My path into this work began through my own need for change. I was introduced to meditation and yoga while in recovery from addiction, and both became important parts of finding my way forward.

 

Yoga helped me get into my body in a way I hadn't experienced before, while meditation became a steady practice and opened into a much deeper exploration of consciousness, spirituality, and my relationship with myself and my inner experience.

 

As my exploration deepened, I was drawn to energy work and shamanic practices, with shamanism feeling like home to me. It gave me something I deeply connected with, while certain experiences opened my eyes to how much more there was to life than I had previously known.

 

Over the years, my understanding has continued to deepen through consistent study and practice, the guidance of teachers, travel, and exposure to different cultures and ways of understanding life. My relationship with nature and animals has also deeply influenced how I understand presence, instinct, relationship, and simply paying attention.

 

My approach today is both practical and open to mystery. I've worked to develop greater agency, stronger boundaries, and a better relationship with my body, while also learning that the thinking mind, as useful as it is, can sometimes become the very thing standing in our way. Meditation, altered states, energy work, and learning to receive have helped me loosen the need to figure everything out through thought alone. Getting out of our own way may sound simple, but learning to actually do it can be a process.

 

Experience has ultimately been my greatest teacher. I've come to trust that life itself—and a larger intelligence moving through our experience—can guide and teach us when we're open enough to listen.

Some experiences along the way have been extraordinary, but much of the change has come through the everyday tending of the flame: practice, patience, learning when to act and when to let go, and continuing to show up.

 

It hasn't been a straight path. There have been periods of clarity and growth as well as uncertainty and questioning, but the practice itself has remained remarkably consistent. Through the hills and valleys over the years, the baseline of my experience has steadily climbed, and my life today is remarkably different from the one that first brought me to this work.

 

For me, it comes back to becoming more real—to experience reality more as it is, remain open to its mystery, and participate more fully in the life that's here.