A deep devotion to understanding how we heal and what creates true health and wellbeing has been at the forefront of my Being since I can remember. Birth trauma and early childhood abandonment by my Czech immigrant parents—who were directly affected by the traumas of WWII—laid out plenty of grist my awakening mill.

Despite their absence, my parents entrepreneurial spirits informed my ability to overcome. They owned a health food store in Seaside in the early 80’s. My mother was a trained nurse who baked bread, and cookies for the Dalai Lama. My father was a multi-lingual professor who retired to become an expert Japanese/Chinese landscaper. My grandfathers were artists and photographers, grandmother an aspiring actress.

Like many young, empathic, and highly sensitive souls, I became hyper-attuned to my environment for survival. Suppression and dissociation from my emotions and needs due to the absence of conscious, present adults forced a reliance on the only thing I felt I could trust—my spiritual inner world.

Growing up I attended a different school almost every year. Change was the only constant. Depression, substance abuse, and numbing started in middle school. Feelings of worthlessness, neglect, and rejection created struggle with self-esteem and belonging. I was often called “an old soul” by those who met me, and nature was my refuge.

In my early 20s, I immersed myself in subsistence living in Vermont as a WWOOFer, where I made friends with the founders of Contact Improv. This was my first exposure to movement arts. I returned to the Oregon Coast to farm and nanny, where I was known by children as Mary Poppins.

Waldorf teacher training called to me. I knew I was too young to take on the teacher role, but it felt like an education my inner child needed.

I studied food as medicine, macrobiotics, naturopathy, and herbalism. Ecstatic dance, conscious relating, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Hakomi, and Family Constellation were all on my path of curiosity, connection, and personal growth.

I joined spiritual communities—some cults. I completed several 10-day silent meditation retreats in India, Nevada, and Washington, all in search of an inner peace and sense of family I had never known. This foundation for stilling the mind would be essential for the rest of what my life would bring.

In my late 20s, I realized I needed a career. I polled my closest friends, and it became clear that massage school would be a perfect fit — healing, hands on, creative, and flexible.

During my years as a massage therapist, I experienced the connection between mind, emotions, and body. I received intuitive insights about the traumas my clients had experienced in their lives, and the more I shared what I was sensing, the more it was confirmed that the body remembers—and has a story that wants and needs to be heard.

Reiki training confirmed that I had already been practicing energy healing all along. We all have these dormant abilities when we create the right environment. I felt an inner guidance teaching, guiding, and whispering to me. It had been there all along. Shamanic and ancestral remembrances surfaced that were undeniable, and it became apparent that the healing I was offering my clients was the same healing I was needing myself. After decades of talk therapy without core, root level shifts, I finally began receiving somatic healing.

I trained with Todd Jackson in Biodynamic Bodywork and Craniosacral Therapy and received a great deal of bodywork in the process. My nervous system began to come out of freeze—I was thawing. What felt like past life memories came to light and so much began to make sense. I finally could begin writing a new story for myself outside of what my trauma had me stuck in the pattern of repeating unconsciously.

Throughout my life psychedelics wove their way in and out, and several times took me down. There were times I was unable to work for years. I felt desperate for a quick fix—wanting to surrender to something greater than the pain I held inside.

Looking back over a decade of psychedelic experimentation, I can now see that much of the draw was coming from a trauma response—an attempt to shock my nervous system rather than truly heal it. Risky behavior and bipolar tendencies weren’t new to me, due to a lack of self-value or self-care.

Now I understand that embodiment, actually being in the body, is the key to grounded, mature spirituality and right livelihood. “Chop wood, carry water” holds deep meaning to me now. Patience, persistence, calm kindness towards myself. Inner parenting and inner child work have been pivotal to the self-love needed to find the peace I searched high and low around the world for.

Throughout the decades Jungian psychology—with its archetypal, synchronistic, and alchemical significance—profoundly shaped my understandings. With a rich dream life I have actively engage with for years, I know the psyche speaks to us deeply and directly—when we are willing to listen.

My training has come from life long direct experience and a deep listening to Source. Any time I have sought human teachers and mentors my guidance has always fiercely brought me back to myself, which has been a self-initiated path of deep trust—long, grueling, and humbling. We are ultimately our own gurus which requires claiming full responsibility for our lives, something I feel so few want to claim in a world that prioritizes comfort, ease, speed.

I feel honored to hold and guide a space for this deep listening to access root level healing with my clients now. We live in challenging times which I believe are ripe for rapid transformative healing in the right conditions with the right grounded, experienced support.

In my free time I value the creativity and beauty I receive from world travel, walking, and photography. Discovering new music to dance to and foreign film bring me much joy. Cultivating my singing voice and writing are current works in progress. My friendships are some of the most meaningful gold in my life. I am a Leo North Node, Libra Rising, Virgo Sun, and Cap Moon.

I appreciate Richard Rudd (Gene Keys), Zachary Feder, Stanislav Groff, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Joseph Campbell, Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, Carl Jung, to name a few.