My teaching philosophy is participatory. Put simply, people learn more when they’re doing things, saying things and using their bodies. The more embodied the learning, the more likely it will create a lasting impact.
I also view learning environments as a space of role fluidity where we learn communally: I learn from my students while providing a safe learning environment for them to learn.
Practically, I have over six years classroom experience teaching math, science and English. I’ve worked with children in elementary school, taught in high schools, adult education, and at the University level as a graduate research and teacher’s assistant.
I love facilitating groups and holding transformative space. It’s my life’s work to infuse these groups with witness consciousness, deep democracy, creativity, generativity and healing.
Public speaking remains one of the greatest fears people have next to death – irrespective of their status or expertise. It’s been an honor to walk people through embracing their vulnerability, facing their fear and overcoming it.
And they do, every time.
I’ve worked as a Mindfulness Communications Coach and Workshop Facilitator in dozens of countries around the world. Leading multicultural groups ranging from 10 to 30 people, through transformative, participatory, life-changing experiences. Reach out if you’re interested in Communications Coaching and Public Speaking Training for you or your organization
Other facilitation skills such as archetypal work, dream body and trauma informed nervous system regulation work heavily inform my philosophy. I’m a certified Women’s Temple facilitator and Yoga Instructor. I ran my own Yoga Studio in Goa, India for three years. I’ve worked with a Neurophysiologist on my own personal healing journey and habitually stay informed on applied research in this field.
Much of our behavior is driven by the unconscious – or as we say in Process Work – is secondary, or outside of our primary consensus reality lens. These can be beautiful things, driving positive behavior; and they can be places of hurt where our power gets locked up in loops.
I’ve coached close to a thousand people over the last five years as a Communications Coach. And over the last two years, I’ve begun developing my expertise as a certified Process Worker – a close relationship to Jungian Psychology – and as a certified Process Oriented Coach.
As a coach and awareness facilitator, I partner with you, we move at your speed and depth. Through this partnership, awareness and empowerment grows helping you to actualize your process.
I see myself as a space for you to experience the deeper undercurrents of your Self. As a relational mirror, I bring in what I see, testing it against your experience. Fundamental to my role as a coach is inner work. Which means, I do my own work – inside and outside of the session.
One of the ways I process and make sense of my experience is to explore the edges of my known world. This is where art comes in. I write, I use instruments, sounds and voice to create soundscapes and I animate research using media, including the body.
I grew up a dancer and have stayed a dancer, although I don’t always make enough time to dance. The disciplines I’ve been immersed in include Ballet, Modern, Jazz, Flamenco, West African, Tribal Belly dance and Postmodern Contemporary. I lived onstage as a performer in my youth. And was a part of a couple of productions in my 20’s and 30’s. I’ve ventured into partner dances like Salsa, Tango and other ballroom dances to a lesser extent.
I learn who I am and what I think when I write. I write. I write.
A side
Certificate in Process Oriented Coaching, Global Coaching Institute, 2023
Certified Process Worker, Process Work Institute, 2023
MS Sustainable Development, Arizona State University, 2020
BS Environmental Resources Engineering, Humboldt State University, 2011
B side
Apprenticeship Voice and Somatic Therapy, 2023
Temple facilitator Awakening Women, 2016-2017
Initiate of the 13 Moon Mystery School, 2015
Vipassana Meditation, 2005 to present
My story
I grew up at a time, in a place and to a family of privilege: 1982, Portland Oregon.
As it is the case for most people, some things came easy for me, others I have to practice.
I'm fortunate that authenticity comes easy - as though I was born with a stubborn sense of what it means to be Emily. I have to work diligently to trust - trust myself, life, others...
Once, I bemoaned my sensitivity - I now see it as a superpower and an act of rebellion against the status quo.
As it is the case for most people, some things came easy for me, others I have to practice.
I'm fortunate that authenticity comes easy - as though I was born with a stubborn sense of what it means to be Emily. I have to work diligently to trust - trust myself, life, others...
Once, I bemoaned my sensitivity - I now see it as a superpower and an act of rebellion against the status quo.
From a young age, I was given a choice. The most important one was how I wanted to perceive, react and relate to what was happening to me. We may ride the winds of the Tao, of relationality, but we get to choose our part. I choose to be the change I wish to see.

I grew up questioning everything.
Pursuit of knowledge caused my awareness to grow. The generative nature of this process gave rise to a personal ethics – distaste of lies and injustice, anger towards people who abused their power.
And…
The troubles of the world showed me to value beauty, greed showed me to value justice and ignorance to value curiosity…
The original story I had been told and was retelling, was that if I wanted to change the world, I needed to be credible in the sciences, get a law degree and go fight bad guys. On the surface, this seemed logical.
But in my early 20’s I experienced a sort of crack in my reality – the worldview I was operating under fell apart in my hands. I came to find that this mindset was the problem. Any solution I would come up with to “change the world” was arising from a mind that had been created by the world I wanted to change. A mind driven by the conditioned. By the past…
If I wanted change, I needed to start with myself.

Leh Ladakh, home to a large Tibetan diaspora in Northern India… I decided on this trip to open my own yoga studio in Goa.
This fissure in my world view happened around the same time that I experienced the sudden death of a beloved companion and marks the beginning of my contemplative practice. It led me on a journey to find my own voice, to trust and to embody the change in me.
From published engineer, soon to be lawyer, to without a plan. I traded comfort, status, money and rank for uncertainty.
I moved to India and spent six years entrepreneur’ing and hustling, working in international development – both the glamorous and not so glamorous side of it – studying, loving, healing and feeling. There, I eventually created a community yoga studio open to local women and later to tourists.
Six years later, I returned to the United States to attend graduate school. During that time, I started coaching communications workshops all over the world. I decided that direct impact – and not academia – was what I needed and what the world needed of me, so I left the PhD program, moved to Colorado and devoted myself to teaching and coaching.
My shaggy winter girl, Dunnit. A fierce cow-hound, adventurer and independent spirit. She mirrors authenticity to me, we follow the unfurling way as it shows itself.

We are made of change.
To honor and live into the change I wish to see in the world, I am constantly choosing change, growth, Process.
This choice is about integrating lessons from my past, deconstructing and reconstructing my beliefs and values, understanding which beliefs and stories are mine and which ones I’ve internalized from the culture. The choice is about relationship. Relationship with the change that moves me. Respecting the mutuality of relationships and that the other end of it is necessarily uncertainty.
It’s my life’s work to normalize mystery as a way of life. Not to tame it or colonize it, but to revel in the wilderness of the unknown.
I’ve had a lot of support along the way. My parents, my friends, my teachers…
I’m grateful to those who have nurtured me, taught me, disrupted me, to those who have come before – inspiring me with their courage, risking their lives to feel and express their truth. I’m indebted to those who risk a life of caring, of love.
A SIDE
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BSIDE
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Change the color to match your brand or vision, add your logo, choose the perfect layout, modify menu settings, add animations, add shape dividers, increase engagement with call to action and more.
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Long headline on two lines to turn your visitors into users
Change the color to match your brand or vision, add your logo, choose the perfect layout, modify menu settings, add animations, add shape dividers, increase engagement with call to action and more.