What if burnout is the beginning?
You’re not broken.
You’re tending to your inner fire.
A library of 23 recorded talks on turning academic burnout into sacred work from the January '26 Ivory Tower Inner Fire Summit.
Publish or perish.
Be grateful you have a job.
Tarot isn't for faculty meetings.
Rest is for the unserious.
Reviewer #2 is easier to just agree with than to fight.
You spent years, maybe decades, chasing the degrees. The grants. The publications. The positions. Somewhere in there you handed over your time, your health, and a good chunk of your spirit to meet institutional expectations, and you kept the tarot deck in a desk drawer where none of your colleagues would see it. And now? You’re tired. You’re disillusioned.
Maybe the story you’ve told yourself is that burnout means you couldn’t hack it. That everyone else is fine and you’re the weak link. It’s just that burnout isn’t a verdict. It’s information. Your exhaustion is trying to tell you something, and the institution trained you to talk over it.
So. That part of you whispering there must be something more than this? 23 people showed up to talk to that part of you.
In January 2026, 23 speakers came together for the Ivory Tower Inner Fire Summit: coaches, healers, artists, and scholars-turned-entrepreneurs who have left, stayed, or reinvented their relationship to academia. Each one brought a practice: tarot, Human Design, somatics, ritual, writing, hypnosis, movement, handwork. None of them pretended that intellect and inner knowing are enemies.
23 Talks for the Overeducated, Overworked, and Secretly Woo is every talk from that January, on demand, with a transcript of each and a presenter-approved summary for the days when you’d rather skim than watch.
This was NOT an academic conference. Nobody paid to be here, and nobody is going to tell you to quit your job, renounce your degrees, or be “over it” by now. It isn’t a course with a curriculum, either. It’s 23 people telling you, each in their own way, what they did when the fire went out.
Inside the Library
23 recorded talks, grouped into the summit’s 3 themes:
Instant access. Revisit whenever you want.
Stabilize & Witness
7 talks on the nervous system, confidence from the inside out, slow work, ritual as a boundary, moving through your to-do list intuitively, and Indigenous solidarity in academia.
Alchemize & Reframe
8 talks on grief as a catalyst, burnout as the predictable outcome of academic culture, the Tower card, tarot as your coach, writing through academic grief, and the sacred choose-between.
Transform & Become
8 talks on Human Design, shifting from academic scarcity to abundance, the self-paid sabbatical, leading from your teacher’s heart, owning your woo gifts, movement, embodied calm, and the unrushed scholar’s guide to rest and refusal.
Transcripts
A PDF transcript of every talk, 1 click under each video. We academics do love our textual sources.
Presenter-Approved Summaries
A summary on every talk’s page, a few paragraphs each, vetted by the speakers themselves so you don’t have to trust ChatGPT for their accuracy.
Ongoing Access
Revisit whenever you want, at your own pace.
The Full Line-Up
Stabilize & Witness
I Can Handle It: Confidence from the Inside Out | Andi Hess, C.Ht.
Awakening the Quiet Fire: Slow Work as Counterbalance to Productivity Culture | Carol LeBaron
Nervous System Reset: A Somatic Approach to Burnout and Stress | Izabela Oquendo, M.S., LPC
Burnout As Initiation: Inanna’s Seven Gates of Power | Dr. Susan Harper
The Sacred Everyday: Rituals as Boundaries for Soul-Aligned Living | Tamara Yakaboski, PhD
How to Move through your To Do List Intuitively and Still Get Things Done | Katy Peplin, PhD
Relentless Indigenous Solidarity in Academia | Dr. Candace Manitopyes
Alchemize & Reframe
The Six Stages of Grief As Catalysts for Leaving Academia | Dr. Karen Kelsky
From Ashes to Alignment: Turning Burnout into Energy, Boundaries, Balance, and Brilliance | Dr. Angelika Gulbis
The God of Permission Doesn’t Exist: Writing Ourselves through Academic Grief and Identity Shape-Shifting | Frankie Rollins
From Overthinking to Insight: Tarot as Your Coach | Erin Heisel, Ph.D.
Sacred Collapse: The Tower Card and the Archetypal Catalyst of Inner Freedom | Mariana Louis, M.A.
The Gifts of Academic Burnout: Following Your Heart’s Calling to your Authentic Life | Nancy Windheart
The System Exiled You From Your Soul: It’s Time to Return Home | Angela Mepham
The Sacred Choose-Between Practice: making your most powerful decisions using tarot and intuition | Dr. Jamie Pei
Transform & Become
Magnetize Your Next Step Effortlessly with Human Design | Dr. Marie Gasper-Hulvat
Woo Your Way Out: Shifting from Academic Scarcity to a Life of Abundance | Dr. Lauren McClain
Broke, Burnt Out, and Bitter AF: Notes from My Self-Paid Sabbatical | Molly W. Schenck
Three Ways to Lead From Your Teacher’s Heart | Carole Chabries, PhD
Life Beyond The Tenure Track: Owning All Of Our Gifts...Even The Woo Ones! | Darnise C. Martin, PhD
Reimagining and Realigning: The Power of Movement | Luna Muñoz, PhD
When I Realized the Downward Spiral Was Optional: Reclaiming Calm Through Embodied Mental Fitness | Dr. Lara Wallace
Slow Down Rise Up, the Unrushed Scholars Guide to Rest Refusal and Radical Self-Care in an Urgency Obsessed Academy | Dr. Brooke Hofsess
Who This Is For
Academics still inside the Ivory Tower, doing everything “right” and feeling like a ghost of yourself at work anyway
Academics halfway out the door, grieving the identity you built in there and not sure what else is possible
Former academics who already left and keep being told you should be “over it” by now
Anyone outside academia who built a life on credentials and is burned out on the work those credentials bought
People with a metaphysical toolkit (astrology, Reiki, tarot) that has never felt “serious” enough to bring to work
Who This Is NOT For
Skeptics with no interest in energetic or intuitive frameworks (there's tarot, Human Design, & hypnosis in here; it’s a lot of woo)
People who want someone to tell them whether to stay or leave their job
Anyone expecting live support or a cohort (these are recordings; there’s no live component)
Anyone looking for a career-services exit plan with a timeline (That’s not what this is.)
DR. MARIE GASPER-HULVAT
Happiness Mentor | Human Design + EFT Magician
I’m Dr. Marie Gasper-Hulvat. Tenured associate professor of art history by training, Human Design + EFT Magician by calling. And I’m almost uncomfortably well qualified to talk about academic burnout: I’ve done it several times.
In academia I did everything “right.” Earned tenure, checked every box I believed would make me feel like I was worth something. Under the surface, I was burning out HARD. These days I’m a both/and academic + entrepreneur, and I’ve helped hundreds of people, especially academics and high achievers, stop second-guessing themselves. I don’t think you need fixing. I think you need new ways to recognize yourself.
I created this summit because I felt alone in the space between what counts as academically valid knowledge and the intuitive downloads I couldn’t prove but knew were true. It turned out I wasn’t alone. Welcome to the sacred rebellion.
Ready to find out what your burnout has been trying to tell you?
$67. Instant Access.
