After sev­er­al years as a jour­nal­ist, inter­view­ing many celebri­ties and cul­tur­al peak per­form­ers, I abrupt­ly switched careers.  I real­ized I had learn­ing some­thing impor­tant.  Many of these peo­ple had over­come some adver­si­ty or tragedy or not-the-best fam­i­ly cir­cum­stances in order to ful­fill their dream.  They were ordi­nary peo­ple liv­ing extra­or­di­nary lives.  I want­ed to find out how they did it.  I start­ed asking,

“What is consciousness?”           “How do people change?”

“What is consciousness?”

“How do people change?”

At the time that I entered the field of psy­chol­o­gy, grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion was still focused on a dis­ease or dis­or­der mod­el.  But I was inter­est­ed in well­ness and cre­ativ­i­ty, as expressed in the aver­age person’s life.  How do peo­ple dis­cov­er their inner strengths and over­come life’s adver­si­ties… surf the waves of life’s adver­si­ty and still stay afloat? In the 1970’s and 1980’s, there was a rev­o­lu­tion of “new age” thought about well­ness that has since broad­ened the men­tal health field into branch­es of holis­tic health, pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy and life coach­ing.   An impor­tant part of this rev­o­lu­tion has been the inven­tion and use of MRI and PET scans to bet­ter pic­ture how the brain actu­al­ly func­tions in response to a wide range of thought process­es. Thus, after earn­ing my doc­tor­ate at UCLA, I did post-doc­tor­al train­ing in neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy at UCLA.   I learned about the mind-body con­nec­tion not only from a philo­soph­i­cal, the­o­ret­i­cal view­point but also from phys­i­o­log­i­cal evi­dence.  This under­stand­ing became the basis for my psy­chother­a­py prac­tice, which is cen­tered in neu­robe­hav­ioral self-regulation.

I get excit­ed when I can help clients use their minds to cre­ate increas­ing moments of inner peace, regard­less of life’s exter­nal tur­bu­lent circumstances.

Many of the “alter­na­tive heal­ing” prac­tices gath­ered from dif­fer­ent cul­tures around the world are being inte­grat­ed into prac­tices acces­si­ble to the ordi­nary per­son.  And neu­ro­science research, using Mag­net­ic Res­o­nance Imag­ing and PET scan imag­ing of the brain, is bear­ing out the truths of these practices.

Using biofeed­back and low-tech ver­sions of phys­i­o­log­i­cal self-reg­u­la­tion of the auto­nom­ic ner­vous sys­tem, I guide my clients to regain mas­tery over their own ner­vous sys­tem, and con­scious­ness, while liv­ing in a world that increas­ing­ly pulls us toward seek­ing ful­fill­ment out­side of our­selves (…the per­fect mate…the biggest car…the most money…the pret­ti­est Me…).  It’s okay to have things, but they don’t pro­vide hap­pi­ness for very long or that high­est state of Being, Inner Peace.

I have pursued, and continue to seek out, cutting edge techniques and processes to help myself and my clients.  I pass them on to you…with Love.