Namaste & Welcome!

I’m Catherine.  My passions are living, loving and learning especially as expressed through bodywork, meditation and yoga. I find these practices are often interchangeable – bodywork and yoga often becoming forms of moving meditation or relationships often expressing through touch with hands and heart.  This work and study has inspired me to try to live more consciously – that is to stay awake and be present to my self, others and the world, (humbling and humorous).

I hope to use this site to share the teachings and skills I’ve been blessed to experience through membership in the wonderful bodywork, meditation and yoga communities of greater Seattle.   I also hope it will be a fun way to share what concerns and delights me in art, music, books and film.

I began my journey as a massage therapist studying with Tom Johnston at the BodyMind Academy in 1997.  Since then I’ve explored many forms of touch that integrate different aspects of yogic healing practice.   Thai Yoga Therapy, is natural synthesis of massage and yoga.  Ritam Healing Arts founder Saul David Raye introduced me to this wonderful work and I now study with Eric Spivack at Soaring Crane Healing Arts.  Every year I continue to train in various methods of working with chronic injury and illness.

In 1998, I began my yoga journey studying with Robin Rothenberg of Essential Yoga Therapy and Gary Kraftsow of the American Viniyoga Institute.  Viniyoga is a particular form of yoga, which emphasizes therapeutic movement.   This healing approach to yoga inspired my path of practice and training.  I studied prenatal yoga instruction with Colette Crawford at the Seattle Holistic Center.  Colette’s commitment to supporting women consciously birth their babies changed my life.  I trained as a doula and taught a prenatal yoga program for many years.  This gifted me with the experience of touching the lives of many beautiful women through yoga and attending the birth of my two grandchildren Cadence and Nolan.

I became certified as an Integrative Yoga Therapist through Joseph Le Page school of Integrative Yoga Therapy in 2009.  Joseph’s program enriched my life deeply with its “Koshic” model of practice and therapy and an international network of yoga therapists who support one another with inspiration, resources and suggestions.  The Koshic model embraces the multiple dimensions of being, physical, energetic, mental, intuitive, spiritual, with its many practices including asana, pranayama,  mudra, yoga Nidra and meditation.   Learning this approach has enabled me to work more deeply with groups and individuals who are experiencing health and living challenges.

I continue to study healing approaches that integrate elements of touch and yoga including Mukunda Styles Funtional Yoga Therapy as taught by Maria Kali Ma and Doug Keller’s Swantantriya Yoga Therapy.

I began exploring meditation at the Green Gulch Zen Center while living in West Marin County in my late teens and early twenties.  Meditation practice and study has helped me to love people and nature.  My sister Jeni introduced me to Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing and Joanna Macy’s work in engaged Buddhism.  I met my partner, Tim, in our neighborhood DharmaSound Zen Center.  I feel so deeply grateful for the gifted teachers Ani Pema Chodron, Jack Kornfield, Rodney Smith, Michael Stone, Bhodipaksa who offer their work so freely.  Their generosity has enabled me to continue my studies while living at the end of a dirt road in the woods.

I welcome your curiosity and interest – we really are connected through this amazing web of life.  Hopefully this site of sharing can serve as sparkling strand in Indra’s net!