My Story

The discovery

At age 30 I was married to a young, aspiring photographer. I was the head of the special needs department in a  public school in New York and suffering through a Ph.D program at Columbia University.  After I had completed two different master’s degrees. I’m not sharing this to boast. Quite the contrary.  My teacher, Rodney Yee once said to me, “Is that making you happy?”  I paused. Then he added,“Why in the world would you do it?”

It’s not easy to admit you are unhappy with your life, and it’s harder to change it. Isn’t that why so many of us experience lives of silent misery and discontent?

I found myself checking off the boxes in order to fit into the world around me. I came from a family of second generation immigrants. Things like marriage, degrees and job security were more than important; they meant you had arrived. I was the only one in my family to actually go to college, let alone graduate. In their eyes there were clear markers for a “successful life” and I had hit most of them. 

Oddly, each box I checked brought me more anxiety instead of happiness. I felt as if I was inside the box and that box was closing in on me. I was following the life plan of other people. In retrospect, people who weren’t happy themselves.

The breakdown or was it a breakthrough

One day something shifted. It felt like a total out of body experience. I told my husband that I was leaving. I dropped out of my PhD program and quit my tenured teaching job. It felt like I was saving my own life. 

That’s when I had my breakthrough, though to many it looked more like a breakdown! It's true I was broke, alone and living on the couches of my friends. It didn’t matter to me. I realized I had to disassemble all of what I “thought” was true so that I could rebuild my life in a way that was my design, that fit “my story”. I had to search for and follow my own life path. But how?

Right under my nose

Alongside everything else I had also been practicing the philosophy of yoga for several years. Not just the yoga postures, though they were also important. I was devouring this ancient tradition in a new and meaningful way, as a path for life. It wasn’t till then that I realized what it was really about and how it could be a true and practical guide for my life. Each lesson spoke about hope, possibility, change, and a very different relationship to the world around me.

Creating a new life

Yogic philosophy is about expanding and living in the unknown world of possibility and I was thrilled. I could make life anything I wanted it to be! I had never even heard that before let alone think of it as a possibility for me! 

I re-discovered my passion for teaching. But my classroom now reached far beyond a room full of desks. I began teaching what I learned about yoga and life to students around the world and I did it by using those very same teachings that I studied and practiced. The same teaching that became Life Design.

I had a passion that would not rest, and still hasn’t. I discovered that life was something you design and that there were no rules other than the ones our fears created.

I realized pretty quickly that my gift was sharing my lived experience and wisdom and opening a space for my students to explore who they really wanted to be and I called it: Life Design which is my  three-pronged approach to living a truly authentic life. 

In my life today I have taught trainings, workshops, and retreats at national and international locations from Denmark and Italy, to Costa Rica and Brazil. At this point, I’ve trained more than 2,000 certified yoga teachers and taught the wisdom of these concepts to thousands more. At one point I was even voted one of the top ten meditation teachers in New York City.

Life Design Encompasses Three Distinct Areas: Soul, Mind & Body

Life Design Course (Soul)

I have taught many incarnations of the Life Design course over the years. Like life, it keeps growing, evolving and getting more exciting! I saw the teachings very differently when I started and certainly when I applied them to my own life. Luckily I had many wonderful teachers to help me along the way.

My 30 years of work as a student, teacher and therapist have helped me identify how clients can create lifelong change and leave behind dissatisfaction, trauma, pain, a sense of feeling “stuck” in their lives, and break out of self-sabotaging patterns that cause suffering and distress. 

My goal in creating  Life Design is to help people move out of old patterns that have been wired in over a lifetime, while also establishing new patterns consistent with their true nature.

It is my nature to bring a practical, structured and sometimes irreverent but always loving approach to the work. I can’t say it is easy, but I can promise it will be life changing.

Meditation (Mind) 

Meditation was at the core of every change I made. Over the years I came to understand how the mind and body work in tandem. I find that people often focus on one, while leaving the other to wither. Buddhists meditate but don't move much. Yogis do yoga all day but often don't find time to sit in meditation.  

One of my teacher’s, Bonnie Bainbridge said “the mind is like the wind and the body is like the sand.” The body is the holder of the patterns and pathways of your experiences. 

My greatest shifts came when I brought these two parts of myself together. You may understand why you do what you do, and that is a great first step. BUT, in order to create lifelong change, you must also address the energy and patterns of your body. 

When you do this, you create space, flow and harmony in your life.

Loving You Yoga? (Body)

Movement has always been a big part of my life. It is actually the path I first took when I started this journey. I started taking classes at a local ashram. It was so long ago that there weren't even studios. Just ashrams where a Guru from India would lead us through the teachings. My Guru all those years ago was Swami Sachitdanada. I still share many of his teachings today.

What these teachings showed me was that you can’t evolve to wholeness without your body. It is the outer representation of who we are. Yet, so many practices asked me to dominate, force or beat up my body. Rarely was I asked to feel it. To experience life through it. That’s where Loving You Yoga came in. 

Loving You Yoga is a practice that invites you to come home; back to your body with the love and care it deserves while you get stronger, healthier and more energetic. And not by force or will, but by connecting with the parts you have left behind. 

Loving You Yoga is a way to come home to wholeness regardless of your age or physical abilities.

My Certifications & Accreditation

I have done many things and met some incredible people along the path. Way too many to list here, but here are some of the highlights. I received my Master degree in Education from Hunter College and studied Psychology at Columbia University. I finished my clinical post-graduate training at Milton H. Erickson Society for Psychotherapy and Hypnosis. Then, studied with Stephen Gilligan (I love this man) in the practice of Generative Trance hypnosis.

I am certified at the 500-hour level with the Yoga Alliance and have run hundreds of teacher trainings around the world. For the past 20 years I have been a holistic coach and was named one of Well + Good's Top 5 Meditation Teachers. I am also a contributing author on the book Happy Gut with Dr. Vincent Pedre.

Getting Connected

If you would like to connect and learn more about Life Design, Loving You Yoga or working privately together, please reach out. I am always happy to have a chat with you and see if this is a possible path on your journey.

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