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My Story 

My name is Ian and I'm a meditation and yoga teacher/therapist, Kambô practitioner, musician, Breathwork facilitator and holistic life coach from Vermont.  I grew up in the states with my single mother.  At a young age, I was fascinated with the music of Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, John Lennon and others who spoke of oneness, love and a reality that laid beyond the ordinary life of dramatic society. I was introduced to meditation for the first time by my mother when she took me to meet Vietnamese buddhist monk and world renowned spiritual master Thích Nhat Hanh in a very intimate setting at a small buddhist monastery in Hartland Vermont when I was just 13 years old.  This meeting was my first encounter with an authentic spiritual master and the seed planted from that meeting would later guide me on the profound journey of self discovery. Into junior high my mother and I would meditate together in front of our wood stove every morning before I went to school and I made the conscious choice at that age to be vegetarian and meditate regularly.


After high school I was faced with a seemingly one way road at the time and that was to college.  Due to pressures from society and family I dropped the curiosity of self exploration and went to business school and

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became a hotel manager and night club promoter in New York City and entered the depths of drug and alcohol addiction.  After seven years, the partying and workaholic lifestyle took its toll and brought me to a complete rock bottom and full burn out experience.  I was completely depressed, exhausted, addicted and stressed. I couldn't stop, nor could I continue the way I was living and through great suffering found the courage to leave my life in New York in search of healing a new way of life.

 

I quite everything I had worked for so many years to obtain, the jobs, a fun fast life, the partying and left to travel the world in search of healing and a deeper meaning to life.  I had to let go of everything I thought I was through what I did, and become a nobody, a nobody that had nothing to do and nowhere to go.  At first painful and confusing, but in the end, the most liberating.  The longing to change, to know who I was, to understand what this life is all about was so deep and came back to the fore front of my life.  It brought me on a eight year journey to the shamans of the amazon, the monks of Burma, the yogis of the Himalayas, into long solitary meditation retreats, into ceremony after ceremony to purge my guts out, again and again and again.  I had to face my darkest corners, my longest shadows and confront my pain head on.  I became steadfast determined to heal and feel at peace and dedicated my life to this journey of transformation and awakening.  Eventually, my addictions fell away and so did the confusion and self hatred for what I had done in my previous years.  I began to love and accept myself as I was and I seemingly without a choice became a slave to the longing in my heart, to know the answer to the only relevant question that mattered; who am I?  After all the journeys, all the teachings, months and months of silent retreat and intense spiritual practice, it all brought me to that which was already there since the beginning, the eternal and infinite space of the heart.

 

After a certain point the sharing of the path to this revelation happened spontaneously and I began teaching meditation, yoga, yoga therapy and hosting Kirtans (group chanting ceremonies) all over the world but mostly in Berlin Germany where I was loosely based starting in 2016.  At this time I also founded a charity project called Anahata Ma in India with a focus on building clean water systems in tribal villages of southern India and supporting an orphanage of 12 children in Kerala, India which still continues on to this day.  After teaching for roughly 5 years I began to expand my range of teachings and offerings into more modalities like breathwork and trauma release therapy, Kambô and Holistic Life Coaching. 

 

Along my journey I realized that the standard western mind and condition required more than just the ancient spiritual approaches like yoga and meditation.  It became clear through my own experience and also meeting many other souls on a similar journey that more in depth mental de-conditioning/shadow work and trauma releasing therapies were needed, yet I never found all of these modalities combined into one clear path.  That's when I decided to create my own version of the spiritual path in the form of Holistic Life Coaching called The Four Pillars of Transformation. I combined everything I had learned and experienced from eight years of traveling and practice into one simple and clear path to complete personal and spiritual transformation which is here for you to experience today. 

 

I came from a privileged western childhood, yet I found myself in the depths of absolute confusion, addiction, stress and depression.  By some grace I was able to make my way out of this and I know there are thousands if not millions of people that live this way and my mission is to do everything I can to help alleviate this suffering.  By the powers that be, thank you for being here, thank you for reading me and I look forward to either meeting or working with you.  May you and all beings be well, peaceful, safe and free.  

My Credentials and Trainings 

  • 500 hr Yoga and Meditation Teacher Training - Hridaya Yoga, Mazunte Mexico 

  • 250hr Yoga Teacher Training - Yog Vidya Gurukul Ashram, Maharashtra India 

  • 250hr Advanced Yoga Teacher Training - Yoga Vidya Gurukul Ashram, Maharashtra, India

  • Pre and Post Natal Yoga Teacher Training - Yog Vidya Gurukul Ashram, Maharashtra, India 

  • Certified Yoga Therapist - Yoga Vidya Gurukul Ashram, Maharashtra, India

  • Certified Ayurvedic Lifestyle Coach - Yoga Vidya Gurukul Ashram, Maharashtra, India

  • Biodynamic Breathwork and Trauma Release Training - BBTRS Institute, Krakow, Poland

  • Certified Kambo Practioner - Kambo Naturista, Iquitos, Peru 

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