I am a parent to two wonderful girls who sometimes challenge everything I think and know. I gave birth to both of them at home, in the water. Both girls were breastfed for more than three years each. We learned EC (elimination communication) with our first daughter and went completely diaper free with our second. We have unschooled and homeschooled. Both girls are currently in private school. All of these experiences are teaching me a great deal about trust and the inherent wisdom of my children.
I love to question and I love to be of service.
I am offering parent coaching in order to be of service. When I can help even one parent, even one child, have a healthier happier relationship and enjoy life more, then my work has been successful. When I help many, then my work is blissful as I feel my service return to me to support my family. Our dreams will be financed by helping you. Isn’t that awesome?
For the last 15 years or so, I’ve been questioning my role in society, who I am, what I want from life, and what I have to offer. I started out in Silicon Valley working as a chemical engineer in an environmental consulting firm. I noticed that the people around me, the adults who I was supposed to look up to, were generally overweight and unhappy. They worked long hours and complained a lot. Many had lingering illnesses. Even more telling, I dreaded Monday morning and going to work every day. I left that job and became an aerobics instructor. The hours were good and I wasn’t going to get fat, I reasoned. I also learned something about myself. I like to slow down and look at the details of things. I started to teach yoga as it’s both slower, more mindful, and to me more meaningful than step aerobics or kickboxing.
And so started a love affair that hasn’t ended yet. Yoga has transformed my life and taken me on many amazing journeys. Omega Institute where I met my husband. Costa Rica where I met poison dart frogs. Yoga has also taught me that yoga is so much more than the asana or postures. Yoga is a way of life, a way of being curious and disciplined, compassionate and grounded. Yoga lead me to parent coaching. Yoga is leading me into founding yearofjoys.com to look within shame and scarcity for gifts of belonging and sufficiency.
Relationships have pushed me to look deeper into myself and take responsibility both for my own misery and my own happiness. The service of parent coaching comes out of this life.
- The voices within you do not need to be silenced or changed; they need to be listened to with compassion. My favorite coaching tool, compassionate listening and gentle inquiry with our parts, comes directly from my training and hundreds of hours of practice with Inner Empathy. Check out www.innnerempathy.com for more information on Inner Empathy.
- Becoming certified as a Somatic Sex Educator means I have the skills and training to work with your entire body, mind, emotions, and spirit in service of your sexual wholeness, pleasure, and empowerment.
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) – a series of 7 different residential intensives in mindfulness totalling more than 400 hours of contact time. “Everything passes. Everything changes. The trick is to notice what’s happening before it’s gone.” Visit http://www.mindfullivingprograms.com/ for more information on MBSR.
- 16 years of teaching yoga and working with people to listen to the body’s wisdom. Our bodies teach us constantly about what’s working, what’s not, how to improve our lives, and how to go more into our life path. Fear, tension, illness are often constricted excitement – energy that’s gotten locked up with no place to go. We can listen, move our bodies, free up that stuck energy, and heal. Visit www.yoga-and-transformation.com for more information about my yoga and meditation background.
- The School for The Work of Byron Katie – a 9 day intensive in compassionate inquiry. We look at our stories, our beliefs, and our judgements and ask how they serve us and what they can tell us about ourselves. Check out www.thework.com to find out about The Work of Byron Katie.
- Working with The Diamond Cutter and Karmic Management to learn radical self-responsibility and the discipline of continually noticing how I create the world around me with my thoughts, actions, and words. This is a tangible, accessible way of working with the incredible power we have to create our own lives. It has transformed mine. I look forward to offering its services to yours. www.diamondcutterinstitute.com
- BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Virginia. The best things to come out of this degree are the abilities to problem solve and to work hard and persistently. Both skills will be useful to you as you embark on parent coaching. You can find more information about UVa at www.virginia.edu.
Content by Kassandra Brown, Parent Coach