When I enrolled in levels one and two of the Contact Beyond Contact (CBC) facilitator training courses last year, I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

I just knew something in my life and in my body was asking for more attention.

I had started integrating intuitive dance into my morning routine (more on that here), and the intense emotions that were coming up for me daily — from deep grief to pure joy — sent me searching for ways to learn more about movement and healing.

I didn’t expect that search to take me to Guatemala. And I definitely didn’t expect how much it would change me.

I had heard from some friends in DC about a magical lake surrounded by volcanoes, with a vortex-like pull for seekers around the world interested in studying the healing arts.

With Lake Atitlán, Guatemala already on my radar, finding Unity Space and the Contact Beyond Contact facilitator training timed just right to escape a cold and heavy stretch of winter in DC, felt like the exact answer to my prayers.

But there was one thing that gave me pause. The physical contact.

The photos and videos of dancers gazing into each other’s eyes, brushing limbs, and moving together like one amoeba — could I actually do that?

My hesitation came from the fact that I had rarely received physical touch, other than the customary hello and goodbye hug, that didn’t carry some kind of expectation or subtext.

And at that point, I understood movement mostly as a solo practice — a way to process emotions and reconnect with myself. Not necessarily as a way to deepen connection with others.

I knew how good it felt to dance with friends at a concert, shake the week off on the ecstatic dance floor, or flow next to a soul sister in a vinyasa class — but not to truly open myself to a body, mind, and heart connection with others in movement.

Again, probably because my prior experience connecting with others in dance was in spaces like nightclubs, where I felt I had to perform for, or received touch I did not want, from others.

I feel uncomfortable sharing this, but I know I’m not alone.

Part of what I didn’t yet understand was that the kind of movement I was about to experience was completely different.

Contact Beyond Contact (CBC) is not partner dancing in the traditional (or club) sense. It’s a somatic movement practice rooted in contact improvisation, where people explore connection, presence, consent, and expression through the body.

Practices like this fall within the broader umbrella of somatic movement and relational dance — approaches that use the body as a pathway for emotional healing, awareness, and connection.

In any case, I put my preconceptions aside and booked my ticket to Guatemala.

And of course, everything changed — I ended up staying for three months to do CBC levels one, two, and a three-week training in Integrative Somatic Arts.

That experience catalyzed a year of soul-led travel, eventually bringing me back to Guatemala earlier this month to complete CBC Level 3.

Slowly, this practice started revealing patterns in how I relate to attention, to boundaries, and to other people, that I had never seen so clearly before.

Three things about Contact Beyond Contact that changed me the most:

1. The power of clear beginnings and clear endings

Who is guilty of arriving somewhere physically, but having your mind and/or heart elsewhere? I know I am.

And I’ve realized this habit doesn’t just affect my relationships — it’s also one of the main reasons I feel overwhelmed.

If I jump into a new activity (answering a text), without fully completing or closing the loop on another (reading an email), and then yet another pull on my attention creeps in (the teapot boiling on the stove), I feel the weight of too many things happening at once.

I can’t manage it all, and I just shut down.

The solution is finding a way to fully find closure in each experience — like ending with a breath — before moving with presence into the next thing.

This shows up in a contact dance as the moments of pause in movement with others. The stop for a breath, for a moment of eye contact, where you both hold space for each other to feel complete, and decide where to take the dance next.

It’s been extraordinary to see how this deepens connection, improves non-verbal communication, and leads to greater freedom and flow.

It feels like punctuation in the prose of movement.

2. Learning when to step away — and how to return

Even in the most connected dances, I have felt the need to flow away and take time on my own.

My body communicates this need through resistance to the leadership of my partner, or a need to break free in my movements — slower, or faster, or differently.

But just like in life, when we know we need to take time for ourselves, we often don’t.

And for me, that’s mostly out of fear, guilt, and the stories running in my head.

What will they think if I leave?
What if they’re hurt?
What if I want to come back and they’re no longer there?

All of this is happening in real time in a contact dance, and it becomes a beautiful yet challenging mirror for how we connect and disconnect with others while honoring our own boundaries, wants, and needs.

I now know how to notice when I need time to myself, how to take that time (mostly) without guilt, and how to be okay re-entering the dance — with or without my previous movement partner.

3. Understanding what a yes and a no feel like in my body

Building on the prior learning, I found that taking time for myself and building connection with others requires clarity around my yes and my no.

I can talk myself out of either with my mind — but my body doesn’t lie.

A no feels like tension, clenching, retracting, and closing.
A yes feels like receptivity, curiosity, openness, and ease.

Three ways you can communicate a no in movement practices:

• stop moving

• move away

• bow or use a hand signal

Three ways you can communicate a yes:

• sustained eye contact

• moving toward

• extending an arm

Listening to these cues and honoring them, both on the dance floor and in the world, has been transformative.

When you start to understand what it feels like to both give and receive a no without attaching to it by creating stories based on past experience or future expectation, you begin living in deeper integrity with your mind, body, and heart.

These are just three of the many lessons Contact Beyond Contact has offered me, which have rippled far beyond the dance floor to fundamentally change how I move through the world.

If you, too, are curious about the connection between movement, somatics, and healing, you’re in the right place.

If this resonated with you, commenting, sharing, or subscribing if you haven’t already helps more people discover this work.

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If you’re in the DC area, you’re invited to experience Contact Beyond Contact at Epic Yoga DC this Friday, 3/27, from 7:15 PM – 9:15 PM.

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And if you’re not, I also integrate intuitive movement and somatic practices into my weekly virtual yoga class on Sundays from 10:00 – 11:00 AM, and I would love to practice with you there.

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I spent a week in New York alone, over my 21st birthday, because I had gotten a small grant from my undergraduate university (Florida State) to attend the FoodTank NYC conference. I remember learning about a new company making animal feed from food waste byproducts, and meeting a babysitter employed by Elon Musk’s brother in the lunch line.

I also vividly remember how it felt to spend the rest of the week in New York on my own — electric, free, and full of possibility.

I didn’t take another solo venture for years, until my late twenties, taking my body, cold from the D.C. winter, and my heart, icy from a bad breakup, to thaw in sunny San Diego. That jaunt gave me the confidence to book two weeks in France the following summer alone, then three in Central America last year, and then almost the entire past year partially solo journeying around the world.

I was just in Peru for a friend’s wedding — followed by a week in Lima on my own. And when I told folks at the wedding about my plans, I was met with encouragement and a side of excuses.

Most folks were excited for me, and said they too would love to take a solo-trip, even brimming with wonderful ideas about where they would go and what they would do, but sure they could never make it happen: my partner wouldn’t understand, I don’t have the time/money, is it safe?

These excuses may be valid, and at the same time, tomorrow is never guaranteed. Sometimes, and you know when you absolutely need to — you have to simply pack your bags and go.

The biggest benefit of solo travel for me is truly hearing, seeing, and feeling yourself and the world around you.

This quote from the book, Women Who Run with Wolves — sums it up for me:

“Long ago, the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one. It is the cure for the frazzled state so common to modern women, the one that makes her, as the old saying goes, leap onto her horse and ride off in all directions.”

Most of us won’t deny that we are living in an increasingly frazzled state, with things pulling at our attention constantly. To be alone is the antidote. And to be alone for quite some time, like a timezone away alone, is a double dose.

Another huge plus is that solo-travel increases your surface area for luck and synchronicity.

While traveling alone in Saussignac, France, about an hour outside of Bordeaux and thousands of miles from my home in Washington, D.C., I met an American woman who was moving from Boston to D.C. in the fall to start a job with the Federal Government as a Presidential Management Fellow, the same program I had completed a few years prior.

Last year, I randomly crossed paths with a college friend at a bakery in Guatemala, and this past summer, a pal from elementary school and I had an unexpected reunion at a Cafe in southern Portugal.

When traveling solo, you are all-one, but you aren’t ever truly alone. If you are present and open, guided by your own whims and intuition, and doing the things you love, you’re bound to attract in aligned people and experiences.

Depending on who and what you attract, you get to practice the soft front, hard back approach.

I have to say that safety concerns, especially as a woman traveling alone, are real, and sometimes mean I spend the evening eating takeout in my room and watching Netflix because my intuition tells me that wherever I am is not a place to be out at night by myself.

However, fear is not the boss of my life, and the soft front, hard back approach has helped me navigate situations and interactions in which it’s safe to open, or better to turn the other way.

The phrase “soft front, hard back,” was coined by Zen Buddhist teacher Joan Halifax, and broken down, it means:

• Soft front: to approach the world with empathy and compassion, maintaining openness without shutting down.

• Hard back: to be guided by your core integrity and sense when a firm approach is needed, standing up for yourself, setting a boundary, or removing yourself from a situation.

Using this strategy has helped me invite in new experiences by not being “hard all over” — aloof and defensive, or “soft all over,” vulnerable to being taken advantage of.

This definitely takes practice and a lot of self-trust. Like most mindfulness-based practices, it means pausing, feeling, and considering before taking action. But it’s one of the best approaches I’ve found to build a deep knowing that I can travel on my own, invite in aligned connections, and stay safe.

Whether or not you’ve ever taken a solo trip, here are a few questions to consider:

1. What’s the most easeful version of a solo journey that you could take right now?

2. If fear weren’t in the driver’s seat, where would you go?

3. Where might you employ the soft front, hard back approach in your life?

Solo travel isn’t about escaping or proving independence — I promise the challenges in my life have all still been there waiting for me when I got back.

If I ask myself what my solo trips have really meant to me — the heartfelt answer is — falling in love with my own company, trusting my intuition, and being reminded what an incredible blessing this fleeting life is to live. So pack your bags, and live it.

Thank you, as always, for reading. If this article resonated, please share and subscribe 🤎.

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Upcoming offerings:

• Weekly virtual intuitive flow yoga Sundays at 10:30 AM

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• Opening movement at Ecstatic Dance D.C. on Thursday, 2/12

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I started practicing yoga when I was in high school, and to be honest — I probably kept at it because I was physically good at it.

I grew up dancing, meaning flexibility and rhythmic movement were second nature for me. So, I began looking forward to the sweaty Sunday morning power vinyasa class at the YMCA that my best friend’s parents flowed through with us in tow.

We would always visit the little farmers market outside the “Y” after class, which developed into a Sunday morning yoga + farmers market ritual I still treasure today (part of why I teach my online class on Sundays).

Yoga means union to me now — a union of mind • body • breath • spirit — but for years, I only got the body part. It wasn’t until I did my yoga teacher training at Epic Yoga DC in 2023 that all the dots started connecting for me.

What started as me frankly showing off how flexible and strong I was at 16 now feels like a conversation between me and my body, a convening between me and my soul.

There are many different styles of yoga and many different lessons to be learned through the practice — things I’ll write about here in the future, so consider subscribing and sharing if you haven’t already.

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And I’m positive I’ll be committed to learning and sharing these lessons for the rest of my life — if not the next innumerable lifetimes. Until I’m enlightened of course 😉.

The way I’ve learned the lessons of yoga, and many truths in life, feels in essence like the words of Pema Chodron —

If you have found your own way to yoga, or at the very least to this post — I’m glad you’re here.

Five honest things I’m not afraid to admit as a yoga teacher

1. I still get pulled out of the present moment when I practice

As I got more and more comfortable flowing through the yoga asanas (poses) and sequences, staying present in my practice actually got more difficult.

I found I could get to the end of a class having physically done it all but mentally spent most of it replaying an interaction from earlier in the day, thinking about what’s for dinner, deciding when to wash my hair next (calculus-level girl math).

The way neuroscientist and mindfulness expert Due Quach explained this phenomenon at the Mindful Leader Conference in 2024 was a huge lightbulb for me. She laid out that we all have an attention system that allows us to focus on any given task for any given period of time. If you can focus intentionally on literally anything — a tennis match, a movie, a book, a video game — you have a functioning attention system.

She also said that we all have a default mode network, which is basically our wandering mind, pulling us into the past, the future, rumination, worry, planning, and again one of my personal favorites, rolling back the tapes on social interactions.

This explanation grounded me in knowing that the feeling of mind drifting away from body, away from present moment sensations, doesn’t mean I’m bad at yoga or mindfulness, it means I’m human.

And that practices like yoga and meditation can help train my attention system so that I can notice when the default mode network starts to take over, and come back to the present. Which I still do in my practice, like all the time.

2. Yoga is not always what my body needs

I remember one of my favorite, perhaps one of America’s favorite YouTube Yogis, Yoga with Adriene, saying in one of her videos that she was easing away from power yoga because of the toll it was taking on her nervous system.

At the time I was in college and very, very hard on my body, as I wrote about in my first post — an honest bio — so I basically rolled my eyes, until I too ran myself ragged in power yoga classes combined with intense weightlifting, got injured, and was forced to rest.

I now know that the physical practice of yoga is not what my body needs every day. Some days I need a walk, I need to dance, I need Qigong, I need pilates, or I need to “rot” — I think I prefer ripen? — on the couch.

That’s setting aside that there are eight limbs of yoga, of which the physical (asana) practice is only one. Among the others are breath, concentration, meditation, surrender, non-violence, and more. So, in some shape or form, I do, and everyone can practice yoga every day.

3. I teach, and I still get nervous going up to the teacher after class

Some of my best friends are yoga teachers, and I love connecting with yoga students before and after class.

Yet, I still feel a little pang of anxiety going up to the teacher after a class I’ve taken and sharing much of anything beyond a thank you, small smile, roll up mat, and resist immediately checking my phone with a low to medium success rate.

I’m sharing this just to name and empathize with that experience. If you take my class and something is on your heart to share, I’d love to hear it. And to all my teachers current and future, I will keep exercising the courage to interact after class, with minimal rumination during savasana about what I’m going to say.

4. I’m guilty of comparison

I can feel the energy of comparison, both when I practice and when I teach, and it feels, in a word — icky. Especially early on in my practice I was definitely guilty, especially of pushing myself to do something in class that felt like a no in my body, just because my neighbor was doing it.

I took on the adaptive strategy of having my eyes closed most of the time during class so I could stay present with my breath and body rather than with what’s going on on someone else’s mat.

It’s taken inner work to stay in integrity with what my body needs, resting in child’s pose when I need to, taking the more advanced postures when I feel ready — not when I want my ego stroked. Maintaining an energy of curiosity and joy when I try something new and stumble out of it. Celebrating my neighbor who flowed with it steadily.

5. I am not everyone’s teacher

My teaching style has and will continue to evolve, just like everything else in the natural world, often imperceptibly with every breath in and every breath out. But what won’t change is that I am not everyone’s teacher, and that’s okay.

It’s more important to me to teach in a way that feels authentic, and to be grateful for whomever vibes with that.

The way I teach right now has a big focus on deep listening. I love a slow vinyasa with a little flow and fire, a little silence and stillness, and a lot of space for intuitive movement guided by each student’s body.

I also love weaving in other nervous system regulation tools I’ve learned while studying the somatic and energetic arts, like shaking, rocking, tapping, and energy cleansing. And I really love seeing a cue that lands just right, seeing someone’s devotion as they flow through Sun A, seeing someone soften sleepily into savasana.

I love being a lifelong student and teacher of yoga, and it feels great to get all that off my chest!

I’d love to hear something you’re not afraid to admit as a yoga student/teacher/insert role of choice — in the comments ⬇️.

Thank you as always for reading. You are warmly invited to practice with me online on Sundays at 10:30 AM.

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This year, I celebrated New Year’s at 7PM. At a meditation center in Orlando (where I grew up) with a room full of (very warm and kind) strangers.

Part of this intentional gathering involved writing down three lessons we’d learned in 2025 on strips of streamer paper and taping those lessons to ourselves as discussion points for the gathering.

I found myself devising an exit plan as I realized I’d have to open up to these strangers about what I’d experienced. But I took a swig of courage tea to wash away my fear of vulnerability and proceeded with the exercise.

Here are the three lessons I came up with:

1. How to practice spiritual hygiene

I was nomadic for pretty much all of 2025, and somewhat counterintuitively my meditation practice was stronger than it’s ever been. That’s because it was the only part of my day that I could count on to be the same. Thirty minutes of Qigong and meditation upon waking, daily, non-negotiable.

Just like brushing my teeth for two minutes in the morning, it became a requirement for feeling clear, fresh, and aligned. Spiritual hygiene, of course, goes beyond daily meditation and may look different for everyone — I’ll elaborate in a future article, motivation to subscribe if you haven’t already — but this, among other practices, showed me how much I need to care for my soul/spirit/energy field just like any other part of my being 💫.

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2. How to embrace a “let’s see” mindset

While I was in Guatemala studying to facilitate Contact Beyond Contact, I heard the phrase “let’s see” more than I ever have in my life. Asking new friends and travelers if they were going to XYZ event later, they’d ponder and with an air of happy lightness, reply, “let’s see.”

Coming from D.C., where making plans with friends often requires pulling out your iCalendar and picking a day three weeks from now, I was flabbergasted. But over time, this approach really grew on me.

Saying “let’s see,” leaves space for honoring your body, energy levels, and actual desires.

I said “let’s see” for example, to planning out all my time in Europe this summer months ahead, and ended up meeting up with three friends from Guatemala in Portugal because all our travel plans were fluid. And again said “let’s see”, to planning housing for the month I returned to D.C. in the fall, and ended up having two friends out of town that I house sat for. A “let’s see,” response can feel annoying, maybe even scary, but it’s a key to unlocking flow.

3. It’s ok to be the crybaby at the retreat

I spent my 30th birthday surrounded by (again very warm and kind) strangers at a week-long contact dance retreat in Portugal and basically ugly-cried my way through the entire thing. The retreat was very physically/emotionally/somatically demanding, there was an eclipse in Pisces (I have a Pisces moon — intense energies ensued!), and I was far away from my closest friends and family.

The floodgates just sort of opened and I felt so embarrassed and ashamed that I couldn’t hold it together. I tried to hide and cry in the trees, but one of the retreat leaders eventually stopped me and held space for me, smiling at me eventually as I stopped crying. When I asked him why he was smiling, he grinned even wider saying that through my sadness he could see so much light.

This made real Rumi’s words “​​Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”

Later, a friend told me that she too had been “the crybaby of the retreat,” at a gathering earlier that year and that even though it hurt, the experience was also incredibly healing. I couldn’t help but agree.

I admit that I did not share all of this with the participants at the New Year’s gathering but the gist came through. We ended the celebration with the timeless task of burning tiny sheets of paper adorned with the things we’re releasing in 2025.

I burned my fear — not just any fear but that precise and relentless fear of doing the things I know I’m here to do. Some of which include writing, and teaching movement classes, and being of service. So here I am writing. Thank you for reading. And tomorrow (and weekly for the rest of this year!) I am teaching a virtual yoga class.

New Weekly Intuitive Flow (Online)

Starting tomorrow, Sunday, January 4th, at 10:30 AM and most Sundays thereafter, you’re invited to practice yoga with me online.

The class will be as sweet and gentle as Sundays should be. I’ll guide you, but really your body will guide you. We’ll start with a slow, mindful warm-up, building to a flow with a lot of space for intuitive movement, and close with a seated meditation. Come as you are (camera on or off), and leave a little more spacious.

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Happy New Year 🤎

The elements were simple — play music and for 2-3 songs, let my body speak — dance, breathe, and make any noises that need to be expressed.

It started as a tentative exploration. I grew up dancing so it took a lot of re-wiring to experience movement not as a performance, not as a measure of perfection, or as a punishment for what I ate — but as an expression of my being.

As I re-discovered how to move authentically, with presence and deep listening, it turns out my body had a lot to say!

Every day different emotions and memories surfaced and nearly every day I found myself in tears — of joy, grief, wonder, frustration, laughter.

I started searching for somatic dance trainings because I needed to understand what was happening, how this practice could be unlocking so much for me, and learn more tools for working with it.

I traveled to Guatemala to train in Contact Beyond Contact, and Integrative Somatic Arts with Unity Space, and the dots started connecting.

I learned that because trauma and emotion are stored in the body, dance provides a non-verbal pathway to process and release them.

And that having space to process through movement is especially helpful for people who struggle to fully express their feelings through words (ya girl is guilty).

Because through movement, we can access parts of our lived experience that existed before we could speak — pre-verbal layers of our nervous system that house a lot of emotional memory.

By letting movement emerge naturally — a shaking limb, a slow curl in, an expansion out — we begin releasing things we’ve held in for so long.

And release, I have! Over and over again returning to this practice to give a voice to stuck feelings and experiences, things I had pushed away with or without knowing it.

Dance now for me is now about authentic expression — to feel and let my body process and transform what it once had to hold back.

Realizations like these are what has inspired me to continue down the path of movement leadership, because I know that movement medicine resonates with so many of us.

If you want to experience this practice for yourself, you know what to do. Just start — pick a playlist, 2-3 songs, express through movement and sound, and be open to feel.

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If you’ve been cracked open by this or a similar practice I’d love to hear about it — drop me a comment!

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And if you want to explore practices of movement and expression with me and in community, I gotchu ⬇️

Upcoming Events + My Offerings

• Contact Beyond Contact Workshop at Epic Yoga D.C. on 11/14

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• Opening embodied movement at Ecstatic Dance Arlington on 11/15

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• My website — all the things

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This is my first Substack post and a commitment to sharing my honest expression with the world. So that you know who I am and why I’m here — this is my honest bio.

Working in politics for the past five years, I’ve written many, many bios about other people, but I find it somewhat agonizing to write one about myself.

The Sanskrit term Sat Nam helps. The word Sat means “truth” and Nam means “name.” This translates to something like “I am truth” or “Truth is my identity.”

Sat Nam helps ease the gripping around my heart when faced with the sometimes-paralyzing question: Who am I? It reminds me that I am the truth of this moment. Who I was is gone, and who I will be will come. I am living the truth of what is here right now.

What’s true for me now is that I’ve been given the enormous gift of time — time to just be. I resigned from my “muggle” job as a bureaucrat in January 2025. Although I found a lot of value in that work, I knew it was time for a shift. Now I’m on a soul-led travel journey.

A psychic recently told me I have a “rebel soul,” and I scoffed. But maybe choosing to investigate your truth when so many forces are pulling your attention in a million other directions is a rebellious act.

What feels true for me right now is to keep studying and teaching the healing arts — practices like Yoga, Somatic Dance, Reiki, Qi Gong, and more. To keep meditating. To keep traveling. To keep following my intuition. To keep rediscovering my creativity. And to start writing about all of it.

I also want to share the truth of who I’ve been.

I am (unashamedly!) from Florida. I grew up dancing, loved ballet, and my heart still breaks a little that I was pretty good — but never thought I was.

In high school, I fell prey to the most toxic form of “wellness.” I started working out and dieting obsessively. My relationship with food and my body tormented me. I’d raise my hand to say I was personally victimized by the Special K Diet, the uber-thin Paris Hilton and Olsen twins era body ideals, and Skinny Tea.

I went to college and studied political science because it’s what I thought everyone else thought I should do. I gave up dancing to focus on working out. In hindsight, I realize that in my fitness-obsessed craze, what I really craved was control — control over my body and appearance, which I tied so closely to my worth. I didn’t understand that my value was so much more than that. And that no one likes you more just because you have a six-pack.

I ended up competing in a women’s bodybuilding competition, which required dieting down to a dangerously low body fat percentage. It reeked of irony: I was the model of fitness and wellness on campus — even serving as a bodybuilding.com campus ambassador — when I was anything but well, mentally or physically.

Then I got injured — probably one of the biggest blessings of my life — and my “fitness girl” identity shattered. I was forced to rest. I was terrified of gaining weight. And I felt ashamed, angry, and stupid for doing so much harm to my body under the guise of wellness.

It took a long time, but I forgave myself.

As I healed, I eased back into movement by deepening my yoga practice. I also discovered meditation, which my boyfriend at the time made fun of — asking when I was going to start levitating. But it turns out years later he started a meditation club at his law school.

Then I went to grad school to study nutrition with a focus on food policy. Again, partly because grad school seemed like what I thought other people thought I should do — and because the food system is broken in many ways and I wanted to help.

During that time, I also discovered and trained in the practice of mindful self-compassion, which gave me the strength to start healing my relationship with food and my body. I found intuitive eating and learned to listen to my body instead of overriding its needs. But this is an honest bio, so I’ll admit I still struggle sometimes with guilt around food and scrutinizing my appearance.

This was also the beginning of my journey toward understanding where feelings and emotions live in my body, and how to notice and hold them with tenderness. I now know my body is my greatest teacher, and opening to its wisdom will be a lifelong journey.

After grad school, I worked in nutrition policy for five years — writing regulations, newsletters, and speeches. I’m really proud of the work I did. Especially the work that helped local farmers and families.

But when I got back from a trip to Sedona in May 2024, I was so charged with joy, so enlivened by life’s possibilities, that I sat down at my desk and thought: I am simply too happy to work. Or at least, to do this work.

I had left so much fear behind in Sedona that in the months that followed I made more aligned friendships in a short period of time than I ever had in my life. I felt magnetic. I tried new healing arts practices like Reiki and Ecstatic Dance, took my first international solo-trip, and invested in a mentorship program for women building soul-led brands.

Making the shift away from a life that no longer felt aligned was not pretty. I gripped, and clung, and cried a lot. I had people in my life that cast a lot of doubt on me and others who inspired and encouraged me. Both made me stronger, thank you.

So now here I am as a ballerina turned bodybuilder turned bureaucrat turned embodied-mover attempting to just be. My truth is that I still don’t know exactly where this path will lead but I’m living life on my terms and getting clear on who I am and why I’m here.

If you got this far, thank you.

I’m certain that part of why I’m here is to write — my guides won’t stop telling me I have to! So this platform, Fully Expressed, is a reflection of that truth.

Here’s what Fully Expressed is about:

• Exploring healing arts practices
  I’ll be your grounded guide to what they are, how they feel, and how you might incorporate them into your life — because they’ve changed mine.

• Living intuitively
  I’ll talk about how to release the “shoulds” and shift toward what feels good, because it’s hard to hear your intuition with so much noise.

• Rediscovering your creativity
  I’ll share my experience of remembering my creativity and how to get back in touch with the creative that lives in all of us.

• Traveling mindfully
  I’ll chart my travels, how I stay grounded, and the different healing arts and creative experiences I seek out along the way.

Thank you for being here. If any of this resonates, you know what to do ↓ ♡

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