My path of seeking began unknowingly at age six with a near-death experience. After accidentally ingesting chemicals, I floated out of my body while lying in a hospital bed. This opened me to the world of the unseen.

Then the portal closed, and normal life took over — I hurried along like everyone else. It wasn’t until age 21 that the door cracked open again. Three months of relentless sciatica pain left me bedridden, begging for deliverance. As I laid there with tears and poems pouring out, life was calling me home.

This kickstarted a journey of seeking. I left my first job cold turkey and attended a Vipassana retreat. It was my first taste of silence and stillness, and my back pain significantly reduced. Around the same time, I was serendipitously introduced to my teacher, Lynn Preston, who generously opened the door to the world of the felt-sense and Focusing. This shifted me from the outer mental realm to the language of the body — metaphors, images, feelings, and process — initiating an inner revolution towards deeper knowing. I began to see our bodies hold truths that our minds can’t always access.

At 27, my entire world shattered from a psychedelic-induced energetic awakening. Numb parts awakened to be released in energetic form, and a flood of unconscious material surfaced, waiting to be met. This began a six-and-a-half year period of dissolution and cocooning. Life stripped away all external ground to center the inner life’s unfolding. Old identities fell away, and many relationships shifted or dissolved. I was pinned to the ground to face the dark, making space for something new.

Over time, new sensitivities came online — a poroursness in my being. Like a naked snail without a shell and a newborn, I felt exposed and delicate in a world of harsh energies. I began to resource deeply with nature, connecting to the elemental energies. With each layer of darkness shed, my perception shifted, revealing beauty, wonder, awe, and appreciation. The clearer my system became, the more I sensed interconnection - the aliveness and animacy of all things and the larger web of living.

It was a shift into living from not-knowing, entering into deeper trusting and surrender. The animal creature fears - of needing to be safe, to know, to belong, and to control - continued to surface to be met. I wondered where I was going and what was becoming of me, and continue to allow those parts to be met.

My teacher Lynn always told me to wait and see what comes. Once again, I was serendipitously led to the womb-space of Continuum with Susan Harper, which became a refuge and anchor, guiding me from a socio-cultural map to a soul map. Susan’s work opened me deeper to the imaginal and animistic realms, teaching perceptual shifts and elemental intelligences. In an effort to anchor my sensitivities, I also studied with Lynda Caesara, who imparted universal energetic principles and scaffoldings of how to be in right relations. Both of these teachers offered ritualized containers, holding depth and expansiveness.

This passage reorients, shifting from the mind to the heart, from a purely materialistic view to an expanded and subtle view, from object to process, from a meaningless world to sacredness and magic, and from an individual self to Soul. This is what my deeper urge was calling forth all along… and the journey continues to unfold.

I am forever grateful for this journey, and it continues to shape the work I offer.