i think it was always about trust

hello, my dear <3

A few months ago, I introduced the beta of The Creative Underground. Going into it, I thought I was designing a creativity workshop. Or a creative entrepreneur workshop. Or maybe a “how to not sell your soul to capitalism” workshop.

I wasn’t wrong.

But I also wasn’t quite right…

When the month was over, I sat down to figure out what had actually happened. As I looked back over the conversations, the experiments, the feedback forms, and all the little moments that seemed to matter most, I noticed something I hadn’t expected.

Nobody had joined because they wanted to become “more creative.” Nobody wanted painting lessons, better poetry, or more business ideas.

They joined because they felt stuck.

Stuck in perfectionism. Stuck in overthinking. Stuck waiting until they felt more confident, more certain, or more ready.

But underneath all of those stories, I kept hearing versions of the same sentence:

“I think there’s a version of me that feels more alive than this… and I don’t quite know how to get back to her.”

Every week someone would say, “This is probably silly, but…” or “I don’t know why I keep thinking about this…” Instead of deciding whether those ideas were “good,” we got curious about them. We built imaginary mansions. Hosted fairy balls. Came up with intentionally terrible ideas. From the outside, it probably looked like a group of adults being wonderfully ridiculous.

But inside the room, the rules were different. Nobody was trying to be right. We weren’t asking, “Will this work?” We were asking, “Does this make you curious?” “Where do you feel resonance?” “What does that feel like in your body?”

And I think something interesting happens when you spend time in an environment where curiosity is celebrated more than productivity:

You stop needing to justify every instinct.

You stop waiting until you feel certain.

You stop talking yourself out of things before they’ve had a chance to breathe.

Looking back, I don’t think the biggest thing people gained was creativity. Or better ideas.

I think they left with permission.

And over time, permission quietly became trust—not because anyone taught them to trust themselves, but because they kept collecting little pieces of evidence that maybe their curiosity was worth listening to after all.

In a strange way, The Creative Underground felt less like a new project and more like a map of how I’d gotten here. It’s an outward expression of the process that’s quietly shaped my own life.

As I kept pulling on that thread, I started recognizing the pattern everywhere. In fact, I realized it’s how I’d built the entire Yoga Underground ecosystem: by following curiosity long before I knew exactly where it was leading. (I have never had a plan lol)

Classes became Teacher Trainings. Teacher Trainings became retreats. Retreats eventually led to The Creative Underground. On the surface, they look like completely different experiences, but I don’t think they are.

I think I’ve been building the same thing for sixteen years:

Environments where people feel free to become more fully themselves.

Places where curiosity is celebrated, experimentation feels safe, and people slowly discover that they already know more than they think they do.

I don’t think most of us have an idea problem, or even a creativity problem. I think we’ve simply gotten so practiced at optimizing our lives that we’ve forgotten how to notice what genuinely makes us curious. Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped believing those quiet nudges were worth following.

The Creative Underground is an invitation to spend four weeks in a different kind of environment. One where curiosity is celebrated more than productivity, where it’s normal to follow something interesting before it makes sense, and where you get to practice paying attention to the parts of yourself that everyday life so easily teaches us to ignore.

What happens after that is different for everyone; maybe you leave with a business idea you’ve finally decided to pursue. Maybe you sign up for the pottery class you’ve been talking yourself out of for two years. Maybe you write your first poem, host your first dinner party, book the trip, start the conversation, or make a new friend who changes the trajectory of your life.

I honestly don’t know.

But after watching this beta cohort, I’ve stopped believing the outcome is the most interesting part.

The interesting part is that people start participating in their own lives again.