The best things in life are often the result of seeing challenges as opportunities. I dove into yoga, meditation, and spirituality because I felt adrift and incomplete in young adulthood. For those of us who have decided to make the healing professions our life’s work, I’d imagine many of us have experienced significant growth and development following considerable hardships.

This is the self’s last stand. The character will remain, but without continually reifying itself through constructing games, problems, solutions, wants, needs, and concepts, the self loses its sway. The small self should be anxious – this is a separate anxiety from general “character-related challenges,” such as paying the bills and making it to my next meeting on time. The current anxiety is existential.

Why would I share this information? Isn’t this, like, top secret? One of our core values is transparency, and I believe that if we’re going to have a longitudinal impact on the behavioral health field, we’ve got to have an open model – one that is shared and improved upon by folks inside and outside of the Advaita Collective.

We spend all day navigating an increasingly complex maze of concepts, and we are rewarded materially for that. Those who are conventionally “successful” (in our consumption-based, materialistic culture) are often those who have successfully navigated this construct zoo. But so what if that does not bring peace?

Ikigai encompasses finding purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction in life by aligning four elements: (1) what you love to do, (2) what the world needs, (3) what you’re good at, and (4) what you can get paid for. I hope your work with the Advaita Collective moves you closer to discovering and working on your ikigai.

A bodhisattva is a person who has seen through the illusion of self and thus glimpsed the undivided perfection of the world, yet dedicates his or her life to addressing the multitude of problems in the (relative) world.

check out this behind the scenes look at what’s going on at the advaita collective (formerly Green Hill and AIM)…

Six months later, we decided instead of operating the organizations as three separate entities, we should consolidate the operations. What follows describes the thought process behind several operational decisions made at Green Hill and AIM.

“Consume less and create more” is what I kept telling myself at the start of the year. It’s much harder than I thought it would be to keep up with biweekly emails, write new blogs, and stay on top of my other responsibilities.

Ashtanga yoga has been pivotal in my life over the past eight years. I would never have entered the recovery space without first being introduced to yoga, meditation, and the contemplative path.

Where are Green Hill, Advaita Integrated Medicine (AIM), and Advaita Health Ventures (AHV) going? Before answering that, we must reflect on what got us to this point.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes you’ve got to field grievances and talk about death…

If you’ve got a relationship with money (which you do), this is one of the most important books you can read.

I wrote this series of posts on the private pay treatment world to explore ideas I’ve wrestled with over the past few years. My goal is to start an honest dialogue around the good, the bad, and the ugly of the private pay treatment industry. If you haven’t read the first post (the good stuff), please check it out before continuing.

Tradeoffs are everywhere. Whether it’s at work, home, or contemplatively, every decision requires a tradeoff.

I have an affinity for the people and programs, but I think it’s essential to be your own harshest critic. Thus I’m scrutinizing my experience with the private pay world – enter the good, the bad, and the ugly of NATSAP, OBH, and IECA (collectively, the “private pay world”).

A running list of my favorite plant-based recipes.

Having solved the meaning of life at the ripe age of eleven, it was time for more important things: tennis and the afterlife. I began thinking about death and how that relates to my happiness hypothesis. Happiness on earth is great, but what about eternal happiness?

I established the board mainly for philosophical reasons — I believe that regardless of how talented and experienced you are, you could always use “adult supervision,” lest you drink your own Koolaid. Too many entrepreneurs espouse noble missions only to end up acting recklessly (ahem, SBF).

I believe that if we better understand the various stakeholders (and their perspectives), we can better work together to develop solutions that make high-quality healthcare more accessible and affordable. Taking a holistic approach allows us to escape the rampant zero-sum-game mentality in most negotiations between the below stakeholders.