MY STORY
We all have a story.
Of trials, tribulations,
and transformations.
From Brooklyn to Bali the long way around to coming home to myself.
I grew up in Brooklyn. Low-income household, broken
family, dysfunctional in ways that become clearer the older you get.
At eight years old I was already changing diapers and cleaning bottles for my three half-siblings. I thought that was what older sisters were supposed to do. I didn't realise yet that I was being asked to grow up befor i'd had a chance to be young.
BROOKLYN
School was its own kind of survival. Six elementary schools intercity schools, moved again and again as my family chased more affordable rent. I was always catching up, always the new kid, always the Asian girl in schools where Asian kids got beaten up and some joined gangs just to stay safe. I kept my head down, stayed focused, and made sure I got home. I was lucky. I had protective friends and aunts and uncles who gave me something that looked like stability when home couldn't.
By 14 I was working. Tutoring. Telemarketing. Anything to take care of myself. By 16 I had left home and was shuffling between houses, figuring it out as I went.
"I knew one thing with absolute clarity: I was going to create a different life."
Finance was how I was going to do it. I was the first in my family to graduate college. At 21, I joined a prestigious global bank, and for the first time in my life, things started to feel somewhat normal. I was earning good money. I was building the thing I had promised myself I would build.
But underneath the performance, I was unraveling.
Long hours. Constant stress. An eating disorder I had carried for years. I went from 110 to 150 pounds and hated myself for it. I was in a toxic relationship, using alcohol and drugs to manage the parts of me that work couldn't fix. I was 24 years old and deeply depressed, dressed in a career that looked like success from the outside.
THE TURNING POINT
Then my body made the decision I wouldn't make myself.
I ended up unconscious in a hospital. No one knew if I was going to wake up. I did, five days later, with no memory of the previous six months. Short-term memory gone. Identity shaken. The life I had built suddenly felt very thin.
I left the bank. Moved into strategy consulting still in finance, still intense, same pace, same patterns. But something had shifted underneath, quietly and permanently.
And then yoga found me. Or maybe I finally stopped moving long enough for it to catch up with me.
Once a week. Then twice. Then every day. Not because I was disciplined, but because for the first time I was being asked to feel what was happening in my body instead of override it and something in me was desperate for exactly that. My body changed. My relationships became healthier. I started to understand the difference between coping and actually living.
In 2008 I began my yoga teaching journey.
Still carrying the fear of falling back, I completed an MBA at Chicago Booth, one of the world's top business schools. I wanted to know I could stand in any room, build anything, pivot anywhere. It took another decade to step out of finance entirely. But I was building toward something, even when I couldn't fully name it yet.
GRIEF
Then grief arrived, in waves, and deepened everything.
I lost someone I had loved deeply, a person who had changed the shape of my world in ways I am still understanding. Then I lost my grandmother, my anchor, the constant through every version of the chaos that had been my life. Then I lost my closest friend.
These losses did not come with instructions. They arrived in the body. In the chest. In the throat. In the sleepless nights and the hollow mornings after.
"Grief cannot be optimized or scheduled or pushed through. You feel it, or it finds other ways out."
That is when somatic work opened something in me that yoga alone hadn't reached. Breathwork. Nervous system regulation. Learning to actually inhabit my body rather than manage it from a distance. Slower than anything I'd done before. Quieter. And more honest.
BALI . NOW
I live in Bali now.
I work with leaders, entrepreneurs, and high-achievers who remind me of who I used to be. People who have built extraordinary things on the outside while quietly running on empty within. People who are skilled at surviving and are beginning to ask whether there's a difference between surviving and living.
There is.
I know it because I've lived both sides of it. The way through is not another strategy, another system, or another thing to optimise. It's the body. It's learning to listen to what has been speaking underneath the noise all along.
Your body already knows.
I'm here to help you hear it.
THE JOURNEY
The long way
around
Age 8
Brooklyn · learning to carry things
Six elementary schools. The new kid, always. Caregiver before I had a chance to be a child. Building resilience I didn't have a word for yet.
Age 14
Working at 14, left home at 16
Tutoring, telemarketing, anything. Left home at 16 and shuffled between houses. Survival made me resourceful. It also made it hard to stop.
Age 21
First in the family to graduate college · global bank
The life I had promised myself, beginning to take shape. Success on the outside.
Unraveling, quietly, within.
Age 24
Hospital. Five days unconscious.
My body made the decision I wouldn't. I woke up with no memory of the previous
six months. The turning point I didn't choose but needed.
2008
Yoga finds me
Once a week. Then every day. The first practice that asked me to feel rather than
override. My body began to change. So did everything else.
MBA
Chicago Booth · building the backup plan
One of the world's top business schools. Still carrying the fear of falling back.
Wanting to know I could stand in any room. It took another decade to step out of
finance entirely.
Grief
Three losses. The body as teacher.
A beloved person. My grandmother. My closest friend. Grief arrived in the body and wouldn't be managed. Somatic breathwork opened something yoga alone hadn't reached.
NOW
Bali · facilitating the return
Retreats, group programs, workshops, and corporate sessions with leaders and
high-achievers who remind me of who I used to be. People learning the
difference between surviving and living.
WHAT I HOLD TO BE TRUE
The beliefs that shape
everything I do
I
The body doesn't lie
Everything we've been through lives in the body. Working at the level of sensation is not soft, it's the most direct route to real change.
IV
Grief is not a detour
It's part of the path. The losses I've carried have made me a better facilitator, not in spite of them, but because I stopped trying to manage them and let myself feel them instead.
II
You are not broken
You've been shaped by things that happened to you. That's not a flaw it's biology. The work is not fixing you. It's returning to who you always were.
V
Safety enables everything
The nervous system will only open when it feels safe. Creating that in a room, in a group, in a breath is the most important thing a facilitator does.
III
Surviving is not living
I know both sides. High performance and deep depletion can coexist for a long time. The question is how long you want to keep choosing the former over the latter.
VI
I know this from the inside
I'm not here as someone who studied this from a distance. I lived the disconnection, the performance, the unraveling. And I found my way back. That's what I hold when I'm in the room
with you.
WORK WITH ME
If something here
landed for you
That's enough to start. You don't need to know which offering is
right, just reach out and we'll figure it out together.