ORIGINS

I was born in rural Wisconsin, the youngest of 5 girls after my parents and 4 sisters returned from 9 years on the coast of Nicaragua. My middle school was in the Saudi Arabian mountains and I completed my high school/International Baccalaureate at the United World Collete of Southern Africa. We were raised to be global citizens; at home everywhere and nowhere, from air terminals to long mountain walks.

I come from a physician father and a spiritual director mother. The intersection of physical health and spiritual health was part of every meal, the books on the shelf, and the guests at our table. I’m fascinated by systems theory, new paradigms of nutrition, the links between soil health and human health, the role of fatigue and attitude as players in our immune function, how our posture affects our hormone levels. I am fascinated by how much affects us (sound, frequencies, seasons, moons, bateria, biomes), and how much effect we have on ourselves.

EDUCATION

Schooled at Princeton University in Comparative Literature and Harvard Graduate School of Education in experiential education design, I crossed into Harvard’s schools of Design, Divinity, and Government to pursue the question of what makes a democratic citizen? What drives our autonomy, our self-regulation, and our drive to contribute?

I have a devotion to text, to the book, to the Word as a means of transmitting our intellectual DNA from one place and time to another. Oh, the feel of a book, the heft, its past life as a tree that now holds print and narrative and knowledge (but likely never as much knowledge as when it was a tree). I have a love of the senses and the body as our truest home for memory. Designing the intersection of abstract concepts and direct experience is the heart of my work. More than anything, my education has taught me that we are the authors of the stories we will become.

WORK

My superpower lies in blending data and research with content to create an experience that was previously unimaginable. I create both large-scale, paradigm-shifting courses that take duration and attention, as well as in-the-moment tools that encompass big ideas in quick actionable, comprehensible ways.

I have facilitated professional workshops for over 20 years, groups large and small, planned and spontaneous. For example, in the corporate world I designed and delivered training for interdisciplinary teams racing the tide of the .com boom. As part of a three-person team I delivered week-long immersions to enable leading edge designers to work with computer scientists to bring new paradigms of interaction to our modern businesses and lives. Clients included Sprint.com, United.com, BluecrossBlueshield.com, Bankofamerica.com and others.

I have helped align global health efforts across Harvard University and then create a course for undergraduates interested in the intersection of public health, medical sciences, and political science. I have taught parenting in the American Visionary Museum, I have taught the history of breath in art and brought it to life at the Walters Museum. I have taught at festivals and farms and corporations. I have taught in yoga studios for over 15 years, not just movement, but workshops on power, energy, intimacy, and time. I am a teacher of teachers, mentoring and refining the work of teachers both locally and nationally and served as the philosophy teacher for the advanced teacher training at Charm City Yoga / Yoga Works in Baltimore, MD.

I know first hand that the education, business and cultural sectors face many common challenges. My work now is at the intersection of the personal body and the body of the world. When we reestablish ourselves as agents of Nature, as innate beings of healing and cycles, the result is regenerative leadership without extractive tendencies that burn out teams, hands-on learning that students initiate meaning and purpose beyond standards and grades, and a personal sense of acceptance that is empowering and creative. It is time for new questions and new paradigms of energy and wellbeing in all sectors.

HOMESCHOOLING

I have homeschooled my kids for the past decade. They have been my PhD in learning and teaching as I crafted our curriculum day by day, year by year. This has been the greatest work of my life.

The purpose of education is changing the fundamental question of what are we teaching for? Through our time together I have seen how quality, curiosity, and competence can replace standards and tests to produce organized, self-aware, engaged individuals. They are ready to participate in the larger, outer world in the years ahead because they have the tools to participate with their own inner worlds on a daily basis.

YOGA + PRACTICE

When I design material to teach - privates, 40 day sequences, corporate trainings - I feel like a seamstress, stitching together parts and pieces to a make a gown, a suit, just for this occasion. Tantra has 14 meanings in Sanskrit but the one that lands first for me is an act of weaving, an integration, a joining of one thing to another to make a third thing that is new, composite, and whole.

My yoga practice has held me steady for over 25 years of changing personal terrain and careers. Among many other influences I am primarily trained in Tantric yoga in the Srividya tradition via Yogarupa Rod Stryker and Kundalini yoga via Kia Miller. Abbie Galvin of Katona Yoga teaches me a Taoist perspective to the form / function of our bodies/thoughts. Elena Brower has woven business, family, time management, and personal growth into the fabric of my teaching and my life.

In 25+ years as a yoga student, teacher, and teacher of teachers I have seen how we all are served by greater awareness and participation in the creation of ourselves. I’ve taught and/or facilitated studio classes, private workshops, festivals, and events, and host yearly international retreats. I teach tools of philosophy for perspective, movement for fluency, and stillness to inform it all. You will find me daily, without fail, on my mat to start each day. My practice inspires me to inspire.