My Life Journey

Welcome!  Here’s a little more about my life’s winding journey.

– I was born in Morgantown, West Virginia.

– My father was in the US Air Force, so we lived in Tennessee, England, New York, Texas, and New Mexico as I was growing up.

– In these diverse regions, I encountered situations involving racial integration, bussing, and being a minority. This led to an intense interest in prejudice and racism.

– I attended college at the University of California at Santa Cruz, majoring in social psychology, with a senior thesis on using cooperative learning techniques to address prejudice.

– I obtained a PhD at the University of Colorado in Boulder, with a dissertation on how one might change stereotypes.

– I taught courses in statistics for psychology majors.

– I studied Ashtanga yoga extensively with Richard Freeman and made several trips to Mysore, India to study with its founder Pattabhi Jois. I began teaching yoga at Richard’s studio, The Yoga Workshop, in 1994.

– I worked for 10 years as the social scientist on an evaluation team designing and assessing National Weather Service workstation platforms (used in making weather forecasts), and many other aspects of the NWS modernization.

– I was a Dead Head. “Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.”

– Having sustained many physical injuries in my rigourous yoga asana practice, I sought out healing and was aided by John Friend, who presented several workshops at The Yoga Workshop.  He went on to found Anusara Yoga, and I became certified in that method.  I became a leader in that community, teaching Immersions, mentoring, and serving on its certification committee.

– I studied extensively with Douglas Brooks, who introduced me to the intricacies of the Tantric yoga philosophy, and the beauty of the Hindu myths.

– The greatest impact on my yogic journey was committing to a path of meditation and studies with Paul Muller-Ortega of Blue Throat Yoga.