Focusing 

I have been studying inner-relationship Focusing I Since 2017. I've completed all four basic levels, as well as a two-year teacher and practitioner training For which I am certified by the International Focusing Institute. My teachers were Mary Love May and Cathy Pascal, both of whom were students of Ann Weiser Cornell – herself was a student of the founder of Focusing: Eugene Gendlin. Focusing is a somatic mode of self inquiry, in which we develop the capacities of Presence and transformation by spending time with our ever-unfolding internal world, accompanied by a guide or a companion. 

Eugene Gendlin "discovered" and developed Focusing in the 1970s while conducting research at the University of Chicago on which factors made Cognitive Behavioral Therapy more or less effective. His findings, along with his collaborations with other researchers such as Carl Rogers, contributed to the development of Focusing. His student Ann-Weiser Cornell eventually developed the branch known as Inner-Relationship Focusing along with Barbara McGravin, greatly contributing to later modalities such as Somatic Experiencing. 

Focusing is a practice and a structure for individual as well as group work; it is also a lens through which I apply other structures and modalities in my practice under the mentorship of Russel and Linda Delman in their 3-year Embodied Life Mentorship Program, which interweaves Focusing with Feldenkrais, Non-violent communication and Zen Buddhism. 

Contemporary Dance, Improv & Artmaking 

I trained as a contemporary dancer and choreographer in New York and Europe before beginning my professional career in 2006. Since that time, I've performed, choreographed and taught in more than a dozen countries on four continents, and have received several commissions and awards for my work. 

My lineage in contemporary dance is very broad, and my training ranges from classical ballet to Modern (Graham, Limon, Horton), to Contemporary dance practices (release, Gaga, floor work, improvisation, contact improvisation, authentic movement, states, scores etc.) to ultimately just 

range of body-based experiences and practices honed by two decades of professional experience on two continents with myriad colleagues. 

Though my relationship to dance and to dancing is, these days, less about creating or performing choreographies, I am still fully and absolutely an artist, and the embodied creative act remains a cornerstone of my somatic facilitation. Sometimes, somatic facilitation serves my creative work, and other times, the creative impulse is at the heart of my facilitation.

This is because so many aspects of our being come alive in the creative act, especially when our bodies – the embodied complexity of ourselves, is at the center. I dance now not as a means of production, but as a means to practice a way of being in the world. To engage in the poetics of such a practice, in my experience, invites aliveness, wonder, magic, and the possibility of greater becoming in our own interiority; it also contains the possibility to feel and to process collectively, which itself is a ground for greater transformation.

Generative Somatics

My introduction to GS came in the late 2010s, as my political awareness began to develop within the context of living in the United States, and understanding more deeply, my own positionality with respect to the movement for Black lives, #metoo and the rise of mainstream American Fascism. 

As a white-bodied, cis-gendered man, I became increasingly aware of the many ways that the dominant culture lives in my embodied habits and ways of being. The first part of my journey, as is the ease with many people sharing my identities, who also share a similar political analysis, was to feel some sense of shame and a need for self-erasure (or defensiveness, as is also the case for many folx who look like me). Part of my journey with GS has been about learning and practicing the tools to both de-pattern my socialized habits, while also remaining in embodied relationship and community. 

Generative Somatics is a set of body-based tools and practices for awareness and transformation informed by a political analysis that centers Black, Brown, Queer and Trans experiences for the greater goal of collective liberation. My own study of the literature and practices of GS was later grounded in my Embodied Leadership training from Sanctuary Embodied in Durham, NC, under the instruction of Adaku Utah, Yashna Padamsee, Eliana Rubin and Fayza Bundalli.

Aikido

I hold a first degree black belt (shodan) in Aikido as a member of the United States Aikido Federation. I've been in committed practice since 2013, when I began in Berlin with Gerhard Walter Shihan (8" Dan), a student of Hiroshi Tada and Masamichi Noro Shihans. In the United States, my teachers are Steve Kaufmann Shihan and Frank Apodaca Shihan, students of Yoshimitsu Yamada, Mitsunari Kanai, Seiich; Sugand and Kazilo Chiba Shihans, all of whom studied with the founder of Aikido: Morihei Ueshiba. I currently practice and occasionally teach Aikido at Open Sky Aikikai in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

Aikido literally translates from Japanese as: The Way of Harmonizing Energy. As a grappling martial art, it is a structure for embodying the complex and dynamic navigation between self and other. Its forms contain many questions, which are not to be answered, but spiritually grappled with through continuous practice: entering and going around, right distance, confronting versus allowing. I believe at the heart of Aikido lies the very nature of love, and a life-long practice whose concepts are processed through the body. 

Beyond my formal practice of Aikido within a dojo setting, I bring its many principles and dynamics into my facilitation and practical spaces, while remaining clear, that Aikido itself, a Culturally specific japanese form, is not being taught or appropriated outside of a traditional dojo. Instead, I borrow certain principles and forms to open  and illustrate other aspects of my 

work. Indeed, my study of Aikido informs my study of Generative Somatics, and my study and practice in Zazen informs my practice of Aikido. 

ManKind Project & work with male-identified people

I began with the ManKind Project in April 2024, and have since continued to be involved with the organization through a series of mentorships, workshops, bi-weekly practice groups and co-facilitation staffings. The ManKind project is on international organization that both theorizes and practices the transformation society aided by the transformation of those identifying and socialized as men, towards a greater state of maturity and accountability with themselves, and in healthy, living and restorative relationships to others and to their communities, 

I am drawn to the organization, in part, because of its commitment to diversity, equity 

And inclusion of difference across intersecting identities, and its commitment to evolve beyond earlier incarnations that drew (in my opinion) too heavily on forms of cultural appropriation. This line of work also integrates several practices that resonate with me, and is broadly in alignment with my commitment to radical liberation from harmful systems. 

In particular, the work practiced through ManKind is grounded in Jungian Depth Psychology and Shadow Work, and often uses tools or modalities such as psychodrama, or dynamics found in Internal Family Systems. These all provide adjacent perspectives to my Focusing practice, and the emphasis on calibration of archetypal energies is a profound framework for sensing into the expression of our internal worlds. 

I am currently on learning track within the organization's "Grounding and Renewal” processes, which connect to elemental experiences, particularly the elements of earth and fire, in order to embody and ground in a sense of the sacred, and in that which is greater than our individual stories. My teachers in this practice are Alex Fish, Ian Roark and Tyrone Marsh and Jack Armstrong.