my story

It started in my body, faced with obstacles I found freedom in movement. I started teaching and traveled the world doing so.  I realized that I was training far more than just bodies – I was coaching hearts and minds. That led me to graduate school where I studied embodied learning psychology. A lot of people question how movement and psychology go together. Common questions include:

How can learning to trust a piece of fabric to hold you – help you with emotional stability? 

Or how can learning to focus your actions to transcend your fears – help you with your physical strength? 

For me, the answers were self-evident. Our bodies, our experiences, and our minds/hearts are inextricably linked. 

So, I believe we can fly. But I don’t just teach physical manipulation of gravity – I teach about breaking free from the things that weigh us down.  So I teach flight. I train resilience.  I research how our bodies learn to carry the weight of what happens (and what we think will happen). So we learn. We learn through experience.

While my career has grown from the dance world where I started, it is an intricate part of my story. As homage to my starting point this choreography tells my story of breaking free. Set to a version of “I need a Hero” and performed with Chris Brown’s amazing fire art – this piece is about resilience through exploring what binds us (including the belief that someone else will save us). 

My years of instruction and leadership took me all over the globe, teaching brain-body techniques. As researcher, I study two specific parts of this equation: the ways in which stress and trauma may be learned and felt in the body (that which holds us down)… and the use of practices like mindfulness and yoga to increase resilience (that which helps us soar). I now work with individuals and teams to using these practices and findings to help them soar. For me there is no greater purpose in life; to help us fly together.  

As the work I do is both in the body and the mind, the layers of credentials get a little complicated. I have a PhD and MS focusing on learning while my bachelors was in health and human performance (dance). I have graduate and post-graduate level training in Health Coaching and Counseling (including Neuro-Counseling, Clinical Mental Health Counseling, and Somatic Therapy).

I hold numerous certificates and credentials through different bodies such as: ERYT500 (yoga), MBSR (mindfulness), USAG, USASF, and APA. I am not a licensed clinical psychologist.