My approach is rooted in my eight years of practice, study, and lived experience as a Buddhist monk, supported by a monastic framework valuing presence, witnessing, curiosity, inquiry, compassion, and deep honesty. Buddhist frameworks are foundational in my work, but since leaving the monastery, I’ve found great value in contemporary perspectives and approaches including trauma awareness, attachment theory, and reparenting, among others.

I’ve come to see that our frameworks for understanding and acting in our lives—including our values, beliefs, intentions, assumptions, and emotional reflexes—need regular updating and occasional overhaul. Our frameworks are works in progress. Framings that served us well in the past may come to hinder or even harm us in the present. Renovating our frameworks—based on what we want and care about as the people we are now—can enable us to shift into healing, renewal, directedness, and growth.

So the heart of my approach is to support you in this personal work of renovation, of finding your way to your next framework. None of us finds our way forward on our own. Together, we’ll work to clarify your motivations, desires, and aims, understanding how you’ve come to them and how they serve you, and reframing to move towards what really matters to you.

Mainly, we’ll engage in honest, probing, caring one-on-one conversation. I will listen deeply, ask questions, and share perspectives. We may also make use, where helpful, of meditation and writing.

I work with students, professionals, artists, researchers, adventurers, culture-crossers, meditators and spiritual seekers of any background. I aim to support people who are
 • struggling with difficult or complex decisions
 • facing challenging circumstances or emotional terrain
 • confronting questions of meaning or philosophical perplexity
 • feeling stuck in life or hindered by past experiences
 • seeking direction

Yes. I also work as a writing coach and mentor, based on eight years as an associate at the Amherst College Writing Center and a long career as a writer and editor. I furthermore offer guidance to meditators seeking to broaden from sectarian or technique-oriented practices to self-directed, creative, life-integrated ones.

No. I’m not licensed as a therapist, mental health counselor, or other clinical practitioner. If you’re struggling with significant mental health challenges, you may benefit from—and I may recommend—the care that a trained therapist or psychiatrist can provide. The holistic approach I take may complement this, but some problems are best approached within a mental-illness framework.

I welcome you in all of your identities. I strive to live with an awareness of how race, gender, economic and class status, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, physical and cognitive ability, political orientation, body type, birth order, and other identities shape our lives and outlooks. This includes working to understand how my own identities as white and male can limit my perspective.

Sessions are by videochat. I’m also available by arrangement for in-person sessions in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, USA, where I’m based.

I charge on a sliding scale. There is no fee for an initial consultation. If we decide to move forward with further sessions, we’ll settle on a fee that’s workable for us both based on a brief discussion at the end of our initial consultation. Payment is typically by Paypal.

Start with an initial consultation. Contact me to schedule one. During this session, we’ll discuss any specific ideas, questions, problems, or goals you’d like to explore. Or we’ll pursue a more general discussion of where you are in your life, how you’ve gotten there, and where you want to go. The aim is to open up what’s important to you now, and whether the counseling/coaching that I offer can help.