Meet Alex Julie

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alex Julie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Alex, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?

Purpose was not a word in my vocabulary until September 22nd, 2018.

That day found me on the beach in Montauk, NY. As I gazed out at the blue-green water, my mind was trying desperately to understand how, after 33 years of the “right” accomplishments, I could feel so empty, so disconnected, so depressed. This well-worn negative thought loop was interrupted by a shower of icy water and sand as my dog Roscoe raced out of the waves and plowed straight into me, hoping for a wrestle.

In 2018 I was on my 11th year in New York City, working grueling hours in the finance industry, and drinking myself to death to push away the intense suffering that pervaded almost every moment of my life. My days were spent riding waves of adrenaline and anxiety, and my nights were sleepless. I was on anti-depressants, and each week felt like a series of checklist items to get through. Roscoe was the only spark in my life, my one tether to unconditional love and joy. I credit him with keeping my alive during those years.

We began to wrestle on the sand, the sound of the waves crashing mixed with our chuffs and growls. A few minutes in, I had Roscoe firmly by the scruff (not an easy task against an 80lb 7 year old goldendoodle who was notorious for his moves within the Tompkins Square Park dog community!). As I peered into his soulful brown eyes I noticed for the first time that nearly half of his eyelashes had gone from a rich apricot to a delicate silver.

The moment struck me like a bolt of lightning. I felt as if I was taking an impossibly deep breath of cool, fresh air. For one heartbeat my awareness dilated, filling the whole beach, the sky, the ocean. Somewhere deep within my body, the true nature of impermanence took root and I saw that my entire life to that point had been lived upside down.

A knowing emerged in this space – that there would come a day in my life that I would give every possession I had, every dollar in my bank account, perhaps even every ensuing breath – for one more day with Roscoe. How could it be, then, that I was choosing to spend my days locked away under fluorescent lights, paying someone to walk him, feed him, play with him?

This clarity lasted perhaps the span of a single breath, but it felt like an eternity. As the moment receded into the past, it left behind it an embodied impression that was so counter to my lived experience up until that point that it has stayed with me ever since. For the last 6 years, I have been nudging myself toward that feeling, following an innate knowing that wherever it leads is the path I wish to follow.

It was 3 years before another moment like that opened up for me. During that time, I had quit my job at the peak of my career, left New York for Denver, begun studying meditation and yoga, gotten sober, had a handful of experiences with plant medicine, and become a step-parent. I was still rudderless, but continuing to follow that embodied sense of spacious clarity. An opportunity to sit a 10-day silent vipassana retreat at the Rocky Mountain EcoDharma Retreat Center (RMERC) emerged, and, despite having never spent even one day in silence, I decided to join.

It was on this retreat, immersed in the sacred mountains, steeped in silence, and guided by incredible teachers, that my purpose began to reveal itself. I spent my days re-membering myself to the Earth, communing with trees and creeks and animals, and sharing energy with humans who were also orienting their lives around that spacious place that I had shared with Roscoe and the ocean years prior. During my time in that small slice of the mountains I reconnected to my joy, my grief, my laughter, my suffering. In doing so, I found my purpose – to create spaces where others can find belonging, healing, community, and perhaps purpose through reconnection to their inner and outer nature.

I now teach nature-centered meditation and embodiment practice, and have just finished developing an underwater meditation program that will launch this Fall. I believe that my purpose is to lend my voice to the voiceless beings that are begging for humanity to re-member itself into the web of life, and in so doing, play a small role in the Great Turning that is taking place at this precious and perilous moment in history.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

As a nature based meditation and embodiment teacher, my goal is to create safe spaces for individuals and groups to experience our living Earth in a new way. We live in a culture of “doing”, individuals having a one-way experience, often for the sake of the pictures, stories, or fleeting pleasure. I have found that with the simple nudge of intention and attention, experiences can shift into a relational experience, where we are invited to move from “doing” to “being”.

As we release our agendas and come back into relationship with the more-than-human (and human) world, we open ourselves to being changed deeply. In this space, insights, healing, peace, joy, wonder, beauty, curiosity, and many other powerful experiences can emerge organically. I believe this is what we are really hungry for – moments of belonging to something greater than ourselves.

To offer this work more broadly, I co-founded the Mind Body Ecology Institute (MBEI), a 501c-3 organization through which I develop and lead Earth-centered programs ranging from extended retreats to online classes with a host of incredible and visionary teachers. Our approach is multi-dimensional, involving modalities ranging from dance to art to tea ceremony to nature meditation to yoga, and much more. Our non-profit seeks to create access to these spaces for communities who are typically marginalized, and most of our participants are on partial or full scholarships. I’m proud to say that our 3rd annual Costa Rica retreat in June was attended by half-a-dozen young climate activists from around the world, fully supported, able to recharge and release burnout so they could get back to doing the important work of protecting our beautiful planet.

The crown jewel of my work to date is UMI (Underwater Meditative Immersion), a first-of-its-kind program that combines mindfulness and the underwater world as a means of personal and societal transformation. Water is a powerful element, as ancient as life itself, and modern science has shown that its effects on the brain are incredibly synergistic with meditative states and physical health. The oceans are also the front-lines of climate change. UMI creates a space for individuals to reconnect to the ocean (within and without), to process challenging emotions in community, and to come out the other side with a deeper sense of purpose and empowerment to take action on behalf of a world in crisis.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The most important skill on my journey has been meditation. I started small, a few minutes a day using the Headspace app. I would sit down and suddenly be plunged into a carousel of thoughts, feelings, distractions, stories. Like many people who try meditation, I initially thought there was something wrong with me. In my years teaching, I have met so many students early in their practice who think, like I did, that meditation is meant to be this clear, open, thought-less space. No wonder so many people quit! Even now, after years of daily practice, I will often sit down and encounter a busy, scattered, anxious mind. I now understand that our practice is just to be with what is, not to change it, and definitely not to judge ourselves harshly for being human. This life is busy and complicated, but meditation can begin to tease apart what is skillful from unskillful, and this wisdom has been of paramount importance for me navigating the transitions needed to live a life of purpose.

Another skill that I rely on, and which has arisen out of my meditation practice, is acceptance. Acceptance often gets a bad rap, as if it means blindly acquiescing to things that we disagree with, such as inequality, racism, etc. For me, acceptance is a foundation from which to act. In order to see clearly, I must first be able to accept what is. To firmly establish myself in reality, and to acknowledge that. even if I wish things were different, they are not and may never be. In the Mahayana Buddhist tradition they speak of the Bodhisattva, the being who has achieved enlightenment but chooses to take birth again and again until all beings have been liberated from suffering. The Bodhisattva is able to act in the world without attachment to outcome because they are able to radically accept that no matter what they do, they do not control all the factors that will determine their success or failure. Acceptance allows me to keep moving forward, despite setbacks. As Zen abbot and poet Hogen Bays writes “Being with what is — I respond to what is.”.

Finally, an area of knowledge that has brought me great freedom and fearlessness is the concept of interbeing. In Buddhist philosophy they speak about emptiness or boundlessness. The idea that if you look deeply into anything, you will find it inextricably connected to everything else in the universe. For instance, our minds may look out the window and see a “tree”, but through interbeing you can see that a “tree” is nothing more than water, sunshine, leaves, roots, bark, branches, the animals that live inside of it, the process of transpiration, photosynthesis, even eventual death and decay as it returns to the Earth. In essence, it is everything BUT a “tree”. The same goes for me. I am my ancestors, the people I meet, the things I read, eat, drink, breathe, etc. No piece of me exists in isolation from the world, nor does any piece of me remains the same from one moment to the next. This is incredibly liberating, and also gives me the expanded vision to see that I am the Earth made human, and I have a right to exist without having to earn my place in the world. I also have the right and perhaps the duty to work on behalf of all Life, as that is what I am. If these concepts appeal to you, I would suggest picking up any of Thich Nhat Hanh’s work, which has been of the utmost support to me on my journey.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

Yes! I believe that we are living through perhaps the biggest and most important transition in human history – a transition away from ways of being that are destructive to ourselves, each other, and our planet, and towards a life-sustaining society for all beings. In order for this Great Turning (a term coined by Joanna Macy and others in their Work that Reconnects) to take root, we will need to weave potency into our networks of individuals and organizations doing work across modalities, regions, and demographics.

The Mind Body Ecology Institute is looking for partner organizations to share ideas and resources with, teachers who are hungry to bring their unique gifts forward in creating Earth-centered programs, and participants to join us on our retreats and in our classes (www.mindbodyecologyinstitute.org).

Also, if you are someone who loves the water and is interested in experiencing it in a new and powerful way, UMI will be launching to the public this Fall. You can email me at Alex@Gaia-Mind.com or find more information on our website (www.DiveUMI.org).

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.DiveUMI.org
• Instagram: @AlexUnfolding
• Facebook: Mindfulness In Nature Programs

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