About Me

My name is Joanna and my pronouns are she/her. I was born and raised in Durham, NC, which is the native and stolen land of the Lumbee, Skarukreh/Tuscarora, Cheraw, Occaneechi, and Shakori Nations. My first spiritual home was at Watts Street Baptist Church where years before, my grandfather was the minister and had a statue of the Buddha sitting on his desk. I grew up with a belief in life’s goodness and a knowing that I was held in grace.

At age nineteen, I began wrestling with life’s big questions and feeling the sense of groundlessness that we all feel at one point or another. Most therapists did not know how to relate to my experience in a way that felt true or empowering to me. I did, however, find mindfulness during this time and it became a refuge.

I later received degrees in Elementary Education and Special Education from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and taught in the NC public school system before having my first child.

When I became a mother, I experienced a resurgence of this familiar anxiety along with a strong pull to understand my inner world and connect with what I call “God” in a much deeper way. I was fortunate enough to find a therapist who related to my experience with trust, respect, and reverence and it was then that I began to find my way. I developed the skills to change my relationship to thoughts, to learn more about how nervous systems work, and to practice surrendering to a deeper knowing.

Compelled to learn more and help others, I completed The Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program in 2023, a two year professional training program for teaching awareness and compassion based practices with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. This program was in partnership with Sounds True and The University of California, Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. In 2024, I pursued an additional year of study with Stan Eisenstein and Cynthia Wilcox, PhD, in Guided Embodied Inquiry for Individuals (GEII).

GEII is a one-on-one modality that supports psychological and spiritual healing through mindfulness meditation, drawing on complementary frameworks including Internal Family Systems, Buddhist philosophy, spiritual reparenting, and somatic approaches to emotional processing. I am continuing my study of GEII with Stan and a dedicated community of meditation teachers to this day.

I facilitate seasonal meditation retreats in the Triangle area, offer classes, lead an online sangha (meditation communities in the Buddhist tradition), and offer individual work. As both a teacher and fellow practitioner, I am committed to my own continued growth and engage in ongoing professional development and personal practice. I regularly make space for contemplative practice and writing, which are central to my life and work. I practices engaged spirituality, a term inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh, which refers to the active engagement of the heart and mindful awareness in service of the greater collective good.

I currently live in Durham with my husband, two sons, and our black lab mix, Tallulah.