When I was 13 years old I had an amazing experience. While mowing the front lawn I began thinking intensely about what I wanted to do when I grew up.

In a flash of inspiration I began thinking about the people I admired. One who stood out was my junior high school Civics teacher Mr. Schreck. He really had the gift of enthusiasm and a way about him that made learning fun and exciting. As I thought about him, something in me just opened up and I knew with total certainty that I wanted to teach.

As I began my work as a counselor I also discovered the importance of spirituality and spiritual practices in my own growth and healing and in the counseling process with my clients. During the early 1970's this was a somewhat radical idea for an East Coast therapist.

My journey into the world of the transpersonal or spiritual domain of human development took me to an Indian meditation master who changed my life, my inner experience and set me on both an inner and out journey that continues to this day.

I have become a mystic, a healer, a meditation teacher and an expert on spiritual awakening and human development. I specialize in integrating the understandings and experiences of cross cultural perspectives on spiritual awakening and practices into the counseling process.

As a doctoral student, I did ground breaking research on kundalini awakening and human development at Teachers College, Columbia University during a time when no one knew anything about spiritual awakening. My work in this arena has permeated my teaching both during my years as a graduate school faculty member in Counseling and School Psychology at Southern Connecticut State University, and in my teaching, consulting and supervision work with agencies and organizations both in the U.S. and internationally.

I bring a unique combination of understanding and experience of spirituality to my work as a counselor, a healer, a trainer and a consultant to individuals and organizations. In addition to being a licensed professional counselor, I am also a Certified Yuen Method Practitioner, a Board Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress, an ICISF approved Critical Incident Stress Management instructor and a Siddha Meditation Teacher.

Most of all, however, I am a mystic healer who is committed to serving others in their journey to wholeness, happiness and success in life.

Now that I am in my 60's, I can truly own the awareness that I am a mystic and a healer.

The first inkling of this awareness leapt into my consciousness sometime in the first couple of years of my work as a professional counselor. I had had a succession of “Ah Hah” experiences in working with my clients in which the energy in the room would intensify and both my client and I would be lifted beyond the conversation to a recognition of something bigger than both of us that was propelling the client into a new level of self recognition and healing.

I began to realize that there was a Self in all of us that was totally whole, totally healthy and totally knowledgeable about this process of bringing us home to our own wellness, clarity and power. I had the experience of this energetic opening outside the counseling context as well when skiing and sailing—you know it was like all of the elements of Nature, my body and my inner awareness were, at least for an instant, in total harmony. In these moments I would experience a rush of energy and bliss that was beyond words.

My problem was that I did not know how to access this Inner Self at will.

Western psychological approaches had nothing to teach me about this. Then in 1976 I met Swami Muktananda. Not only was he speaking about that same Self in the very words that I had been thinking about it, but by awakening my inner spiritual energy and providing me with the spiritual practices of meditation, chanting, study of the ancient eastern yogic texts and his teachings gave me the way to access that Self at will.

He also opened the doorway to a life long journey by suggesting to me that psychologists needed to learn about meditation, the Self and the kundalini—the inner spiritual energy. I was at the beginning of articulating my doctoral dissertation topic at the time. I seized the opportunity to do research on kundalini, full well realizing that the only way I could begin to do this was to plunge myself into the spiritual practices, spend time studying, learning and practicing in India with Mukatananda.

Off I went to live in Muktananda’s ashram in India for 3 months—fully approved for 12 credits of doctoral work. My commitment to the inner journey was rewarded with experiences of lights, visions, merging with the Self, a deepening of the experiential knowledge of the kundalini process and of my own self as being greater than I ever imagined.

My life for the past 31 years had been in service to that Self. My work is about taking those I work with to that recognition of that Self in themselves and others in whatever way they are ready, willing and able to access that. Some take baby steps in that direction. Others take giant leaps. Whenever it happens the experience is the same----that same explosion of energy in the room, in the healing space of the heart of the Self, that expands to touch not only the person or the group of people, but also me.

I live for those moments, as a mystic, as a healer, as a teacher. Those are the moments of true healing and empowerment. That is what I am here to help us create and access together.