Born and raised in Southern California, my journey with mindfulness started with nature. From a young age, I was always captivated by the changing beauty of nature– whether that was the first signs of snow on the San Gabriel mountains or the blanket of purple flowers that fell from the Jacaranda tree by my house. While I never thought of this as mindfulness at the time, in a small way it was. It put me in touch with a source of solace I have come to know so sweetly now–the solace of being in touch with the present moment. 

 

My journey with mindfulness picked up again as freshman in college when I started to meditate. While I learned a lot about myself during this time, my motivation and goal for meditating was to curb the emotions and thoughts that I didn’t like and instead cultivate this “always good and peaceful” state of my mind that so many of us want and expect coming into meditation. 

 

My interest in mindfulness continued to blossom and I spent three months in Thailand studying Buddhism and understanding a way of life steeped in Buddhist teachings. After graduating from college, I spent a year working at the UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Mindfulness & Human Potential under Dr. Alissa Mrazek and Dr. Michael Mrazek. It was during this time that my understanding of meditation began to mature. I began to see that the true power of mindfulness was not in always feeling good, but in learning to become aware of all my thoughts, emotions, and experiences, with a sense of openness and kindness. 

Currently, I am affiliated with the Mindfulness Training Institute under Mark Coleman and Martin Alyward. As a certified mindfulness teacher, I hope to guide people through an experiential sense of what it means to be compassionately present with all of their experience.