About Me

Transcendental Meditation
A trusted high school teacher mentioned Transcendental Meditation during one of our discussions. I had tried a number of relaxation and breathing techniques before but never had any formal training in meditation. I went to an introductory lecture at the Richmond TM Center and was encouraged enough to sign up for the instruction.

TM was an immediate revelation for me. Within the first week I found the effects of this style of meditation to be truly life-changing. I experienced a profound and new level of rest during the meditations, and was continually surprised by how much my mental clarity, sleep quality and sleep quantity kept improving.

Yoga and Tai Chi
TM was my introduction to the vast and complicated world of 'alternative health'. I started learning about diets and started a yoga practice as well. My meditation teacher was a dedicated Tai Chi practitioner, and he introduced me to Master Wei Qi, an extremely well-reputed Chinese Tai Chi instructor that was temporarily teaching classes through Richmond Parks and Rec. From her I was fortunate to get a powerful foundation for what has continued to be a helpful form of exercise for me for almost 30 years.

Moving to Iowa
My health had improved, but I was still struggling with most of the same issues. I wanted to see if I could get well if my lifestyle was more fully dedicated to getting better. I decided to move to the TM-based univeristy in Iowa to study some of the advanced meditation techniques of the system.

Living and working on the campus in Fairfield provided not only a very regular routine that I could use to test the effects of different foods on myself, but also a vibrant community of kindred spirits. There were dozens of educated and highly trained people in all kinds of health modalities, and I learned volumes from just being there, as well as from a more dedicated study of yoga and meditation. There was a vibrant performing arts scene there, and I even fulfilled a lifelong dream of learning to perform standup and improv comedy.

Bright Lights, Big Cities
I was feeling better than I had in years, and I wanted to to use what I had learned to attempt life on the stage. I spent most of the next 10 years in Chicago and New York City, studying and performing stage acting, standup comedy and improv, while holding down the necessary day jobs to cover rent.

It was an exciting time and once again provided volumes of learning and experience, but I continued to encounter the constraints of compromised health. I still did not have the energy and stamina of my peers, and my dietary restrictions were becoming more extensive. I enjoyed preparing for shows and the thrill of performance, but also found it exhausting.

Return to Virginia
In 2008 I moved from Chicago to Charlottesville. I definitely appreciated the slower (and much greener) pace in Charlottesville after the years in Chicago and New York, although returning to Virginia also brought back familiar sinus allergies and headaches that were less intense in the more urban areas.

I continued to investigate and optimize my health. I started classes at the Charlottesville Tai Chi center, and received the highest quality martial arts training I had ever encountered there from Master Hiromi Johnson. I also found several very helpful health professionals who added additional pieces of the puzzle for me. I discovered I was unable to absorb B12 through my gut, and my colds reduced significantly once I started taking it sublingually.

But overall I could tell things were unfortunately getting worse. I felt as if I had a huge collection of knowledge about multiple modalities and systems, but no way to integrate them. I had discovered multiple things over the years that had helped, but I had also frequently experienced the frustration of waking up to find that previously helpful remedies no longer had any effect, and sometimes were now making me worse.

Enter Z-Health
One of my good friends in Iowa, an experienced body worker and massage therapist, had told me about a system she had encountered that she was genuinely impressed and intrigued by. I began looking at their website and trying some of the basic drills and exercises they recommended.

It was a truly different approach, yet it made sense to me. Z-Health uses the nervous system as its alpha and omega. In all of my years of researching health and well-being, I had never encountered anything other than a passing mention about the nervous system, yet the neurons that make up our brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves and receptors provide the foundation for every experience we have during our lives. It seemed worth it to learn a little more about neurology.

The Relentless Pursuit of the Useful
The more I learned about the founder of the system, Dr. Eric Cobb, the more impressed I was. He was committed to staying grounded in scientific literature, but equally concerned with treating people as people, and not as simply a collection of physiological systems.

Initially the hardest aspect of the system to accept and trust was the speed at which the nervous system responds, which I slowly came to understand was measured in milliseconds.

Changing the brain is a physiological process that can take days, weeks or months. But the brain responds to everything that we do immediately.

Hidden in these responses are the preferences of our nervous system. I came to understand that the nervous system is always answering the question, "Do you want more of that, less of that, or did you not even notice?" And Z-Health is designed to use this response to take the guesswork out of choosing the right exercises and drills for each person. If you're not assessing, you're guessing.

The more I learned about neurology, the more I was able to improve my health, and the more helpful I became to my Tai Chi students. Our underlying neurology is intricate and complex, but brain-based training is sometimes almost ridiculously simple. For example, targeting the Purkinje cells in the left vestibulocerebellum can be extremely helpful with certain balance issues. It sounds hopelessly academic, but doing so involves nothing more than keeping your head still while moving your eyes to the left.

Our brains are made to be activated, that's the easy part. The trick is determining which areas are under-used and hungry for stimulation, and which areas are exhausted and need a break. But those answers are precisely what the Z-Health approach reveals and leverages.

Additionally, learning about the nervous system opened the door for me to organize and use all of the wonderful and powerful systems I had spent so much time learning. Tai Chi, Pilates, yoga, massage, acupressure, cardio and strength training — all of these intervention systems are powerful and profound, but what do you do if they make you worse, don't work, or worst of all, stop working? Again and again, neurology provided the way forward for me.

Certifications and Training
In 2018 I became certified as an ACE Personal Trainer and began working with private clients. Other certifications followed, such as Health Coaching and Group Fitness Instruction. But the core of my approach is provided by Z-Health, and to that end I have recently completed the Z-Health Master Practitioner requirements.

This is an advanced certification, which involves completion of all eleven Z-Health certification courses (each one involving between 24 and 32 hours of in-class time), plus the assessments and advanced material specially created for the MP certification.

Dr. Cobb created Z-Health partly because his education did not provide a way for him to help every person who came through his office door, and he wanted to design a curriculum flexible enough to work with issues of elite Olympians or fibromyalgia sufferers, and everyone in between. Neurology is complex, but it is also consistent, and it is always communicating. Z-Health teaches how to speak its language.

If you've read this far, then thank you — I'm impressed. Feel free to reach out with any questions on the Contact page.