Berkana Institute - Letter of Intent
Four years ago, to the day, I typed into my email:
Seemingly great technologies scrub life of its human touch. You Zoom into work, Uber to the airport, get Amazon straight to your door. But if relationships are what make life meaningful, then it sure feels like the very best of us are missing the point...
If we all carry a phone in our pocket, and that isn't going anywhere, then the ultimate question is: how can the phone bring us back together in person?*
Introducing: OPENMAT.
And hit send to 400+ Silicon Valley investors…
I spoke with 40 people, spent quality time with 5, and ended up raising half a million dollars from a Midas-touch venture capitalist who happened to run my university's endowment. There were big dreams, bigger promises, and it all fell on me.
I failed. I failed again. And again. And again. And it started to become obvious: the more I try to build the next Facebook, the further I wander from any real solution. Sure, I learned about viral growth, network effects, and startup theory. But the most important thing I learned was that this great white whale of a problem wasn't going to be solved by technology alone. Software is an abstraction of what's already real, physical, and true.
So I returned the money, walked away from the venture, and found myself traveling through Europe, dropping into jiu jitsu gyms to make friends, backpacking through India where I lived in an ashram, escaping to Sri Lanka to learn to surf, and eventually making my way home.
The great thing about travel is that you meet people from all walks of life. Your worldview changes, evolves, and you begin to see things more clearly. Yet the problem of human touch remained on my mind.
One mental model that's especially valuable is inversion. If you're presented with a grand question like:
Q: How do you solve poverty in India?*
The best thing to do is invert it:
A: How can I help one poor person, as deeply as possible, first?
I believe the same approach applies to the problem of human touch. If I want to bring human touch back into everyday life, then the solution has to start with my own life, then one person at a time. Then, and only then, is impact inevitable.
My intention to study at the Berkana Institute, secure my massage license, and open a practice is the first real step toward solving the problem that's occupied my mind for 4-years too long.
Toward the end of my travels, the phrase "root down" became more and more pronounced. So I've spent the last 6 months living with my mom and dad, which has been more healing than I could have imagined. Now I'm ready to fully commit to what's next.
My mom was a school nurse, and my dad sells healthcare insurance. And while I can talk business with the best of them, I've learned I don't really care about words like revenue or EBITDA. I'm most like my mom–a healer at heart.
When I returned home, I tried to take that first step toward human touch by becoming a personal trainer at the recreation center. I believe in training more than almost anything else, and it's one of the throughlines of who I am.
But the role itself feels insufficient. A trainer is often more cheerleader than healer, and the real value of training is learning to show up for yourself when you don’t want to. I've never relied on a personal trainer, and it feels hypocritical if my occupation were something I don’t believe in.
I do rely on human touch.
It's ultimately why people show up to jiu jitsu–that electrophysical connectivity. Community. There are superpowers in our very fingertips. It's why I rely on massage therapists when I get injured or need to unwind. I used to run my university’s boxing program, and while my hands were tools then, I want those tools not to hurt, but to help others.
What excites me most about Berkana is the opportunity to learn deeply about the human body, from anatomy to physiology, then translate that knowledge into a true, empathetic skill set.
When I toured the Mindful Expression class, I told Jon, the instructor, how strikingly present the environment felt. There was this distinct attention to detail, to the moment, not just your own self, but in relation to someone else. That quality feels increasingly rare and valuable.
I don't know what the future holds. I'll probably try to bundle my experience into software that minimizes the number of clicks between scrolling on your phone and showing up in person. But clarity is a real virtue, and the only way to develop profound clarity is to do the thing itself. To be the healer, and let someone who actually loves coding, do the coding.
If I keep talking about the power of human touch but never truly learn it, then I haven't learned anything. Maybe software isn't the end result. But it certainly isn't my starting point.
After speaking with Jill and hearing her enthusiasm, and how, although retired, she's still the ghost in the machine, Berkana feels like the perfect place to evolve and determine what's next.
Maybe it's an intraoral practice. Maybe it's working at Barral. Maybe it's opening a yoga studio with rooms for manual therapy. Maybe it's building a healthcare insurance company that rewards positive action, like showing up to massage or taking the right supplements. I don't know...
What I do know is that the more I search for answers, the more obvious it becomes that I need to stop thinking about the power of human touch and commit to learning it. Berkana feels like the right place to begin.
Thank you for reading as well as for your consideration. It means a whole lot.
Parker Mackley Revers