What I bring to this work
I was ten years old and already medicated with Ritalin for not fitting in. By fifteen I had looked at the life being offered to me — the career, the consumption, the performance — and found it so hollow that I didn't want to live. Not because I was sick, but because I was paying attention. I grew up in the meaning crisis before it became a named phenomenon. Fortunately, at seventeen, I started finding my way back through psychedelics and meditation. But I also nearly destroyed myself chasing mystical psychedelic visions without knowing how to integrate them.
Then the dark night arrived and took everything apart.
What came after was a long, slow, humbling education in what the experiences were actually asking of me.
What pulled me through, slowly and imperfectly, was a combination of Buddhist practice, breathwork, and eventually ayahuasca. Buddhism came first, through a book my mother bought me as I was finding my way into psychedelics. Breathwork came later, and became the most direct path through the aftermath. Ayahuasca came when I was ready: as a teacher, not a thrill.
The point of this work isn't transcendence or escape. It's return. Back to your body, your relationships, your life. Changed. Humbled. More alive to what actually matters. I offer not answers, but companionship on the walk back.
We are a civilization stuck in our heads — overanalyzing, overthinking, optimizing — and cut off from the intelligence of the body and the heart. I know this from the inside. Analysis has always been more familiar to me than feeling, ideas more comfortable than presence. My entire path has been about closing that distance: from the head to the heart, from knowing to being, from insight into embodiment. Psychedelics accelerated that journey. So did meditation, breathwork, participating in and facilitating ceremony.
A note for those here specifically for psychedelic work: I have been working with these medicines for just over a decade: as a participant, a student, and a guide. I know the difference between a good set and setting and a great one. I know what happens when preparation is skipped. I know the particular loneliness of a difficult experience that no one around you can hold. And I know what genuine integration looks like, as opposed to the story we tell ourselves about it.
Contemplative training. Zen practice at Enpuku-ji in Montréal, silent Vipassana retreats, Vajrayana training, Ashtanga yoga, certified instruction in yoga and conscious connected breathwork. I teach in private practice and have worked in residential treatment settings with people navigating addiction, depression, and anxiety. I have trained in and led ceremonial contexts.
Academic depth. Triple major in Psychology, Philosophy, and Religious Studies at McGill; MA in Psychedelics and Consciousness Studies at the University of Ottawa, where I developed the Psygaia framework. Doctoral research is the next step.
Beyond 1:1 work. I am the founding researcher and director of Psygaia, a nonprofit dedicated to psychedelics and ecological systems, and co-founder of Woven, which offers group ceremonial journeys and integrative retreats in the BC backcountry.