I currently reside in Pittsburgh, PA, where I was born and raised. Growing up, my mother treated our family’s health issues with herbal and food remedies. Like many people, I became interested in learning about natural medicine in depth when Western medicine failed me. Several years ago, antibiotics stopped working for my frequent urinary tract infections. Herbs ultimately cured my last UTI, and prevented me from having another one since. It was then I knew I needed to learn more. I officially started with East West in September 2015. I hope to finish the professional course by January 2018, and continue through the clinical path. I will attend my first seminar this spring. Upon full completion, I would like to open my own practice, integrating yoga and meditation with herbal and food remedies.
I’ve always been interested in the body. As a dance major at Ohio University, I took four years of anatomy and kinesiology, and studied yoga, Pilates, Bartenieff Fundamentals and the Feldenkrais Method. I became certified in Yoga at the Sivananda Vedanta Centre in Val Morin, Quebec, Canada in 1999 and have been teaching ever since. Upon college graduation, I performed as a modern dancer for two local companies and taught yoga, pranayama, meditation, and creative movement to both children and adults. Now, I teach mostly private students, as well as a few large group classes. My work as a physical therapy aide, several years ago, greatly informs my teaching; functional movement with correct alignment is extremely important to me.
I am an avid reader and writer, and couldn’t live without my book club and longtime writers’ group. I wrote for seven years as a dance critic, and have published creative non-fiction with the Elephant Journal and Silk Road Review. I have also done professional editing on the side. My main love is hiking through the woods with my husband and our rescue dog, Jake. Nearly every day we pass by the many plants our beautiful Midwestern forest offers.
My website describes more about my teaching, and offers links to my writing: https://