Sunrise has been my office for twenty years.

The Medicine Is Outside

I have never been someone who wanted to be indoors.

I opened a private personal training gym in 2005 and closed it after a few years. I couldn’t stand being inside. What I did instead — what I did for the next twenty years — was teach people how to start their day outside. Sunrise classes. Sunset classes. 6:15am. 9:15am. Five days a week. Twenty-five different locations across Santa Cruz. About twenty trainers working alongside me over the years.

The company was called Optimal Health and Fitness. The flagship program was Santa Cruz Challenge — it became its own S Corp and eventually a franchise. We opened one franchise location before I closed the business to focus on my doctorate in Chinese medicine.

It was one of the great loves of my professional life.

What I learned in those twenty years — watching thousands of people show up in the dark, in the cold, in the fog rolling off the Pacific — is that movement outdoors is its own category of medicine. It isn’t exercise. It’s a form of contact. With the ground. With the air. With the seasons. With the people around you. With yourself.

Most people in modern life are touch-starved for the natural world. They don’t know it until they feel it. A body that trains outside regulates differently than a body that trains in a mirrored room with fluorescent lights. The nervous system knows the difference even when the mind doesn’t.

I retired from outdoor fitness when I moved to Boulder. But the principle hasn’t left me. It’s in everything I do now.

Qigong

In 2002 I found qigong. In June 2005 I became certified.

Twenty-four years later it is still the practice I return to every day.

Qigong is the movement side of Chinese medicine. Where acupuncture works on qi from the outside in, qigong works from the inside out. Slow, deliberate, breath-led movement that regulates the nervous system, opens the meridians, builds energy rather than depleting it, and teaches the body how to be present with itself.

What I teach draws from several lineages:

• Taoyin — the ancestor of yoga; deep, held, breath-coordinated stretches that release stored tension in the connective tissue
• Tendon Nei-Gong — subtle internal strength work that builds the body from the inside
• Five Element Flow — moving sequences that work through wood, fire, earth, metal, and water energetics
• Breathwork — the bridge between body and mind
• Visualization and meditation — the quiet practices that make all of the above actually land

Qigong is not a workout. It is not a performance. It is not something you get good at in the way you get good at a sport. It is a practice of listening — to the body, to the breath, to the space around you — and over time that listening becomes the medicine.

Classes

I’m offering monthly qigong classes wherever I am — most months that means one class in Boulder and one in Santa Cruz, about twice a month total. I’ll be recording and building out a growing library of replays so you can practice from home.

A Portal to Presence

I’ve graduated from The 360 Emergence facilitator training. Its approach to movement, music, and presence now joins the qigong practice and two decades of group movement work that have shaped how I guide people.

A Portal to Presence is an invitation to move with curiosity. I create the space, choose the music, and offer simple prompts that help you notice your breath, feel your feet on the ground, and explore what wants to move. You can follow an invitation, adapt it, or pause. There are no steps to learn and no particular way you need to look.

Some people call this dance. I think of it as a chance to arrive more fully in your body, in your own way, alongside others.

If you’re curious, come as you are. Join my email list for upcoming gatherings.

Why Movement Is Medicine

In Chinese medicine, stagnation is the beginning of most disease. Qi that doesn’t flow becomes pain. Blood that doesn’t move becomes heat. Emotion that doesn’t discharge becomes pattern. Life that isn’t metabolized becomes weight the body carries silently for years.

Movement is how we stay alive to ourselves.

Not performance. Not punishment. Not the fitness-industrial complex. Just movement — the kind that reconnects you to ground, breath, and the slow intelligence of your own body.

What I Offer Now

Monthly Qigong Classes Boulder and Santa Cruz, about twice a month total. Live, with a growing library of replays. → See class schedule

A Portal to Presence A new offering launching this fall. Movement, music, facilitation, and the practice of arriving in a body. → Learn more

Retreats Occasional longer-form gatherings that weave qigong, nervous system work, and group presence practice. → See upcoming retreats