A little more about me

I bring decades of training and practice in the healing arts to Wholeness Anew. In the late 70s, I obtained my Massage Therapist license in Washington State and opened a private practice in bodywork and health coaching. I maintained an active practice until 2007 when I retired. In my practice, I utilized not only massage, but also Touch for Health, Craniosacral Therapy, and Positional Release. I also used sound and gemstone healing.

I first started meditating during college and over the years studied several different meditation traditions, learning from each, but ultimately stopping each one. In 2009, I began the study of the Realization Process (RP) with Judith Blackstone and continue to practice it daily. In 2017, I became a fully certified Realization Process teacher and since then have taught RP to family and friends.

Moving to Portland in 2020, I felt ready to start my new life. I was drawn to end-of-life work. To explore this I took an End-of-Life Doula training through INELDA and a class in Griefwork through the Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath, and Death. These trainings helped me realize that the most beneficial role for me would be as a teacher of meditation for those who are experiencing grief.

What We Do

The Wholeness Anew classes blend an exploration of grief as experienced in the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, social, and environmental areas of life and Realization Process exercises that can be applied in daily life. Each class also includes reflecting on the day's learning with writing, drawing, or movement.

In private sessions, I will companion you along the pathways of your grief. Each person’s grief journey is individual. What we do together will be specific to your needs at different points along the way. As your guide and companion, I will support you in your grief to find that space deep within yourself that has never been wounded despite your loss. In this deep inner place, you can experience safety and peace.

I bring to our work decades of experience with meditation, bodywork, and various healing modalities. The meditation that I teach is based in The Realization Process as developed by Judith Blackstone. After the death of my husband, Realization Process was the foundation for my engagement with my grief as I trod the winding and often convoluted path under my feet. My meditation practice provided me with a deep attunement to Fundamental Consciousness, that spacious stillness inside of me that I experienced as stability within the turbulence.

Since that time, I have found it remarkably effective in helping others deal with their grief.

When we are grieving, we may feel fractured, deadened, disconnected from ourselves and others, and lost. Ideas, philosophies, and even the homilies of friends may not be enough to allow us to come back into ourselves and feel whole again. When we follow the pathways within our bodies, we travel gently to those places where the grief, pain, and feelings of fracture are living, and gently invite them to release.

We reconnect to our core essence and find, despite the grief and pain, a new sense of wholeness and connection within ourselves. In time, our grief may even become a portal to an expanded sense of who we really are.

Realization Process

In this form of meditation, we begin by focusing on the sensation of the breath as it moves in and out of the nose and expand this awareness to the experience of inhabiting our bodies from the inside all the way out to the edge of the skin, feeling the stillness within the body and at the same time, feel the movement of the breath. Since unresolved emotions cause constrictions, this gentle work can help us identify where we are holding and help us let go and heal. Realization Process can be done while moving as well as when sitting or lying still.

It can become a natural part of your daily life.

Our work together will teach you the fundamentals of Realization Process and how you can continue to do this work on your own. When relevant I will share self-care techniques that I have learned during my thirty-year career as a massage therapist, craniosacral practitioner, and health coach. I offer individual as well as group sessions both virtually and in person.

Holding Space

Sometimes we just need someone to listen, not give advice, not judge, not have their emotions triggered. Amy Wright Glenn, founder of The Institute for Birth, Breath and Death defines Holding Space as "the practice of showing up with a compassionate presence to life as it arises, especially when it arises with difficulty and loss. As a certified Holding Space Consultant I can listen, help you find where you are holding the emotion in your body and to use your breath to connect to the area so that it feels acknowledged and can begin to release.