BIO

I am a licensed psychotherapist and massage therapist, a certified Rosen Method Bodywork practitioner, and a meditation teacher.

My formal education includes a BA in psychology from the University of Michigan, an MA in physiological psychology and neuroscience from the University of Florida, and an MA in counseling psychology from Antioch University. I studied massage at the Santa Barbara School of Massage in 1984 and Rosen Method Bodywork at the Rosen Method Bodywork Center Southwest from 1996-99. Over the years I have also trained and studied numerous healing modalities and techniques that have gradually integrated themselves into my work with people.

Early on I sought to bring the body into psychotherapy, which is why I learned massage. It wasn't until I studied Rosen Method Bodywork, however, that I found a way to work that I had always intuitively known was possible, facilitating people to go much deeper inside themselves and access their own wisdom. Rosen also drew on skills I was cultivating in meditation, and was the beginning of bringing spirituality more explicitly into my work.

I began meditating on a daily basis in 1988 during a time of great change and upheaval while living in Glastonbury, England. At that time my meditation practice was simply about sitting with my eyes closed and letting my experience unfold. It was a way of coping with altered states of consciousness and emotional pain that seemed to have a life of their own. I continued with that practice until 1995, when I went to my first Vipassana meditation retreat in the Goenka style to obtain formal instruction. This was shortly before beginning my Rosen training.

I practiced the body sweeping technique I learned at the Goenka retreat for several years until 1999 when I got involved with the Santa Fe Vipassana Sangha that practiced in the more Western style based on the Mahasi and Forest Thai methods. I attended several retreats a year, including two month-long retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. I taught inmates in New Mexico prisons with Heart Mountain Prison from 2003-2006 and was president of the Santa Fe Vipassana Sangha from 2003-2005.

In 2004 I met Jason Siff of the Skillful Meditation Project and trained with him until recently, immersing myself in the study of Buddhist philosophy and psychology. Jason's approach, called Anupassana, or Recollective Awareness, took me back to my roots of simply being with my experience without using technique. I found it a natural progression from my work with Rosen and am now teaching my own adaptation of it in groups, workshops, and retreats.