I’ve always been a seeker. Guided by my instincts and intuition, I always knew that moving forward and learning new skills for coping was the essential key to living life without stress and overwhelm.

Change is inevitable, obviously. Nothing ever remains exactly the same for very long. Stress arrives quickly when we are confronted by something out of the ordinary and we can’t adapt to the new situation easily or quickly enough. We can also get stuck grinding over the same thoughts again and again, unable to imagine living or thinking a different way, even though we recognize what we are doing isn’t working at all.

If the key to helping ourselves is found in our ability to adapt and to move forward, but we know we feel stuck, then working with me could be very useful. When I consider all that has happened to me in my lifetime, I recognize I have had to learn a lot to adapt to complex situations, and I have also accumulated a wide repertoire of useful skills which can help any of us deal with whatever is going on in our lives.

You might want to know something about me. I was born in Boulder, Colorado to a businessman and a teacher. My parents were lovely people, but they had their own dark shadows caused by traumatic early life experiences, and my education about coping with stress began in early childhood.

I showed great promise as a musician, which was very fortunate, because music gave me a tremendous outlet for all that I had to process emotionally. Eventually, I came to NY to study at the Juilliard School of Music, where I met my future husband, renowned cellist Paul Tobias.

After Juilliard, I played concerts both as a soloist and chamber musician, and my husband and I worked together for years, playing sonata recitals in festivals, colleges, and university concert series. When I was sidelined with an injury to my right hand, I began a search for teachers and techniques to help me heal the injury and avoid another in the future. I found my way to Dorothy Taubman, a brilliant teacher who was well-known for rehabilitating pianists, and I also delved into an extensive study of Feldenkrais, qigong, breathwork, and more. For 20 years I taught Feldenkrais and other stress-reduction techniques at the Mannes College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music.

As I worked with musicians over the years, I observed that not only were their injuries healing easily and their instrumental skills improving, but their struggles with career and life challenges as well as their stress and anxiety levels were improving too, often remarkably quickly. I had ample opportunity to observe that the techniques that helped my students play without pain and discomfort also helped them live their lives more easily and have less anxiety.

My personal life has also been deeply affected by physical and mental illnesses in my immediate family, including bipolar illness, schizophrenia, and addiction. I navigated through the chaos created by these illnesses using the same skills I acquired while healing my hand injury. 

Often, individual family members can find themselves feeling isolated and ignored if the focus remains for long periods on a person who is sick. Parents, spouses, children and siblings (and even good friends) of the physically and mentally ill can benefit from acquiring tools that help them successfully manage ongoing difficult situations. They can also find comfort in knowing their experiences are not unique.

In my coaching, I use techniques with proven effectiveness that can help anyone achieve more balance when faced with a variety of stresses, including an illness, death in the family, divorce, or devastating news.

The techniques I use help people reflect and improve their lives. Stress, or stressful situations, are inevitable, and we cannot control anything except what goes on in our own minds and which actions we take. Every session with me is unique, and tailored to each person – their needs, their stresses, their life. 

Though life may offer many unexpected twists and turns that will challenge us physically and emotionally, we can learn to get through it all more easily and calmly. Nobody has to remain stressed out.The techniques I use have proven effectiveness, and they can help all of us achieve more balance when faced with a variety of stresses. Each session with me is unique, and tailored to the individual – their needs, their stresses, their life. We can all learn to cope more easily and calmly, no matter the unexpected twists and turns in our lives or the physical or emotional challenges we might encounter. My life has also been deeply affected by mental illnesses in members of my immediate family, including bipolar illness, schizophrenia, and addiction. These illnesses created a lot of additional stress, and I learned to navigated through the chaos using the same skills I acquired while healing my hand injury and helping musicians. Whatever the cause, nobody has to remain stressed out.