About me

Point of View

Like so many in our fractured culture, I had to find my own way to a sense of unshakeable inner Belonging — and the journey continues. Along the way, I have swum through oceans of confusion, pain, and loneliness. The onion layers of our conditioning come off one by one. Along the way we learn and make medicine from our challenges.

Once we do, we find a freedom, a trust, and creativity that we couldn’t previously imagine. This is the transformation we need, individually and collectively. I am most passionate about reconnecting humans to their inherent Belonging because from there, we can regenerate our world.

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My Journey

I was raised in San Diego, CA, with the ocean as my first love. I carried this love of nature into my studies: an undergraduate degree in Ecological Economics and Biology, and later with the Holos Institute’s Ecopsychology program and the Hakomi Institute of California.

I’ve practiced meditation and yoga for 15 years, and have been working with sacred plant medicines for 10 years for my own healing and awakening of vitality. I now focus on the practice of Traditional Amazonian Medicine (TAM) and am a lineage carrier of my Ashaninka teacher Juan Flores. I am deeply privileged to spend 2-4 months each year living and studying with him and his family in the Peruvian rainforest.

As part of this training, I’ve spent a cumulative 12 months in master plant dietas, the practice of traditional shamanic apprenticeship consisting of strict fasting in silence and isolation in the jungle.

I also have been teaching mindfulness for a decade, first through a community I founded called Monday Meditation, Tea, & Poetry that is still going strong in San Francisco, and now through my work with Hakomi somatic counseling and organizing ceremonial retreats in Peru and Brazil.

Before fully entering the healing path, I spent time in the worlds of technology and economics, and as cofounder of a software startup. The company was successful but my heart and my calling were not aligned. As a result, I experienced a profound burnout and health crisis that taught me a great deal and ultimately redirected me toward a truer calling, the one that made my soul come alive.

I live and work in Sebastopol, CA, on unceded Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo lands. Here, I love walking in the redwoods, learning to relate ever more deeply to the beings around me, and surfing the wild coastline.