Humanity Beyond the Checkout Lane
Last month I found myself, again, in a battle of wills with a self-checkout kiosk at the grocery store—a soulless machine hell-bent on misunderstanding my every move.
I argued (in vain) with its screen—“No, I don’t have 17 lemons! It’s ONE lemon!” — and felt my dignity evaporating. The smug scanner beeped, the screen flashed an error message, and it dawned on me that I was pleading with a glorified calculator. A grown adult, outwitted and humiliated by a box with a barcode reader.
Ancient Remedies for Modern Ailments
I had a little moment of clarity: this is what disconnection feels like. Not just from other people or nature, but from myself—reduced to a frantic, lemon-waving automaton. It hit me again how desperately we need practices that pull us back into our humanity. Breath, movement, rhythm, nature—they don’t ask for receipts or accuse you of stealing produce. They meet us where we are, waiting to remind us what it feels like to be alive, awake, and a good distance away from the tyranny of the self-checkout lane.
In a world continually buzzing and blinking, it's easy to forget what it feels like to be fully alive in your own skin. We’ve become so fluent in distraction, adept at bending our minds toward endless tasks, while our hearts, our truest compasses, remain unconsulted. But what if the way forward isn’t through another achievement or another scroll through headlines, but through stillness, simplicity, and returning to the steady rhythm that life offers?
There’s profound medicine in practices that don’t try to sell us a perfect version of ourselves. Yoga, in its essence, isn’t a performance. It’s an invitation to breathe and feel where we are. Movement, when freed from the tyranny of metrics and mirrors, becomes a playful inquiry—our body's way of remembering its wisdom. Nature, too, calls us to recalibrate, to soften our gaze and stretch our time horizons to the scale of wind in trees and light on water.
And then there is rhythm. In the beat of a drum or the hush of a steady chant, we remember we are creatures of sound and pulse, woven into the vibrations of a world far older than emails or deadlines. Music and rhythm are threads that stitch us back together when we feel frayed, binding us gently to one another and to the quiet truth of being alive.
These aren’t mere self-improvement techniques or escapes; they are ways of waking up. They remind us that wellness isn’t something you buy—it’s something you embody, moment by moment. To practice mindfulness in its raw, uncommercialized form is to lay down the armor of modern life and step into something ancient, true, and deeply liberating.
Registration for The Mindful Unplug 2025 Just Opened
This is a big part of the reason why I think places like the Feathered Pipe Ranch matter more than ever. The hum of technology and the buzz of daily demands can fall away, leaving room for something vital to emerge: connection: to yourself, to others, to the natural world, and to the rhythms that have always been waiting for you.
I am honored to again share the role of guide for The Mindful Unplug retreat with Matthew Marsolek, whose work with rhythm and sound has left a lasting imprint on me. Over the years, our collaborations have deepened my respect and admiration for his intuitive approach to using rhythm to heal. He has an extraordinary ability to bring people into the center of their own experience, whether through the heartbeat of a drum, the resonance of a chant, or the power of shared silence.
For my part of this ride, I look forward to incorporating elements of Freedom Yoga as well as somatic movement practices that have profoundly shaped my understanding of embodiment. My approach is inspired by the open, exploratory teachings of Erich Schiffmann and enriched by my recently completed training in Movingness, a somatic modality developed by Peter Appel, that has taught me so much about gentleness, flow, and the art of deep listening to the body. If you’re curious, I’ve reflected more on the principles of Movingness in this blog.
The Mindful Unplug retreat isn’t about following a system or achieving a goal. It’s about creating space for your own answers to emerge. The practices we’ll explore are invitations—nothing more, nothing less—to find what resonates for you. There’s no formula, no prescription, no “one-size-fits-all.” What matters most is cultivating the courage to inquire deeply and the humility to allow your own truth to unfold, one breath, one step, one rhythm at a time.
Imagine this: mornings spent moving through open air, your breath rising to meet the Montana sky. Afternoons laced with laughter, shared meals, or quiet reflection by a forest trail. Evenings around a bonfire, the heartbeat of a drum drawing you into a kind of rest you’d forgotten was possible. There’s no “right” way to experience such a retreat—only the way that meets you where you are.
This isn’t about “fixing” yourself. It’s about stepping back into the wholeness you already carry. So whether you’ve practiced yoga or mindful movement for decades or are just curious about the call of nature and rhythm, know this: your place is waiting. No experience in anything that happens there is needed. And maybe in summer, as you sit under a canopy of stars, you’ll wonder, not why you came, but why you waited so long to, as author Cheryl Strayed's mother is credited with saying, "put yourself in the way of beauty.”
Feathered Pipe’s Mindful Unplug Retreat (26 July - 2 August) offers one such space, free of pretense and full of possibility. It’s one doorway—not to a new you, but to the truest you. Reach out to me if you think you’d like step through.
Registration is open now, and scholarship applications will open in February.