A life laid down in strata, like the earth.
I like to think a series of coincidences brought me here. Looking deeper, I don’t believe it was coincidence at all. This is exactly where I’m supposed to be — down this lane, not left or right.
I am a living, breathing archetype of the wounded healer. As Jung wrote, a person’s ability to heal others is derived from their own deep wounds. When I look back, I see that I turned my own wounds into a thriving practice — touching people in the deep, nurturing way I had missed, listening the way I had longed to be listened to.
My path in teaching began in 1989. For twelve years I assisted on craniosacral trainings, traveling the country and the world. I taught with Michael Shea across three continents, then followed his suggestion to a manor house in Devon, England, for a year of biodynamic craniosacral training with Franklyn Sills. I was scared the entire way — and I did it anyway. That, I’ve learned, is what courage actually is.
I never planned to open a school. It took a cease-and-desist letter from the state and two years of paperwork to build a curriculum I’d never thought to write down. In 2016, the Ankrum Institute was born — named, in the end, by a friend from across a swimming pool in Costa Rica.
For twenty-six years I ran all over the world gathering knowledge. Then, in 2012, something inside me said stop. So I stopped. I let everything I had learned settle, and in the stillness a deeper way of working came in. That is an embryological principle, and a life principle: when stillness happens, something new can arrive.
Principles, not just techniques.
Listening to the body, not applying formulas.
Empowering, not fixing.
A path, laid down over four decades.
I taught my first class — body mobilization for twenty-five practitioners in Tulsa. I sweat right through my shirt. An auspicious beginning.
I traveled and assisted on craniosacral trainings across the US, Canada, Jamaica, and Switzerland, and taught alone in Italy.
I completed biodynamic craniosacral training at the Karuna Institute in Devon, England — a year of commuting from Chicago, one week a month.
I moved to Tulsa to share a friend's house for two years. Twenty-six years later, I'm still here.
I entered the Canadian College of Osteopathy — a five-year program in Vancouver — and learned that the treatment plan is in the body.
After twenty-six years of gathering knowledge, something said stop. So I stopped. In the stillness, the next level arrived.
The Ankrum Institute was licensed — a school with its own heartbeat, born of a cease-and-desist letter and two years of paperwork.
I'm winding down my private practice to teach the many — through a book, an online body of work, and a final in-person cohort in January 2027.
Educated by the deepest traditions in the field.
My curriculum is built on everything I’ve studied — the neuromuscular referral trainings, the organizing principles of structural integration, a lifetime of craniosacral work, and the osteopathic tradition’s insight that many systems can hold the root of a single problem.
CNMT
Certified Neuromuscular Therapist
CCST
Certified Craniosacral Therapist
Twelve years as teaching assistant to a leading craniosacral educator — teaching practitioners across the US, Canada, and Switzerland.
Structural integration training with the Guild for Structural Integration (Rolfing).
Biodynamic craniosacral training with Franklyn Sills at the Karuna Institute in Devon, England.
The Canadian College of Osteopathy — a five-year osteopathic training. (I practice under a massage therapy license; I'm not an osteopath or physician.)
Founded the Ankrum Institute — a school of functional bodywork in Tulsa, Oklahoma — now with over three decades of practice behind the curriculum.
Continuing study & influences
- Canadian College of Osteopathy — five-year program (2003–2008)
- Guild for Structural Integration — Rolfing / fascial (1997)
- Shea Educational Group — craniosacral, myofascial, visceral manipulation (1990–1992)
- Karuna Institute — biodynamic craniosacral therapy, England (1998–1999)
- Vodder — lymphatic drainage training (1991)
- Hakomi Institute — sensory motor integration (2001)
- Neuromuscular massage therapy (1988–1989)
- Anatomical dissection — Somatics, Boulder, Colorado (2004)
- Canadian College symposia, Montreal — pediatrics (2007), pregnancy (2008), cranial energetic dynamics (2010)
- Canadian College symposium, Germany (2009)
- Embryology — multiple trainings
- Concussion Resolution Training