Welcome to My Dreamscape

I'm Mackenzie, the creative and servant behind YUNA. Whether you've come to explore my design portfolio or my yoga offerings, I hope you feel that YUNA isn't just a professional persona, it's a cauldron, a ground for self-expression, and a means to communicate the magic of life itself. And before you think to yourself, "wow, that's generously bravado" I'd like to tell you how I've cultivated this perspective...

I first entered the cocoon when I quit my job in medical research and plunged into a backpacking trip through Latin America with no return date. You could say I was both figuratively and literally lost in life...I still remember that first night in the home of my Guatemalan host family. Laying on the bed alone, I felt slightly bewildered. "Whatever comes, whatever happens, I will always try my best" I promised myself. Then I fell asleep.

Soon enough, as travel is wont to do to a person, I learned to trust in the help of others, in the grace that life shows in its myriad of form. And life in Latin America started to feel pretty, well, normal. I began the humbling process of learning another language. I went to Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua again...I landed on a tumultuous Neo-Tantric commune and was spit back out. I began learning graphic design and using it as a work exchange skill. I was, in short, shedding and expanding.

Later, I landed in Mexico just months prior to the pandemic. For me, the early days of quarantine were defined by my deepening yoga practice. I had already begun to hold a steady (ish) sadhana, but it was the vacuum created by our collective, forced halt that truly called me to look inwards. Since then, the call has waxed and waned in my life, but it's never left. So when I left my relationship in Mexico, the voice beckoned me to India...and I went.

India was a year of intense highs and lows. Of losing my center and finding it again in the kindness of others. I don't think anywhere else on Earth could bring me to my knees in such utter rapture of its spiritual and aesthetic beauty...and then bring me face to face with my own shortcomings and limitations. Sure, I earned my teacher's certification in Hatha yoga and studied some beautiful lineage and scripture, but I also experienced great loneliness, emotional angst, and an emergency knee surgery. But again, the Mother showed me how blessed I was...blessed by a monk who listened to me cry on the phone after meeting me just once. Blessed by two women who took me in when I was recovering from surgery...who looked after me and fed me and put up with my sometimes neurotic personality. Thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart which you helped me excavate, India.

Leaving India with a questionable knee, I couldn't resist the chance to stop in Turkey. In fact, I had planned to go there when my injury happened, just four days before my intended departure. And I'm so grateful I went. I felt an immediate intimacy with the place and people. I've experienced hospitality in every place and culture, but the flavor I received in Turkey was unique...almost tribal. "If you EVER need anything, call me" one man told me after barely sharing a full conversation with him. It was humorous, but mostly because I knew he really meant it! Thank you to all those I met in Turkey. You moved me with your idiosyncratic culture, you touched me with your mystic lands, and you engulphed me in your oceanic hearts...

So, perhaps my sentiment in the intro makes more sense now. YUNA is not just a display case of my design and yoga offerings. It's a direct reflection of who I am at any given point in time—the values and lessons I'm learning, the stories I'm holding onto and those I'm letting go. The people who make my life worth living, and the slopes (or volcanoes) I'm climbing to get nowhere in particular...only to see what magic awaits.