Bio
My passion for natural medicine began as many stories do, “So, there was this girl…”, who I followed to Hawai’i in 2008 to partake in my first Yoga Teacher Training at Yoga Hanalei in Hanalei, HI. (coincidentally the same place Puff the Magic Dragon hails from) with the absolutely spectacular yogini Bhavani Maki. Although I couldn’t have imagined at the time, this training sparked an interest within and fervor for the Eastern philosophies of healing arts leading me to study Ayurveda, the sister science of Yoga, at the Ayurvedic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico from 2009-2010 under the guidance of world renown Dr. Vasant Lad. I continued to deepen my own understanding of East Indian philosophy with further practice and training in Yoga at the Mount Madonna Center in Watsonville, California in 2011, home of resident guru Baba Hari Dass.
After hearing multiple testimonials from clients who felt the conventional medical model was misguided in its combative, symptom suppression-based philosophy I began to pursue a career as a Naturopathic Physician in 2014. Initially, I did this for two reasons: 1) to expand my scope of practice and have the ability to utilize all of the therapies I had learned; 2) to gain an understanding of the western medical model with the goal of being able to communicate with western doctors. I graduated from the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon in 2019 with a Doctorate in Naturopathy. While there I learned about the theory of Vitalism, often referred to as the Vis Medicatrix Naturae, which is, “The Healing Power of Nature” or, “the body’s own innate propensity to heal itself.” However, It wasn’t until my residency that I gained the clinical experience of Vitalism in practice. I was selected as the first recipient of a one year residency granted by the Naturopathic Medicine Institute (NMI), which was hosted at Windrose Naturopathic Clinic in Spokane, Washington with Resident Director and now President of the NMI, Dr. Letitia Dick-Kronenberg, ND. The NMI is an organization founded by Dr. James Sensenig, ND. His aim was to preserve the philosophy, principles, and practices of Vitalism for future generations in an effort to educate both the public and medical professionals alike in the separate and distinct healing art of Vitalistic Naturopathy.
