Our Inherited Wisdom

My roots are in nature. I grew up in the flatlands of western Kansas where my family members have been wheat farmers for 100 years, and the elders in my community modeled a deep reverence for the earth and for living a life guided by grounded spiritual values. Growing up in this place, I felt deeply connected to the land, sky, subtle shifts in nature, and the awe of existence. Yet, I grew apart from my original teachers - the elders and nature itself. My parents divorced when I was young, and I had to adapt to urban living when I moved away from Kansas. After getting my BA in Art History, I lived in Europe as a translator and foreign worker liaison for six years. When I returned to the States, I went back to school for my MBA in Organizational Leadership and found success in the world of philanthropy while leading campaigns and growing boards. In my thirties, the loss of my mother to suicide and of my marriage to divorce set me back on the path to living wisdom. In my forties, I traveled solo around the world, met my husband Jay, and entered into a yoga teacher training program. Although I had already studied over 1,000 hours of yoga philosophy before the training, it was the deep study of mantra and breath that brought my inner and outer life back into alignment. Over the next twenty years, I taught yoga, wrote, and presented. I experimented with how to bring into daily life what I'd learned from my nature-rich roots and study of a range of ancient traditions. In the process, I realized that my rural upbringing with wise ancestors uniquely prepared me to grasp the origins of ancient wisdom: Nature. As a presenter and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, I share the living wisdom practices I've honed over two decades through my writing, teaching, and mentoring. In addition to my two books, Mala of the Heart: 108 Sacred Poems and Mala of Love: 108 Luminous Poems, which I edited with Ravi Nathwani, my writing has been featured in Yoga Journal, Integral Yoga Magazine, UK Yoga & Health Magazine, and Embodied Philosophy's "Voices."