I have been fortunate in my teachers. It has been a great gift to have been able to study with the original flame, with the source of each of these inspired bodies of work.

Twenty-five years ago, Dick Price (co-founder of Esalen institute) and his own brand of Gestalt therapy was the beginning of an inward journey. His extraordinary support of the initial development of my work continued until his death. I am forever thankful for his pushing me before I realized I was ready.

Later, Jack Rosenberg, developer of I.B.P.R and his partner, Beverly Morse, inspired me with their brilliant teaching of compassion mixed with unflinching self exploration.

Thirty ago, my years of training with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais were the most pivotal of my life. I found my purpose and my path. He taught me how to “create a space in which people choose to learn.” He taught me that our problems are not resolved by “fixing an afflicted area” but by looking at “the failure of the intention to execute the action.” He taught me that it was about dealing with the whole system – about balancing an imbalanced workload so that the body could heal.

Moshe showed me that if you want to truly change what happens in the system, you have to upgrade the perceptual abilities of that system. His concept “UNTIL YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DO, YOU HAVE NO CHOICE TO DO OTHERWISE,” has proved a consistently true foundation for my work.

Dr. John Upledger, the pioneer who brought CranioSacral TherapyR into mainstream consciousness, taught me about answers that lie outside the realm of our genius sensory-motor cortex and the volutary muscles. This mysterious and sacred cranial rhythm is as essential to our survival as our heartbeat. As it pumps the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes and nourishes our brain and spinal cord, the bones of our skull, spine, and pelvis move in a constant and delicate dance. This system of healing is worth another lifetime of study. It is a key which opens many locks.

Dr. Upledger has also created an “umbrella” Institute where other modalities are supported. Dr. Jean-Pierre Barral, creator of Visceral Manipulation®, and his disciple in this country, Frank Lowen, have been and continue to be another profound source of healing information. Also Dr. Bruno Chikly, founder of “Lymph Drainage Therapy”.

Perhaps the greatest gift in my own personal growth, and in my work, has been Integrated Awareness® and its creator, Lansing Barrett Gresham. I.A.® constantly challenges me to ever greater expansion of my heart, of my perceptual net, of my paradigms. It puts whatever other skill I’ve acquired into perspective, while holding me to a center of self-responsibility and integrity.

“True healing deals with the emotional, mental, energetic, and spirtual levels of our being as well as the physical.” These teachings become evident every time I work.

UNTIL YOU BECOME AWARE OF WHAT YOU DO AND, WITHOUT JUDGEMENT, ACCEPT THAT IT HAS BEEN YOUR CHOICE – ONLY THEN DO YOU HAVE A CHOICE TO DO OTHERWISE”, has now become my broader foundation.
I.A.R has taught me that the body cannot lie. Its essential purpose, hard-wired in through billions of years of evolution, is physical survival. It naturally seeks balance and healing. It and the field in which it is enveloped is a storehouse of tremendous information. The body was designed to be in affinity with reality, with the rules of how earth works.

It is the mind and the emotions that can distort information. Emotions that seem to be appropriate at the present moment may really be the recordings of old past wounds. Fears and limits that seem sensible in the moment may really be the mind living in the future, trying to protect us from some imagined negative outcome that hasn’t even happened yet. So we stiffen, shrink, contract, raise stress levels, and our body can no longer clearly tune into or resonate with its own truth. WE NO LONGER HEAR OUR OWN UNDISTORTED INFORMATION TO THE EXTENT THAT WE NO LONGER FEEL.

Clarifying our life path and our purpose, embracing forgiveness (self or other), taking responsibility for our choices, accepting the unfairnesses of earth, learning to occupy our bodies, reconnecting to Source are all as essential to true healing as any of the exquisite tools these and other great teachers have brought toward the collective consciousness.

Through the teaching of I.A.®, I’ve had the consistent experience that real healing requires presence from everyone involved. We all need to “show up,” be willing and vulnerable, whether giving a lesson or receiving one.

My intention and commitment is an occupied body, living in the present moment, holding without judgment or need for specific outcome, the space for the other to either make a choice to heal or to feel completely supported in a choice not to. (I’m very aware that I could never know what the best path for another looks like, or its ultimate form or direction).

To be truly seen and unconditionally accepted, no matter what choice was made, is such an unusual experience in our lives that it often leads to the discovery of what prerequisite must occur, what condition satisfied, before a choice for healing is permitted. So it feels, twenty years later, I’ve come full circle, but with expanded perception. It’s still about “our intention,” but not just “to execute an action,” no matter how skillfully. It’s about “our unconflicted intention to heal,” with all parts of us in agreement.

When we decide our prerequisites for healing have been satisfied, when we become reconciled with our fears, and with the imagined or real cost of healing, then these prerequisites, these fears, become replaced by a willingness of the whole field. The true healing can begin.

AS WE RETURN TO USING OUR BODY AS IT WAS DESIGNED FOR THIS EARTH, WHAT EMERGES, BESIDES GREATER COMFORT AND EASE OF MOVING AND AUTHENTICITY, IS A GREATER SENSE OF BELONGING.