From Sound Baths To Red Flags: My Exit From Austin’s New Age Bubble

In my twenties, I was modeling in London and New York as a plus-size model. It looked like a dream—fashion weeks, campaigns, magazine spreads. But everything still revolved around how I looked. Even in “body positive” spaces, the message was: be palatable. Be marketable. Everything felt like a performance. I couldn’t name it at the time, but I was starving for something real.

Then I walked into a women’s circle in London. No brand name clothing. No small talk. Someone handed me a mug and said, “You’re safe here.” We breathed. We shared. We cried. And no one flinched. Something cracked open.

Later in Israel, I found myself in a kundalini ceremony—chanting, breathwork, release. Midway through, my skin broke out in a red rash. By the end, I felt alive.

I kept going. A 30-day training in Bali. Yoga in the jungle. Sound baths. Mushroom journeys. Bufo. Ketamine. Microdosing. And for the first time, I felt something I could only call God.

Then COVID hit. I refused the vaccine. My agents dropped me. Every modeling job disappeared. My decade long career disappeared. Friends pulled away. Invitations stopped coming. I became the “crazy anti-vax girl.” So my husband and I left New York and moved to Austin, where thousands like us had landed.

Outcasts. Artists. Thinkers. Spiritual seekers. Every weekend was breathwork or embodiment or women’s circles. Group chats full of women building six-figure businesses from their intuition. Everyone talked about trauma, nervous system regulation, feminine embodiment and sacred masculine revival. It felt novel, refreshing, and beautiful.

And for a while, it worked. I felt regulated and seen and the love of a community that walked a new path. I was practically glowing. But after the birth of my first child, the shine started to wear off.

I began to wonder if I’d just traded one ideological cult for another. 

For years, I sought healing in the New Age—ceremonies, channeling, plant medicine. But somewhere along the way, I stopped asking: is this actually true?

And underneath it all… I began to wonder if I’d just traded one ideological cult for another. 

I first heard about Aubrey Marcus when I moved to Austin.

At the time, he was known as a spiritual podcaster—a former polyamorist who had, by all appearances, renounced that path and embraced monogamy. I liked that he questioned the status quo. He was a critical thinker. He spoke his truth, even when it was unpopular, and I admired that. In a world full of performative “consciousness,” he seemed like a safe, grounded man. One of the coveted “conscious men.” Divinely masculine without being too soft or too hard.

I never attended one of his events, but his influence shaped the Austin spiritual landscape. And as I settled into the wider scene around him, I started noticing cracks.

The community adored a tantra night or “play party”—spaces where people exchanged “sacred sexual energy” in the name of awakening.

I met open couples who spoke about polyamory like it was a spiritual sacrament. One man told me, eyes wide: “Polyamory is the way of the future. You have to override your human programming to get closer to God—because we are love, and love is free.”

It sounded poetic. Elevated.

But when I looked closer, it wasn’t clarity I saw—it was confusion. Women unraveling. Dissociating. Reframing betrayal as growth. Crying quietly after their partners went on dates with other women, then feeling guilty about their hurt because they weren’t “evolved” enough.

And then came the moment that changed everything for me. Aubrey posted a photo series with his wife, Vylana—who looks like an AI rendering of a goddess from Atlantis—and another woman. The caption? Something about a “new relationship blueprint.”

The third woman looked… young. Like, half his age young. My spidey senses started tingling.

Then he released a podcast explaining the whole thing. I thought: Let me keep an open mind. Maybe this is just uncomfortable because it’s unfamiliar.

So I hit play.

At minute 58, I let out an audible shriek in my car. That’s when he shares that, during a temple visit in Egypt, he received a “download” from the goddess Isis telling him he was meant to impregnate both his wife and his much-younger partner.

His wife, Vylana, is crying, clearly grappling with the horrifying premise that her beloved husband wants children with another woman. And the podcast moderator? Mark Gafni—a man publicly accused of serial spiritual and sexual abuse.

I just sat there—mouth open, skin crawling. This didn’t feel like spiritual evolution. It felt like spiritualized narcissism. This was ancient patriarchy in a linen shirt.

It hit me: polyamory isn’t some new frontier of consciousness. It’s an old story dressed up in sacred language. Kings with concubines—now called ‘a new relationship paradigm.’ Men who pedestal their Queen, then get a wandering eye and want to eat their cake too.

Women were being asked to override their instincts. Told that jealousy was a flaw to rewire. That heartbreak was an opportunity for alchemy. That pain meant you were growing.

But what I witnessed behind the scenes wasn’t harmony, it was heartbreak. Women crying in bathrooms. Questioning their worth. Coaching containers telling them their suffering was a mirror of their inner wound. If it hurts, it must be medicine.

But I don’t believe that anymore. Some pain is justified and means you are a normally functioning human being. Some dynamics aren’t soul contracts—they’re emotional chaos in spiritual drag.

I’ve been married for 15 years. We’ve known rupture and repair, birth and loss, desire and disappointment. And through it all, we stayed. We worked. We forgave each other. That, to me, is sacred.

What I witnessed behind the scenes wasn’t harmony, it was heartbreak.

Monogamy isn’t easy. It requires discipline, humility, and the daily choice to love when it’s inconvenient. But that’s what makes it holy. It sanctifies the ordinary. It’s the “chop wood, carry water” type of act.

There is nothing small about one person choosing another—over and over again—in the unseen, unglamorous moments of life. It’s not less spiritual because it’s not flashy. In fact, it may be the most spiritual thing of all: to die to the ego, again and again, for the sake of love.

“You must forsake a thousand half-loves,” Rumi said, “to take home one whole heart.”

I don’t want performance. I don’t want expansion for its own sake. I want the whole heart.

Not fragments. Not downloads. Not “frequencies.” Just love. Rooted. Maybe sometimes boring and banal… but real.

So many people around me in Austin were channeling something—archangels, ancestors, galactic beings, light codes.

And I wasn’t skeptical. I was wide open. I wanted to believe it. I wanted to be receptive. I wanted to be open. But over time, I realized I had stopped asking questions. I never paused to wonder… Where is this information coming from? And more disturbingly—is it even safe?

The deeper I got into the scene, the more that question started to haunt me. Were we actually connecting to higher intelligence? Or were we playing with forces we didn’t understand? Was it divine guidance… or was it our subconscious dressing up as Arcturian council members and benevolent “goddesses”?

When Aubrey Marcus said he got a download from the goddess Isis telling him to impregnate two women, I couldn’t shake it. Are we sure what we’re channeling is always light? Or are we f***ing around and finding out?

At the same time, I was watching the overuse of plant medicine spiral out of control. People were chasing peak experience after peak experience—ayahuasca, mushrooms, bufo.

One more ceremony. One more “ego death.” But many times instead of integration, I saw avoidance. Instead of healing, I saw fragmentation. I watched some unlucky folks slip into psychosis after one too many journeys, or delay the real responsibility of returning to the banality and beauty of everyday life in favor of yet another trip.

At some point, it started to feel like we weren’t elevating—we were escaping.

I had mistaken being “open” for being spiritually advanced. But I had dropped my boundaries and discernment in the process.

The same thing was happening in the coaching world. Everywhere I turned, there were sacred business priestesses offering $20K activations and “abundance codes.” Some of it was helpful. Some of it was just a glamorized sales funnel in disguise. And when something felt off, the answer was:
“If it’s triggering, it’s your shadow.” “If it’s not landing, you’re not ready to receive.”

Many times instead of integration, I saw avoidance. Instead of healing, I saw fragmentation.

I’ve said those words too. I get it. But eventually, it started to feel like I was gaslighting myself. It wasn’t that everyone else was out of integrity. It’s that I had handed over my own and I called it surrender.

Eventually, the glow wore off. The medicine ceremonies. The sensual embodiment workshops. The coach who called herself a dragon priestess.

I started to feel like I was floating—so spiritually open, I had no foundation left.

And to be clear: I still believe in many of these tools. I still sit in mushroom ceremonies. I still explore polarity and nervous system work. They’ve offered me real healing.

But like anything powerful, they require discernment. Critical thinking. Boundaries. Otherwise, we risk mistaking altered states for absolute truth.

So I started asking: What is actually true? Not what feels good. Not what gets praise in a circle. Not what sounds enlightened in a room full of Bali transplants or enlightened Austinites.

But what lasts. What grounds. What heals in the long run.

And I realized—I didn’t need more ascension. Quite the opposite. I needed roots.

I needed to remember that doing the hard thing often brings good things. That responsibility and discipline are the fertilizer to the field of crops. That chop wood and carry water are found in the day to day actions of staying committed to the job, the partner and the responsibilities. 

I found more of the sacred in the kitchen with my toddler than I ever did in a jungle ceremony. More reverence in a quiet dinner with my husband than in a mastermind circle. More peace with friends who laid down the Burning Man outfits and parented their children with patience day in and day out…

I started going to church for the first time. Which shocked me—because I spent years actively avoiding church. I saw the dogma, the hypocrisy, the abuse. To me, religion had always represented blind obedience, patriarchy, control.

But I came back with a different lens: We don’t have to agree on everything to find value in something (as long as I keep my bullsh*t detectors on).

I wasn’t looking for a high vibe. I was looking for a timeless truth. And I found it—in the old stories. The quiet rituals. The reminder that I’m not the center of the universe.

• Honor your father and mother

• Marriage is sacred

• True greatness comes not from exalting yourself, but from humbling yourself

• Live for purpose—not applause.

These aren’t rigid rules. They’re guardrails. They help us orient to something older, deeper, and more stable than our moods. Because freedom without form? Eventually it collapses.

Modern women are floating in uncharted territory. 

We’re the first generation to delay marriage, out-earn men, choose motherhood on our terms. We have options our grandmothers could only dream of, and yet, many of us feel lost.

Lonely. Burnt out. Disconnected. We are drowning in options, but starving for meaning.

The New Age promised us liberation. But too often it delivers performance, confusion, and an endless loop of “healing” that never ends.

We’re told our next breakthrough is one more ceremony away. One more trauma release. One more quantum upgrade. But what if it’s not?

What if what we’re really craving… is devotion? Not the kind that’s loud, flashy, or Insta-worthy. But the quiet kind. The kind that shows up. The kind that chops wood, carries water, and tucks the kids in at night. That keeps its word. That does the dishes. That listens.

The kind that chooses responsibility over escape. Honesty over performance. Faithfulness over dopamine.

The New Age promised us liberation. But too often it delivers performance, confusion, and an endless loop of “healing” that never ends.

We’re sold empowerment. But maybe what we really need is reverence. Not another breakthrough in the jungle. But the discipline to build something sacred right here—after the ceremony ends.

I still believe in the sacred. I still believe in transformation. I still believe in healing. But I no longer believe in chasing the next high to get there.

I don’t want to be high-vibe. I want to be real. I don’t need a download from Isis. I want to listen to God in the quiet. I don’t need a temple full of strangers. I want a kitchen table and people who stay. I’m not trying to ascend anymore. I’m trying to root.

I’m still a mom who microdoses. I still love a women’s high council. I could talk for hours about the possible races of extraterrestrials.

But now—I want discipline. Devotion. Not just ecstasy, but integration. Not just peak experiences, but a faith that holds when the glow wears off.

Because the real work isn’t in the stars. It’s in the staying.