It brings me great joy to announce this first welcoming of humans for deep work at my sanctuary, my home near Mount Shasta. 🏔️✨
This land has a way of quickly reactivating connection to both the animal and the celestial - I feel rooted in the earth I walk barefoot on with the deer and foxes and bears, and I also feel my soul being pulled by the stars, like the massive surrounding pines that are reaching for them.
The work and play we’ll do in this Return to Inner Wisdom will be working directly with the energies and rhythms of these realms - we’ll be both uncaging our subdued primal instincts, and remembering and embodying our essence as beings of light.
Expect deep, vulnerable work. We’re going there.
Expect being witnessed in those places that are both trying to hide and aching to be seen.
Expect post-ecstatic dance hot springs soaks and fireside freestyles.
Expect unexpected outbursts of child-like joy.
I’m filled with gratitude to have a space I can invite people into to provide nourishment for and do deep work with. It feels very different than a destination venue. It feels like a village. It feels like home.
More info in bio. 🌲✨
Beginning THIS Saturday on Zoom! If being witnessed in any kind of vocal expression is an edge for you, or if you want to learn to trust your channel more, come do this powerful and playful vocal liberation practice in a guided and supportive space. We’ll be singing, freestyling, and exploring some soft edges in a way that will leave you more expanded than when you arrived. Absolutely no experience required. Link to sign up in bio.
The healing and pleasure-inducing properties of our vocal vibrations don’t need to be reserved for shower singing and song circles. They were meant for much more. It might feel edgy, it might feel strange, but bringing song into intimacy can unlock a new level of connection.
Would you try/have you tried this?
When I first heard about the practice of s€men retention years ago, I assumed that it meant abstinence from all physical pleasure - a la the “no-fap” movement.
That sounded puritan and boring as hell to me. Why would I want to completely abstain from one of life’s highest pleasures?
What I’ve discovered through the practice is that the opposite is true: when I refrain from reaching the “finish line”, opting instead for holding and recirculating the pleasure, it trains my body to hold and feel more of it.
Expanding capacity is a big part of a man’s work, but it’s not just about being able to do hard shit, it’s also about being able to hold more pleasure in our bodies. This greatly enhances the amount of pleasure we can offer our partners as well.
🌲 ᴄᴀʟʟɪɴɢ ᴜꜱ ʜᴏᴍᴇ ✨
ᴊᴜɴᴇ 12-17ᴛʜ, ᴇᴛɴᴀ, ᴄᴀ
Calling Us Home is both the deep work of recovering our god-given right of expression free from shame, and the vivid joy of experiencing it fully through playful edge exploration. Around the fire, amongst the pines, under wide open starry skies, and in cozy summer-camp-esque bedtime stories and songs, we’ll cocreate a space that feels like a “welcome home” for all parts of us.
5 spaces remain, early bird ends April 26th. ✨
When I first started going to open mics, I would only go up on stage if there was someone that was worse than me performing (whom I would then judge for their lack of skill). In hindsight, what a blessing, what a wayshower that person was for me, to be willing to embrace their human suckness in all its glory, so that I could muster the courage to step up. May we be those humans
So excited to have @ivandurst back in our space, and to welcome @isabelleyrose .
At our March dance, they will be closing our evening with a vocalization sound bath!
During the closing they will play some beautiful instrumental music for people to sink into as they are coming back down to Earth and provide invitational cues for others to use their voices along with them, through collective toning and a simple call-and-response song to close out.
Ivan Durst is a somatic expression and vocal liberation guide, weaving intimacy, edge exploration, and sacred sound into his offerings. Isabelle Rose is a song-carrier and songwriter, uniting others through the gift of music and vocal expression. Together, they create improvisational auditory landscapes that invite connection and collective collaboration.
As always the closing activity is from 10:00-10:10 pm, so make sure to stay all night!
Being witnessed in areas where you are unskilled is uncomfortable af as a human.
At first.
And then, after a little while, a magical transmutation happens: that pressure turns into pleasure.
When you are willing to be seen in your amateur-ness instead of hiding out until it feels presentable, perfectionism dies. The need to be skillful to be “enough” dies. And simultaneously, your actual skill level rises much more quickly than when practicing alone (assuming you’re sticking with it).
And yes, I know what you’re thinking: does this apply to sex? I dunno, try it out 🤷♂️
Keeping impending death in my awareness has been one of the biggest bringers of gratitude. It arrives alongside a tender grief, a warm sadness, that all that I dream to create can’t be accomplished in one lifetime, and I must choose just a small handful of things to focus my energy on that will be the greatest conduits for me to bring my magic into this world; and once chosen, they must be made manifest from the dream world through immediate action.
I was recently speaking to a friend about us both having hundreds of voice notes of song ideas from the last 10+ years. I always told myself I’d come back to them. I’ve been clinging onto them to keep their possibility alive. As I’ve been recently revisiting them, I’ve realized that the inspiration behind most of them has wilted and died - she worded it something like “that season of life experience has passed.”
A little conversation as a nudge, a reminder of the dire importance of seizing the moment and the magic as it arrives, and of letting go of the dream of all the potentials and possibilities of what could be, instead opting to make a decision, to choose one thing to focus on and bring into reality.
God will not create through us the same way twice. If we miss an opportunity, we have to surrender it and let it die, grieve it instead of clinging onto it so that that space is free again, and then use that deeper understanding of the life cycle to take action, swift and uncertain, when divine guidance strikes again.
God will also not create through us forever. At least not in this exact vessel that we are embodying for our specific purpose this go-around. Possibilities are infinite, but time is limited, and opportunity knocks only until death does.
———
Bring death into your awareness. In the morning at your altar, before going to sleep, between breaths. It is our greatest teacher.
To those that don’t use your voice, I pose the question: “how can you not sing?” But I already know the answer: years of carrying layers of shame, stories and what feels like a physical weight on the vocal cords. There is a density there that constricts, that chokes when any attempt is made at expressing. There are fear and danger signals that come up in the body that say “I’m not safe to be seen/heard as I am.”
I know the answer because I’ve lived this. I used to be deathly afraid of sharing my voice, of being witnessed in general, so I would hide. And in hiding, there was more contraction, which created a shame spiral of repression and more hiding, until it manifested in physical and psychological dis-ease in my body. It took a lot of work to start to reverse that constriction - first having to apply a massive counter-pressure to the forces that were keeping me small to let myself be seen, and then continually and often uncomfortably opening more and more in an upward spiral. Even after all this work, I still have stories come up about my voice, but I don’t let them stop me from shining it out into the world at every opportunity.
And it’s true: hearing someone who is both connected to their heart and has acquired high skill level through dedication to a craft is awe-inspiring. But technical skill level is *not* a prerequisite for expressing ourselves - that’s a comparison story that keeps us locked in the “it’s for them, not for me” mindset. If you want to improve technical skill, there are many great vocal instructors in the world. But if want to clear the discomfort, the need to perform, the very comparison story that says “I need to take singing lessons before I’m good enough”, the work lies in letting yourself be witnessed in that raw imperfection by an empathic observer until your body internalizes the message “it is safe to express right where I’m at.” Once that rings true in the body, the message quickly spreads out into all aspects of life - creativity, relationships, purpose. Everything that’s stuck inside and wants out, can now safely be let out into external reality. (Continued in comments below)
My signature offering “Sacred Song Carrier” is back for 2026 with a new evergreen format, extended weekly group calls (+ a 1:1 deep dive with me), and an online curriculum covering topics of working through fears and feeling joy in your voice, sharing songs in sacred spaces, and holding your own song circles and vocal activations.
This is a space where you rewrite those stories:
“I’m not musical”
“Nobody cares what I have to say”
These stories do not define you
They’re no longer yours to hold.
Your voice deserves to be heard
Even if you’ve been told by those you love that your expression isn’t enough
Even if you’ve been carrying the heavy chains of self-judgment all of these years.
I can’t do the work for you, but I can be your guide
Through the fear, into the darkness
Through the unearthing process
I know know the road well
Just like me, your transmission is a healing invitation for others to find theirs.
The initial call is April 14th. $200 off for the first 3 signups - use code ssc200 at checkout.
Calling Us Home is not just a voice retreat, although we will be working extensively with vocal medicine. This is a guided liberation remembrance, a calling back of our celestial power into our blood and bone. This is a sanctuary where deep intimacy blooms through the energy exchange of expressing and witnessing. This is a land where the earth welcomes the surrender of our burdens and the stars fill our empty container with light again.
This is also summer camp sleepover vibes full of fireside songs and delicious shared meals, except we’re also slowly exposing our unexamined stories and fears to the light, to the eyes of a loving witness, so that those stories and fears no longer run the show.
Calling home courageous and playful humans for 6 days and 5 nights of reactivating our wild & free expressive nature amongst the pines and under the stars. ✨ 🌲
