Background

My work historically has been helping small businesses and organizations improve their worker, community, governance, and environmental practices. I worked in a field called "impact measurement:" the process of understanding as best we can the social and environmental impact businesses or organizations have, and identifying areas to lessen harm and improve quality of life from within organizations. I worked with small businesses, worker cooperatives, nonprofits and entrepreneurs in different settings to explore how they could track and hold themselves accountable to high standards of good work.

I still love helping organizations re-work their internal culture to do things like redistribute power, bring in more democratic decision-making, or explore what more they can do with their resources. But at a certain point, I felt like this arena of work wasn't going deep enough for me. The more I got into the field of work described as "social change" and "social impact," the more I felt like something vital was missing from the work.

Exploring Schools of Thought & Practice

Alongside the paid jobs I worked in my twenties, I simultaneously followed my urge to get into some of the deeper, and perhaps more invisible, layers of social dynamics and social change. To do this, I began exploring different schools of thought and practice that focused on traditions of exploring awareness and perception. These included things like...

• I participated in many Buddhist meditation retreats, and eventually went to a Buddhist monastery in Yangon, Myanmar, where I lived for two months learning about awareness from the beloved meditation master Sayadaw U Tejaniya

• I lived and worked in a land-based spiritual community in West Virginia for three years, that taught practices for expanding awareness as a way of life and incorporating it into daily actions
  
  
• I spent eight years in a consciousness school where we confronted our personality limits and biases using integrative breathwork, the Enneagram, and ever-escalating inner exploration activities

Training & Coursework

In this same period of time, I also completed trainings that covered three main focus areas, that I group into the following categories: land/the ecological, the social/interpersonal/political, and the spiritual/invisible. It became important to me to maintain a balance of these focus areas, since some of the programs I encountered only emphasized one or two at the expense of the others and I want to be in relationship with and accountable to all of these arenas of connection. These included:

Land/the ecological

• A permaculture design certification program
• Courses on building better relational and observational skills with the land and more-than-human world
• Training in the in-field collection and management of ecological conservation research
• Trainings on how to design and implement the planting of food forests

The social/interpersonal/political

• Peer-based learning groups exploring the internalization of white supremacy culture
• Training in multicultural dynamics and understanding different systems of oppression
• Trainings focused on improving relational dynamics, ranging from the sexual/intimate to within groups
• Training in the art of giving and receiving feedback, and facilitating this process for others

The spiritual/invisible

• Coursework on the foundations of ritual
• Courses focused on cultivating living relationships with no-longer-living ancestors. Some of these were for the general public, and some of these were specific to European-descended people wanting to integrate decolonization into their ancestral connection practice.
  
• An intuitive development training program focused on strengthening perception
  
• Two different training programs to become a certified integrative breathworker

These experiences gave me the deeper dive I had been looking for, mainly into some of the personal, interpersonal, and collective dynamics informing human behavior and perception. While it may sound neatly packaged here, I went through a lot of internal and interpersonal conflict due to all of the new awarenesses these experiences brought into my life. I am so grateful to the formal and informal teachers who had such a profound impact on, and are largely responsible for changing, my ways of thinking.

What I Took Away

And now my growth is complete! I did it! Just kidding. But I did leave the past decade of heavy exploration and transformation with something that feels quite clear to me, something I keep coming back to. I learned time and time again that the inner change required for broader social change goes beyond the need to expand our awareness, or our perception. It requires expanding our connection.

Through the jobs I've had, the schools I've learned in, the communities I've been a part of, the blind spots I've become aware of, the histories I wasn't taught, I've come to believe that the problems that plague us have less to do with what is supposedly true or right. To me, they have more to do with what or who we are currently connected to, and who or what we are not connected to.

I have found that whether or not we're aware of it, many of us have been taught to be disconnected from a seemingly infinite number of things. Our bodies. Our hearts. Parts of ourselves. The land, plants, and non-human neighbors. The seasons. The elements. Our ancestry. Subjugated histories. The people we have been taught to be opposed to, the types of people the dominant culture has denounced over time. People who are different from us, depending on how we identify and the structural divides between us. It's different for each of us. 

I feel that the journey through the disconnections we have learned towards the connections that we lack is both for ourselves and effects change beyond ourselves, because when we do this work we can bring it to our little corner of the systems we are a part of and we can do something different there.

That's my sense, at least. That's the hope I carry, and that's what now guides my work.

My Offerings

Everyday Aliveness exists to create opportunities to expand our perception and our sense of connection through the disconnections we have each internalized, different though they may be. I aim to offer this in everyday ways, like through breathing, noticing, and reflecting; activities that can stoke connection in daily moments, in our lives as they currently are. I focus on supporting people to grow their connection anywhere, in the hope that it strengthens connection everywhere.

I have found some modalities I love and designed some activities that open up more perception and connection, which you can read about below. I also hope this to be a growing home over time to house more and more opportunities to grow connection. There are so many people out there doing something like this in their own way; there are limitless ways to do this. Check out the resource library for a few more.

For Individuals

Breathwork offers a potent way of opening up our perception, especially our unconscious perceptions, and entering into connection with parts, people, and perspectives that we have been disconnected from. I do one-on-one sessions with clients, and also offer introduction to breathwork circles for folks who want to dive into it in a group/open discussion format. 

Group Journey

I offer a public three-month group journey/inquiry exploring how we experience connection and disconnection in our daily lives. This program is a daily adventure into nonordinary awareness towards the aim of growing connection wherever it's hard to feel it in regular life, and to hear from others how they are experiencing and growing connection in their own lives.

For Organizations

I also offer services for ethical organizations wanting to engage in thoughtful self-reflection. My favorite offering for organizations is a facilitated employee visioning session, where I bring in breathwork and rounds of sharing to spark idea generation and input from workers or team members on the direction they want to see their organization go.