Nonahood News: What’s your job?
Caitlynn Rainey: I’m the founder and Executive Director of COC – Conscious Evolution of Community. It’s a newly founded nonprofit that focuses on intimacy within communities. I’m also a teacher and a practitioner of the healing arts. I teach yoga, meditation, Chi Gong, sound healing, breathwork, and different varieties of meditation and a retreat facilitator.
NHN: What does your day-to-day schedule look like?
CR: After waking up, the first thing I do is connect my feet to Earth and gaze at the sun coming up. Then I make a cup of cacao, coffee, tea or matcha. I spend my day nurturing community, supporting and building events, having meetings, and working individually and with my small core group. Moving my body is important to me, so throughout the day I usually go back outside in my bare feet, and I ground. I have two dogs, so they keep me moving. I also do a range of dynamic movements to keep my limbs and my body nurtured. Every day feels full.
NHN: What are the most challenging and rewarding aspects of your work?
CR: Part of the work I’m doing is to help evolve communities and to help grow parts of our existence that aren’t serving us anymore. That requires a new approach to things. My hardest part is being patient with culture, with patterns of participation, and with people and their stories. It can be challenging to hold space and be patient knowing that what we’re doing is huge, but that huge trajectory is going to take time. It’s not all going to happen at once.
The most rewarding aspect is witnessing transformation and change in people’s lives as well as creating a safe space for people to feel seen and heard. Giving people permission to fully show up for themselves, witnessing them showing up for themselves, and witnessing personal transformation through authenticity is the most rewarding.
NHN: What led you here?
CR: My own healing journey. I was always an adventurer and I got hooked on traveling very young. I have a Catholic background, so I always sought something beyond myself, connection to God and divine, and being a servant at heart.
But I became sick. I had heavy metal poisoning, black toxic mold poisoning, which is mycotoxin poisoning. I was working for a big corporation where the air was heavily polluted. I would do contracts and get sick every time. My third contract was to the point where I couldn’t speak sentences. The neurotoxin poisoning was polluting my mind, skin, memory and energy. I was at a critical point of recognizing I used to feel amazing and something else was happening. Along the way, I’m studying yoga and meditation, going organic. I was vegan for five years. Healing has been this process of realizing I can heal myself, access intuition, and make decisions for my healing intuitively. I’ve been coached and mentored by the most incredible people who’ve helped support me on my healing journey. I became a health coach to help others seek empowerment on their healing journeys.
NHN: Do you have any hobbies you would like to share?
CR: I love plants, hanging out with my sisters, and listening to Trevor Hall.
NHN: Where do you see yourself in the next five years?
CR: I see myself leading, with a team, a longevity focused community space that invites you to participate in the space differently. We are creating a space to meet every modern-day human need in one place. In five years. I want to be leading community-driven research and hosting large community initiatives that are supportive to regenerative community models. I always pitch our project like the YMCA meets a secular church meets a spa, meets a forest, and they all birth this sacred place into existence.
NHN: Where are you originally from? What brought you to Lake Nona?
CR: I am originally from a town called Bracebridge in Muskoka, Canada. It’s in Ontario. I moved to Lake Nona three years ago now. My husband and I both got an opportunity to be a part of the Lake Nona Performance Club and launch Chopra Global’s first yoga studio in Florida, Chopra Mind-Body Zone. I think what brought us here originally was that my husband and I are both innovators, and this is a hub of innovation.
NHN: What is your favorite thing about Lake Nona?
CR: The people. A lot of people move here, with a focus on health and well-being, or at least they’re seeking health and well-being. Lake Nona feels like this place of growth and potential and newness. I’ve met a lot of people from around the world here and gained amazing connections. It’s a great place to meet and find support systems for you and your family.
