The Essence is a small conscious community built around one practice: stopping the argument with reality and seeing it as it is. We share stillness meditation, conscious movement, and daily life — cooking, raising children, running retreats — as one continuous practice, not separate activities. We are grounded in slow living, sharing plant-based gluten-free meals, and living close to nature. Life here is about being rather than doing.
The Essence exists to remind us of something humanity stopped teaching: how to actually sit with discomfort, communicate without blaming, and build the resilience to take full responsibility for our own experience. We call the bigger version of this The School of Happiness. These are foundational life skills, and we want to find a way to share them freely and at scale, for everyone who is ready to put them into use.
Our Essential Practices
At The Essence, we live each day as if it were our last, embracing simplicity and enriching our lives through presence and connection. Together, these practices reveal what we call the foundation — the basic human skills of awareness and honest relationship that most of us were never actually taught. We nurture the body, mind, and spirit with the following daily practices:
We are actively seeking co-founders, collaborators, and funders ready to build a permanent, multi-generational base for awareness.
The Essence envisions a permanent, multi-generational home for the practice of awareness — a place where presence, honest communication, and full responsibility for one’s own experience are simply how life is lived.
The Essence teaches people how to actually sit with discomfort, communicate without blaming, and take full responsibility for their own experience — foundational life skills most of us were never taught. We do this daily, together: through stillness meditation, conscious movement, honest communication, and ordinary shared life, guided directly by Chi Om, the community’s founder. We share what we learn freely, at scale, with everyone ready to put it into use.
Becoming a part of our community is a highly individual process that looks different for everyone. Please apply to join us through our website and book a call with us to get in contact.
What we expect from our members:
100% vegan lifestyle
No drugs, smoking, or alcohol
Participate in daily practices and community events
Take initiative and contribute your energy
A few people (not elected by the broader community) make the major decisions.
More than 50% agreement needed.
Power and responsibility are shared relatively equally among members.
We hold daily meetings where all members can share ideas and doubts, ensuring collective decision-making. At the same time, we consciously choose to follow a clear, skilled, experienced, and non-emotional leader who holds the main responsibility for group decisions. On a smaller scale, everyone has their own responsibilities and is encouraged to initiate and co-create. Our decisions are guided by practicality, simplicity, and alignment with our values, vision, and agreements.
Community operates shared enterprises that provide income.
Common House, Vehicle Share, Library, Swimming pool, Kitchen, Internet, Shala
In-person, in our space outside Tulum, Mexico:
Online, wherever you are:
Across all of it, the throughline is the same: direct, honest guidance from Chi, grounded in daily practice rather than theory. This is what we’re building toward as a wider School of Happiness — teaching the foundational life skills of awareness and honest communication, freely and at scale.
Characterized by high rainfall, dense vegetation, and extreme biodiversity
Examples: Amazon Basin, Congo Basin, Southeast Asian Rainforests
Countryside locations with significant distance from urban centers.
Connecting people and communities through an intentional online marketplace
A residential project: people live here as their primary home.
An institution, business, network, or project that isn’t a residence (e.g. a learning center, farm, or network with no one living there full-time).
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We’re introducing new Plus features — including community reviews, Profile Match, and unlimited Needs & Offers posts — while keeping most of FIC free for everyone. Membership costs less than two coffees a month.
