About Me

Hello, dear human. I am so glad you're here.

My journey here has had two interwining paths, the personal and the professional. And then there is, of course, the Magic.

I grew up in the Soviet Union in a Jewish family, a daughter of those forced to supress their identity to survive. Raised by parents and grandparents whose lives were shaped by WWII, the Holocaust, and Soviet regime, I was a deeply sensitive, inuitive child who learned early to suppress her emotions, attuning to the nervous systems and needs of others to fit in.

When I was almost 10 years old, we moved to the US as political refugees. After that, I began trying to save all the children in the world. By this I mean that I began working in the education system, earning my Doctorate in Developmental Psychology, and working for over 15 years as a teacher, education coach, researcher, professor, and student teacher supervisor.

As I worked within these systems, the feeling that something was deeply wrong continued to grow. While the world of education and research focused so heavily on cognitive development and progress, my heart kept questioning why we prioritize the mind over movement, math over music, logic over intuition. I began recognizing how the systems of power like racism, patriarchy, and capitalism shape what we value, and how they were also living in me.

At the same time, my body was screaming. After almost a decade of chronic pain, I left teaching and did some soul searching. I began, slowly but surely, to reconnect to all the parts of my own humanity that I had suppressed, and that sweet, sensitive, inuitive inner child who was still living inside me (and trying to save all the other children).

Reconnecting with my body completely changed my life. It led me to reconnect with long buried emotions, confront and heal personal and generational trauma, and showed me the places where my inner wisdom, power, wholeness, and wild joy reside.

In March 2020, my father got sick with Covid and passed away. What followed was darkness. My old, conditioned self had already been cracking, and this was the final blow. She did not survive. So it goes.

Luckily, we live in a world of paradoxes, and darkness reveals the light. Some people call it awakening. Some call it remembering. I experience it as an opening, a deep knowing that I am the love, the joy, and the home for which I had always longed.

Nowadays, I see the holy everywhere. The trees, the falling autumn leaves dancing on the breeze, the faces of children and adults alike. I sense, deeply, how interconnected we all are, how much we belong to this beautiful Earth, and all the ways that She is calling us to wake up, remember who we are, and live from soul.

It is my honor and my joy to be on this path, and to share it with others who are also feeling that call to shed what is no longer yours, embody your true self, and live whole, connected, and alive.

Trainings and such

My approach weaves the spiritual, the intellectual, and the embodied. I work through energy, intuition, and a mixture of modalities I have gathered over 15+ years of personal and professional practice. More than anything, I trust the wisdom of the body and the truth of the soul to guide us. It works every time.

M.S. & Ph.D., Developmental Psychology
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Stanford University Department of Education
Postdoctoral Fellowship, New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
School of Embodied Arts, Feminine Embodiment Coach Certification
The Forest Therapy School, Forest Therapy Guide Certification
Temple Somatics, Somatic & Emotional Release Trained Practitioner
Other Completed trainings:
- Peaple's Institute of Survival and Beyond
- Strozzi Institute for Somatics
- Deep Coaching Institute
- Michaela Boehm's Wild Woman Circle
- Animas Valley Institute Nature-based Soul Initiation
- International School of Temple Arts Training: Level1, Living Level1, Level 2

Some personal nuggets

Deep loves: Dancing, reading, live music, poetry, swimming, treehugging, barefoot wandering, cuddles.
Deep values: Liberation for all. Love for all. Wild joy for all.
Relevant identities: She/They. Queer. Jewish. Immigrant. Refugee. Priestexx. Wild Woman. Poet. Witch.
Languages spoken: Russian, English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese.
Recent soul adventuring: 2023: Sold all of my belongings to answer a soul calling to go to Brazil. 2024: Returned to the U.S. to work and live on an herbal farm. 2025: Making a home in the Hudson Valley, NY.
Fact: I can (and will) dance forever.