How I use AI

A catalyst, not a source

AI is a catalyst. It speeds up whatever it touches, and it takes on the intention of whoever is using it. If you want to take over the world, it accelerates that. If, like me, you want to help people understand themselves and come home to their true nature, it accelerates that.

Fire works the same way. The same flame cooks a meal or burns a forest, depending on the hands that tend it. I try to tend this one well.

Here, AI magnifies what I already know and clarifies what I already do. Everything it works with comes from my own writing, recordings, templates and sessions, and from teachings I’ve trained in for more than fifteen years. It doesn’t bring its own wisdom to your results. It helps me bring mine to you, more fully than I could by hand alone.

Rooted in my work and my teachers

What you receive here is crafted from my own body of work and woven from the maps of teachers I’ve trained with and studied for years. Their work is always credited by name, never passed off as mine:

• Internal Family Systems, developed by Richard Schwartz. I’ve worked as an IFS-informed guide since 2020, and Internal Family Solar Systems builds on his model.
• Bill Plotkin and the Animas Valley Institute, where I’ve trained as a Wild Mind Guide since 2018.
• Vedic astrology, with Freedom Cole’s Science of Light as my first reference.
• Ayurveda, through my teacher Alakananda Ma.

AI helps me weave these maps together with your answers. It doesn’t replace the years of training that taught me how to read them.

Who does what

Some of what you receive is made by AI, some by plain math and some by me. Here’s which is which.

Around the work, AI helps in a few other places:

• Messages. Some of my community messages, like welcome notes, are drafted with Claude’s help. I read and approve each one before it’s sent.
• Images. Many of the paintings and illustrations here are made with Canva’s AI image tools, from image ideas I write. Photographs of me are real.
• This website. Claude helps me build and maintain it. Nothing changes on the site until I approve it.
• My writing. Claude helps me gather my recordings, course transcripts and notes into drafts for essays, ebooks and newsletters. The ideas and the voice are mine, and I edit and approve every piece.

What AI never does here

• Diagnose you or give medical or mental-health advice.
• Decide about you, such as whether you can join, continue or receive support.
• Respond to a care flag. If your answers to the Threshold Test suggest you may be at risk, you see crisis resources right away and I get an email. No AI is involved in that.
• Take my place in a session. When we meet, it’s me.
• Sell or share your information. Nothing you share here is sold, traded or used for advertising.

Your information never trains AI

Nothing you share here is used to train AI models. It stays between you and me, and the few services named on this page that help me do the work.

• Your free Reading. The site sends your answers to Claude through Anthropic’s commercial service, which doesn’t use what it receives to train its models. It gets your first name, your answers and your chart notes, never your email address.
• Your book and session notes. When I work with Claude on these, I do it in my own Claude account, with model training switched off.
• Session transcripts. Zoom states that it doesn’t use meeting audio, video, chat or transcripts to train its own or anyone else’s AI models.
• Images. Canva’s AI makes images from descriptions I write. Your name and personal details never go into it.

Where your information lives

Your answers live in this site’s own database on Cloudflare, on servers in western North America. Copies of some details pass through a few other services, each for one job:

Cloudflare

Runs this website and its databaseHoldsYour Assessment, Threshold Test and Shape your book answers, your scores, birth details and Reading

Anthropic (Claude)

Writes your Reading and book, and organizes session notesHoldsOnly what’s sent for that task

Zoom

Our calls, recordings and transcriptsHoldsRecordings, until they move to your private folder

Google Workspace

Email, files and schedulingHoldsOur emails, your book file and your session folder

Zapier

Moves details between services, such as sending your results emailHoldsDetails in transit

Circle

The Ecosystem community and checkoutHoldsYour profile, posts, messages and membership

Stripe

Processes contributions made through CircleHoldsPayment details (I never see your full card number)

Asana

My task listHoldsYour name and the date your book is due

Dropbox

Course and practice audioHoldsOccasionally a session recording too large for Google Drive

That’s the full list. If it changes, this page changes with it.

How it’s protected

• Private links. Your results, Reading and book open from a private link: a long random code that can’t be guessed and that search engines never list. There’s no password on it, so treat the link like a private letter and share it only with people you trust.
• Encryption. Everything travels over encrypted connections, and Cloudflare encrypts the database where your answers are stored.
• One set of eyes. Only I can open the dashboard that holds everyone’s answers, and it’s password protected.
• Two-factor login. Every account that holds your information is protected with two-factor login.

No online system is perfectly secure. If something ever goes wrong, I’ll tell you.

Your choices

• Try it without AI. You can take the free Ecotone Assessment and see your results without asking for a Reading. Your results then involve no AI at all.
• Notes without AI. If you’d rather your session notes be written without AI, tell me and I’ll write them myself.
• See or delete your information. Ask me what I hold about you, or ask me to delete your answers, Reading, book or recordings, at hello@ecotone.academy.

The cost to the Earth

AI runs in data centres that draw real energy and water, and I don’t take that lightly. For perspective, a typical question to an AI model uses about as much electricity as nine seconds of television. As with climate change, the real impact lies in the systems: where data centres are built, what powers them and how fast the industry grows. Those are choices for companies and governments, and worth pressing on. In my own corner, I use AI where it does work that matters, like writing your book, and not for things I can do as well by hand.

A living page

AI is changing fast, and so are the tools I use. When anything here changes, I’ll update this page and the date at the top. The legal details are in the Terms of Use, the Privacy Policy and the Membership Agreement.