Personal Bio

I was one of those kids who was born contemplating the nature of the universe. I loved to spend hours lying on the ground, looking up at the sky or into the branches of trees. (Actually, I still do.) I realized early on that the letters of my first name, “Ruth,” could be rearranged to spell “hurt,” and the letters of my middle name, “Leah,” could spell “heal.” Although my parents didn’t realize this when they named me, it has felt appropriate, since my deepest orientation has always been toward trying to understand the nature of human pain and healing.

Like most healers (and, in fact, most human beings), I grew up in a family filled with pain. That experience influenced me deeply, but there was also another, more mystical stream present in my life from early on. At the age of four, while lying on my cot in nursery school, I had what my teacher Isa Gucciardi calls an “anomalous experience.” Three spirits visited me, and told or showed me something about what I was meant to do with my life. Although it sounds magical, it actually left me with some dread. I never afterward remembered exactly what they had told or shown me, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it. It was strange, compelling, frightening and burdensome all at once to think that I actually had a purpose — that my existence wasn’t random or accidental. I told no one about this experience for more than 20 years.

As a kid I read a great deal, and at around 15, I discovered poetry. A poem called “Fly,” by W.S. Merwin, spoke to me about love and betrayal in a way nothing else ever had. For the next 25 years, poetry was my greatest teacher, and illness took a close second place. After graduate school in Creative Writing, I became an AIDS and then a cancer educator, fell in love with someone with multiple chronic illnesses, and eventually donated a kidney to her. Meanwhile, I wrote and published four books of poems, and, eventually, a memoir about the transplant and its aftermath. I also traveled to Africa and the Caribbean as an AIDS education consultant. After 10 years in the health education field, I became a university professor, teaching at California State University-Fresno, Mills College, and elsewhere. I had loved working with health and sexuality, helping empower people to take charge of vital aspects of their lives — but I missed the creative, symbolic, nuanced world of poetry. And I loved many aspects of teaching poetry, especially introducing others to the works which seemed to me to best hold what Jon Kabat-Zinn calls “the full catastrophe,” the complex beauty and tragedy of human life — but I missed impacting peoples’ lives on a more core level.

As part of my own personal journey I had tried many forms of therapy, but, although I had gained a lot of insight, I had done no real healing of my deepest wounds. Yet when I discovered a methodology called Depth Hypnosis and began working personally with its creator, Isa Gucciardi, my experience of change was rapid and profound. I literally felt core beliefs and energetic patterns shift with each session. The process was challenging, but tremendously exciting and rewarding. I found myself feeling new levels of joy, gratitude and possibility — first intermittently, then more and more consistently. I felt a level of wholeness within myself that I could never before have imagined. I trained with Isa, and when I began working with clients, I soon saw similar changes occurring for many of them.

About three years into my study with Isa, to my complete surprise, I suddenly found myself able to contact and “channel” a very wise presence. “He” wrote and spoke through my body, but knew things “I” (the small, personality-level I) couldn’t possibly know. Perhaps this is what the spirits who visited my nursery school all those years ago told me about. Perhaps, or even probably, there are more surprises to come! But the ability to speak with my guide, and to offer his deep insight and love to others, has been a gift for which I am enormously grateful.

After four years of intensive study, I recieved my Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology, and decided to combine all that I had learned in my personal, therapeutic and academic journeys to create the modality I call “HeartMind Integration.” I have practiced some form of HeartMind Therapy for nearly five years now. The work continues to grow, change and evolve along with me. I am deeply grateful for all I have learned as its practitioner, and for the privilege of being able to accompany my clients on their healing journeys.