Let’s Work Together!

I have close to two-decades of experience in nonviolence work, as a trainer, practitioner and student.

While I have a background in nonviolent direct action and civil resistance work, my main passion is in a principled approach to nonviolence that serves as the ethical foundation for the work of social change.

I am a senior trainer in Kingian Nonviolence, a philosophy developed out of the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and have been mentored by elders who worked closely with him. I have also facilitated workshops on Gandhian nonviolence, Nonviolent Communication and other modalities grounded in this ethical approach.

From building nonviolent movements to learning how to practice feedback, accountability and forgiveness in interpersonal or group dynamics, nonviolence can guide the way to healing and reconciliation.

Restorative Justice is a way of building and centering relationships, even through the most escalated forms of harm.

It centers healing and relationship, and creates space for all people who have been impacted by harm to share their stories, and together come up with a way forward.

I have been trained in several modalities, but have done most of my work as a founding member of the Ahimsa Collective.

My introduction to social change came through a Buddhist order committed to nonviolence. I spent a 1.5 years living a monastic life, and have been practicing in Buddhist communities since 1998.

I have come to understand that Buddhist practice - and all spiritual practice - is a way to deepen in the reality of interdependence, and to resource our inner selves so we can engage with the external world around us.

As I have deepened in the work of social change, I have come to understand the critical importance of understanding how trauma impacts us as individuals and as collectives.

I have come to see how our unintegrated traumas damages our ability to make lasting change.

And I have come to see that injustice itself is a manifestation of our collective traumas. We lash out and harm and oppress others because of the unhealed traumas that we hold in our collective bodies.

Organizing, social change and resistance work, therefore, is about healing our collective traumas.

At the intersection of spiritual practice, trauma healing and nonviolent social change lies Fierce Vulnerability.

As we accept the reality of the poly-crisis, how do we engage in public actions that are rooted in our own healing, and that can offer our vulnerability as medicine for the world?

How do we practice not only the “shutting down” of highways and oil pipelines, but the opening up of our own hearts and the possibility for collective healing?

An alternative to the current capitalist, market system of economics, the Gift Economy is a way of sharing and distributing resources that are modeled from natural ecosystems.

Through the Gift system, we can devise ways to create sustainability for all beings, recognize the abundance of the earth and remind ourselves to be in right relationship with all those around us.

Click here to read more.

The ancient Greek poet Archilochus once said “We don’t rise to the level of expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

Despite having beautiful vision and mission statements about the kinds of community we want to build, many of us find ourselves not being able to embody a different way of being because we are constantly being reinforced - trained - to operate differently.

How do we build structures and practices within our organizations to help us align with our vision, and to be in integrity with what we preach?