I have grown up around various flavors of religion as my Father was Jewish and my mother Mormon. In my early 20’s I spent 6 years living as a monastic and have lived in both Christian and Buddhist monasteries. In the early 90’s went to seminary to be a priest and lived within several closed religious communities. 

From a young age, for some reason, I really wanted to understand what the soul or consciousness was, and this led me to travel and study with various teachers on the nature of consciousness and to learn by experiencing other paradigms. I have traveled through India, Europe, Canada, Latin America, Australia, Mexico, Turkey, and Asia studying the psychological teachings contained in the religious teachings, histories, sacred sites and art of these cultures. I have lived in seven countries, and feel very fortunate to have studied both religion and psychology, cross-culturally. I have worked in mental health and western psychology for over 30 years. I have a Masters in Counseling Psychology with an emphasis in Jungian Depth Psychotherapy and Psycho-dynamic Process from Pacifica Graduate Institute and have worked just about every field of western psychology, prisons, treatment centers, addictions. couples therapy.

I am interested in how psychology has manifested over the centuries and have published an academic paper called “The True Origins of Psychology and the Influence of Euro-American Ethnocentrism“.

I currently live and work internationally in the Seattle, WA,  Saigon, Vietnam and Bangkok, Thailand.

 I have a lot of trainings in various trauma informed disciplines (see Methodologies section). Through my continued research into what works best for the treatment of religious trauma I have come to see that Somatic psychology works more effectively than any form of talk therapy. Through working in inpatient and outpatient treatment centers with trauma for the last 30 years I have seen that trauma cannot be resolved through thinking and talking. In Judeo-Christian thinking we have tried to use positive thinking to eliminate sin to no avail. We have actually used thinking and talking to often dissociate from our feelings.  Because I have lived within closed religious circles, I understand how alone one can feel with religious trauma in our past and how difficult it can be to trust that others in authority. Religion can provide a lot of certainty in ones life and if you take away or lose your religion you can be left within a vacuum of uncertainty. This can be quite terrifying. Through somatic psychology we can collaborate together to  guide you out of this fear, anxiety and uncertainty to discover your own truth and help support you in learning how to trust again that your emotions are not something sinful. Through somatic methods we can come out of the doubt and pain into our own unique truth beyond fear.