My mother took me to ballet lessons, but our teacher had us do an exercise that hurt my body. I wasn’t interested in doing something painful in order to enjoy what I loved — and thankfully, my mother wasn’t OK with that either — so I quit ballet.

Around the same time, I was given a violin, which I’d been asking for since I was two.

Playing the violin didn’t hurt until many years later, when I was in college. One day, without warning, I felt a sharp, searing pain shoot up my arm from my left pinky. For a couple of days, I couldn’t play at all.

Thankfully, it went away, and yoga stretches helped keep that particular pain at bay most of the time.

But I didn’t really get to the root of that pain — or of a much deeper pain I was carrying, one that felt more emotional and spiritual than physical — until I was in my early thirties.

That was when I developed a stubborn neck pain that wouldn’t go away for weeks. My doctors and chiropractor couldn’t help, so a friend urged me to try the Alexander Technique again.

I’d already tried it twice before.

I really hadn’t liked it.

But something in me said to give it one more chance.

That decision changed my life.

Within a couple of weeks, the neck pain disappeared. But what happened over the next few months mattered even more: my heart seemed to open, and a fresh curiosity, creative flow, and love of life began awakening from somewhere deep within me. 🌿

Interestingly, my Alexander teacher was a dancer, not a musician.

And perhaps that was fitting, because to me, we are all musicians. We are all dancers.

We are all moving through life, responding, expressing, creating, relating, listening, speaking, performing, contributing.

And beneath all our particular goals — improving our art, building a business, speaking with confidence, becoming more visible, solving a physical problem — I think many of us are looking for something much more fundamental:

A way to fall in love with life again.

To move with more ease.

To experience beauty.

To feel inspired.

To become more fully ourselves, rich in creative spirit, and free enough to share what is uniquely ours with other people.

To be inspired — and to become a source of inspiration for others. 💫

This is at the heart of The Art of Freedom® and why I’m now expanding my coaching work beyond musicians to welcome performers, creatives, leaders, and entrepreneurs who sense that there is more of themselves waiting to emerge.

My work isn’t about adding another layer of self-improvement or teaching you to perform a better version of yourself. It’s about helping you notice what may be interfering with the natural transmission of your ideas, creativity, presence, and gifts — in your mind, your body, and the way you show up in the world.

That’s the foundation of my new online Relaxed and Real program.

We’ll begin exactly where you are: with what you’re feeling, how you’re moving through your days, and how you currently present yourself and your work.

From there, I’ll help you become more aware of the physical and mental patterns that may be getting in your way, release unnecessary interference, reconnect with your creative spirit, and discover what happens when you dare to show up more fully — relaxed, real, and unmistakably yourself. ✨

Because this is a brand-new program, I’m offering a special Founder’s Rate through September 15.

I’m also bringing this work into an intimate in-person experience near Amsterdam this October with Dare to Shine: Relax, Create, Contribute.

So if you’re a musician, performer, writer, creative, leader, entrepreneur — or simply someone who knows there is more freedom, inspiration, and aliveness available to you — and you’re curious about what might happen if you stopped trying so hard to become better and began removing what interferes with who you already are, send me a message.

And if you’ve read this far, you might pay attention to the part of you that is curious before the self-editing part has time to explain why you should ignore it.

Sometimes curiosity knows something before the rest of us does.

Just tell me you’re interested in Relaxed and Real, and we can have a conversation about whether it feels like the right next step for you.