- PhD Clinical Psychology

- Associate Professor, Director of Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at Brown University Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior;

- Licensed Clinical Psychologist (RI)

- Mindfulness-Based Stress reduction teacher

- Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy teacher

- Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP);

- Mindfulness and meditation researcher, with expertise in meditation-related adverse effects, practice specific effects

- Meditation-induced changes in sense of self, especially depersonalization type dissociation

- Neuroscientific mechanisms of meditation-related adverse effects

- Practice-specific effects; practice modifications

- Buddhist philosophy + mindfulness ideology, especially around self and no-self

- Meditation induced changes related to

• sense of self

• depersonalization

• dissociation

• fear/panic/terror

• perceptual changes and hypersensitivity

- Involuntary movements/convulsions

- Harmful advice from teachers and negative responses to disclosure

- Meditation-induced changes in sense of self, especially depersonalization type dissociation;

- Making sense of or working through no-self teachings;

- Questioning or loss of faith; deconversion; betrayal trauma;

- Sorting out interpretive frameworks

- Neuroscientific explanations

- OCD-like struggles (unless they are related to depersonalization)

- Acute psychosis; inpatient hospitalization

- Clients seeking only a spiritual or Buddhist approach

- Trauma approaches, especially Somatic Experiencing

- Neuroscience

- Clinical Psychology

- Social Psychology (influence)

- Social and Disability Justice

- Feminist Philosophy

- Institutional courage

A ten year vipassana meditation practice and 5 years of lived experience with adverse effects of meditation.

Training from Cheetah House on the mechanisms of meditation induced adverse effects and how to facilitate healing through multiple modalities.

Cheetah House Care Team Scaffolding / Resourcing Trainer

Cheetah House's Scaffolding / Resourcing Modality

Meaning-Making

Dealing with anhedonia and depression

Dealing with a loss in world-view

Getting back to oneself and one's life

Changes in sense of self

Dissociation

Fear/Panic

Depression

Anhedonia

Changes in visual perception

Involuntary Movements

Energy-Like Somatic Experiences

Changes in cognition (mainly memory)

Would benefit from a friend with lived experience who understands what they're going through

Need help feeling meaning in their life

Need help finding practices, objects and activities that align with their original practice goals

Would like to learn and practice Cheetah Houses Scaffolding / Resourcing modality

Are seeking help from someone with an educational/professional background in psychology/therapy.

Are seeking help for OCD (Obssessive Compulsive Disorder) type struggles

Are not open to non-spiritual explanations for the effects of meditation

Person centered care

Cheetah Houses Resourcing / Scaffolding Modality

Nervous System Regulation

Internal Family Systems

Neuroplasticity (No such thing as a 'point of no return')

Meaning Making

I am a certified crisis counselor with 10+ years of work with people in a variety of crisis situations and states of being. and have received training from Cheetah House on scaffolding/resourcing and the mechanisms of meditation induced adverse effects. I have two Master’s degrees, and a Bachelor’s degree with focus in Psychology.

Non-dualism and ideological/ belief related adverse effects and general meditation-induced adverse effects.

Extreme and varied traumatic dissociative effects from non-dualism and meditation.

Anyone who has experienced negative effects related to non-dualism, belief/ideology or meditation.

Meditators experiencing psychosis or mania.

Non-ideological, trauma-informed, curious, compassionate, with focus on individual interpretation of experience.

PhD in Religious Studies, concentration in Cognitive Science

Scholar of Contemplative Studies

Meditation researcher with expertise in meditation-related adverse effects

Engaged Compassion facilitator (certification through the Center for Engaged Compassion)

15 years of contemplative practice in Buddhist, Chinese, and Abrahamic traditions

Jewish, Christian, and Islamic contemplative traditions

Western Buddhist contemplative traditions

The “Dark Nights” of the soul in Abrahamic traditions

Some Taijiquan and Qigong/Neigong traditions

Jewish and comparative mysticism

The Varieties of Contemplative Experience (VCE) and VCE-Abrahamic (VCE-A) research studies

Fear and anxiety

Headaches and head Pressure

Depression

Energy-like Somatic Experiences (ELSEs)

Involuntary movements

Re-experiencing of traumatic memories

Worldview changes

Wrestling with western Buddhism/Buddhist modernism

Wrestling with worldview confusion

Exploring religious or spiritual frameworks and worldviews

Exploring secular or scientific frameworks and worldviews

“Safe and sifted” approaches to re-engaging with contemplative practices traditions

Jewish, Christian, and Islamic contemplative practitioners

OCD-like struggles

Acute psychosis

World-negating (acosmic) spiritual frameworks

Yogic practitioners

Person-Centered Care

Social and Cultural Psychiatry

Enactive Psychiatry

Embodied, Embedded, Enacted, and Extended (4E) Cognitive Science

Psychological Anthropology

Attachment Theory

Social-Baseline Theory

Internal Family Systems Approach

Undergraduate: Organisational Psychology

Masters Level Coach

Postgraduate Certification in Mindfulness Based Interventions (2 years)

Enneagram Certified

HeartMath Certified

Mindfulness

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

Mindfulness Based Relapse Prevention

Mindfulness of Feeling Tone

Adult Children of Alcoholics or Dysfunction

Codependency & Addiction

Reigniting Childhood Trauma

Severe Tinnitus

Dissociation

Anxiety and Panic

Early developmental childhood trauma

Hyperarousal and Anxiety

Mild Dissociation and Depersonalisation

Loss of meaning and existential crisis

Mindfulness crisis - retreats

Acute Dissociation

Delusions

OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)

Attachment and Trauma

Grief and Loss

Compassion Focused Coaching

Recovery and 12 Step Frameworks

Mindfulness

• 2 years of gestalt psychotherapy training

• 1 year shiatsu training

• 19 years of meditation and yoga practice

• Cheetah House care team training

• The teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and Plum Village

• Ashtanga yoga

• DPDR

• Dissociation

• Psychosis

• Involuntary movements

• Hyper-sensitivity

• Energetic porousity

• Long-term adverse effects

• Those who are in Cheetah House Support Groups:

• For 1-1 Consultations, those who are:

  • Referred to me by another Cheetah House Care Team member.

  • In a reintegration phase

  • Open to challenging and exploring their belief systems and the impacts of those belief systems on their lives

  • Interested in creativity and art and exploring how these modalities can be part of a re-integrative path

  • Experiencing long-term symptoms

  • Have various relationships to the practice of meditation, including: discontinuing, re-engaging, modifying and continuing

• Those in acute or crisis situations

• Those experiencing psychedelic or other plant-medicine based difficulties

• Those experiencing OCD like systems

• Person-centered, relational approach - influenced by Gestalt

After a terrifying unfolding of experiences that began during a 10-day Goenka retreat in 2014, I spent years trying to find meaning and healing. During this time, I struggled to find advice that wasn’t harmful to my nervous system. I felt very alone with what meditation practice had done to my body, even though I had received praise from meditation teachers about the direction practice was taking me.

As a former social worker and mental health clinician, it was surprisingly difficult to find mental health providers for my care who understood the nuances of meditation, mindfulness, and Western Buddhist psychology and were simultaneously able to be critical of use in mainstream society and their role in our healthcare system.

At the start of 2020, I joined the Cheetah House support group, where I met a group of folks struggling with many of the same things I was. I no longer felt so alone. This camaraderie has enabled me to regain my agency and sense of self and has been a main ingredient in my healing process.

I wanted to give back to Cheetah House because of the life-changing support it provided to me. Using my experience in social justice work, human services, and nonprofit governance, I helped with organizational strategic planning and development of the Care Team. I participated in the inaugural Care Team training, helping create a curriculum centered around peer-led care systems, and served as a member of the Board of Directors until the Fall of 2023.