Full Circle: From a Scholarship Seat to the Stage

A year ago I walked into Eudēmonia on a scholarship, carrying a vision and not much else. This week, because of you, Sensorium returns as an Ambassador. This is the story of how we got here, and an invitation to come stand in that room with me.

Chapter One: Why the water

Some of you have sat with me in a breathwork circle. Some of you have floated through one of our sound immersions, or met me in the ocean at one of our snorkeling meet ups. And maybe you've wondered why water runs through everything I do, why I keep coming back to the breath and to sound moving through water as my modality.

The answer is a part of my life story I don't tell often.

On January 1, 2011, I drowned. Not almost drowned. I was underwater for 8 minutes. My heart stopped. On the way to the hospital, I coded 11 times in the ambulance before coming back to life.

I spent a month and a half in a coma with a collapsed lung. The medical teams told my family there was a 98% chance that if I ever woke up, I would be completely brain dead, and that was only if my organs didn't fail first.

Then my parents had to make an impossible choice: a tracheostomy that could save my life but destroy my voice forever. I was an aspiring singer. Church choirs, Bible School plays, a vocal major in middle school, a theater major in high school. Singing was everything. But without the surgery, my chances of survival dropped below 40%.

But a miracle happened. God was in the room. I woke up, against every medical odd, and started my personal journey to recovery and purpose.

I gradually regained the ability to speak, walk, swallow, and eventually sing again. But the real miracle wasn't just the physical recovery. It was the spiritual awakening that came from experiencing what most people never do.

Every breath since that day has been a gift.

I have spent my time since then trying to understand why I was given a second chance, and creating a reason to continue living to the fullest. That search became an intensive healing journey of over a decade, and it is why I keep coming back to the breath and to the water.

So when I guide you through your breath, or invite you into the water, I'm sharing the practices that brought me home. The water that almost took my life became the place I go to heal.

Chapter Two: Starting over

I spent 15 years in music and talent management, pouring my money, time, energy, heart and soul into building artists' careers. I watched artists cycle through tour highs, then crash into depressive lows. I lost colleagues to substance abuse. I saw an industry chew people up and spit them out, with zero wellness infrastructure to catch them. And when the artists finally broke through, I was thanked, dismissed, and left with the debt.

Last fall, at 34 years old, I filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and moved back in with my family, starting over from absolute zero. My food benefits were cut off. My car broke down, and I was teaching myself to fix it from YouTube videos, lying on my back in my family's driveway.

And right then, Eudēmonia came to West Palm Beach. My hometown. The Convention Center sits right across the street from Dreyfoos, my high school of the arts, where my love of music, film and theater all came together. The world's leading health experts were coming to my backyard at the exact moment I was crystallizing my purpose, and I couldn't afford a ticket.

So I wrote a scholarship essay and told them the truth.

“My car is broken. My bank account is empty. My credit is destroyed. But my commitment to this path is absolute and unshakeable.”

Chapter Three: The room

By some grace, Eudēmonia read my words and made a seat for me in that room. I will carry that gratitude for the rest of my life.

When I sat down in that auditorium, I felt like I had stepped into the future of what conscious events could be: a template that merges education, science, spirituality, health, fitness and wellness, all under one roof. That vision was exactly what I wanted to create, and the foundation and standard Eudēmonia brought showed me a future where that dream was possible.

I recognized something immediately. It was the same sense of trust, safety and permission I'd been building in my own small sound healing circles, the permission to soak up knowledge with your whole nervous system, not just your ears. Except instead of one practitioner holding space for a handful of people, it was a hundred of the world's leading experts holding space for thousands.

That collision is the exact seed that became Sensorium.

Chapter Four: Full circle

Because of all of you, and because of what we have built together at Sensorium, we were accepted to become Ambassadors for the Eudēmonia Summit this year.

I need you to feel what that means to me. This concept was born right inside the container of Eudēmonia, the container that gave it a chance at life. And now it gets to come back home and serve.

This year, Eudēmonia also hired me as an Artist Relations Manager, helping bring the summit to the stage with some of the most influential voices in the industry. Last year I asked if I could earn my way back into that room rather than simply receive it again. This week, I get to help build the thing that rebuilt me.

Chapter Five: Why I want you there

I was genuinely transformed by this event. It has become a staple of our local community, putting Palm Beach County on the map, and it gives us a purpose that reaches far beyond one weekend.

That purpose is where you and I come in. At Sensorium, we reach our community to integrate this knowledge. We hold our Knowledge Panels monthly to keep the experience and the intention alive. We bring our local practitioners and vendors together. And together we spread this movement throughout Florida and the rest of the world.

United Monthly. Integrated Weekly. Lived Daily. It all starts in that room, and I would love for you to be in it with me. So as Ambassadors, we were given something to make that a little easier for you.

Nov 5–8 ✦ West Palm Beach

A gift for our community

Enter this code at checkout for 10% off any 3-day or 1-day badge, whether Standard, Enhanced or Expo.

Code: SENSORIUM

Online sales end Wednesday, November 4, at 12:00 PM Eastern. After that, badges cost more and can only be bought in person at the box office.

Get your badge · Lineup · Agenda

The ones I look up to

If you come for anything, come for these three.

Dr. Lisa Miller

Columbia University ✦ Author of The Awakened Brain and The Spiritual Child

Dr. Miller is a professor at Columbia University, where she founded the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program and research institute in spirituality and psychology. She is the New York Times bestselling author of The Awakened Brain and The Spiritual Child, and to me she is the perfect crossover of neuroscience and spirituality.

I met her last year, and we had an in-depth conversation about The Awakened Brain. She SAW me that day. She said it felt like we had met before today, and she showed me that my people in this industry exist.

Her writing on the spiritual child and family relations is one of the reasons I chose the topic for our next Sensorium event on Saturday, November 21: Chosen Family. I would love to keep this conversation going with you there.

Fri Nov 6 ✦ 3:30 PM ✦ Grand Ballroom
From “The Body” to Embodiment: The Art and Science of Becoming Whole, with Elle Macpherson

Dr. Andrew Huberman

Stanford School of Medicine ✦ Host of Huberman Lab

Dr. Huberman is a neuroscientist and tenured professor at Stanford School of Medicine, known for his work on brain function and neural plasticity, our nervous system's ability to rewire and learn. In 2021 he launched the Huberman Lab podcast.

That podcast became my weekly lifeline. When I had nothing, his protocols on sleep, stress and the nervous system cost nothing and transformed everything. They literally helped me rewire my brain after my near-death experience.

Sat Nov 7 ✦ 3:30 PM ✦ Grand Ballroom
The Next Era of Human Health: Rewriting the Rules of Aging, with Dr. Jessica Shepherd

Dr. Thupten Jinpa

Founder, Compassion Institute ✦ Principal English translator to the 14th Dalai Lama

For nearly four decades, Dr. Jinpa has served as the principal English translator to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Trained as a monk, he earned the Geshe Lharam, the highest scholastic distinction in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, then a PhD at the University of Cambridge. He founded the Compassion Institute and developed Compassion Cultivation Training during his time at Stanford.

I was assigned to be his liaison for this summit, and that is such an honor on my journey. I have been studying Buddhism more closely these last two years than ever before, and I feel this is the universe aligning with the mission we have all set out to accomplish together: to spread love and compassion to the world.

Come practice his renowned meditation with us, then hear him in conversation on the sessions below.

Sat Nov 7 ✦ 8:00 AM ✦ Room 2ABC
A Fearless Heart: A Guided Meditation for Compassion and Connection

Sun Nov 8 ✦ 11:00 AM ✦ Coral DE, Hilton
Dying Well: Mortality, Meaning & the Art of Letting Go

Sun Nov 8 ✦ 12:30 PM ✦ Coral ABC, Hilton
Where Inner Life Meets Outer Purpose: Compassion, Spirituality & Legacy

Dr. Chayim Newman

This one is personal. Dr. Newman is a clinical psychologist and co-founder of Amber Health, building mental health infrastructure for the music industry. He spent more than two decades in live music as a touring performer and event producer, and helped pioneer a framework for delivering mental health care on tour.

Everything I watched happen to artists on the road is what he is working to change, and it is the direct reason I am doing what I am doing with Sensorium. When I wrote that essay, I said my calling was to become a bridge, to bring the practices that saved my life into the spaces where people are suffering most. He is proof that bridge can be built.

Sat Nov 7 ✦ 12:30 PM ✦ Agora Stage
Where the Head Meets the Heart: Music, Mental Health, and the Power of Connection, with The Head and the Heart

Choose what moves you

A ✦ marks a presenter I am personally looking after this year. Say hi if you see me running around.

Spirituality + meditation

• Fri 3:30 PM · From “The Body” to Embodiment (Dr. Lisa Miller, Elle Macpherson)
• Sat 8:00 AM · ✦ A Fearless Heart: Guided Meditation (Dr. Thupten Jinpa)
• Sun 11:00 AM · ✦ Dying Well: Mortality, Meaning & the Art of Letting Go (Dr. Thupten Jinpa, Michael Hebb, Melissa Red Hoffman)
• Sun 12:30 PM · ✦ Where Inner Life Meets Outer Purpose (Dr. Thupten Jinpa, Sage Robbins)

Breathwork + rhythm

• Fri 12:30 PM · Breathwork for Heroes & Heroines (Chris Keener ✦ Event Lawn, Hilton)
• Sat 12:30 PM · ✦ Rhythm of Happiness Drumming & Breathwork (Caleb Spaulding)
• Sun 11:00 AM · Community Breathwork & Cold Plunge (Chris Keener ✦ Contrast Therapy, Convention Center)

Psychedelic medicine + therapy

• Fri 11:00 AM · ✦ The Skeptic's Corner: Psychedelics as Panacea? (Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris, Rachel Yehuda, Drew Ramsey)
• Sat 8:00 AM · ✦ How Psychedelics Work: Illuminating the Hidden Mind (Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris)

Neuroscience + the mind

• Sat 2:00 PM · ✦ Your Limitless Mind (Jim Kwik)
• Sat 3:30 PM · The Next Era of Human Health (Dr. Andrew Huberman, Dr. Jessica Shepherd)
• Sun 11:00 AM · ✦ Built for More: Mindset, Performance & the Capacity to Adapt (Jim Kwik, Devon Levesque, Stacy Sims)

Mental health + music

• Sat 12:30 PM · Where the Head Meets the Heart (Dr. Chayim Newman, The Head and the Heart)

Fitness + movement

• Fri 9:30 AM · ✦ Kettlebell Flow: Strength in Motion (Alex Silver-Fagan)
• Fri 11:00 AM / Sat 9:30 AM · ✦ Primal Moves (Nick Brewer)
• Sat 9:30 AM · ✦ Supercharge: Bodyweight Training (Don Saladino)
• Sun 9:30 AM · ✦ Sunday Stretch (Don Saladino)

Food + nutrition

• Fri 12:00 PM · ✦ Longevity Starts in the Kitchen (Dr. William Li, Johanna Hellrigl)
• Sat 1:00 PM · ✦ Cooking Demo: Maitake Mushroom Milanese (Camilla Marcus)
• Sun 11:00 AM · ✦ Are We Biohacking the Joy out of Food? (Dr. William Li, Andrew Zimmern, Max Lugavere)
• Sun 1:00 PM · ✦ Cooking Demo: Kobocha Squash Curry Soup (Camilla Marcus)
• Sun 2:00 PM · ✦ Only Pans: The Chefs Shaping the Future of Food (Camilla Marcus, Andrew Zimmern, Johanna Hellrigl)

“Your current situation is not your final destination. The best is yet to come.”

Get your badge

Code SENSORIUM ✦ Online sales end Wed Nov 4 at 12:00 PM Eastern

Thank you for being the reason any of this means something. You are the proof that a second chance can become a community.

With all my heart, and see you in West Palm,

Jameson Shelnut
Founder, Sensorium ✦ Artist Relations Manager, Eudēmonia Summit

Sensorium is an official Eudēmonia Ambassador for South Florida, and the links above are our ambassador links.