How I went from being a frustrated burnt out teacher to a balanced entrepreneur & artist.
I was in your shoes. Held back by old patterns.
In 2020, I was beyond burnt out.
I had just left a summer camp nonprofit that I had founded, my dream since college. For five years, I’d given it my all, working nights and weekends while I was full-time teaching in Oakland middle schools.
But achieving “my dream” came at the cost of my well-being and my relationships. And still, somehow I felt like I wasn’t “enough.”
Both of my parents are psychotherapists, and I’d been in traditional talk therapy for nearly a decade. So it’s not like I didn’t have any insight into my chronic patterns.
But it was getting out of hand. I was having conflict at work, with roommates, and even with my boxing coach.
After a bad break up, my best friend sat me down and told me I needed to change something.
I intellectually “knew” what I needed: to slow down, take care of my body, prioritize what mattered and accept that I couldn’t do it all.
But in the moment, my body kept reacting the way it always had. Even if I knew I was tapped out, my body had learned to not disappoint people, to find safety by being needed.
I realized that I needed to retrain myself at the level of the body. That led me to somatics. And everything started to shift.
By listening to my body, my intuition made it clear that I needed to change jobs and environments. I could mindfully feel the anxiety in my shoulders when I would consider hopping off the career ladder. And that gave me choice. So I went part-time. And then left, working full-time for myself as a coach and facilitator.
Through somatics, I got in touch with “softer shapes,” that had been repressed by needing to be a tough school administrator at a high-trauma school. By 2021, I came out more publicly as gender-fluid and queer, and even led a group for trans/nonbinary youth at my old middle school.
Old patterns holding you back?
My years of angst turned into creativity energy as I started performing stand up comedy again, wrote, acted, and directed in art projects, took a screenwriting class and earned a semi-finalist award in a screenwriting competition. I dreamed up and produced new events, like “Somatic Shabbat.” I founded a Men’s Group, and finally broke ground on a long-time dream of a vulnerable Men’s Work writing project.
My years of treating my body like a resource to be allocated changed to me delighting in caring for it. I became a healthier vegan cook, starting cross-training including dance, swimming, and yoga, not just basketball to burn off steam. And I went from being a middle school boys basketball coach to playing in a semi-pro league and traveling to Mexico for the Gay Games, representing San Francisco in the “Queer Olympics” in basketball.
Most importantly, the internal experience of living my life, the quality and texture, has been transformed. Rather than stewing in resentment, feeling perpetually rushed, and never having enough time for my loved ones, I feel like I have choice, mindful of my reactions, intentional with my actions, and intuitively following my path, with joy and gratitude.
Since I started the Strozzi Institute for Somatic Coaching program in October 2021, I have not missed a single day of meditation and somatic practices, >900 consecutive days. It is the cornerstone of my life. In my coaching, I share the methodologies that have been transformative for me — somatics, nonviolent communication, role play, ritual, self-compassion, Internal Family Systems, and more.
Just a few years after I was out burnt-out and stuck, I was on retreat with my childhood friends, and they told me it “felt like they had their old friend back.”
