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 I’ve been passionately interested in health as far back as I can remember. At 14 my father enrolled me within the Boys & Girls Club (of Greater Vancouver) - an after-school activities center similar to YMCA. On the ground floor of Boys & Girls Club was “The Odyssey Program.”. Odyssey is a place where youth and their families dealing with substance addiction came to receive help. I made many friends with the teens and councilors in Odyssey; I also made friends with a gentleman named David Huntington. Dave was one of the councilors whom introduced to a volunteer position within Odyssey as a ‘peer councilor’. During that time I also began volunteering upstairs at the boys and girls club as a junior volunteer, eventually becoming a adult volunteer. My position as a peer councilor continued until I was 18; my position as a volunteer at boys and girls club ended around my 25th birthday. In those years I learned many things about addictions, emotions and counseling.

During that time period I was also enrolled in Martial Arts. The styles I studied ranged from Tae-Kwon-Do, to Karate, to various forms of Kung-Fu in general. I achieved different ranks and competed as an amateur throughout that time. At 19 I was introduced randomly to Yang Style Taiji (Tai chi) by a man I met by the name Rodrick Arietta. After a year or so Rod introduced me to Ian Sinclair. When Ian moved out of province, I was introduced by a friend to Master Li Rong sometime in 2000, who has been my Sifu since. Li is the founder of Tristar Taiji, which is also the style of Taiji and Qigong I teach today.

Over the years I’ve formally studied Philosophy and Psychology, as well as earning licensing and certification in Reflexology, Hypnotherapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and of course Taiji and Qigong.

Today, as you read this, I work for UBC as a Researcher where I am part of a project which studies the effect of ‘pain’ within the human body. We work with heart rate variability, cortisol levels and distress-behaviors (behaviors that are expressed automatically through facial expression or on the body through motor movements). This work hopes to understand the poorly understood topic of pain so better approaches can be created in the future to assist with pain management and prevention. In the evenings and weekends my clinic is open to the public for counseling, taiji instruction, massage or meditation.

My interest in health has led me to first hand knowledge about the physical body, the emotional mind and how they are both connected – or more popularly stated as “mind-body integration.” Gateway Therapy is an integrated therapy combining my 16 years of experience in the health field. We work together starting from where you are and go from there.

 ~ Be content to seem who you really are ~ Marcus Aurelius