My "root" lineage is based on the Earth philosophy developed and passed forward by the elder Lipan Apache seer, Grandfather Stalking Wolf (Nuacano).

Grandfather's Vision guided him to wander the Americas for sixty years, distilling universal spiritual truths found across cultures, testing everything he learned in the temples of the wilderness. He passed this body of understanding to the Tracker, Tom Brown, Jr., whose tracking & wilderness survival school I attended at various times since 1998. Tom's first student, Jon Young, has been my primary nature mentor for many years.

I learned the ancient skills of tracking, bird language, and the art of mentoring from Jon Young in a working mentorship, helping others to put the tools of deep nature connection into practice around the world. Jon taught me in the same way he learned from Tom Brown--through Coyote Teaching--rarely giving me answers, but instead asking questions and setting a container in which I could follow my curiosity and develop my own understanding. My goal in participating within this lineage has always been one of service--to help share this connective path with others through various media, workshops, and one-to-one venues. For me this has been a path of continual enlightenment and a chance to hold space for others in introducing Nature as a mentor, healer, guide, and teacher...an ancient relationship that we need, I believe, to desperately bring back into the modern (dis)culture.

This lineage is an embodied one, involving a gradual initiation process of awakening the senses and calibrating intuitive awareness to the patterns of Nature--a quest that starts with recognizing the plants, animals, and elements around your sit spot, growing into a felt understanding of the subtle lines of communication moving across the land, and that leads ultimately to the place of Vision and authentic service.

The Coyote Mentoring method informs how I guide my own clients - through deep listening, encouraging sensory-based storytelling, asking questions that meet them at their edge to encourage observation and reflection, and offering practices that support meaningful engagement and connection with Nature and Vision. And above all, following inner vision, the voice of emergent creativity that guides us to our fullest expression of our calling.

It's been my honor to have mentored clients on every continent (except Antarctica - still waiting for that one). The fun thing is, because these connective processes are universal, they work anywhere--even if I've never been there yet myself. "The Coyote Teacher always learns the most"...so I get to learn about new places and animals all the time, simply by sharing my own curiosity and modeling the Tracking Questions that connect our senses with our environment.

However, most people don't have the time to go on a decade-plus traditional mentoring journey. Because I'm an endlessly curious mystic-at-heart and constant learner, I've also sought out perspectives from other paths that can help people in the midst of modern life to accelerate their connection and enjoy breakthroughs in mind-heart alignment, spiritual discovery, and learning Nature's language.

One other teacher that I must mention here is the late Lakota elder Gilbert Walking Bull, who was raised in a family lineage of healers and holy people that worked to keep their traditional ceremonies and culture alive in a time of intense and overt oppression (an ongoing challenge that continues systemically today). Gilbert was an amazing seer who saw deep into the nature of reality. He taught me that all things are connected, and that when you work with any one piece of the whole (be it mind, heart, body, soul, or spirit) that it pulls on everything else...and he showed me that nothing is impossible. He taught me about focus, internal alignment, and to find hope through our connection with those natural powers of creativity that bring healing and peace.

I trained and certified in Lee Holden's original Santa Cruz Chi Center Qigong Practitioner program back when I lived in his neighborhood, with a focus on Five Elements Qigong and Universal Tao internal alchemy. This included training with Lee's teacher Mantak Chia and with Yang, Jwing-Ming. We learned many medical qigong forms, esoteric meditation techniques, and even how to run energy with trees--pretty fun stuff and amazingly blissful meditative practices that I teach periodically today (and weave into mentoring when appropriate).

During that time (2010-16) I also studied intensively with the Tai Chi Natural Health Club, with longtime students of Chang I-Chung, practicing the Chen Pan Ling/"Nanking 99" Form, and dabbled in Bunjinkan Ninjutsu with Daishihan Mark Roemke who I traded with teaching tracking skills for ninja lessons. A fun time, probably 15-20 hours a week training something or the other when I wasn't wandering the California coastal range or on the beach tracking, either alone or guiding groups. Got some desk time in there too for good measure writing nature connection curriculum and teaching online courses, otherwise playing mandolin in a barn dance band, and mentoring folks who also wanted to learn these ways.

I followed up those six years with Lee with four intensive years in New York state with Hawksbrother (B.P. Chan's apprentice from the Tai Chi Farm)--a typical session had us warming up with shuai shou (throwing the hands), holding standing zhan zhung poses (i.e. standing like a tree, etc.) alternating with flowing qigong sets (Ten Taoists, Eight Brocades, Ten Chikung) and breathwork, then into 2nd Generation Yang Form, and back into meditation...old school. Or we'd take one move from the Tai Chi form and hold it and notice the energy flow. Same routine at home between classes. One of Hawks' friends had a sign over the door that read, "The Secret is Standing." I still feel like I just dipped my toe in the vast ocean of internal arts, but I gradually felt my body movements unifying, arms floating, energy flowing.

Hawks never directly answered a question (another Coyote Teacher), though he encouraged questions and wouldn't teach until we came up with something to inquire into. He'd say, "Oh... watch this" and show something, and leave it to us to figure out what he was doing (this meant testing ideas again and again, demonstrating the move to see if we'd "got it", and then watching our teacher with new eyes and testing some more...a two-hour lab process each time). Or standing in posture while adjustments were made, again and again. Usually we didn't get it, but we got closer and our experiments taught us more than words can tell.

Hawks said it so many times but it took awhile to sink in, that even if he explained a move to the letter that didn't mean a person could he actually do it, because "their body had to change"--Tai Chi rewires how one moves and holds themselves; it's an inside job. Fascia releases, tendons change, bone and marrow thickens, motion integrates, muscles softens to follow intent, chi flows naturally. Lots of things moving all at once or in sequence. Energy comes up from the feet, turns through the waist, goes up and over the head, expresses out through the arms. Nothing that can be rushed. Tai chi is said to be like a rice paper book that thickens one sheet at a time. Several thousand hours of practice later, I'm still learning and getting epiphanies from those "watch this" moments and the questions they opened, marking one page or even one letter in the book with each learning. Maybe some day I'll "get it"...and in the meantime, I'll have lots of fun experimenting. I slowed down my practice (no pun intended) after an unrelated injury, but each time I come back to it there's a shift and new understanding. I think Hawks setup my brain to keep learning even during rest periods. Yes, a good teacher shows proper technique. A great teacher also keeps you hungry and teaches you how to learn.

This path has brought me excellent energy tools that I use to help clients find bliss, enhance qi flow, dissolve energetic blockages, and enjoy connections with Nature in a deeper way. They come in when needed and appropriate to supplement the nature connection or vision work journey, and sometimes clients choose to focus on this path for a period of time. I also offer some online workshops around special topics in qigong.

My studies of meditation began at age 14 when a mysterious and undeniable synchronicity brought me into contact with Tree of Life hermetic practices. Not long after, Yogananda's meditation home-study training caught my interest, and thus began a deep dive into Raja Yoga which brought me great peace and focus, giving me a baseline practice and reference point to build from.

Later, I sought out deeper teachings in the Western Hermetic Arts, that great storehouse of wisdom that has percolated down the ages, a mixture of various streams of practice that's brought so many generations into an exploration of harmony between microcosm and macrocosm. One particular teacher who's taught me so much is R.J. Stewart, the Scottish seer whose vast body of work touches on many points of practice, ranging from earth magic to internal alchemy. I find the Tree of Life to be a potent reference point for consciousness work on the Inner, a living doorway to change and perspective. Given the exchanges that occurred along the Silk Road, it's also interesting to experience the meditative practices of Alchemy that have developed from both east and west.

I draw upon insights from modern research into the mind and consciousness to support change work. I am a Certified Professional Life Coach (CPC), and I hold a Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP) from the Flourishing Center.

As a Rapid Reprogramming™ subconscious healing provider, I offer an inquiry-based process for retraining the brain's neural networks to release painful or unhelpful thoughts (and the feelings attached to them) to enjoy greater peace, centering, and ease. This ingenious transformation method (created by Dianah Johnson) is the focus of my Light Within coaching program, designed to guide clients in saying yes to the next level of their deep purpose work by releasing outworn limitations and stuck areas.