An Introduction to My Master’s in Holistic Living
Over the last month while quarantined in Bogota, Colombia, I’ve spent a lot of time in deep meditation reflecting on my own journey. Sometimes the thought comes up that it might be a good idea to go back to a formal university to receive a Master’s degree in an area so that I can improve my career opportunities for the future.
Then, I took a second and thought about my own journey. One month from now I will have been out of college for four years. As I sit now reflecting on my last four years, I realize the experience I’ve gained and everything that I’ve taught myself in the process of truly living life has been way more valuable than the four years that I spent in a formal university.
Taking the time to go out into the world on your own and really know yourself is one of the most valuable experiences you can ever have.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m eternally grateful to have gone to college, to have studied geology, and to have gone through that entire experience. However, it wasn’t the most cost effective way for me to learn and grow.
In the last fours years, I handcrafted and funded what I like to call my own Master’s in Holistic Living. This personally designed course took me to some of the most beautiful places in the world.
I have lived and fully experienced the city beach dream life of Rio de Janeiro, the magical digital nomad island of Florianopolis, the calm countryside of Sao Paulo, one of the biggest and busiest metropolitan centers of the world, the indigenous cultures of South America, the abundance of natural beauty in the Andes mountain range, and even realized how blessed I am to have grown up in the suburbs of Washington, DC in Leesburg, VA.
Last year around this time, I vividly remember witnessing the powerful energy of Iguazu Falls. As I stood there watching tons and tons of water flow, my entire body was filled with a deep sense of gratitude for every moment of this unforgettable journey.
All of the amazing moments I’ve experienced and people I’ve met have opened my mind and heart to a new perspective of life. Basically through experience, I’ve found for myself a new way of being and living that’s constantly evolving.
The wisdom and knowledge that I’ve gained from sustaining a life of travel around North and South America, learning Portuguese and Spanish, teaching English, and working online has been extremely beneficial to my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual growth.
Over the past few years as an English teacher and speaking coach I’ve helped over a hundred of my students ranging from places such as Brazil, Russia, Argentina, Sudan, Qatar, Honduras, Guatemala, and Puerto Rico improve their ability to communicate in English.
Thus, opening them up to new opportunities in their careers, allowing them to connect with the world outside of their country, and expanding their perspective of life as a whole.
In fact, this entire journey has been a priceless experience that has helped me realize my core values and has given me a significant amount of clarity on my vision, purpose, and dream in life.
I am inspired to embody my core values, which are love, gratitude, and courage every single moment. As simple as it may seem, the task is actually a difficult one to embrace.
In the process of embodying love, gratitude, and courage, my dream is to be able to serve others as what my virtual mentor and health guru Paul Chek calls a Holistic Lifestyle Coach.
At the moment, I feel called to devote my life to learning how to help others improve their life holistically because I don’t believe there is one clear solution that solves all of our problems. I believe that a big picture holistic approach to issues in our lives would be beneficial to the current medical, economic, and education systems that have been established in society.
Four years have passed since I’ve graduated college, and now I’m ready to step out of my comfort zone and embark on a new journey to serve others and advance in my profession. In this new journey it is my intention to stay connected to my heart while also growing professionally so that I can amplify my impact on the people around me.
There’s a lot in this world that I don’t agree with, so naturally one of my key principles is to embody or be the change that I wish to see in the world instead of complaining about what I don’t like.
Unlike the mystics that spent their days off in the mountains or away from society, I’m choosing to walk the Middle Path. I’m learning how it’s possible to live a healthy life while immersed fully in the present moment wherever I’m at, even if I’m living in the middle of the city (like right now I’m writing this from my room in Bogota).
Although spiritual practices such as meditation, writing poetry, yoga, Qi Gong, and plant medicine are a major part of my life, I’m starting to understand that it’s all spiritual. The way I express myself and show up in the modern world is just as spiritual as when I’m immersed in the Amazon Rainforest learning about shamanism from indigenous healers.
Now that you know a bit about my story and where I’m at right now, I want to dive into my Master’s in Holistic Living.
Level 1 – A Taste of Brazil
The entire journey started with the desire to learn a foreign language, Portuguese. Up until I turned 21, I had struggled with learning a foreign language in school.
I had “studied” Spanish for about 6 years in total and could hardly communicate in the language, so I decided to switch things up and start fresh with Portuguese.
I chose to learn Portuguese specifically since I wanted to experience the beauty of Brazil. I had heard a lot about the country and even checked it out online, and deep down in my soul I knew that it would be an amazing place to live.
Stories of Brazil’s friendly people, rich culture, relaxed culture, unreal natural landscapes, and warm weather immediately attracted me to the country.
So my senior year of college I decided to take a Portuguese course and spend 6 months living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil becoming fluent in a foreign language for the first time in my life. This decision alone changed my entire journey.
Fast forward a bit, I ended up having an enriching experience in Brazil, living on my own, traveling, learning Portuguese, teaching English as a volunteer in favelas, connecting with people from all over the world, and really just fully living in the present moment.
It was hard to stay away from Brazil, so after I came back to the United States and graduated college in 2016, I immediately packed my bags and went back to my training grounds.
Level 2 – Embarking on a new journey: Teaching English in Brazil and discovering the world of optimal performance
In the following 3 years, I continued to grow and sustain my travels by teaching English and diving into the world of online business. This gave me the flexibility to more or less choose where I worked from.
No matter where I went in Brazil, I found that people are always looking to hire native English speaking teachers. Additionally, businesses and organizations will always have the desire to attract more clients to their services and products.
As I gained more experience teaching English and learning Portuguese, I felt more confident in my abilities to effectively communicate so I evolved to focus on working in the digital world with online marketing.
Online marketing is a really commonly used term today. I see it as the ability to captivate and grow an audience through good storytelling. In my mind, stories drive society. I believe people care about doing business with genuine humans, not just robots that will help them achieve a desired outcome (though results are super important too).
My interest in online business led me to discovering podcasts, blogs, and the world of optimal performance. I started to learn how to live a happier and more fulfilling life by listening to Lewis Howes’ School of Greatness podcast, the Tim Ferriss Show, and Aubrey Marcus.
While in Rio de Janeiro, I connected with a great writer named Troy Erstling, and started to read all of his blog posts. Later on, I learned about James Clear and he helped master my habits through his book Atomic Habits.
Listening to Aubrey Marcus speak about his experiences with plant medicine and reading Troy’s articles on Ayahuasca, broke my stigma around natural plant medicines/drugs and opened me up to trying psychedelics for the first time. Then in 2018, I tried Ayahuasca for the first time in the middle of Tijuca forest in Rio, and it was an experience that completely transformed my life.
Read this article I wrote to get a little background info on Ayahuasca.
After my first Ayahuasca ceremony, I understood on a cellular level what the spiritual journey meant. For the first time, I felt connected to my soul and experienced the depth of life. I experienced the sense of oneness that the mystics of history talked about their entire lives and realized how connected everything in the Universe is.
Level 3 – RealLife English
After two years deepening my experience as an English teacher in Brazil and learning about digital marketing, I started to work for a company called RealLife English.
RealLife started as a few friends that met in Belo Horizonte while traveling in Brazil and teaching English and grew relatively quickly into one of the top online English learning companies in the world.
While working with RealLife English, their YouTube channel Learn English with TV Series grew to over 1 million global subscribers.
During my time working with RealLIfe English, I developed my skills as a writer by managing their blog and weekly newsletter. At this time I also started to fall in love with Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey model for storytelling and using it in my own writing (check it out below).
While blogging for RealLife English, I published over 20 articles focusing on giving expert advice to English learners around the world with the desire to improve their confidence and fluency in the language. My task was to take the RealLife audience through their own Hero’s Journey as English learners.
Read one of my highest performing articles on English fluency from my time blogging with RealLife English.
Additionally, they taught me their entire teaching methodology and I started practicing as what they call an English Fluency Coach, guiding students through their English fluency journey. As well, through my time working with RealLife English, I discovered first hand how the systems operate for successful online businesses.
Along with the other tasks, I was really involved in the process of redefining the business’ core work values and the production of new audio lessons for their online course Fluent with Friends.
Previously, I had known about these processes through books or podcasts, but it was a different thing to actually be in an actual online business system and working with it on a daily basis.
I ended up spending 8 months with the RealLife English team, and in the beginning of 2019 I decided to leave RealLife English and dive deeper into my spiritual path.
I had felt a calling to connect deeper with Ayahuasca and the indigenous cultures that work with the medicine, so I began to travel around Brazil while still continuing as an English Fluency Coach.
Level 4 – Rosemary Dream
I ended up leaving Rio de Janeiro and moving south to a conscious living community in Florianopolis, Brazil called Rosemary Dream to do a volunteer work exchange as a bilingual receptionist.
At the same time, I was still teaching English online and learning more about the digital nomad lifestyle.
While staying at Rosemary for 3 months, I met some of the most amazing people in my life. Each day was like a mini adventure.
I lived in a tent under a gazebo in the forest for the first 2 months! This was an unforgettable experience. I learned a lot about myself from living in the jungle connected with nature.
Also, a majority of the people that I met at Rosemary were practicing meditation, yoga, dancing, healthy cooking, exercising, swimming, exploring their inner child, expressing themselves, and really living life. I forgot to mention there was a big involvement with Ayahuasca in the community.
It was a really inspiring environment to be in to work on my own spiritual practices, especially since there were a lot of people that I could share my own experiences with Ayahuasca with and connect with in person through stories and poetry.
My time in Floripa was a major part of my integration process. Naturally, I found guides through the people that came to visit Rosemary.
These guides led me to improving my meditation practice and learning how to live a more holistic life.
Before Rosemary, I had been working on myself quite a bit, and the actual physical environment helped me accelerate my own spiritual growth process.
Around this time I also had more time to improve my own coaching and speaking skills, and my buddy Troy was a really helpful guide during this period of my life where I was learning how to embody the principles of speaking that I wanted to teach my students.
Ayahuasca has really helped me deepen my practice as a facilitator of my students’ growth as an English speaker. A lot of the insights I’ve received on my spiritual journey, I’ve used to become a better person and leader in general.
I found that the real work in my spiritual journey came from implementing and integrating the insights that I received from these deep practices into my daily habits.
In the last year, I have been focused on enhancing the quality of my life by improving the quality of my relationships (starting with my relationship with myself and family), sleep, nutrition, water, movement, breathing, and thinking.
These are actually some of Paul Chek’s foundational principles to living your healthiest life. I feel as though through these daily practices, I’m learning how to not just live holistically, but to LIVE SOULFULLY. This is my motto and philosophy that I live by.
Level 5 – Ani Shinan
Towards the end of 2019, I started to combine my spiritual and professional path even more by working as a business and marketing consulting with an indigenous Ayahuasca spiritual development center called Ani Shinan based in Pucallpa, Peru.
In October of 2019, I went through a profound inner transformation while going through my first Master plant dieta while staying in the jungle at Ani Shinan. While dieting a plant called Marosa, I rediscovered for myself a deeper understanding of self love and faith.
If you aren’t familiar with the dieta process, check out this article that I wrote for Ani Shinan on the plant dieta process. It’s basically the process that indigenous shamans or healers undergo in order to cure diseases and learn how to heal others.
Afterwards, in the months following this experience in the jungle, I took charge of Ani Shinan’s marketing campaigns and have increased their total social media following by over 50% since the beginning of 2020 to April through creating original blog content, updating their website, and sharing posts on Facebook and Instagram.
February 20th, 2020, I officially launched my own personal blog while working online from Colombia and connecting with spiritual leaders from the Kogui indigenous tribe (here’s an amazing documentary on YouTube called Aluna that shares their story).
For now, it’s my own personal space for developing my craft as a writer and effective communicator, but I also feel like it’s a great channel for me to share my passion for poetry and the learnings that I’ve accumulated along my journey.
Graduation – My “Rebirth”
I consider the publishing of my blog the end of one journey and beginning of a new journey. It’s been kind of like a metaphorical REBIRTH.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that this time that I’ve spent isolated with myself during this global quarantine is exactly what I needed and it came at the right moment.
This time has allowed me to understand what is really important in my life and realize the things that I have been avoiding.
Though I feel as if I’m graduating from my self-designed Master’s in Holistic Living, I’m discovering there is a new sense of responsibility that comes with all that I’ve learned.
Yes, I could go meditate in the mountains or in the jungle for the rest of my life, but that would be avoiding the call I have to help others in the world.
It might just be my Ego talking, but in this process of creating true freedom for myself, I want to help other people experience this sense of freedom that comes as a result of following your heart and doing what makes you feel love, gratitude, and happiness on a daily basis.
I don’t want to just free myself. I want to free my family, my friends, MY WOLFPACK. With this big mission, comes lots of responsibility.
I see all that is unfolding in my life right now as a call to step up my game. It’s time to be a warrior and slay the dragons of resistance that are within me and in the world.
This is the test of a true hero. I’m ready to answer the call and take my life to the next level,
Master’s in Holistic Living Overview
So just a quick recap of my four year course of self-learning…
- I’ve lived in 4 different countries and 8 different cities
- Connected with hundreds of travelers and digital nomads from all over the world
- Became fluent in 2 foreign languages: Portuguese and Spanish
- Improved my ability as a writer and speaker by teaching English to over 100 students across the world and starting my own blog
- Worked for a global English education company with over 1 million followers,
- Created my own system for 1 on 1 English speaking coaching
- Participated in 17 Ayahuasca ceremonies in 3 countries (Brazil, Peru, Colombia)
- Created relationships with powerful indigenous healers from the Shipibo, Yawanawa, and Kogui tribes
- Deepened my daily spiritual practice
- Created a personal system for living holistically that I can use for the rest of my life
Most importantly, I’ve learned WHO I AM and what my core values are, and no one can take these things away from me.
My dream for today, this moment, and moving forward is to surround myself with people that have a similar vision for the world. GROW MY WOLFPACK.
I’m currently looking to work under and gain experience from experts in the field of holistic health and coaching.
I would love to be involved in the process of creating and sustaining a successful business in these areas because one day I also aspire to create my own business, serving people and helping them improve the quality of their lives.
Right now, I’m studying and practicing the principles that Paul Chek outlines in his book How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy and I believe it will be important to continue to reference this book for the rest of my life as I grow as a health professional.
I’ve experienced a huge amount of growth in my life since listening to Paul Chek’s podcast Living 4D and reading his book, and recommend everyone to read it if they have the chance.
Shoutout to my Wolfpack – Sending love and gratitude to ALL
Thank you for taking the time and energy to read a bit about my journey to live soulfully! This is just a glimpse of many moments and I hope you continue to read along as I continue to dive deeper into the topics that I touched upon above.
It’s an honor to be on this journey together, and I’m embracing the value of growing the Wolfpack and would love to connect with YOU personally either through a one on one call or in person!!
Feel free to reach out to me and send me a message @thesoulfullpoet on Instagram or zach.barney@gmail.com.
May you experience true freedom and your wildest dreams! And keep HOWLING OUT your truth!
Ahoooooww familia!!!
If this message resonates with your heart and soul, I invite you to join the Wolfpack, a global community of conscious leaders that are devoted to embodying the change we wish to see in the world, living fully, protecting the planet, and HOWLING OUR TRUTH.
As a part of the Wolfpack, you will receive weekly insights and poetry from me, as well as opportunities to cultivate meaningful connections in our online gatherings.
It would be an honor to share this journey with you!!
With love and gratitude,
Zach