It’s been a long while since the last Exquisite Practice landed on SpaceUnknown. So it is my great pleasure to feature herbalist, writer, and perennial woman crush, Rachelle Robinett!

Today's edition outlines her practice for reconnecting to the primal, instinctual forces that shape her life and her writing—powerful precisely because of its refusal to complicate.

Read on below…

I was first introduced to Rachelle’s work on Instagram eight years ago, drawn in by her potent yet pragmatic herbal guidance, and yes, her killer sense of style (because yes, she’s also a NYC fashion industry veteran).

At the time, I was on world tour as an acrobat with Cirque du Soleil, gradually (cautiously) beginning to explore plant medicine in support of my athletic performance and C-PTSD recovery. Herbalism felt like the obvious next step.

Except—like many before me who have stood lost in the maze of herb and vitamin-lined shelves at a natural health store—I had no idea where to start.

I couldn’t just whack the whole herbal pharmacopeia into my suitcase and figure it out as I went. Whatever I tried needed to justify its weight on the road.

It was a suboptimal, but worthwhile challenge. A challenge, it turns out, Rachelle was uniquely poised to meet.

What sets Rachelle apart—particularly for someone like me who grew up in the fucky shadow of the New Age world—is her refusal to be dogmatic. She holds peer-reviewed science and indigenous traditions with equal respect, letting each speak on its own terms.

That felt not just radical, but safe to me.

I grew up in a world where spirituality was more hollow performance than embodied practice.

There, herbalism oscillated between the pseudoscientific snake oil hawked by predatory capitalists LARP-ing as wellness gurus (looking at u Dr. Joseph Mercola), and the hypochondriac rituals of depressed hippies attempting to herbalize away their body's protests against unprocessed emotional pain. Pain they were, not coincidentally, using “spirituality” to avoid confronting in the first place.

Rachelle was my first example of how a healthy relationship to herbalism could look. An approach rooted not in disempowered and desperate extraction, but in genuine reverence and reciprocity with the greater living world.

It was, to paraphrase her own words, herbalism less as a discipline, and more as a life-orientation.

Grounded by Rachelle's free YouTube channel and educational articles (and recently, her new book!), I found that orientation.

It's become an anchoring root in my life ever since—one I've had the pleasure of passing on to clients and friends along the way. It has also grown into a mutual admiration and, happily, a handful of collaborations (like this one!).

And thanks to her work, the process wasn't complicated.

It was natural.

So without further ado, here is Rachelle's exquisite practice for SpaceUnknown.

WHAT DO I FEEL?

An exquisite practice of elemental inquiry—by guest contributor, Rachelle Robinett.

My writing ritual unfolds in two parts on heavy writing days…

01 • PART ONE

Part one begins with coffee and incense, music, my journal, and the only pen I write with—outside on my deck in Brooklyn where I sit under enormous mulberry trees, or in my yard in Costa Rica where I get to be naked and surrounded by butterflies and hummingbirds.

I watch the sky, feel the breeze, and write stream-of-consciousness—always beginning with the prompt that has come to me automatically for years:

What do I feel?

Sometimes the answer fills a few lines, sometimes several pages.

Then I go for a long run, a bike ride, or into the sea to surf—movement as meditation, as preparation.

02 • PART TWO

Part two begins after that physical intensity, which primes both my body and brain for deep, sustained focus. I sit at my computer to write, again with music (often heavy or fast dance music), again with incense. (I can’t wear sleeves when I write—it’s always been that way. My shoulders, arms, and wrists must be free.)

On writing days, I allow no distractions. No phone. No email. No notifications. Nothing. I set a timer for one hour and write, uninterrupted. When the hour ends, I walk, look outside, stretch, drink water—fifteen minutes of space—then I return.

I repeat this rhythm as long as my mind allows, usually for five to six hours.

After that, I open the doors again—notifications, communication, the rest of the world—and the rest of the day I’m free to do as I please. The only priority thereafter is to allow my system to recover in order to do it all over again the next day.

I love the ritual of writing, as challenging as it frequently is. It’s my favorite way to spend time, energy, and my life.

Writing prompt: What do you feel?

EXQUISITE LIST

…of exquisite stimuli. From Rachelle’s senses, to yours.

LISTEN

1. Rachelle’s absolute vibe of a writing playlist:

SMELL

Her favourite writing scent-scapes:

1. Bolaji Badejo incense

2. Astier de Villate Kingston incense (I can also vouch for Astier’s Nara, Aoyama, Awaji, Yakushima, and Villa Medici incense!)

3. Suchness—A natural eau de perfume created by Rachelle in collaboration with Serene Body Health.

   It’s crafted with 100% essential oils including mugwort, hinoki, blue lotus, siberian fir, oakmoss & spearmint.

   Smells like: morning light spilling through lush arborial canopies onto the forest floor.

   It’s verdant.

   It’s herbaceous.

   It’s ethereal.

   It’s giving Fern Gully fairy chic.

   Get into it.

TOUCH

1. Moleskine classic softcover notebook in black—her (and I’s) preferred writing vessel.

2. The only pen she writes with.

READ

1. Naturally—Rachelle’s wonderful book on integrative herbalism which I can personally and enthusiastically vouch for!

   Order Naturally Now

   

2. Thinking, Naturally—her bestselling Substack on living a healthy, fulfilling life, naturally.

3. Rachelle and my conversation from last year, on her Substack:

   • Part One: personal evolution based on principles of nature

   • Part Two: we seek flow, but resist change

That’s it for this week! More goodness to follow soon.

Until then, stay exquisite :)

— Antonia

Welcome to August’s edition of Exquisiteness—a series of playful, sensory practices designed to add levity to the often serious work of personal growth—for paid-subscribers.

To unlock this full edition, as well as the complete archive of my writing, you can upgrade your subscription below. I’m happy you’re here :)

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Since leaving Canada for Europe in February, I’ve met a lot of people. This includes versions of myself I didn’t know existed. I landed in both Crete and, later, Menorca knowing absolutely no one—starting from scratch, socially speaking.

Before I left, I felt a flicker of apprehension. Not just about meeting strangers, but about which version of me would show up to meet them.

I used to wrestle with monstrous social anxiety.

It was so intense, my throat would make this involuntary, extraterrestrial clicking noise as I tried to speak—even with people I knew. A kind of awkward glottal jig at the edge of the existential abyss of anticipated rejection.

That struggle eased significantly over the last decade of complex trauma recovery—especially through MDMA-assisted psychotherapy (happy to write more on this if there’s interest). But the ghost of that former identity—the social cripple—still haunted my nervous system. I feared her sudden re-apparition.

I was aware that thriving in a new country (again) would require me to stretch into a more socially agile identity. The trouble was, I had no idea how wide the gap was between that version of me and the one I currently inhabited. My social environment over the previous five years hadn’t allowed me to find out. I’d been orbiting the same twenty people since the pandemic. Rarely, if ever, did I meet someone new.

Only time would tell.

When I wrote my last Exquisite Practice—Sweet Release: a ritual for reinvention—back in February, I had a lot of ideas about the new version of me I was making space for. I also had a lot of ideas about the versions of me I was leaving behind.

So you can imagine my surprise when, within the first six weeks in Greece, I discovered:

1. I already was the version of me I thought I came to Europe to become—there was zero gap to close.

2. The version of me I believed I was leaving behind in Canada had actually fallen away long before.

3. The unknown is silently shaping me into something else entirely.

Let’s start with the first discovery.

When I landed in Greece, I challenged myself to seek out and attend as many social events as possible. I used the rare opportunity of a fresh slate as grounds for experimentation. One of my first experiments was to wait as long as I could—ideally several meetings—before disclosing any of the following:

• My past as an acrobat with Cirque du Soleil

• My current professional life as a somatic depth coach for successful creatives

• Any part of my extensive history as a complex trauma survivor

• My trauma-related chronic conditions and how they shape my daily rhythms and capacity (fibromyalgia, EDS, CFS, POTS, etc.)

My reasons for withholding this information had nothing to do with shame, and everything to do with creating space to discover what new, subtler dimensions of my being might come into view when the attention-grabbing headlines of my personal lore didn’t dominate it.

In that space, I experienced an existential liberation.

Not only did I emerge as someone utterly at ease—even highly skilled—at creating new connections, I also began to notice desires, preferences, perspectives, and traits within me that had previously gone unrecognised. Finer aspects of selfhood that didn’t conform to my more well-worn identity-based narratives.

Expanding into these new dimensions allowed me to experience both connecting and being connected to in ways that felt both unique and exhilaratingly unfamiliar.

It also gifted me a deeper, embodied understanding of a truth I’ve long grasped intellectually: neither my greatest trials nor my triumphs are the most interesting—or the most lovable—things about me.

This is an especially important truth to absorb for those of us (my clients included) who tend to attach our sense of safety and self-worth to our accomplishments while also trying to answer the question: what’s next? A question that, by its very nature, requires the transcendence of those attachments to explore in greater depth.

I’ve also come to experience how sharply attuned my intuition has become in sensing other people’s integrity—or lack thereof. When I tell you… nothing gets past me anymore. I can gauge another person’s level of internal congruence through my body’s sensory responses with uncanny precision.

On that note: since (reluctantly) getting back on the dating scene, I haven’t had a single bad date.

That’s out of a few dozen dates with seven different men over roughly four months. Some I met through apps, others in person, but all have been delightful, respectful, intelligent individuals with their wits about them.

Part of me feels a bit cunty attributing that to the accuracy of my intuition over luck. But also—it’s not like I haven’t put in the work to cultivate S-tier discernment over a decade of brutal lessons learned through painful fuckups in my relational judgment. This superpower was earned, yo.

If nothing else, let the above offer hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel with this work. You won’t become an omniscient god, but you’ll become the next best thing: a relationally competent, self-trusting adult.

Now for the second discovery…

The version of me I believed I was leaving behind in Canada had actually fallen away long before.

The biggest reason my self-perception lagged so far behind reality was that, in Vancouver, everyone around me still saw the composite of my past selves.

There’s something beautiful about being known that deeply, over time, by those you love. But that kind of long-term witnessing comes at a cost. You’re not just being seen, you’re being remembered, which can make it hard as hell to locate who you are now, especially when the version of you people are relating to is burdened by the weight of your past selves.

They’d seen me through my throat-clicky social paralysis days. Through two years of being mostly bedridden with cPTSD-related symptoms. Through the early hustle of building a business during a pandemic, while recovering from aspinal injury. Through years of housing insecurity. Through the grief and chaos of cutting ties with abusive family members.

In other words, there were a lot of struggling selves being mirrored back to me, making it hard to see who I’d become.

But in those first eight weeks away, I experienced a clean break from that collective perception.

Back home, life was erupting in every direction: childbirth, marriage, burnout, parental health crises, one friend struggling through a hellish medical residency while raising a toddler (and newly pregnant with twins!), another three navigating the horrors of war in their home countries.

I heard almost nothing from anyone.

Understandably (if isolatingly), my Eat, Pray, Love moment wasn’t the community priority. But in hindsight, for all the reasons mentioned above, that silence worked in my favour.

As for the final discovery—the silent pull of unknown forces shaping my evolving identity—that part’s still as much of a mystery to me as it is to you. But I promise to keep you posted as the process unfolds.

For now, let’s turn to our practice…

Hi! I am [insert reductive construct].

Most of us walk into new settings—especially social ones—and instinctively perform the most familiar version of ourselves.

I’m an artist.

I’m a three-time World Champion.

I’m a good listener.

I’m the founder of a seven-figure design firm.

I’m a sad, broken, trauma bb.

I’m someone who always needs to explain themselves.

These stories become landmarks on the internal map of our Selves—fixed points we return to for stability in an uncertain world. Every retelling seduces us into mistaking them for immutable truths.

But comforting as they are, these familiar narratives also constrict us. They flatten our complexity, obscuring the subtler truths and new growth seeking to emerge from beneath the surface. We become so entangled with the story, we forget it’s not the whole—not even the essence—of who we are.

Last week in Barcelona, battling the throngs en route to my friend’s flat, it struck me that these habitual essence-distortions aren’t so different from tourist traps.

Think about it: you don’t have to be a local to know the Eiffel godforsaken Tower isn’t where the real magic of Paris lives. Sure, it’s iconic. But the seven-hour queue and overpriced keychains don’t exactly scream Parisien chic, authentique.

No one moves to Rome to slam a doppio espresso in front of the Trevi Fountain every morning. (Sidebar: If you did, please unsubscribe from this Substack immediately. I’m only half-joking.)

But that’s exactly how we market ourselves to the world.

We herd newcomers down the same over-trafficked high streets of our being like sneaky little emotional pickpockets, mining their time and attention to inflate our ego economies with the hollow currency of external validation.

We confuse the map with the territory, the highlight reel with the human, the branding with the being—until eventually, persona speaks first, and presence forgets how.

Maybe your Emmy Award is your Eiffel Tower.

Your diagnosis, your Trevi Fountain.

Your “4/6 Generator Aries sun with Scorpio rising”, your Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But stay on the tourist track and you miss everything that makes you truly real, vivid, and unforgettable.

You don’t stumble upon the two-seater bar no one’s heard of, with a 4 am mystery special.

You don’t meet the eccentric bar owner whose batshit personal anecdote sparkd the plot of your next novel.

You don’t notice the graffitied bathroom-stall poem by the unknown artist who, in three years, will be bigger than Basquiat.

The backstreets between monuments hold the real texture, mood, and aura of a place.

And the same goes for you.

Your inner landscape holds mind-bending multitudes. I know this because I help people map the evolving terrain of their psyche for a living.

Incidentally, I’ve never met a single person with a boring inner world—just people stuck in the habit of being shitty self-tourists. They’re afraid if they veer off the familiar path, they’ll get mugged by bandits in the dark alleyways of their unconscious mind. Semi-valid. But don’t worry: as your guide, I’m trained in the psychic shadow arts of Jung-fu (lol, get it?).

As mentioned before, neither our greatest trials nor our triumphs are the most interesting or lovable things about us.

But to discover that for yourself, you’ve got to get off the mf guided tour bus (unless it’s this one) and go off-script.

August Practice: Self-Tourism

Read more

Happy Wednesday! Today’s newsletter brings you an exquisite practice for shedding dead weight—quite literally. And right on time, for a few reasons...

For one, life has been moving at an explosive pace since the last exquisite practice I shared in October. Case in point: in three days, I’m uprooting my life in Vancouver and moving to Greece—a decision made ten weeks ago with very little premeditation. I wrote a whole thing about it here.

The second reason is that we recently entered the Year of the Wood Snake in the Chinese zodiac (a big deal here in Vancouver), which is a time to weave old wisdom together with new growth, and shed skins restricting our expansion.

There’s nothing quite like an international move to ignite both internal and external processes of existential inquiry. I’d know—I’ve made more than a few in my life.

We packed up and moved to Monterrey, Mexico when I was four, back to Vancouver at seven, then across the country to circus school in Montreal for several years, and back at both eleven and seventeen. Later, I moved to London in the UK with my ex-fiancé (a story for another day), before setting off solo on a world tour with Cirque du Soleil in my early 20s. In 2019, a crippling spinal injury forced my unexpected—and unwanted—return to Vancouver, just weeks before the pandemic shut down the world, and all touring productions, for years.

To say transition has shaped my life would be an understatement. For better or worse, jarringly hyperbolic circumstances have repeatedly forced me to become an expert in letting go—of places, people, identities, plans, and the illusion of control. Again, and again… and again.

But this burden hasn’t come without its gifts. I mean, who better to write a Substack called SpaceUnknown? Embracing and cultivating these gifts is what’s allowed me to stop fighting a losing battle with the operatic rhythms of change in my life—and instead, harness their power. And powerful they are!

Now, obviously, one does not live a life of chronic, cosmic disruption without learning a thing or two about packing. Specifically, about packing light. At 31, the entire material contents of my existence can fit into five boxes and three suitcases. One box for tax archives and memorabilia. Four for books. Two bags for clothing, and one for shoes.

Yet even this feels excessive. There lives within me a restless, ever-present striving to shed more. Not just for financial reasons—overseas shipping is extortionate—but for the sake of energetic efficiency. In growth, and in packing, the things that slow us down aren’t always what we expect. It’s not the weighty heirlooms all the time, but the accumulation of tiny, seemingly innocuous nuisances I call “bits”.

Bits are the things (clothes, legal documents, browser tabs, unexamined habits, trains of thought…) that feel too important to toss, but too insignificant to know what to do with. They’re the electronic cables, abandoned craft supplies, and spare multi-national currency shoved into drawers. They’re the stoned, 2am Etsy purchases made on behalf of a fantasy self. They’re the ultra-rare Corso Como era Romeo Gigli tassel coat with baggy sleeves you’ve been meaning to take to the tailor for years. Bits are the stray hair ties jamming the gears of our becoming. It’s not always the boulders, but the bits that keep us stuck.

Since only two suitcases are coming with me to Greece until I figure out where I’m landing long-term, the past ten weeks have been all about ruthlessly unburdening myself from all my extraneous “bits”. Every square inch of luggage space is precious real estate. Nothing can come with me that can’t pull it’s own weight in value.

Part of what makes this challenging is my acute awareness that the person I am now is not necessarily the person I’m packing for. Historically, these life-altering moves have preceded a monumental overhaul in my sense of self. I’m not just preparing to shed a city and the life associated with it; I’m preparing to shed an identity. The objects I bring must not only support my present self, but a seamless transition into my future self. They are transmutational talismans.

This week’s exquisite practice details my process for selecting these objects, and shedding the rest. I share it with you, because you don’t need a transatlantic leap to reinvent yourself—only a willingness to clear space for what’s ready to emerge.

Sweet Release: an exquisite practice for reinvention

STEP ONE: Make time to save time

Bits don’t just take up space, they take up time—moving them, mending them, maneuvering around them. In the rush of daily life, auditing our bits can feel like a drain, when in reality, it’s an investment. For this practice, carve out at least a few uninterrupted hours for each area of your home.

STEP TWO: Dial the atmosphere

This is a ritual, not a chore. You’re midwifing your future self into being. What sounds, scents, flavors, or textures would make them feel truly welcomed? Set the stage. Make it feel like an arrival.

STEP THREE: consolidate the chaos

You can’t curate what you can’t see. Whatever part of the house you’re working with—get it all out into the open, make a pile.

STEP FOUR: Self check-in

Take a moment to connect to your present self.

• What do you love about your life now? Why? What sensations do those parts of your life allow you to access (ex. warmth, spaciousness, lightness, relaxation, expansion…)?

• What do you not love? Why? What sensations do those parts of your life generate within you (ex. heaviness, contraction, tension, numbness…)?

• Look around your space. Which items amplify the version of life you enjoy and the sensations it generates? Which ones feel like clutter, noise, or obstructions?

Now, reflect on your past selves.

• Which rhythms, identities, values, desires, and preferences have shifted over time?

• Invite at least three past versions of yourself to walk through your space. What items are they thrilled you have? Which make them cringe? Which are they indifferent to?

Finally, turn toward your future self.

• Who are you becoming? What skills, capacities, habits, visions, and values shape this version of you?

• Invite your future self into your space, and ask them: “Which items actively supported this version of us to take shape? Which ones got in the way?”

  ---

STEP FIVE: refine

Use these prompts to whittle down your maybe pile.

• Would you wrestle a senior at a flea market for this item?

• You encounter this item in a dream, glowing with meaning. What does it represent? Is it’s symbolism significant to your future self?

• You’ve been sentenced to life-long exile, and have a two-piece luggage allowance. Would you take this item with you?

• Would you feel proud to pass this item down to your grandchild?

• Would your grandchild feel connected to you through this item?

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art is doing a retrospective on your life, featuring a curated selection of personal belongings from your estate. Would this item make the cut?

• How far would you go to restore this item if it were damaged in a flood?

• After this item is tragically destroyed, a skilled artisan offers to recreate it for you—but only if you can justify why it deserves to exist in the world. What do you tell them?

• Thousands of years in the future, archaeologists unearth this item beside your skeleton. What do they conclude about your life? About humanity in this moment of history? And how does their interpretation sit with you?

  ---

STEP SIX: honour & re-home

Everything that made the cut deserves to be chosen—not just kept by default. As you put each item away, take a moment to acknowledge why it’s staying. Does it support your present self? Your future self? Does it bring you joy, ease, or a sense of belonging? Place it with care, giving it a home that makes it easy to access and appreciate.

For the things you’re releasing, let them go with intention. Some items might be perfect for a friend or community swap. Others can be donated, sold, or recycled in a way that aligns with their value. If something no longer serves you, but still has life left in it, pass it forward so it can serve someone else.

And for the pieces that have reached the end of their usefulness? Thank them, if that feels right, then let them go.

With every object you keep, re-home, or release, you’re shaping a space that reflects who you are now—while making room for who you will become.

EXQUISITE LIST

…of exquisite stimuli. Personally selected by my senses, for yours.

READ

• Rachelle Robinett of Thinking, Naturally on Herbalism for Trauma

  Rachelle Robinett—who’s held a top spot on my woman crush list for years—is the queen of sourcing exquisite healing herbs you’ve never heard of, all while looking like she just stepped off a runway that also happens to be on a beach. This post explores herbs to support a neuroendocrine system fried by chronic and traumatic stress. But if herbalism as a path to holistic growth and healing tickles your curiosity, her entire Substack is well worth the deep dive. She’s also an upcoming guest on SpaceUnknown!

• I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky

  The poems of Arseny Tarkovsky—father of celebrated film director Andrei Tarkovsky—are ones I always seem to return to in uncertain times. Having lived through some of Russia’s most tumultuous eras, from the Russian Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall, his words linger like gleaming drops of light suspended in webs of darkness.

  Something was leading us.

  Built by miracle, whole cities split—

  like mirages before our eyes.

  And mint bowed beneath our feet,

  and birds hovered above our heads,

  and fish nosed against the river flow,

  and the sky unscrolled above the land,

  while behind us, fate followed

  like a madman with a razor in his hand.

  —Arseny Tarkovsky

WATCH

• The Lunchbox (2013), dir. Ritesh Batra

  I wasn’t prepared for how deeply—yet subtly—this Mumbai-set romantic drama would get to me. It was less a bawling-over-ben-and-jerry’s kind of impact, and more like a quiet, but enduring, ache in forgotten places. Shook. Five stars.

• The Worst Person in the World (2021), dir. Joachim Trier

  Quirky-thirtysomething-woman-at-a-crossroads type films usually annoy me deeply, but somehow, this one made up for the whole genre. Renate Reinsve—Dakota Johnson’s hot, Norwegian doppelganger—navigates a long-term identity crisis with chaotic charm. The result is heartwarming, hilarious, and devastating in equal measure.

• Youtube Channel: Bald and Bankrupt

  If you’ve ever craved travel content that combines Anthony Bourdain’s warm, human-centered focus, with David Choe’s reckless, borderline-suicidal edge—Bald and Bankrupt is for you. Or at least, it’s for Austin and me, who can’t stop consuming the chronicles of Benjamin, a bald, middle-aged Englishman with a kink for showing up alone in the places you’d least expect a bald, middle-aged Englishman to be. Places like rural Tajikistan, post-Assad Syria, and a deadly South American migrant trail. True to his handle, Benjamin never travels in luxury. His goal is to experience local life in some of the world’s most forgotten corners—immersing himself as authentically as possible, while connecting with the people who live there. Will boost your optimism for the human race.

LISTEN

• Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud

  I was cruising smooth on a fine literary wave before Fashion Neurosis dropped out of nowhere and destroyed my reading habit for the following six weeks. This podcast is essentially fashion hoe crack. It consists of Bella Freud—fashion designer, and great-granddaughter of the Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis—interviewing her extremely cool and accomplished friends about their relationship to clothes. Highlight episodes include Rick Owens, Eric Cantona, Zadie Smith, Kate Moss, Nick Cave, and Kristin Scott Thomas.

• Sweet Release: A playlist for letting go

  Shed some skins (and quite possibly, some tears) with this cross-cultural journey of musical catharsis curated by yours truly.

That’s it for this week! I’m still in the process of cooking up February’s paid-tier workshop. It’s extremely good—oh my god—I can’t wait to share it with you. The working title is “Wizard Shit”, and since that’s exactly what I’m teaching, I doubt I’ll change it.

In the meantime… stay exquisite :)

— Antonia

And when you're ready for the next step… 

1. Learn more about UnfoldingSpace, my twice-monthly group coaching membership here.

2. Learn more about 1:1 coaching, and apply for a complimentary, commitment-free discovery session with me here.

3. Up-level your self-regulation and mindfulness skills with Open Studios—an app that looks, and feels, like riding in a sexy wellness spaceship. 

Welcome to October’s edition of Exquisiteness—a series of playful, sensory practices designed to add levity to the often serious work of personal growth—for paid-subscribers.

To unlock this edition, as well as the full archive of my writing, you can upgrade your subscription below. I’m happy you’re here :)

Upgrade Now

It's funny—every month when I sit down to organize my Substack calendar, I worry that I’ve run out of “exquisite practices” to share. But then, while going about my day, I’ll remember another that’s so deeply woven into my life, it blurs the line between ritual and routine. (Scent)spedition is one of them.

This practice has its roots, once again, in a lingering coping mechanism from my eccentric af childhood…

As a teenager, I faced a brutal daily bus commute from home to school, to gymnastics, and back home, totaling around six hours (sometimes more) roundtrip. One bus had a tight five-minute connection window, and if I missed it—which I often did due to traffic—I’d be stuck waiting another hour. Luckily, my stop was right next to a department store, where I could take shelter from Vancouver’s characteristically gloomy skies. I’d ride the escalator between floors, dripping wet, eventually landing in the fragrance department, where a neurotic middle-aged sales-associate named Farzaneh would stalk about, eager to assail me with suffocating jets of Lancôme’s latest offerings.

I moved from scent to scent, taking every opportunity to dodge Farzaneh’s weaponized atomizer. Before long, I had smelled and mentally cataloged every fragrance on the floor. But I wanted more. The commercial department store offerings seemed to lack something—a certain vibrancy or “music”. The feeling was a perpetual almost. But almost what? I had an intuitive sense that a whole world of fragrance lay beyond those counters, and I was right.

Not long thereafter, I was dedicating a portion of my paycheck from my part-time grocer cashier job to buy tiny sample vials of obscure olfactive creations from specialty vendors like Luckyscent (LA) and Aedes de Venustas (NYC). I kept a notebook to record my impressions, associations, and breakdown of each scent, regularly sharing them on dedicated online forums. The technical precision and intuitive artistry of perfumery fascinated me. Each fragrance was a symphony you couldn’t hear. An invisible performance in three acts. A garment you couldn’t touch, yet which enveloped you in a universe of its own.

In my senior year, I seriously considered a career in perfumery through the prestigious ISIPCA (Institut Supérieur International du Parfum, de la Cosmétique et de l'Aromatique Alimentaire) in Versailles, France, before ultimately pursuing circus. There was, it would seem, no point in my life during which I was not an insufferable hipster, lol. Nevertheless, what started as a way to fend off boredom gradually deepened into curiosity and eventually blossomed into a genuine, lifelong passion.

Scent has introduced new relationships and opportunities into my life, enriched existing ones, and expanded my embodied experience of the world. Which brings us to October’s Exquisite Practice, which is more like a concise compendium of scent-related quests...

Read more

THE LORE

If you’ve been following me for a while, then you know I’m a dedicated disciple of the cult of cinema. It got me young too. Growing up under the care of an authoritarian single-parent who bounced us from actual cult to cult (a whole-ass topic for another newsletter…), I was forbidden to watch most media. “See no evil, hear no evil” was something that got repeated a lot. Yet, to my boundless frustration, what counted as “evil” seemed entirely subjective and dependent on my mother’s whims. Pokémon and the Powerpuff Girls? So so evil. The Matrix? Wholesome family fun!

Around the same time all this was going on, we were v strapped for cash. So instead of shelling out for childcare while she was busy working, my mother dropped me off at our local library, not to return for another four to eight hours. She must have figured the library was a place I was unlikely to be corrupted. And I mean, fair play. Aged eight, I wasn’t exactly bursting to borrow Mein Kampf. I was, however, bursting to sneak into the library’s VHS collection to discover the worlds so forbidden to me.

I vividly recall the electric quiver of my nerves as I inserted a recording of The Marriage of Figaro into the VCR in the library’s private viewing room. Utterly captivated. My world was blown open. After that came The Magic Flute, La Bohème, and Carmen.

Once I’d exhausted the library’s opera section—and my gymnastics coach’s patience as I strained to replicate Diana Damrau’s epic rendition of 'Der Hölle Rache' in screechy kid-voice to impress my teammates during practice (note: unsuccessful)—I moved on to old Hollywood. Then to post-war Italy. Then to the marvelously bizarre world of golden-age Czech animation (Jan Švankmajer’s Alice, anyone?). By the time I reached high school, I was making weekly trips to Frontier Video, a rental joint just a few blocks down from the library, for their Thursday special: four films for $8. By graduation, I’d made my way through their entire foreign film section—about 300 films. More importantly, I’d successfully subverted the rigid bounds of my mother’s censorship.

Though she sheltered me to the point of debilitation in nearly every other important aspect of life—for example, pulling me from all sex education classes and mandatory vaccinations at school—film exposed me to realities that were supposed to remain unknown to me.

As a child, these realities provided a needed escape from the bleakness of my upbringing, but as an adult, they supported me to locate and embody my own reality more fully.

Which brings me to our practice for August…

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As some of you may know, I gave up weed in January. For years, cannabis had served as an utterly indispensable source of relief for my lifelong chronic pain—an invisible disability that didn’t get diagnosed properly until 2020. Last fall, however, a decade's worth of consistent weekly psychotherapy, psychedelic-assisted treatment, somatic coaching, and the implementation of a radically new movement practice began to pay off, with my symptoms rapidly easing or subsiding altogether. With no pain to soothe, my usual post-work CBD joint and nighttime walk routine was no longer doing it for me—it was just making me unnecessarily listless and dull-witted (unacceptable!). As my needs and desires continued to shift, I realized I required new rituals to support my transition from work to relaxation-mode, and to the unfamiliar, more able-bodied person I was becoming.

Thus began an experimentation-filled pleasure quest, which continues to this day! I have since discovered, gathered, or otherwise cooked up a range of rituals and practices ideal for dropping out of the frenetic, ethereal chaos of the mind and into the exquisite sensory pleasures of embodied life on Earth. All these rituals have nurtured and sustained me during both my highs and my lows, and today, I’m excited to share one of my bi-monthly favorites!

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