Hello
I’m Paige. I’m a Life Coach, a Poet, a Yoga Teacher and a moss whisperer. My life adventures have included wild joy and deep sorrow and everything in between. I know I’m here for a reason. What is the reason? That, my friend, is the Sequoia-sized question.
I spent [the best part of] my childhood outside in the valleys and foothills of the greater Salt Lake area. I was in the dandelions; I was staring at clouds; I was climbing trees.
Growing up is hard on human beings, and I was no stranger to a diverse array of traumatic experiences. I got lost in a sea of numbing my pain with drugs, alcohol, danger. I heard all the messages a “troubled youth” gets. The sad part was, I believed them. I believed I was bad for looking for love in all the wrong places. I share this because while it was terrible, I know now how much I learned about being human and meeting my ‘shadow’. At the time, I dealt with this by covering up that part of myself and “falling in line”.
For me, this is what “falling in line” meant: I did the things that were expected of me. I stayed at jobs that didn’t suit me. I stayed in friendships that didn’t light me up. I ignored red flags: exhaustion, burnout, anxiety.
Apparently I needed something really dramatic in the physical world to tug me back to my wild self: giving birth to my son, Forrest.
After taking a break from everything, there was a tiny seed of an idea that started to take root in my mind. These visions I had lit something up inside. They came to me when I was making art, practicing visualization, engaging in deep conversations with friends. I started to feel wild again. Bringing a new human in the world completely shifted my identity – which was incredibly painful at first. Partly because I didn’t know having a baby would mean identity death. I needed to grieve that loss, and it was incredibly beautiful when I did.
When my son was 2 ½ years old, my worst nightmare happened. My mom died– unexpectedly.
My world ripped from my fingers. I was left with nothing but agony.
The next year was the most intense pain. And something else completely unexpected: my life turned into a poem. While my brain was reconfiguring itself through intense waves of grief, I had art, visions, nature encounters happen to me. I felt the connection to all that is, a kind of learning only death can teach. Once again,I was giving birth to a whole new identity. This experience of my worst nightmare became a sacred portal into a new way of being wild in the world.
Everything that didn’t matter fell away. I no longer held onto relationships, job titles, identities, or physical objects that wanted to leave. My whole world was turned upside down and pretty much since then I’ve been saying, “what is this whole thing we’re doing here on the planet and why does it hurt so much all of the time?”
Living these questions brought me somewhere new. For the past 9+ years I’ve taught yoga and in more recent ones, trained yoga teachers. My approach is rooted in ancient wisdom and the spiritual dimensions of the practice as a way to guide myself and others into true embodiment. In my dreams, I saw myself walking in nature with others, connecting with the earth, co-creating all kinds of beautiful experiences, and supporting others on their own personal journey. My mind didn’t know how that vision would take shape until I stumbled into Wayfinders Life Coach Training. I had thoroughly enjoyed several of Martha Beck’s books (especially The Way of Integrity– go grab it if you haven’t already). Her way of weaving ancient wisdom, science, and spirit together into practical freedom struck a chord within me. Where yoga brings us back home into the body, Wayfinding made music of the whole of me– heart, mind, spirit, and body.
I now find myself in the tri-lake area outside of Seattle, WA. Moving here was impossibly hard, and it was the next step on my wild adventure.
I’m breathing in mossy air. I’m unburdening my suffering. I’m touching trees. I’m following my inner compasses. I’m frolicking in the woods, and I’m guiding fellow humans on this unpredictable, intimate, back-country adventure of living the most joyful life possible.