My Journey

Suffering as a Doorway

Many transformational journeys begin with suffering and loss. That is certainly how mine began when, at the age of twelve, my father died from cancer. The impacts of this event on me and my family were devastating in many ways. With little access to attuned support, I hid and repressed my pain and grief and, over time, became increasingly disconnected from myself, others, and the fullness of life. By my later teen years, I was struggling with depression and feelings of existential futility and despair. I was silently asking, “What is the point of life? Where is the meaning, purpose, delight in being human? Is there a way to transcend pain and confusion?”

I was fortunate to happen upon two doorways that offered initial answers to these questions. One was intellectual and the other spiritual. At nineteen, I read No Boundary by the philosopher Ken Wilber, in which he outlined an early version of his comprehensive Integral Theory. Reading it blew my young mind wide open and introduced me to a map of reality that still deeply informs how I orient to life. Around the same time, I met the non-dual teacher Adyashanti, who directly introduced me to the freedom of awareness beyond concepts. This began a process of spiritual awakening and unfolding that also continues to this day.

Bringing Heaven Down to Earth

These revelations were transformative, to be sure, and yet, if they had a direction, it was up, up, and away… I had little to no capacity to embody them in my life. I was still carrying an immense amount of psychological and emotional pain and did not feel at home in my body. I needed to find ways to bring heaven down to earth. And I found ways – through a community practicing embodied, relational awakening (within which I became a teacher for a time), attuned psychotherapy, bodywork, study and work in the field of psychology, and coming into a dance of deep intimacy with the woman who is now my wife. The path of embodied integration has been long and is still ongoing for me and yet I feel deep gratitude for the whole sacred mess of it – the highs and lows, the breakthroughs and breakdowns, the successes and failures, the delight and pain – and the space that holds it all in a limitless embrace.

Weaving Together the Threads of Transformation

Coaching is a way for me to bring together all the threads of learning and growth of my journey as an offering to others on their own transformative paths. In 2022, I graduated from the Newfield Network’s coach training program, the first to be accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and I am currently training in the Lumina Process, an approach to parts and shadow work developed by Alexander Love, which I am gradually incorporating into my coaching. My coaching is also informed by Ken Wilber’s Four Quadrants, Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES model of ego development, Newfield’s Observer, Action, Results (OAR) model of transformation, and the Mahamudra tradition of meditation within Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. While all these streams of learning enhance my work with clients, they are secondary to the co-creative process of developing an effective and unique style of coaching with and for each individual, grounded in curiosity, experimentation, and reflection.