“VIVIFY was the most meaningful week of my life since my daughter was born.”
Imagine this:
It’s January 1st, 2025. You wake up early, surrounded by birdsong and the sound of a distant rushing river.
As the sun begins to hit your tent, you poke your head out to greet the crisp Patagonian morning air. Lenga trees surround you, quivering in the low sunlight.
You dress and head out into the morning - down to the river to splash some water on your face, then back up to camp.
As you share a maté with your fellow journeyers, you reflect on the previous night’s ceremony and the upcoming day.
Nothing to do but walk and breathe in this remote Patagonian valley.
A blank page to start the day, and to start the year.
Today, I’m excited to officially announce the next cohort of VIVIFY: Patagonia New Year’s 2025.
In-Person Wilderness Expedition: December 28 - January 4
Online Preparation & Integration Program: December 2nd, 2024 - February 10th, 2025
If you’re ready to renew and rejuvenate yourself with an unique and unforgettable wilderness adventure, this is for you.
This edition of VIVIFY is a 10-week leadership journey, built around a weeklong wilderness expedition in a magical and remote corner of Chilean Patagonia: Aysén.
To introduce this program, I want to focus on the voices and experiences of our participants from our summer 2024 Sierra expedition.
Through the lens of those who’ve experienced it, here are 5 reasons that this cohort of VIVIFY might be right for you.
Renewal Through Wonder
Aliveness Through Adventure
Clarity Through Simplicity
Empowerment Through Discomfort
Inspiration Through Immersion
Renewal Through Wonder
"The VIVIFY wilderness expedition was the most meaningful week of my life since my daughter was born.
The experience gave me something I was completely unaware that I needed - space to explore this moment in my life while immersed in the mountains.
I hope anyone else who’s considering VIVIFY will take the chance on this journey of self-discovery through the most magical landscapes on the planet.”
- Lee, Climate Founder
First and foremost, I am a wilderness guide. VIVIFY is a wilderness-based leadership program.
We center the place as the primary teacher, rather than the facilitation or the curriculum.
And as Lee highlights above, we journey through some of the most magical landscapes on the planet. For this upcoming cohort, we’ll be headed to one of my favorite corners of this world - Aysén, in Chilean Patagonia.
We’ll be based in Puerto Guadal, an idyllic small town perched on the southern shore of the second-largest lake in South America. I spent just over a month in Guadal a couple of years ago, and certainly count it as one of the most beautiful towns I’ve ever seen.
Then, we’ll spend 5 days backpacking through Parque Nacional Patagonia1, through granite spires, lenga forests, and along the shores of bright blue glacial lakes.
I’d say less than 1% of Americans that go to Patagonia make it to Aysén. It’s a hidden gem.
It’s raw - open skies, brisk winds, and bumpy dirt roads.
It’s Patagonia as Patagonia is meant to be experienced.
It will change you.
Aliveness Through Adventure
“The word “vivify” is absolutely the best description for this program.
I’m walking away feeling more enlivened, with a lasting sense of calm, a renewed confidence in my body, and a much-needed reconnection with the mountains.”
- Jared, VP Product @ Climate Co.
We need more adventure.
We need more expeditions, more opportunities to move together through big, natural landscapes.
We need more birdsong in moments of morning stillness, and more shared maté while we wait for the sun to finally crest over the horizon.
We need more cold plunges in rushing glacial mountain streams.
We need more days that float by in the rhythm of movement, the pilgrimage of walking.
We need more uncertainty, more surprise, more what’s over the next ridge.
We need more hot meals on cold nights, satisfying well-earned hunger.
We need more songs around the fire, more offerings of beauty back to the rest of the living world.
We need more adventure, to awaken the best in us, and return us to the heart of life.
Clarity Through Simplicity
“VIVIFY came to me at a time of my life when things had both hit a plateau, but were also moving at a chaotic pace.
ON VIVIFY, I was able to find moments of quiet in these beautiful, remote places which instilled lasting sense of joy and confidence.”
-Gabriela, Climate Investor
On VIVIFY, we strip it down. No cell phone service, no temperature control, no stepping foot indoors for at least 5 days. We keep packs as light as we can (though we use modern gear - no hunting and gathering here).
This simplicity creates the space for stillness, a rare commodity in many of our lives. Especially after the 24-hour solo, we heard repeatedly from participants that a sense of calm had unfolded, revealing a latent anxiety that they hadn’t even known was there.
On this cohort of VIVIFY, we’ll be taking this even deeper. You’ll remove your watch, and release yourself from any attachment to times and schedules. This dilation and expansion of time is profound medicine.
In a world where the siren song of productivity, of getting more done, of moving just a little bit faster is so strong, we need immersive experiences to act as a countermeasure.
We need to retreat, to simplify, to clarify. To remember how time actually flows, and how spacious life can be.
Empowerment Through Discomfort
“Typically, I avoid anything fear-inducing - prioritizing a life of safety and comfort.
On VIVIFY, I faced my fears and didn’t turn back, which was profoundly empowering.
Since VIVIFY, I’ve been moving forward in my life, on things that had lain stagnant for months.”
-Dorien, Mechanical Engineer & Photographer
The VIVIFY wilderness experience presents a challenge for everyone. For some, it was the longer ~10 mile hiking days. For others, the discomfort of sleeping in a tent for the first time.
For some folks with more experience outdoors, the challenge came from being out for a full week for the first time, or from the invitation into vulnerable connection and sharing with a new group of people.
For others, spending an entire day alone was brutal.
The experience will find the areas of your life where there are opportunities to grow, and invite you into that space.
We don’t fake or contrive the discomfort. If it’s cold, it’s cold. If you’re tired, well, sometimes we still need to get to camp.
Pushing through these challenges reveals strength on the other side, especially when paired with the opportunity to pause, reflect, and integrate.
This strength lasts. Here’s a message I got last week from a participant:
“...I just had one of the most difficult nights of my life, and I was able to find the courage to navigate through it.
This wouldn’t have been possible without VIVIFY - I’m so grateful for the trip and your coaching guidance.”
Inspiration Through Immersion
“VIVIFY was disruptive, and shook me loose of old patterns. It provided a hard disconnect, and has invited me more fully into exploring an unknown future.”
-Thomas, Former Chemical Engineer
“The VIVIFY experience gave me the confidence I needed to face some long-standing personal issues head-on.”
-Rajan, Psychedelic Entrepreneur
It’s one thing to have a beautiful week in the woods. It’s quite another to bring whatever emerges from that week back into the rhythm of our days.
A primary reason I started VIVIFY is to surround immersive wilderness experiences with a powerful context and container.
With 10 weeks of preparation and integration, VIVIFY creates the space for you to go deeper, uncover more insight, and weave it back into your life.
Within this upcoming VIVIFY cohort, we’ll be walking through a series of workshops, curriculum, and coaching designed to give you a powerful launching pad into 2025 and beyond.
A weeklong wilderness experience is intentionally disruptive. It’s hard to turn your phone on when you come back.
But with the continuity of integration support, we help you land the plane and make the rejuvenation and renewal that we find in these wild places last.
12 Adventurers
I don’t have a catchy, targeted, niche-ified tagline for VIVIFY.
These wilderness experiences are so multi-faceted, so unpredictable, and so immersive that everyone gets something slightly different.
So, should you choose to join us, I can’t tell you what you’ll discover. Adventures like this one can’t be completely pre-planned or scripted.
However, I do know that you’ll walk away with gems of insight you’d never have expected, a community to celebrate and grow with, and most importantly an embodied connection with the complexity and beauty of the wilderness.
I’m looking for 12 adventurers who are ready to embrace wonder, return to simplicity, push through discomfort, and return inspired.
12 people who are ready to renew themselves for 2025 in one of the wildest, most magical landscapes on this Earth.
So, what are you doing for New Year’s?
The fascinating history of this national park is the focus of the 2023 Nat Geo film Wild Life (made by the same filmmaker as Free Solo, Jimmy Chin). It’s a stunning place, both for it’s natural beauty, wildlife, and conservation history.
For this edition of VIVIFY, we’re partnering with our friends at Chulengo Expeditions, who will be lending their decades of expertise in Aysén.