About Dawn

I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1943. My geographical journey then took me through Kentucky, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming before I landed in northern California in the mid 1960s.

While earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in Acting at the University of California, I took yoga and bodywork classes and taught relaxation workshops at the Experimental College on campus. I received my therapeutic massage certification by serving as a teaching assistant for Judith McKinnon for her first training class in what would eventually became the McKinnon Institute of Massage. I continued studying additional forms of bodywork with Michael Reed Gach and other originators or master teachers of modalities gaining popularity at that time: Acupressure, Ortho-Bionomy, Feldenkrais, Rosen and Trager Methods, Touch for Health, and so on. I also began taking workshops from Stephen Levine and studying the Enneagram with Helen Palmer.

While raising my two children and working as a professional actress in the late 70s and early 80s, I also explored various forms of meditation. In 1981, I was introduced to a unique residential meditation retreat known as The Enlightenment Intensive. This form of contemplative inquiry, combined with communication in a dyad format, resonated deeply with me. I immediately began organizing these residential retreats as well as attending more of them in various venues. I began leading them myself after training with Lawrence Noyes in 1982, and eventually assisted him in training others over a period of 30 years. My experiences in this distinctive meditative process transformed my life and how I relate to others in deep, profound and lasting ways, and became the ground on which the COMPASSIONATE TOUCH for Those in Later Life Stages™ Program was built.

My second husband and I met in 1972 and were married in 1982. My third child was born four years later . . . We now enjoy spending time as often as possible with our three adult children, four grandchildren and several grand-dogs.