My journey arrived quietly, like a river gathering as it descends, in university classrooms where practicing social justice required action and recognition of each person's innate dignity, and where I realized that beliefs without action are clanging cymbals, empty noise. Translating those beliefs into stories through singing and songwriting became a medium through which emotion, honestly offered, creates its own community. I spent 25 years as a high school teacher, learning from students that respect and patience are learned daily. Each challenge, like practicing scales, held its tedium — and its beauty.
Marriage brought me to the Indigenous Australian Wiradjuri people — not as a visitor, but as family. I came to understand, slowly and with reverence and humility, that ancient cultures do not preserve wisdom the way museums preserve artifacts behind glass and out of reach. They live it. Indigenous Australian culture — 70,000 years of continuous knowing — taught me that the body is not separate from the earth, that movement carries memory, and that self-care honors something far older than any of us.
It was, then, no surprise that yoga found me. Its core principles felt less like a discovery than a recognition: the body is wise, breath is sacred, and well-being has always been a practice — not a destination you arrive at and unpack your bags.