We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alex Julie. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alex below.
Hi Alex, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
In 2021, I attended a two-week Ecodharma training at the Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. During the retreat, we were invited to spend two days alone in the mountains with minimal distractions—staying within a 20-foot radius, fasting, and relinquishing timepieces if we chose. This solitude came after days of meditation, embodiment practices, rituals, and Dharma talks about humanity’s relationship with the Earth, leaving me deeply attuned to the environment and my inner world.
Alone on a small patch of land, with its sweet-smelling ponderosa pines and enthusiastic colonies of black ants, I felt both the eruption of inner turmoil and the emergence of unexpected clarity. As the separation between myself and Life thinned, I experienced an overwhelming sense of unity and belonging. This connection ignited a long dormant wellspring of passion and purpose I had never known.
Before the retreat, my life followed a predictable, linear path—school, career in finance, and external success. Despite achievements, a hollow feeling of disconnection persisted, which I later recognized as spiritual longing, and which I have since recognized in so many others. On that mountain, I made a vow to remember my place in the world and to align my life with this deeper knowing of interconnectedness.
Returning home, I resolved to leave my career within 18 months, simplifying my life and prioritizing practices like meditation, yoga, and nature connection. Though this choice carried risks and triggered fears of scarcity, it brought a profound sense of freedom. Now, my work is helping others reconnect with the Web of Life, trusting that the bigger risk would have been remaining in separation and delusion.
Alex, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
For much of my life, I felt disconnected and adrift, shaped by the productivity and consumerist ideals of Western culture. Discovering mindfulness in Nature transformed this, reconnecting me to the kinship I share with all Life and equipping me to face the world’s suffering—personal, societal, and ecological—with resilience rather than despair. This work feels vital in our time of unprecedented challenges. As my teacher Joanna Macy says, “It is our great good fortune to be alive now when we can put our courage and interconnectedness to use.”
In response to this call, I co-founded the Mind Body Ecology Institute, a non-profit offering programs that integrate mindfulness, embodiment, art, music, and ritual to help participants remember their interconnected nature. I also created UMI (Underwater Meditative Immersion), the first program centering underwater mindfulness as a transformative practice. All proceeds support scholarships for marginalized communities, land regeneration projects, and platforms for Indigenous and visionary teachers to share their wisdom.
My role is to create safe spaces for participants to reconnect with Nature, which I believe is our greatest teacher. Through its lessons in generosity, resilience, and joy, Nature becomes an ally in finding purpose and meeting the ups and downs of life. This work inspires hope and reminds us of the beauty and strength in our interconnection with the world.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
A major focus of my inner work has been uncovering the cultural narratives I have absorbed. Before mindfulness, I didn’t notice how the story of individualism shaped my life—the belief that I should pursue “success” in isolation, that giving back was optional, and that individual flourishing could exist while others suffered. At its root, this story is a delusion—the idea of the self as separate and independent. It fosters greed, judgment, and competition while ignoring our fundamental interconnection.
This understanding has come from my Nature practice, the wisdom of Indigenous voices, and Buddhist teachings. In Nature, it’s clear that no being flourishes alone. This shift in perspective feels urgent in light of the climate crisis, wealth inequality, and rising authoritarianism. While I can’t control these forces, I can choose how I live. I choose to return to Life and to align my actions with a deeper sense of interconnection.
Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?
In my life, training and the accumulation of knowledge have been vital, but they can only take one so far. At some point, we have to put down concepts and enter the world of Being. It requires exceptional courage to let go of preconceived notions, question habits and patterns, and allow ourselves to enter the groundless place that is being fully alive in the present moment. It is heroic work to let our hearts break for the suffering of the world, to cultivate forgiveness of ourselves and others, to go against the grain of believing that happiness lies outside of ourselves. And in modern Western culture, it is a herculean task to resist the narratives of productivity and consumption that we are bombarded with every moment of our waking lives.
A dear friend of mine has a tattoo of a Japanese character that signifies “the courage that arises from being no-thing”. I think about this a lot. Some of my favorite queries I orient around are: What risks would I take if I knew in my heart that I am the Earth made human? Who would have power over me if my worth was not tied to a bank account or a job title? What would I do if I were not attached to my actions being successful?
There is great liberation in embracing our interconnected Nature. The Earth has incredible resilience that lives inside of us. The time is now to find it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.diveUMI.org www.gaia-mind.com www.mindbodyecologyinstitute.org
- Instagram: @alexunfolding @diveumi
