Draft — awaiting review
Eco-somatic and rites of passage guide, SF Bay Area
Former professional ballet dancer. Suffered a severe injury at the height of her career, which led her to Pilates and GYROTONIC®, then to somatic ecotherapy and wilderness rites of passage. Certified in Somatic Ecopsychology and Wilderness Quest (TerraSoma, 2019). Wilderness First Responder (NOLS). Certified California Naturalist (UCANR). Additional training: Hakomi, Internal Family Systems, earth-based ceremonial practices, holistic coaching. Psychedelic guidance training 2020–2022. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area / Oakland, CA.
Pilates, Paris, 2003. I had been carrying a back problem for years and arrived at Pilates as the one right answer — the method Joseph Pilates had promised would correct everything. My practice was too controlled, too willed. I was training with my head, trying to get rid of the problem, and reinforcing the very patterns I wanted to resolve.
Erin changed that — not by correcting my technique, but by bringing something different into the room: the inner peace of a dancer. A quality of presence, not a prescription. My relationship to the problem shifted. I stopped trying to force a solution and started moving from somewhere else.
That opening led directly to Gyrotonic — first with Regula Gadient at the White Cloud Studio in Paris, then continuing in Bern and Zurich when I moved to Switzerland. Years later, I would have spontaneous recollections of what Erin had set in motion. That is what a foundational encounter feels like: it keeps producing, long after the sessions end.