Your voice is the voice of the Earth, the words rung clear as a bell to me as I sat at the top of the mountain in Ojai. I did not know what they meant, but I trusted their significance.
As a child I could spend hours engaged with the secret mysteries of the wind and the birds. I loved butterflies and ladybugs, snails, and spiders just the same. I was one of those kids that made up stories in my head, had imaginary friends, and created potions out of dirt and water. I was open, I trusted, and believed that anything was possible. Because of this I had a connection with spirit from an early age.
Being open also meant that I felt the pain of the world and those around me. I longed to make sense of everything I was seeing and experiencing. I loved to read and I took in everything I could get my hands on. I felt the call to healing very early on as I discovered my Dad’s books on color therapy and would offer sessions to my family members. Being introduced to the traditions of yoga and meditation at an early age by my family also provided me with a direct line to my own source of peace and clarity.
At the same time as I was being introduced to the skills and practices that would open the path to healing, I was experiencing the deep traumas of sexual, physical, and emotional violence. Living in this paradox shaped me and has made my journey as a healer a sort of inevitability.
A vision that I had around the age of 18 gave me the insight that ultimately I was working towards embodied planetary healing, but I knew the first step would be to understand and work with the suffering facing people.
After graduating from high school, I knew I wanted to go into the healing arts and so I went to massage school. I loved doing hands on healing work but after 10+ years my body couldn’t sustain it. I also knew that I needed to develop more skills if I was going to be able to work with what came up on the table and help guide people through the deeper layers of their healing process. Meanwhile I was engaged in my own healing journey of recovering from childhood trauma. Diving deep into my yoga and dance practice, receiving trauma informed bodywork, and studying with spiritual teachers from Yogic, Buddhist, Tantric, and Sufi paths allowed me to regain a sense of safety and presence in my own body.
I learned that with spacious awareness all aspects of experience could be reintegrated into a sense of wholeness and that this process of integration is really what healing is all about. This made becoming a holistic therapist an easy choice for me, so I chose to attend the Somatic Psychology program at JFKU’s School of Holistic Studies.
I learned that with spacious awareness all aspects of experience could be reintegrated into a sense of wholeness and that this process of integration is really what healing is all about. This made becoming a holistic therapist an easy choice for me, so I chose to attend the Somatic Psychology program at JFKU’s School of Holistic Studies.
As I began to practice as a psychotherapist I knew I needed to continue to deepen my own internal and practical resources as a healer. I saw a flier for a training in ecotherapy and I decided to take the leap of faith and deepen my exploration of healing in relationship with the natural world. Working outdoors opened up new dimensions in my practice of somatic psychotherapy and made me feel vibrantly alive. At the same time I was exploring the integration of yogic, tantric, and buddhist philosophy, and the energetics of the subtle body in my somatic psychotherapy practice. This prompted me to deepen my study of integrative energy healing and I embarked on the two year journey to become a practitioner and teacher of an energy awareness and healing modality known as Syntara System.
Syntara means with the stars and works to bring coherence between the individual and cosmological layers of existence. This was a wonderful compliment to my work in ecotherapy and somatic awareness of the subtle energy body. It allows me to support my clients in deepening their felt sense of resource and to work on unseen levels of experience. The evolution of my work has been to become a teacher and trainer in the various modalities that I have studied. By sharing what I have learned in practice with others, I hope that the possibilities of healing and integration can continue to blossom outwards.
I currently work as a holistic psychotherapist and energy healer in my private practice and teach other healing arts practitioners about embodied spirituality as affiliate faculty in the Spiritual and Depth Psychology Specialization at Antioch University. I’ve also developed a BIPOC Ecotherapy course and train practitioners in ecotherapy with The Earth Body Institute. My emerging dream is to support the reweaving of the embodied and loving relationship between human beings and the natural world through public programs.
