Slight Return.

I read a post on Instagram this morning by Stuart Sandeman of @Breathpod and it resonated powerfully. He talks about how the post-Covid years have seen a burnout spike that is completely unprecedented - never mind that we don’t have the historical data against which to measure the metrics, it’s perfectly obvious to any barely-functioning human that the last few years have seen the species experience a complete collapse at all levels of the psyche.

Ethno-supremacy is on the rise, late-stage capitalism is burning the planet to the ground, inequality has never been deeper, terrifying genocide never more present or normalised, and people all over the planet are numbed out by relentless screen excess, AI overload and mental deterioration as we drown in fear of (whilst experiencing tha actuality of) being overtaken, underpaid, unsuccessful and most of all, unhappy.

It feels like a difficult place to talk about wellness, rituals and a lot of the content that used to populate my world, and like so many people I’ve struggled with how to show up in the current landscape. The last 236 days have been full of strain and struggle as the effort to create a gorgeous wellness space - both physically and digitally, has served a heavy, unmanageable bill on my mental health. As the world burns and I’ve grappled with guilt and shame for focusing on my little corner of sound and wellbeing, time has passed and here we are, at the end of another season in Goa, the monsoon teasing us from clouded, humid skies.

I left London nearly a decade ago in a state of nervous breakdown, and thought that by choosing the slow life in Cornwall, I was giving myself and my nervous system the break that was needed to recover. The truth is, it’s incredibly difficult starting again as an outsider, especially in a small, seasonal place deeply suspicious of incomers and their big ideas. I never really settled in Cornwall and I realise now, some years down the line, that what I thought was my safe place, my sanctuary, was in fact just a container for upholding the state of burnout. When I moved again and took the leap to Goa in 2022, I unwittingly let history repeat itself. So here we are, 9 years into a nervous breakdown of sorts. A meandering journey with its mountains and valleys, but still - untouched by any sort of true, resonantly deep healing.

When I saw Stu’s post this morning, I watched the graph unfold and felt the arc of my own life unravel alongside it. Burnout gets spikier, more intense, the longer it goes on. Especially in midlife, the onset of hormonal chaos, questions of purpose and late diagnoses only perpetuate the bitterness of the psychological soup.

Which doesn’t mean there aren’t tools that have helped, and continue to.

Over the last decade I’ve tapped into many of them. Yoga, naturally. Yoga therapy. Yin yoga. Nidra (not my fave, never will be). Breathwork - also not my fave, I honestly find conscious connected breathwork to be a real trigger for my rarely below the surface anxiety. Pranayama makes much more sense to me, and recently, nice simple exercises to fix my daily breathing, rather than induce panic attacks, have been a revelation.

Assisted psychotherapy was a game changer, bringing together neuroscience and plant wisdom. Biohacking, in moments, can be ok: I find tracking my sleep to be incredibly illuminating and motivating. Tracking everything else freaks me out and gets me into an unhealthy target-driven mindset. The gym - strength training was always my safe place, but this last two years it’s disappeared and I’m mired in self-loathing for my failure to discipline myself to show up through the stress.

And sound. Of course, SOUND. Still the tool that helps me stumble towards sanity on the daily. I listen to a huge range of music and engineered sound, as well as listening to nature. The ocean will always be the things that holds me - I’m listening to it as I write this, looking out across Patnem Beach as the moody skies conceal sunset over South Goa. Creating sound still brings me back to life more than anything, whether its banging out some morning chanting, strumming some lazy disorganised guitar chords (still neevr really learned to play with any sort of cohesion), reconnecting with the handpan, banging the gongs, or blasting The Prodigy at top volume in the car.

SCROLL DOWN FOR FREE SCIENCE-BACKED OPTIMISED SOUND TO TRY THIS OUT YOURSELF….

Maybe you recognise your own experience here - it’s almost IMPOSSIBLE to tell when burnout digs its claws in, especially if you’re starting from a low ebb like I was. The last few years have been so relentless for us all, so many people are now existing in a state of permanent disregulation, it’s easy to just stay on the treadmill, vaguely aware but numbed to reality.

I have to consciously force myself to take 10 minutes before looking at my phone in the morning (I probably manage it 50% of the time) and take deep breaths every time I open my laptop, and yet still I find myself holding my breath while working and hyperventilating in my sleep. A few nights ago I was biting my own lip SO HARD in my sleep that I have cut off all the nerve endings and for the last three days have had lip more numb than after a root canal. THREE DAYS! DUE TO SLEEP STRESS! THAT’S NOT OK!

Some slides from @thefabstory that illustrate simply and beautifully why we are all so overwhelmed. These reminders of how our nervous system was built to function versus what we now put it through on the daily are necessary if we are to understand that we can’t carry on like this, either as individuals or societally.

Why I am I writing about this? Well because nervous system f*ckery applies to every human I know. And the wellness world has been SLOW to catch up, continuing to preach nourishing sound baths, relaxing flotation tanks, and peddling soft focus, hair swooshing wellness as an actual tool. Like fighting a hurricane with a cute umbrella from Topshop. Nothing gets me more more irritated than pastel coloured sound bowls and messaging about finding inner peace in sound baths. Call me bitter about all the young pretenders, but it’s facts. I don’t think spiritual bypassing masquerading as wellness coaching is helping anyone at all at this point.

Some time I ago I leaned back from a lot of my daily practices, sensing that they were insufficient for the level of crisis in which we find ourselves. Yes I still have an altar, with a crystal grid on it, decks of cards under it, and I still know what’s going on energetically and astrologically most of the time - but my previously deep connection to these spirit-driven worlds has shifted. Because I’ve shifted, as has the world around us.

What matters now is nervous system regulation. Cognitive coherence. This is all distilling into something that I keep calling post-wellness perception. Something about modern ritual, but in a more future-facing rather than clatteringly, naively spiritual sense. An approach to the intersection of neuroscience and spiritual thinking that is more discerning, more embodied. I want to listen to what my body is saying before I listen to what some podcaster or wellness influencer or what the astrological weather is telling me.

HOW DO YOU FEEL? REALLY?

That doesn’t mean I’m leaving behind all those tools that have served me so well over the last two decades. I still read astrology - but in a more embodied, intelligent way. My approach to soundwork was always more on the science side and now it’s firmly anchored in coherence and cognition, meeting systemic disregulation rather than leaning into spiritual transcendence. Although all routes remain available.

So as I observe the biggest burnout I’ve seen in myself, and contemplate next steps, I find myself renewed in passion and commitment for the work I’ve chosen. It’s so important we all talk about, read about, and learn about how to be human in these times. How to have purpose, make an impact, and offer something meaningful in a media-driven world dominated by the ecocide, genocide and cultural and economic chaos that the world’s misogynist elite and our own headlong sprint into untested technologies are wreaking upon society.

I’m trying to figure out my own journey and place amongst it all, and I’ve rebranded this Substack and my Silence & Noise universe to reflect where we are now. I’d love you to come along. Having recognised that the root of my burnout is trying to do it all alone, I’ve finally found and accepted the help I need to run my bricks and mortar business, freeing myself up to come back to what I love - writing, sound and connection.

I’ve decided to focus back on monthly offerings here, in what might just be the most editorial and free part of the internet, and will be bringing my soundwork here too in the form of monthly gatherings that take us back to this distant moments of digital togetherness in early 2020, before it all started spiralling.

It’s just over 400 years since John Donne’s poem “No Man is an Island” (snapped above) was published. I hope it doesn’t take another 400 years for us to realise its innate truth.

It’s good to have you here, and good to be back. You can find out more about Too Alive, what this name is all about, and what and who you can expect to meet here, below.

With love

Janie x

PS. Stuart’s post is below, in case you’d like to check it out. The video alone is a WAKE UP CALL. Also I love that he used the same Radiohead track I still use in so manny sound sessions.

And WHAT is “too” alive?

I mused on being too much. Too loud. Being seen too much.

For a lot of my life I felt too much. Society, family, the SYSTEM seemed to ask me to diminish, to burn a little less, to settle a little more. No need to go the extra mile. Slow down. Messages I heard - and still hear - from so many.

Now I recognise a certain neurological pattern in myself that explains it all.

I’m 45 now and I wish I’d known sooner that I’m exactly enough as I am. I never really felt SAFE showing up as myself and honestly I still don’t. I’m in fear pressing send on this post, as I have been on almost everything I’ve ever shared in the public domain. Fear of being seen is a real Xennial affliction (born 1978-1984? That’s us!) but regardless of age applies to so many of us trapped by a social media landscape of judgement, embodied in fear of getting our head above the parapet and standing in our truth.

Anyway that’s why I renamed this Substack, to reflect the experiences I’m noticing, processing and learning about. The perception of being too much. Making too much noise. Having too many opinions. Too much partying, and too much what comes after. Too close to a mental precipice, living life in a technicolour so saturated sometimes it hurts. Too much sensory overload. To many hormones, too much midlife, experienced too viscerally. For a while I was going to call it After The Noise - reflecting a new era of a different kind of volume.

But I like Too Alive. It feels good, and is a reminder that there’s no such thing.

Thoughtful and occasionally humerous essays on sound practice, modern wellness and it’s place in our world, nervous system regulation, midlife and perimenopause, the moon and stars (yep, still), and whatever cultural narratives are impacting me and us.

I’m here for the women (and men) who are navigating a new chapter of deeper irreverence, greater anger, more intense emotions, chaotic hormones, and overwhelmed living. I’m here for the seekers and spiritualists who still believe in the magic of the stars even as they rage at Channel 4 news. For the women feeling betrayed by their hormones and left behind on a childfree island, as well as the ones drowned by the responsibility of parenting in a sociological crisis, the adults who are still navigating teenage traumas and unprocessed emotions from decades where adulthood meant something else. The Gen X and Millenial folk wondering what it is to grow up in the shadow of AI, and how the hell to adapt and expand in a world that seems to have collectively forgotten the end of Terminator 2 (anyone else…?) The readers, writers, creators and artists who have been hiding their lights, talent and mind under societal structures that are tearing at the seams of culture.

Every month I’ll be sharing a sound session, because this is the best medicine I know for the modern world. Sometimes they’ll be more lunar/spirit driven as lots of you may recognise, sometimes not. Some will be live, and some won’t. Its depends where I am, and how the internet is. For now these will be accessible to ALL takers, along with my whole archive; from next month they’ll be dropping behind the paywall because I too have to pay the bills and it’s bloody hard work.

You can support my work by signing up for the monthly sound session and accompanying additional content (some old school ritual insider goods; expanded writing and biannual online retreat days) for £8.88 a month which I am reliably informed is the cost of a coffee in North London these days.

You can read all about how to get involved and co-regulate in a like-minded community of slightly rage-y, intellectual, post-90s midlifers at the button below. Whether you identify with those tags (naturally you can choose your own) I’m happy you’re here. If you felt resonance whilst reading this and know someone else who would too, feel free to share this to your friends, family, co-workers and whoever else needs it.

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Here’s something I made about a year ago as I began shifting towards this updated version of myself - 247: NEUROTONE. A series totalling about 80 minutes of sound optimised to bring your brainwaves and nervous system into a particular state. I’m going to make a lot more of this sort of content.

I’m dropping the first one here as a freebie for anyone reading this, and if you sign up to this Substack as a paid subscriber I’ll throw the rest in for free (the whole series is currently on sale at £24.24 on my website so that’s another little gift alongside £400 worth of online sound session access over a year… all for £8.88 a month!)

Because we do all need this work. Truly. I hope you enjoy it.

Here’s a downloadable audio only version too:

Trailer for the whole of NeuroTone:

A little refresher on how to work with me and a LOAD of live events happening from India to Europe this summer. UK folk - if you’re interest in an all night gong puja (yep that’s 10 hours of gonging while you ‘sleep’) you’ll want to check back in for info and save the date 12th September.

Get ahead of events here

I haven’t forgotten you astrology lovers. I’m still one too. And tomorrow the Sun and Uranus conjunct in a CAZIMI at 1° Gemini which is one of those “first time since the 1940s” moments, as all things Uranus are right now. Giving rise to lots of WW2 connotations and reflections. More useful, I reckon, is to unravel what a cazimi is and why this particular energy might be useful for fresh starts on communication style, study and mental pursuits.

Like relaunching a Substack, one could say.

See you soon x