I got into the helping professions like many do; first facing and working-through some of my own suffering.

My first career was as a professional musician. I grew up in Los Angeles - in a family of unrealized creatives; an environment that shaped my identity as a musician by the time I was five years old. (Jung said that the biggest influence on the life of the child is the unlived life of the parents - a provocative thought).

From 5-years-old until well into my 30s, I rode this music-train full steam ahead, as I went on to record and tour with various artists and musical theater shows.

At the height of my career, I was performing as an onstage musician for the Spider-man musical on Broadway - which was the most expensive musical ever produced. It was a trip. I had the surreal opportunity of working alongside Bono and the Edge (from U2) as they developed the music for the show.

You would think a person in such a position would feel happy or a sense of “accomplishment” - but the confusing and disorienting truth was that I did not. Instead of those sentiments, I felt that I was somehow “off-track” in my life. Or that something important was missing.

When I couldn’t shake this feeling, I decided to go into Jungian analysis.

That’s where things started to shift for me.

Very quickly in analysis, I had an incredible surge of vivid dreams, memories, experiences, and emotions - that began to show me parts of myself and my history that I’d become disconnected from. It was a bit overwhelming. And frankly I wish that I had better guidance at the time. But it gave me contact with aspects of myself and my vitality that had not had bridgesIt was a process that both connected me to parts of myself that had become disconnected or unrealized- and it initiated me into a long-form deconstruction of the personality that I thought I was, and a long-form construction of becoming the person that I am.

Jungian psychology has its own language for such a process. And religions have their own rituals and symbolism that guide members of the community into a new being as well.

It was a long time before I was able to find psychological language that spoke to this process as well (the True Self concept of Winnicott and Alice Miller being one example).

At the time - I simply noticed the recurring images in my dreams of brick walls. When I followed these images, the insight came that these walls were symbolic representations of aspects of my psyche, my life, and my lived experiences that had been “walled off” from conscious awareness.

This was not because there was something fundamentally wrong with me (a feeling I carried into my adulthood). It was because such a disconnection is one of the only available coping strategies for children who experience chronic and high levels of distress. These primitive defenses are actually the kinds of coping strategies we all use when our early experiences are (chronically) too distressing or overwhelming for a child’s psyche.

Before Jungian analysis I didn’t even know this was a part of my own truth/my own lived history!

I only knew that something felt “off.”

As I made more and more contact with these walled-off parts of my psyche, it gave me the chance to integrate more aspects of my own history, and this gave me more contact with the truth of myself.

The insights that came from this also helped me understand how it was possible that I had arrived as a - seemingly - “successful” musician in my 30s - but who was permeated by a feeling of being “off-track.”

It was a powerful process.

Jungian analysis became a trailhead for me; taking me deeper into Jungian studies as well as other fields adjacent to Jungian psychology.

I studied at Assisi Institute, CAJS, the C.G Jung Institute in New York, and I took many courses on dream work, clinical concepts, typology, active imagination, shadow work, and more.

The process led me to some profound experiences - both in my dreams and in my waking life. But one of the biggest takeaways from this period was the experiential realization that the unconscious is not only about the remnants of our past (or the wounds that turn into drivers and defenses in our present lives) - it is also something that can guide us and pull us forwards; like the imaginal discs inside of a caterpillar that will eventually help shape the becoming of the butterfly. As an actual fact, the butterfly is not only the result of its past; it is the product of its past and something it is meant to be; something which is already present and functioning even in the caterpillar’s body.

An especially powerful insight when you consider that the Greek work for butterfly is psyche - the same word for soul - and the same word that functions as the root of psychology and psychotherapy 🦋

On the one hand, this Jungian journey was a wonderful journey; one that gave me substantive insights into myself, the world, and others.

On the other hand, I began to feel that I was very often too much “in my head” in Jungian psychology explorations - and I began to wish for tools and ideas that were more somatic, relational, and trauma-informed.

This led to a growing rift between what I was looking for as the next stage of my journey and what I was finding in the approaches of classical Jungian psychology.

In 2020, that gap led to a serendipitous encounter with Compassionate Inquiry (CI); the modality co-created by Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur.

CI definitively addressed the relational, somatic, and embodied aspects of healing and growth that I felt were missing in Jung’s framework - and it taught me about the somatic and relational dimension of the “walled-off” parts of our psychology.

CI taught me that the somatic and relational sides of healing are as important as the mental/cognitive ones; that bottom-up modalities can have immediate, powerful, and lasting effects in areas that talk therapy struggles to address.

It was CI that provided the link I was missing before; an opportunity work at the levels of both mind & body.

Now I feel lucky to be able to bring the Jungian tools and insights into the CI world, and to bring the somatic, trauma-informed, and relational aspects into the Jungian scene.

Using both a mind & body awareness, I am confident that each of us can process and integrate more of the “walled-off” parts of ourselves; that each of us can experience new levels of healing, wholeness, authenticity, connection, meaning, and Becoming.

This is the mind-body intersection that I now live in and work with others - and it is a powerful intersection that I love very much.

If any of these ideas, experiences, or modalities speak to you, I hope you will reach out and connect with me.

🦋