Photo by Edith Young
In Conversation
  • Name
    Leandra Medine Cohen
  • Location
    New York City
  • Creator of
    Man Repeller
  1. Has ritual ever helped you find your way?

    YES. When I lost my first pregnancy at 15 weeks last November, I started going to yoga every day and taking meditation more seriously, and lighting a candle every morning for the unborn baby. I still do yoga pretty regularly, am not as aggressive about my meditation practice and don’t light the candles anymore but I do look back at the months of December and January really fondly because of the rituals I had established and further held myself to. What’s personally upsetting is that it took growing out of the primordial, raw suffering to recognize that I was finally, for the first time ever, being so, so kind to myself.

  2. You can now buy a stick of palo santo with your morning coffee and attend a sound bath every other weekend—what do you make of this trend?

    I think we’re putting a band aid on a wound that needs stitches. We are overworking, over caffeinated, over drinking and have to turn to intellectual relaxation to quell anxiety that we building up in ourselves, that we are letting in too freely and readily. I’d much prefer to cut my hours back then go to a sound bath, but often don’t feel like I have that option—and I run my own company! So I don’t know what the solution is, necessarily, but I do know we’re creating new levers to cure symptoms instead of addressing the root of what’s wrong.

  3. How can we create more magic in this world?

    It’s so easy. By letting pain in, understanding it as a byproduct of big great love and opening our hearts.

Photo by Meiko Takechi Arquillos
Photo by Edith Young