The Coherence Experience: Cancún

Conditions, Perception, and the Art of Seeing Clearly

The Coherence Experience: Cancún is a six-week guided inquiry into the conditions shaping your perception, responses, relationships, habits, attention, and conduct. Using selected Buddhist teachings and stories, an original companion workbook, weekly individual mentoring, a five-day field experience in Cancún, and guided re-entry, we examine what becomes visible when ordinary conditions are interrupted. What changes when you leave the environment that has been continuously producing urgency, confusion, over-functioning, tension, or collapse? What returns when you go home? Which parts of your identity are fixed—and which were formed through repetition, necessity, relationship, history, and environment? What once helped you survive but may no longer need to be carried? This is not about becoming Buddhist. It is not about performing healing, chasing a peak state, or demanding that travel transform you. It is about inquiry. Observation. Contrast. Curiosity. Clearer seeing. And the difficult, practical question of how insight becomes conduct. No previous knowledge of Buddhism is required. The Coherence Experience: Cancún is open to anyone seeking greater clarity, precision, and coherence—especially when ordinary conditions are no longer producing the life, environment, or way of living they know they need. Applications are now open. Visit the website or message me for details. #cancun #mexico #retreat #private #mentor

A friend asked me recently for a photo of the “infamous gecko” … Perhaps others are curious as well. @letschangeourminds @chloebourjalliat.coach #messenger #gecko #life #podcast #story

2019 Kunming monastery for intensive Buddhist Studies summer program. Miss these days. And these ladies!! @maggiealisonm @teddyfinkart my Chinese interpreters lol. Ummm you both still need to join me in Japan one of these days to return the favor haha #undergrad #buddhism #china #knowledge #learning

#song #tunes #perspective #wander #curious

I have been thinking about what is missing from contemporary manifestation culture. What is missing is sacrifice. The Vedic sacrificial fire is not merely symbolic decoration. The offering enters the fire and is transformed. This contemporary word sacrifice carries problems. Women in particular have been taught that sacrifice means erasing themselves for families, husbands, children, communities, religions, and institutions. Suffering has repeatedly been made sacred in order to keep people obedient. That is not what I mean. I mean the offering. What are you actually willing to place into the fire? Not what you want to pretend you have released. Not what you can write in a journal and ceremonially burn while continuing to behave exactly as before. What will you stop doing? What will you stop protecting? What will you stop feeding? What will you relinquish even if there is no immediate reward? What will you give in exchange for the life you claim to want? And equally: What have you already given that should never have been demanded? What are you no longer willing to offer? Who has benefited from teaching you that your suffering is sacred? What are you sacrificing yourself to—and what is actually being created through that sacrifice? Manifestation asks: What do you want? Sacrifice asks: What will it require? Manifestation says: Become available to receive. Sacrifice asks: What are you offering? Manifestation says: Raise your vibration. Sacrifice asks: What must be transformed? The Puruṣa Sūkta places sacrifice at the beginning of the world itself. The cosmos does not emerge through affirmation. It emerges through offering. Perhaps manifestation is so appealing because it promises a life without sacrifice. No unbearable choices. No genuine endings. No obligations. No relinquishment. No admission that what we want may require us to stop being who we have been. Only alignment. Only receiving. Only wishing harder. But nothing new is created while everything old remains untouched. At some point, something must be offered... New on Substack: The Magical Thinking of Manifestation

Awww missing my sidekick!! @king_chimp5 remember when this was your fave song? Lol #son #mom #oldies #throwback #emptynester

I do miss Luna as my dance partner though!!! Sooooon 😍✨😍

The Coherence Experience: Cancún 2026 Conditions, Perception, and the Art of Seeing Clearly Ever been curious about Buddhism and how it might actually apply to your life? Join me through a six-week guided inquiry combining Buddhist Studies, private mentoring, reflective work, and a five-day field experience in Cancún, Mexico. This is not “Buddhist wisdom” repackaged as wellness content. The experience is grounded in my academic training in Buddhist Studies, years of research into sacred sites and lived religious practice across Asia, and a lifetime of examining the relationship between knowledge, experience, environment, and change. What might change in your life if you understood that you have been trying to navigate distortion from inside the very conditions shaping your confusion? Ready to disrupt the distortion? #buddhism #knowledge #course #travel #offer

Im often asked what the tattoo on my back says / signifies. At the nape is Sanskrit Devī, the Goddess, followed by kanji representing courage, strength, wisdom, faith, love, and healing continuing into the idea of the precious jewel or treasure, emanating from a lotus with a Siddhaṃ character (bija) associated with Kichijōten, the Japanese Buddhist form of Śrī/Lakṣmī. 勇 — ゆう (yū) · courage/bravery 強 — きょう (kyō) · strength 智 — ち (chi) · wisdom 信 — しん (shin) · faith/trust 愛 — あい (ai) · love 癒 — ゆ / いやし (yu / iyashi) · healing 為 — い / ため (i / tame) · action, purpose, for the sake of 珍 — ちん (chin) · rare, precious 寶 — ほう (hō) · treasure/jewel; the old/traditional form of modern Japanese 宝 Kichijōten (吉祥天) is associated with: * beauty * abundance * good fortune * prosperity * virtue * grace * fertility * auspiciousness In Japanese esoteric Buddhism she represents auspicious virtue and spiritual as well as material flourishing. Siddhaṃ is the script used to write Sanskrit in esoteric Buddhist traditions that spread from India to China and Japan. While it disappeared from everyday use in India, it was preserved in Japan, particularly within the Shingon and Tendai traditions. Monks continue to study and write Siddhaṃ today as part of ritual practice. bīja (seed syllable) In esoteric Buddhism are understood as a condensed expression of a Buddha, bodhisattva, or deity’s enlightened qualities. a single Siddhaṃ character can stand in for their presence, wisdom, and activity. That’s why temples often use Siddhaṃ characters: * on mandalas, * on ritual implements, * on memorial tablets, * in calligraphy, * and in visualization practices. My tattoo functions symbolically and ritually and reflects my broader interests in how scripts themselves become sacred objects and vehicles of meaning. #tattoo #talisman #ritual #ink #script

EUREKA!!!!! The past seven months have been incredibly disorienting, disillusioning & discombobulating. And AMAZING!! I drove 7000km to a new country. I left academia launching massive complaints and prepping for legal battle. I stepped into worlds I had previously only observed from the outside—the coaching industry, wellness spaces, self-help, spiritual communities. it has felt like the shattered pieces of my life have been scattered all around me. Like a puzzle, I’ve been trying to see what fits where. A few days ago I was speaking with a mentor and shared that the outer frame of the puzzle has finally come together! She said she had read recently that our intuition is our oldest ancestor’s voice. Years of academic training. Decades of lived experience. A lifetime of following sparks that made no practical sense. I am now a trained Buddhist Studies scholar. I found refuge in this through some of the most difficult and cumbersome chapters of my life. I got and stayed sober only partly due to AA - I found my sobriety & recovery in ancient traditions. I never imagined those threads would lead me here. But they did. And with that… I’m incredibly excited to officially introduce the inaugural experience from Emerald Goddess International: The Coherence Experience: Cancún A six-week hybrid experiential & educational inquiry exploring perception, coherence, Buddhism, and the conditions that shape how we experience our lives. Over the coming days I’ll be sharing: • what it is • who it’s for • exactly how it works • founding cohort pricing • and the two Founding Member places available. The website is live (and as always still being refined), but you can find more info there including an FAQ. Boom, bitches. 💫 hahaha It’s been a long-ass journey. Thank you to everyone who has listened, challenged me, encouraged me, and let me run with a million different ideas over the past months. You helped shape this more than you know. The hard launch for Cancún starts NOW And Java… you’re next. 2027 is going to be one hell of a year. ✨ #travel #history #buddhism #launch #mentor

📖 🤓 🙃 #philosophy #india #book #knowledge #read

From the Undergrad Snapchat Archives lol My academic background spans 11 yrs and is rooted primarily in religious studies, history, Buddhist studies, South & southeast ‘Asian’ religions, lived religion, material culture, and the relationships between people and their environments. I hold a Master of Arts in Pacific and Asian Studies and an Honours degree in History, completed with Great Distinction. I also completed advanced doctoral training in international and global history, environmental history, and the history of medicine. For more than a decade, I have studied how human beings make meaning: through stories, rituals, sacred places, objects, bodies, institutions, and relationships. My research has so far taken me to Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, India, and Cambodia. I have studied pilgrimage routes, Buddhist temples, Shintō shrines, goddess traditions, religious manuscripts, iconography, sacred landscapes, funerary practices, and the movement of ideas across cultures and centuries. I have taught university students about Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintō, Asian religions, Japanese and Chinese culture, Mesoamérica history, gender, literature, and the Silk Roads. My published work includes scholarship on Kālī and Kuṇḍalinī, as well as Tendai Buddhism. I am not interested in reducing Buddhism to mindfulness slogans, turning goddesses into branding, or dressing self-help in borrowed spiritual language. I am interested in what these traditions actually reveal about perception, attachment, suffering, power, environment, and the conditions through which a life takes shape. Emerald Goddess International brings together scholarship, travel, observation, and personal inquiry. For the makers & the misfits: curious, discerning, and tired of being sold simplified answers to complex human questions. www.emeraldgoddess.ca DM for inquiries

The House Where No One Has Died; An EGI Adaptation of the Buddhist parable of Kisā Gotamī and the Mustard Seed. A woman named Kisā Gotamī had a child whom she loved deeply. Before the child was born, she had struggled to find security and belonging within her husband’s family. The birth of her son changed her position. Through him, she felt that she had finally become visible, valuable, and secure. Then the child died. Kisā Gotamī could not accept what had happened. She carried his body through the streets, moving from house to house, asking for medicine. She was not searching for comfort. She was not asking how to grieve. She wanted someone to reverse the conditions themselves. Someone directed her to the Buddha. She approached him carrying her child and asked: “Can you give me medicine for my son?” The Buddha did not tell her that she was foolish. He did not shame her for refusing reality. He did not offer a spiritual explanation for why her child had died. He told her that medicine could be made, but that she must first bring him a mustard seed from a household in which no one had ever died. Mustard seeds were ordinary. Nearly every household would have had them. Kisā Gotamī began knocking on doors. At the first house, the residents were willing to give her mustard seeds. But when she asked whether anyone in the family had died, they answered that many had. She went to another house. There, too, mustard seeds were available. But someone had died. She continued through the city. At every door, she encountered another history of loss. A parent. A child. A husband. A wife. A sibling. A friend. The details changed. The condition did not. Slowly, the world Kisā Gotamī thought she inhabited began to change. Her grief had told her: This has happened only to me. This should not have happened. My life has been singled out and broken. But house by house, she began to see that death was not an exception that had entered her life. Mortality was already woven into every household, every family, and every human attachment. She had not found a house untouched by death.

#meetings #creating #exciting #travel #knowledge

If ever any one were to ask: How does your mind work? This might help with a visual representation … lol This is going to be such an epic experience!!! 8th -9th century temples dedicated to the goddess Tara. Caves Buddhist monuments, sculptures, art. A night out dancing at the end of it all! Planning away and loving every minute of it hahaha #nerd #excitable #strange #cool #emeraldgoddess

Borrowed from FB (unsure of credit) but this really resonated with me… especially lately 🤍

And here’s a tiny tidbit from the online event I cohosted with @melanie.mishler in March. When the Universe had other plans and you ride the waves 🌊 (Cleaners and water refills and wild hair adjusting to the climate lmao…) Beyond grateful for this journey and the incredible women I’ve met and befriended along the way.

I absolutely loved this conversation with Anna. Here’s another tidbit of it 🤍 @letschangeourminds

Consistently holding boundaries with people who refuse to acknowledge or respect them is exhausting AF. I have always much preferred to be with books, surrounded in pen and paper, exploring creating thinking experiencing than trying to make some dimwitted fool “understand “ And I see this all around me right now - Which brings me to this: We have been repeatedly told that relationships are work. They are hard. They are extracting. We must talk about them with our partners alllll the time. I call bullshit. If you are always talking about, “The Relationship….” with your ‘partner’ assessing “their attachment style” or finding “growth” or whatever it is you think you’re finding other than genuine affection and respect all while ignoring your own fucking needs and desires in life, please take note: You’re in a toxic dynamic. Healthy relationships do NOT require consistent monitoring, assessment, explanation, or discussion. If your relationship IS “The relationship “ you may want to take another look. It’s exhausting. It’s draining. And “holding it together….” Or whatever the fuck the narrative is, it’s a lie. Relationships are not “work” they are meant to be enjoyed fully and wholly. Of course people sometimes disagree, argue, etc. we all really should know how to deal with conflict constructively… but let’s be very clear that the second you lose any of your autonomy in a relationship of any kind you have begun to give your power over. Healthy people will not need to have “the talk” every day about boundaries and growth etc etc etc. healthy people will not require you to constantly hold boundaries to such a degree that you begin to notice you are holding the same boundary in various ways and yet it’s still being ignored. That is one of your first warning signs it’s not a healthy person or relationship. Also; I’m busy behind the scenes and have some exciting announcements coming up. I’m having SO MUCH fun planning and organizing and excited to start sharing more of what’s been going on around here 💫 #thoughts #relationship #healthy #boundaries #no

I have long held the position that Western appropriation of yoga and Tantra has defiled and distorted our understandings of these traditions reducing them solely to physique, sex, and markers of social status. But I made those assessments & arguments inside the walls of academia. Having now stepped outside the university and into the worlds of wellness, healing, and spiritual tourism, I am utterly appalled by what people are peddling. Tantric Taoist Yoni Egg sound baths at a luxury resort in Mexico?! I’m not even joking!! Like there is so much wrong with this. What the actual fuck is going on? Śakti is not simply the wellness industry’s vaguely eroticised idea of the “divine feminine.” She cannot be reduced to feminine energy, sensuality, sexuality, womb work, or whatever other language happens to be selling this month. “Śakti is not simply a spiritual or transcendent sort of metaphysical energy; it is also the material power that flows through the social body and the state as well as the physical body and the cosmos.” The social body. The state. The physical body. The cosmos. That is an entirely different constellation of power than the one currently being sold beside a sound bath and a green juice. Current rant concluded.

5 Page Sample Workbook

$0.00

EMERALD GODDESS INTERNATIONAL

THE COHERENCE EXPERIENCE

Accompaniment Workbook

Five-page sample

Buddhist stories, teaching commentary,and reflective inquiry

Cancún · Six weeks · Guided field experience

Coherence Experience Workbook

$88.63

The workbook will be provided free of cost to participants. It is here for purchase for anyone who might wish to work through some of these things on their own.

Please note the pre-recorded lectures are not available. For the time being, if you are interested in purchasing these please send us a message.

Ever been curious about Buddhism and how it might actually apply to your life?

Join me for a 6 week hybrid experiential & educational inquiry into perception, coherence, Buddhism and the conditions that shape how we perceive our lives

This guided inquiry combines Buddhist Studies, private mentoring using Body as Barometer, reflective work, and a five day field experience in Cancun, Mexico at Casa Ana. *

A brand new boutique home just a 10 min walk from the Caribbean Ocean and next to a nature reserve in the oldest community in this fairly new (yet ancient) city. [Welcome To Casa Ana video coming soon…]

The Experience is grounded in my academic training in Buddhist Studies, years of research into sacred sites and lived religious practice across South and South East Asia and the ways in which humans make sense of their lives and environments through myth, ritual, story, and meaning-making. I have spent a lifetime examining the relationship between knowledge, experience, environment, and change both personally and academically.

What might change in your life if you understood that you have been trying to navigate distortion from inside the very conditions shaping your confusion?

We are often told to look inward when something in our lives feels wrong.

Regulate yourself.
Change your mindset.
Establish a better routine.
Become more resilient.
Try harder not to react.

But thousands of years of tradition would argue otherwise…

Are you ready to explore some of the ways Buddhism - and not the wellness world neo-colonial version - but with someone who has studied personally and academically for over 20 yrs combined - can be applied to your modern contemporary life in tangible ways?

Are you ready to start living your life with some direction?

Peace?

Softness?

Curiosity?

Adventure?

Then Coherence Experience Cancun might just be for you!

*for male participants, I will stay across the street during your stay at Casa Ana.

One inaugural founding member package for July, 2026
The founding price for The Coherence Experience: Cancún is $5,000 CAD.
Upon acceptance, a non-refundable $500 CAD deposit is required to reserve the Participant’s place. The deposit is applied toward the total program fee.
The Participant may then select one of the following payment options:
Option One — Full Payment
- $500 CAD non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance
- Remaining balance of $4,500 CAD due upon signing the Participant Agreement
Option Two — Three-Payment Plan
- $500 CAD non-refundable deposit due upon acceptance
- Remainder due no later than 14 days before the Cancún field experience
The complete program fee must be paid before the Participant begins the Cancún field experience.
All major credit cards are accepted as well as E-transfer.
If the Participant’s scheduled field experience begins too soon to accommodate the standard payment schedule, the payment dates will be adjusted in writing while retaining the same deposit and three-payment structure.
Failure to make a scheduled payment may result in suspension of program access, postponement of the field experience, or cancellation of participation in accordance with the cancellation terms of the Participant Agreement.
All prices and payments are stated in Canadian dollars.

Begin Application Process Here

start with downloading the form, once complete attach with your submission form.

I am so excited to hear from you!

Download the Application Form

The Six-Week Journey

Week One — Seeing the ConditionsCentral question: What is shaping what I can currently see?

We begin by examining the relationship between perception and conditions.You will consider the environments, relationships, histories, roles, and repeated circumstances that influence how you understand yourself and your life.Together we work to develop a more accurate picture of the field in which your thoughts, choices, habits, and responses arise.

Week Two — Perception Is Not NeutralCentral question: What am I adding to what I perceive?

We examine the distinction between an event and the meanings constructed around it.You will explore interpretation, projection, expectation, memory, fear, longing, and the stories through which the mind attempts to create certainty.

Week Three — The Conditions ChangeCentral question: What becomes visible when the environment changes?

This week includes the transition into Cancún and the beginning of the field experience.Rather than asking you to manufacture a breakthrough, the experience invites observation.You will pay attention to changes in energy, attention, emotion, physical sensation, thought, desire, resistance, and capacity.The environment becomes part of the inquiry.

Week Four — Crossing OverCentral question: What am I carrying that once helped me but may no longer serve me?

We examine the identities, strategies, beliefs, defences, and attachments that may have been necessary under earlier conditions.The question is not whether these patterns were bad but whether they remain appropriate for where you are now.You will be invited to consider what has protected you, what it has cost you, and what may be ready to change.

Week Five — Returning HomeCentral question: What returns when the environment returns?

Re-entry is not treated as an afterthought.The return of familiar stressors, patterns, emotions, and responsibilities does not mean the experience failed.It provides information.This phase helps you notice what changed, what did not, what your ordinary environment activates, and what support may be needed to live differently within it.The purpose is not to chase Cancún as a permanent state.

It is to use contrast as evidence.

Week Six — Living What You Know Central question: How does insight become conduct?

The final week turns toward application.Drawing from the interconnected Buddhist areas of wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental cultivation, you will consider how clearer seeing affects:the way you speak;the choices you make;the relationships you participate in;the conditions you continue to tolerate;the boundaries you establish;the attention you cultivate;and the life you are actively constructing.Coherence is not simply feeling calm.It is the growing alignment between what you perceive, what you know, what you say, and how you live.

the Companion Workbook

Every participant receives an original Coherence Experience companion workbook containing the substantive curriculum of the experience.

It brings together introductory Buddhist teachings, stories and parables, historical and conceptual context, guided reflection, environmental observation, written inquiry, field exercises, re-entry practices, and questions for integration.

The workbook does not tell you what your answers should be. It provides a structure through which you can examine your own experience more carefully, privately, and at your own pace.

Why Buddhism?

Buddhism has spent more than two thousand years asking questions that remain urgently relevant:

Why do we suffer?

Why are we so often unable to see clearly the conditions producing that suffering?

How do perception, attachment, habit, action, and environment shape what we experience as reality?

How do we distinguish what is occurring from the stories, fears, expectations, and inherited patterns through which we interpret it?

And once something has become visible, how does insight become conduct?

In this experience, Buddhist teachings are not presented as doctrines you must accept.You are not being asked to become Buddhist.

The teachings are used as tools for examining perception, conditioning, attachment, impermanence, action, and the relationship between insight and daily life.

Private One-to-One Mentoring

Private mentoring is the central relational component of the experience.

These conversations create space to examine what you are noticing, separate observation from interpretation, identify contradictions and recurring patterns, untangle complex relational or environmental dynamics, ask questions about the teachings, and articulate what you already know.

This is not mass coaching or group disclosure. You will not be expected to perform vulnerability in front of strangers.

The work is private, attentive, intellectually rigorous, and responsive to the question you are bringing.

The Cancún Field Experience

The five-day, four-night Cancún experience creates a temporary environment in which the inquiry can become embodied.

Rather than remaining inside a classroom or tightly managed retreat schedule, we use Cancún itself as a field of observation.

Your experience may include private mentoring, guided reflection, restorative time, movement, local experiences, shared meals, environmental observation, and unstructured time for solitude in a peaceful setting.

The purpose is not escape. It is to notice what becomes visible when familiar pressures, roles, demands, and surroundings temporarily change.

Spaciousness Is Part of the Method

Every hour will not be filled for the sake of appearing valuable.

The itinerary is intentionally spacious because constant activity can reproduce the very conditions this experience is designed to interrupt.

Time to rest, think, walk, write, observe, and allow an experience to settle is not empty time. It is part of the methodology.

Specific accommodations, inclusions, transportation arrangements, activities, accessibility considerations, and travel responsibilities will be outlined clearly before booking.

"... by staying with me [in that moment] you gave me the support I needed. It was not really anything you said or did, but rather just by being there..."

T. Harker