At 35, I am happier, healthier, more resilient in my life and movement than ever before. But it hasn't always been this way. I've been immersed in the world of movement since age 5 when I began training as a young ballerina. My early struggles with injury and chronic pain became a potent springboard for where I am today. If there is a single word that sums up my experience, it is gratitude; gratitude for the hardships, gratitude for the learning, and gratitude for the process of discovery that has lead me to the work I do today.
I began ballet lessons as a young child, and, in those formative years, I found myself increasingly in love with the expression of dancing, the exhilaration of performing, and the rigor of traditional ballet training. But alongside this love, I also began experiencing an increasingly regimented, painful and physically and mentally demanding lifestyle. The ballet world is beautiful on the exterior. It is also unfathomably harsh. On the outside I had a flexible, young, graceful body, but it came at the cost of severe wear and tear and extensive chronic pain. A decade into my training with pre-professional, local dance company, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, I was in so much pain that I began seeing doctors and specialists. At the age of 16 doctors suggested I have surgery for a chronic hip injury. Unwilling to undergo surgery at such a young age, I instead looked toward alternative modalities for bodywork, physical therapy, and healing. Nothing seemed to make much of a difference until my first experience with the Feldenkrais Method®. I was immediately intrigued, and something about the gentle, profound quality of Feldenkrais began to change not only my aches, pains, and injuries, but also my relationship to my body and the way I moved. I became dedicated to weekly classes and private sessions, and, over time, it deeply nurtured and changed my inner dialog around how I perceived myself and the world.
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In 2007 I moved to upstate New York and recieved my Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts at Skidmore College. After graduation, I returned home to Santa Fe with plans to establish myself in the local art scene. Instead, still deeply immersed in weekly Feldenkrais classes that were feeding my well-being and fueling my curiosity, I signed up for a Feldenkrais Training with Movement Educators in Santa Fe. What started as a personal passion evolved into a profound and life changing paradigm shift, and a deep, clear realization that this was the work my soul was called to do in this world. Four years and over a thousand hours of training later, I graduated as a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner® in 2015.
Today, my chronic dance injuries are non existent. My entire perspective on the world and the way in which we function and interact in it has completely transformed, expanded, and continues to evolve. Every day, I learn from the students and clients I work with as they too expand out of pain into well-being. Feldenkrais has taught me that I am not merely a body and a brain rushing through this so-often chaotic and busy world, but instead that I am a SELF, a whole and complete individual with the wondrous capacity to slow down, exquisitely experience and participate in my moment to moment world, and to move through it with a luminous grace and ease.
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In this process, my sense of self has been profoundly nourished by my intentional, deep connection with the wild living landscape of New Mexico. As a child, I spent endless hours playing outside, adventuring through the backyard, baking mud pies, foraging dandelions and building tiny fairy homes. Somewhere along the way my time spent outdoors flourishing in the sunshine was replaced with time spent indoors in classrooms and work spaces, car rides to and from the next thing on my never completed to do list; over time I forgot what it was like to delight in the pleasures of nature.
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Through movement I discovered how deeply I could reconnect to nature as an adult. The magic of being a child opened back up as I began to run around barefoot through the desert and mountains, and immerse myself in brilliance of this earth. In 2017 I received my Natural Movement (MovNat) Certification to continue building my own Natural Movement practice, and to be able to offer this unique experience to my clients and students. MovNat presented me with a whole new set of skills and perspective with which to move and engage with the wild living landscape, and shifted my entire fitness paradigm. Today I blend this approach with my extensive Feldenkrais experience to offer a robust and well rounded approach to human health and vitality.
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Discover Ease in Movement is my private practice located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I feel honored to be on a path of continual self development, and my door is always open to your curiosities, questions and explorations. I am deeply dedicated to this profound way of moving, breathing, living and interacting in the world, and to sharing renewed feeling of ease, well-being, and luminous vitality with each of you.