I was introduced to yoga at age 14 while attending Brockwood Park School, founded by J. Krishnamurti, in Hampshire, England. After high school I studied yoga with T.K.V. Desikachar in Chennai, India. Mr. Desikachar was the teacher of Krishnamurti and of all the yoga teachers at Brockwood, and is the son of the great T. Krishnamacharya, a highly influential yoga teacher in India. 

Born in Santa Barbara, California, I was raised between Santa Barbara, Canada, Switzerland and England. My father was a well-known and well-loved psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, one of the early pioneers in the human potential movement, who was profoundly influenced by the teachings of J. Krishnamurti, Zen Buddhism and Hasidism. My mother was an artist and Indophile, and turned our home into a Tibetan Buddhist Center, with visiting monks and lamas, lectures and retreats taking place on a regular basis. Visitors to our home included Alan Watts, Aldous and Laura Huxley, Charles Schulz, Fritz Perls, and many other innovative figures throughout the 1960s and 1970s. 

After graduation from Northwestern University Medical School, training in Emergency Medicine and then Psychiatry, I returned for further training with Mr. Desikachar in Europe and India, and began to incorporate yoga practice and philosophy into my psychiatric practice. For the past 25 years I have worked to develop a synthesis between dynamic psychotherapy, medicines when needed, and yoga principles. I find these highly compatible, and have observed that daily practice tailored to the needs of the individual is a powerful accelerator of emotional growth in a positive direction. The teachings of T. Krishnamacharya, passed on through his son Desikachar, concern a form of yoga which is highly individualized and therapeutic in nature; the practices are tailored to the specific person and intended for daily personal development. 

My own psychiatric training took place at McAuley Neuropsychiatric Institute of St. Mary’s Hospital, San Francisco, a psychoanalytically-based training program. My personal therapeutic process and supervision included Jungian, psychoanalytic, existential, Gestalt and other influences. My practice philosophy is person-centered rather than disease-centered, drawing upon all of the traditions I have been steeped in. As Mr. Desikachar taught, “people heal themselves in the context of caring, interest and faith.”