An Untold History of Embodied Philosophy
PART 2: Post-Pandemic Expansion – the "big team" and its beauties
In 2015, while I was teaching yoga full time in NYC, I started working on a side project that was soon called Embodied Philosophy – an online learning platform for contemplative traditions, yoga philosophy, and subtle practices. During the entire month of June 2025, we are celebrating our ten-year anniversary through a series of emails that reflect back on what has happened over the first decade of our existence. This is the second of a three-part “history” of how Embodied Philosophy evolved over our first ten years, with a special emphasis on my colleagues behind the scenes who helped make it happen – and a few of the lessons I learned from them.
A Cliffhanger Fulfilled
We ended the last part of our story with my best attempt at a ‘cliffhanger.’
The pandemic was an event that changed everything, initially catapulting our course performance into high gear, because we were well-situated to resonate at a moment when everyone was suddenly very online. But as every business and organization caught up with the moment, an online space that was not particularly competitive before the pandemic very soon became saturated by other platforms, well-minted corporations, and businesses that had a lot more resources and capabilities than a humble online platform like Embodied Philosophy.
And so the story of Embodied Philosophy post-pandemic is one of revelry and rupture, expansion and contraction. While telling this half of the story is challenging on those grounds, it is also paradoxically the moment when Embodied Philosophy’s team – previously limited to five incredibly capable people – expanded significantly in a relatively short amount of time. So I’ve decided to further sub-divide this history into another two parts, focusing on our expanded team in this post, while saving the story of our subsequent contraction for the final part of our story.
The “Trauma First Aid” Implosion
As I shared in Part 1, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, we launched the most successful course ever published by Embodied Philosophy. The context of the pandemic coupled with the course’s theme, “Trauma First Aid” (while being taught by Peter Levine – someone as close to a celebrity as you can find in the somatics world), intersected to create an explosively successful course that attracted over 2000 registered students.
Because, as mentioned previously, we were uniquely situated online at a moment of societal lockdown, the success of this course – while understandable in retrospect – was at the time it happened rather shocking. In my excitement for this sudden opportunity, my blind spot was not in appropriately preparing our existing staff for a course with sometimes over 1200 live attendees (and another 800 more watching the replay). We were also new to hosting courses on the subject of trauma, and therefore did not have the experience to know that many enrolling in this course would be seeking a level of therapeutic support that it was simply beyond our means to offer.
When Capacity Meets a Wall and Someone Walks Away
Ara and one other volunteer course host were therefore completely unprepared for the flood of comments, questions, and administrative concerns that flowed ceaselessly through the zoom chat window. Having previously only hosted courses with a maximum enrolment of 350 students, our staff was so overwhelmed – traumatized, even, if you’ll forgive me this darkly ironic turn of phrase – that it quickly transformed from something to celebrate into something that was symptomatic of a deeper need for organizational re-structuring.
Before I had the experience of watching someone walk away from a full time role at Embodied Philosophy, I held the very naïve assumption that certain staff members would always remain a part of the Embodied Philosophy experience – especially those ones I couldn’t imagine working without. With Ara Cusack, in particular, I felt we had struck a unique kind of gold: a capable, adaptive, disciplined, resilient, and hard-working team player. After the first session of “Trauma First Aid” – which I’m not mincing words when I say was a total “shit show” –, Ara called me up and kindly handed in her resignation. Because I saw her as an EP “ride-or-die”, this was my first truly unanticipated heartbreak.
As often happens with these things, her decision hadn’t come out of the blue, based on one frustrating experience. “Trauma First Aid” was simply the proverbial ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’, revealing a truth that had been germinating and evolving for her over some time. In my subsequent reflections on what had happened, I realized that we had neglected to acknowledge the mounting pressures that Ara was under as the platform continued to grow. It was thus a failure of management to give her the appropriate space in which to effectively communicate her concerns, tensions, and the stresses she was experiencing. As sad as it was for all of us who worked with her to see her go, Ara performed a great service with her resignation by teaching me about what can happen when a staffing structure doesn’t adapt quickly enough to accommodate a growth of work responsibilities.
Replacing One Powerhouse with Two
Jesse and I thus recognized – albeit too late – that Ara was working the job of two people (perhaps even three), and so when we sought out a replacement, we expanded what fell under her umbrella into two ‘project manager’ roles. Therefore, from the sadness and misfortune of losing an incredible employee, we were blessed with two uniquely gifted colleagues: Ross O’Brien and Casie Stockdale. It is impossible to speak too highly of these remarkable individuals. Casie works with an attention to detail and such thoroughness that she continuously revealed areas of possible refinement for us at an administrative level. Casie is ever the sober-minded person in the room, encouraging the kind of ‘slowing down’ that is necessary to help make work digestible and repeatable. Casie is the kind of employee who you never have to worry about doing her job; when the list of her immediate tasks was exhausted, she wouldn’t sit around twiddling her thumbs, but would find a new area that needed attention.
Ross is a perfect example of someone deeply devoted to the subtler teachings of yoga, with great editorial instincts, writing chops, and a high-level grasp of project support that – from the very beginning – exuded that of someone with great leadership potential. Ross had a quality of calm, confident, and capable warmth that made everyone on the EP team feel seen and supported. Together, Casie and Ross brought a new kind of energy to the possibilities of EP’s project management; with the two of them on board, Embodied Philosophy finally began to meet its expanding needs with the right level of sustainable support.
From Margarita Moments to Strategic Backbone
An upside of the circumstances surrounding the pandemic was that we had ample resources to bring in new hires, and therefore another important individual officially came on board at this time – a long-time friend who had been advising me on Embodied Philosophy since the beginning named Matt Bramble.
I met Matt very early on when I was working on Embodied Philosophy, at an ayahuasca retreat in upstate New York. Through our conversations at that retreat, we discovered not only a shared interest in the group experience we had just shared but a confluence of knowledge around the marketing strategies that I had been leveraging to build and expand the EP platform. At that time, Matt co-owned a marketing agency, and before he ever considered coming on board, we would have dinners together in New York City – often with way too many margaritas – and he would consult with me on strategies and approaches that I hadn’t considered, and together we would celebrate the milestones of seeing these strategies work, and the course performance improving over time.
Just before “Trauma First Aid,” Matt was already beginning to run our social media advertising campaigns, but as things grew significantly at that time, Matt became a regular part of our weekly meetings – becoming as close to a COO as was possible for an organization that didn’t really have formal executive positions outlined in the standardized way of many businesses. Matt is a strong, direct, and imaginative thinker, and he is probably the first colleague who I really leaned on – and in a lot of ways deferred to – in making many important decisions. Together, we decided to build an entirely new custom-built website, with a customized learning management system (because, in previous systems, we always felt like we were trying to fit a square peg in a round hole). Because we didn’t have the right agency doing the work, that process turned out to be a bit of a time-consuming headache, and we ultimately went with another agency. We couldn’t have accomplished any of that without Matt’s rich experience working in B2B spaces and his ability to speak a language that I had no previous aptitude for. Besides serving in a new kind of executive role, he also ran all of our ads. With Matt behind the wheel of our course enrolment campaigns, we were in very capable hands for the first time.
Provincetown Connections and Getting Bigger than Before
Over the course of Matt and I’s friendship, we both developed an affection for Provincetown, and in the early years of the pandemic we both moved there – seasonally for me, and full time for Matt. When I arrived in Ptown one particular summer, Matt had become friends with a vibrant young yoga teacher named Chase Hiffernan. Matt knew that I needed a personal assistant, because I have always struggled to stay organized – as anyone will have observed who has seen my computer desktop or the number of unread emails that I have in my gmail inbox (what I have often playfully described as a ‘dark abyss where emails go to die’). At Matt’s recommendation, I hired Chase, who not only became an incredible asset in helping me stay on top of my own tasks, but also a dear and very fun friend.
In addition to Casie, Ross, Matt, and Chase, soon afterward one of our course hosts was promoted to a newly created “Community Manager” position. Mika Gainer brought many new ideas to this area of operations and managed a small team of new “Learning Navigators” (affectionately referred to as “Navis”) – who were tasked with opening up the course sessions, introducing our various teachers, and communicating a new set of ‘best practices for learning’ to our registered students. Mika did a wonderful job expanding what this new role of community management could be, beyond anything that we had until that point considered.
Also at this moment of new energy, I hired Chris Walling to take over the direction of our MindBody Therapy Certificate Program. Chris had a great deal of experience, and knew the somatics world extremely well. He is also just a hoot to work with, and given his therapeutic chops, our conversations were always extremely helpful and encouraging. He was able to analyze and ‘diagnose’ issues that were arising for the team, and so Chris brought an additional level of executive leadership support to the platform that was both clarifying and transformative.
Editorial Expansion: Thoughtfulness and Integrity
Additionally, Stephanie and I wanted to expand the editorial team, and so we eventually brought on LeTonia Jones and Patricia Tillman. LeTonia is a gifted writer with a passion for the intersection between somatics, contemplative practice, and social justice. She hosted contemplative writing sessions for our Wisdom School members and helped curate articles that enriched the platform tremendously. Patricia (Trish) is also an excellent writer, and she contributed many articles on various yoga-related topics, and she also helped make connections to yoga teachers and speakers who participated in a number of our online events. With a small but not insignificant number of people working on editorial ideas, Stephanie took on an increasingly expansive role as Managing Editor of the EP platform.
At a time when student customer service emails were coming in at a rapid pace, we brought on board Ichha Nihalani – an India-based Learning Navigator who had illustrated a level of commitment and professionalism that made her a natural fit for a more continuous role. Monitoring the Embodied Philosophy helpdesk can be a challenging task, as the correspondence we receive can sometimes be less than compassionate and quick to conclusions that imagine EP as a massive corporation without human beings on the other side. While many of us had worked in the helpdesk at various points over the years, it is Ichha who demonstrated the kind of resilience, compassion, and flexibility of heart to serve beautifully within a very important customer service role. Even after the major staffing changes that ensued in 2023 – and which I will discuss in the next “chapter” (Part 3) – Ichha continues to serve in this capacity at EP, and we are much the better for it.
A New Academic Chapter and an Old Pattern
At the end of 2021, I decided to complicate my life by pursuing further graduate study at the University of Oxford, this time studying “Classical Indian Religions” – a unique masters program I had my eyes on for some time, that emphasizes Sanskrit translation study. About a year into the program, Matt – who, while working part-time at EP had still been working full time with his ad agency – needed to step away to work more committedly to that full-time role again, as they pursued the possibility of being acquired. When Matt stepped down, Ross was promoted to EP General Manager and did an admirable job juggling the responsibilities of team management during a time when EP had started to become somewhat heavy and bloated.
Towards the end of EP’s pandemic growth spurt, Anthony Swindell and Bethany Surface were the last to be promoted from their roles as Learning Navigators into project support roles that expanded Ross and Casie’s orbit. Anthony is a kind and generous person who took over some of Ross’s responsibilities when he moved into general management. He worked alongside Stephanie and I to develop and support the Buddhist Psychology Certificate Program and a newly condensed Yoga Philosophy Certificate Program. On the somatics side, Chris Walling, Casie, and Bethany worked on the Awakened Body Certificate Program and the Embodied Yoga Therapy Certificate Program. Bethany ultimately took over the role of Community Manager and developed a wonderful (but sadly short-lived) experience for members in a new EP “Member’s Circle.”
The Weight of Too Much
In a very short period of time, Embodied Philosophy went from being a team of five to a team of fifteen. However, while these hirings were quick and responsive to the evolving needs of our various offerings, the organizational structure and managerial workflows were not always clarified or carefully considered. Managing so many moving parts started to become unwieldy, and tensions once again began building for the team. Ross O’Brien, who had taken on a significantly more robust role as General Manager, was under a lot of pressure, and his strength of boundless consideration and understanding for everyone on the team started to give way to burnout. In wanting to preserve as much of what we had built as possible, I once again took too long to recognize the necessary structural changes that needed to be made. As a result, around mid-2023, Ross shared that he wanted to shift his relationship to EP from full-time General Manager to part-time consultant.
Then Entered a Friend: Clarity and Connection
I knew that we needed to do some major restructuring, but I didn’t know how to do it. Then, when I was home visiting family and friends in Seattle, I had a conversation with one of my oldest friends, Irene Barber, who had recently stepped down from her role working for a large Seattle-based agency that worked on organizational structuring and design with major corporations. I spoke to Irene about the current EP situation, and we decided to bring her on board for a 12-week organizational consulting project that would begin with a four-day in-person work retreat in New York City. In November of 2023, EP flew all of its team members to NYC, and over these four days Irene led the team through group activities that helped her get a sense of the EP landscape by drawing on the collective wisdom and experience of the existing team. Besides these working sessions, the team socialized over lunches and dinners, and for the first time in EP’s history, a group of people who knew each other only through zoom meetings were able to connect with each other as full human beings, colleagues, and friends. It was a rare and beautiful experience, even though it was fairly soon thereafter that this large team was forced to shrink considerably in the face of a burgeoning financial hardship for the platform.
Calm Before the Storm
I have left a discussion of this hardship out of this part of our story to emphasize the beautiful growth of the EP team. While a larger team does not come without its share of unique challenges, it was an exciting time full of collaboration and teamwork. But sadly, it was not sustainable, and I took too long to admit to myself that preserving Embodied Philosophy at this scale over the long term was not going to be possible.
In the next and final part of this ten-year anniversary story, I will share a bit of what happened, and how it led to where we are today. While the team is almost as small as it was in the beginning, that necessary contraction does not in any way reflect on the value and strength of every person I’ve mentioned. All of the contributions by these gifted colleagues coalesced to create the Embodied Philosophy that many of you may know. I am incredibly grateful for the years that I worked with them, and if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing.
See you in Part 3…