January 2025: Emergent

Downshift, Hakomi, reading, skiing, and upcoming travels

I usually write long-form essays focused on a single topic, but I'm experimenting with a new format: monthly updates that capture my current work, thoughts, and explorations. These dispatches aim to share both professional developments and personal reflections as they unfold. Let me know what you think!

Applications for the next cohort of Downshift are live!

At Downshift, we help ambitious professionals recalibrate their inner compass to create a relationship with work that feels intentional, authentic, and energizing.

Our Spring ‘25 cohort will be from mid March to early May and applications are now open! We’ll kick off with a 4-day retreat at the peaceful Menla Retreat in the Hudson Valley followed by six weeks of virtual curriculum, discussions, and workshops.

Since joining the team at the start of last year via apprenticeship, I’ve witnessed both the transformation in participants and the evolution in our team (we’re a squad of 5 now!)

If you or someone you know is going through a significant work-life transition and looking for a guided transformational program with a curated community, check out our website and apply for the next cohort!

I started training in mindful somatic psychotherapy

This month, I started the yearlong Hakomi Level One Comprehensive Training. Hakomi is a mindful somatic psychotherapy, meaning that it’s presence-based and body-centered. Unlike other therapy modalities, you usually won’t hear too many questions that address the past. And in contrast to talk therapy which is tops-down oriented with thoughts and behaviors, Hakomi is bottoms-up, viewing the body and associated emotions as the source of wisdom.

Last year, I surveyed the landscape of coaching and therapy trainings pretty rigorously and probably evaluated over a dozen different programs. I took a broad sweep across anything that I came across, following my curiosity and sensing if there was any resonance. There were several that appealed to me, including certain methods that I’ve experienced as a client, but it wasn’t until I came across Hakomi that I had a sense of clarity that this was it.

Over this first three-day training block (Fri-Sun), I spent 19(!) hours in training. I honestly had no expectations going into it and was pleasantly surprised when meeting my fellow trainees. Most folks are licensed therapists with years, if not decades, of experience. As someone who is relatively new to coaching, I felt honored to learn amongst professionals who have been in the helping and healing space for a while. I won’t lie, in the beginning it was a bit intimidating, but as we moved through the exercises, small groups, and relational practices, I settled into a sense of ease and belonging.

Last thing I’ll say is that I’ve begun to incorporate some of the key principles of Hakomi (i.e. loving presence) into my coaching practice and I’ve already seen the difference. As the year unfolds, I’m stoked to deepen my practice and study the Hakomi method.

I read On Becoming A Person by Carl Rogers

Most of us have heard of Sigmund Freud—his theories about the unconscious, the ego, and all that. For a long time, his ideas were the go-to framework in psychology. But then Carl Rogers¹ came along in the 1970s and flipped the script, introducing client-centered therapy with a more humanistic, empathetic approach. That’s when things really started to change in the field.

I picked up this book because I wanted to hear it straight from the source. I’ve read endless articles, watched hours of YouTube videos, and listened to so many podcasts, but I still felt like I was missing something. I wanted to get to the heart of Rogers’ ideas, and who better to learn from than the man himself?

Written as a series of letters, the book feels deeply personal, as if Rogers is speaking directly to you. One passage that really stuck with me is this:

“One of the fundamental truths I took a long time to realize—and am still learning—is that when an activity feels valuable or worthwhile, it is worthwhile. In other words, I’ve come to understand that my holistic, intuitive sense of a situation is more reliable than my intellect.”

He also writes, “Experience is, for me, the ultimate authority. The validity of any idea is tested against my own experience. No one else’s ideas, nor even my own, hold as much weight as my lived experience. It is to experience that I continually return, seeking a deeper understanding of the truth as it unfolds within me.”

What I took away from this is that it’s less about technical knowledge, specific training, or searching for some silver bullet, and more about embracing authenticity—being fully human, fully yourself. It’s a reminder that being normal is enough, and that growth often comes not from expertise, but from how we show up in the world.

so many highlights I ran out of pink and had to use blue towards the end

I’m becoming more interested in AI x human wellbeing

It’s finally hit me how big of a deal AI is. Nowadays, you can’t turn on the news or check Twitter without being bombarded by the latest AI news, but what I’m referring to is more about my growing slow hunch that this is truly is going to be a paradigm shift. While these tools have significantly boosted my productivity, I believe we've barely scratched the surface of AI's potential to enhance human wellbeing and flourishing.

Take AI coaching or therapy for example—I think it’s now a matter of when and not if for many of these big crazy ideas. With my background in product and engineering, and my more recent explorations in the adjacent possibilities of what it means to be human, I anticipate spending more time learning, and perhaps eventually getting involved in this space. If you’ve been exploring this intersection of AI and human development, I’d love to hear from you and connect!

I’m continuing to study complexity science and systems theory

I've been learning about complexity science and systems theory not because I want to be a big brain academic nerd, but because they offer powerful lenses to describe the world as I experience it. Complexity science explores how interactions between multiple components create emergent patterns and behaviors that can't be predicted from individual parts alone, while systems theory examines how different parts of a whole influence each other across biological, social, and technological domains. The relevance of these perspectives keeps emerging in my work, from writing about climate tech to now training in mindful somatic psychotherapy. These frameworks resonate deeply with me because "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" shows up everywhere, from various branches of psychology to therapeutic modalities. What draws me in is their emphasis on process-oriented thinking instead of fixed goals, and sensing rather than rigid planning. As I continue learning about these alternatives to our dominant individualistic, mechanistic society, I hope to practice living in a more relational way and empower others to do the same.

Further reading: The Systems View of Life, Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System, Integrative Responsiveness by my friend Vicente

I facilitated an annual review workshop series

At the beginning of the year, I hosted a virtual annual review and intentions setting workshop series across three sessions. Although I was a little nervous about facilitating a group by myself, the experience flowed naturally. After sharing it with friends, getting the word out, and doing the prep work, everything else felt so easeful. Everyone was around the same age and despite not having any screening questions, many people were going through similar life experiences. The greatest value for people was finding comfort in relating to others, leading to greater self-acceptance “Oh I’m actually not so different. This really is quite okay.” Through witnessing others' journeys, they discovered their own experiences were valid and shared. As I deepen my practice with Hakomi and continue to refine my coaching approach, I believe group work will play a bigger role. In fact, I’m planting a seed to run a group coaching pilot later in a couple months. Let me know if you’re interested!

I spent the month co-living and skiing in Utah

It’s winter, which if you know anything about me, means I’m skiing. This season I decided to switch things up and instead of joining another ski lease in Tahoe like the past two seasons, I co-organized a monthlong Airbnb in Salt Lake City. With five bedrooms and enough space for a cozy 12, we made the most of our time in the Wasatch with hot pot dinners, board game nights, Sundance film screenings, and of course, plenty of time on the mountain. This season isn’t necessarily going to be the season with the most skiing or the biggest adventures, but it is shaping up to be the most intentional. I’m choosing how to spend my time well, even when that means choosing to not ski (always tough).

staring down the barrel of High Rustler, Alta’s signature run

I’ll be in China and Japan for all of February

Prior to COVID, I visited my relatives in China every other year, but it's been six years since I've been back and I've really missed them all. Having been born and raised in the US, visiting my Chinese family creates a complex, beautiful human experience as I spend time with people who I share DNA with, yet have lived in such a different culture. There's a duality in that we are so different, and yet it always feels like coming back home when I enter my aunt's place. I'm eager to slow down and observe daily life in these countries, knowing that experiencing different ways of living helps broaden my perspective beyond my usual American mindset. With a few big changes that I anticipate making this year, deep down inside I know being halfway around the world with more time to process and be with myself will be good for me.

Looking ahead

As we enter the second month of the year, I’m feeling optimistic, excited, with just a twinge of restlessness. I’m eager to see how some of my hunches and big decisions play out. I’m eager to spend time with relatives in China and stoked to ski in Japan. Once I’m back, I intend to hit the ground running while still remaining attuned with what wants to emerge. I’m looking forward to seeing how these parts of my life continue to influence and inform each other in the months ahead.

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To learn more about my coaching practice, check out my website.

P.S. If you have recs for Tokyo, Kyoto, Hakone, or Nara please send them over 🙏

1. I also wanted to include this quote, but it felt like it was too long. Rogers describes what happens as a client goes through the therapy process AKA the title of the book “On Becoming a Person”:

The characteristic movement is for the client to permit himself freely to be the changing, fluid, process which he is. He moves also toward a friendly openness to what is going on within him — learning to listen sensitively to himself. This means that he is increasingly a harmony of complex sensings and reactions, rather than being the clarity and simplicity of rigidity. It means that as he moves towards acceptance of the "is-ness" of himself, he accepts others increasingly in the same listening, understanding way. He trusts and values the complex inner processes of himself, as they emerge toward expression. He is creatively realistic, and realistically creative. He finds that to be this process in himself is to maximize the rate of change and growth in himself. He is continually engaged in discovering that to be all of himself in this fluid sense is not synonymous with being evil or uncontrolled. It is instead to feel a growing pride in being a sensitive, open, realistic, inner-directed member of the human species, adapting with courage and imagination to the complexities of the changing situation. It means taking continual steps toward being, in awareness and in expression, that which is congruent with one's total organismic reactions. To use Kierkegaard's more aesthetically satisfying terms, it means "to be that self which one have individuals try is." I trust I have made it evident that this is not an easy direction to move, nor one which is ever completed. It is a continuing way of life.