Born from a vision
of a truly heart connected healthy world for all.

I have spent much of my life curious how to heal, evolve, expand, connect, forgive and be happy. I've asked myself what makes us human—and what makes us more alive, and tried nearly anything the universe put before me from all corners of the earth.

I've been incredibly fortunate to sit with extraordinary teachers, artists, healers, scientists, spiritual leaders and indigenous elders from the Amazon and North American tribes. I've meditated with the Dalai Lama, studied over fifteen years with Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith, explored neurofeedback and brain training, Bruce Lipton, Wayne Dwyer, Tony Robbins, Joe Dispenza, Marianne Williamson, to name a few. I trained in "master level" Reiki, energy work and sound, traveled into ancient healing traditions, and spent most of my professional life around some of the world's most creative people.

And after all of it, I keep coming back to something remarkably simple: we already carry so much of what we're searching for. We have just become incredibly good at not hearing it. Life gets loud. Achievement. Phones. Fear gets loud. Distractions. Other people's opinions get really loud. And somewhere underneath all of that is this quieter voice saying: I'm still here.

My own life has given me plenty of reasons to learn how to listen. I've known extraordinary joy, beauty and adventure, and I've also known profound loss. My grandfather and my beautiful friend Chris Huvane took their own lives, and then my mother at only 67. There isn't a sentence beautiful enough to make that okay.

And I don't want Estrella to be a place that tries to make pain pretty. I want it to be a place that helps us become more capable of being human. A place where it's okay to be joyful and grieving. Strong and exhausted. Spiritual and questioning. Addicted and suffering. Playful and joyful. Creative and adventurous. A masterpiece and a work in progress. Sometimes all before lunch.

Because healing, to me, isn't becoming a person who never struggles, it's remembering who we truly are. It is developing a deeper relationship with the part of ourselves that knows how to find the way home.

I keep thinking about what could change if we helped people build that relationship earlier. What if children learned emotional fitness alongside physical fitness? What if a child knew that taking three conscious breaths wasn't strange—it was simply something humans can do when their nervous system feels overwhelmed? What if intuition wasn't something we had to rediscover as an adult? If creativity wasn't slowly educated out of us? If adults had spaces where they could put down the performance of having everything together? If families could learn these things together?

And what if the ultimate purpose of becoming more conscious wasn't simply feeling better ourselves—but becoming more available to one another?

That's the Estrella I see. Not a place telling you what to believe. A place inviting you to experience, question, practice and discover for yourself. A playground for human potential, a laboratory for consciousness, a community rooted in love. And, hopefully, a place with enough joy that we remember transformation doesn't always have to be so serious.

The great Rev. Michael Beckwith's Life Visioning work asks us to become receptive to what is seeking to emerge rather than imposing our limited idea of what life should be. His teachings describe visioning as opening consciousness to a life of wholeness, joy, creativity and generosity of heart. That idea has stayed with me.

So my vision for Estrella isn't ultimately about building an institute. It's about what the institute might help build in people. More resilient children, present parents, connected partners, courageous artists, conscious leaders, emotionally equipped young and older people. More people who remember that their lives have value—even in the moments when they cannot feel it themselves. More humans becoming beneficial presences on this beautiful, complicated planet. And then helping someone else do the same.

Because your healing is yours. But what you do with it belongs to the world.

So come take a class yourself. Bring your child or your friend, or come alone. Sit with us. Dance. Meditate. Laugh. Release. Learn something. Unlearn something. Play. Ask impossible questions. Get quiet enough to hear what answers. Get inspired, being inspiring. And if you have the resources, help us hold the door open for somebody who doesn't.

Estrella means star. My hope is that this becomes a constellation—each of us remembering our own light, and then using it to help illuminate the way for someone else.

May all beings know health, peace, love, joy, magic, wonder and awe. And may we have the courage to become available to the life that is still trying to live through us.