Lineage Part 2: Guru Purnima

Tom and Burki Gladstone first introduced me to both yoga and meditation at my secondary school in Sewanee, TN. Burki led an afternoon yoga program my 9th grade year and taught World History my 10th. We learned about the Mahābhārata and the Bhagavad Gita. Tom was my 10th grade English teacher. We started every class with 5 minutes of mindfulness meditation and read Beat Generation books like The Dharma Bums.

Tara Stiles and her husband Mike Taylor led my first Yoga Teacher Training. Tara is known as a “yoga rebel” for bringing a more secular perspective to the yoga world based on interoception and felt experience. Mike studied Mind-Body medicine at Harvard and contributed decades of experience with tai chi and qigong to the Strala style of practice. I still remember the time I asked him about the Sanskrit term for a pose and he reflected back to me that “knowing” it with my mind would not benefit my body or way of being. A lightbulb went off!

A workshop with Tao Porchon-Lynch was built into my YTT. Tao marched with Gandhi in 1938, was Iyengar’s first female student, and was a friend of Aldous Huxley. She holds the Guinness record for oldest yoga teacher on the planet.

After my first YTT I returned to Oxford, MS to finish my BA in Psychology. Dr. Kenneth Sufka was my neuroscience professor, and his wife Stevi Self owned the only yoga studio in town. Dr. Sufka is Professor of Psychology, Pharmacology, and Philosophy and research professor for the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Mississippi. He is author of The A Game, a book about how to study and retain information. This book changed my entire life! I highly recommend it for everyone, even if you aren’t in school. In 2014, he was named one of 26 CASE-Carnegie U.S. Professors of the Year. Stevi is a yoga therapist and received her first teacher’s certification in 1998. She is co-owner of Southern Star, the co-director of Southern Star's 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training, and assistant director of the Inner Peace Yoga Therapy program. Way back in 2010 I told both of them about my plans to combine yoga and psychology-it appears I was onto something!

The first workshop I took when I got back down South was with Shiva Rea. She is an OG yogini master of vinyasa. We ended the workshop with a yoga rave which I really appreciate because I love a good dance party!

At Wanderlust I found a flyer for a Yoga & Ayurveda training, specializing in substance abuse. One of my friends was struggling with addiction at the time, so I felt called to attend. I spent 10 days studying with Durga Leela at the Satchidananda Ashram in Yogaville, VA. Durga is a clinical ayurvedic and pancha karma specialist, trained at the California College of Ayurveda and Sivananda Ashram. She is Director of Ayurveda Programs at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm and a member of the National Ayurvedic Medical Association and International Association of Yoga Therapists.

While living in Austin, TX I had the opportunity to take the Off The Mat, Into the World training with Seane Corne, Hala Khouri, MA and Suzanne Sterling. Hala earned her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Religion from Columbia University and has a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is also a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.

Over her 25-year yoga teaching career, Seane has created many instructional videos, including her groundbreaking series The Yoga of Awakening with Sounds True. Featured on over 40 magazine covers and countless media outlets, Seane uses her platform to bring awareness to global issues including social justice, sex trafficking, HIV/AIDS awareness, generational poverty, and animal rights. In 2005, she was named “National Yoga Ambassador” for YouthAIDS, and in 2013 received both the Global Green International Environmental Leadership Award and the Humanitarian Award by the Smithsonian Institute. Seane also co-founded the Global Seva Challenge, which has raised over $3.5 million by activating communities of yoga and wellness in fund and awareness raising efforts.

Suzanne is a “musical priestess” that creates ceremonies for large gatherings worldwide. She received her BA in Theatre with a minor in dance from San Francisco State University. You can find her on the mainstage of festivals such as Earthdance, Harmony Festival, Burning Man, Power to the Peaceful, and The World Festival of Sacred Music.

At this training I had a somatic experience during a session combining sound healing and asana, and Hala talked me through it. Little did I know this training would change the course of my entire life. “Half the Sky” was a book on the list of suggested readings. That book inspired me to learn more about maternal mortality. I found out that the Mississippi Delta has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the US, and began working on a research project with a public health team. It was there that I encountered healthcare professionals suffering from burnout. Through my research I found Roshi Joan Halifax and began reading about end-of-life care. I also signed up for Hala’s trauma-informed yoga training so I could begin working directly with traumatized populations. Finally, I learned of Peter Levine’s work for the first time and began studying somatic psychology more in-depth.

I met Roshi Joan Halifax for the first time in 2014, when I attended her GRACE training at Upaya Zen Center. Roshi Joan was powerfully initiated into suffering through illness at age of 4 which caused her to go blind for 2 years. In college she became a civil rights activist and participated in anti-war protests. She has a Ph.D in Medical Anthropology! (how cool is that?) In the 70s she and Stanislov Grov examined the use of LSD as a support mechanism for dying patients and jointly published a book on the topic. She left psychedelic research to focus on (zen) buddhism and end-of-life care, and eventually founded Upaya Zen Center. She has published many books and I recommend all of them. I have been lucky to visit Upaya several times and participate in more trainings with Roshi. Her birthday is 4 days after mine…we are both Leo Sun in the zodiac and I think those characteristics describe her (and our relationship) perfectly. She is FIERCE—a pioneer in many fields. Whenever I start to feel weak or disgruntled by lack of progress, I always remember her description of being a female Buddhist: “like climbing a mountain of needles.”

James Fox, MA began teaching yoga and meditation to prisoners at San Quentin Prison in 2002. His years of experience as a facilitator of victim/offender education, violence prevention, and emotional literacy classes for prisoners informed his work with prisoners and the eventual founding of Prison Yoga Project. James has trained thousands of teachers (including me!) who have replicated PYP’s methodology in correctional facilities in 28 states, India, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, the U.K. and The Netherlands. He is a very chill person- he’d have to be right?

When I decided I wanted to teach veterans I knew I’d have to step up my knowledge of anatomy since veterans tend to struggle with a myriad of health issues. I chose Amy Ippoliti for a yoga therapy training simply because she knows her stuff! She started practicing young (like me) and has been on the path for a long time. She is what I would call a “traditional” yoga teacher in that she truly embodies the 8 limbs taught in the Yoga Sutras. Amy is a clear-headed professional. She’s written for (or been on the cover of) just about every yoga publication in existence. She is also a champion of all forms of eco-consciousness, animal conservation and marine conservation. The lady free dives with whale sharks, ok?! She is committed and Amazing!

Later that year at the Southeastern Yoga Conference I met Tiffany Maloney and Cyndi Lee. Tiffany also began practicing at a young age, and is now a senior leader with Off The Mat Into The World, as well as a teaching assistant to Seane Corn. She’s magical :)

Cyndi Lee is known as the first female Western yoga teacher to fully integrate yoga asana and Tibetan Buddhism in her practice and teaching. She is founder of the OM yoga Center in NYC and author of several books including “Yoga Body Buddha Mind.” She regularly contributes to many national publications. Cyndi is a formally trained Lay Buddhist Chaplain under the guidance of Roshi Joan.

After we met I began to put some puzzle pieces together. I was the youngest person in Tara’s first training; Tara did her first training under Amy; Amy participated in the first training at OM under Cyndi; and to bring it full circle Cyndi trained under Roshi Joan. Traditional yogis believe in the concept of lineage as an important transmission of energy and information. I can’t speak to whether it’s true that there is such an energy, but I do find it entertaining that the four of us are all connected and that this information only came to light After my learning experiences with each of them. If there is such a thing as lineage, I’ll claim them ;)

At a Somatic Psychotherapy conference at Kripalu in 2014, I spent time with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Bo Forbes, Dr. Peter Levine, and Dr. Anodea Judith. Dr. van der Kolk is the author of The Body Keeps the Score, a book that has become a bible of sorts for somatic psychotherapy with research on the effectiveness of yoga as an effective form of treatment for trauma. Dr. Forbes is a clinical psychologist, yoga instructor, mindfulness teacher, and movement educator. Her book Yoga for Emotional Balance encouraged me to finish my B.A. in Psychology because it showed me that it was possible to combine yoga with more traditional western therapies. Dr. Peter Levine is basically a wizard. He is the originator and developer of Somatic Experiencing. He holds doctorate degrees in Medical Biophysics and in Psychology, and during his thirty five-year study of stress and trauma, has contributed to a variety of scientific and popular publications. Peter has been stress consultant for NASA in the development of the first Space Shuttle; he’s been a member of the Institute of World Affairs Task Force with Psychologists for Social Responsibility and has also served on the APA initiative for response to large scale disaster and Ethno-political warfare. Dr. Levine is the author of the best selling book Waking the Tiger-Healing Trauma, among many other books on somatic psychology. He is basically the godfather of somatics. Dr. Judith holds Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Psychology and Health, is a yoga teacher and therapist with lifelong studies in somatic psychology, mythology, history, sociology, systems theory, and mystic spirituality. She is best known for her work reviving the chakra system of ancient yoga, and its profound correlation to human psychology, cultural evolution, and the downward process of manifestation. I use her book Eastern Body, Western Mind as a resource for basically everything I do.

At Upaya, Dr. Cynda Rushton and Dr. Anthony Back co-facilitated my GRACE training. Dr. Rushton is a professor of Clinical Ethics in the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and the School of Nursing. (Dr. Rushton holds a joint appointment in the School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics.) Dr. Rushton co-chairs the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Ethics Committee and Consultation Service. She is author and editor of Moral Resilience: Transforming Moral Suffering in Healthcare. Dr. Rushton has served on the Institute of Medicine's Committee on increasing rates of organ donation and was a consultant to its project When Children Die. She is a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering & Medicine’s Committee on System Approaches to Improve Patient Care by Supporting Clinician Wellbeing. She has received more awards and accolades than I can list here! Dr. Back is a board certified, Harvard trained physician at UW Medical Center, co-director of the UW Center for Excellence in Palliative Care and a UW professor of Oncology and Medicine and an adjunct professor of Bioethics and Humanities. Dr. Back studies patient-clinician communication and interventions to make clinicians more effective. He is triple board certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine, Medical Oncology and General Internal Medicine.

I was also able to attend workshops with Dr. John Dunne, Dr. Richie Davidson, Dr. Cliff Saron, and Stephen Batchelor. Dunne, Davidson, and Saron are contemplative neuroscientists— they study the neuroscience of contemplative studies (yoga and meditation). They are all extremely intelligent and quick witted. Stephen is one of my favorite buddhists. He trained as a monk for ten years in traditional buddhist centers in Asia, fell in love with another monk, they left the monastery together, and now (both he and his wife) teach a lay and secular approach to buddhist practice, largely based on the early teachings of the Buddha as found in the Pali Canon. One of my favorite things I’ve learned from Stephen is that the Pali Canon itself did not use capitalization. Any capitalization you see in buddhist teachings is the author’s translation, for example “The Way” “The Path” “The Void.” I tend to use lower case letters to describe words like “zen” and “buddhism” now, too.

The Summer of 2014 I attended Wanderlust again and was able to schedule time to attend Tiffany Cruikshank’s workshops. I knew then that I resonated with her work and would look forward to hearing more from her. I’m a not so secret Yoga Medicine enthusiast, I have been a fan for years but more recently became even more interested in her curriculum as I’ve experienced the healing effects of acupuncture myself and began a more serious practice of yin yoga. The next YTT I invest in will be hers. She’s legit! I also sat with Lama Marut. He lived as a Buddhist monk for 8 years, and now holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Religion. He taught for over two decades in the academic world, first at Columbia University and later at the University of California, where he retired as Professor Emeritus in 2004.

While briefly living in Los Angeles I was able to do a few workshops at Pacifica Graduate Institute and UCLA. Dr. Ron Alexander, MFT, (Somatic Experiencing Practitioner) is a psychotherapist, leadership coach, and clinical trainer, and has been a leading pioneer in the fields of Mindfulness Based Mind-Body Therapies, Gestalt Therapy, Somatic Experiencing, Ericksonian Mind-Body Therapies, Holistic Psychology, and Integrative and Behavioral Medicine since 1970. He is a long time extension faculty member of the UCLA, a lecturer in the David Geffen School of Medicine and an adjunct faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute and Pepperdine Universities. Ron is a true ZenDoc, an OG Topanga hippie with a brilliant clinical mind and a heart of gold.

I met Ashley Turner, MFTI and Daniel Stewart, LMFT at Pacifica. Ashley is a mentor for many young yogis/yoginis working in the field of mental health. Daniel is just a really good guy, and my favorite thing about him was his refusal to tell me what to do with my life. Once upon a time I was very distraught about the tension of opposites between the haves and have-nots on this Earth. Daniel admitted that there was nothing he could actually Do to help me with that tension, I would just have to hold it: Jung’s tension of opposites. His willingness to reflect back to me my own righteous frustration in the face of injustice was the most helpful response I could have received.

I sat with Trudy Goodman at InsightLA, and took Diana Winston’s workshop at UCLA. I met Dr. Rick Hanson and Dr. Elisha Goldstein at their Mindfulness and the Science of Psychological Well-Being workshop also at UCLA. Dr. Hanson is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, he’s been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other major universities, and taught in meditation centers worldwide. He also writes my most favoritest :) newsletter. Dr. Goldstein is extremely creative- he has so many writings and projects that I can’t name them all here, but you can find out more on his website!

I met Kate Payne JD, RN, NC-BC at a workshop for nurse burnout at Vanderbilt in 2016. We immediately became friends. Kate is a nurse and a lawyer! I mean WOW. I want to be her when I grow up. She has worked as a clinical ethicist since 1994.

Kate received her BS in Biological Sciences from Colorado State University, and her BS in nursing from Rush University. She studied law at Pepperdine University, and was a fellow at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago. Kate was named the Tennessean Nurse of the Year in 2009. Before coming Vanderbilt, she spent seventeen years at Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville finishing her career there as the Director of Ethics and Palliative Care. She has advised two nonprofits, the Dispensary of Hope and Hope Beyond Hope- both organizations that help people in need get access to medications. She helped write and pass the Tennessee Health Care Decisions Act of 2004 to make it easier for Tennesseans to complete medical directives. Kate was also part of a Nashville Mayor’s Task Force to revise the code of ethics to deal with perceived conflicts of interest for Metro-Nashville government. She served as the ethics advisor for the state of Tennessee’s pandemic flu planning process and continues as part of a multidisciplinary team looking at ethical issues with disaster planning for the state. Kate is currently an Associate Professor of Nursing at Vanderbilt University and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Center for Biomedical Ethics, Education & Research at Albany Medical College, Albany, NY. She is also on the receiving end of weekly texts from me, asking if I’m making the “right” decision about things.

I met Dr. Dave Vago at Vanderbilt Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. He is the most down to earth contemplative neuroscientist I’ve ever met. He deserves ALL the funding for his ability to give and receive information with a humble, open mind. He is an intelligent, compassionate soul who values the highest truth no matter his previously held beliefs, and That is what makes him The Best. He served as an anchor for me during my time in end-of-life care, and continues to advise me on yoga research and all things academia. He is an associate professor in the department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and department of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt. He is also a research associate in the Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory (FNL), Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Harvard Medical School. He has completed post-doctoral fellowships in neuroimaging and mind-body medicine and previously held the position of Senior Research Coordinator for the Mind & Life Institute. He is currently a Mind and Life Fellow, supporting the Mind and Life mission by advising on strategy and programs. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at University of Rochester and his Ph.D. in Cognitive and Neural Sciences with a specialization in learning and memory from the department of Psychology, University of Utah.

I studied under Dr. Katherine MacLean at The New School for a workshop on psychedelic integration. As more research comes out to support psychedelic therapy, those of us working with traumatized populations must be prepared for clients who have used or desire to use entheogens to assist in the healing process. The most concise way to “define” Dr. MacLean is that she is simply a goddess. She completed her BA in psychology and neuroscience at Dartmouth College, her PhD in research psychology (with Dr. Cliff Saron) at the UC Davis, and her postdoc in psychopharmacology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. During graduate training at UC Davis, she was one of the lead researchers on the Shamatha Project, a groundbreaking study of the effects of intensive meditation on psychological and brain function. While a research fellow and faculty member at Johns Hopkins, she apprenticed with and was supervised by two of the world’s top psychedelic therapists - Bill Richards, PhD and Mary Cosimano, LSW. She was also a lead researcher and head session guide on the first study to test the combined effects of high-dose psilocybin, daily meditation training and integration support. In 2015, Dr. MacLean co-founded and was the first director of the Psychedelic Education and Continuing Care Program in New York. She has helped to bring medical and humanitarian aid to remote Himalayan villages, as well as create sanctuary spaces for psychedelic support at large outdoor festivals.

I have just 9 years of experience training with all the aforementioned people, as well as facilitation from peers and everyday people in my waking life. As I began to write this post I never imagined it would take as long as it did to complete. I have been very lucky to follow the path of so many great teachers who came before me. This responsibility can be intimidating. Who am I to speak on the great matters of life, death, happiness and suffering? When I start to feel insecure -imposter syndrome- I think of what Stephen Batchelor once said to me…who am I NOT to speak on these matters? I must keep the path open for those who come after me, just like those who came before did for me.

It’s been about a year since I enrolled in a workshop. I have been keeping my feet wet with certificates like Mental Health First Aid, but I am only now integrating the teachings of all these great souls. I am synthesizing their lessons for you, so that what I create next might also alleviate suffering…so that I, too, might also bring hope to students that follow my path. Happy Guru Purnima <3