The pedagogy of Chinese medicine, as ancient, Earth-based healing, was founded on the observation of natural and seasonal rhythms and how this impacts our own internal environments. The teachings of Chinese medical philosophy encourage adherence to diurnal and seasonal cadence in order to maintain physical and mental well being and optimal health. Changes in Nature are also reflected within the body’s landscape (or terrain) and the ability to adapt is determined by the vital capacity (or qi) of the organ systems.

Because this is a complex and dynamic system that mirrors Nature it is often difficult to directly translate observations and diagnostic patterns into western language and ways of thinking. Chinese medicine is fluid, relative and relational in its thinking. At the root of Chinese medicine is correlative cosmology which links the relationship of the sun, moon, planets and the natural, elemental world around us to the movement and processes of the body, emotional states and patterns of disease. It is to contemplate the weather of the body, and determine if this is congruent with the environment. It is a medicine that focuses on movement and rhythm rather than the treatment of a fixed state or condition. In that way, practitioners of Chinese medicine are concerned with correcting qi flow to conjure harmonious resonance with its surrounding nature. The application of Chinese healing modalities poetically embeds our bodies back in nature in a way that is absent in western healing paradigms. 

It is time for us to redefine what it means to heal. Healing, at the root, translates into restoring wholeness. In order for us to be whole, we must include ourselves into the web of life, and we must include the natures of death, grief, suffering and shadow, not just where there is ease. To feel is to feel it all. We must be able to stand at the edge of the fractures and chasms that have rendered us vulnerable and raw and grieve into the darkness; the bones of our soul’s nakedness reflected back to us in the moonlight. We must be able to grieve those who have been lost: humans, animals, habitats; quiet and dark spaces, childhood innocence, missed experiences.

Grieving is universal, it is natural and it is never problematic or pathological. Being divorced from this essential part of our humanness renders us disempowered and disconnected. Grief initiates us into the deep wells of gratitude and love. 

Grief is something that happens to our bodies, it is more than the emotion of sorrow, weariness, despair. Grief is active, like labor, and requires just as much attention.

We are living in a time of great tension and stress. Grieving and healing have to be interdisciplinary in nature and must cross thresholds between art, ecology and include the wild. Not wild like feral, but wild as the unclaimed parts that want to have relationship with us. We must learn how to make alters of our pain so that we can still put one foot in front of the other and make something interesting and beautiful of it all. How do we make art of our healing through our engagement with the natural world?

Interpersonal ecotherapy is the temple I have built as an offering to grievers. It is how the myth and story of our time, and how the psyche of the land we’re on informs how we live and die in our bodies, in community with each other and in relationship to an ailing Earth. Healing these relationships by first naming the wounds allows us to restore wholeness because calling them into the light of consciousness reduces their shadowy grip.

This is an offering in process. Currently I am fulfilling the desire to be in service of death and dying by volunteering at an end-of-life almshouse. But as a death doula, I know that this work can be applied to any area of living, at any point where letting go and trusting what comes next can feel challenging. My experience with death has taught me that by practicing all the little deaths in our day to day (even a sunset) can temper our fear of the unknown. 

What I can offer here is vast and boundless. It is community, a blend of healing arts and ceremony. It is guidance, counsel, alternative palliative care and spiritual support. Most importantly, I offer presence and steadiness, to witness, to be available, to listen, to be a support person of embodied lovingness. 

*Current offerings:: Monthly grief ritual at Hopewell House, 3rd Monday of each month https://hopewellhousepdx.org/grief-support/

Somatic therapy is embodied medicine - it is bringing medicine into the places where it is needed, creating a felt place from which you can heal. It can provide non-verbal, diagnostic feedback, and may be experienced as a somatic call-and-response. It provides deep and gentle healing potential and helps you identify boundaries through somatic cues, resting nervous system state and unwinding old patterns that desire shift and change. It is ideal for people who are sensitive, hypermobile or interested in somatic healing work. 

Body connection and balance starts by understanding the strategies you have relied on to survive, and how your connective tissue and nervous system have made adaptations and modifications - solely meant to keep you alive. Adaptations are a testament to the dynamic and responsive strength of your body. We both celebrate this and acknowledge when it is time to grow beyond it.  

Craniosacral therapy is a gentle, non-invasive, hands on therapy which allows the person to become familiar with their holding patterns and mechanisms that they have developed to maintain balance within their bodies. Bodies are extraordinary at adapting to changes in their environment in order to find equilibrium in an otherwise unstable atmosphere. Complex internal changes often go unnoticed, but can affect the nervous system, muscles, fascia, skeletal and organ systems, as well as general well-being. Oftentimes, the flexibility of our systems can maintain adaptation mechanisms to trauma or imbalances in the system for a long while, but over time structural changes start to decrease circulation which diminishes nervous system communication, organ and endocrine function.

Transforming the Experience-Based Brain (TEB) was developed by Stephen Terrell and Kathy Kain. It is an integrative neurodevelopmental approach that addresses developmental ruptures though repairing and reintegrating early, primitive reflexes. It can be used with or without touching the body.

There are two ways that I offer myself as a guide, as an act of love towards a sense of belonging in this world, so that we may be brought into action.

Expanded state integration:

You possess a reservoir of knowledge, gathered from the fiery sparks and ashes of your life. Sometimes that rich resin that has been distilling can no longer exist in a retracted state, and must be given voice, made conscious. Out of the wound our inner healer is liberated, and oftentimes we find that suffering actually comes from resisting the pain rather than looking at the wisdom buried within it.  

We hold an idea that medicine is to heal, but first can we allow medicine to reveal? To integrate what comes up, to make sense of it, to sit with it? 

Expanded states may be useful in helping our minds to uncouple from the belief systems that have become automatic and ingrained. It gives us just enough space to consider something else, to allow for something new to emerge, while slowing down the deeply grooved pathways that once provided efficiency and protection. 

We have not evolved to tolerate the fast-paced and technological stress that requires us to be “on” all of the time. We have become separated from ourselves, from each other and from the Earth as natural beings whose resting states are much slower, much more expanded than the narrow and hyper-focused current that we’ve been swept down. 

Narrative medicine:

A deeply inherent human desire (I would go as far as even say a need) is to be heard, to be understood, to have your story deeply listened to, and there should be no exception to that within medicine. 

Narrative Medicine is described as “having a clinical practice fortified by the knowledge of what to do with stories”. As a healer, our ability to absorb them (your stories), to receive them whole, to honor and interpret them, to be moved by them to action, is an artistic skill - that is, when applied to healing - invaluably effective and holistic at its root. 

When there is no story available, there is meaning, and a story in that too. 

When we come together, as a diverse group gathering in storytelling, we create an opening, much like a sun-filled clearing in a forest. We gather around the fire center of our shared mortality where truth is exposed. In bringing this to healing space I give you my recognition, to stand with you in the courage and vision of your dis-ease and in your pain. To stand together with the knowledge of your body, perhaps in the face of death, and make contact.

Sometimes it’s just about asking the right question, making an opening and waiting, listening.  

So, I ask with deep listening and with steadiness : What do I need to know about your life, so that we can create space for you to heal?

I am very curious about our inner community, the structures that bind, and the the liminal, fluid spaces in between. I specialize in understanding the intricate webs that support health and well-being. I offer nervous system restoration which improves communication within the body’s ecosystem so that our soma-brain can cultivate a harmonious relationship. 

Health is the flexibility to adapt and respond, a dynamic arc that vacillates between states of ease and entropy. We are in constant motion, falling into and out of balance all the time. It is through this constant calibration and recalibration that transformation occurs, and it is what creates resilience. When flow becomes rigid, stagnant or overwhelmed it can engender disease states. Slowing down and considering our acquired, learned and relational states we can become familiar with our individual terrain and identify both the overt and the subtle areas that are calling for support. Sometimes there is no discernible pathology to treat, other times we need more intervention to correct course and create realignment. In both cases support is available and there is no symptom, question or feeling that is insignificant. 

My practice adheres to slow medicine principles, which includes collaboration and relationship, agency and respect, trust and alignment with Nature-wisdom, and it requires a nourishing and supportive environment in which healing is the focus, rather than pushing, over-diagnosing or over-treating. I have also cultivated the practice of bridging two disciplines of relating to our environment - internal and interpersonal, and external and transpersonal - into what I have created as interpersonal ecotherapy — individuated consciousness within a whole being. We are mirrors of Earth and Earth is mirrored within us. Likewise, we are mirrors of our attitudes, traumas, relationships, beliefs, experiences, the food we eat, our lifestyle habits, and we receive the reflection of those back within ourselves. Relationship with these things changes our consciousness and in turn changes our relationship to our bodies, minds and souls. Relationship is what heals, so I emphasize this as primary medicine.

Note: I am not a primary care physician. It is not how I was trained, or what I specialize in. 

I am not staffed or resourced to offer urgent care or 24 hour coverage, and I do not have hospital admitting privileges. Please establish with a primary care physician or nurse practitioner that you can see annually or as needed, who can uphold screening schedules, manage medications and monitor pathological diagnoses and progression. Because medicine and healing can be complex, I prefer a collaborative approach between you, myself and your healing team to give you the best support so that your symptoms feel more manageable and you feel more in tune with your body. Holding several perspectives within the wheel is necessary and I uphold the respect of all perspectives, all professionals and all specialists who step forward in healing work.