About Nan

I am a licensed psychotherapist holding a Master’s in Contemplative Psychology and Buddhist Psychotherapy from Naropa University, with PhD-level coursework in Jungian depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and in somatic psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

 

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I have experience serving on Naropa University’s Master's Somatic Counseling program and have spent many years living, learning, teaching, and practicing at Esalen Institute — one of the few places in the world where the boundaries between disciplines have always been porous. There, I have worked directly alongside senior lineage holders in embodied relational Gestalt and somatic psychology, including extended intensives assisting with Michael Clemmens, PsyD, of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. I am a certified Esalen Massage practitioner and have assisted master teachers in presence based bodywork — and through Esalen’s singular revolving community of elders, practitioners, and lineage holders, I have had the rare opportunity to study and teach alongside some of the most significant figures in embodiment, movement, and somatic tradition, including within the 5Rhythms work of Gabrielle Roth, whose shamanic movement practice was itself born at Esalen from the fertile ground of Fritz and Laura Perls’ original Gestalt work. The development of Holotropic Breathwork by Stanislav and Christina Grof, also rooted in the Esalen container, has been another formative current in this formation, shaping my understanding of non-ordinary states of consciousness and their role in deep psychological reorganization.

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Esalen has also been the site of a deeper formation— one that cannot be reduced to any single training. My somatic lineage expanded through ongoing study in Continuum — originated by Emilie Conrad and carried forward by Susan Harper — and through work with Michael Morin-Skelton in contemplative movement. The work of Ida Rolf and that of Moshe Feldenkrais have been equally present in this formation — encountered through direct study, through teaching alongside senior practitioners of both traditions, and through the kind of slow absorption that happens when you spend years inside an environment where their influence is simply in the walls. The philosophical ground beneath much of this work has been shaped by David Abram, whose thinking at the intersection of phenomenology, ecology, and the animate earth has been a formative and enduring influence.

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For over two decades, I taught and practiced Yoga philosophy, asana, and meditation nationally and internationally — including years of immersive study and teaching within the Jivamukti lineage. This included teaching at the flagship Jivamukti studio in Manhattan, assisting the founders, and teaching residencies in studios across Europe, working both in public teaching contexts and privately with high-profile and public-facing clientele navigating the demands of visibility and the interior life that visibility often obscures. My study extended into Ayurveda and the broader philosophical traditions of India from which Yoga emerges —in conversation with modern approaches to dietary philosophy. This inquiry includes guiding groups and individuals through extended journeys of dietary reflection, cleansing, and somatic transformation rooted in those traditions.

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For twenty-five years, I have been in deep study with indigenous elders of North, Central, and South America — engaging the shamanic traditions of those cultures not as a tourist but as a sustained practitioner. This includes extensive work with master plant teachers, herbalism, and the ceremonial and ritual practices in extended states of non-ordinary consciousness through which those traditions transmit their understanding of the body, the psyche, and the living world.

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More important than any single lineage is this breadth this orientation has cultivated: the capacity to stay steady in ambiguity, to track lived experience as it unfolds, and to trust timing rather than impose solutions.

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I bring structure where it is needed, restraint where it serves, and care for pacing as an expression of respect.

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I am less interested in labels than in patterns, and less interested in quick answers than in what is already organizing itself.

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I am a lifelong student and teacher. Curiosity and a certain quality of playfulness are central to how I work—and I remain in committed relationship to expanding awareness in all forms. 

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I work best with people who value honesty, curiosity, and complexity, and who are willing to move slowly enough for real change to take hold.

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This is not a high-volume practice, and fit matters—for both of us.