fully or overshadowed all the good—it just sat there quietly in the background, like a low hum you eventually stop noticing but never actually goes away. When I was living in New York, life was exactly how I wanted it, with the exception of finding a solid relationship, which took ten years and eventually turned out to be Jonni. But even during the years when I wasn’t looking for a partner and was totally happy being single, the heaviness was there. I kept searching for what was causing it, convinced that if I could just identify the source, I could fix it.

When I moved back to Australia after fifteen years away, I had the opportunity to heal relationships I thought might be the root of it all. Returning home made me realize something I hadn’t been conscious of when I left: I’d been escaping a discomfort I couldn’t even name. With more life experience and a bit more wisdom, the discomfort became crystal clear, and life provided the exact circumstances I needed to do the healing work. Real, substantial shifts happened—things I’d resigned myself to as “just the way things are” actually changed.

But now here I am in Mallorca, and there’s still a layer of heaviness. I said to Jonni recently, “I don’t remember ever not feeling this. It’s always been there, like a baseline.” And then I caught myself, surely not as a baby. Every photograph, every story from that time shows a joyful, playful child. That joy and playfulness got squeezed out somewhere along the way, not seen or recognized in the way a child needs, so I figured out other ways to get attention. I became the kid hunting for validation through achievement—the best marks, the hardest subjects, excellence in sports to match the attention my brothers seemed to get effortlessly. And then I’d beat them academically too, just to cover all bases. The clear message I was sending: Smart and athletic—good luck competing with that, boys.

In this current chapter, I’ve had these unexpected moments of tears that seem to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, like I’m finally crying for the exact moment when that little girl stopped being herself. Afterward, there’s a lightness I can feel in my body, a softening that lets me notice things I’d been walking past. The particular way roses smell in the morning. How trees move in the wind. The quality of light changing on water. I’m more connected to the people I love in a way that feels less effortful, more natural. I’m noticing with the kids, who can test every ounce of my patience within a five-minute window, that even during these windows when they’re driving me crazy I feel this bone-deep adoration for them and want them closer to me.

There’s something opening up to a knowing that exists beyond my heart’s feelings and my mind’s thoughts. Real knowing, the absolute truth of who we are, doesn’t need either of those to exist. What I’m realizing is that the heaviness is what I’ve let obscure that knowing all these years. Life keeps presenting circumstances that create opportunities to peel back the next layer, and then the next one after that. It’s slow work, incremental work, but it’s the only way through.

What I fully understand now, which before was just a concept I could intellectually grasp, is that you can’t outrun heaviness by changing locations. You can’t blame it on your environment or project it onto the people around you. The heaviness travels with you because it lives inside you, not outside you in the world. There are different intensities of it, but at its core, it’s usually accumulated unworthiness, this thick residue of not-enough-ness that weighs everything down. The only way to clear it is by actually living, by showing up fully to your life, because that’s what creates the friction and circumstances needed to address what you’re carrying. With real willingness and consistent practice, the layers can be removed. I’m still in that removal process. With each layer that gets addressed, I’m shown an aspect of myself I hadn’t let myself see before. Other people could apparently see it, friends, Jonni, my kids, but I couldn’t access it myself.

The heaviness is often what instigates big changes in your life. It’s the uncomfortable feeling that makes you think maybe you need to move countries, leave a relationship, completely restructure how you’re spending your days. But the change itself, the new country, the ended relationship, the restructured life, that’s not what resolves the heaviness. What the change does is create new conditions, new circumstances that nature can use to help you address what’s actually underneath. The move to Mallorca didn’t fix the heaviness, but it’s revealing layers I couldn’t have accessed while I was comfortable and settled in Byron Bay. The discomfort here, the uncertainty, the stretched-beyond-capacity feeling—all of it is creating conditions for more truth to surface, more light to emerge.

At Ritam Studio, we're creating conditions for people to meet what they've been carrying. Through Jonni's meditation practices and teachings, you learn to drop beyond your thoughts and access Being that exists no matter what's happening on the surface. Through my movement classes, you're conditioning your body to make that place of knowing and unchanging truth your baseline, removing the obstacles that have been blocking your access to it. We're building your capacity to stabilise this every day, to peel back layers without rushing the process, and to recognize the moments when more of who you really are gets revealed.

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The heaviness will keep following you until you turn around and look at it directly. When you finally do, when you sit with it and feel it all the way through without trying to make it go away, you’ll find that underneath everything you’ve been carrying, there’s a knowing that’s been there the whole time.

This is the work we’re doing at Ritam Studio, and if this story is resonating with you, you’re not alone in it. Over the years, so many clients and friends have shared versions of this same experience with me, different circumstances, different flavors, but the same essence underneath. That baseline feeling of heaviness that follows you from city to city, relationship to relationship, chapter to chapter. The knowing that something is there asking to be looked at. It’s why Jonni and I decided to create The Reveal — a four-day intimate retreat here in Mallorca this July 23-26, designed to address exactly this. To create the conditions for you to meet your own layers and actually see what’s been obscuring your knowing. Every day begins with my Chain Movement practice to prime the body, moves into deep Vedic practices including rounding, and then Jonni guides the group through a structured process of self-inquiry that takes you somewhere most people haven’t been able to go on their own. By the end of four days, you’ll understand the specific pattern that’s been holding you back, and you’ll have the tools to keep peeling back the layers when you go home.

I feel remnants of the heaviness some mornings, but it’s vastly different to what it was. Life keeps presenting exactly what you need to heal, the trick is being willing to feel it instead of analyzing it, fixing it, or waiting for better circumstances to process it. I’m enjoying what’s here—the roses in the backyard, the kids picking lemons, the four hours of car time daily —while simultaneously sitting with the discomfort of what’s unresolved. Both can be true at the same time, the beauty and the heaviness. The spaciousness and the layer that’s ready to be peeled back next. Your truth gets revealed little by little, little by little.

Love,
Carla

P.S. If you've been carrying something you can't quite name, something that persists no matter how good life looks on the outside, the Reveal Retreat is for you. July 23–26, Mallorca. We'd love to see you here.

The last month has been the most stretched I’ve ever been, physically, emotionally, in every direction a person can be pulled. Our Emirates flight got cancelled two weeks out, which we’d half-expected might happen, but there’s a difference between expecting something and living through the actual scramble of rebooking an entire family across the world in the middle of geopolitical chaos. We ended up on an Etihad business flight through the Middle East—the most direct route, minimal layover, and somehow the same price as economy seats on Singapore Airlines or Air China with their multiple stops and marathon layovers. Nobody wanted to fly through that region, and I understood why. We weighed the options carefully. The business flight felt right, despite everything.

I knew we’d be safe, but I also played devil’s advocate with myself. What if the risk really was higher than normal? And even then, the answer came back clear: if something was meant to happen, it was always going to happen. Living in constant risk aversion would mean living in a very small, very restrictive bubble, and that’s not the life we’re building for our kids. So we boarded the plane, and the flight turned out to be a breeze. The kids had a ball, Jonni and I somewhat rested, and I remembered why I used to love flying, that suspended time with often no internet, endless movies to fall asleep to, a natural fast since plane food has never appealed to me. Of course, flying with kids is a completely different experience now and I don’t necessarily love it! It’s weeks of mental preparation, a giant onboard bag stuffed with every possible thing they could ask for—wet wipes up the wazoo, snacks, games, coloring books, spare clothes—and a heavy travel pouch filled with all my tinctures. Saffira tends to vomit on long flights, and I’ve become accustomed to air hostesses yelling at me to sit down during landing when I’m standing there with two full vomit bags in my hands. Jonni has told me many times that the look I give them in those moments isn’t pretty. I’m working on it though!

But this flight brought something entirely new. Our youngest started needing to urinate constantly, every ten minutes, like clockwork. Imagine managing that on a long-haul flight from Australia to Mallorca. Jonni and I tried to foster some independence, encouraging him to go by himself, and god bless him, he tried. On his first solo attempt, he managed to get the door open, but the problem was he had to stand on the toilet seat and lean forward to reach the handle. Mid-reach, he swung out with the door, lost his balance, and ended up clinging to the handle for dear life as the door swung open with him dangling from it. The whole thing was a disaster. So we spent the entire flight accompanying him to the bathroom, over and over and over again.

This wasn’t the first time I’d seen this pattern. When Jonni went to Rishikesh for a month to run his teacher training, both kids developed the same issue—frequent urination, even bed-wetting at night despite being dry for years. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the bladder is linked to the kidneys, and the kidneys are the organs that hold fear. When a child experiences anxiety, insecurity, or fear around big change, it weakens the qi of the bladder, and the body manifests what the mind can’t yet articulate. My son’s body was telling me what he couldn’t put into words: this is big, this is scary, I don’t know what’s on the other side of this change.

We landed in Mallorca still riding on fumes from the massive job of leaving home, and within days we went to see the apartment we’d been negotiating for over six weeks. The interiors were beautiful—modern, clean, exactly what we’d seen in the videos our real estate agent had shared. But the view left something to be desired, and the area itself was both Jonni’s and my worst nightmare. Heavily touristed, kind of ugly, with shops selling t-shirts that said “We Love Sluts.” The kids, of course, loved the sleek modern apartment compared to our 120-year-old Queenslander back in Australia. Jonni appreciated the idea of a place he wouldn’t have to maintain, and the fact that it was ready and available immediately. But my gut said no, it said it repeatedly.

We met with the owner and his son anyway, both smiley and lovely to our faces. “See you in the office tomorrow morning to sign,” they said. “The place is ready for you tomorrow.” We’d already air-freighted two boxes to that address, filled with kitchen supplies and kids’ toys, things we didn’t want to wait two months for while our shipping container made its way across the ocean. After the meeting, we wandered the town, and Saffira looked up at me and said, “This doesn’t feel right. This is not a good town.” I had to laugh. I understand my love. I feel it too.

On a whim, I asked our real estate agent to show us one more property, a finca he’d mentioned weeks ago that we’d initially passed on because it wasn’t modern like the apartment. He managed to organize a viewing for that same afternoon, and when we met up with him a few hours later, he delivered unexpected news: “I’m sorry, but they gave the apartment to someone else today.” We stood there, shocked, and then all we could do was laugh. I felt a strange sense of relief wash over me, I knew it wasn’t right for us, but like Jonni, I’d been willing to take it just so we could finally settle.

Then we saw the finca, and everything shifted. It sat in a quiet part of town where only locals lived, with mountains visible from the front porch and the ocean just a five-minute walk down the road. There was a vegetable garden already established, beautiful plants everywhere, a kids’ playroom, and so many spaces where we could actually breathe. It’s rare to find a property in Mallorca that’s this rural with so much acreage—120 acres—but still so close to the coast. The house itself was filled with grandma’s furniture, which was absolutely what I didn’t want, a stinky nanna’s house with cobweb-covered furniture, but we could see past all of that to the potential underneath. It fell right within our budget. We took it. We love it.

That felt like a massive win, and it was. But the discomfort we’ve been swimming in since we arrived has been real and relentless. We’ve had the kids with us full-time while trying to set up an entire house from absolute scratch, no furniture, no kitchen utensils, no towels, nothing. We’ve had to drag them to mind-numbingly boring stores to buy basic essentials while they whined about wanting to play instead, and I completely understood their frustration because I felt it too. We just wanted to get them a decent mattress to sleep on and some nice linens so they’d feel settled. But their stamina for car rides and shopping expeditions is nothing like ours, and by the end of each day, they were completely cooked—which meant we were too. Each day felt simultaneously enormous and unproductive.

What I’m learning is that Spaniards do things slowly, and they enjoy themselves in the process. They don’t mind waiting in lines at the bank or post office, they don’t complain about traffic, and they’re never in a rush. Living on an island seems to have doubled their already-relaxed pace, and Jonni and I were still operating on the enormous fumes we’d been running on since we started this whole relocation process months ago. Now we’d finally arrived, and we realized the real work was only just beginning.

We’re both stretched thin. Jonni is handling it better than I am—he has a much more relaxed approach to when things actually get done. I’m a super Virgo New Yorker who needs things done yesterday, and I’m finding myself in this constant, exhausting dance of letting go and surrendering. It reminds me of childbirth, actually, that’s the only other time in my life when I fully understood what surrender actually means in the body, not just as a concept.

When you relocate to another country, there’s this built-in waiting period that you can’t rush or skip. You’re waiting for your shipping container to arrive, waiting for your visa to be processed, waiting to find the right home, then waiting to choose and order furniture, and then waiting for that furniture to actually arrive—and in Spain, you can quadruple whatever timeline you thought was reasonable. Even though every part of you wants to set up your place and make it feel like home immediately, you simply have to wait. Patiently. Without forcing anything. My capacity to respond to situations with my usual efficiency is definitely less than normal right now. There’s a deep fatigue that’s settled into my system, and underneath that is a low-level stress that’s been accumulating since the lead-up to the move—the endless logistics, the uncertainty, and now the daily reality of trying to make sure the kids are happy and that everything is actually okay. Even with all the practices I have to keep myself grounded, I’ve been stretched in a way I’ve never experienced before.

I’ve never been the kind of person who wanted a full-time nanny, but in these weeks, I absolutely did. I wanted a cook too. And a driver. I felt like I had nothing left to give, and simply being present with the kids every single day while simultaneously trying to establish our stable home base felt like more than enough to ask of myself. Add to that the experience of navigating impossibly tiny European streets, having to execute perfect bumper parking jobs every time you need to run to the shops, and then rushing home to cook dinner at a decent hour so the kids can get to bed on time—it was just too much. But as a parent, you don’t get to tap out. You have to keep going somehow, and you have to find spaciousness inside yourself even when it feels like there isn’t any left.

All of this was happening while my thinking brain kept repeating the same unhelpful refrain: “You wanted to move here. You got exactly what you wanted, so you should be happy.” But happiness wasn’t leading the show at all. What I could feel most prominently was overwhelm and bone-deep fatigue. And yet, underneath all of that, something still felt profoundly right.

Our property really is amazing. Every single day we walk with the kids down to the water and jump in, letting the ocean cleanse us. We chant Gayatri mantras to Surya as the sun sets over the water, and watching the kids sing along while they cuddle into Jonni makes me cry, tears of overwhelming gratitude that we were actually supported in making it here. At the same time, I’m still challenged by the reality of sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and I’m irritated by living in a terracotta stone tile house with no rugs to absorb sound (particularly when my son is also experimenting with a high-pitched vocal sound that he insists feels good and releases tension). Through all this deep discomfort, though, I keep finding moments of immense beauty and gratitude that take my breath away.

This experience is tiring, and it feels like being pulled in two completely different directions at once. You’re so uncomfortable and yet simultaneously so happy, but it’s not the normal kind of happiness you’re used to experiencing. It’s not surface-level laughter and joy. It’s something deeper—a resonating-with-the-self kind of happiness that exists even while the loud, uncomfortable surface layer tries to convince you otherwise. I’ve moved countries before, but each time I got absorbed in working and exploring the city, making friends, going out. With kids, it’s different. They need my presence, and that seems to take all my energy, staying present with them instead of doing all the things that need to get done. And here in Mallorca, where everything moves at half-speed and nobody rushes, where the cultural rhythm itself seems to insist on not-doing, I’m being forced to match that pace whether I like it or not. The kids need to be nurtured first and foremost. They need to feel safe with all this change, and that requires me as their parent to feel safe about the change myself, and because they mirror us, it’s important that I don’t fake feeling safe and happy. They’ll detect that immediately.

When you don’t have certainty around the specific factors that typically make you feel safe—for me, that’s having a visa sorted, knowing what work opportunities exist, and living in a beautiful home that nourishes our family—it pushes you into entirely new dimensions of your self. For me, that’s meant connecting even more deeply with the certainty in myself that this move felt right, despite every single challenge and unknown and hairy curveball we’ve been thrown. Growth happens in discomfort. Sitting at the precipice of massive change is uncomfortable by definition, and yet that’s exactly where the greatest growth lives. I’ve moved our family so far from everything we know—our community, the kids’ Nonna and Nonno who they adore and see every week, our established rhythm and routine, the very stable life we’d built in Australia. I am deeply uncomfortable, and I am also growing in ways I couldn’t have predicted. And slowly, I’m learning to recognize and appreciate the beauty of the small things that bring comfort in the midst of so much uncertainty.

I’m learning that landing somewhere new isn’t about having it all figured out. It’s about staying present even when nothing feels complete yet, while constantly connecting back to that deeper knowing instead of letting the narrative of discomfort take over. Growth doesn’t feel like expansion when you’re in it, it feels like being stretched beyond what you thought was your capacity, right to that point where you feel like it’s all falling apart, where you’re feeling lazy and just want to give in or give up or get someone else to handle everything for you. This is exactly what meditation and movement prepare us for: not the fantasy of living without discomfort, but developing the capacity to stay connected to yourself and your knowing while you’re right in the middle of it.

At Ritam Studio, we create the specific conditions you need to develop this capacity in your own life. Through Jonni's meditation practices and spiritual teachings, you learn to find the stillness that exists underneath whatever chaos you're navigating. Through my movement classes, you release what's been stored and held in your body so there's actual space to feel what's happening in real time without collapsing under the weight of it. This work isn't about transcending your challenges or bypassing the hard parts of being human. It's about building the internal foundation that allows you to move through inevitable change without losing yourself completely in the process.

When your child's body is processing fear through constant bathroom trips, when you're sleeping on a mattress on the floor in a foreign country wondering what you've actually done, when the discomfort feels bigger than your capacity to hold it—that's precisely when you need practices that ground you back into your body and your knowing. Things don't magically become okay just by telling yourself it's okay, you have to transcend the level of thought to access the place that knows it's okay, and that's exactly what these practices do. They help you stay connected to what's true underneath all the overwhelm.

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We're still sleeping on that mattress on the floor. The shipping container still hasn't arrived and the air freight boxes going to the other apartment (for immediate purposes) are still sitting in customs. Yet Jonni and I agree there's this quiet, unshakeable certainty that we're exactly where we need to be. Growth happens in the space between what you planned and what actually unfolds, and the only way through is to stay connected to the knowing that exists underneath every logistical nightmare, every moment of exhaustion, every second where you think you can't possibly do one more thing. That's where the real work lives, and that's exactly the territory Jonni and I are sitting in.

Love,
Carla

More in the series about our move to Spain:

Losing 10 days when we already felt like we were racing against the clock only amplified our sense of urgency and overwhelm. We were really exhausted, we’d pretty much packed up the house, we’d shipped all our furniture and we were well past the point of no return.

Our travel agent had called with some concern - bombs were flying in the middle east, flights were getting cancelled every hour and there was a bigger concern about jet fuel shortages, flights potentially grounded for the unforeseeable future.

“Get on the earliest flight you can,” she said.

So suddenly we had ten less days to prepare our Mullumbimby home for renters, pack up our lives, and get the earliest flight to Mallorca. Not flying at all wasn’t an option we were willing to consider.

That’s when our beautiful community showed up ready to work. People pulling weeds, painting walls, patching holes, fixing the veranda pilings. Someone tackled Carla’s jar collection, which deserves its own mention because if you know Carla, you know that was no small feat. Fixing gates, power hosing… the list went on.

I’d leave for the tip with a load of stuff, come back an hour later, and two more things would be done without me even thinking to ask. The garden cleared. Windows washed. Things packed and labeled for storage.

Carla and I kept looking at each other with this mixture of gratitude and awe at the love and commitment that our community made with such joy and enthusiasm, despite them feeling sad and a little confused why we were leaving in the first place.

We’ve spent years joyfully serving this community - teaching, holding space, showing up when people needed us. It’s a way of life that is expressive of our sense of purpose and gives meaning to everything we do. And to receive it back in such a flood of concentrated support at this scale, to watch people take initiative without being asked, to see them spend their precious time helping us reach out deadline, was a gift we never expected but became one of the most important experiences of this whole move abroad.

The bittersweet reality was that it took leaving to fully understand how extraordinary our community was. We always knew, but experiencing it at full force - that level of care and willingness to show up with sacred reciprocity revealed to us in such a clear way: this is what makes life meaningful.

Our greatest joy comes from being there for others, from investing in our community, from not being afraid to say “I need help” and showing up when someone else says it. The time and energy we invest creates a reciprocity so profound it reminds you why we’re actually here, to be with each other, to work with each other, to care for one another.

Needless to say our flight wasn’t one of the many that got cancelled, and we made it Spain - exhausted but filled with love and appreciation for the life we left behind. As the plane took off and I held hands and looked at each other with a sense of victory. We had made it! And it was a sweet victory in the sense that it was only because of our friends that we did!

We held the gaze as we the plane took exhausted and excited for the journey ahead and the incredible adventure our kids ahead of them. We knew we had made the right decision.

Love,
Jonni

P.S. Making yourself available and being generous with those you care about with your time and support is the quickest way to generate that sweet belonging we all long for.

More in the series about our move to Spain:

I want to start there because I think most of us assume the opposite. We generally wait for the crisis or breakdown; when staying becomes more painful than leaving. But sometimes things can be really, really good, and it’s still time to go.

This is the story of how we came to terms with an abstract impulse to move to Spain that, on paper, made absolutely no sense.

We lived in Mullumbimby within The Byron Bay Shire on the east coast of Australia, and if you know the place, you know why it’s one of the most sought-after regions in Australia - some would argue the world. There’s natural beauty everywhere you look. There’s a culture of true conscious living and a lifestyle that actually supports living that way. The climate is perfect (mostly, apart from the flooding rains) and school is two minutes down the road. We have the best organic supermarkets, farmers markets and fresh produce you could ask for.

We have a beautiful home that we purpose-built for everything we need. Private practices, film recording studio. It’s centrally located so the community can come to our events and is in close proximity to our dearest friends.

When I look at our life there, there’s not much I can point to that would justify leaving.

And yet…

About two years ago, Carla started talking about a deep, abstract calling that we needed to be in the Northern Hemisphere again.

I had just come off the back of spending almost five years renovating the house, making it perfect for how we wanted to live. So when she said that, I was obviously going to have some degree of resistance.

She’s full-blooded Italian and spent most of her adult and professional life in New York, regularly traveling to Europe. I could understand why she might be yearning for that kind of experience again. And honestly, at first I just put it down to her coming out of giving birth to our two beautiful children and raising them in a small regional country town with some itchy feet, craving some action.

At that stage, I wasn’t feeling it. So I acknowledged that she was, and quietly disregarded it as a little itch she just needed to scratch.

But despite my quiet objection, she maintained a pretty clear and determined relationship with this impulse. She’d bring it up regularly in bed as we were falling to sleep.

It’s still there. I’m still feeling it.

So I proposed we go scratch the itch. Take a trip, investigate the viability of it and see how it all felt.

We started planning about six months out, and something strange happened. I started to feel an odd pull towards Europe myself. I put it down to the fact that we were looking at destinations - Spain, Mallorca - and figured I was just stirring up some romanticism about the European lifestyle.

At one point I admitted it to Carla, and she stirred that pot.

We started entertaining the possibility. What might it look like? At some point in the future, what could that be?

I did it as an exercise and it was fun. But I was still quite resolved that it felt a long way off.

We agreed that this trip would be more than a holiday. It would be a trip to feel what it might be like to live there. Particularly in Mallorca as that’s where she was feeling the call most specifically.

I remember flying in and the coastline almost took my breath away. It was so beautiful. I had this overwhelming sense of oh my goodness, I think we’re going to move here before I’d even been to the place. It was a deep irrational knowingness that overrode all my reasons for why we should not.

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I guess that’s where it all really began for me. That coastline.

We landed and spent a few days unwinding, and I felt something I wasn’t expecting: a deep stillness in the land. A real power in the mountains and the ocean. The place was completely charming to me and it was also quite confronting because it was so unexpected.

We both agreed: this was somewhere we could see ourselves living and we should continue the conversation.

And then we came home.

We were surprised by how much we missed our beautiful life in Mullum. The conveniences and the comforts. Everything agreeable to our lifestyle. Within about two months, we stopped giving energy to the idea of moving and agreed that it made so much more sense to stay for now.

We were building out Ritam Studio and needed to launch it, I had the Veda Therapy diploma program that I needed to start building for a 2027 launch. Carla had her Chain Movement Therapy practitioner training to create as well. The kids were enjoying school and social life. The studio for filming was all set up and we have our production team literally around the corner.

It was all perfect. Why would we disrupt that?

Let’s wait a few years.

We agreed that was probably the smartest thing to do. Given how intense it had been to build Ritam Studio, best to stay a little longer. Make sure it all gets done properly.

We resigned ourselves to that.

It lasted about two weeks.

I remember the morning. We both woke up, rolled over, looked at each other.

I was the one who said it.

Do you still feel it?

Yeah. Me too.

Especially that particular day.

So we discussed what it might mean, with everything we had planned, and it still didn’t make sense. From a work perspective, a cost perspective, a timing perspective. It just wasn’t the convenient time.

On paper, we could easily rationalize why we shouldn’t go. Why it made so much sense to stay.

But here we were, both feeling very deeply that this is what we had to do.

I found myself really conflicted.

The most important thing I was considering in this whole process was stability for my family and our lifestyle. For the equilibrium we’ve worked so hard to sustain through our routines. We had fine tuned it to exactly what we needed to keep that beautiful balance.

Making a move at this particular time could deeply disrupt that and turn our lives upside down, particularly for the kids. For Carla and I, their well-being and emotional stability is the most important thing.

So I kept expressing reservations, despite feeling the growing impulse.

I was confronted by the challenge of doing all the things we were planning to do, but from Spain. With all the unknowns.

Where are we going to live? Where do we set up the studio? We’ll have no help with the kids over there. Can we set up private practices? How do we make it all work? What could go wrong that sets us back twelve months?

We’re not spring chickens anymore. Twelve months is a long time to lose. The stakes felt high.

And in the meantime - this is the part that made me laugh at myself - we’re creating our Ritam Journeys. Sharing our deep teachings about surrendering to nature’s intelligence. Fearlessly following the impulse of charm. Stepping into the unknown. Not needing the answers.

Every time I heard myself say it, I laughed.

Because here we were, in the quintessential moment of needing to completely surrender.

The conflict created strain in my system.

We finally surrendered, fully, to this impulse that was so strong and so clear.

I remember the day we sat down and just said: we’re doing it.

I think I blurted it out first. To some friends. They were like - oh, it’s happening? You’re serious? When did you decide that?

Carla looked at me the same way. Oh, it’s happening. When did you decide that?

I’m like, c’mon it’s happening…. We’re just going, right?

There was a great sense of relief from Carla. She’d been carrying this and holding it the longest. I was the one on the fence, holding the responsibility of the operational side of things.

But the moment I really let go and just let it happen there was a deep sense of relief.

The tension of uncertainty turned into excitement. The same excitement I felt flying into Mallorca and looking at that beautiful coastline. Except this time I was carrying the complexity and the reality of the move, and it felt right.

We don’t have a lot of the answers. We don’t know exactly how it’s all going to play out but we surrendered to the fact that it’s going to be an adventure. And that’s exactly what it’s been.

The four weeks building up to leaving were so intense and all our gorgeous friends got so involved in helping us get everything done.

We landed a few weeks ago and man, has it been a wonderful test of everything we teach! There’s been some pretty awesome hair-raising twists and turns already but we are really finding our feet.

The home we had lined up fell through at the last minute and then a minute later…

We found a 120 acre farm (finca) just 3 mins from stunning coastline with the cutest little locals only beach. The farm house is a bit of a fixer-upper but we are excited to turn it into our new home. A farm this close to the coast is very rare let alone for it to become available to rent.

It’s challenging the pants off us but also it feels pretty awesome.

So if you’re reading this and you’ve got a calling to do something that just feels irrational - something that doesn’t quite make sense but won’t let you go - I really encourage you to take steps towards it.

Listen to that innate willingness to just allow nature to organize whatever needs to happen. The reality is you are never going to know how any of it’s going to play, even if you think you have a clear plan. As the old saying goes, if you wanna make God laugh, just tell her your plans!

Get out of the way. Let it happen. Enjoy the ride.

This is living and as our 4 year old says, “Just be your life.”

Love,
Jonni

P.S. My next few articles will share how we are implementing our core teachings on this incredible journey, through the pain points and the successes. Subscribe now and we’ll send them to your inbox.

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More in the series about our move to Spain:

When obstacles kept appearing on our path to Spain, I had to learn the difference between a stop sign and an invitation to go deeper.

The shipping quote doubled overnight, and suddenly I was staring at our couch wondering if we were sending it on an elaborate voyage to Spain just to sit in a storage unit for a year.

This wasn’t the plan.

None of it was going according to plan, actually, and I was starting to wonder if the universe was trying to tell me something.

We’d made the decision to relocate to Spain months earlier. I’d done the work, sat with the feeling, checked in with my body, asked myself repeatedly if this was right for our family. Every time, I got a solid yes. A knowing. The kind of deep certainty that doesn’t come from the mind but from somewhere more fundamental.

So we kept moving forward.

We put a countdown calendar on the fridge where the kids cross off each day leading up to the move. We created a clear timeline with important tasks marked by dates, a way to keep Jonni and me on target, and a way for the kids to stay engaged with the reality of what was happening.

We got quotes for shipping our furniture. The plan was to send some pieces and buy the rest when we arrived. The shipping company advised us to send everything. The cost difference was negligible, and it was already way above what we’d budgeted.

Then they came back and told us the container size we needed wasn’t accepted where we were moving.

The quote doubled.

This triggered a massive reassessment moment, an exercise in attachment. Jonni and I sat down and went through every piece of furniture we owned, asking ourselves what we actually cared about keeping. The answer surprised us: not much. We weren’t attached to any of it except the couch.

So we pivoted. From shipping the entire contents of our house, to shipping just a couch and a few essentials.

The process felt liberating and simultaneously like a pain in the ass as we set about selling everything we owned for devastatingly lower prices than we’d paid. Watching our beautiful dining table go for a fraction of what it cost, watching friends and strangers load our belongings into their cars, watching our home slowly empty out.

And this is where the doubt started creeping in.

We didn’t even have a house on the other side confirmed.

We’d been searching for six months with no winning option. Our criteria seemed simple enough, within twenty minutes of the kids’ school, within our budget, matching our aesthetic. But finding all three was proving impossible.

Jonni and I have a particular style we enjoy living in. We love old architecture, stone walls, rustic fincas with character and history. But we don’t love when the inside looks like your grandma’s musty home where the cupboard is filled with stale crackers and ancient cereal boxes. We wanted charm without the dust, but the ones we found were 5x our budget.

I really wanted this piece to fall into place. Having a house confirmed would give me enormous relief, knowing where we were landing, that we had a base when our feet touched Spanish soil, that the kids could settle somewhere that felt like home.

But that piece of the puzzle remained elusive.

Then finally, our real estate agent sent through a property. A really big apartment with a view and outdoor space, very different from anything we’d had in mind, nothing like the rustic finca we’d been imagining. Yet looking at it, everything felt right. It even had a big spare room where we could film our Ritam content—a replacement for the temple at home in Australia that we’d been filming from. We could see ourselves there.

We said yes.

Then we were told we needed to pay twelve months’ rent in advance plus a three-month deposit.

I still don’t understand why you need a deposit when you’re paying twelve months upfront, but that’s beside the point. The point is: it wasn’t going to work for us. It didn’t feel good.

Another door closing…

The journey leading up to this move has been, in a word, rough.

Not smooth. Full of obstacles. Including our flight path—planned on Emirates through Dubai. Given what’s happening in the world right now, this added another layer of unknown. Would that flight even happen? The instability, the regional conflicts, the general chaos of the global situation made me think we were absolutely insane for leaving Australia at this particular moment in history.

And when all of this kept happening—the shipping hiccup, the house falling through, the geopolitical uncertainty—I started to wonder why these obstacles kept appearing.

I know, intellectually, that everything happens for us, not to us. But I couldn’t work out the reason. Was the universe steering us away from going? Were these signs we were ignoring at our peril?

I certainly went through periods of reconsidering everything.

Even though our house was empty, even though our belongings were sitting in a shipping container waiting to be shipped—the rest of our pieces sold—and even though all of our momentum was moving forward, we were on a bike that we just had to keep pedaling despite the destination being unclear and fraught with uncertainty.

So much unknown.

But the kids were so excited. Their enthusiasm remained consistently high, their anticipation for the change unwavering. Had they shown any hesitation, any doubt, we would have absolutely put the brakes on. But they didn’t.

So I sat with it all.

I spent a great deal of time sitting with the feelings, the doubt that was arising, the fear, the uncertainty, and then constantly coming back to a deeper feeling underneath it all. A knowing.

And then I started questioning whether that knowing was just a very strong delusion. A sophisticated psychological trick I was playing on myself to avoid admitting I’d made a terrible decision.

So how do you know? How do you tell the difference between intuition and delusion when they can feel remarkably similar?

This is where ’s work became essential.

He’s very proficient in this process of distinguishing between surface emotions and deeper knowing. He even wrote a book about it—The Golden Sequence. It’s the kind of book that once you own it, it becomes your go-to for life. I can put it into anyone’s hands and know there will be a precious gem in there to serve them and their journey.

The sequence is simple: Surrender. Accept. Feel. Connect. Respond.

The greatest work in this process is surrendering all resistance to the present moment and allowing all feelings without judgment. Not trying to make them go away, not trying to rationalize them, not trying to decide if they’re “right” or “wrong.” Just letting them be there and moving through them.

This became my daily practice during what I now think of as my “doubtful period.”

Every morning, I would surrender to whatever was arising. Accept that this was what was happening right now. Feel all of it—the fear, the doubt, the excitement, the knowing, the confusion—connect to the deeper layer underneath the noise, and then respond from that place.

Interacting with these feelings in this way helped dissipate the doubt and left me with the clarity of my knowing: this move was what our family needed, and whatever played out would be an adventure for all of us, a part of our evolution.

I went through every permutation of the situation. Worst-case scenarios to best-case scenarios. We arrive and hate it. We arrive and love it. The kids struggle. The kids thrive. We run out of money. We create something beautiful. The house falls through again. The perfect house appears at the last minute.

I sat with all of it until I got to a place where I was genuinely okay with all possible outcomes.

I could handle whatever came. We had the resources—internal and external—to navigate whatever this adventure brought us.

This process has been so important for my personal growth, for my relationship with Jonni, for our family’s journey as a whole.

I’ve learned that doubt doesn’t mean you’re going the wrong direction. Doubt is part of the process of knowing. Sometimes we need to pause and check in rather than blindly charging forward. It gives the certainty a chance to shine. Sometimes, we need opposition for the clarity.

I’ve learned that obstacles aren’t always signs to turn back. Sometimes they’re opportunities to clarify what you actually want, to release what you’re carrying that you don’t need, to practice staying connected even when it’s uncomfortable.

I’ve learned that intuition and delusion can feel remarkably similar from the inside, and the only way to tell them apart is to move through the layers of feeling until you reach the quieter, deeper knowing underneath the mental noise.

And I’ve learned that when you’re moving as a family, each person is holding up the whole. We’re all playing our part, our paths inextricably linked. Each of our frequencies affects the others. Our birth charts working together as a family unit.

What I feel confident in now—after all the doubt, all the obstacles, all the questioning—is that whatever this next year looks like, we’re going on an adventure together. And as long as Jonni and I are solid, the kids will be too.

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What I’ve Learned About Navigating Doubt:

• Doubt doesn’t mean you’re wrong. It means you’re paying attention. The question isn’t whether you feel doubt, it’s whether you can move through it to the knowing underneath.

• Doubt is part of the process of knowing. Sometimes we need to pause and check in rather than charging forward. Opposition gives certainty a chance to shine.

• Obstacles aren’t always stop signs. Sometimes they’re invitations to clarify what you actually want, to release what you’re carrying unnecessarily, to stay connected through discomfort.

• Intuition and delusion feel similar from the inside. The only way to tell them apart is to surrender, accept, feel, and connect to the deeper layer underneath your mental chatter.

• Your family’s frequencies affect each other. When you’re moving together, each person holds up the whole. Stay connected to your partner, check in with your kids, honor the unit you’ve created.

• Being okay with all outcomes is freedom. When you can sit with every possible scenario and genuinely be fine with it, you’re no longer controlled by fear of the future.

Ready to connect to your unshakeable knowing?

At Ritam Studio, we create the conditions for you to access the deeper layers of awareness that guide your most important decisions. Through Jonni’s meditation practices and spiritual teachings, you’ll learn to move through the noise of the mind and connect to your highest self. Through my movement classes, you’ll release what’s stored in the body and create space for clarity to emerge.

This isn’t about blind faith or forcing answers. It’s about cultivating the self-awareness to know the difference between fear and intuition, between delusion and deep knowing.

Join us and experience what it feels like to drop beneath the mental chatter into the certainty that’s always been there. Your first 5 days are free, and Jonni’s audio course for The Golden Sequence is one of many guided journeys to explore.

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If you’re facing a big decision and can’t tell if what you’re feeling is intuition or just your mind playing tricks, the work isn’t to figure it out intellectually. The work is to move through the layers of feeling until you reach the quiet knowing underneath.

Surrender what you think should be happening. Accept what is happening right now. Feel everything that’s arising without judgment. Connect to the deeper layer of knowing and love. Then respond from there.

The path forward might still be unclear. The obstacles might still be present. But you’ll know—really know—whether you’re moving in the right direction.

And that knowing is worth more than any amount of certainty about how it will all unfold.

Love,
Carla

P.S. The house situation is still unresolved as I write this. The flight path is still uncertain. The couch is sitting in a container somewhere between here and Spain. And somehow, I’m more at peace with it all than I was when everything felt like it needed to be figured out. That’s what connecting to your highest self gives you, an unshakeable knowing that whatever unfolds, you have the awareness to navigate it.

More in the series about our move to Spain:

This is the story of how I tore my calf muscle at a tennis game with the founders of one of the most successful personal development platforms in the world, and what it taught me about the tension I was carrying around our move to Spain.

It was a sunny Thursday morning at the Mullumbimby tennis courts. We were meeting and Skyler Grant, the founders of Commune, for the first time. Our dear friend Rad had been wanting to introduce us for a while. They saw a natural synergy between Ritam Studio and what Jeff and Skyler have built, and with Commune presenting at the Wanderlust Wellspring festival, the timing finally worked.

We were excited. And I was quietly terrified, but not about the meeting.

To understand how I was feeling, consider this, Carla is an exceptional tennis player, Jeff used to play competition and Skyler has been playing since she was a kid. I had lessons for about a year, maybe four years ago, and this was going to be my first game back since then. Prior to those lessons, I hadn’t really played at all.

Let’s just say I may have been slightly out of my league in this doubles match.

We arrived, met Jeff and Skyler, and as we suspected—gorgeous humans. Really open and warm people, we hit it off instantly. Then I watched Jeff warm up and immediately thought: I’m on his side. Skyler was also very handy with the racket. I figured for once I might actually be able to beat Carla, which is always the opposite of what happens when we play.

We started with some chitchat between points, but pretty quickly we all realised we were in good form.

The game got fierce and sweaty and everyone was really going for it.

Jeff was very encouraging, which inspired me to dig a little deeper on every shot. And to my surprise, I was probably playing the best tennis I’ve ever played.

About forty minutes in, Skyler hit a really deep shot that had me sprinting to make it. I remember committing one hundred percent to getting there. And just as I took my last stride and swung for the ball, I heard this almighty pop come from my calf muscle. Like someone had hit me with a stick. I knew immediately I’d torn something.

I strategically rolled down onto my back to avoid having to take another step on it, and yelled out to my personal physiotherapist.

“Oh shit. I think I’ve done my calf. It went pop. Does that mean I’ve torn it?”

Carla ran over, assessed the situation pretty quickly, and confirmed that I’d most likely strained the muscle.

Now, what needs to be said at this point is that I made that shot. Down the line, on Carla’s side, and she was not able to return it.

It was worth it.

The first place my mind went was the pain.

The second place was: what kind of tension am I holding to cause my calf muscle to snap running for a ball?

Being in good company, I started vocalising my internal process, directed primarily at Carla.

“What does it mean? What aspect of our psyche does the calf muscle represent?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Jonni babes, it means your glutes and hamstrings need strengthening, your calves are compensating and storing tension. Its generally resistance taking steps forward”

It was my right leg, which expresses the masculine; being forthright, making a decision, taking action.

For maybe two weeks prior, I’d been carrying an abstract anxiety about the enormity of what we were planning to do. I couldn’t see a clear path for how it was all going to work. And me being the man I am with a family, I felt a deep sense of responsibility to at least be able to imagine how it might all come together. Without that clear vision, I was finding it really difficult to just let go and commit to taking a step forward into a plan for moving to Spain in the timeframe we were considering.

That resistance to surrendering had caused all this tension in my system. It had pooled in my right calf muscle, and all it took was one committed lunge towards a ball to cause it to snap.

So there we were — Jeff and Skyler sitting there as Carla and I processed my resistance to everything. How I really needed to confront it and let it go.

Needless to say, the game was over. The men declared victory. The women had sympathy. It was a fierce match and we were all sweaty and needed smoothies. Unfortunately, I couldn’t put any weight on my leg and required assistance on both sides.

Carla being Carla, on the way home she drove straight to the chemist. Crutches, ice pack and pressure bandage. Within twenty minutes of being home I was showered, wrapped up, iced, and being told how I played pretty well at tennis today.

We continued the conversation we started on the tennis court for many days after that.

With her incredible healing hands and physiotherapy skills, Carla had me off my crutches in three days. She was surprised at how quickly I recovered, but aware that is was the depth of my internal processing that also largely contributed to this.

I sat constantly and deeply with the tension that caused the injury and worked on resolving it. I hadn’t made a definitive decision about the timing of the move or how we were going to do it all. But I did make a different decision: that it was okay to not have all the answers. That it would all work out in its right time and in its right way.

That created a massive opening in me. It moved me closer to accepting that this is what we were doing, in an earlier time frame than I’d been willing to consider.

Within seven days, I was walking again with a very mild, almost undetectable limp.

Within ten days, I’d completely forgotten I’d had the injury.

A torn calf would normally take weeks, if not months, to fully recover. But when we can really connect with the tension that caused the strain in the body - meet it, let it go, find some deeper place to operate from - healing happens spontaneously.

I learned an enormous amount from that experience.

And yes, I returned to my weekly tennis lessons. I’m playing better than I’ve ever played. Getting so much joy from observing my progress with tennis, and also with golf and painting. The three things giving me the most joy as activities right now.

If you’re reading this with a new injury, or an old one that keeps prolonging itself - it’s worth asking what deep tension in your system might be causing that strain to hold on.

Carla’s teaching in Chain Movement always goes back to the root. The unwillingness to let go, surrender and feel. The art of bringing awareness to where the tension is and allowing it unravel through awareness and motion.

That’s how I healed so quickly.

If you’re interested in learning more about this, I encourage you to explore Carla’s courses in the therapeutic application of Chain Movement.

Try Chain Movement

Love,
Jonni

P.S. Remember the old adage, ‘you have to feel it to heal it’. Feeling just means given awareness to what we are experiencing. Sometimes we don’t want to feel because we are afraid of confronting what we don’t know and would prefer telling ourselves a story that isn’t true rather than just being in the unknowingness. Surrender to what is, and know the path will always appear when the time is right.

More in the series about our move to Spain:

It probably started back in 2023. The idea of moving to Mallorca began appearing in my thoughts uninvited, persistent, showing up in quiet moments when I least expected it. This has happened in the past, but that was when I was living in places I didn’t love. Right now we love where we live. We have an incredible community here, a lifestyle that fits us, the beach close by, the kids’ school three minutes down the road. I have two organic grocery stores within a five-minute drive—there’s even one in the service station. We have the best farmers markets I’ve experienced in the world and a house we’ve slowly renovated to hold exactly the life we wanted.

So why was I dreaming of somewhere else?

There was this abstract pull, tugging at something deeper than logic. Then there’s the idea of being closer to the rest of the world instead of a 24-hour flight away from it. As an Aussie, we have a warped sense of distance. If a flight is under 12 hours, we consider that close and easy. We’re blessed to live on this beautiful island so removed from everything, but that remoteness is also the thing I struggle with most. I have Italian roots, and I feel the need to visit the country every year. It satiates something deep inside me, like coming home to people I’ve always known. When I lived in New York, hopping over to Italy was simple. But since returning to Australia with two small children, those big European trips have become harder and harder to make happen.

So I started looking. I began searching for somewhere else we could live, with one non-negotiable criterion: it had to be as good as what we already had, if not better. In my search, only one place fit. Mallorca. A place I’d traveled to years earlier and never forgotten.

I started investigating what schools were like? How much would it cost to rent? Could we even get visas? Boxes kept getting ticked, so I mentioned it to Jonni. He’d never been to Mallorca, but he seemed charmed by the idea. Or at least, he made out like he was. He suggested we go visit, and quietly I think he was hoping the trip would scratch my European itch enough that I’d let the whole thing go.

The opposite happened.

We went in 2024, and Mallorca rolled out the red carpet for us, totally charming us. A similar feeling to when I first arrived in New York all those years ago. The land there holds something special, the mountains are powerful and beautiful, and the energy of the island feels calming. I went on that trip hoping it would feel right, but honestly, I mostly just wanted a definitive answer either way. Yes, let’s do this, or no, let it go. I wanted to stop the endless circling in my mind.

We were introduced to friends of friends who welcomed us into their world, we attended their kids’ birthday party, met their community, and started gathering local intel on the island. These were people like us, expats who had moved to Mallorca to build a particular kind of life. There was genuine interest in our work, and the island felt wholesome for our family in a way I hadn’t expected.

We flew back to Mullumbimby with the intention of making the move soon, but life had other plans. We landed straight into a packed schedule, we were in the thick of launching Ritam Studio, Jonni was preparing to launch Veda Therapy, I had my teacher training, and everything about our current setup was so convenient. The studio is in our front yard, all our filming equipment is here. To disrupt what we’d built for a move overseas started to seem impractical. Nonsensical, even.

And yet. The thought wouldn’t leave me.

Jonni seemed to have drifted from the idea since we’d been back. The reality and practicality of our life here appeared to override whatever feeling he’d had on the island. So I let the thought drift too, or tried to. Every day I’d notice it surface, and every day I’d gently push it aside. Jonni’s logic made sense. There was no pressing reason to leave. Everything was working.

Except for this one thing. This perpetual pull inside me that wouldn’t quiet down. My intuition, something my rational mind couldn’t justify.

Then came August 13th. Almost a year after our Mallorca trip. It was a normal school morning, I’d woken early to meditate and exercise, made the lunches, got the kids ready. But all morning I’d felt flat and heavy, like the day was already a struggle before it had really begun. When I saw Jonni come up from the office at 8:15, I thought he must have had a cancellation. Maybe he could take the kids to school. I didn’t feel like I had the capacity to handle any drop-off outbursts and shenanigans, which can happen with either Saffira or Himalaya on any given morning.

Then another thought came: actually, it would be lovely to go together, as a family. We never do school drop-off all four of us. And selfishly, Jonni would be there to absorb any meltdowns.

So I suggested it, and everyone was enthused.

We joined the drop-off line, cars crawling forward at a snail’s pace. I got out and opened the back door to lift Saffira out. I don’t know exactly where Jonni’s thoughts were in that moment, but while the door was still open and Saffira was mid-jump into my arms, Jonni drove the car forward.

Over my left foot.

I yelped—loud enough to startle him into hitting the brake. Which meant our two-tonne Defender was now parked directly on top of my foot.

“Reverse the car, Jonni,” I said, my voice tight and strange.

He stared at me, bewildered.

“You’re on my fucking foot, Jonni. REVERSE THE CAR.”

His face. The poor guy looked shattered. He reversed. The weight lifted. My Lusso Cloud shoe had taken most of the impact, the rubber sole compressed into my skin.

I shut the car door, took Saffira’s hand, and limped her into school. Pain shot through my foot and up my leg with every step. My mind was racing—okay, it’s not broken, we’re walking, thank god it’s not broken, I think we’re okay, unless this is just adrenaline and it’s actually completely fucked.

Back at the car, I needed silence. Jonni kept asking to see my foot. I told him not now, please, just drop Himalaya off and take me home. When he got out to walk Himalaya in, the tears started. I let them slide down my face without wiping them away. He got back in the car and drove us home without a word.

I peeled off my sock and my foot was a mess—deep purple bruising already forming, with the squares from my shoe sole indented into my skin like a strange grid. And then the real tears came. Guttural, from somewhere deep. I couldn’t stop. Words were tumbling out of my mouth, things I didn’t even know I’d been holding.

Mainly this: we need to leave Mullum.

A few hours later, once I’d settled, Jonni sat beside me and opened his laptop. “I heard what you said,” he told me. “I want to show you something.”

He proceeded to walk me through spreadsheet after spreadsheet. Finances, planning, shipping quotes, rental prices in Mallorca. He had gone so much deeper into this than I’d realized, deeper than he’d ever let on. While I’d been dreaming abstractly about a move, he’d been quietly working out whether we could actually afford to do it safely. He’d been consumed with protecting our family financially, making sure if we did this, we wouldn’t fall. Meanwhile, I hadn’t given the money side much thought at all. I just knew that if we were meant to go, we’d figure it out.

And so we made a plan. A real one this time.

When Jonni started saying it out loud to friends, I was genuinely shocked. Oh, I thought. This man is serious. Because once Jonni is invested, he’s fully invested. I felt a wave of relief wash through me, I hadn’t realized how heavily I’d been carrying this idea alone. To have him not just onboard but actively making it happen meant it would happen, and fast.

We divided the labor the way we always do. I’m micro, he’s macro. Shipping containers, selling cars, taxation—that’s him. Visas, culling, packing—that’s me.

And so we’re going. We leave in a couple of weeks.

In the midst of clearing out cupboards, I found an old Jyotish astrology reading I’d had done back in 2015. I was living in New York at the time, no partner, no prospects. I sat down and read through the notes I’d scribbled during that session, and my jaw dropped.

You will have two children. Yep, that happened.

Between 2019 and 2024, you will buy a house. Not in a city. Near the ocean, with mountains you can see. Yep, that happened.

And then this:

You will move overseas in March 2026.

I shouted up the stairs for Jonni to come down. He read it and we both just laughed. This deeper pull that had been tugging at me for years, that I couldn’t explain or justify—it was already written. It was always going to happen.

This is the work we return to again and again at Ritam Studio, building the capacity to hear your own intuition, even when the mind is louder. Through meditation and movement, we create the stillness that lets that inner knowing rise to the surface. If you’re feeling a pull toward something you can’t quite name, join us for our Amplifying Intuition journey in late April.

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We don’t need to wait until things feel wrong to make a change. Change is inevitable, it’s constant. Life is always moving, always shifting beneath us. But there’s a part of us that remains stable amidst all of it - an unshakeable knowing that exists beneath the noise and distraction our minds love to create - our intuition.

The mind will put up obstacles. It will make things seem far more complicated and difficult than they actually are. But when you take just one step in the direction your intuition is pointing, and let things unfold from there, you realise most of those obstacles were never real to begin with. They were just your conditioning, your fear, your thoughts dressed up as problems. As long as you keep moving, connected to that deeper knowing, the path reveals itself.

I don’t expect the transition to a new country to be easy, especially with a family. But I know that whatever unfolds, it’s exactly as it’s supposed to be.

Love,
Carla

P.S. My foot healed beautifully, by the way. No breaks. Looking back, it felt less like an accident and more like a release, deep layers of tension finally finding their way out. I think the whole thing was my body's way of letting go of something I'd been holding onto for far too long. Sometimes that tension needs a dramatic exit. Apparently mine required a Defender on my foot!

More in the series about our move to Spain:

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As a kid, I remember countless hours as a kid, riding my skateboard on boiling hot summer days, then running to the garden hose and guzzling what felt like liters of water. Ignoring that strange rubber hose flavor. I remember feeling quenched in the moment but then having this odd tummy feeling afterwards. Not necessarily feeling replenished by all the liquid I’d just poured into my body.

As I got older, I noticed that if there was an alternative to water, I’d always go for it. Soda never really did it for me in terms of quenching my thirst, but I’d reach for apple juice or Gatorade or orange juice over just having water. And that pattern developed more and more until water became something I actively avoided.

It’s because after drinking water from a tap, or even so-called filtered water, I would feel really heavy. Certainly not invigorated by the experience.

There were, however, intermittent exceptions. Times in the mountains or some natural place where the water was sourced from a running stream or a water table, flowing naturally. I’d drink it and feel so incredibly alive. Energized. Replenished in a way that went beyond just thirst being quenched.

It became increasingly apparent to me that water flowing in nature, unaffected by human pollution, without fluoride and chlorine and all the other nonsense pumped into our water supply is utterly life-giving. More than anything, a glass of clean, alive, energetic water can be far more satisfying than even eating something for me.

When I moved to the US, I was really confronted by how much chlorine was in the drinking water. Particularly on the West Coast, in LA. It’s inconceivable to me that people drink that water from the tap. There’s more chlorine in the tap water there than in my swimming pool here. I just don’t understand how anyone can think that’s good for us.

When I moved from the West Coast to New York, the situation wasn’t much better. The pipes through which all the water runs in that city are so old. I’ve seen cross-sections of what some of those pipes look like, and let’s just say I have second thoughts about washing my feet in it based on where that water flows from.

When we decided to move from New York back to Australia, we landed in Byron Bay. A pristine environment on the East Coast. And I remember only a few months in, both Carla and I noticed that we and Saffira, our only child at the time, would smell like chlorine coming out of the shower.

We were renovating our home then. Some days it was so incredibly hot, and I’d be tempted to go to the hose and just guzzle because I was so parched and I would always regret it. There was that same old heavy feeling I remembered guzzling hose water as a kid.

I came up to Carla that day and said: it’s time we invest in the quality of our water.

We started investigating systems. Our dear friend Skye, affectionately known as Schnippies, considers herself a bit of a water nerd, so we asked what she used. She put us onto this incredible system that basically filters all water from the mains through a very sophisticated filtration process, then runs it up to under the sink where there’s a big holding tank that passes the water through a rose quartz crystal restructurer.

So it purifies, strips out all the chemicals and heavy metals, remineralizes it and then restructures it through this rose quartz crystal chamber.

Honestly, the water that comes out of our tap now is very close to some of those mountain drinks I’ve had in the past. It’s become my go-to for hydration every day. And I can say without exaggeration that deliberately staying hydrated with good quality water has affected the quality of my health, my energy levels, my skin. Our cooking, obviously. We don’t have chlorine in our shower water anymore. All around, it feels like one of the most significant investments we’ve made.

The system wasn’t even that expensive given the value we’re getting out of it. It’s changed my whole relationship to how I look after myself. I don’t need to smash half a bottle of apple juice, coconut water or some exotic delicious liquid with a zillion calories after doing yard work anymore. I can just come in, have a couple of glasses of water, and feel genuinely replenished. Oh, and I started losing weight in a healthy way too.

It’s something we overlook so easily. A decent filtration system is often considered a luxury, but I don’t think we can afford not to have one.

We’re made up of water. We depend on it. We don’t last long without it. And we last so much longer and live so much better when we increase the quality of it.

We live in a world of great privilege where we have running water and the capacity to be sophisticated about improving it. So we should.

This article is just a little prompt. If you haven’t got a decent filtration system and you’re pouring water from a tap, next time you drink it, just ask yourself how you feel afterwards. Does it feel okay? Or have you just become desensitized to it? Normalized the way it makes you feel? Assumed that’s just how water feels?

If you notice it doesn’t feel good, even if you’re renting, even if you move around, invest in a good system. Bring your dead water back to life.

Because water is life. It’s such a big part of the vitality required for expanding into higher states of consciousness. De-structured, distorted, dead water actually costs us energy, creates drag in our system and we have to work harder to process it.

Good, high-frequency, mineralized structured water rejuvenates, energizes us and assists in processing emotions. Alive water isn’t a luxury, it’s an essential part of our well-being.

The same principle applies to what we consume for our mind and body. Many of us have normalized low-quality mental and emotional inputs the same way we’ve normalized tap water.

Ritam Studio membership means you can have Jonni’s meditations and Vedic teachings coupled with Carla’s Chain Movement practices at your finger tips. This app strips away the noise, remineralizes the foundation of Being, and restores embodied clarity that enlivens your experience of self.

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If you are interested in the water system we have you learn more about it here . This is not a paid plug. The guy we bought it from doesn’t even know we are plugging him. His systems are just brilliant and more people should know about it and others like it.

Love,
Jonni

Beauty is an inside job. The health of your insides shows up in your face, in the vitality of your eyes, in whether your skin looks alive. What actually makes the difference is what you put in your mouth, every single day.

Organic, biodynamic, sustainably sourced, fair trade, non-GMO—there are so many labels and words now that grocery shopping consciously can feel like navigating a foreign language. For me, it’s become one of the most important choices I make for my family.

When I lived in New York, I was lucky enough to live near East Village Organic—more convenient than Wholefoods, which had stopped feeling like a place that sold whole foods anyway. Since returning to Australia in 2019, I’ve been going to the farmers market, and I’ve realised just how blessed we are here. I genuinely believe we have access to some of the best produce in the world.

The Northern Rivers region where we live has exceptional soil, subtropical climate, reliable rainfall, and a community obsessed with regenerative farming. Organic and biodynamic systems thrive here. It’s the kind of place where buying direct from the person who grew your food feels normal rather than niche.

Going to the Mullumbimby Farmers Market is an experience. Live music, great brekkie options, kids running feral, vibey people doing vibey things. That said, I’m not the type to linger. I arrive at 7am when it opens, execute a military-style operation through the stalls, and get home before the chocolate-dipped mango ice blocks melt in my bag. I also have zero interest in making small talk while three bags of produce cut off circulation to my shoulders and a rogue fig rolls around in my handbag. The market is wonderful. I experience it at pace.

When food doesn’t travel thousands of kilometres to reach your plate, when it’s grown in healthy soil by people who actually care and picked that same morning, the life in it stays intact. You can taste it, the colours are vivid and the flavours pop in your mouth.

And once you’ve experienced that? You can’t unfeel it.

Now when we eat out at restaurants, there’s often a heaviness in our bodies afterwards. Sometimes inflammation and a dullness that lingers. It didn’t used to be this obvious to me, I ate out constantly in New York but since building a steady baseline of home-cooked organic meals, my body has re-calibrated. The contrast is stark.

This is part of why we eat at home so much. Yes, it’s practical (eating out with young kids is its own special chaos), but beyond the logistics, dinner at home has become one of our family’s most treasured rituals.

The kids set the table. We sit down together and put our hands in the middle—’thank you Mamma’, ‘thank you Dadda’, depending on who cooked. Music plays softly in the background and we can actually hear each other. Do you know how rare that is? After years of shouting across restaurant tables just to catch half a sentence, I never take it for granted. Meals together have become a place of real connection for us. A time to share, to indulge in each other as much as the food. In a life that moves fast, it’s one of the anchors of our day.

People often ask if I meal prep. The honest answer is no. Even though there are plenty of 5:30pm moments where I’m staring blankly into the fridge thinking why didn’t I sort this out earlier? I have tried the weekly meal prep approach in the past and it didn’t work as choosing what to cook, for me, is as organic a process as the produce itself. It’s intuitive. A mood. I look at what we’ve got, flick through a cookbook, and something jumps off the page. My cookbooks are full of ripped-up tissues, strings, parking fines/whatever is on the kitchen bench marking pages I want to return to. Very chic!

For years I was an Ottolenghi devotee, but I’ve drifted away. Too many obscure ingredients and recipes that require more patience than I can summon on a Wednesday night with two kids circling the kitchen asking when dinner will be ready. As a mamma, I need quick, efficient, delicious without the fuss. Anna Jones has become my constant. Simple, reliable, always good.

Since I’m always asked for recommendations:

• Flamingo Estate – Fridays from the Garden

• Anna Jones - One Pot, Pan, Planet

• Anna Jones – A Modern Way to Eat

• Anna Jones – The Modern Cook’s Year

• Anna Jones – Easy Wins

You can buy Anna’s books from her site HERE.

When people ask my daughter what her favourite meal is, she says Mamma’s green soup. Every single time, it fills me up to hear it. Not because I need the validation (okay, maybe a little), but because I know what it means. She feels good when she eats it. She loves the taste. All the love I put into the cooking, the effort to get the best produce, the care I take with each step—it lands somewhere. She receives it. This makes every early market run, every heavy bag digging into my shoulder, every moment spent chopping completely worth it.

Food is one of the most direct ways we can care for the people we love. It’s showing up, again and again, with nourishment in your hands.

Mamma’s Green Soup (Makes 4 servings)

1 leek
400g zucchini
150g peas
10g ghee
500g vegetable stock (I make my own using the Thermomix)
A handful of fresh herbs—basil, dill, mint, parsley (whatever you have)
10g macadamia spread (I use Botanical Cuisine) or quark or cashew cream
Salt and pepper to taste

Gently fry the leek in ghee until soft. Add chopped zucchini, peas, and stock. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add fresh herbs (my preferred combo is mint and dill). Stir through the macadamia spread, season, and blend until smooth.

This is what we believe at Ritam Studio - that how we nourish ourselves matters. Not just through food, but through how we care for our minds and bodies each day. Through Jonni's meditation practices, we create the stillness that allows us to reconnect with ourselves. Through my movement practices, we release what's stored in the body and return to alignment. These practices become the foundation everything else is built on. The choices we make, the way we show up for our families, the capacity we have to be truly present - it all starts with how we nourish ourselves.

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It’s easy to get caught up in wellness practices - the supplements, the routines, the things we layer on hoping they’ll fix us. But nothing matters more than what we actually put into our bodies. It’s the most basic act of self-care there is. When we extend that care to the people we love, sitting down together, sharing something that’s been grown with intention and cooked with love, it becomes bigger than eating. It becomes nourishment in the truest sense.

Love,
Carla

If you have young children, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you don’t, just imagine being gently pummeled most of the day by tiny humans who love you very much but also need seventeen things from you at all times. By the end of the day, all we want is to sit down without a small foot in our ribs or a hand grabbing our face mid-sentence.

Enter: Blue Lotus.

I’d never heard of it before moving to Byron Bay. These beautiful blue flowers that open by day and close by night. When you watch them, you can actually see they’re living, breathing creatures. A mystical flower that moves with the sun, that follows its own rhythm so visibly.

The blue lotus, or Nymphaea caerulea, is actually a water lily that originates from the Nile River in Egypt. It was sacred to the ancient Egyptians—depicted on tomb walls, woven into religious ceremonies, offered to gods. They believed it held both healing and spiritual properties, using it traditionally to calm anxiety, ease into sleep, and deepen connection. For thousands of years, people have been steeping its petals into teas and tinctures, enjoying its gentle, sedative quality and the way it softens the edges of the day.

When I discovered it here, people were swearing by its calming effects. So I bought the dried flowers and started brewing a pot in the evenings.

The first time Jonni and I had it together, we loved it. We loved its subtle, earthy sweetness flavor and the actual moment itself. We sat on the couch with our teacups and it felt like exhaling. We are always craving these quiet moments, sitting down together and just being in each other’s presence. Moments where we’re not multi-tasking, not dealing with a child’s hand (or foot or face) in our face, not saying no to an unrelenting demand for the forty-seventh time that hour. A moment when the kids are asleep, there are no toys to trip over in the lounge, no tiny Lego pieces lying in wait for bare feet, no Schleich horse wedged under my bum on the couch. No phones. No schedules. Just an ahh-moment together, Jonni and I.

And so this blue lotus ritual was born.

Our days have a particular shape to them. We wake early to meditate and exercise before sunrise (and before the kids wake up). We work. We parent. We eat dinner together as a family. We wrangle kids through shower time and teeth brushing and cleaning up after themselves. We move through bedtime stories, mantras, cuddles. And then, finally, silence.

You’d think we’d collapse at this point, and sometimes we do, but most nights this is what happens…

I pull out the fresh laundry that’s been done during the day, and Jonni and I sit on the couch together. We fold. We unpack the day. We catch up on everything—developments with the kids, things that happened at work, the small and large moments that got lost somewhere between sunrise and now. The folding itself has become its own kind of ritual. Each piece of clothing holds a story. Saffira’s favourite skirt. Himalaya’s shorts and the first time he wore them. Even though they’re asleep in their rooms, we feel their presence as we fold, basking in the memories each small piece holds.

And then, once we’ve showered and the house is still, one of us will ask: “Do you want a blue lotus?”

The answer is always yes.

We steep the flowers in our Japanese teapot and pour it into our Hasami ceramic cups. The tea itself brings this gentle wave of calm, a settling. Sometimes it makes us a little giggly, loosens something in us that the day had tightened. The ritual itself has more impact than the actual blue lotus. It’s the sitting down and being together without interruption. It’s the quiet that says: the day is done, and now it’s just us.

We drink our tea in bed or on the couch, and we talk. Not about logistics or schedules, but about heartfelt things, or sometimes about nothing at all. Sometimes we just sit there, in the comfortable silence of each others presence.

I believe we need rituals that punctuate our days. Small ceremonies that mark transitions, that draw a line between one part of life and another. Without them, everything bleeds together—the day into the night into the next day, one week indistinguishable from the last. But rituals create dedicated moments of intention, reflection, repetition. They remind us who we are and what matters, even when life is moving fast.

Our blue lotus ritual is that for us. But it’s also so much more than that. As parents, it’s easy to get lost in the children, to pour so much of yourself into them that you forget to nurture the relationship that started it all. Jonni and I, we existed before Saffira and Himalaya arrived. We fell in love, we built something, we chose each other, and that part of us still needs tending. It’s easy to let it slip, to assume it will just sustain itself while you’re busy raising small humans. But relationships don’t work that way. They need attention. They need intention. And this ritual—this simple, quiet moment at the end of each day—is one way we nurture ours. It doesn’t require a babysitter. It doesn’t require being entertained or going anywhere. It just requires a teapot, two cups, a handful of water lilies and us showing up for each other, when the house is finally still.

This is what we explore at Ritam Studio—the rituals and practices that anchor us back to ourselves and to each other. Discover more of these small, intentional moments that create space for presence amidst the fullness of life when you join us inside Ritam Studio.

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Love,
Carla

It stood next to me like an entity, constantly opposing me. It ran a hard campaign to undermine everything I knew to be true about myself, and it was exhausting.

This is the short version of how I overcame unworthiness and what I learned, that I now get to share.

From the outside, my late teens looked like a bit of a dream. I was a professional skater touring Australia and the US, doing shows with my childhood heroes. I was acting on a popular TV show, I was painting and selling artwork. When I was praised for great success at an early age, it was never easy to accept as I never felt like I was achieving anything. It felt like it was all happening by itself while I was just showing up and having the best time I could. Because of this, I didn’t have a great sense of the value of it at the time. By the age of 18 I was having a kind of identity crisis, and despite all the wonderful things that were happening for me, what I was yearning for was something else entirely.

In that later part of my teens, I started realizing what actually made me different from my peers and most people around me: I wanted to understand deeply who I was, and what was in the way of me living that, fully, with all my power.

I had this ever growing desire to just be with myself. However, I felt like I was in this trauma hangover from my childhood that was screaming at me to be dealt with. If I woke up feeling anxious, I would choose to stay at home and be with that experience until I conquered it that day. I refused to ignore it and pretend it wasn’t happening. I also refused to do anything else until I felt myself override this distortion of the present moment. While I got really good at staying with it, it felt like an unending pit of heaviness and worry. Was I going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life? The more awake I became, the deeper I saw into the depth of my pain and traumatic memory.

I knew I needed more tools than what I had to deal with this and conquer it. I refused to accept that this was what life was going to be like. A dear elderly friend convinced me to go to India to find some answers to my questions.

On my first trip to India at the age of 19, it became clear that what was happening was a spiritual awakening, and the path I had to walk required me giving as much attention to my inner world as I possibly could.

While I was there, something very important became clear to me: despite feeling this deep spiritual power, there was always this sense of something being wrong with me. It was this abstract feeling of not being good enough.

It didn’t feel true, yet it had a very strong presence in my experience. It was as if an entity was standing next to me, constantly contradicting the truth of my being.

Its presence was constant and deeply opposing to what I felt the truth was. Its campaign to undermine me was exhausting and, at times, deeply painful.

I found it both fascinating and compelling to understand why this feeling of not-enoughness could, in moments, feel so dominating that it would demand all my attention just to overcome it. What was this feeling? Was anyone else experiencing this the way I was? Where did it come from?

So I committed myself to understanding this and I developed a habit of continual awareness, remaining ever vigilant to how this feeling of unworthiness would be at play in my thoughts, my decision-making, my actions.

Over time, the practices I was learning and recognizing through direct experience deeply awoke the knowing that who I am and what I am is not only enough, but filled with a profound intelligence and capability. A creativity of expression that enables my soul to flourish and reminds those around me of our shared human essence of love, creativity, and power to unify.

This felt like the most important thing to dedicate my life to. I couldn’t see anything more important than conquering this demon of unworthiness, truly liberating myself from its influence, and hopefully then inspiring others to do the same.

Through the decade of my twenties, I spent a good part of it in deep feeling, exposure, and confrontation. I took it upon myself, just like a professional athlete would, to train my strength, capability, and performance to not only conquer unworthiness, but deeply establish my spiritual nature as the spontaneous expression of my being.

It was through fumbling and stumbling, exposing blind spots, confronting trauma, healing trauma, and being willing to take full responsibility for what was happening inside of me that I learned some very important things. Things that could be distilled into simple wisdom and actions. This became the foundation of what I have spent the best part of the last 15 years teaching to uncover and dismantle unworthiness.

Carla and I have created a course called Overcoming Unworthiness as part of the Ritam Journeys. We lay out a holistic practice in the most direct way, distilled into seven short sessions. It’s the sum total of the wisdom we’ve gained from our personal practices and from teaching over many years.

The course outlines what our nature is, what the condition is, the mechanics of unworthiness, how it operates, and how we dismantle it moment to moment by addressing the root of it.

What I’ve learned is that when we confront and overcome unworthiness, we reveal the deep intelligence that’s already within us waiting to be expressed.

This process isn’t a one-and-done deal, it’s an ongoing unfolding. Even to this day, I observe remnants of unworthiness arise and I can now spontaneously address them in the moment with deep loving compassion, transmuting them into a powerful force of action.

This is our wish for you: if you’re fed up with the old game of believing you’re not enough, if you’re tired of the cycle that holds you trapped, our aim is to inspire and encourage you to confront whatever is holding you back from being all of you.

Join us at Ritam Studio for our next 7-day journey - Overcoming Unworthiness.

GET STARTED NOW

Love,
Jonni

P.S. The image for this post was taken in one of my favourite places in the world -Rishikesh, a day after I graduated 13 powerful souls as Vedic meditation teachers after a year long intensive training. Despite looking a bit serious, I was feeling pretty good on the inside about the incredible experience it was being with these guys and watching them grow into the status of teacher. A vision I had for myself on that first trip to India when I was 19.

Three cocktails sat in front of me at Il Pellicano, a gorgeous hotel in Porto Ercole Italy. Each one had barely been touched and collectively had cost me almost a hundred euros.

My dear friend Libby watched me push the third glass aside and continued to enjoy her cocktail, which apparently was perfect!

I was trying to tell myself that the cocktails were just not right, but I knew they were and that what was happening was a transition in me. My body was no longer enjoying/tolerating them!

Porto Ercole in the late afternoon is the kind of place that historically would demand a drink in my hand. The Tuscan coastline stretching out below us under the golden light of sunset, my dearest friend from school sitting across from me after months apart. We’d been doing these rendezvous for years, whenever I was on a work trip to Europe, I’d tack on a few days to meet her in Paris, London or wherever we could manage. This time we’d chosen one of Italy’s most beautiful spots.

This was one of those quintessential ‘cocktail moments’.

I took a sip and my whole body recoiled like I’d tried to swallow something that didn’t belong inside me.

I assumed I’d chosen badly and that it was a wrong flavor combination. I proceeded to order something completely different, with the same result. By the third attempt, I finally stopped blaming the drinks and just looked at the reality of the situation.

This isn’t the cocktail, this is me.

Libby thought it was fabulous, this revelation that my body had simply stopped tolerating alcohol. She raised her Aperol spritz in a toast to my evolution.

I smiled and clinked my water glass against hers, but inside I felt something I wasn’t expecting: grief.

The thing that most people don’t tell you about transformation is that it often feels like loss before it feels like gain.

Sitting at that table in Tuscany, watching the sunset I’d imagined enjoying with a perfect drink in hand, I felt like a part of me was dying. The fun part, the part that knew how to unwind, to celebrate, to be somewhere beautiful and indulge without overthinking it. The part that had been my companion through my twenties and into my thirties, through celebrations and random Tuesday nights that turned into adventures.

That version of me had ordered champagne on boats, martinis at hotel bars and wine with dinner without a second thought. Now she was gone and replaced by someone who couldn’t get through a single cocktail in one of the most beautiful settings on earth.

What I didn’t understand yet and what would take me months to fully grasp, was that I wasn’t losing myself. I was gaining a part of me I had been distanced from for some time.

The shift had started years earlier, so gradually I almost missed it. In my late twenties, I learned to meditate. I wasn’t seeking any particular transformation, I was a busy professional in New York looking for stress relief and a way to enhance my efficiency, and meditation seemed like something successful people did. I learned the technique, established a practice, and went about my life.

Nothing dramatic happened overnight, no sudden enlightenment. Just twenty minutes twice a day, eyes closed, mantra repeating.

By my early thirties, there were noticeable changes happening. For example I was drinking less without trying to drink less. The desire was simply fading, what used to feel celebratory or relaxing was beginning to feel... off. It felt physically unpleasant, like wearing a shoe that no longer fit my foot.

I’d go to dinner and sit on one glass of champagne the whole night, then I started choosing sparkling water instead. I noticed I could go three weeks, four weeks without alcohol without any effort or conscious decision.

My body was changing its preferences.

Then came panchakarma.

In 2015, I traveled to India for this ancient Ayurvedic treatment, and it remains, alongside learning to meditate, one of the most transformative experiences of my life.

For those unfamiliar, panchakarma is a comprehensive detoxification and rejuvenation process that’s been practiced for thousands of years. The word itself means “five actions,” referring to the five primary procedures used to cleanse the body of accumulated toxins and restore balance to your entire system.

The treatment spans several weeks and is personalized to your constitution. Each day involves some combination of warm medicated oil massages, herbal steam treatments and gentle internal cleansing procedures. You follow a carefully prescribed diet, you rest and you allow your body to do what it’s designed to do when you finally stop overwhelming it with the demands of modern life.

It’s about returning your physiology to its natural state, the state it would exist in if we hadn’t spent years accumulating stress, processed foods and environmental toxins.

What surprised me most was the timeline of the benefits.

During the treatment itself, I felt good, rested, nurtured, cleansed. The real shifts didn’t announce themselves until months later. Six months out, I noticed changes I couldn’t have predicted and a year out, even more. It was as if the treatment had planted seeds that needed time to take root, and I was only just beginning to see what would grow.

Everything became clearer, my decision-making sharpened, what was good for me and what wasn’t had become obvious, self-evident, requiring no deliberation. My body was more sensitive to everything: food, environment, people’s energy, my own patterns and most importantly my awareness had expanded.

Things started falling away, not through force or discipline, but through simple disinterest. Habits, patterns, relationships, anything that wasn’t serving my growth began to exit my life with surprisingly little drama. It was less like giving things up and more like watching them leave because they no longer belonged.

Before panchakarma, we’d been advised to avoid meat and alcohol in preparation for the treatment. I expected this to require effort but it didn’t.

Following these guidelines was easy, and the ease itself was information. I realized I rarely ate meat nor drank alcohol. I’d been drinking out of habit and social expectation, not genuine desire. The preparation period simply made visible what was already true.

When I returned to New York, my body felt so clean and my mind so clear that I didn’t dare disturb it. I still went out and socialized as I had before but I wasn’t ordering drinks when I otherwise would have.

This required no willpower or discipline, this was me listening to my body. Just like the moment in Tuscany, my physiology was refusing to cooperate with my mind’s idea of what the moment required.

The grief I felt at Il Pellicano was real, and I want to honor that.

There’s a particular kind of loss that comes with growth, a mourning for the self you’re leaving behind, even when you’re becoming someone better. That version of me who drank champagne on boats and ordered cocktails at sunset was fun, she knew how to celebrate.

Letting her go felt like a small death, and I think we need to acknowledge these deaths when they happen. Pretending transformation is all lightness and gain does a disservice to the process of becoming. I wasn’t becoming a different person, I was becoming more myself.

The fun didn’t leave, it just changed form. I could still celebrate, still mark moments, still feel pleasure and joy and indulgence. I just didn’t need alcohol to access those states anymore. Without alcohol, I discovered I could access these feelings more fully (and remember them!).

I was more efficient than I’d ever been and living with a renewed direction and purpose. My awareness of myself and others had sharpened considerably. I noticed things I’d previously missed, in conversations, in my body and in the natural environment around me. I was more present.

This resulted in changes in my relationships that were perhaps the most significant shift of all.

Some friendships faded, and when I examined them honestly, I could see they’d been built on the surface level, on drinking together or going out together, good times rather than actual connection. Without alcohol as the bridge, there wasn’t enough underneath to sustain them.

The friendships that remained grew deeper than I’d thought possible. The connections became nourishing in ways I hadn’t known friendship could be.

The new people I began to attract into my life, they matched my sensibility and values. I started meeting others who didn’t drink, and I discovered there was a whole world of people living this way who were cool, interesting, creative, and doing meaningful things. The assumption that not drinking meant not living fully was simply wrong. If anything, the opposite was true.

People focus on what they’re giving up when they consider releasing alcohol. The parties they’ll miss, the toasts they can’t participate in or the social ease they’ll lose.

What you gain so far exceeds what you give up that there’s really no comparison.

Clarity, energy, presence, deeper relationships and better health. The ability to be fully in your life instead of numbing your way through it.

Since stopping drinking alcohol, I met Jonni, now my husband and the father of our two beautiful children. He doesn’t drink either, which has made building this life together very easy. If you’re considering giving up alcohol but struggling with the concept, having a partner who’s already there removes so much friction. The social pressure, the explaining, or the initial instinct to defend your choices rarely happen when you’re doing it with someone else.

The social pressure is real and I can guarantee you’ll encounter it.

People will shame you for not drinking. They’ll tease you, push you, use every tool of social influence to get you to have “just one.” I’ve watched otherwise lovely people become surprisingly aggressive about my empty hands at parties.

What I’ve come to understand is that this behavior is rarely about you. When someone pushes hard for you to drink, they’re usually pushing against something in themselves. Your sobriety is touching a place of discomfort in them, perhaps shame about their own drinking, perhaps fear of what it would mean to stop. By not drinking, you become a mirror they didn’t ask to look into.

I don’t need to avoid these people or these interactions. I meet them where they are, I’m straightforward about why I don’t drink and how I came to this place. What they do with that information is their business.

I have no judgment of people who drink, I don’t think less of anyone for having a glass of wine or enjoying cocktails with friends. My choice is about my body and my path, it has nothing to do with anyone else’s. I think this is what people fear when they encounter someone who’s stopped: that they’re being judged, being found lacking. Rejection is one of our deepest fears and it’s important to know that’s what you might be triggering.

What does an alcohol free existence look like when it comes to celebrations? Every dinner party, lunch, and gathering we host is alcohol-free. This was a choice we made early on, and it’s one of the best decisions we’ve made for our social life.

I love creating drinks that are delicious and make you feel good. There are so many wonderful options available now, the non-alcoholic beverage world has exploded in recent years. There are entire bottle shops dedicated to non-alcoholic drinks, sophisticated brands creating complex and interesting options, and a real culture emerging around this way of living. If you’re considering giving up alcohol, now is an excellent time!

I have no interest in non-alcoholic versions of alcoholic drinks. I feel the same way about these as I do about fake meat. If you want a gin and tonic, just drink a gin and tonic. Don’t give me a simulation. It will always feel like a lesser version of the thing you actually want.

Instead, I focus on making something that isn’t trying to be anything other than what it is. Blends of natural herbs and tonics, adaptogens and botanicals, drinks that are conceived from the start as their own thing. The Beauty Chef makes beautiful bases for these kinds of drinks, I have included these in our recipes below.

Our parties are lots of fun, most guests don’t miss the alcohol (or if they do, they’re kind enough not to say so!). What we consistently hear is how delicious the drinks are and how connected everyone felt by the end of the night. That’s not a coincidence, when nobody is numbing out, the quality of interaction changes completely.

​​What I Know Now About Ditching Alcohol:

• Your body knows before your mind does. When something that used to feel good starts feeling wrong, pay attention. Your system is communicating.

• Grief is part of growth. It’s okay to mourn the version of yourself you’re leaving behind, honor the loss as it makes room for what’s coming.

• Your social world will reorganize. Some friendships will fade, others will deepen, and new people will appear who match who you’re becoming. Go with the process even when it feels disorienting.

• Other people’s reactions belong to them. When someone pushes you to drink, they’re pushing against their own discomfort.

• What you gain far exceeds what you give up…Clarity, presence, energy and deeper connection.

Our Favorite Non-Alcoholic Recipes:

Our fridge is always stocked with a selection of The Beauty Chef’s Boost Range, there are 4 fermented and probiotic elixirs to choose from that make for wonderful mocktail bases.

HYDRATE

Beauty Chef HYDRATION + sparkling mineral water + cucumber + lime + fresh mint garnish
Contains bio-fermented coconut and cucumber water, finger lime and trace minerals, plus magnesium for electrolyte balance

RECHARGE

Beauty Chef ENERGY BOOST + Blood Orange Soda + Rosemary garnish
Helps reduce fatigue, recharge your energy and nourish your gut with bio-fermented papaya, adaptogenic herbs ashwagandha and holy basil and activated vitamins B6 and B12

Curious about developing the kind of body awareness that lets you hear what your system is actually telling you? Our Ritam Studio practices are designed for this.

Meditation creates the quiet necessary to notice what your body already knows, the subtle signals we usually override with habit and social expectation. Movement reconnects you to your physiology in a way that makes its wisdom accessible. Together, they can cultivate the clarity and presence that makes releasing alcohol possible without using force or will power. Simply show up to the practices and let them do their work.

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If you're considering dropping alcohol from your life, know that you're not giving something up, you're making room for something better. Your body might already be telling you this, a growing disinterest or a sense that it doesn't feel as good as it used to. Listen to it and move in that direction and see what happens. Trust me, it will be great!

Love,
Carla

P.S. I never did finish those cocktails in Tuscany but I finished the trip with my dear friend with my heart full and the view was just as beautiful with sparkling water (and I can remember every part of it very clearly!)

I said this exactly once and the resulting protest from both kids, complete with tears and genuine distress, made it very clear: mantras are non-negotiable in this house.

Every night after dinner, we have a solid routine. Clean up the dishes, tidy the lounge room, sort the kids’ bedroom, shower, brush teeth, story time - Carla reading to one kid, me to the other, alternating each night.

And then… mantras.

I pull out the shruti box (think of it like a harmonium. A small, hand-pumped instrument that creates a continuous drone). Carla and I alternate nights, whoever’s turn it is sits on the rug right next to the bunk beds while the other stays in the room, witnessing.

We always start with the Ganesha mantra, then flow through a few other basic mantras for about seven minutes. Almost every night, both kids are out cold within five minutes.

In those five to seven minutes, something powerful happens: the bedroom becomes saturated in this rich, deeply comforting frequency. The kids call it “golden” because they can actually feel it. Sometimes if they wake up from a bad dream in the middle of the night, they’ll call us back in for a second round.

The nourishment they receive from having their parents sing and generate such a gentle, powerful sound just for them is hard to articulate, but we can see it in their faces, in how their bodies settle, in how special it feels to them. This isn’t just a bedtime routine, it’s a transmission of presence and safety that goes beyond words.

Carla and I often think about what it might have been like to have this done for us as kids. It feels like something so foreign, so outside the realm of what we experienced growing up.

I know the mantras are energetically rich and nourishing. There’s something happening on a vibrational level that goes beyond just “nice sounds.” The act of parents ritualizing singing mantras to their kids might be even more powerful than the mantras themselves though.

The consistency, the presence, the fact that we’re both there—one chanting, one witnessing—creates this container together. The kids feel held in a way that goes deeper than words, sensing not just the sound but the intention, the devotion, the simple fact that we show up for this every single night.

Now, we may sound incredibly selfless here. ”Look at us, such devoted parents, chanting mantras every night for our children’s well-being.”

The reality is we love doing it. We feel so good after, the room feels saturated with peace, watching the kids drift off into deep sleep feels nourishing, and being there together while one of us sings creates this connection between Carla and me that’s hard to describe.

It’s not a sacrifice, it’s one of the highlights of our day.

Since starting this practice, the kids sleep deeper and wake less frequently. When they do wake up, they’re able to self-soothe more easily.

Bedtime isn’t a battle anymore. There’s no negotiating, no prolonged resistance because they know what’s coming and they actually want it.

Carla and I end each day connected, which matters more than I can say. Even on nights when we’ve been ships passing in the chaos of parenting and work, there’s this moment where we’re together in the kids’ room, creating something beautiful. It resets us in a way that spills into how we are with each other after the kids are asleep.

The kids are learning something profound about sound, presence, and how to self-regulate their nervous systems. They’re internalizing that there are tools available to them when they feel scared or unsettled.

If you have children and are wanting to give this a try, here are some tips on how to start:

• You don’t need a shruti box. You can use a harmonium app on your phone, or even just your voice. The drone is helpful because it creates that saturated frequency, but it’s not essential.

• Start with one simple mantra. The Ganesha mantra (Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha) is perfect because it’s easy to learn and has a beautiful, grounding quality. You can find audio examples online to learn the melody.

• Make it consistent—same time, same sequence. Kids thrive on ritual, and the consistency is what allows them to drop in fully.

• Both parents (if there are two of you) should be present when possible. The witnessing parent matters. The container you’re creating together is part of what makes this work.

• Keep it short. Five minutes is plenty. You’re not trying to achieve anything or get through a certain number of mantras. You’re creating a frequency and holding space.

Don’t worry about getting it “right.” Your kids don’t care if you hit every note perfectly. They care that you’re there, singing for them, creating this golden sound that makes them feel safe.

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If you want to go deeper into understanding mantras and learning more, check out our friend’s platform Mantrafy. They have incredible resources for anyone wanting to explore this practice more fully.

This is just one of the rituals we do that makes our lives feel richer and more connected. There are others - some involve the kids, some are just for Carla and me - and we’ll share those in upcoming posts.

This one, the nightly mantras, might be the most powerful because it happens every single day, because both kids and parents receive from it, and because it marks the transition from any chaos of the day into the rest of the night with something sacred and beautiful.

If you try this and your kids resist at first, stay with it. It might take a few nights for them to get used to it, but once it becomes the new normal, they’ll be the ones demanding it.

Just like mine did when I suggested skipping it that one time.

Love,
Jonni

These weren’t suggestions from my Nonna, they were my entire life blueprint, delivered with the unshakeable certainty that only an old-school Italian grandmother could muster. Each family gathering, same questions, same expectant smile as she waited for updates on my reproductive timeline.

Growing up as the only girl with four brothers, I knew my role early. Set the table, clear the table, help with house duties because “that’s what girls do.” It irritated me immensely, but it also planted something deeper: the unquestioned assumption that I’d marry a man who would handle the finances while I handled the family. This seemed like a perfectly reasonable division of labor in my teenage mind.

This plan felt rock-solid until I hit my all-girls Catholic secondary school, where the message shifted dramatically. “Be women of the world! Make your mark as a professional!” they declared with missionary zeal, suddenly pointing me in the completely opposite direction from my Nonna’s kitchen-based ambitions.

So naturally, I decided I wanted both. A successful career AND a wealthy husband who’d take care of the money stuff. Why choose when you could have it all?

Then I moved to NYC and started making some serious money for the first time in my life.

The freedom was absolutely intoxicating. I could buy what I wanted when I wanted and travel wherever struck my fancy. No permission required, no explanations needed, no asking anyone if I could afford it. This was complete autonomy, and I was absolutely enchanted by it.

New York also introduced me to a whole new dating landscape, the Sex and the City version where men were evaluated partly on their earning potential and investment portfolios were discussed over cocktails. As a naive Australian who’d grown up far from the world of Wall Street, I was completely lost in this new language.

“I have my own hedge fund,” became the pickup line I heard constantly at every party and every coffee shop encounter.

“Oh, that’s nice,” I’d respond with what I hoped was a sophisticated smile, having absolutely no idea what a hedge fund actually was but not wanting to sound like the financial peasant I clearly was.

My more worldly girlfriends quickly set me straight during one of our catch-ups: “That means money! Serious money!”

And while financial security represented safety to me, something I genuinely craved after watching my parents fight about money my entire childhood, I couldn’t let dollar signs overshadow everything else I was looking for. What I was looking for was character, emotional intelligence, and the ability to have real conversations about feelings and dreams and what actually makes life meaningful.

So I dated...a lot! Wall Street guys, musicians, entrepreneurs, screenwriters, tech wizzes, all with impressive bank accounts and mostly minimal capacity for emotional depth. I found myself consistently disappointed by men who looked like they had it all figured out, sharp dressers, successful in their careers, impressive on paper, but who became emotional teenagers the moment a conversation moved beyond surface level. They could commit to five-year investment strategies but panicked at the thought of planning a weekend together. Getting a serious boyfriend and marriage seemed far off.

That’s when it hit me: I need to get stable in my own finances and stop waiting for some mythical prince to handle this for me.

Then I met what I thought was “the guy”, the one who seemed to check every box on my impossible list. Everything I’d wanted in a partner, plus the financial stability that my Nonna would have approved of. “Finally!” I thought. “The universe delivered exactly what I ordered!”

Six months later, he ended it abruptly. A mid-life panic attack about commitment and an inability to handle the vulnerability of actual love.

I was devastated and single.....again.

Then, almost immediately, walked into my life.

The first man I’d met with genuine confidence, not the chest-thumping, name-dropping kind, but the quiet assurance of someone who knew exactly who he was on the deepest level. He was honest about his feelings and unafraid of commitment, crystal clear about what mattered most in life, adventurous but grounded, loving and caring and completely devoted to whatever he chose to focus on.

His bank balance? Not even a thought because what he offered transcended any monetary value, he had the emotional intelligence I’d been searching for my entire adult life.

We both shared the same live-for-the-moment mentality. We’d both always made good money, so we just kept living like we always had, generously, spontaneously, without much thought for budgets or five-year plans.

Then we had two kids, bought a house, and reality hit like a financial freight train.

Suddenly we had a hefty mortgage, endless house expenses, business costs, school fees, and every month we’d look at each other with the same bewildered expression: “Where did all the money go?” It was like watching our income evaporate into thin air, no matter how much we earned.

I used to harbor resentment toward my parents for never setting me up with an investment account when I was young, never teaching me to be financially savvy like some of my friends’ families had. I’ve come to see the unexpected gift in that oversight: I learned to stand completely on my own feet, work hard for my own money, and now I’m developing a real appreciation for what it means to build wealth intentionally.

Now I’m facing it head-on, and it feels both terrifying and empowering.

What I’ve discovered is that financial wellness isn’t about accumulating a certain magical number, it’s about developing a conscious, healthy relationship with money that actually aligns with your deepest values. For too many years, I ping-ponged between two equally problematic extremes: either expecting someone else to handle the complex money stuff, or spending without any real awareness because “I’d always made money before, so why worry?”Neither approach gave me the genuine security I was actually seeking.

Real financial peace comes from understanding where your money flows, making intentional choices about how you direct it, and building steadily for the future without sacrificing the meaningful experiences that make life worth living right now.

If you’ve felt overwhelmed or confused about your finances, please know you’re in excellent company! Most of us weren’t taught this essential life skill, and there’s absolutely no shame in starting exactly where you are right now. The same principles we teach in our Ritam Studio practices apply beautifully here: awareness first, then intentional action, then patient consistency as new patterns take root and grow.

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Having to tighten our spending and get genuinely creative with our money has opened my eyes to how much I used to take for granted. It feels incredible to walk this financial learning journey with Jonni, knowing we’re growing our wealth together as true partners rather than me waiting for someone else to handle the complex parts. We’re bringing the same present-moment awareness we practice daily into how we manage our money, staying conscious of our choices while building for the future.

We love our work, couldn’t imagine a better way to be spending our days than doing what we’re passionate about, together. We’re stepping up our investing game with the sobering awareness that the past 20 years flew by in what felt like months, and the next 20 will disappear just as quickly if we’re not intentional about building something sustainable.

Simple steps that completely changed our financial reality:

• Don’t get sold on someone else’s path. Bitcoiners will pitch crypto, stock guys will swear by the market. Just because they made money there doesn’t mean you will. Trust your gut on what feels right for you.

• Track spending for one month without any judgment, just pure awareness

• Create a realistic “fun money” budget so you don’t feel completely deprived

Love,
Carla

P.S. My Nonna was half right about the importance of security. Where she missed the mark was in believing it had to come from a man, rather than something I could create for myself. Though she never got to meet Jonni or live to see me become a mother, I like to think she’s smiling now, knowing that what she wanted for me, safety, stability, and love, found its way to me after all.

I’m watching Carla climb the lighthouse stairs in Byron Bay for the second time this morning, and I’m reluctantly trailing her but quietly pleased with myself.

Every Monday morning we do this walk together without the kids. It’s where we have our family meeting, discuss the week ahead for Ritam Studio, complain about how much we don’t like having to be on social media (but we love substack), talk about the kids, future plans, immediate things that need handling.

If you’ve done Carla’s classes it won’t come as any surprise that she walks at lightning pace. She’s the kind of person who will climb 100 stairs and then go back down to climb them again. I’m always gasping for air, trying to keep up, getting slightly better at keeping up.

It’s whale season right now, which I’m grateful for because she always stops to look at them from the top of the lighthouse while I get about 30 seconds to catch my breath before she’s off again.

Me struggling to match her pace across many areas of our life is something we’ve worked on over years. But it wasn’t always this playful.

When I first moved to New York City and into Carla’s apartment, I was genuinely confronted by how intense and fast-paced she was. It was kinda “keep up or see ya later.” She was so efficient in everything she did that there was little room for me to fumble without getting a look or a comment that made it clear I was slowing things down.

One sweltering summer day, we were heading out for breakfast. I was practically running to keep up with her natural walking stride, sweating my ass off in the oppressive New York heat. Finally, I stopped her.

“Where are you in such a hurry to get to? We’re just going out for breakfast. Can we slow down a little, please, for fuck’s sake?”

She looked at me - drenched in sweat, obviously agitated and started laughing.

“I’ve been on my own in the city for a long time,” she said. “Having you around is going to require me changing a few things.”

That moment opened something that gave me permission to point out a few other things that were connection blockers for me. And to my surprise, she made lots of changes very swiftly. The doors opened to this magnificent connection and a blossoming love that’s only deepened since.

I wanted to write about what we’ve learned together as a result of honoring a very powerful set of priorities that, when committed to, safeguards love, intimacy, orderliness, and joy.

Most people have this order completely upside down and we can see this in the way they live, in their relationships, and their parenting.

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Here’s our order:

Priority #1: We must tend to our stress and fatigue individually.

We have to be fully responsible for what’s happening inside of us. This means carving out time each day to reset, recover, and replenish after the demands of life. For us, this includes daily practices of meditation, movement and being in nature.

You can’t skip this, when you do, everything downstream suffers.

Priority #2: The relationship between Carla and me.

This is just a smidge below #1, and honestly, they’re so intertwined they might as well be 1A and 1B.

Our priority in the relationship is to be intimately aware of where each other is at, what our stress and fatigue levels are, and how to support each other to get what we need to recover and recuperate. Sometimes this means stepping in for tasks we wouldn’t otherwise be responsible for. Picking up slack without keeping the score.

Intimacy and quiet time together is a daily non-negotiable. We spend at least 30 minutes on the couch every evening, reflecting on the day, our individual and shared parenting experiences. It’s about being present and allowing each other to express what happened in the day which includes stories, concerns, urgent things, affection.

It’s just the act of being there with each other that replenishes the connection. Connections need to be fed. Relationships must be fed with a quality of attention. This nurtures the fabric of the connection, and depending on the quality of this daily act, our relationship deepens every day.

We also get to bed early to lay with each other, chat, laugh, work through things that might be challenging. This sets us up for the night’s sleep and the next day’s partnership.

We go on a date night once a week, a sleepover adventure without the kids once a month, and a getaway for a few days every six months. For us, we love going to Tokyo or Bali for four days. It’s so fun.

When we can get away from our daily routine and the ceaseless demands on our time and attention, we remember just how much we really like each other and how much fun we can have. We share a love for great food, hotels, shopping, and laying on the beach or by the pool doing very little but just being in the moment.

Priority #3: The kids.

My perspective is that we can only parent successfully when we’re a united force, aligned in values and embodying them in every moment.

If Priority #2 isn’t Priority #2, then Priority #3 is immediately compromised. It becomes a massive disruptor to Priority #1 and impacts everything below it.

Priority #4: Work.

Priority #5: Family and friends.

(These last two are somewhat interchangeable depending on what’s happening, but they’re always #4 and #5.)

What happens when we lose touch with this priority order?

There are plenty of examples where we lose time to spend quality time with each other. If this builds over a couple of days, we feel the tension accumulate. We both need it and crave it, but sometimes we wait for a breakdown in communication to reset.

This is less and less these days, but it was our learning trajectory. We’ve learned to see it coming now and double down on Priorities #1 and #2.

When we get overwhelmed with tasks, we sometimes forget the imperative of remaining true to our priorities. We declare that a few nights of missing couch time won’t be a big deal. This can unravel very quickly if one or both of us become too fatigued and stressed. We fall into a pattern of just ticking boxes to get stuff done.

We can justify it easily as the solution to getting back to where we want to be—just clear the slate and reconnect then. It never works out that way.

The connection becomes ratty and unsatisfying. We get snappy at each other. When this happens, we often laugh because once the other person starts laughing, it’s so ridiculous. But underneath the humor is the reminder of the great question we have to regularly ask:

If we’re busting our asses and aren’t connecting and enjoying ourselves, what’s the point?

If we’re arguing that one of us isn’t present enough and we make the excuse that we’re just so busy, it doesn’t fly in our house anymore. We’ve asked the question “what’s the point?” and we’ve answered it very clearly:

We live by our order of priorities, and we safeguard our love, connection, intimacy, and joy.

Something for you to reflect on:

What’s your actual order of priorities right now?

Most people operate like this:

1. Work

2. Kids (if they have them)

3. Extended family obligations

4. Relationship (if there’s time)

5. Self-care (if there’s energy left, which there never is)

This is completely upside down.

When you prioritize work and kids above your relationship and yourself, your relationship suffers. When your relationship suffers, your parenting is compromised. Your kids feel the tension even when you think you’re hiding it. And when your home life is disharmonious, you carry that into every other aspect of your life including your work, which ironically is what you were prioritizing in the first place.

Our practical tips for living in the right order:

• Meditate and move daily. Non-negotiable.

• Cultivate a practice of deep listening and feeling into yourself to understand what you need. Don’t wait for breakdown to figure this out.

• Spend at least 30 minutes on the couch with your partner listening and sharing about each other’s days, feelings, experiences. Offer support when needed.

• Date night once a week.

• Sleepover adventure without kids once a month.

• Getaway for a few days every six months.

• Find your version of our Monday morning lighthouse walk. A recurring time that’s just for the two of you to sync up on life.

We put in a lot of time to communicate and be still with each other. This cultivates a powerful desire for emotional connection and intimacy.

When we live life with this order of priorities, life is so much easier, meaningful, and fruitful on every level.

You need to be good to be good in your relationships. If you have kids and the relationship isn’t good, the kids are severely impacted and your parenting is compromised. If your home life is disharmonious, you carry this into every other aspect of your life.

It’s not selfish to prioritize yourself and your partnership. It’s the foundation everything else is built on.

So, if you’re reading this and realizing your priorities are upside down, you don’t need to blow everything up to fix it. Start small.

What’s one thing you can do today to tend to your own stress and fatigue?

What’s one conversation you can have with your partner tonight about how you’re actually doing?

The order doesn’t establish itself overnight but every choice to honor it builds the life you actually want to be living.

If this is landing and you’re sensing you need support getting back into your groove, individually and in your relationship, we’re offering a 5-day free trial with Ritam Studio. Sometimes the hardest part is just getting started, and having someone in your corner who understands how the pieces fit together makes all the difference. We’ll help you get back into your relationship groove by helping you get back into yours first.

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Love,
Jonni

P.S. Learning these priorities requires you put them to the test and see for yourself what changes. Don’t take my word for it, try it out.

The magpie circled overhead, wings cutting through the air with military precision, clearly pleased with its tactical victory.

I’m a city girl through and through. Melbourne born and raised, declared at sixteen while wandering the streets of London and Paris that I’d live in a proper city one day, then spent my twenties and thirties in Manhattan where the closest I got to wildlife was the occasional cockroach (which the super dealt with, thank you very much). I like city lights, fashion, and having someone else handle any creatures that don’t belong indoors.

So when Jonni and I moved to Byron Bay with Saffira, trading skyscrapers for rainforest, I knew there would be adjustments. What I didn’t anticipate was the daily wildlife negotiations that would become part of our morning routine.

Our backyard is literally a rainforest. We wake every morning to a kookaburra’s laughing call, which sounds exactly like someone having the best inside joke. It’s actually quite lovely, from a safe distance.

But Australian magpies? That’s a whole different story.

For those unfamiliar with these birds, imagine the most intelligent, musically gifted creature with a memory like an elephant and the protective instincts of a mama bear. They can produce sounds across four octaves, mimic other animals, even human speech, and they remember every single face that’s ever crossed them wrong. They’re like feathered opera singers with perfect pitch and photographic memory, except they dive-bomb you.

During breeding season, male magpies become fiercely territorial, dive-bombing anyone who gets too close to their babies. They never forget a face, I’ve tried hats, sunglasses, even walking on the other side of the street. This particular magpie knows it’s me and adjusts his attack strategy accordingly.

That day with the stroller, I learned just how swift and terrifying a magpie swoop can be. The first time, you think you imagined it. Second time, you’re pretty sure something just skimmed your head. By the third swoop, you’re absolutely certain you’re under aerial assault, and all rational thought abandons you.

Hence: me on my knees, screaming, with poor Saffira getting an unexpected view of the Australian sky.

I eventually sprinted home, being chased the entire way, my heart rate somewhere in the stratosphere. Did I mention I’ve had a bird phobia since childhood? Those “birds in flight” shows at every zoo we visit with the kids are basically my personal nightmare wrapped in educational entertainment. I sit through them anyway, parental love conquers phobias, apparently, but I still make dramatic ducking movements when someone opens a chip packet too enthusiastically during the shows. The sound of anything flapping near my head sends me into high alert.

Our friend Skye was visiting and, being the nature lover she is, got the kids excited about feeding the magpie. Every day they’d go outside with scraps, and the bird would come right up to them, trusting and gentle. When Skye left, the daily feeding ritual continued.

What we didn’t anticipate was that the magpie would decide it was now part of the family.

One morning, I walked out of the bathroom to find a full-sized magpie flying through our living room, wings outstretched. The bird had started coming inside, and I immediately retreated to the bathroom and locked the door, feeling like a prisoner in my own home.

My six-year-old daughter eventually declared the coast was clear, but not before the magpie had left its mark, pooping on our couch.

When I gently tried to close the door as the magpie approached in future visits, the whole family turned on me.

“Why don’t you love nature?” my daughter asked, her little face full of genuine concern. “Look, the poor bird wants to be with us and you’re denying it.”

Way to make me feel like the villain in a Disney movie.

I’m grateful for nature, inspired by it, and deeply appreciate living surrounded by it. I just don’t want birds flying around my house, or mice setting up residence in my pantry, or snakes deciding our living room looks cozy.

Watching my kids develop this relationship with the magpie, caring for it like a family member, understanding its needs and respecting its intelligence made something shift in me. They’re so naturally connected to the world around them, so unafraid of the wilderness that still makes my city-girl heart race.

What my kids taught me is that having a relationship with nature doesn’t mean you have to become someone you’re not. It means finding your own way to connect with the natural world that surrounds us, even if that looks different from everyone else’s approach.

I may never be the person who kisses dogs or invites birds into my living room, but I’ve started to appreciate the morning kookaburra calls, I’ve learned to identify the different bird songs that fill our days, and yes, I’m even researching dog breeds that might work for our family.

We’re all part of nature whether we live in Manhattan penthouses or rainforest clearings. You don’t need to be “outdoorsy enough” or “nature-loving enough.” What matters is finding your own authentic way to acknowledge your connection to the living world around you.

For some people, that’s feeding wild magpies. For others, it’s tending houseplants or choosing a morning walk over another scroll through social media. It might be as simple as pausing to really notice a sunset instead of rushing past it, or teaching your kids to appreciate the resilience of weeds growing through sidewalk cracks.

If you’re feeling disconnected from the natural world around you, our Ritam Studio practices can help you reconnect through your own body, which is, after all, part of nature too. Through movement, you remember that you’re not separate from the natural rhythms and cycles that govern everything else. Through meditation, you develop the stillness to actually notice and appreciate what’s already present.

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The magpie still visits our property daily, I still prefer it to stay outside. Now when I see my kids rush to greet it each morning, I feel something softer than fear, maybe even a little gratitude for this fierce, intelligent creature that chose our family as worthy of its trust.

Simple ways to connect with nature, even if you’re more city than forest:

• Notice one natural element during your daily routine

• Tend to one plant, even if it’s just herbs on a windowsill

• Choose to walk outside instead of on a treadmill when possible

• Teach yourself to identify three local birds by their calls

• Create one outdoor ritual, however small

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The magpie and I have reached an understanding, it can visit our property, I can close the door. Everyone’s happy with this arrangement except my daughter, who still thinks I’m being unreasonable.

Love,
Carla

This used to be normal for me, before Australia, before the renovation, before I convinced myself that creative expression was a luxury I’d get back to “when things settled down.”

In 2019, we moved to Australia and bought a 120-year-old Queenslander-style home on an acre of land. The place needed work, a lot of work, and I had no idea what I was doing.

What started as a renovation project became something else entirely: a five-year immersion in the craft of building, landscaping, creating. My cousin Dan and I transformed that property into a sacred space. There’s a temple in the front yard now and a seven-foot bronze Lakshmi statue. Every corner of that land has been touched, considered, rebuilt.

I learned to build, not just fix things or follow instructions, but actually build. The kind of knowing that comes from making thousands of decisions about materials and angles and how things fit together. The kind of patience that emerges when you realize shortcuts always reveal themselves later. (Usually at 2 AM when something starts leaking.)

But somewhere in those five years, I put down my paintbrushes.

I didn’t mean to stop painting, it just... happened. The renovation became all consuming. There was always another project, another problem to solve, another vision to bring into form. And I told myself it was fine because I was still creating, just in a different medium.

Which was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

The thing about painting—my kind of painting, which is sacred mandalas and images of subtle spiritual experiences—is that it does something renovation can’t. It bridges a specific gap between the subtle reality alive in me and the gross physical world.

When I paint, I’m translating feelings and perceptions that exist in a realm most people can’t see or touch. I’m bringing them through my hands, through oil and canvas, into something tangible. It’s a process of correlation, subtle to gross, that connects me more deeply to the spiritual reality I’m always teaching about.

Without it, something was missing.. I could feel it but couldn’t quite name it.

About twelve months ago, I finally put the tools down. The major renovation work was complete and I started craving the easel again.

What stopped me was this belief that I needed twelve-hour painting sessions to really get into it. That anything less wouldn’t be worth the setup time, wouldn’t build enough momentum, wouldn’t produce anything meaningful.

There was something else too. This nagging feeling that if I disappeared into the studio for hours, I’d be burdening Carla with all the home duties. The kids, the cooking, the endless small tasks that keep a household running. It felt selfish to carve out that much time for myself when there was so much to manage together.

So I just didn’t paint.

For months, I told myself I’d start when I had a full day clear. Which, with two young kids and a business and everything else, basically meant never.

Then something shifted. I can’t remember the exact moment, but I stopped waiting for the perfect conditions and just picked up a brush one morning for an hour.

It was delicious.

That’s the word that kept coming up—delicious. Like a dessert after a meal. A reward for a hard day’s work.

I found myself thinking about painting when I was doing other things, craving it, planning the next session in my mind. Even an hour every few days was incredibly beneficial, not just enjoyable.

Carla noticed the shift immediately, she saw how lit up I was coming out of those sessions and how present and settled I became. She’d look at what I was working on and I could see something register in her, she’d forgotten what this looked like in me.

The first painting I ever did for her was a birthday present, back when we first got together in our tiny apartment in NYC. She’d watched me go through the whole process then, the way I’d disappear into it, how it affected me, the particular quality of presence it brought out. But that was years ago, before kids, before Australia, before everything got so full.

Seeing me paint again reminded her of something she loved about me that had gone dormant. And instead of resenting the time it took or feeling burdened by what it meant for her, she became one of my biggest encouragers.

“Go paint,” she’d say, “I’ve got this.”

She was willing to carry the full load of household tasks and kid wrangling to give me space to do this—not grudgingly, but genuinely. She became interested in my process, inspired by watching me work. She understood that this wasn’t me checking out, it was me coming more fully alive, and that version of me was better for everyone. The gift of being seen and supported in your creative expression by your partner is profound.

The kids became part of it too, though not in the way I expected.

I’d always unconsciously framed them as obstacles to getting back to the canvas. But they became a whole new dimension to the process.

My seven-year-old daughter Saffira started watching me paint. I’d let her and Himalaya work on my canvases with me—real oil paints, adult paints, not the watered-down kid stuff. They loved it and Saffira’s own work improved in skill and quality almost overnight. She was learning by watching me slow down, take my time, stay with one piece.

Himalaya mostly just wants to mix colors and see what happens when you put “all of them together at the same time, Dadda.” (The answer is: brown…always brown. But he’s discovering this firsthand, which is the point.)

This brings me more joy than I know how to express. Watching them learn that creativity isn’t about speed or outcome, but about being present with the process of bringing something into form.

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Since painting again I’ve noticed my ability to perceive subtle detail in nature has amplified. The forms I paint are expressive of deep feelings and perceptions, and the act of translating them into physical form strengthens my connection to the subtle spiritual reality they emerge from. It’s stabilizing in a way nothing else quite is.

The five years of renovation fundamentally changed how I paint. The patience I developed, the attention to detail, the refusal to take shortcuts, the immersion in process for the sake of quality... all of that transferred. My paintings have become more complex, more refined, more deeply layered than they were before.

The renovation wasn’t a detour from my creative life. It was preparation for the next phase of it.

I don’t say that lightly, especially after spending years teaching about consciousness and understanding the deep value of contemplative practice. Creative pursuit does something distinct though, it exercises our awareness in a task-oriented way without particular outcomes or deadlines, connecting us to the process of creative intelligence that’s always at play within us.

Whether you’re drawing, painting, writing lyrics or stories or poems, making films, taking photographs, decorating, landscaping, dancing, or working in any other medium, the same principle applies: the outcome of your creative endeavors should always be secondary to the process.

When we’re process-oriented, we can explore and learn something deeper about ourselves and the craft we’re giving ourselves to. We allow space for what wants to be discovered through the doing. We let it build in complexity as we listen more deeply to what wants to be expressed.

Most people abandon creative projects when they hit a wall or don’t achieve the level of output they expected in a particular timeframe. The frustration leads them to abandon the process and the original impulse that started it.

I almost let “not having twelve hours” become the reason I never painted again, which would have been tragic and honestly a little ridiculous, like refusing to eat unless you can have a seven-course meal.

You don’t need to get heady about what you create. Just allow how it comes out and observe it.

This is the philosophy that’s always driven everything I do, whether I’m teaching, building, painting, or raising kids. It’s not about forcing an outcome, it’s about showing up to the process with presence and patience and letting the intelligence that moves through all things move through you.

When you carve out time for creative expression—even an hour, even imperfectly, even with kids climbing on you—you’re not indulging a hobby. You’re stabilizing the divine intelligence within you. You’re practicing the art of bringing subtle reality into form. You’re training yourself to stay with complexity and uncertainty without needing to resolve it immediately.

This is sacred work disguised as painting or writing or gardening or whatever your medium is.

Think about the creative impulse you’ve been telling yourself you’ll get back to “when things settle down.”

What if things never settle down? What if the conditions you’re waiting for aren’t coming?

I’m saying this because I almost lost something essential to who I am by waiting for perfect conditions that never arrived. The shift happened when I stopped waiting for twelve hours and started showing up for one. When I let go of perfect and chose present instead.

Your creative intelligence is always there, waiting. It doesn’t need grand conditions or endless time. It just needs you to show up, even for an hour, and let it move through you again.

Love,
Jonni

P.S. The same principle that governs my painting - process over outcome, presence over perfection - is what we cultivate in Ritam Studio’s daily movement and meditation practices. Join our 7-day Power of Presence journey now, where we are training the capacity to stay with what’s alive in you and let it express without needing to control the result.

“Carla! You’re going to spoil your dinner!” she’d say, but I was already savoring that perfect hit of chocolate-hazelnut heaven that only comes from eating straight from the jar like a proper Italian child.

Give me the choice between savory or sweet, and I’ll take sweet every single time. It’s in my DNA. My father would go down the street to buy cheese for dinner and come home with half the chocolate aisle instead. We were a family that understood the fundamental importance of sugar in all its glorious forms.

Birthdays at our house were pure magic, not because of presents, but because Mum would make chocolate cake and I’d get to lick the beaters and the bowl. Those precious few minutes with the leftover batter were worth waiting a whole year for.

That’s when I discovered the beautiful loophole of baking for myself.

If I was the one mixing and measuring, I could set aside entire bowls of cookie dough, cake batter, whatever my heart desired. No more waiting for Mum to scrape every last bit into the pan, this was my show, and I was eating as much raw mixture as I wanted.

But baking offered something my mum and Nonna’s cooking never could: precision. Their approach was always “a little bit of this, a little bit of that,” making it impossible to get an exact recipe from either of them. Everyone assumes I learned to cook from my Italian family, imagine their faces when I tell them my real teacher was Bon Appétit magazine! Here I am, fourth-generation Italian, and I’m getting my culinary education from glossy American food photography. My ancestors are probably rolling in their pasta-filled graves.

The irony wasn’t lost on me, but baking was different from their intuitive cooking. To get the perfect texture, you had to follow exact measurements. There was something deeply cathartic about the precision, the reliability of chemistry transforming simple ingredients into something magical.

Every romantic disappointment sent me straight to the kitchen like some sort of sugar-powered coping mechanism. Boy crush ended? I’d be in there until midnight, emerging with four banana breads, four chocolate cakes, and forty cookies. The beautiful thing about living with four brothers who played football was that teammates were constantly coming over, and it only takes a few teenage footballers to demolish that much baking. So I could process my emotions through flour and sugar without any waste, and somehow I’d feel completely restored by morning.

Then I moved to New York, and the formula fell apart.

Same dating life, same heartbreaks, but now I lived alone. If I stress-baked my way through another romantic disappointment, there was only me to eat the results, and that was definitely not a sustainable situation for my jeans or my sanity.

I’d walk down the street dropping off my emotional baking to homeless people, most of whom told me to beat it because they wanted cash, not cupcakes. Fair enough, but I needed a better solution than becoming the neighborhood’s unwanted dessert dealer.

That’s when I started experimenting with healthier treats, ones I actually felt good about eating by the bowlful.

I began making my own chocolate, realizing that store-bought stuff left me feeling sluggish and slightly sick, but when I created bars from coconut oil, honey, raw cacao and himalayan salt, I got that delicious sweet hit and felt energized afterward. Friends would come over and head straight to that special compartment in my fridge where I kept the good stuff, and they all became completely addicted to what I was creating.

Then we moved to Byron Bay with Saffira, and a few years later Himalaya was born. Having children completely shifted how we saw sugar, what had once been my sweet escape suddenly became something I needed to understand on a much deeper level.

I quickly learned that sugar and children create a level of chaos that makes New York traffic look peaceful. Living in Byron Bay amplified this lesson dramatically, everyone here is incredibly health-conscious, and you’re basically considered a negligent parent if you send your kid to school with anything containing refined sugar. My seven-year-old daughter’s friends will literally interrogate me: “Is this organic?” when I offer them a snack. The awareness level here is both impressive and slightly intimidating. I giggle at pre pre-school drop off when my 4 year old son takes out his baked treats and tells his friends, “You can have some, it’s got gluten-free in it.”

Having kids brought a new joy to my baking. They love helping me mix and measure, and they’re enthusiastic taste-testers who give honest feedback. Jonni loves my treats too, but unlike the kids who can demolish half a tray and bounce off the walls happily, he just looks at my baking and his metabolism seems to slow down in solidarity. I hide these things from him or ration his portions like a concerned health coach/loving wife.

Everything changed when someone gifted me a book called “Sweet Laurel.” The author had been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and told to cut out sugar for life. Instead of accepting that devastating fate, she found a way to have her cake and eat it too, with no refined sugar and completely grain-free.

I started baking from her recipes, and the results were so delicious that no one could believe there weren’t any processed ingredients. I’ve given this book to countless people, but most say their treats don’t turn out like mine, which brings me to something I’ve learned about cooking in general.

Baking is an art that requires presence. The difference between a good cake and an extraordinary one is how much love and attention it was made with. The frequency of the ingredients matters. The energy of the environment you’re cooking in matters. What music is playing? Are you angrily throwing salt while thinking about something that upset you, or are you mindfully sprinkling it with awareness of its impact on the entire dish?

It all comes out in the final product.

My kids’ birthday parties now feature cakes that don’t turn the celebration into what I call a “sugar circus”, you know, that moment when twenty children simultaneously lose their minds and parents start planning escape routes. Both adults and children love these healthier treats, and everyone maintains consistent moods throughout the party instead of experiencing the classic sugar spike-and-crash roller coaster.

When you finally cut out refined sugar, you realize just how dramatically it impacts everything. Your ability to focus becomes sharper, no more afternoon brain fog or that scattered feeling. The inflammation in your body decreases, which means less joint pain, clearer skin, and better digestion. Your energy levels stabilize instead of riding the blood sugar rollercoaster that leaves you craving more sugar every few hours. Sleep improves because your body isn’t processing artificial stimulants. Even your mood becomes more stable, without the constant sugar highs and crashes, emotional regulation becomes so much easier.

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I can’t buy just any chocolate anymore. Here in Byron Bay, our go-to is Loco Love—made with the finest organic ingredients, superfoods, tonics, and herbs. They’re gluten, soy, and refined sugar-free, and one piece totally satisfies that craving. You don’t need to eat an entire block and still feel unsatisfied because your body is actually getting nutrients instead of empty calories.

My kids have grown up eating this way and understanding the difference between nourishing sweetness and the artificial stuff. We occasionally give them conventional sweets because we think it’s important they experience firsthand what it does to their systems. They’re completely aware of the impact, my daughter will look at our four-year-old after he’s eaten a sugar snake from the candy shop and announce with scientific precision, “Mama, he’s gone sugar-testosterone crazy!”

What started as emotional processing through sugar and flour has evolved into something much deeper: the understanding that what we put into our bodies directly affects how we feel, think, and show up in the world. Baking became my gateway into conscious consumption, not just avoiding certain ingredients, but actively choosing ones that nourish rather than deplete.

The beautiful thing about healthy baking is that you don’t have to sacrifice pleasure for wellness. When you use whole, unprocessed ingredients, your body actually feels satisfied instead of craving more. You can enjoy the process, lick the bowl, eat the treats, and wake up feeling energized rather than sluggish.

If you’re ready to transform your relationship with sweets, the same principles we teach at Ritam Studio apply: awareness first, then intentional choices, then patience as your palate adjusts and new habits form. Your body will guide you toward what truly nourishes when you learn to listen.

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I still find baking therapeutic, but now I’m using high vibes and positive frequency, creating only things I’d happily eat myself and feed my children.

Love,
Carla

P.S. I still love licking the bowl, I just make sure what’s in it actually loves me back.

P.P.S. Enjoy some of my favorite guilt-free recipes that prove healthy treats can be absolutely divine:

BANANA BREAD

makes two 9x5 inch loaves

• 4-6 ripe bananas, mashed

• 2 eggs

• 1/3 cup coconut oil, melted

• 2/3 cup maple syrup

• 2 cups almond flour

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1/2 tsp himalayan pink salt

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chips (optional)

Beat together the wet ingredients, combine dry ingredients separately, A little at a time, add the dry ingredients to the wet. Fold in chocolate chips. Bake at 350°F for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaves comes out clean. Pure magic.

Recipe from the book Sweet Laurel.

THE BEST BIRTHDAY CAKE

makes two 6 inch layer cakes or one 8 inch cake

• 4 cups almond flour

• ½ cup coconut oil, melted

• 2 large eggs, plus 1 large egg yolk

• ¾ cup maple syrup

• 1 tbsp vanilla extract

• 1 tsp himalayan pink salt

• ¼ tsp turmeric

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 2 cups milk chocolate frosting

Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and yolk, coconut oil, maple syrup and vanilla until well incorporated. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, salt, turmeric and baking soda until there are no clumps. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, stirring until a batter forms. Scoop batter into prepared pans and bake for 35-40 minutes or until the cakes are golden brown. This cake is so moist and rich, no one believes it’s healthy.

You can leave the cake in two layers or slice each layer in half horizontally, creating four (preferable for cake to frosting ratio).

FROSTING

makes 1 cup

• 4 ounces cacao unsweetened baking chocolate, broken into chunks

• ¼ cup coconut oil, solid

• ⅓ cup maple syrup

• 1 tbsp vanilla extract

• ½ cup almond butter

• ½ cup full fat coconut milk

Melt the chocolate and coconut oil in a double boiler over medium heat, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat when melted. Add maple syrup and vanilla and stir to incorporate. Cool to room temperature, it should still be liquid, not solid

Transfer the mixture to a medium bowl and with an electric mixer beat in the almond butter until a thick, whippy frosting is formed. Add the coconut milk and continue beating until smooth.

For more of a sauce, use the frosting at this state. For a sturdy frosting suitable for building cakes, put the frosting in the fridge to set for at least 2 hours. Whip again until spreadable and fluffy, adding coconut milk if you need to smooth it out further.

Recipe from the book Sweet Laurel.

RICH CHOCOLATE TORTE

Crust:

• 1 ½ cups raw pecans

• ¼ cup maple sugar

• ¼ tsp fine sea salt

• ½ tsp ground cinnamon

• ¼ tsp chipotle powder

Filling:

• ½ cup raw almond butter

• ½ cup date paste *see below

• ½ cup agave nectar or maple syrup

• 3 tbsp coconut butter (solid coconut oil)

• 1 ½ tbsp tamari

• 1 cup cocoa powder

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• About 1 cup filtered water

**To make ½ cup date paste: blend ½ cup pitted medjool dates with enough water to make an almost pourable, thick, honey-like consistency. You’ll need roughly ½ cup water, depending on the moisture content of your dates.

FOR CRUST: Put all crust ingredients into a food processor, and process until very finely chopped but not pureed into a paste. The pecans can turn into nut butter, so use short pulses to process the mixture into a consistency similar to a graham cracker crust.

Press the crust mixture into a 9 inch fluted tart pan. Use your palm and fingers to make sure it’s pressed in well, especially around the edges. Set aside.

FOR FILLING: Put all filling ingredients into a food processor or high-speed blender. Process or blend until very smooth, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides, with a rubber spatula. Mixture should be thick, but if it’s too thick to blend, add a touch more water. Blend until smooth. Pour and scrape chocolate filling into crust, smoothing the top with a spatula. Freeze until firm, about 20 minutes, or refrigerate until firm about 1 hour.

Recipe from Chad and Derek Sarno

I’m staring at three deep gouges on our very expensive new dining table right now, and I can’t stop smiling.

Last night, while I was on a call, my four-year-old son Himalaya discovered he’d somehow melted beeswax onto our dining table. He interrupted me - insistent, urgent- needing help right now.

“I’ll be with you in a moment, buddy,” I said, holding up one finger. “Let me just finish this call.”

He disappeared and then I saw him walk by with a butter knife.

When I hung up and found him, he looked up with those serious eyes kids get when they’re in problem-solving mode. “I need really hot water and a cloth,” he announced. “To get the beeswax off.”

I got him what he needed, handed it over, and turned back to check on something in the oven. From across the kitchen, I heard him scrubbing away, then…”Dad, it’s not coming off.”

I walked over to see what he was working on, next to his bowl was the butter knife.

He’d been wiping the water away to check his progress, and what was revealed made my stomach drop. Three substantial gouges carved into the surface—he’d been using the butter knife like a coloring pencil to scrape away three big blobs of wax. The beeswax was gone, alright, and so was a significant portion of the table’s varnish, along with the wood beneath it.

I looked at him, and he was already looking back at me. He knew. His face held that particular expression children get when they realize they’ve crossed a line they didn’t know existed.

There was this subtle feeling moving through me, something old and conditioned from my own childhood. A quiet voice suggesting consequences, the kind that still lives in my nervous system as a faint residue. But then I really saw what was happening here.

This little person had been trying to do something good. He’d taken responsibility for the beeswax situation. He’d problem-solved, gathered his materials, and set to work fixing his mistake. He just didn’t have the knowledge to do it correctly. In his four-year-old understanding, he believed what he was doing was right. He was trying to make things better.

I knelt down and explained how metal is harder than wood, how using one on the other will always damage the surface. I took my time with it, staying gentle as I spoke. He listened with that full-body attention kids have when they’re really taking something in, and then he repeated it back to me clearly.

He got it.

“I’m sorry, Dadda,” he said, looking right into my eyes.

“Everything’s okay, buddy. Sometimes we make mistakes, all we need to do is learn from them.”

The behavior was corrected without any punishment and the lesson was learned.

A little later that day, I found a moment to tell what had happened.

I watched her face go through this beautiful progression—first, a flash of panic as she registered “three gouges” and “new table” in the same sentence. She looked at me, clearly ready to spiral into problem-solving mode or maybe mild horror.

I was completely calm, and she could see it. Without me saying a word, she adjusted herself to almost exactly where I’d landed. This unspoken “ah well, what are we gonna do about it anyway” passed between us, and then we both just started laughing.

I told her the whole story - what went through me, how I’d chosen compassion over that old conditioned response, the way Himalaya had just been trying to help. She was completely with me on it.

“I’m so grateful it was you and not me who was the first responder,” she said. “I don’t know if I would have gotten there that fast.”

We talked for a while about how we would have been severely scolded for something like this as kids. No space to reflect without shame and guilt coating everything. No room to learn from it with any dignity intact. Just punishment masquerading as correction.

Carla and I love these moments because they reveal just how aligned we are on pretty much everything that matters. It feels so good to be on the same page with your partner, to know that when it counts, you’re moving in the same direction with the same values.

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I passed that table three times today and each time I smiled.

I’m genuinely considering not repairing it. Leaving those gouges as a permanent reminder: we make mistakes, we learn from them, and we don’t always need to cover them up.

There’s something joyful about those marks now. They’re evidence of Himalaya’s initiative, his problem-solving, his desire to make things right. They’re also evidence of the moment I chose compassion over conditioning. The moment I remembered that the universe’s intelligence is corrective, not punitive and that I could be an expression of that intelligence in my son’s life.

There’s a principle at the core of the work I do with people, and it’s this: the universe is benevolent, non-punitive, and always guiding us toward the deepest experience of who we are.

I know this sounds a bit cliche but it’s true.

This understanding completely transforms how we receive life. When we realize that everything happening to us is actually happening for us, we stop resisting the circumstances that feel hardest. We start looking for what they’re revealing. We approach our perceived failures with compassion and kindness rather than critical judgment and disapproval.

When we embody this for ourselves, it naturally shows up in how we relate to others and their perceived failures. We become a force of encouragement, a source of support that helps people recover faster and move through difficulty with more grace.

Most of us weren’t raised this way, most of us learned that mistakes require punishment. That correction means consequences. That love is conditional on getting things right.

How often do you treat your mistakes - in business, in relationships, in your creative work - as evidence that you’re fundamentally flawed rather than fundamentally learning?

Most people I work with carry deep conditioning around punishment. They’ve internalized a harsh inner voice that sounds a lot like correction but is actually just cruelty. They’re stuck in loops of self-judgment that keep them small, afraid to try new things, terrified of being seen fully because they might get it wrong.

The work is about interrupting that pattern. Learning to recognize when you’re in punishment mode versus correction mode—with yourself, with your team, with your clients, with your work.

Correction says: “This didn’t work. What can we learn? How do we adjust?”

Punishment says: “This didn’t work because you’re wrong. You need to suffer for this.”

One moves you forward, the other keeps you stuck.

When you learn to approach your own growth with the same patience and compassion I tried to bring to that moment with Himalaya, something fundamental shifts. You recover faster from setbacks, take bigger creative risks, and stop performing so you can actually create. The businesses and relationships and lives you build start to feel aligned because you’re not constantly bracing for punishment.

This is the foundation of the work in Ritam—whether it’s the immersion journeys or the deeper embodiment work. We’re learning to recognize the difference between the universe’s corrective intelligence and the inherited patterns of punishment. We’re practicing choosing compassion over conditioning and we’re building the capacity to transmute difficulty into wisdom.

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When was the last time something happened to you where you reacted strongly, toward yourself or someone else, and then later realized there was room for more compassion?

It’s never too late to take that position. To let things go and reconcile them within ourselves, knowing that’s what the universe is always doing for us: infinitely compassionate, infinitely patient, always guiding and supporting.

Even when we take a butter knife to the table.

Love,
Jonni

The first thing that hit me wasn't the sight of boxes or the reality of sharing my space, it was the smell.

I stood outside my East Village apartment door, keys in hand, returning from a work trip to the Bahamas, and breathed in the most incredible curry-scented cloud mixed with... was that sandalwood? My functional, mid-30s working New Yorker apartment, set up entirely for efficiency rather than ambiance, now smelled like an ashram.

Oh god, I thought, is this what my apartment is going to be like now?

That was ten years ago, the weekend Jonni officially moved in. I had no idea I was about to get a masterclass in energy cultivation that would completely transform not just how our home felt, but how we lived.

You see, Jonni doesn't just move into a space, he transforms it. Within days, my practical two-bedroom (where the second room had been devoted entirely to my embarrassingly large collection of clothes) had sprouted crystals like some kind of geological garden. Smoky quartz appeared on windowsills. Rose quartz claimed real estate on the dining table. A massive piece of selenite took up residence by the front door like a bouncer checking the energy of everyone who entered.

"Do we really need all these rocks?" I asked, stepping carefully around what looked like a small crystal city forming in our living room.

Jonni just smiled and cranked up the Indian flute music that had become our apartment's constant soundtrack.

But something was undeniably different about our space. The change was immediate and impossible to ignore. Friends would walk in and something shifted in their bodies, shoulders would drop, breathing would deepen, they'd settle into our couch like they'd found an oasis they didn't know they'd been searching for.

"Your place just feels so... different," they'd say, and then they'd stay. And stay. And stay.

I remember countless evenings where I'd finally excuse myself to bed around midnight, telling our lingering guests, "Just let yourselves out when you're ready!"

That's when I realized we weren't just decorating anymore. We were creating an energetic container.

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The real test came when we had kids.

Now, a decade later, our children have crystal bowls in their bedrooms, not for decoration, but because they've grown up understanding that these aren't just pretty rocks. They're part of how we keep our home feeling like a sanctuary. Our four year-old regularly sets up a "crystal shop" in his bedroom where Jonni and I come to "purchase" stones with very serious negotiations about pricing.

"This one is fifty hundred dollar bucks because it's very special magic," he’ll inform us, holding up a piece of clear quartz.

Their nightlight? A softly glowing smoky quartz crystal that bathes their room in the gentlest amber light.

I’ve learned that it's about creating a home that feels energetically intentional rather than accidentally chaotic.

The music plays an equally crucial role. We keep Indian ragas or flute music playing softly in the background, not as performance, but as frequency. On days when the kids are wound up and I can feel that familiar parental stress creeping in, I notice how the consistent, flowing soundscape seems to regulate all of us.

Though I have to admit, when Jonni throws on James Brown while cooking dinner, the entire energy of the house shifts into pure joy. Suddenly we're all dancing in the kitchen, the kids are giggling instead of whining, and dinner prep becomes a celebration rather than a chore.

We've never lived anywhere without finding "our crystal guy", that one shop where the owner really knows their stones and the energy feels right. Whether we were in New York, Byron Bay, or anywhere in between, sourcing quality crystals became as essential as finding a good coffee shop or farmers market.

And here's something I never expected: there's never been a time when a crystal wasn't a perfect gift. Whether it's for a friend going through a difficult transition, celebrating someone's new home, or just because Tuesday felt like it needed more beauty, crystals work. They're like giving someone a tiny piece of intentional energy they can carry with them.

What Jonni did was cement something I'd always known but had never quite executed properly: our environment shapes us far more than we realize. Of course, having him there made me want to come home to him every night, but what surprised me was how the space itself began to transform me.

The question isn't whether you believe in crystal energy, it's whether you're intentional about the energy you're creating in your daily life. Most of us spend enormous effort optimizing our diets, our workouts, our schedules, but we live in spaces that accidentally drain us rather than restore us.

When your home becomes a place that actively supports your nervous system instead of overstimulating it, everything changes. Your sleep improves. Your relationships feel easier. You actually want to be there instead of constantly seeking escape. People linger. Connection deepens.

Our home isn't perfect, there are still days when the kids are melting down and no amount of rose quartz can fix the chaos. But we've created a foundation of intentional energy that holds us through the storms. Below I’ve shared a list of crystals that would be a great investment to your home.

If you're ready to bring this kind of intentional energy into your own life, our Ritam Studio practices are designed around the same principle: creating supportive containers for transformation. Through our movement and meditation work, you learn to cultivate the same kind of energetic awareness in your body that crystals and conscious music bring to a space.

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Our recommended starter crystals for any home:

• Smoky Quartz: Grounding and protective, perfect for entryways

• Rose Quartz: Heart-opening energy for bedrooms and gathering spaces

• Clear Quartz: Amplifies intention, beautiful anywhere

• Selenite: Clearing and purifying, ideal for resetting energy

• Green Aventurine: Peaceful, calming vibration for stress relief

Start with one. Notice what shifts. Remember the most powerful practice isn’t just what you do, it’s the energy you cultivate in every space you inhabit. Let your home become a conscious partner in your transformation rather than just a place where you collapse at the end of the day.

Ten years later, we still haven’t lived anywhere without finding our local crystal guy. Creating intentional energy in your space is just as essential as finding your local coffee spot (or for me the local bakery as I don’t drink coffee …but that’s another Substack story entirely!).

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