I'm Nathan. I hold space, not answers.
Facilitator, space-holder, and integration guide. I didn't come to this work through a certificate. I came to it by walking out of my own stuck life, one terrifying yes at a time.
The long way here.
For most of my life, I was stuck. Long stretches of depression and isolation. Cycles of building my life up, collapsing, and starting over. I saw dozens of therapists and tried the medications. Some of it helped a little. None of it made the difference.
Eventually I built something that looked like stability: a career as a software developer, a salary, a routine. But underneath, my life was work, recovery, and numbing. Screens and substances, anything that quieted the constant unease in my body. I was battling burnout every day and medicating just to get through it. For the first time I had stability, and I still wasn't living.
The turning point came during a stress leave I was terrified to take. I had learned about psychedelic-assisted therapy, and for the first time in years I felt something I'd almost forgotten: hope. Not long after, I sat for my first guided medicine journey, prepared and held by two facilitators who welcomed me with real warmth, like a human who mattered. That mattered more than I can say.
In that session, my body began to metabolize emotions and old wounds that had been stuck for decades. I saw my patterns clearly, maybe for the first time: how I kept myself small, how I stayed in the victim seat, what I could do differently. And more than any insight, I felt, deep in my body, what it actually feels like to be okay. To feel love for myself. To feel hope.
The medicine doesn't do the work. It points the way.
As I came down, I asked with fear in my voice: what do I do now? I'm going home to the same environment, the same triggers. The answer was that this is the hard part. The medicine points the way, but the work is mine. That answer shaped everything I do now.
What followed was a few years of saying yes when everything in me screamed no. I went to my first community gathering and hid in my tent half the time, and it still cracked my world open. I went to my first men's retreat with strangers far outside my bubble, and discovered what it feels like to belong, to be accepted as my authentic self. I danced for the first time in my life, in my thirties. I stood in icy water in the snow with twelve other men and learned, in my body, that discomfort is not the enemy.
Then I quit my job. I spoke the wish out loud in circle around a fire, was met with love and encouragement, and put in my notice the next day. No plan. Plenty of fear. But I was just finding out who I was for the first time, and I wanted the freedom to actually live it.
It was in the middle of all that saying yes that I met Leah Fae, the woman who is now my partner and co-facilitator, and joined her on the road. We lived nomadically for over a year: van life, farm sitting, a stretch in an intentional community, and a summer completely off-grid in an 8x11 bunkie with no power or running water, hauling water up from a pond. We spent three months in Peru together, beginning with a ten-day ayahuasca retreat, and later trekked unguided through the Andes at 4,600 metres, above the treeline, with only alpacas for company. These experiences taught me, over and over, that I can do hard things. That I am more resilient than it feels. That the world is not as dangerous as my nervous system believed.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, during a group journey where the container began to crumble around me, I found my voice. People were panicking, and I was struggling too, but I spoke, and the room settled. I spent the rest of that night in service to everyone there, and by the end of it I knew what I was here to do: to hold space. To make sure that everyone is okay.
Since then I've been building deliberately toward this work. Breathwork facilitator training, men's work facilitator training, coaching clients, co-facilitating retreats, leading ceremony, and an annual Vision Quest: three days alone on the land without food or water. Return is the practice that grew out of all of it.
The path that shaped me.
The turning point
A first guided medicine journey during a stress leave from tech. Decades of stuck emotion began to move, and I felt for the first time what it means to be okay.
Leaving the safe path
I quit my software career with no plan and a lot of fear, trading hard-won stability for the chance to find out who I actually was.
Men's work & community
Retreats, circles, fire, cold water. The spaces that taught me belonging, courage, and that discomfort is a doorway, not a wall.
The nomadic year
Van life, farms, intentional community, an off-grid summer, and three months in Peru with Leah Fae, including a ten-day ayahuasca retreat and an unguided trek together through the high Andes.
Vision Quests
Each spring, three days alone on the land without food or water. The deepest teacher I've sat with on what I'm made of, and what actually matters.
Building Return
Facilitator trainings, coaching, men's retreats, and leading ceremony, some of it side by side with Leah Fae as co-facilitator. The practice this page belongs to, and the work I'm devoted to now.
Still on the path.
I show up as a fellow human in accompaniment, not someone on a pedestal. I may have more experience in some territory, but I don't pretend to have it all figured out. I walk beside you, not ahead of you.
I bridge two worlds. I came from tech, from the modern western world, with zero exposure to spirituality. Now it's the fabric of my life. I speak both languages, I don't talk in woo, and I make no assumptions about where you're starting from. I know what it is to be an outsider to all of this.
I take preparation and integration seriously. This is sacred work that can genuinely change a life when it's handled with care, so the container has to be strong. I'm honest about what the work is, what it isn't, and what it will ask of you. Here's how the container is held, start to finish.
And I'm still on the path myself. The old waves still come: anxiety, overwhelm, the pull toward numbing. The work was never about making them stop. It's about how I meet them, and how quickly I find my feet again. Some of my deepest ongoing work happens inside my partnership with Leah Fae, where nothing stays hidden for long. I'd rather you know all of that than believe I've transcended anything. I haven't. I've just learned to stay.
Sometimes the space is held by two.
Leah Fae is my partner — in life and, when a container calls for it, in ceremony. She's a Reiki Master, a Kundalini Yoga teacher, and a trauma-informed Hatha yoga instructor, with more than a decade of experience guiding meditation, ceremony, and movement, and she's the creator of Soul Medicine, her personalized meditation practice. Much of the path that shaped me, we walked together — the road, Peru, the medicine — and some of the ceremonies I've held, we've held side by side.
A dyad changes a room. The masculine and the feminine holding space together brings a grounding, complementary presence — and for some people, especially women considering a male facilitator, knowing a woman is co-holding the space changes what feels possible inside it.
Co-facilitation is an option in any container. What Leah's involvement looks like varies, so it's something we shape together in the fit-and-scope conversation — always agreed before anything begins.
If this resonates, let's talk.
This is for you if you've been stuck a long time, tried what you were supposed to try, and still sense there's more to your life than you can reach. You don't need to have it figured out. This work starts with relationship, not a transaction. Reach out and tell me what's calling you here.