My Story
The Short:
I am an artist, a feminist, and a practitioner of consciousness medicine. The foundation of my post MFA studies is in the BodyTalk system. I incorporate teachings and practices from both fields of alternative medicine and fine arts. I believe in the merging of spirit and matter, body and soul, as a fundamental and ongoing challenge of human being. My mission is to aid others in finding this balance, and to encourage folks to be their own authority over their bodies and lives.
The Long:
I’ve been an artist my whole life and my formal education is in visual arts. While I was an MFA candidate I began to learn to move my body in performance and modern dance classes, working with improvisational dance and learning to make dances. I incorporated this into my drawing practice developing a
form of somatic drawing. I did not realize at the time that I was learning how to tune into my energy and move it through my body as a means for soothing myself. It had become very therapeutic and it was a form of interpretation for my mental health states. Now, as an energy practitioner I realize that I was using dance and performance (which included vocalizing in a new way) as energy medicine and daily drawing and writing as an integration method.
I became curious about alternative healing modalities before this time and had been going to a BodyTalker named Amberlee Rose for a couple of years before graduate school. I had also been interested in ritual and ceremony as an anthropology student in college. When I finished my MFA I set out to New Mexico where I was invited to join seasonal medicine wheel and sweat lodge ceremonies with the Red Horse Council. This was my first transformative encounter with ceremony and an introduction into connecting with the rhythm of the earth by living with the seasons and honoring the spirits.
This time of my life was tumultuous. I went into and came out of a toxic relationship that left me feeling very physically and mentally ill. It brought up all of my old wounds that had been buried. I started receiving acupuncture from someone I didn’t realize was also a shaman, (no wonder her treatments felt like magic). I also was receiving BodyTalk sessions much more regularly. I dove into a regular meditation practice while I was there, meditating in front of the rising sun and the Sangre de Cristo mountains and taking walks in the quiet arroyo with my dog. I began to practice yoga regularly. I began to heal and I began to feel a connection to spirit/s. I began to feel magic that I hadn’t felt since I was a child talking to lizards. I was in my body and in my power.
After this I decided to study BodyTalk, and also came across Naomi Love and Wise Womb Medicine Path, a school for earth and womb centered healing. My BodyTalk instructor, Elzabieta Kosmicki, taught me more about consciousness and also had a lot of knowledge of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which still has a lot of influence on how I care for my own body and my overall views on health. Naomi helped to develop my education in ceremony and for living in right relationship with the earth and other humans. Both of these mentors, and many others, have taught me so much about listening deeply. This has all been a process and is a continuing education.
I have encountered many other mentors and teachers along the way that have added to my knowledge bank and have integrated into my own web of consciousness around healing. I am always reading about mind-body medicine, feminism, behavioral health, and miracles. And my friend Amanda has gotten me really into feminist speculative fiction :)
Things I have studied/been influenced by in varying capacities:
2-dimensional and 3-dimensional object making (especially drawing, printmaking, painting, dance, performance for video, figure drawing)(creating gestures), the blurring of art and life, earth centered ceremony and ritual, womb centered healing and ceremony, mindfulness meditation, Dreamtime ritual and dream journaling, Neurodynamic breathwork, yoga, BodyTalk, the chakra system, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Taoism, behavioral psychology (toxic shame, codependency, narcissism, addiction, ADHD), psychoneuroimmunology, culturally responsive teaching, The Artist’s Way, automatic writing, punk rock
People I have been influenced and deeply impacted by (in no special order):
Leslie Kenneth Price, Teresa Stanley, Jack Bentley, Malia Penhall, Lien Truong, Sanderson Morgan, Crystal Azul, Tracey Stafford, Emmy Lingsheit, Deke Weaver, Jennifer Monson, Hadley Smith, Charli Brissey, Kathleen Durkin, Brett Hanover, Katie Knickerbocker, Ethan Nazsady, Grant Skoglund, Nicole Brown, Amberlee Rose, Doris Romero, The Red Horse Council, Elzabieta Kosmicki, Naomi Love, Janessa Lew, Jumana Sophia, Greta Hill, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Candace Pert, Bell Hooks, Marianne WIlliamson, Derrick Jensen, Malidoma Patrice Some, Karen Mason Riss, Jonh Bradshaw, Ram Dass, probably a dozen other authors