Through yoga teaching, health and wellness counseling, education, scholarly research, publications, public speaking, mentoring, and chanting, I express my commitments to holistic healing, peace building, social healing, children’s rights, nonviolence, the prevention of violence, and spiritual cultivation. My recent publications include, but are not limited to, The Neurobiology of Vicarious Trauma and How Yoga Helps (2012), Some Causes and Consequences of Direct and Structural Violence (with Marc Pilisuk, 2012), The Power of Peace (with Madeleine Y. Gómez, 2004), Peace Quest: Cultivating Peace in a Violent Culture (2003), and The Plague of Violence: a Preventable Epidemic (2002).
I work as the Holistic Health and Wellness Coordinator for Psychealth, Ltd. and as a yoga teacher with the Niroga Institute.
My mission for holistic healing, peace building, and spiritual cultivation is rooted in early childhood experience. As an undergraduate at Columbia University (B.A.), I chose religion as my major because I wanted to discover what the spiritual traditions could contribute toward reducing violence and building peace on earth. My graduate studies were in sociology at the University of Chicago(M.A.) and psychology at Saybrook University and were motivated by the same abiding interest. In February, 2013, the Indian Board of Alternative Medicines, located in Kolkata, awarded me a Ph.D. (h.c.) in Alternative Medicines in recognition of my lifetime achievements in this field, including my scholarly work, publications, yoga teaching, practice of holistic healing modalities, clinical counseling work, and teaching in higher education.
With an estimated 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, the presiding Pope Francis has a potentially huge audience and significant influence through his…
