My Background Story

My work started out with helping small businesses and organizations improve their worker, community, governance, and environmental practices. I worked in a field called "impact measurement:" the process of understanding as best we can the social and environmental impact businesses or organizations have, and identifying areas to lessen harm and improve quality of life from within organizations. I worked with small businesses, worker cooperatives, nonprofits and entrepreneurs in different settings to explore how they could track and hold themselves accountable to high standards of good work.

I still love helping organizations re-work their internal culture to do things like distribute power, bring in more democratic decision-making, or explore what more they can do with their resources. But at a certain point, I felt like this arena of work wasn't going deep enough for me. The more I got into the field of work described as "social change" and "social impact," the more I felt like something vital was missing for me.

Alongside my jobs, I dove into learning, working, and living environments that supported exploring the deeper levels of our relationships to each other, the systems we build, the land we do it on and with, and the invisible layers at play.

Over the course of about ten years, I lived at a Buddhist monastery in Yangon, Myanmar, to learn more about everyday awareness and perception. I lived and worked in a land-based spiritual community in West Virginia that taught practices for expanding awareness through the tasks we do throughout daily life. I got trained in how to strengthen my intuitive perception and joined a school that taught different ways to explore our experience of consciousness. I got certified in permaculture design and learned from formal and informal teachers about how to observe and connect with land better. I joined learning and practice groups focused on unearthing white supremacy culture in ourselves, our relationships, and the things we create. I learned about how to create rituals for others and how to be ritually connected to the people and places I come from over a broader span of time. I dove deep into the realms of spirituality, land connection, and the social and political histories we are living in currently. 

These experiences gave me the deeper dive I had been looking for. While it may sound neatly packaged here, I went through many cycles of internal and interpersonal conflict from all of the new awarenesses these experiences brought into my life. Ultimately, I am so grateful to the formal and informal teachers who had such a profound impact on, and are largely responsible for changing, my ways of thinking.

The takeaway that has lingered with me the longest from these experiences is that whether or not we're aware of it, many of us have been taught to be disconnected from a seemingly endless number of things:

Our bodies, our hearts, parts of ourselves. The land, plants, and our non-human neighbors. The seasons, the elements. Our ancestry. Subjugated histories. The people we have been taught to be opposed to, the groups of people the dominant culture has denounced over time. People who are different from us, depending on how we identify and the structural divides between us. It's different for each of us, but governs how we relate to each other and the broader world, and the actions we are driven to take.

I feel that these disconnections inform our worldview and influence us, often unconsciously, to perpetuate a culture of disconnection at all scales of relating - with different parts of ourselves, with each other, and with the ecosystems we live in. This is not the case for all of us, but what I offer here is designed for those of us who feel any level of disconnection to the things that matter most in our lives. When we begin to heal these disconnections, my hope is that we grow within us an ability to feel and contribute to the great shifts that are called for in our lives. 

My Offerings

Everyday Aliveness exists to create opportunities to expand our perception and our sense of connection through the disconnections we have internalized, different though they may be. I aim to offer this in everyday ways, like through breathing, noticing, and reflecting; activities that can stoke connection in daily moments, in our lives as they currently are. I focus on supporting people to grow their connection anywhere, in the hope that it strengthens connection everywhere.

I have found some modalities I love and designed some activities that open up more perception and connection, which you can read about below. I also hope this to be a growing home over time to house more and more opportunities to grow connection. There are so many people out there doing something like this in their own way; there are limitless ways to do this. Check out the resource library for a few more.

For Individuals

Breathwork offers a potent way of opening up our perception, especially our unconscious perceptions, and entering into connection with parts, people, and perspectives that we have been disconnected from. I do one-on-one sessions with clients, and also offer introduction to breathwork circles for folks who want to dive into it in a group/open discussion format. 

Group Journey

I offer a public three-month group journey/inquiry exploring how we experience connection and disconnection in our daily lives. This program is a daily adventure into nonordinary awareness towards the aim of growing connection wherever it's hard to feel it in regular life, and to hear from others how they are experiencing and growing connection in their own lives.

For Organizations

I also offer services for ethical organizations wanting to engage in thoughtful self-reflection. My favorite offering for organizations is a facilitated employee visioning session, where I bring in breathwork and rounds of sharing to spark idea generation and input from workers or team members on the direction they want to see their organization go.