It was the pandemic. I was socializing on Zoom, doing Chloe Ting’s challenges, and focusing on my health. The wellness craze was sweeping over all of us.
Lore invited me to take my first yoga class; we joined the same Zoom call and she shared her screen with me. I vividly remember feeling my body get all slippery—I’d never sweated that much before. On the screen was Ana Marce, guiding us through the poses with great ease, as always.
By 2022, I had already earned my first yoga teacher certification with Ana Marce. I took it more seriously and started posting content on TikTok—which was just becoming popular—talking about yoga, the chakras, and suddenly I brought astrology into the conversation. I remember when Dany first taught me about astrology. I discovered I was a Pisces, with an Aqua Moon and Gemini rising.
My likes and views skyrocketed, and I was convinced that what I was teaching was the absolute truth. I believed that was the path.
Very soon I incorporated tarot and oracle readings into my content, since, given TikTok’s algorithm, it was only a matter of time.
I paused Gerastros because something didn’t feel right. I realized I had changed; my lifestyle was different. I pretended to be an enlightened monk, living on top of a mountain. But I was still in the city, living in a self-imposed confinement that was no longer mandated by the state.
My thoughts became obsessive, which was only a matter of time, since I had suffered from undiagnosed anxiety since childhood. I remember that in the middle of a yoga retreat, I had a panic attack when I heard my friends talking about a spiritual healer who took advantage of his patients’ vulnerability and ended up hurting them. I had a panic attack, even while living the most Zen lifestyle. Even at a yoga retreat in the middle of the Yucatecan jungle. So I asked myself, if I haven’t healed, what am I doing sharing my wisdom with people?
Although I stopped posting, I never stopped blindly believing in the principles of yoga as the ultimate dogma, in astrology, and in the messages I interpreted from the tarot. And I don’t know at what point numerology entered the picture, but yes, I even interpreted numbers.
Then came the prejudices, magical thinking, and cognitive biases. From yoga, I’d learned that everything that happens to you is because you’ve done it before. That everything is a mirror. I lived in terror of not fighting, not speaking negatively, not telling lies (not even white ones), not being disrespectful, not making fun of anyone, etc. You can see why it was hard for me to get along with other people, especially in a city where gossip is the law. From astrology, as a true Pisces, my mortal enemy was Leo; I even overanalyzed past negative interactions with people of this sign. I had to avoid them at all costs. When it came to tarot, every TikTok that predicted my weekly fortune was crucial. The messages, the signs, and the horoscopes dictated my mood for the day. They told me what I should and shouldn’t do, and who I should and shouldn’t hang out with.
I reached 20k on TikTok, but I stopped living. I lost my ability to make decisions for myself and blindly followed the signals, signs, and predictions.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake these beliefs, this toxic spirituality. Until I finally did. But I did it through anger.
I felt betrayed by spirituality, by God, by content creators, by my own circle, by the signs, the belief systems, by humanity itself.
In 2024, I began my master’s degree in London. There, I experienced the worst dissociation, the worst anxiety attacks, and the deepest depression I had ever felt. My world was falling apart. I realized I had never truly let go of these biases, these signs, these toxic, intrusive, and obsessive beliefs.
The anxiety was so intense that the only things that truly calmed me were returning to yoga, signing up for a meditation course, and a gratitude journal my dad gave me. (And of course I took medication; this was also part of the process, and still is.)
In my mind, I felt as if I had lost the battle. I thought: I’ve fallen into the same trap again. To my surprise, that thought was wrong. How could I fall into the same trap again, knowing my history, knowing my fears, remembering what I’d been through?
So every time I meditated, every time I wrote in my little journal to give thanks for waking up alive, every time I went to my yoga class, I focused on science. I read the evidence—concrete, peer-reviewed, observed, and tested through iterations and calculations. These practices calmed me because they did have benefits—verifiable ones, backed by scientific evidence.
I managed to separate the science from the magic, and that’s how I achieved integration.
In hindsight, anger and complaining pushed me to the opposite extreme, to reject spirituality, pseudoscience, and the unproven. But under this emotional red traffic light, I was never going to make peace with the past.
Integration came through recognizing the scientifically proven therapeutic effects of some of these practices, such as mindfulness, meditation, yoga, gratitude, and even reiki and ASMR—which I had previously opposed.
But I did recognize that astrology and tarot would no longer be part of my logical judgment or diminish my ability to make rational decisions. They would simply be a form of entertainment, based on the full awareness that nothing is set in stone, my mood does not depend on these connections, and no one and nothing can predict the future or dictate my ability to face a challenge—except myself.
The path to reframing Gerastros has been difficult, and it hasn’t come without challenges. But now that I truly believe I’m on the other side—that is, on the side of integration—I dare to share my wisdom from a place of compassion and empathy. Knowing what I went through, I would have loved to have had this.
Neither I nor anyone else has the absolute truth, but I hope that through my experience and my creations, I can shed some light on your path if you’re lost in this spiritual and mental journey. I hope these tools are as useful to you as they were to me and that they help you make decisions that you’re passionate about, that recharge you, and that truly feel right. From a place of calm, reason, and serenity. From the earth. Grounded.
