While traveling in New Zealand during my early 20’s, I badly hurt my back. The injury was so severe that a western medical doctor told me I would never be 100% again, and that I would have to “live with the pain” by taking painkillers. I didn’t know much about alternatives at the time, but I had an intuition that I had other options.

I threw away the pain killer prescription (along with her negative prognosis), and began serendipitously bumping into those who offered me alternatives. A friend told me about the healing benefits of the arnica plant, which I took daily until the shock in my system eased. I found myself at a dance workshop that started with a long segment of stretching that felt so good that I took up a short recuperative daily practice. A month later I was back in BC at my treeplanting job, planting trees, pain-free.

I became a passionate practitioner of yoga asana. I worked through my copy of “Yoga: The Iyengar Way” until it fell apart at its seams, especially loving the section in the back of the book with practices for remedying all sorts of conditions. I was discovering our capacity to heal ourselves and craved to know more. My teacher saw my enthusiasm, and I was invited into a two-year teaching apprenticeship.

Toward the end of this apprenticeship, I went through ten sessions of bodywork called “Rolfing”. By this time I felt strong and flexible from daily practice and only went because of a friend’s encouragement, not expecting much. The first session blew my mind, though, as I released tension I didn’t realize was there, and felt structural patterns I thought were permanent begin to change. As the sessions progressed I continued to feel an openness and strength in my posture I previously hadn’t had access to. I started running, and I finally stood up on a surfboard – two things I thought I would never do.

Through all this I discovered a thirst to know more about how the body stores, and can release, holding patterns and trauma, and that I delighted in supporting and witnessing people in their physical inquiry. I followed my curiosity and passion to the Guild for Structural Integration in Boulder, Colorado and Sao Paulo, Brazil, became a certified practitioner in 1997, and have maintained a private practice since.

What interests me about Structural Integration is not just pain relief, but our potential for changing the relationship to our physical experience and, through that, our relationships to our ever-changing inner and outer worlds. This method is about supporting people to find freedom. We are amazing creatures with boundless potential. I feel most alive when I remember this, and when I see others remembering the same as they discover wisdom in their own body, and its capacity to heal itself.

I show up in this work with compassion, curiosity, and trust in the client’s wisdom about what their body needs. It is my aim to hold physical and emotional stories with care and humility while facilitating new relationships to alignment, mobility, and capacity.

My work is influenced by a love of movement, my meditation practice, and ongoing continuing education. I have been formally studying nervous system-based approaches to trauma resolution since 2013, and am also a practitioner of Relational Trauma Therapy, (Merete Holm Brantbjerg) Somatic Resilience and Regulation, (Kathy Kain & Stephen Terrell), and Somatic Experiencing® (Peter Levine).