Movement is my muse. Throughout my life I have been enchanted by the range of human expression in self-movement. The following bio is for you to get a sense of who I am, the training I have received, and the tools I use in my practice.
In the first years of my life, I explored the possibilities of movement mainly outside in nature with siblings and friends. However, organized sport had a big impact on my movement experience. I was steeped in competition and the values of winning and losing, success and failure. My identity was informed by those structures. I was enchanted by what it took to win, to not only be good, but to be the best…to be the hero.
After high-school I lived in a van with my best friend traveling across North-America discovering ourselves in movement. During this trip, the experience of moving for the sake of moving itself, and not to achieve something through movement, was reignited.
After that trip the muse of movement seduced me to ‘formally’ study human movement. I started with an undergrad in Human Kinetics where the primary focus was on physical movement with courses such as;
During my undergrad there was one course, and one professor, who linked me to the next chapter of my movement relationship. The course was about sport psychology and the prof; Terry Orlick. Halfway through the course I was fully in! I had the thought, “I want to hang out with this guy as much as possible.” I could sense the expansion in movement through the mind.
I completed a master’s degree in performance psychology with Terry as my supervisor. I studied the success elements of big-mountain freeskiing because I was competing in the sport at the time and it was all I wanted to do. My master’s experience was primarily focused on how to be successful and how to achieve things through physical movement. Through this, I learned:
Many of the movers I interviewed for my master’s degree said the experience in movement was spiritual. Although it surprised me hearing so many say this, the word and the sentiment deeply aligned with my experience in self-movement all the way back to exploring nature with my siblings and friends in my youth. There is something so much more than the physical experience in movement.
The muse seduced me further, this time to do a PhD, about the more-than-physical, more-than-mental, experience of movement. I had ZERO plans, impulses, or desire to do a PhD until that moment of realization occurred. Movement and wonder had more to reveal to me through formal education. My PhD was a mutt degree of psychology, human kinetics, and education. Some concepts I explored:
As I continued evolving through formal education, I began working with people as a mental performance consultant. Still primarily focused on helping people win, be successful, achieve. I worked with Olympians and Paralympians helping them unleash their dormant potential. In that process I realized that most performance blocks are rooted in some form of trauma (*trauma as disconnection from aspects of self, others, and the here and now with varying degrees of intensity).
In sessions with clients, I found that I would get to the place of trauma with individuals and then freeze. I was not equipped to go further. I had not yet gone further myself. I had reached the part of the hero’s journey where something else must be confronted. Something else must be the focus and the teacher. That something else was the adversary.
It was at this point that my life-path shifted…again. I continued focusing on enhancing performance; both professionally and personally. Now, with the aspects of ourselves that we reject as a doorway to growth. Time to face the adversary!
For four years, I studied with Dr. Carlos de Leon and his Ontogonic Body-Mind Therapy (OBMT) program, which is a body-centered, transpersonal, psychological approach to locate and integrate traumatic blocks. The program consisted of learning theoretical principles, practical tools, and supervised training. All the while, each student was supported through their own therapy process facilitated by Dr. de Leon. My tool-kit and experience expanded significantly throughout this program, adding tools such as:
I continue working with high-performers and am perpetually enchanted by the inexhaustible depth of human potential. Now, I am equipped to tend to more intensive and complex disconnections from the field of possibility. The deep disconnections are the aspects of ourselves that we reject and banish to the shadows of our mind.
Through the OBMT program and while continuing working with people in my practice, not only did my pathway shift, but so did my focus. Performing at the ‘highest level’ is still of interest to me, and it’s fun and exciting to win, to be successful, to ‘be the hero’. But my focus personally and professionally has expanded to the evolution of the self. This process may include ‘hero stuff’ but it definitely includes ‘adversary stuff’ as you journey into the most mysterious and exciting terrain…the terrain of your true Self!
