My Story

Expert in Disconnection

Being the only Asian kid until 7th grade was stressful.

I was a Chinese girl who convinced myself I was White and Jewish. 

I desperately longed to fit in and feel belonging. I rejected everything about myself that was Chinese. I resented my parents for looking the way they did, for their accent. I did everything I could to look like my friends (including some really terrible home perms!). 

I am also an oldest—and “good daughter”—of Chinese immigrants. I fulfilled others’ needs and had no idea what my own were.

I half joke that my first full-time job of college prep started when I was three-years old and had my first piano lesson. I was four when I had my first recital on a stage. 

I learned early on that when I excelled at certain things my parents calmed down. Less fighting at the dinner table. So I continued with that trajectory.

Achievement was my survival strategy. 

Mid-life crisis at 18

When I was seventeen, I skipped my senior year in high school and went to college a year early. I had “made it” as a super achiever, but I was utterly lost and confused.

I had learned how to fulfill others’ desires and expectations so well, I had no idea what my own needs and wants were. They were buried.

I was completely disconnected from myself. Which also meant I had no idea how to “be myself” in relationships.

The tragic irony is reflected on my application to Stanford. I wrote an essay responding to this question:

“If you could spend a day with anyone, whom would you choose and why?”

I wrote about spending the day with my Self - an imagined version who was unaffected by social context and free from responding to pressures and expectations from family or society.

Who would I be if I lived according to my own inspiration and desire?

I had no idea.

But I knew very clearly at 18 how burdened I was from living out a life that was a response to duty, obligation, fears, and anxieties. I was trained to fulfill someone else’s story of my life. And it completely disconnected me from my own agency and sense of my Self.

Five months after arriving at Stanford, I dropped out.

Path to Connection

Have you ever felt like you were living out the story of your life that someone else had written?

I spent the following 30+ years seeking teachers and experiences to help me figure out how to be the author of my own life story.

I read countless self-help books that didn’t help. Most of them painted a picture of a life I already knew I wanted, free of shame and self-judgment, fueled by self-trust. They gave me permission to do what I love, and live a fulfilling and creative life.

The problem was, nothing I read actually showed me the steps for how to get there.

How do I do what I love when I’m so deep in my shame I have no idea what I love, let alone pursue it?

I pieced together a self-guided education that helped me integrate the discarded parts of myself and begin to heal the trauma that was limiting me.

I awakened to my own interests and desires. That led me on a path to engage with what it takes to sustain my life and create deeply fulfilling connection with myself and others.

Land & Shelter

Land

After graduating from Stanford, I spent two years at the University of California Santa Cruz Farm and Garden Apprenticeship Program.

I learned how to grow good soil and organic food. I emerged from this transformed after experiencing peace, wholeness, and well-being from being so interconnected with the land.

I felt committed and compelled to spread this to young people. I went on to launch an innovative organic garden and cooking program in the Berkeley Unified School District, a model for schools across the country. See videos of the program on My Story page.

Shelter

In my idealism (and ignorance), I had a vision to design and build my own strawbale home (a sustainable building technology), with strawbales made from rice grown in Winters, California, and walls plastered with local clay soil.

That vision became a 10-year project, and is where I live and garden now.

Interpersonal Relationships

I grew up in a household where my family didn’t talk about feelings. It took me years to be able to name what I was actually feeling. This was a huge unconscious barrier that limited my potential.

I intuitively made my way to teachers and methodologies that helped me get comfortable with emotions (my own and others’) and how to express them in ways that build and deepen meaningful connection.

I ended up pursuing work in the area I most needed.

I went through a training program at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where I learned how to facilitate small group learning labs called T Group (“training group”) to help MBA students develop emotional literacy and interpersonal skills.

With consistent practice over a few years, facilitating T Groups became one of my passions. And continues to be. As someone with an innate systems orientation, I'm able to “see” and pick up dynamics and patterns happening in groups that are invisible to many.

Body. Trauma. Cuban Salsa. Healing

I stumbled into a next layer of healing and growth at a New Year’s salsa party. I was the only one who didn’t know how to salsa dance, but I was inspired by how alive and radiant everyone was.

These people were loving life and I wanted a piece of that.

Two days later on January 3, I signed up for my first salsa class. By June, I was dancing 3-4 times a week.

Salsa became my joy practice for over 6 years.

After struggling with deep shame and inadequacy for decades, I felt the absence of shame for the first time. On the dance floor! This miraculous transformation ushered me into a next stage of profound learning and healing through my body’s wisdom.

Trainings through Strozzi Institute and generative somatics expanded my world into the intersection of neuroscience, somatic practice, leadership, and trauma healing.

Embodied practices have enabled me to transform deeply entrenched patterns of shame, inner critic, and inadequacy, into being comfortable in my own skin and expressing my own unique purpose and leadership.

As a result, somatic practices with a lens of neuroscience, are a bedrock for my methodology Designed For Connection, and my teaching and coaching.