What I Do

As a meditation coach, I find the most joy in helping people find calm and balance in a chaotic world by using words, space, imagery, compassion, and curiosity to guide them back to themselves through the breath.

Why I’m Here

My love of meditation started with yoga. After wearing out multiple Rodney Yee VHS tapes teaching myself yoga back in the mid-1990s, I gathered up the courage to take my first studio class in the Short North in Columbus, Ohio, in the evenings after teaching full days of middle school ESL.

I was fortunate to find a dynamic community and thoughtful teachers who helped me develop my practice through multiple forms of yoga. I started with ashtanga and moved through practices with vinyasa, hatha, kundalini, yin, and restorative. I have enjoyed all the practices, especially those with a slower and deeper pace.

Curiosity led me to explore Zen meditation. It was love at first breath. Through stillness, my world came to life. I was fortunate to have an empathetic, expert Buddhist instructor, and after the course ended, I longed for more.

Unfortunately, there were limited options available, plus life grew busier, so that ache to meditate slowly fell away. It was not forgotten, however, as I would find myself Googling “meditation teacher near me” in times when I felt the world get too big for me.

Fast forward to the Great Pause of 2019-2020, when we when we were sent home from the classroom due to the blossoming pandemic. At the time, I was still processing the trauma and grief from the loss of my husband to cancer from 2016. Living alone in a world filled with fear started a spiral of anxiety that at moments threatened to take me under.

But that weekend, I chose to restart the daily morning meditation practice I had put off for so long. I started meditating 6 minutes a day, without fail, before attempting to teach my middle school ESL classes on Zoom. I have kept that streak alive since, missing only a few days due to illness.

Eventually, I found myself meditating upwards of two hours a day during summer break. I moved back into a yoga practice as well. As the pandemic carried on, I longed to get into the studio for classes. When my local studio opened a teacher training program, I signed up. I really wanted to teach meditation, but yoga would soothe me in the meantime.

As I am fond of noting, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. At the end of our yoga coursework, we used The Radiance Sutras by Lorin Roche, Ph.D., as a guide on meditation and exploring language. I was utterly smitten with the poetic nature of the text, which is a modern interpretation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra. To my delight, I discovered the Radiance Sutras School of Meditation Teacher Training was beginning in January 2021.

I signed up in less time than it’d taken me to buy the book. That moment shifted my life. Meditation led me on a journey to heal my grief and help me navigate this wild world with profound appreciation and gratitude.

I finished the 200 hour training, enrolled in the advanced training, and quit my 28 year classroom teaching job. I believe that helping others tap into the life-changing benefits of building their own meditation practice is what the world needs most.

Along the way, I have taught my former middle school students, colleagues, friends, family, and numerous studio clients the value of taking a pause, tuning into the breath, and remembering all the joy that surrounds us in this exquisite life, even when world events try to convince us otherwise.

In each moment, there will always be struggle and challenge, and there will always be breath and peace. I know which one I will continue to choose for as long as I’m able. I hope you will, too. Join me on the journey to choose life, breath, joy, and peace.

It isn’t always easy, but it will always be worth it.

Om Shanti, Om Shanti, Om Shanti

Peace, Peace, Peace.