So what are we doing here? Expanding into retreats, video essays, mindfulness, and more

After 20+ years of creating exclusively for educators, I’m expanding into some new creative spaces.

In this article + Truth for Teachers podcast episode, I share the “why” behind my YouTube channel,  Substack publication, free guided meditations on Insight Timer, and my coaching app Motivation Lab.

I also talk about how my own work has shifted more toward adults, and why so much of what I’ve always talked about on this podcast (productivity, mindset, burnout, boundaries) goes way beyond the classroom.

Then I get into something I’ve been wanting to demystify for a while: the restorative practices that are at the heart of my retreats. I break down what forest bathing, sound baths, and restorative yoga actually are, what the research says about why they work, and what it felt like to lead these sessions at my Books in the Wild retreat last month.

I also make a case for planning your year around restorative practices instead of around work, and using the concept of “due season” to build intentional periods of rest into your calendar before the busyness fills it up.

Truth for Teachers isn’t going anywhere. But you’re not JUST a teacher, and I want to create for ALL of you, not just the part of you standing in front of a classroom.

Sponsored by Retreats

Use the player or your favorite podcast app to listen above, or read the condensed transcript that follows.

Soooo … what are we doing here?

That’s a question I’ve been sitting with a lot lately, and I want to be really honest with you about where it’s taking me.

I’m also going to be very transparent about my motivation and intentions, because I feel like that’s the piece I’m always most interested in when other folks take their businesses or creative endeavors in new directions. I don’t just do things “because.” I’m strategic, especially when it comes to anything that requires me to be sitting at a screen. There’s a purpose to what I’m doing, and I’ll share that.

I’ve been living and breathing all things education since 1999, when I got my first classroom teaching job.

For many years, teaching was both my job AND my hobby. It was the thing I was most passionate about, and I could consume and create resources for it with endless fascination.

When I moved into instructional coaching in 2011 and started working with adults, my interests shifted. I realized how important the needs of the whole teacher are. I saw the need not just for professional development, but personal development.

I realized good teaching is much more about who you ARE rather than what you DO.

As mindset work became the core of everything I offered in educational spaces, it became clear that having a life apart from teaching was essential. Rest is not the opposite of productivity but the catalyst for it. And you need to experience a full, rich life outside the classroom in order to have a compelling presence inside it.

I started spending more time in nature, creating art that no one would ever see, and playing around with sound healing instruments like the kalimba. I found my way into gardening, yoga, and mindfulness. I actually had hobbies.

For the first time in my life, I was not producing something for someone else, or even making a finished product I would share with the world. I was just doing things for the sheer joy of the experience. It felt like returning home to myself, shedding all the ideas I’d had about what I “should” be doing and just being present in the everyday wonders of life.

Many of you have been going through the same self-discovery process. And I’ve heard from many of you who have unsubscribed or unfollowed in various places because you left the field of education, and what I share is no longer relevant to you. Maybe you have friends or former coworkers who you used to talk about the podcast with, and they’re no longer teaching, and so this just isn’t part of your shared conversations anymore.

I’d like some ways to stay in touch with folks who aren’t in education, as well as teachers who want to talk about more than just their work life.

So I’ve been experimenting with some new things, in new formats, in new places. If any of these resonate with you, I’d love to connect with you there.

None of my teaching resources or offerings is going away. This is more of an expansion toward things that feel joyful and fun, stuff that’s less professional and more personal. The teaching-related stuff is largely on autopilot now. Things in that aspect of my business are weird and slow and unpredictable, and the upside to that is it allows me more time to focus on other projects.

So the things I’m thinking about and studying and obsessing over aren’t always specific to K-12 anymore. A lot of it is about being a human who is trying to live a thoughtful, intentional, purposeful life in a world that makes that really difficult, that is always fragmenting our attention and presenting horrific events to us that we’re relatively helpless to do anything about.

It’s a world in which being a kind, empathetic, caring, conscious person is hard, but more important than ever when it feels like the absolute worst, most incompetent people are making all the most important decisions for us. You can interpret that statement however you’d like, because I feel like it works on every level and sphere of society at the moment.

And I’ve always tried to talk to you as whole people, not solely as educators. Teaching may be an important part of your identity, I know that, but it’s not the only part. And I want to create for all of you, not just the part of you that’s standing in front of your students.

So let me tell you about what I’ve been creating and building.

My New YouTube Channel: “So What Are We Doing Here?”

I’ve started a YouTube channel called “So What Are We Doing Here?” and I’m making video essays there.

I called it that because it’s a phrase I find myself saying a lot. In fact, my bestie Jen Gonzalez from Cult of Pedagogy… I’ve told you before how she and I are on Voxer, which is the voice messaging app, all the time, and I’m constantly saying that when I’m annoyed or confused by the most random stuff. It kind of became an inside joke between us that anytime I don’t know what the rules are for a situation, “what are we doing here” is the phrase that comes up. For example, the Zoom meeting is supposed to start at 10:00 a.m….

So I thought that would be a good all-encompassing phrase for all of the many topics that I’ll be discussing on YouTube. The subtitle of the channel is “rants, research, and rabbit holes about things that don’t make sense… yet.”

I’m talking about the impact of AI on society, the illiteracy crisis, social media and internet culture, the productivity industry, wellness culture, and even a bit of what we can learn about human psychology and relationship dynamics from watching reality TV. It’s really just a collection of a whole bunch of different random things that I’ve researched and rabbit holes I’ve fallen down, and I’m sharing it with you all.

The format, as I mentioned, is video essays. If you don’t frequently watch YouTube, I mean, first of all, you really should. More and more people, myself included, are watching YouTube instead of television. I literally stream it on my TV instead of Netflix, for a couple of reasons. First off, you can go ad-free and have millions and millions of videos for $7.99 a month on YouTube, which is like half the price of most of the streaming services. Second, the bulk of that money goes to the actual creators, the people who are making the content. And I really like that, because I feel like I’m supporting smart, thoughtful, funny, entertaining people directly just by watching their stuff.

Video essays can be long. Most of mine are between 10 and 30 minutes, which really shouldn’t surprise you if you’re a podcast listener, because you know that I just don’t do short-form anything. The idea of trying to condense all of my ideas and the nuance and the paradox and all of that into like a two-minute TikTok reel just is so hard for me and very unnatural. Video essays tend to be longer. In fact, I follow some creators who make them an hour, an hour and a half. I’ve watched two-and-a-half-hour video essays before, usually not all in one shot, but sometimes I will, because I just turn it on and have these folks in the background keeping me company while I’m doing stuff around the house.

If you have not tapped into the brilliance and entertainment value of everything that’s on YouTube, I feel like you’re missing out. I barely watch the other streaming services now that I got hooked on this.

Actually, this all happened during my sabbatical in December, because I was offline, meaning I wasn’t posting on social media, wasn’t creating new podcast episodes, or any kind of new content. I had more time. And YouTube did that thing where they offered me a month of premium for free, and so I was like, Sure, why not.

And that was the first time, just this past December, that I really consumed YouTube like that. Normally, it would only be if someone had shown me a video, like sent me a link, or I saw a link someplace. Sure, then I would watch it. But I didn’t think of YouTube as an actual streaming service. And a lot of that was because I was thinking the videos were short, and I wanted something longer. I wanted to watch it like TV, on my television, on the big screen. And in December, I was like, this is brilliant. This is inspiring so many creative ideas in me. I love the idea of creating video essays as an art form.

So basically, you write the script the same way that I would write a script for the podcast or whatever, but then instead of just recording myself reading it and kind of riffing off of it, which is what I’m doing here, I turn on the camera and also record the video of me. And then I can overlay quotes, images, video clips, excerpts of things, sound effects, memes, GIFs. I can make it into this really fun, engaging, entertaining project in a way that I feel like is harder to do for audio, number one.

And number two, this is a professional podcast. I mean, I may not always be professional on here, but I’m supposed to be talking about professional things to a professional audience. There are schools that use this podcast for professional development settings, so I’m mindful of that. That’s the tone here, and I like that. But I also like having a place where I can be more casual, a little more irreverent, and just play around with things more. So that’s what I’m doing on YouTube with these video essays, and it’s been really fun.

I’m planning for all the videos to be freely available, no Patreon or subscriber-only content or anything. I do want to monetize through YouTube ads once the channel gets enough watch hours, and I want folks who aren’t in education who watch on YouTube to hopefully get curious about Motivation Lab, my retreats, and other resources they wouldn’t find through Truth for Teachers.

So the YouTube thing is part ad and sponsor revenue as another stream of income, but nothing I’m taking too seriously. I really want to keep it fun and to talk about whatever threads my brain is pulling on at the moment. I have never created videos like this, and while it’s a ton more work than audio alone, or creating courses with slideshows and recording that, it’s also really immersive and fun.

If you are on YouTube, the most important thing you can do to support my efforts is just watching the videos. Subscribing, liking, and commenting all help the algorithm learn what kind of folks like the channel and show it to more people. If you watch a lot of YouTube, I’m sure you’ve heard every single creator prompt you to hit the bell for notifications, like, comment, subscribe, and there really is a reason for that, because we get paid for watch hours. Every minute that someone is watching our videos counts toward the payout we receive. And I think it’s such a cool model for that reason.

Why I Started a Substack

I’m also on Substack now. I’ll be honest, I did not want to jump on the Substack bandwagon. I feel like every single writer, journalist, and former blogger that I know has created a Substack in the last year or two, and I get it, because so many journalists have been laid off and it’s very difficult to get paid as a writer anymore. But I don’t have any plans to monetize it.

If you’re not familiar at all with Substack, it’s sort of like the RSS feed reader. Do you remember those from like 15 years ago, where you could subscribe to all your blogs in one place and see all the new posts in one feed? And then Google killed it, and it broke my heart, and I’m still mourning that.

Substack has risen up and become way more popular in the last year or two because it kind of offers the same thing. My problem with it is that it just keeps adding more features, and now it’s trying to do everything. It introduced a Notes section, which is basically like a Threads or a Twitter feed, and you can do audio and video there, and you can do live streaming, and there’s images. It’s just a lot to me, it’s kind of a lot.

But I also find that really smart, good writers congregate there, and I still not only love to write long-form content, I love to read long-form content. Substack is where the long-form written content lovers are. I feel like if you love long-form videos, YouTube is your jam, and if you love long-form essays, Substack is your jam. I happen to love both, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

So it just seemed like a natural fit to take the stuff I’m sharing on YouTube and also share it on Substack, written out in article form. I embed some of the images, videos, GIFs, and stuff like that within the article, not as many as you would get to see if you watch the whole video, of course, but it’s the same content as what’s on YouTube. So it’s really not that much additional work for me.

And it serves the dual purpose of giving me sort of a home base or a landing page for the “So What Are We Doing Here” brand, if we even want to call it a brand.

I also didn’t want to create a whole new website or a new social media presence for “So What Are We Doing Here,” and Substack turned out to be a really good compromise.

I can publish everything there, the written versions of my video essays, and send email notifications about new posts and articles that aren’t about teaching. I’m also posting Truth for Teachers podcast transcripts there, so if podcasts aren’t usually your thing, or if you just want another way to engage with the content and join discussions and enjoy long-form content on Substack, that’s available too.

Guided Meditations on Insight Timer

And then there’s Insight Timer. Now, this is going in a completely different direction.

I’ve started offering guided meditations there, and this is something I’m really excited about because it lets me take content I’ve already created for Truth for Teachers and give it a completely different form.

For example, you might remember my episode on radical acceptance, which has been one of the most popular episodes I’ve ever done. I turned that into a guided meditation on Insight Timer. So instead of just hearing me talk about radical acceptance as a concept, you can actually be guided through practicing it.

I also have meditations on things like sitting with uncomfortable feelings and mid-day resets for when you’re overwhelmed. If you’ve ever heard me talk about mindfulness and thought, “Yeah, I’d try that if someone walked me through it,” now you can. I really like the people behind Insight Timer, and it felt like a natural fit to become a teacher on their platform.

But I might be getting ahead of myself here if you’re not familiar with Insight Timer, which is a free meditation app that I actually use for my own practice. I downloaded it about a year ago and really like it. I got into Yoga Nidra, which is a practice that helps you experience the state of consciousness between being asleep and awake.

You know that kind of dreamy state that you’re in just before you drift off to sleep, or just when you wake up, and you forget about, like, you don’t yet realize what reality is yet? That state. That’s what Yoga Nidra helps you access, and it’s done not by anything woo-woo or metaphysical. It’s literally just activating the parasympathetic nervous system, so it’s like a guided meditation through tensing and then relaxing each part of your body and inducing a state of deep relaxation.

I do this at my yoga studio, but I also wanted to do it at home, and Insight Timer has that, along with all kinds of other things, too, like tons of meditations. I think there are over 200,000 different meditations on there. It’s really amazing.

So I have mindful moments and meditations for teachers on there, and I was like, you know what, I’ll just put those on there. And then Insight Timer started to also list retreats, and I’m like, Okay, perfect. I can use this as a platform to help inform people who are about to come to my retreats what to expect, and after they come home, they can continue doing these things.

For example, one of the things that we do on the retreats is forest bathing, and I want folks to have a guided forest bathing that they can do at home, because you don’t have to be in this remote rural setting. You can literally just go to a park, go out in your backyard, and do a forest bathing if you have a tree. So now you can just go to Insight Timer for free and listen to me guide you through the forest bathing. That was my purpose there.

Teachers on Insight Timer can accept donations, and sometimes people will donate, like two dollars or something, a really small amount. Insight Timer also pays its teachers the same way that YouTube does. They have people who have premium accounts.

I told you it’s a free app, but there’s also a premium version if you want to have access to save things into individual folders, have more features, and access additional content. And they split that revenue around with Insight Timer teachers. So again, the more you listen and like, follow, subscribe, all that kind of stuff on Insight Timer, the more it helps me and my work. I don’t really say that as a significant source of revenue. It’s more of a way to let people know about my retreats, support the people who are coming to the retreats, and help people continue the restorative practices after the retreats.

What Happens at My Retreats

So, speaking of retreats, that’s another fun place you can find me. I just led one in February called Books in the Wild: A Winter Sensory Retreat for Readers, and it was incredible. My home base for retreats is the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, and the weather was exactly what I had hoped for: a thick, magical blanket of snow that made for an extraordinary mindful forest walk and just a gorgeous backdrop to everything we did inside, too.

This was a weekend retreat designed for avid readers, open to everyone, not just educators. We gathered and spent three days and two nights doing the things your nervous system is actually designed for: eating nourishing meals we didn’t have to cook, going on guided excursions outdoors, I conducted a live sound bath, reading without a to-do list hanging over our heads, and just connecting with other curious, thoughtful humans around shared interests.

And the thing that struck me most was how many people showed up having no idea what a sound bath was, or what forest bathing meant, or whether restorative yoga was going to require them to be flexible. They came curious but a little skeptical. And by the end of the weekend, they were asking when the next one was.

I get that reaction a lot, actually. When I tell people what happens at my retreats, people hear “forest bathing” and picture hugging trees in the rain. They hear “sound bath” and think it’s some kind of ceremony with crystals and chanting. They hear “restorative yoga” and assume it’s basically a nap with extra steps.

And I get it. I really do. I would have had the same reaction not that long ago.

So let me actually explain what these things are, what happens when you do them, and why the research says they work. Because my whole approach is evidence-based and accessible. You don’t have to adopt a particular belief system or buy into anything mystical to benefit from these practices. You just have to show up and be willing to try.

What Forest Bathing Actually Is

Let’s start with forest bathing, because the name alone is enough to make people skeptical. Forest bathing, or Shinrin-yoku, originated in Japan in the 1980s. And despite the name, nobody’s getting wet. There’s no bathtub involved. You’re just slowly, intentionally walking through a natural environment using all of your senses. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

You’re not hiking to reach a destination. You’re not exercising. You’re walking slowly and paying attention. Noticing what you see, what you hear, what the air feels like on your skin, what you smell. I’m a certified Forest Therapy Guide, so when I lead these walks, I offer gentle invitations, little prompts to help you notice things you’d normally walk right past. But there’s no pressure and no performance.

So why does this work? A few things are happening in your body when you spend time in a forest environment. Research out of Japan has found that time spent in forests can lower cortisol levels, which is your stress hormone. Studies have also shown decreases in blood pressure and heart rate. There’s fascinating work on phytoncides, which are the natural oils that trees release, and when we breathe those in, our bodies actually produce more natural killer cells, a type of white blood cell that supports immune function. One study found that the boost in natural killer cells lasted more than a week after a single forest visit.

But beyond the biological stuff, there’s something about slowing way down in nature that just recalibrates your nervous system. And I think this is true for all humans, but teachers especially: you spend all day in fluorescent-lit rooms managing 25 to 30 other people’s needs. Your nervous system is running on high alert for hours at a stretch. Being in a forest, moving slowly, not having an agenda? Your body knows what to do with that. You just have to give it a chance.

What a Sound Bath Is (and Why It Works)

Sound baths. This is one of my favorites, and also the one people tend to be most confused by.

A sound bath is not a bath. You don’t get wet here either. You lay down, usually on a yoga mat with blankets and pillows so you’re really comfortable, and someone plays instruments: singing bowls, gongs, chimes, and other resonant instruments. You just lay there and listen. You observe what happens in your body as the sounds wash over you. That’s the whole practice.

I’m a certified Sound Healing Practitioner, and the instruments I use include Tibetan singing bowls, a gong, Koshi chimes, and kalimba. The vibrations from these instruments are felt physically, not just heard. Some people feel tingling, some people feel heavy and relaxed, some people fall asleep. All of those responses are completely fine. There’s nothing you’re supposed to do or achieve.

From a science perspective, sound frequencies can affect brainwave states. When you’re stressed and alert, your brain is producing beta waves. The sustained, resonant tones of singing bowls and gongs can help shift your brain toward alpha and even theta wave states, which are associated with deep relaxation and that dreamy state right before you fall asleep.

Research has found that sound meditation can reduce tension, anger, fatigue, and depressed mood, while also decreasing heart rate and blood pressure. One study published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine found that participants who had never done a sound meditation before showed significant reductions in anxiety after just one session.

And you don’t have to be “spiritual” to experience this. Your nervous system responds to sound whether you believe in anything or not. It’s a physiological response. I think the thing that surprises people most is how physical the experience is. You actually feel the vibrations in your body. Most people are asleep or deeply relaxed within about ten minutes.

What Restorative Yoga Really Means

And then there’s restorative yoga, which is probably the most misunderstood of the three because people hear “yoga” and picture themselves in some pretzel position while sweating. Restorative yoga is nothing like that.

In restorative yoga, you’re using props, blankets, bolsters, blocks, eye pillows, to support your body in very gentle positions. And then you hold those positions for a long time, usually five to fifteen minutes each. The entire point is that you are doing nothing. Your muscles are fully supported. There’s no stretching, no straining, no holding yourself up. Gravity and the props do all the work.

I’m a certified Restorative Yoga Teacher, and what I love about this practice is that it directly activates your parasympathetic nervous system, your “rest and digest” mode. Most of us spend our days locked in sympathetic mode, fight or flight. Restorative yoga is essentially a structured way to tell your body, “We’re safe. You can stand down now.”

Research supports this. Studies have shown that restorative yoga can reduce cortisol, improve sleep quality, decrease anxiety, and even reduce symptoms of chronic pain. A study from Boston University found that yoga practice increased GABA levels in the brain, and GABA is a neurotransmitter that reduces neural excitability. People with anxiety and depression often have low levels of it.

For teachers who carry an enormous amount of physical tension from standing all day, from emotional labor, from being “on” constantly, restorative yoga can feel almost shocking. Like, “Wait, I’m allowed to just… not do anything? And that’s the practice?” Yes. That’s the practice. And if you’re someone who feels guilty doing nothing, that’s actually a sign you might need it most.

Plan Your Year Around Rest, Not Just Work

So here’s where I want to bring all of this together, because these aren’t just nice things to do once at a retreat and then forget about. These practices point to something bigger, which is how we think about rest in the first place.

Most of us plan our lives around work. We schedule the meetings, the deadlines, the obligations, and then we try to squeeze rest into whatever gaps are left. And usually there aren’t any gaps left, so rest just doesn’t happen. Or it happens accidentally, like collapsing on the couch at 9pm because you literally can’t keep your eyes open, which isn’t really restoration. That’s just your body shutting down because it has no other choice.

What if we flipped that? What if you planned your year around rest first, and then fit work around it?

I know that sounds radical, maybe even impossible, especially if you’re a teacher with a schedule that’s largely not in your control. But hear me out.

The concept I keep coming back to is “due season,” which is the idea behind the name of my company, Due Season Press. Due season means the appropriate time for something to happen. It recognizes that everything, including us, follows natural cycles. You can’t harvest in winter. You can’t expect constant output without periods of renewal. Trying to is how people burn out, and I think teachers know this better than almost anyone because you watch your own energy tank every single year and then try to refill it over a summer that’s never quite long enough.

So what does it look like practically? It means looking at your calendar right now, before the year fills up, and blocking time for rest first. Not waiting until you’re depleted to take a sick day. Not hoping that summer will magically erase all the accumulated stress. But actually, intentionally building fallow periods into your year the same way you’d schedule a parent-teacher conference or a dentist appointment.

Maybe that’s a long weekend every quarter where you have zero plans. Maybe it’s a retreat this summer, and I’ve got two educator-specific retreats coming up: June 12th through 15th in Honesdale, PA, and July 24th through 26th in Charlotte, NC. They’re designed specifically for educators who need to decompress after the school year, and I would love for you to be there. Go to dueseasonpress.com for details. Maybe it’s committing to 10 minutes of guided meditation each day on Insight Timer. Maybe it’s a daily walk where you leave your phone behind.

The specific practice matters less than the intention behind it. You’re telling yourself, and everyone around you, that your restoration is not optional. It’s not a luxury. It’s part of how you stay effective and whole.

And I think that’s something educators struggle with more than almost anyone, because the culture of teaching tells you that sacrifice IS the job. That caring about students means neglecting yourself. That if you’re not running on empty, you must not be working hard enough. And I don’t think that’s true. I think the teachers who last, the ones who are still finding joy in this work after decades, they’ve figured out how to honor their own cycles of rest and productivity. They’re not the ones who grind hardest. They’re the ones who’ve learned when to push and when to go follow.

Takeaway Truth

Your takeaway truth for the week ahead is this:

You are not just a teacher. You are a whole, complex, interesting person who happens to teach. Your curiosity doesn’t stop at the classroom door. Your need for rest and restoration isn’t something you earn by burning out first. And the things that make your life richer, whether that’s nerding out about why productivity systems fail, or lying on the floor listening to singing bowls, or reading a stack of books in the woods with strangers who become friends, those things matter. They’re not frivolous. They’re not extras. They make you who you are.

That’s why I’m creating for all of you now, not just the teacher part. The YouTube channel, “So What Are We Doing Here,” is for the part of you that can’t stop pulling at threads and needs to understand the 492 layers underneath everything. Substack is for the part of you that wants to read and think and discuss ideas beyond education. Insight Timer is for the part of you that needs to slow down and be guided back into your own body. And this podcast, Truth for Teachers? That’s still here, still for you, still not going anywhere.

Your job is not your whole life. And the more you invest in the parts of yourself that exist outside of work, the more you have to bring back into it.

All the links are below. No pressure, just know I appreciate your support and engagement with my work anywhere and everywhere you show up.

• Retreats
• Insight Timer
• YouTube
• Substack
• Motivation Lab