If you’re new to me, you probably have very little clue as to who I am and what sorts of credentials I bring to this work.
Even if you know me, you might only know bits and pieces of this, and I think it’s important to understand where I came from so you know you’re working with the right (or not) person.
Without going into all the details, by the time I was in my mid 20s, I was suffering from severe (and sometimes life-threatening) depression and anxiety. With that, there was a ton of comorbid chronic pain throughout my body. I had also had severe digestive issues and migraines from around the age of 11. I would say, I actually identified my depression at the age of nine; I actually remember a very specific moment when I said to myself that I was deeply sad and would be so for a long time but that I would eventually get out of it. (But that’s another story.)
In my mid 20s, in a desperate attempt to FIX something… I blew up my life, which is probably what then mired me in that depression for much longer, until I re-found dance at the age of 40. (I had danced since I could walk and then even into college but stopped when the depression hit so very hard.)
By my late 20s, I had found yoga and embarked on a study that’s never stopped. By my early 30s, I found Kundalini yoga specifically. While yoga in no way healed my depression, it made it, here and there, a bit “less,” and I think Kundalini prepared me to be able to dance again… it brought me back to the idea that my body could be a source of joy.
Then at the age of 40, at a friend’s wedding, I danced again for the first time since my mid 20s.
Over the next six to nine months, everything changed for me. Keep in mind that I was dancing/moving about 3 hours a day. Sweating my ass off and having so much freaking fun. Without intending to at all, I dropped four sizes. This was the literal weight of my depression (not that weight and depression are always cause and effect; they are for me).
I also was no longer in constant pain. And something amazing was happening to my mind. This was the most important thing. I could feel hope and light and joy and curiosity and awe coming back. I started to feel like my little self. I would giggle and hear her.
Knowing I could not stop dancing but that I needed outside structure and support, I signed up for my first training at Kripalu. Over the following six years, I went to Kripalu nine times for intense trainings as well as traveling elsewhere for trainings.
Now, keep in mind, preceding my return to dance, I spent countless thousands of hours trying to “figure out” my depression, trauma, and chronic grief. Along the way, I studied a huge array of leaders in the field of psychotherapy, until I eventually found body-based psychotherapies and studied in person with some of the most forward-thinking humans in that field.
I read everything I could find in the psych section of our local college libraries. I wasn’t stuck in “self help” books. I wanted the real theory and actual results of studies.
I had tried to intellectually “solve” depression (which has given me a bedrock of knowledge that underlies all my movement work), but it wasn’t until I got into my body that anything really shifted.
Depression eats the very thing that is YOU -… the very thing that can help you navigate whatever traumas etc. led to that depression.
And depression, of course, eats your desire to move. Paradoxically, moving in joy is one of the main things that can heal us, but to get to the place of being able to move can be a long and arduous journey.
I’m here to help you with that.
My most influential intensive was with the Butoh artist Maureen Fleming. I think of her as my core mentor. She is the most important American woman in Japanese Butoh and had studied many times in Japan with the originator of this movement art. She is my lineage.
My first trainings were in YogaDance and YogaDance for Special Populations with Megha Buttenheim. This is based in chakra energy work and community building. Special-populations studies were targeted toward people with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and post-cancer treatment.
I’ve spent serious time with Bessel van der Kolk. When his book “The Body Keeps the Score” came out, it was like reading his plans for the intensives I’d attended in person.
I’ve also spent time with Peter Levine (one of the originators of body-based psychotherapies), Bo Forbes (a psychotherapist and yoga teacher), and a variety of other somatic psychotherapy leaders.
I’ve studied biomechanics with Katy Bowman, and I was lucky lucky lucky enough to study in person with the amazing yoga teacher, Erich Schiffmann, one of the first Americans to study yoga in India with BKS Iyengar. Erich has developed what he calls “freedom yoga,” and his DVD with Ali MacGraw was my very first introduction to yoga and still remains my favorite.
I’ve been teaching now for 13 years, weekly and sometimes daily, and in a huge array of venues. A tiny sampling of my most significant experiences would include
Working with different groups focused on processing grief to eventually develop movement art processes to transmute the grief and build communities of support.
Developing and teaching movement art methods to children living in a residential therapy grade school and high school, focusing on creating tools for emotional regulation and helping them understand, allow, and provide safe intimacy in relationship.
Developing and creating classes for a Regional Cancer Center, focusing on relationship and healing.
Developing and teaching elder dance at Mercy Center for Aging.
Creating and running movement workshops with the Sisters of St. Joseph elders.
Teaching for a chiropractor where I focused on basic mobility and joint health.
Being the Keynote Speaker (with interactive movement demonstration) at the Annual Conference for the Pennsylvania State Association of Senior Centers, at PSU, State College in the Fall of 2013.
Being the Special Speaker at Alzheimer’s Association Conferences, May 2016 and again in 2017.
Developing, in 2019, Brain Grooves with the NWPA Alzheimer's Association, with the help of Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM).
And of course, over all this time, I’ve put ALL THE THINGS into a GIANT compost bin and that is now named The Peony Method.
I don’t think my story is unique. I think, culturally, we’ve gotten so used to not moving and not being expressive with our bodies that we don’t even look to that anymore when we are suffering from myriad body and mind based challenges.
But we must. We are EMBODIED beings, for whom a movement imperative is written into our very cells.
Furthermore, the way we’ve treated our individual bodies has leaked out to how we’ve treated our communities and this planet. Only when we come back into right relationship with our physical selves will we have the vision and the energy necessary to take responsibility for and rebuild everything from communities to ecosystems.