Help me create a Conscious Living Platform

Hello I’m Analu, and I just want to help!

I am a 42 year old Costa Rican native, yoga teacher, musician, advocate for environmental awareness and spiritual counselor, and my only mission in life is to be of service. I have two graduate degrees — an M.B.A. and a Master’s in Environmental Leadership — and I have dedicated the last 15 years of my life to studying, learning, and sharing wisdom with thousands of individuals all over the world. Over that time, I watched us all move together toward a more awakened world through spirituality, leadership, and socially responsible career paths that allowed us to become more conscious about ourselves, our societies, and our environment.

After nearly a decade of seeing the power of positive transformation in myself and others, I created my own business, Pranaluz, in 2014. I’ve been slowly growing it with meditation workshops, mindfulness courses, weekend and long retreats, I've been leading also tours to sacred place of the world like India, Guatemala, Bali, etc; and most recently, immersive yoga teacher trainings for both beginning and advanced yoga teachers. I was working all over the world, with many events lined up for 2020 in Latin America and Asia. But this current crisis has led me to postpone everything. Most of the money my clients paid to book their trips and courses needed to be returned. There are even many instances where I’m unable to receive a refund from hotels and yoga centers who are holding my deposits “for a later date”. Even though all the workshops, all the retreats, and all the tours have been cancelled, I realize that there is still much work to be done.

I've always been a very determined person, and I have been working diligently since I was 17 years old. I’ve had many jobs in many different industries, and I’ve spent a lot of money in education just to be able to prepare myself to learn, heal, and grow into a person who is capable of being of service to others.

Right now, I find myself with no capacity to work and little savings. All of my money was invested in booking deposits for future programs and tours, all of which I can’t get back. But it would be truly sad if I was unable to rise to the occasion and seize this opportunity.

I have outlined a plan which will help more people than ever before, encourage learning across a diverse range of disciplines, and fuel a transformative process that will help all committed practitioners heal, grow, and give back to their communities.

Our Project: For many years, I dreamed of creating an institute, a place where people from all over the world could gather and learn about the wisdom traditions which form the foundations of peace, love, and happiness. My dream involved creating a physical place, like a sustainable center in nature, but it’s just not possible to do that right now. Given that global suffering has been steadily increasing and people are becoming increasingly anxious about the state of the world, I’ve decided now is the right time to start, regardless of what it looks like. This institution needs to exist, and right now, given the circumstances, it needs to exist online. Not only does this achieve the objective of encouraging people to stay inside and not travel, it also allows people from all over the world — and many people who wouldn’t normally be able to afford the luxury of months-long international travel — the ability to gain the wisdom they need to be happier, healthier, and more “consciously alive”.

So what is the Pranaluz Institute all about?

We help people get into a state of “conscious living” by offering programs based around three recurring themes:
1. Spirituality
2. Social awareness
3. Environmental awareness

These themes run through the platform by offering short, medium and long courses, all of them taught by highly experienced professionals from a wide range of disciplines, traditions, and backgrounds. We tailor a learning experience directly to you and your needs, so that you can embody the experience of “conscious living” and we can co create a society that is  spiritually fulfilled, socially just and in harmony with the environment.

Some of the kinds of classes offered will be:

Spirituality: Meditation, mindfulness, contemplative practice (Buddhism, Dream Yoga, Hinduism, Vedanta, etc.), tai chi, yoga, sound therapy, qi gong, traditional Chinese medicine, aromatherapy, crystal therapy, and reiki.

Social awareness: Emotional psychology, emotional healing, self love, relationship healing, non-violent communication, community engagement, NLP, social neuroscience, and therapeutic practices to support relationships with others.

Environmental awareness: Sustainability, permaculture, ecology, composting, healthy eating, environmental leadership, atmospheric sciences, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, and reducing individual and global carbon footprints.

We’ll co-create and co-share a platform where our teachers will be allowed to set up their own courses and programs, with a 70/30 teacher/platform payment model. The prices will be pre-determined and based on a variety of factors, but the courses will always be accessible, with sliding scales and available scholarships. I also plan to teach many of the same courses I’ve been teaching to my select groups of students for the past several years, and I hope to encourage all of my talented teacher friends to join in and offer their courses at the Pranaluz Institute.

I believe that this is an amazing way to unite all the diverse people of the world onto one, peace-building platform! I imagine teachers and students from all over the world getting together, speaking different languages, studying different traditions, and learning to embrace the diversity that makes our world a beautiful patchwork of humanity.

Here’s what I need:

*The platform: The online platform Teachable costs $99 USD a month. It’s an education platform where the creators are able to (relatively easily) upload and offer all of their content via the internet. This is substantially cheaper than hiring a web developer to create a website from scratch and a webmaster to maintain and manage that website. Calculating six months of Teachable costs: $99x6 = $594 USD

*Recording material: It needs to be done right to attract the most amount of people possible. We’ll need decent quality videos to justify the course costs. I’ll need a wireless microphone, an interface to connect it to the computer, and a stand for the phone/camera. A microphone and interface is in average about $250-$300 USD + stand = $400 USD

*Video editing: This will be the most difficult and most expensive thing. I will need support from an expert to edit the videos and courses together so that the material looks professional and clean. A rough estimate for 3-6 months of a video editing freelancer = $4000

*Marketing: I know how to do marketing and promotions, but there will be too much to do by myself — and with limited funds, it will be very difficult. I’ll first need a small investment to advertise on social media (Facebook/Instagram ads, YouTube promotions, etc.). I can perform this initial advertising phase myself, but I’ll need the funds to do it correctly. I’d also like to hire a designer to create flyers, course pages, and maybe even some external promotional material at some point. Estimated cost for Facebook and Instagram ads is about $500 USD. A freelance designer for 3 months would be about $600 USD
Total marketing costs = $900

*Assistant/support: I need someone to help me create and upload all the courses. I’ll be creating course curriculums, videos, how-to guides, and online presentations, and the assistant will need to help with all of this. The assistant will also help with lead generation, onboarding teachers onto the platform, and various other administrative tasks as they come up. The assistant will help me wherever I need help (and I’ll need a lot of help!). An initial 6 months salary (will be re-evaluated after 6 months): $800 USD / month = $4800

Total startup costs: $9694

I’m sure there are other expenses which will arise, but once the initial funding phase has been completed, it will be easier to hold future investment rounds.

The world has thrown us all a challenge which we know we need to rise up to. We’ve been given a blessed opportunity to stand up and create a life that is intentional, moral, and “consciously alive”. I am kindly asking for your support in helping us co-create this dream project. If you know me, you know I’m a stubbornly hard worker who believes that serving others helps us find our true purpose in life. If you don’t know me, well, I hope to know you one day — one day when we come together, start living the life we were meant to live, and finally take action toward bringing about radical and positive change in the world.

Please help us help each other! I have a strong intention, a good heart, and all the necessary prerequisites to get this going — an M.B.A., a successful business which is being forced to take a new direction, personal relationships with many world-renowned teachers, and decades of experience in walking down the path of “conscious living”.

I have been preparing myself to lead this project for a long time. And now is the right time to make it happen!

Please give whatever you can. Support in any way you can. Help us co-create in any way you can. If you need more information about me or the project, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thank you!!

Namaste,
Analu
www.pranaluz.com