Underneath the surface,

inside each one of us, there is a place of vitality and centeredness. With the right tools and guidance, we all have access to this expansive life force... and it begins by simply tuning in our attention. Over the past 15 years, I have devoted my life to being a bridge for individuals to connect to their healing, learning, spirituality, and the practice of being in community.

As a Jew-yo-Rican

(half Jewish, half Puerto Rican, New Yorker) my mixed cultural heritage paved the way for me to investigate identity and belonging out of a necessity to understand how I fit into the world around me. “Which one are you” they would often ask me as a kid, until I decided I am my own category: a “Jew-Rican”.
In a sense we all go on a journey of wanting to belong and negotiating what our values are.

I learned to tune in and find this place. Halfway through my second year of college, a friend took me to my very first yoga class. By the end of the class, when we laid down to final resting, I felt as though I sank through the floorboards and had floated into another world.

I went into a deep state of relaxation like I had never experienced before. Those three minutes felt like hours, and when I awoke, there was a profound sense of peace inside me. This experience began my journey into yoga, self-discovery, and my study of the healing arts.

After 6 years practicing yoga, I received my certification and started teaching. I began learning how to create spaces of opening and transformation, like those which had so deeply affected me. As I continued exploring how this transformational energy is created, I was led to the Peruvian Amazon where I initiated my study of plant medicine. This shamanic healing work was another huge catalyst, a spiritual awakening that cleansed my body, mind and spirit. It allowed me to unravel, work with my deepest struggles, and find a new path in my life.

Over the next few years I organized retreats to guide others through this powerful healing work. I developed a program which uses yoga to integrate these ancient shamanic techniques. I created Three Fold Healing Arts to strengthen the partnerships with the indigenous healers of the Amazon and create a comprehensive, integrated approach to work with sacred plant medicine. Three Fold runs retreats in the Ukayali area of the Peruvian Amazon and plans to build a new healing center within the next 5 years.
 

Learning from the Masters

After returning from Peru, I completed a Masters in Childhood education. Bringing this transformational energy into the early childhood classroom was one of my greatest joys and teachers on my journey. Children exist in a world filled with magic. If we know how to listen, we can learn so much from children about how to heal, forgive and find freedom in our lives.

After 5 years, the stress and burnout of the job was starting to affect my health. While the classroom had been a wellspring of growth, I knew I needed to come back to healing myself and felt a calling to affect other peoples lives in this way as well. I had started my journey through the body, and it was in that way that I wanted to help others. 

Sacred Body Work

I was drawn to Thai healing arts because of its spiritual orientation. While massage is a physical practice, this particular approach builds upon the interconnectedness of mind, body, spirit and the fields of energy in between. By restoring the body's energy flow we can affect the mind and the spirit in incredible ways. When we tune into the energy of the body we have an opportunity to find the keys to our health and vitality, and unearth the fully alive and connected version of ourself that yearns to be awakened.  

NOW...

I live and practice body-mind healing work in New York City. My community is Sugar Hill in West Harlem, just north of the Upper West Side where I was born and raised. 

When I'm not working, I am usually hosting and cooking for my friends and loved ones, dancing somewhere, exploring hikes of the Hudson valley and beyond. I have also started doing workshops at my old schools to see my students as they grow up and connect them with yoga and mindfulness practices.