How I got started in what I do now

In college, George Washington University, I majored in sociology and psychology.  I got my masters in education.  During those hippie years, I participated in the first encounter groups.  I was fascinated with psychodrama and attended regularly in Washington, DC and in New York City.  I later studied both those modalities plus Applied Kinesiology, Bioenergetics and Gestalt Technique while attending GROW Institute in NYC.  Afterwards, I participated in Carl Rogers’ La Jolla Program in Sand Diego and learned to facilitate encounter groups Rogers style.  Of course, I was also experimenting with drugs and sex and proved to be as interesting to me as what I was studying in the classroom.

Upon leaving San Diego, I traveled around the country with a man I met in La Jolla facilitating Men’s and Women’s body-oriented encounter groups where we dealt with gender as the main issue blocking people from becoming truly free in their skins.  We used the body techniques we had both studied as well as the Rogers encounter group style.  We were invited to cities across the US for most of 1972.

When the tour was over, I moved to Boston and began teaching Assertiveness Training classes in Boston and Cambridge.  I also taught a Body, Mind & Sprit class for Women which grew into a weekend workshop and company Women’s Educational & Resource Enterprises, Inc. (WE ARE) offering a variety of courses, retreats and coaching. 

Around this time, I first heard of Osho from my father, who has been a self-proclaimed sannayasan for years.  I began reading his books and listening to tapes.  I also met Baba Ram Das, Isabel Hickey, Robert Gass and others in the 70’s.

Then the craziest, luckiest thing happened.  Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) called and asked if I could start teaching Assertive Communication courses in house to their employees.  Hell yes I could.  Soon, Digital wanted to know what else I could design/teach.  With the help of some friends, I crafted team building exercises, communication and risk-taking courses.  DEC used to send for me in a helicopter and fly me up, up and away to their “woods meetings” in New Hampshire.  I’ll never forget imagining I was Bette Midler flying into a concert for the evening.

That was the beginning of my corporate consulting work.  At the time, I did not even know what to call what I did.  I found out a year later that there was a whole field called OD – organizational development.  I continued to do my work with individuals at the Boston and Cambridge Centers for Adult Education, taught at Northeastern University and Quincy Junior College and Massasoit Community College.  I taught anything from Psych 101 to Sociology of the Family during the day and Body, Mind and Spirit for Women at the night school.  In addition, I taught at such wonderful companies as Wang, Raytheon, Hughes, TRW, and Rockwell.  Working at many military industrial companies, I convinced myself that I was bringing consciousness to the folks who produced bombs, rockets and missiles.  Maybe what I taught them would make a difference.

During the Regan years, my Boston-based business began to falter.  My business, which is based on human growth and development, always does during Republican administrations.  I wonder why?

So, I moved out to Los Angeles and began a consulting job as part of a team with Mattel until I found “in house” position in the training and development department for an international software company Informatics General Corporation.  I loved my job and created a lot of wonderful programs convincing my manager that we offered more than training – we offered OD.  She gave me free reign to design interventions and meet regularly with top level executives to see if I could bring ideas that would facilitate productivity as well as happy employees in the ranks.

Until Informatics got taken over by a Dallas firm, I had the best time in the corporate world.  I had no plans however, of moving to Texas.  I am strictly a one coast or the other type of girl.

In the early 80’s I moved back to Washington, DC where I began to write grants and develop programs for our nation’s youth who were killing themselves with and over drugs.  I won many a grant and received numerous awards for my community service. 

I later went to work for Landmark Education Corporation (LEC) and learned about transformation by immersing myself in the system.  I stayed at LEC until my body rebelled from lack of attention and exercise.  The staff position involved many long hours each day and I reversed my habits of regular exercise - running and tennis to exercise of talking on the phone - doing the work of enrollment into the popular Landmark Forum.  Although, there were things about working here that I loved, the lack of exercise took its toll.

By the time I left LEC, my body was broken from lack of use (even lack of sex) and I was in desperate to get in physical shape again.  I was bleeding on the inside and I had torn a ligament in my left knee.  Mentally, I was a mess needing to find out who I truly am again if not a part of the Landmark community.  I was lost to myself.  I was on my knees. 

In late 1996, a friend suggested I take a Tantra course.  She thought it might be a good experience for me, help clear my head, get me in touch with Spirit.  I don’t know why I agreed to take it, but I went off to it with trepidation about imagined orgies and such. It was nothing that I imagined.  Believe me, I lost and found myself again during the experience.  After doing the breathing exercises and allowing myself to cry and cry about the betrayal of my body, I remembered who I was as a human being (rather than a human “doing”).  Even further than that, for an instant, I remembered on a primordial level, like a cellular memory, who I am and why I was put on this earth.  For as long as I can remember all I ever wanted to do was make a difference in the world and this memory shook me to my bones.  It gave me a new raison d’etre. Cobra Breath gave me the way to move into it with zest!

I am here to promote spiritual well-being, to transform people’s lives with the appreciation of their beautiful bodies, senses and feelings – unite body, mind and spirit. What a revelation!  Just as my body was recovering from only focusing on the mind, I discovered that this is the lesson I was put here to share and teach.

During this same time in the late 90’s I was awarded grants from the federal government and state and local governments to train people coming off the Welfare rolls during the Bill Clinton Welfare reforms.  I trained hundreds of people to get and keep employment and received national honors for the results.  This work became the basis for the training my current company Butterfly Workshops still offers - Leadership, Integrity and Service (LIS).  It is both a corporate training program and a means for training people who wish to work/volunteer with the Tantra programs offered. 

With the election of George W., any government contracts I had disappeared as is predictable so I set out to offer Tantra programs full time.  I now teach internationally and Butterfly Workshops offers three levels of Tantra training as well as an ongoing Tantra series.  Tantra has proven to be my true spiritual path.  I am honored, privileged and grateful for the knowledge I have received.  I love my life.  I love my job!  What a joy it is to teach people transformation through pleasure!