Fast forward to motherhood and marriage and diagnoses and deaths - it no longer felt like I was tending to just my own heart and being. Suddenly, I was thrust into the energies of relating in a way that was both profoundly tender and surprisingly reactive. A practiced yoga student, I found myself metaphorically falling out of the pose again and again. My nervous system needed to recalibrate and I need to understand why.

Now, a Master's degree and countless hours (and books, trainings, and podcasts) later, my brain and my body know the landscape better. I know why being outdoors matters. I can feel how regulation spreads between people, environments, and relationships. In this way, I think of myself as a trail-guide. I know the mile-markers but everyone gets something different out of the view. It is this synergy of being and knowing that I bring into my therapy practice.

This need first, serendipitously, brought me to yoga. After a career as an Olympian and a professional athlete for almost two decades, I could not imagine healing without my body. At the same time, I had an overly performative and disconnected way of relating to my physical self; I could control my body but I seldom really listened to it. Yoga was one of the first places I learned to listen to myself as a witness and a compassionate friend. With practice, I realized that understanding myself meant understanding how energy and regulation flows within my being and tracking both the connections and the harrowing moments of disconnection. I learned that our reactions, our vigilance, our pain, and our 'mistakes' were tender spots waiting for compassion, stillness, and care. It was in the dark spaces that I truly began to move towards peace and healing.

Over time, my patterns continued to emerge, but I noticed that I was beginning to embody them differently. Sometimes, I still made the same outward choices but, being able to recognize the window of choice created a profound sense of relief and, ultimately, hope. I was slowly unsticking myself - breath by breath - heart by heart. I had heard countless times that I was not broken... now I felt it.

What I know to be true is that we feel before we think. Eighty percent of the information flowing through our nervous system goes from body to brain, not the other way around. This is why my years of 'knowing' were not enough! Lasting change requires a regulated body that is valued, heard, and tended to. Together, we will listen to and trust the wisdom our bodies are constantly communicating. The pieces you need are here already.

I became a therapist because I know what it's like to need help. I know what it's like to feel confused or at the mercy of your reactions, your habits, your sensitivities. I know what it's like to have all the 'right' tools and still feel stuck. And I know the relief of finally working with someone who sees you. I have experienced the exhale of finally having your struggles understood not as pathology or personality deficit, but as intelligent adaptations that made perfect sense given what you were navigating. I am committed to seeing the whole you so you can finally exhale too.