The idea for Lotimus was born when there was a kid at home who needed an opportunity to meditate. He was a super smart little dude newly enrolled in a gifted program, and he’d landed in a class which, instead of being fantastically enriched, was really just a fat homework factory. Here he was, this deliberate, slow, highly creative thinker, and I’d unwittingly dropped him into a gulag, believing it was a place where he could thrive. Five months into that experience, he kept getting sent out into the hallway to try to catch up on his math work. By that time, he’d become a stressed-out, twitchy old man who, at the ripe age of ten, was convinced he was failing life. Of course the more he ended up out in the hallway, the slower he moved on those math problems. And as he fell more and more behind, his confidence tanked.

Quick sidebar. I’d recently taken up a meditation practice and taught myself how to get quiet, occasionally even connecting with the Infinite, the Beyond, the Field of Conscious Awareness—whatever you want to call it. Moreover, going inward felt so good and SO essential to my sense of well being that I started doing it every day. To say that meditation was a complete and total game changer for me is just stupidly understating the benefits.

No lie: it saved me.

Now, back to the boy-in-the-gulag. As I watched him thrash around in that classroom full of coolly confident overachievers, I had a thought one day. I thought: this boy needs to learn to meditate. But then I also thought, Who am I kidding!? He’s ten! He’s massively stressed out trying to write high-school-level, five-paragraph essays every week on topics like, Should state taxes be levied on junk food to underwrite wellness programs for kids? Honestly, with assignments like that sending your homework anxiety into the stratosphere, how could you possibly be expected to just settle down and breathe?

And then it hit me. Whatever misgivings he might have about meditation, he would nevertheless listen to a story. Especially a journey story, where he was the Journeyer-avatar. He would for sure do that.

So. One day when he seemed particularly cagey about his homework, I suggested that he just cozy up next to me on the couch. I told him I was going to help him meditate by way of a story. I promised him that he wouldn’t get bored, and that he would feel way less stressed-out when we were done.

And he took the bait!

What happened was, I had him close his eyes. I summoned my best storytelling voice. And I started into a story that featured him, Mr. Ten-year-old, venturing into an old-growth forest, where a two-hundred-foot redwood tree beckoned. I wanted the experience to feel so real, so embodied, so UNLIKE sitting cross-legged on a linoleum floor in a forgettable school hallway, that he’d be able to imagine the climbing experience as something one hundred percent real, one hundred percent LIVED.

And guess what? He got quiet and just listened, imagining himself as the avatar who climbed high enough to be able to glimpse the glittering Pacific off in the distance.

Just like that, my son was able to relax and let go.

Now we fast forward a little, with Lotimus quickly phasing from being something for kids, to being something for adults. Why switch audiences?—especially when the elusive but tantalizing redwood forest still waited for more young climbers? Story for another day. (So stay tuned . . .)

The point is that every brand has a birth moment, when an idea arrives as a result of a deeply human problem that seems intractable. Lotimus was born on that couch, when a storyteller-turned-meditator channeled a journey story intended to shift the self-concept of a single, impressionable listener leashed to math worksheets and hallway desperation.

Several years later, we now do world-building-meets-meditation for listeners who want to imagine journeying while their bodies fall still. It’s not for everyone.

But if you’re a story-loving human who craves an impressive narrative arc AND a chance to learn the deceptively simple art of sitting, then maybe this is your practice.

Fact is, if you’ve been stuck out in your own linoleum hallway wondering how you’re going to make it through your day (or your life!), Lotimus might just be your wondrous, new thing.