As an adjunct faculty member at Bastyr University, and an alumni of Antioch University where I completed a master's degree, I've long been interested in alternative approaches to healing and personal transformation. As a psychotherapist since 1990, I've learned that people make the biggest changes when new insights and understandings are linked to a shift in bodily felt experience. This led me to curiosity about whether some somatic sensations might actually be evidence of the vital force, or what naturopaths call the "vis medicatrix naturae." That curiosity, and the desire to complete my education, formed the basis of my doctoral studies at Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in San Francisco, where I developed theories and research methodology for investigating the lived experience of the subtle energy of healing presence. This background as a researcher/psychologist now has me interested in the world of flower essence remedies as subtle energy catalysts working on mind and spirit to effect profound change. I also continue to write on topics of subtle energy and personal transformation. And I teach on grief and loss in midwifery at Bastyr. My new book will be a textbook on grief for midwives and others in the natural childbirth field. For fun, I do astrology and tarot readings --- which for me is just another form of subtle energy (the energy of intuition) presented in mythological, psychospiritual, and vitalistic images and connections.

Pioneered the Organic Inquiry research methodology at Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center 2000-2003, and wrote a textbook for others: An Organic Inquiry Primer for the Novice Researcher---A Sacred Approach to Disciplined Knowing.

Dissertation with Distinction award for the academic version of Healing Presence, from Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco, 2003.

Sidney M Jourard Award for Research for the Healing Presence project, American Psychological Association, Humanistic Psych Div, 2004.