What I teach has evolved naturally from my lifework as a dancer, performer, choreographer, movement and fitness instructor, meditation, tai chi, and qigong teacher, reiki master. With my husband, Vincent Orlando, I codirected Orlando Dance & Exercise which is where I explored in earnest the body’s interior environment (bones, muscles, organs) and the dynamics of breath and visualization in aligning the skeletal structure so that movement is freed and energized. I taught both dancers and non-dancers and saw immediately the results of this dynamic alignment as muscle pathways, spine, and bones realigned. As energy within my own body became more fluid and available to me, I realized its healing effects on myself as well as on my students when I assisted them.
One of my students asked if I was using Reiki, unknown to me at the time. Her question prompted me to explore this gentle Japanese healing art and I received my Reiki training, attuning, and Master teaching certificate through the Ursuline Sisters and the Daughters of Wisdom. After some years of working internally, my own body sensitivity became heightened and internal pathways began to reveal themselves. Another of my students invited me to an acupuncture and qi gong workshop, and I knew that what I was feeling and experiencing was my own “qi” flow through my body’s energy meridians. For the next 15 years I studied qi gong with Greg Winder, who was an indoor student of Grandmaster Chen Yong Fa, and feng shui architect Howard Choy; I Liq Chuan, the martial art of awareness, with Grandmaster Sam Chin; Xinyi-Dao, the Chinese internal arts of tai chi, xinyi, and bagua, with Grandmaster Li Tai Liang, with whom I have the privilege of being an indoor student.
I am fortunate to have a lifestyle that has offered me the solitude necessary for the exploration and cultivation of mind/body/heart connection in which the embracing of space and process occurs quite naturally. I’m grateful for the opportunity given me to experience zen meditation at the Tokuunin Temple in Akiruno-shi, Japan. I’m grateful for the deep silence of the listening heart that began in my childhood growing up in Episcopal rectories where the stillness of an empty church (at off hours) was available to me, and where I first sat quietly on my own. And I am grateful for all those who have influenced, encouraged, and graced my life, including Martha Graham, Satoru Shimazaki, Nadine Revene, Sandra Genter, Gay Delanghe, Dr. Earle Pratt, and particularly Vincent Orlando whose steadfast and persevering support of the creative life (“You keep on going,” he would say to me. “You’re on to something exciting!”) remains a place to which I return again and again.
