Fascination with humans has been the defining feature of my life since memory, leading me on many journeys outer and inner. As a mindfulness and body-based therapist and coach, it is my honor (joy! delight! good fortune!) to companion others in navigating this territory. Seriously, I love it.

I grew up in Sonoma Valley, California, at the end of a quiet, dead-end street. I spent a lot of time wandering the creek beds barefoot and asking that age old question children so unabashedly ponder: why are we here? I felt more than I could articulate, exactingly tracked the nuances of human dynamics, and found myself obsessed with trying to understand and explain the world around me. Writing provided an avenue to explore the range of emotion and experience I sensed made up the building blocks to this ride of life. My love of the written word, intersecting with preoccupation of the ways human socially construct meaning and structure , saw me to a study of English and Sociology at Tulane University in New Orleans, where I also completed a Masters in English literature. Studying writing at the same time as I lived within the rich complexity of New Orleans unfurled abundant recognition that there is no neat packaging of what it means to be alive, or how we should act, or what it means to make art, or how it looks to grieve.

This era of my life precipitated massive inner shifts, and the beliefs, self-perceptions, and relationships to reality on which I’d relied went through massive overhaul. It was hard, at times excruciating. To help me navigate new waters, I turned to spiritual books, listened to thousands of hours of world wisdom and human development teachings, started meditating, trained in yoga, and built self-inquiry into my present-moment experience. I started to experience an inner intimacy that I sensed was radically different from whatever I’d been experiencing before, or what I’d even been taught was possible. and I realized I needed help to make sense of it and integrate this new awareness into my life.

I began studying with Diana Zaheer, who remains one of the foundational teachers and mentors in my life. I left New Orleans and solo-traveled for a year, primarily in South and Southeast Asia, before landing at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Naropa's motto, "transform yourself, transform the world," underscores the university's  approach to higher education by blending academics with spiritual practice and world wisdom traditions. While the university has gone through many shifts in the last decades, my experience there was true to the original emphasis on self-inquiry, contemplative practice, and sensing beyond appearances. 

I received my Masters in Transpersonal Clinical Counseling and Psychotherapy from Naropa University in May of 2021. Much of my early career training comes from working with Natural Highs Healthy Alternatives to Drugs and Alcohol, Naropa Community Counseling, Windhorse Community Services, and hospice volunteering, all of which center innovative approaches to the client/therapist relationship and the integration of spiritual tradition into clinical practice.

In my day to day life, I honor where I came from and hold curiosity and an open-palm about where I might be going. Collectively, I have spent 3 years living outside of the US across 25 countries. In some of these places, I have been a brief passer-through, and in others I have stayed a while, learned the language, grown the food, and tended to the dying. Many peoples, lands, and ancestors have made these journeys possible. At this point in my life, I most identify as an inner traveler. Every day, every moment holds the possibility for a fresh engagement with life as it is.

I owe a debt of gratitude to many master teachers. The transmissions of my own teachers are largely informed by the teachings of Tibetan Medicine, the Diamond Heart School of A.H. Almaas, and Daniel P Brown. I also feel fortunate to live in an age where so many teachings are available simply through the internet. Though I have not studied with most of the following people in person, the work of Adyashanti, Gangaji, Jack Kornfield, Mooji, Michael Bernard Beckwith, Ram Dass, Rupert Spira, Tara Brach, Stephen Jenkinson, Daniel Siegel, Bill Plotkin, and the lineages from which they come are fundamental to how I approach both my own inner world and client work. Additionally, my work is informed by study of the Enneagram, developmental psychology through a study of integral philosophy and STAGES International, psychedelic medicine, and neuroscience. I would be remise not to mention all the books and authors that have made me who I am, but that list would be far too long for here.

My personal life teems with the attempt to uncover and encounter beauty everywhere I go: in remote valleys in the wilderness, in late night dance clubs, in a stranger at the corner store, in the words that flow forth when I put pen to paper. My own life is based on cultivating a sustained wonder and celebration of this mystery we call life. Working as an inner work practitioner is a tremendous gift to me, and I proudly walk the path alongside my clients as a fellow traveler and learner.