Since very early on in life I knew I wanted to be a healer and  therapist. 

Healing through creative expression, dance, therapy and mindfulness practices, it catapulted me into a rich world of personal growth and knowing this work is worthy of sharing with people.

In college I knew I wanted to further explore the psyche and how this human spirit lives in this human body and life. I attended The New School of Social Research where I received my BA in Psychology. Also, working as a case manager in a children's psychiatric unit in New York taught me early on how when the soul and psyche are fractured how hurtful it can be but not impossible to integrate with support from a variety of healing resources.

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After graduating with my BA I was moving deeply into a meditative yogic approach. I lived in an Ashram in Upstate New York for a short time. It was a powerful experience that nourished me in wonderful ways, and yet at the same time I was aware that it wasn’t totally sustainable for me to live that way. 

I left New York and went to graduate school at Antioch University in Los Angeles to get my  Masters in Psychology, with an emphasis in Community Psychology, as a Marriage and Family Therapist. That training was a great experience but also a demanding one. I was doing  internships, completing my 3000 hours of client hours under supervision, training in psychodrama, working at a homeless shelter in Venice Beach for dually diagnosed people, community college guidance counselor, and a bilingual (Spanish speaking) therapist in downtown L.A.; As well as teaching yoga and energy therapy classes and workshops. Unsurprisingly, I needed a lot of self care to replenish me during the intensity of that time. I re-engaged with my spiritual practices there and trained in Kundalini Yoga at Yoga West in Los Angeles.

When my husband and I were ready to start a family and change up the intensity of our life in Los Angeles, we made the move to Sedona where we have lived since 2009.

What I have discovered on my own path is how important balance is. The positives of spirituality are about a focus beyond the suffering and pain. That expansiveness and connection with intuition or with communing with things beyond yourself to guide you through life can give a sense of freedom and possibility, rather than prescribing some concretized way of being. 

That can be very strong and clear if you are also able to be in relationship to and take care of your body. With too much emphasis on spirituality, people can get very attached to signs, symbolism, messages, and sensations without fully examining if what is happening to the body and if that might be a trauma response  or a true spiritual experience. Many empaths struggle with hyper awareness that bleeds into their knowing life and if not properly regulated can become a tangled knot of where one ends and others begin. The reverse can be said about individuals who only believe what is in front of them and need to explore beyond factual or concretized based thinking and expand their energy bodies. We are individuals as well as collective members of a social consciousness, and that affects how we nurture ourselves. 

We are affected by the world we live in and it leaves an imprint in our biology. On my own path I found that the somatic piece, or returning to the intelligence of one’s own body and truly inhabiting it, is a whole new relationship and I find it to  be very grounding and clarifying. It has created healthy natural boundaries that have arisen organically, versus mental constructs of safety. I believe the path of personal growth leads us into being empathic and more connected to our instinctual, primal self. Becoming fully embodied in transcendent groundedness, while more fully inhabiting our heart and integrating our soul within our body.