Your Questions, Answered

  • To The Root offers tools, practices, and guided experiences that support grounding, spiritual attentiveness, and wholeness.

    These currently take several forms:

    • Handmade grounding tools
    Spiral touchstone bracelets, stones, and crafted objects that anchor attention in the body and the present moment.

    • Spiritual direction
    One-on-one sessions centered on listening and discernment, supporting awareness of the Spirit within lived experience.

    • Enneagram equipping for individuals
    Personalized sessions using the Enneagram to explore patterns of attention, reactivity, and growth.

    • Enneagram equipping for couples
    Guided sessions that help partners understand core motivations and reactive patterns, deepening compassion and connection.

    • Group and team Enneagram work
    Facilitated experiences for small groups and teams, offering shared language for awareness, empathy, and collaboration.

    • Group contemplative practices
    Guided experiences that support embodied presence through breath, attention, reflection, and stillness.

    • Retreats and SoulLab experiences
    Place-based gatherings that invite slowing down, reconnecting, and practicing everyday mysticism in community.

    Some offerings take the form of tools.
    Others are practices, thresholds, and invitations into deeper presence.

    Each offering is a way of returning to presence, in form, in practice, and in lived experience.

  • Both offerings support awareness and growth, each with a distinct purpose and posture.

    Spiritual Direction is a contemplative practice centered on listening.
    It creates space for attentive presence, where the primary movement is between the directee and the Spirit. My role is to accompany, holding prayerful attention and offering questions that open new ways of seeing.

    At times, this space may also include symbol, image, poetry, simple ritual, or objects from the natural world. These serve as invitations to engage the imagination, the body, and deeper layers of experience.

    Sessions are shaped by silence, curiosity, and trust in what unfolds through presence.
    This is a slower, spacious practice for those longing to listen more deeply to their life and their relationship with the Divine.

    Enneagram Equipping is more orienting and instructional.
    In this work, I guide individuals, couples, and groups using the Enneagram as a map to recognize patterns of attention and reactivity. The focus is increased self-awareness, reduced reactivity, and greater compassion for oneself and others.

    This is a more structured space for those wanting clarity, language, and practical tools for growth.

    In short

    Spiritual direction centers on listening, presence, and discernment.
    Enneagram equipping centers on learning, insight, and practical awareness.

    Both honor the inner life. Each invites a different way of engaging it.

  • To The Root is for those who desire greater self-awareness, grounding, and wholeness, and who are willing to engage their inner life with honesty, patience, and care.

    This work often resonates with those who:

    Want to deepen their lived experience of the Divine
    Are willing to slow down and be still
    Desire a spirituality rooted in presence and everyday life
    Are curious about patterns of attention, reactivity, and motivation
    Are open to engaging through symbol, creativity, and embodied practice
    Want language and tools that support self-observation and conscious choice

    Different offerings meet people in different ways:

    Spiritual Direction is suited for those who long to deepen awareness of the Divine in their lives. It invites a slower pace of listening, presence, and trust in what is already unfolding.

    Enneagram Equipping is suited for those who want clarity and insight. It offers a structured way of seeing patterns and reactivity, supporting greater awareness and responsibility.

    This work may not be a good fit for those seeking:

    Therapy, crisis support, or clinical treatment
    Quick answers without self-reflection
    Someone else to tell them who to be or what to do

    To The Root holds both mystery and structure.
    Stillness and awareness are practiced together.

    Stillness allows us to rest, to soften, to listen.
    Awareness allows us to see, to name, to take responsibility.

    Together, they open a way of being that is grounded, spacious, and alive.

    This work lives in the practice of holding both.

  • .To The Root is rooted in the Christian contemplative tradition, cultivating stillness, discernment, and attentiveness to the sacred in everyday life. It remains open to wisdom from Buddhist and Sufi traditions, along with the reverence for land, relationality, and interconnection found within many Native American traditions, grounded in the trust that the sacred is woven through creation and encountered in lived experience.

    This lineage is shaped by voices that trust lived encounter, presence, and humility before mystery. It reflects a shared posture of reverence, attentiveness, and openness to transformation.

    To The Root is guided by a simple conviction: no single person, tradition, or framework holds the whole of truth. Each of us perceives a facet of a larger reality, true and luminous, yet partial.

    The Enneagram helps bring this into view, revealing how we habitually attend to reality in limited ways, and how awareness opens the possibility for responsibility and transformation.

    The posture of To The Root is humble and non-dogmatic. The aim is increased awareness of self, others, and the sacred, held with care and restraint.

    To The Root offers practices that deepen presence, expand awareness, and invite a more compassionate way of seeing.

  • The Enneagram is a map of attention.
    It helps us notice how we move through the world, how we seek safety, and how we make meaning.

    It describes nine patterns, each one a way of seeing and responding to life. These patterns are not problems to fix. They are intelligent strategies we learned over time, helpful and also partial.

    At some point, what began as a strategy can start to feel like who we are.
    The Enneagram gently reminds us that we are more than the pattern we are living from.

    In the Narrative Enneagram tradition that shapes this work, the aim is awareness.
    Without the ability to observe ourselves, nothing truly changes.

    As we begin to notice our patterns in thought, emotion, behavior, and the body, something opens.
    We catch the moment before reaction takes over.
    We sense the tightening. The pull.

    And in that moment, there is space.

    Awareness creates space.
    Space allows for choice.

    This is the beginning of freedom.

    As we slow down, attention begins to drop beneath the surface of the mind.
    Down and in.
    Into the body. Into presence.

    Here, something deeper becomes available.
    Not something added, but something already here.

    Over time, what was rigid begins to soften. What was automatic becomes conscious.
    And the deeper qualities of the heart, clarity, compassion, presence, begin to come forward.

    At To The Root, the Enneagram is a tool for awakening.
    A way of seeing more clearly.
    A way of meeting yourself with honesty and care.

    A quiet return to what has always been here.

  • The Enneagram is used as a tool for awareness, not as a label or a script.

    In sessions, we begin with listening and noticing, paying attention to what is already present in your experience. The Enneagram offers a shared language to name patterns as they arise, especially patterns of reactivity, defense, and habitual attention.

    Shaped by the Narrative tradition, this work emphasizes self-observation. Together, we explore how patterns show up in thought, emotion, behavior, and the body. The aim is increasing awareness, so patterns can be recognized as they are happening and met with greater freedom.

    With couples, the Enneagram helps each person recognize their own patterns and how those patterns interact under stress. This often softens blame, deepens compassion, and opens space for more intentional connection.

    With groups and teams, the Enneagram offers a shared way of understanding differences in communication, decision-making, and responses to stress. It helps name these differences clearly, supporting empathy and healthier collaboration.

    My role is active and responsive, offering teaching, reflection, and mirroring when helpful, while honoring lived experience as the primary source of insight. Sessions are paced with intention, allowing space for curiosity, integration, and the emergence of insight.

    The aim is simple and practical:
    to notice patterns sooner, soften their grip, and choose how to respond.

    So personality becomes something you can work with,
    rather than something that quietly runs the show.

  • Therapy, coaching, and the work offered through To The Root each support growth in distinct ways.

    Therapy focuses on healing psychological wounds and supporting mental and emotional health. It may include diagnosis, treatment, and clinical care.

    Coaching is often goal-oriented, helping people develop skills, gain clarity, and move toward desired outcomes.

    At To The Root:

    Spiritual Direction is a contemplative practice rooted in listening and discernment. The primary movement is between the directee and the Spirit. My role is to hold attentive space and support awareness as it unfolds. Over time, this kind of attention often opens into healing, as insight and integration emerge from within.

    Enneagram Equipping is formative in nature. It supports self-observation by helping people recognize patterns of attention and reactivity as they arise, so that choice and responsibility become possible. As awareness deepens, patterns soften, and meaningful change begins to take shape.

    Many people engage this work alongside therapy or coaching, finding that each supports a different dimension of growth and well-being.

    In short

    Therapy supports healing
    Coaching supports movement toward goals
    This work supports awareness, presence, and integration

    To The Root offers a spacious container for those who want to deepen attentiveness to their inner life, relate differently to their patterns, and grow in freedom, at a pace that allows something deeper to unfold.

  • Touchstones are not meant to fix or replace anything.
    They support attention.

    A touchstone gives the mind and body something real to rest on when attention is pulled into reactivity, false stories, judgment, or overwhelm. As attention tightens, the body follows. A touchstone offers a simple return to what is immediate and present.

    There is no single right way to work with one. What follows is a posture you can return to again and again.

    1. Begin with contact

    Hold the touchstone, wear it, or place it within reach.
    Notice its weight, temperature, texture, and shape.

    Let your senses lead. Simply notice.

    2. Let attention settle

    Allow your attention to rest on the stone or bead.
    Notice any softening in the body or a shift in breath.

    When attention drifts, gently return.
    The return is the practice.

    3. Engage curiosity

    Curiosity softens reactivity.

    As you hold the stone, you might ask:

    Where have I seen patterns like this in nature?
    What does this remind me of, water, earth, fire, sky?

    There are no right answers.
    Let curiosity widen your attention.

    4. Stay with simplicity

    The Divine is often discovered in the small.

    Stay with something simple long enough to notice its depth, its texture, its quiet beauty. Let it speak.

    Start with a stone.

    5. Change the light

    Meet your stone in different conditions:

    Natural light
    Low light
    Different times of day
    UV light when appropriate
    Magnification

    Details emerge. What once seemed simple becomes layered.

    6. Allow space

    As attention steadies, something shifts.
    In that space, choice returns.

    7. Return

    Come back to your touchstone in moments of stress, transition, prayer, or pause.
    Over time, the body begins to recognize the gesture as a return to presence.

    Touchstones do not carry power on their own.
    They support your capacity to notice, to pause, and to choose how you meet what is unfolding.

    A note on origin

    These touchstones began as a personal practice, a way to ground attention in moments of overwhelm and disconnection.

    What proved helpful became something to share.

    They are offered as companions, simple reminders that presence is possible in small moments.