Hey, I’m Teresa

Here’s my “bio.”

I am a therapist in training, pursuing my Psychology PhD at Meridian University, living in Oakland, California. I am of Taiwanese, Chinese, and Mongolian descent and a first generation American. I come from studying and practicing modalities including AEDP, IFS, and Polyvagal theory and maintain a decade long deep practice with Vipassana meditation and yoga. My ceremony and medicine work began in 2018, learning from a Peruvian lineage working with Ayahuasca and a South African Sangoma lineage working with Iboga. I believe that now is the time to heal in relationship and open to those vulnerabilities of deeper connection with self and others through creating real, safe and secure relationships with clients. In 1-1 work, she guides people to create safety and return back to being in the body, heal attachment wounds, re-align inner dialogue and invite imaginal capabilities and play to reinstate vitality. In ceremonial work, I brings my connection to master Amazonian plants, voice, music, and sound instruments to remember the wisdom of the heart and spirit to heal and transform.

I grew up on the east coast, with the typical accolades of graduating top of class, captain of varsity team, honors roll, double degree, and straight into a future in Washington D.C. I moved to San Francisco to work at a start up and have travelled to 35 countries.

After a series of unexpected events, my path turned towards healing and has led me to learn from teachers around the world and most importantly taught me how to live life in presence and intention. I’ve cultivated unique tools to restore my own vitality and live in joyful connection with the world around me.

Since 2015, I learned and trained in practices like yoga, meditation, grief, and trauma. In 2019 I raised $20k and launched a non-profit focused on peer based healing modalities, with my key thesis being we all have what we need to heal and the medicine is in community.

This led me to spend two years helping run a trauma foundation with one of the worlds most foremost experts and researchers on the forefront of trauma healing modalities, Bessel van Der Kolk.

I was privileged to learn from experts in various modalities of healing which I now call upon to help others on their healing journey including:

  • Body Based Movement Practices

  • Breath and Meditation

  • Complex PTSD

  • Parts Work

  • Play Therapy

  • Peer Counseling

  • Art Therapy

  • Various Medicine and Plant Work

  • Spiritual Guidance and Alignment

Teachers who have most influenced my work include:

  • Diana Fosha

  • Richard Schwartz

  • Judith Herman

  • Peter Levine

In parallel, I spent the last decade seeking out and working with teachers from Peru, Costa Rica, and South Africa, organizing retreats, building communities, and facilitating psychedelic experiences with plant medicines including Ayahuasca, Iboga, and Wachuma.

Today, I am grateful to use all the knowledge and experience I’ve gained to help others on their path of healing from trauma.

Now here’s the real story…

I’m a trauma survivor. When I was 27 I had an out of body experience when a beloved suddenly died in a motorcycle accident on his way to see me. I didn’t know it then but as I was floating above my body, listening to the girl below me cry, my life was starting on a deep path of healing.

Disassociated, disconnected, and numb, the non-existent space for grief in our society left me depressed, alone, and totally lost. I quit my job, packed my bags, and went to a small little island to hide away and try and figure out what was happening inside me. 6 months of isolation just focusing on each step ahead I dove into yoga, breath work, meditation and plant medicines. The pain inside me was so immense, everything I thought I knew about life was shattered, I had to re-build from scratch.

Two years later, another previous love also died in a motorcycle accident. I spun into a whole new whirlwind of traumatic stress - it brought up all the first grief, created a whole load of new grief, and the bewildering of it all happening again. Dark night of the soul round two.

At this point, I had spent all of my savings and was in such bad mental shape that returning to a six-figure job that was the antithesis to the new human I was becoming was out of the question. I relocated into the mountains to do the deeper work that was being called. Two years later, all of the grief work led me to become a yoga and meditation teacher. I had robust toolbox of self awareness and self practice and I started to feel my feet underneath me. Then the deepest chapter began - to heal the sexual abuse I experienced in childhood.

All of the old mechanisms and behaviors developed when young were finally out of date and called to be healed and released. Disconnection from the body, self, authenticity, and needs tuned into a path of remembering, reconnecting, and restoring.

1,000+ hours of Vipassana meditation, many journeys learning from ancestral medicines like Ayahuasca and Iboga, I confronted my family and my abuser. With each abandoned part I recovered, I discovered sweetness and connection. For each fearful part I recovered, I discovered unwavering courage to stand for what’s right. For each rage-full part I recovered, I discovered strength and clarity in boundaries. With each neglected part I recovered, I discovered compassion and the ability to love unconditionally. With every traumatized part I recovered, I discovered the fail-proof equation to healing: awareness, presence, self-compassion, and love.

I started to share the knowledge and methodologies that helped me from trauma psychology, plant medicines, neuroscience, IFS, AEDP, mindfulness, music, and movement to help other people heal.

There isn’t a day where I’m infinitely full of empathy and compassion for the difficulties that stem from trauma and there isn’t a day where I am not absolutely fascinated and hopeful of humans ability to not only survive but to thrive. To turn hardship into something so inexplicable -love, beauty, and awe, is life-long hard-earned magic.

I’ll walk with you until you reach that magic.