My Personal Path

I went through some difficult years in my late teens and early twenties. I had lost my father at 15 years of age, and then for the next few years I was inwardly feeling quite lost and depressed. This all came to a head in my early adulthood (I dropped out of college -- more than once), and fortunately I reached out for help. My first experience with psychotherapy as a client was quite helpful, and started to give me a little traction in my life. And when I returned to college I eventually started to focus my studies on psychology. A little while later I started practicing meditation and started to study and explore Eastern philosophies and practices (primarily Buddhism and Hinduism). And these practices started to really help me come into my life more fully.

After college I was very fortunate to work at an amazing place called Odyssey in Vancouver, Canada. I was counseling youth and their families and this was the first time in my life where I felt really engaged and in my calling. I felt I had found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life! There was only one problem, the work was emotionally very intense and after a year I started to began to feel like I was 'burning out' (this was fairly common in the field).

Luckily for me, I discovered the writings of John Welwood at this time. Welwood was a Buddhist and a psychotherapist, and he had written a number of books that described how meditation and buddhist understanding could be integrated with psychotherapy. And this was not only more effective for the clients you work with, but was very beneficial for the therapist as well.

Deeply inspired, I went to a week-long workshop that John Welwood was giving at the Omega Institute in New York (at 26 years of age, I was by far the youngest person in attendance). That week changed my life. A light bulb went off for me, I had discovered that I could rest in a meditative presence as I listened and guided others; and this way of being was fairly effortless and highly effective. When I returned back to Vancouver, my work with my adolescent clients had raised to an entirely new level of effectiveness, and just as importantly, I was now feeling energized and revitalized in the work.

I was so inspired by this way of combining meditation and healing work that I asked John Welwood where I could go to learn this more fully. He told me there were only two places in the world that he knew of -- The California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco , and The Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado. A few months later I chose to enter graduate school at CIIS in San Francisco.

A year into my studies at CIIS, I was to meet my eventual mentor, John Prendergast, PhD. John was a professor at CIIS and he taught a nondual-oriented psychotherapy class entitled The Art of Listening. Meeting him, and taking this class completely captivated me and informed how I wanted to practice psychotherapy. John became my supervisor and mentor and was instrumental in shaping my career. I started to become a teaching for his CIIS courses, and then in 2013 I took over teaching that class at CIIS when he retired from teaching.

My life and my career has been dedicated to this powerful presence based approach that seamlessly blends healing and awakening. I live this in my own personal growth journey, and I have practiced, refined, and shared this approach with countless clients, supervisees, and students for many years now. And now I am increasingly called to share this approach with larger numbers of people through group work, courses, and retreats.