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In Gabylu’s Wild Apothecary workshops, guests gather near the sea to create herbal remedies, botanical body care, and simple wellness tools by hand. More than a workshop, it is an invitation to slow down, reconnect with nature, and remember that care and healing can often begin with the simplest ingredients and rituals.

At first, I saw sargasso as little more than a problem washing onto Caribbean shorelines. But over time, living with it began changing the way I understood the ocean itself. Tangled in the floating seaweed were plastics, debris, and signs of larger environmental imbalance. I began wondering whether the sargasso was not simply invading the coastline, but responding to the condition of the waters it moves through.

Living off-grid at Mahai has changed the way we think about waste, water, and our relationship with the natural world. Without municipal infrastructure, we’ve had to build systems that work with the environment rather than simply pushing consequences out of sight. Over time, our humedales became more than infrastructure — they became a reminder that in nature, nothing truly disappears.

At Mahai, living off-grid was not originally a philosophical choice — it was a necessity. With no electrical or municipal water infrastructure reaching our stretch of coastline, we built the property around solar energy, rainwater collection, and ecological wastewater systems. Over time, what began as necessity became something deeper: a different relationship with the natural rhythms and resources that sustain daily life.

What I eventually realized was that I was never truly searching for another festival property. I was searching for a different relationship with healing, community, and life itself. After years of crowds, production, and constant movement, I found myself longing for something smaller, quieter, and more human — a place where healing could happen through shared meals, honest conversations, time in nature, and the simple act of finally being able to exhale.

On my final night before leaving Mexico, I found a listing for a property in a tiny town near the Belize border called Mahahual. When we arrived, it looked almost abandoned — collapsing palapas, bats, snakes, and massive termite nests. Everyone assumed we would walk away. But beneath the decay, I felt something completely different. For the first time in years, something inside me became very still.

After letting go of the vision of building another festival space, I found myself searching for something entirely different. I drove from Virginia down through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida looking at properties on rivers, lakes, and coastlines, knowing only one thing for certain: whatever came next needed to be near the water. Eventually, that search — and a warning from my brother that “Mexico is not for the weak of heart” — led me to board a plane to the Yucatán pen

In the strange silence of the early COVID years, I traveled across the United States wandering through abandoned summer camps and empty retreat centers, imagining what they might become. But as painful truths emerged within the Kundalini Yoga community, the future I thought I was rebuilding began to dissolve once again. What followed was a deeper reckoning — one that ultimately led me away from large gatherings and toward a search for something smaller, quieter, and more huma

We imagined our farm in New Hampshire becoming a home for healing, education, music, retreats, and community — a place where people could gather, stay on the land, and reconnect with themselves and each other. But when local regulations made that vision impossible, we were forced to let go of a dream we had spent years building. What followed was grief, uncertainty, and ultimately the beginning of a search that would lead us somewhere entirely unexpected.