Movement
My primary movement training is in yoga. I completed her 200 hour yoga teaching training with Ana Forrest and Cat Allen in 2014 and her 500 hour CYT teaching training with Heidi Sormaz in 2016.
My movement practice is heavily informed by my work as a craniosacral practitioner and experiences with dance, Continuum, Contact Improvisation and other forms of contemplative movement. I worked with Barbara Dilley during a residency on contemplative pedagogy at Naropa University in 2021. My movement classes are trauma informed and work with the nervous system to attend to injury and habitual movement patterns.
In addition to teaching movement classes in a group setting, I work with individuals towards specific goals, especially working with chronic injury and coming into compassionate relationship with our bodies and their capacities.
MEDITATION
I was introduced to a formalized meditation practice in my late twenties, when suffering in both my personal and professional life. It helped me develop more empathy for the people around me and opened up a space for the self-compassion I needed so badly. While relaxing can be a nice side-effect of meditation, my intent for my own practice and my facilitation is to ease suffering that comes with clinging to our (often outdated) perceptions of self and others. In no way is meditation a “quick fix,” but it is a practice that can help relieve anxiety, depression, heartache, and the feeling that you’re running on autopilot, or missing out on your experience. Developing a formal meditation practice can enliven intersecting contemplative practices like yoga.
I trained as a meditation teacher through the Institute of Jewish Spirituality’s Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training in 2013, which is rooted in both Buddhist and Jewish lineage practices, and some of my most beloved teachers include Rabbi Jeff Roth, Rabbi Shiela Pelz-Weinberg, and Sylvia Boorstein. I am especially moved by teachers examining embodied awareness with attention to and understanding of its function in Tikkun Olam, or healing the world, especially the reverend angel Kyodo williams and the Lama Rod Owens.
My practice has a heavy somatic focus and is informed by Focusing, based in the work of Eugene Gendlin, which encourages us to connect with the felt-sense of the body, and to gently inquire what it might like us to know about our experience.