Transform your experience of movement.

I've always loved movement. In fifth grade, my favorite way to read was riding a ripstick around the driveway. (I promise it was neither as impressive nor as hard as it sounds.) I was one of those Golden Retriever kids: if there was a ball involved, I was happy. I played sports seriously until I was 15. Then I suddenly found myself looking at an MRI showing two stress fractures in my spine. I was able to walk and move normally shortly after that, but then spent the next two years in and out of rehab, doing those stupid little exercise printouts in fluorescently lit offices, trying to regain function. Eventually I gave up. I was pretty devastated, and went looking for a new place to pour my passion that wasn't going to be as physically demanding. I'd had a long-standing interest in acting, so I went to theatre school.

In actor training, movement became about comfort, enjoyment, and expression. The relationship I'd lost was starting to come back: I was a Golden Retriever again. (That's also when my pain went away.)

I went from being unable to play a full baseball game — or golf, or basketball — without a lot of pain, to enjoying exertion again: two soccer leagues, several seasons of flag football, a year of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, a serious amount of bouldering, contact improv, hip-hop. I can squat one and a half times my body weight. I've done pull-ups for reps with 45 pounds hanging from my feet. Along the way I tore my right knee badly (the terrible triad: meniscus, ACL, MCL) and recovered. I wouldn't attribute any of it to one specific modality. It was the change in my relationship to movement. When I went from brutalized to enjoyment, everything changed: the possibility space just grew. If you'd told me any of that in 2017, I wouldn't have believed you. In 2017, an hour-long car ride could do a real number on my lower back.

During the pandemic, I was doing Feldenkrais almost every day and pairing it with meditation. Through movement, it became clear that kindness and gentleness are much more fertile ground for learning. I didn't have that kind of relationship with anything until I found it with my body. That's what let my meditation change.

And it runs both ways. If you've found enjoyment meditating, you can find it moving. If you've found it moving, you can find it meditating. I physically suffered through my first meditation retreat in 2019. I've sat at least one a year since, sometimes two, and it's been radically different year over year: from really uncomfortable to actively enjoyable. These days I can sit six to ten hours a day on retreat and feel pretty dang good.

I'm NASM certified, and certified in pain reprocessing therapy. I've worked with normies and athletes, and one-on-one with people in chronic pain. I've been a practitioner with Evolving Ground since it formed, and a facilitator since 2024. These days my favorite thing is coaching meditators: people who already know transformation is possible, and want to extend it into their bodies. Usually that means making the move from exercise as an unpleasant grind to exertion that can be fun, actually. And beyond that, accomplishing physical things they never thought they could: their first push-up, their first 10K.

For those who love a list of modalities, here are some of my biggest influences: mainstream exercise science™, Feldenkrais, Alexander, Fighting Monkey Practice, Ido Portal, Vajrayana, dance. I've spent most of the last ten years immersed in these modalities; it's been a joy to shift my focus to teaching them.