My New Book Is Available Now!

Hi everyone, 

I’m incredibly excited to share with you that I have written a book, and it’s now available as a paperback and ebook through Amazon (find links at the bottom of this post). Its title is How To Open The Heart: An Incredible Journey Into Vulnerability, Empathy, And The Transformation Of Consciousness. If you would like to hear a few of the details surrounding this book’s creation and contents, read on.

At the beginning of 2020, I formed a very clear vision of what I wanted to focus on this year: I wanted to push myself out into the world in new, challenging, and meaningful ways, both personally and professionally, and I planned to do so quite aggressively. Well, I didn’t get very far into that endeavour before the world essentially shut down completely, and I received the message from life loud and clear that my plan was not actually on the agenda for this timeframe. At least not in the way I’d been conceiving of it. 

In early spring, during the initial, strict lockdown here in Vancouver, I began playing with a book idea that I’d had in the back of my mind, but had been avoiding going into over the past year. In a state of isolation with absolutely no distractions, it was a pretty ideal time to dive into writing.

Fast-forward to today, and I’ve now spent the past eight or nine months completely immersed in writing and shaping this book. It has been an all-consuming, joyous, painful, and gratifying process. I’ve never given so much care and attention to a creative project, and I can honestly say that I never imagined creating a book that I feel so proud of and in love with.

My initial goal with this project was to write something that held parts of what I’ve been blessed to learn about in relation to working with emotions and energy over the past nine or so years. The form that this took is that of a story - the first hand account of a young man (me) whose heart has become closed and cynical to life, the world, and humanity, and the extraordinary process of tearing down the walls around his (my) heart.

The book chronicles about eight years of my life, during which I had the fortune of learning from a very gifted, empathic spiritual teacher, as well as engaging in my own explorations.

The book’s title: How To Open The Heart, pretty much holds its central theme completely. It’s a book about opening the heart, and navigating all the places within oneself that might be blocking that opening. 

For now, I think the only thing I will add is that I am incredibly grateful to have been a part of creating this book, and equally grateful to be sharing it with you. It’s a real honour, and I’ve been truly blessed by all of the people and forces that have come together to help shape it over these years. Some real genius souls have touched me and have their fingerprints all over the pages of this book. If you read it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The entire creative process over these past months has felt very much ‘guided’ - in the sense that some invisible force has been present the whole time, moving things along, stopping things up, inspiring certain ideas and directions. The period of my life that the book covers feels very much the same.

It’s been an amazing journey, and a part of me can’t believe I actually made it here. But here we are, and onward we go.

If you’d like to get a copy (or download it), here is a link for Amazon (US), and Amazon (Canada). It is also available on most all other Amazon platforms worldwide.




Upcoming Project & Blog Update

Upcoming Project & Blog Update

Hi Everyone,

It’s been about a month since my last blog post, and I just wanted to pop in and give regular readers an update as to what I’ve been up to. This spring I committed to posting blogs once a week, and found that a really fruitful decision. For the past couple months, however, I’ve been devoting my attention to a bigger project - a book that I hope to have available this summer!

Playing With The Insatiable Void - Holding Light For The Never-Ending Hunger Inside Us

Playing With The Insatiable Void - Holding Light For The Never-Ending Hunger Inside Us

It’s been about three or four weeks since my life suddenly shifted to the period of self isolation and social distancing we’re all currently navigating. At the moment, I can clearly see the blessings of this - but I won’t pretend that it hasn’t put me face to face with parts of myself that are aching and screaming at times. It actually turns out that confronting this pain is the blessing for me right now, and that’s exactly what I want to dive into the details of in today’s post.

A Simple Guide To Therapeutic Journaling

A Simple Guide To Therapeutic Journaling

For much of my youth I kept a journal, and although it was often the sole witness to many of the secrets and feelings I was too scared (or didn’t know it was possible) to share with any other human, the role of my journals was never solely therapeutic.

While there certainly was something deeply beneficial about having that private space, those pages in which to write my life down, there was something about my process that was almost expressly non therapeutic. To be completely honest, there was always a sense in the back of my mind that one day I would be a very important person, and people would be reading through these journals to see how smart and important I was even at an early age living in obscurity.

Emotional Processing 101: How To Have A Dialogue With Your Feelings (The ‘Getting Over A Breakup’ Edition)

Emotional Processing 101: How To Have A Dialogue With Your Feelings (The ‘Getting Over A Breakup’ Edition)

Late last year, I went through a difficult break up. Despite a lot of love, things weren’t working on some important levels with me and the woman I was seeing, so we decided to step away from our relationship, and were able to come to a pretty good place together initially. Over the following months, however, through a series of messy interactions, things got progressively less clean, and a part of me that had been comfortable letting go of this relationship was no longer so sure of itself.

Introducing The Healing Hearts Online Support Group

Introducing The Healing Hearts Online Support Group

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well and taking good care of yourself during these unprecedented times we are moving through together.

This winter I began hosting local group events in Vancouver, BC, focused on sharing and supporting one another on the journey to living in a deeply authentic, heart centred way (and navigating the challenges that arise on this path). As is the case nearly everywhere at this point, group events are on hold for the time being, the positive side of this being that I am going to be offering the same experience online, meaning anyone anywhere can attend.

Making Grief A Sacred Experience: Processing The Death Of A Loved One

Making Grief A Sacred Experience: Processing The Death Of A Loved One

It’s been about a year since a very close friend of mine died in a sudden and difficult way. The passing of this friend, as well as the months leading up to it and the emotions that arose in its wake, coloured my past year in very significant ways. It was the closest and rawest that death has touched my life up to this point, and though this experience challenged and rocked me to the core, it has also been one of the most profound, humbling, eye opening and heart deepening things I have gone through.

The Art Of Vulnerability And Rejection

The Art Of Vulnerability And Rejection

Vulnerability can act like an edge that cuts two ways: At times it can be an elixir that unlocks doors to extraordinary levels of connection, and in other situations it can slam doors shut so hard it leaves us reeling, in a state of shock or worse - bruised and battered in the most tender place. When we don’t know how to take care of our vulnerability, the latter is often our experience - bringing it out into the open is synonymous with rejection and wounding. That’s why we so often simply don’t - we’ve learned at the deepest level to simply not be that honest, to not get that real, to the point that it might take a massive excavation to break up the frozen feelings and go there even if we wanted to.

After all, even with all the flowery stuff self help gurus speak about the virtues of vulnerability, actually going there carries the very real potential of leaving us exposed to injury. When it’s done right, opening up our vulnerability is a pathway to heaven on earth, but damn it can hurt when things don’t flow.

Today that’s exactly what I want to talk about.