Rooted in Sound Podcast — Episode 2

In this episode, Wyatt sits down with Jeremy Mikush to talk about what it means to find real community — especially for gay and queer men — outside of bar culture. They trace their own paths through evangelical upbringings, coming out, sobriety, and years spent searching for spaces built around connection rather than performance. The conversation moves through spiritual retreat centers, Pittsburgh's particular culture and history, intimacy versus transactionality, and how Rooted in Sound is working to become one of those missing "third spaces" for the local queer community.

Below you can read the full transcript of the podcast episode. You can also watch the full video above..

Wyatt: For gay men in particular, [this work is about helping people] find peace, find tranquility, find a place where true healthiness actually occurs. When I started my journey — coming out and leaving a pretty intense cult organization — I left one close-knit community for another that also seemed close-knit. And I think this is true everywhere, but especially in Pittsburgh: gay culture is centered around the bars. There aren't many great third spaces for people to experience community without drinking, or without the attitude and atmosphere you find in a bar.

It took me stepping out of that scene, and honestly getting sober, to find space to heal — to feel like a complete, whole person without needing that from another person, or feeling like it's dependent on my career or how much money I have, or all the other external things people look to for happiness. It's been a journey, many years in the making. And I still feel there's a void here in Pittsburgh for men in particular to find that.

You're originally from here, then moved to California, and you've been around the country since. What's your experience been like moving through those different cultures — finding community, and finding a place of healing?

Jeremy: I also grew up in evangelical Christianity, which parallels a lot of what you're describing. You can have a really close-knit community, or you can feel really isolated — having to keep your identity, who you are, really hidden and under wraps. That pressure and stress creates distortions that often go undealt with when we finally emerge and come out.

In my twenties, that process was about wanting to feel free, wanting to connect physically and emotionally. The bars were there. Fortunately, in Pittsburgh, the performing arts were there too. But when I moved to Los Angeles for grad school in 2006, I got to see the vast spectrum of queer experience that was possible — especially over the past ten years, with more queer yoga teachers, more of this healing and wellness "influencer" culture emerging.

Before that, though, a lot of our socializing was happening in bars, increasingly at music festivals, and occasionally in communities like the Radical Faeries — pagan, eco-conscious, very into healing and counterculture. We were lucky to find those spaces. Coming back to Pittsburgh, I'm passionate about welcoming our community into something similar, because there's this "pancake stack" of pressures: dogmatic Christianity we're still processing, feeling isolated within cosmopolitan coastal cultures we may or may not want to emulate, and figuring out our own identity here.

And because so much of our culture is centered on spaces where we're drinking to lower our inhibitions and make connection feel easier — especially with technology, and the isolation that's come out of remote work and the last several years — it's really important that we relearn how to socialize in person. We need frameworks, like a healing and wellness community, that give us space to be vulnerable within trusting, caring, compassionate agreements. I also believe the creator made us queer for a reason — we're magical people with unique perspectives, unique challenges, and unique gifts to offer one another.

Wyatt: One of the things I found through my own journey was spiritual retreat centers. It's funny — sometimes we have to give up the spirits for the spiritual, and I'm not even talking about sobriety specifically, just finding balance. It's so easy in this culture to reach for that drink, to walk into a space thinking it'll be easier to meet people, when really we're just looking for connection. In my opinion, that's what spirituality actually is: connection — to the people around us, to source, to the planet.

I think of spirituality like Wi-Fi. We have our source, and we need to connect to it. If we're not connected, we're not connected. And we get to choose what network we connect to, and how. For me, that started with Easton Mountain, a spiritual retreat center and campground in upstate New York. I began with their recovery retreats, and I really loved it.

I've been sober about eleven years now, and the recovery community in Pittsburgh for queer and gay men is fairly small — it's expanding a bit lately, but traditionally, especially during COVID, it was almost non-existent. Around 2023 I remember telling people I felt like I was on an island, that there weren't people to connect with in the way I wanted. I don't go to bars, except rarely, because it's not a great place for me — the people I end up interacting with are often a little tipsy, and their authentic self isn't showing up. Or people are on the apps, which is its own kind of connection that often lacks authenticity.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Wyatt: So I started going to these recovery retreats, and the community there was pretty amazing. My first time as a retreatant, they were looking at the whole person, not just the "meeting, sponsor, steps" structure you find at an AA or NA meeting — which can be important for creating safe boundaries, but can also be fairly rigid.

Jeremy: The boundaries for having safe space, yeah.

Wyatt: Right. But that first week at Easton was really liberating. There was space for physical connection if it happened, workshops, good information, fun things to do, great food. It let me sink into what it means to be a gay man in its entirety. It reminded me of watching old gay movies and shows with the queens singing at the bar — where the drag community came from — except here, there was a cabaret, no alcohol, and people were just being silly and having fun. It brought me back to what it felt like when I was first coming out and discovering this community.

Unfortunately, that's in New York, and there are only a couple of spiritual retreat centers geared toward the gay community — especially gay men — in the whole country. So how do we bring that sense of community, those priorities and principles, into a microcosm here in Pittsburgh?

Jeremy: Certainly. As an educator, one of my axioms is meeting people where they are. Here in the Pittsburgh region, we're a courageous people — of rivers and mountains and tough terrain and vicious winters — so there's a kind of resilience. The question is how we direct that resilience, how we express both that toughness and also have spaces where we don't have to be tough, where we can be vulnerable.

For queer folks, especially male-identifying queer folks, there's a recognition that other spaces are starting to emerge — I follow local Instagram profiles for spots like the Soft Spot in Garfield, and another in Dormont. But there's a particular puzzle for male-identifying folks, because whether you call it working-class or Appalachian, there's a strong tavern culture here across generations. And if you're working-class and queer, that becomes queer tavern culture.

At the same time, we've been stereotyped as the creative people — the designers, the fashion people — and that creativity can be redirected into a space where we create. Come in for a sound bath, learn to play a bowl, learn things that are mediators of social connection, queer or not — especially now that we're talking more about neurodivergence too. I believe Rooted in Sound can provide studio space for people to come together and receive a sound bath, or do intentional sound work with a bowl or a gong.

It seems like our trans and femme-identified folks have gravitated more toward arts-and-crafts spaces — and that's okay, it's fine to have your niche. Since moving back to Pittsburgh, it's been great to see trans- and femme-centered spaces like the Soft Spot, and spots in Dormont offering safe space, crafts, coffee, that kind of thing. Male-identifying, male-bodied folks, meanwhile, are often working through frustration, shame, or guilt — adjusting very specific fantasies of what an "amazing queer male experience" looks like, adjusting out of the bar scene and out of transactionalism. Without going into a whole rant about patriarchy, it can be a real struggle for vulnerability. A place like Rooted in Sound can offer creative social engagement — learning to play a gong or a bowl, jamming with ear-string instruments — as a way to bring out that creative, splendidly queer part of us, while also building community.

Wyatt: After I went to school for coaching, I connected with the Gay Coaching Alliance, and their resources made me want to bring some of that to Pittsburgh — along with training through organizations like the Body Electric School. I decided to bring LGBTQ life coaching to Pittsburgh, along with intimacy coaching, because so much of what we're talking about is connection — physical connection that isn't transactional. What does it look like when everything we do is a transaction? For men especially, sex becomes transactional in part because we didn't have role models for what healthy relationships look like — and honestly, a lot of our parents didn't necessarily have great relationships either.

So how do we sink into real intimacy — into-me-you-see — that isn't egocentric, isn't focused on a result, but is really about just being together for enjoyment? That's part of what we're bringing here: the embodiedness of sound through Rooted in Sound, paired with the somatic experience of intimacy coaching — maybe through gay workshops or circles.

Jeremy: Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking of.

Wyatt: Yeah.

Jeremy: Because we're a sound spa here, and in the Radical Faerie tradition we have heart circles. A lot of our training as sound therapists points to the fact that the mind can be dualistic — objective and subjective, the heroic or warrior thing and its opposite — and that's gendered in a way, the "brilliant mind" coded male, the "nurturing" coded female in traditional heterosexual relationships. Those are constructs, and we all carry both, and we're learning to balance them. A lot of this work is about getting out of our heads — tech folks especially, give your brain a break — and letting our hearts lead, letting the creative work engage our hearts and our flow.

Maybe it's been a long time since you've been intimate with someone, and you put that "someone" button on pause and just ask: what's it like for this to just happen with queer neighbors and friends? I believe intimacy can be playful, and it might not happen again, but you don't know unless you learn to read one another's energy — know what kind of vibes are up. Otherwise we default to sorting people into categories: this person is sexy, this person isn't, this person is someone to know professionally — and we get exhausted trying to keep all those categories straight. Instead: these are my neighbors, my queer siblings. Those roles can shift and change, but we have to practice engaging each other at the right level so we can be closer for whatever lies ahead.

Wyatt: I was in Nepal a couple of times over the last few years, and it's interesting — when we talk about intimacy, we don't necessarily mean sex. There are so many ways to connect physically that aren't sexual. In Nepal, everybody walks around with their arms around each other — it's just part of the culture. I think we lose that here.

Jeremy: Accessibility gets tangled up with transactionality — if I become very desirable, that accessibility becomes something real that we don't often name, especially in gay male culture specifically. These stressors, the isolation, the personas we put on that aren't really us, and the fear that we aren't enough — that's false, spiritually and socially.

Wyatt: I also find that when we can let go of rigid definitions of attractiveness — what we are and aren't attracted to — we start to love ourselves more. Accepting self and accepting others build on each other, so we can connect in ways that are more pure. Being introduced to larger groups of men of all different sizes and shapes, even trans men, and finding ways to connect with all of them that I might not have found before — there are techniques for learning to hold and cherish that without it becoming transactional. I think it's important to bring that into people's awareness and start teaching it.

Jeremy: Along the West Coast and in coastal cities, a lot of these coaches and retreat experiences are bubbling up. Here we're talking specifically about Pittsburgh, and the readiness and openness of our community. For me, this is an invitation, in a very Pittsburgh way: come on down and start experimenting. We're recording this during the week of Honcho Camp, so I'll be real — folks are coming from across the country and the world for very specific music-festival, partying-in-the-woods experiences, consciousness-expanding things, drag, maybe even sound baths there. But for folks whose path is taking them toward a sober space — whether or not they currently have one — it helps to have spaces that don't depend on those things.

I'd love for Rooted in Sound to start offering more of this to our community, with me as a point person who takes ideas in and makes them accessible — brewing the coffee, bringing instruments, providing joy and warmth. But people have to be willing to be vulnerable and take the risk that it's a social event, within a wellness community event. This isn't Puritan Christian culture — come as you are, come as your best self, be curious, be willing to have conversations with people you might not otherwise. We're trying to get rid of the limiting thoughts and feelings behind why we feel isolated, emotionally untended to, depressed, or anxious — and come back to wellness, back to sound therapy. It's really helped me.

Wyatt: If you're interested in finding ways to connect — to yourself, to others, to source, whatever that may be — we have a few avenues here at Rooted in Sound. First, we have a predominantly queer staff, so this is a safe space for anyone to walk into.

Travis is our massage therapist, so if you're looking to become more embodied and want therapeutic touch, massage is extremely powerful — especially paired with sound therapy on the vibroacoustic tables. It's like being blanketed in vibration and love. We also have sound baths open to the public on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings — a great place to feel the embodied experience of gongs, drums, hand pans, and flutes. There are private sessions too, working one-on-one with a sound therapist, whether that's a sound massage or a specialized session integrating Biofield Tuning, toning, and voice work. Or just sound Reiki.

And then there's coaching — working with a coach toward the goals you actually want to accomplish. We often think of coaching as career or executive coaching, which can absolutely help you level up your career. But what about leveling up your whole life? Not just career, not just physique — sure, you can go to the gym and build the perfect physique, but then have a heart attack or a stroke at forty because you're also drinking too much, using substances, or not eating properly. It's all of those aspects. And there's so much loneliness in our community — even people in relationships tell me they're lonely. So how do we start to address that loneliness, that boredom?

Jeremy: One of the bedrock instincts of mammals is snuggling up to each other — lions, elephants, primates, cats and dogs. For us not to have that, especially in the gay and queer male community, means we see real struggle, pain, and suffering, and a reluctance to be sociable in ways that actually work. I'm excited to be back in my hometown, to be a resource, a friend, a support — so it's not just about going to the coast or into the woods, but having local community right here, the kind we all hoped and looked for as young queer folks searching for friends and chosen family.

Wyatt: Look for more things to come — we're introducing a few new events, circles, and groups, so stay tuned. Thank you for joining us.

Listen to Part 1 of this conversation, "Sound Healing with Jeremy Mikush," on Rooted in Sound Website or youtue channel.