Vision
School of Self-Study exists to help reunite folks with the whole of their humanity using mindfulness-based contemplative skills and tools. Contemplative practice equips us to see ourselves in a clear, balanced way; to appreciate and utilize our excellence, and to understand and work our growth points without shame.

Values 

• Praxis: We directly, meaningfully and practically apply theory. We allow our practices to reach into every area of our lives, transforming how we see and treat ourselves, and how we show up in every conversation we enter. 

• Growth Culture: We are here to create and hold optimal space for learning and growth.  We understand that failure is often evidence of having tried, so we address it with compassion. We don't have to be perfect to be loved.

• Iteration: We accept that the ways our needs get met will evolve overtime. We keep a finger on the pulse of our habits and practices, and retool anything that isn’t actively useful. We don’t let our identities get coiled around What we do, but rather focus on what we Need and whether that practice is meeting that need anymore. We are allowed to change.

• Free Inquiry: Do not, under any circumstances, take our word for it. Try it on. Test the hypothesis. Have your own lived experience. 

• Multiplicity: We know that people are complex systems that contain multitudes. Two seemingly contradictory things can exist as true at the same time. How we behave in one moment does not represent a complete picture of who we are, nor does it define our future. We are here to explore all the facets of our truth.

• Self-Determination & Bodily Autonomy: We are multidisciplinary practitioners who know that there is not One Right Way to awaken, to live or to be. We are here to bolster and champion each other, even if our styles and traditions differ. We don't have to be the same to be nourished and affirmed. 

The story of my life as a contemplative practitioner began as a wee child in ballet class. I fell in love with movement at the barre and have trained in some form of dance for most of my life, and in yoga and meditation since 1999. As soon as I could form sentences, I started recording and reflecting on the happenings of my life. It was no surprise when I enrolled in a personal and professional experiential education program in college called the Community Involvement Center (CIC). In the CIC, I was taught to view all of life as a classroom and all of my experiences as opportunities to learn something new. I volunteered taking calls on a crisis hotline, and wrote papers called Reflective Self-Dialogues that guided me to break down and contextualize events in order to make useful, supportive meaning out of them. After a year of being a student in the program and learning the system, I went on to teach my own reflective seminars and later to be a program director. 

After graduating and leaving the CIC in 2007, I trained to become a yoga and meditation teacher, and a massage therapist. In my 37 years of dance training, 25 years of yoga and meditation practice and 15 years in the wellness industry, I have dabbled in countless disciplines, seen so many fads come and go, so many gimmicks be debunked. The School is a grand coalescence of everything I’ve learned thus far, crafted based on time-tested methods and ideas. Along my long path of contemplative work and study, it has become apparent to me the ways my varied interests and practices overlap, support and inform one another, and if consciously connected could be more powerful than any one element on its own.

As a lifelong learner, I am consistently engaged in continuing education, keeping up on new research and evolving my curriculum and approaches to reflect bleeding edge knowledge. As the world learns and grows, I learn and grow, and so does The School.

• My grandmother and her generosity of spirit; "Whatever we have, we have to share."
• My first ever yoga teacher, Sophie Rheinheimer
• English teacher Stacey Miller for being a lifeline, and for gifting me The Enlightened Heart and introducing me to ecstatic poetry
• Steve Cochrane and the Community Involvement Center at SFSU
• Yoga teacher Mark Frankel and this movement prompt, which has informed so much of my perspective for the last several years:  “Space and freedom through stability and discipline.”
• Kundalini yoga teacher Guru Singh and his direction to "Cover the drain."
• Brene Brown’s work on vulnerability and shame
• Donella Meadows and her contributions to systems theory
• adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism
• bell hooks, All About Love
• Josh Korda and Dharma Punx NYC
• Meditation teacher Paul Weinfield, Paul’s teacher Peter Doobinin, and Peter’s teacher Thanissaro Bhikkhu
• Movement teacher Anna Grundstrom, and the way she leverages dance for growth and exploration