CURRENT MISSION

To inspire and be inspired...

ABOUT ME

I AM in Love with LIFE!And In deep gratitude for all the lessons I have learned and continue to learn along this Mysterious journey. I am founder of Inspired Life Workshops (www.InspiredLifeWorkshops.org), The Voice of the Earth (www.thevoiceoftheearth.com) and Expand the Love (www.ExpandtheLove.com), Vice President of Rattle the Cage Productions (www.RattletheCage.org), and a musician with Song of the Soul (www.myspace.com/SongoftheSoul)Imagination and creative expression feed my soul. I have a MS in Environmental Studies with a focus on deep ecology, education and living systems from Florida International University and have studied directly with world-renowned systems scholar and deep ecologist Joanna Macy, creator of The Work That Reconnects, as well as in-depth studies of The New Cosmology and The Universe Story—the work of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme—at Genesis Farm with Miriam MacGillis. Over the past 15 years, I have been active in community organization and Social Permaculture, environmental education, performance art and music, producing and hosting conscious events, facilitating workshops and speaking on environmental ethics and education, cosmology, living systems, transformation and deep ecology at conferences, festivals, and for organizations and universities both nationally and internationally. Im also a licensed massage therapist for over 17 years, specializing in neuromuscular therapy, deep healing techniques and natural medicine. I'm in love with the mountains, spending time in the woods...experiencing that deep connection with the Earth, knowing that we truly are Nature. I believe in sharing wisdom and adventure! Giving from my heart. Forgiveness...Always learning, always in Truth...for we are all in the midst of conscious evolution.

PHILOSOPHY

The greatest gift in life is LOVE. I believe in Truth, living passionately, acceptance, forgiveness and understanding. I live a life that is deeply meaningful, making choices that enrich my spirit and inspire!

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

Well, besides the wide variety of random, spontaneous couches and crashes and unexpected natural couchsurfing experiences, I am new to this community. Im looking forward to meeting beautiful kindred spirits!!!

Interests

Exploring this beautiful earth, hiking, camping, yoga, meditation, firsts, listening to the wind, drinking sunsets, dreaming, teaching, learning, common sense, quick wit, uncontrollable laughter, intense late night conversations, road trips, dusk, staying up all night until the weeee hours when sleepiness begins to consume me and the world takes on an unusual hazy, dream-like quality, reading great literature and poetry, classical mythology, writing beautiful music, poetry and fiction, the Beat generation, Native American spirituality, philosophy, wine by candlelight, sensual exploration, humane education, ecological awareness, deep ecology, playing make-believe, performance art, taiko drumming, butoh, jazz, and modern avant-garde dance, theatre, spontaneous spoken word, drumming, Truth.

• arts
• writing
• literature
• poetry
• performing arts
• festivals
• dancing
• education
• ethics
• wine
• yoga
• meditation
• drinking
• reading
• music
• jazz
• spoken word
• hiking
• camping
• ecology
• teaching
• environmental studies
• medicine
• road trips
• mountains

Music, Movies, and Books

Music: Song of the Soul (my band) ;-), Peter Gabriel, Jeff Buckley! Tom Waits, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Ali Farka Toure, Ry Cooder, Ravi Shankar, Coltrane, Miles, Billie, Elvis Costello, Danny Elfman and Oingo Boingo, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, Cream, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Hendrix, Wilco, Philip Glass, Bright Eyes, Built to Spill, Neo, Death Cab, Delerium, Dead Can Dance, Grant-lee Phillips, Mutual Admiration Society, Nick Drake, Jim White, Wierd Al, They Might Be Giants, U2, Iron and Wine, Howie Day, Ben Folds, Mozart, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Orff...Ahhhhh! it's hard to stop...there is so much beautiful music!

Movies: Dark comedies, crazy fun, rolling on the ground, tom hanks in the money pit when the tub crashes through the floor comedies, witty dialogue, beautiful cinematography, movies that make you think and feel intensely, fantastic and imaginative movies that really push the boundaries of reality, August Rush!, Labyrinth, Legend, Life is Beautiful...La Vita E' Bella, LOTR, Star Wars, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Monty Python period!, The Neverending Story, The Princess Bride, Batman, The Lorax, the Hudsucker Proxy, I Heart Huckabees, The Three Amigos, Shanghai Noon, Fear and Loathing..., Jacob's Ladder, Blade Runner, Amelie, Fight Club, Brazil, 12 Monkeys, A Clockwork Orange, 2001, Swing Kids, Natural Born Killers, Moulin Rouge, Heathers, Serendipity, Harold and Maude, the Red Violin, Leaving Las Vegas, The Shawshank Redemption, Baraka, The Yes Men, Documentaries!!!... Almost everything with Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes, Meryl Streep, Kubrick, Cohen Bros, Tarantino, Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, Aronofsky, Woo, Lucas, and Benigni

Books: I LOVE to read...AND RE-READ. Hermann Hesse is brilliant! Tom Robbins, Joanna Macy, Joseph Campbell, Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, C.S. Lewis, Shel Silverstein, T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Coelho, Richard Bach, SARK, A. Huxley, Ovid, Aldo Leopold, Thoreau, Teilhard de Chardin, Tolle, Kahlil Gibran, Sri Aurobindo, Rumi, Samuel Beckett, Kafka, Thoreau, Rand, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson, Rachel Carson, Lovecraft, Borges, Baudelaire, Bukowski, Artaud, Tagore, Ezra Pound, Gary Snyder, Whitman, Rilke, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Black Elk, James Baldwin...and, of course, Tales of a Female Nomad.

Im currently reading: The Global Shift, Edmund Bourne

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Honestly...there are many. One amazing experience was tree-planting on the Apache reservation in New Mexico. I lived in my tent for a month in the mountains, breathing so deeply, working in the land, experiencing the natural rhythms of the Earth: the sounds, the smells, the sensation of the wind...it was magnificent. It's amazing how distracted we can become surrounded by constant noise and stimulation. I never felt so much presence as in the silence of that sacred space. It was one of the greatest reminders of just how important it is for us to experience natural wild spaces, to get out of our boxed and contrived environments, to just BE. ;-)

Countries I’ve Visited

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Peru, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Vatican City State

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States

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