Dr. ZZ, Midwife to the Soul

iSkin products for Mac, iPod, iPhone, and more

SOME THINGS YOU MAY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT DR. ZZ. . .

• World teacher, world healer, world leader, world traveler, Dr. ZZ was born and raised in Holyoke, Massachusetts. She graduated in visual arts from Bennington College in Vermont and studied at Instituto Allende in San Miguel De Allende, Mexico and Tenrikyo Mission Headquarters in Tenri, Japan. Long before the term "entrepreneur" was a household word, she had developed two of her own pottery studio businesses in Western Massachusetts and had owned and operated a graphic design/ad agency in Marin County, California. Later, she ran her own California-based greeting card company that hired the handicapped, published 143 original designs, and maintained a nationwide marketing network of 129 sales reps, 15 showrooms and 29 annual trade shows.

• Selling each of these ongoing enterprises as she progressed to the next, she moved continually westward across the continental United States and eventually transplanted to Hawaii. A resident of the Big Island and Maui from 1988 to 2000, she taught SCUBA, studied ancient healing arts, and lived among papaya trees, wild turkeys, and active volcanoes. To enable access to her primitive 12' x 16' coffee shack in the jungle on the Big Island of Hawaii, she built a 500-foot long lava rock road with her own two hands.

"At first," she is quick to admit, "I moved to Hawaii for the ocean. But, it was the land, the 'aina,' that kept me there all those years. The Hawaiian islands are the most removed island chain from any major land mass in the world. Land becomes precious in the middle of all that water. It's the planet's largest and deepest ocean, the ocean named after Peace. To me, there is no more beautiful place on earth."

• In 1989, she made the acquaintance of Rev. Dr. Tadamasa Fukaya, who invited her on full scholarship to study at Tenrikyo Mission Headquarters in Tenri, Japan. At Tenrikyo, she earned a Yoboku degree in Natural Healing and was awarded the Osazuke Healing Grant. She interned at Tenrikyo Mission Hospital and then studied herbology and acupuncture under Dr. Zhao Pin Zhen at the Yangshao County Hospital of Traditional Oriental Medicine, Gangxi, R.O.C.. After completing these endeavors in Japan and China, she visited Thailand for the very first time and developed what was to become an ongoing love relationship with Southeast Asia and "The Kingdom of Smiles."

• The good doctor draws on ecumenical credentials and a fellowship Ph.D. in Counseling with emphasis in the spiritual dimensions of natural healing. To this she applies a degree as Reiki Master-Teacher, and a variety of complimentary certificates in technologies like Tantra, Hypnotherapy, Gestalt Therapy, Intuitive Healing, Applied Kinesiology and Food as Medicine.

• Dr. ZZ trained in Human Sexuality at the Human Awareness Institute in Northern California and has held adjunct faculty positions at Pacific Northwest University in San Francisco; North Shore Community College in Beverly, Massachusetts: and the School of Tantra in Wailuku, Maui, Hawaii. She also lectured for the Women's Department at the University of Hawaii in Hilo and for the Naturist Society of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. In 1996, she authored the article on eating disorders and their treatment for the Encyclopaedia Britannica Health and Medical Annual.

• While a television co-anchor for The Good News program on the Akaku network in Maui, Hawaii, she produced the self-help video Return to Health: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. The video is available for sale on the Internet with proceeds benefiting chapter 501(c)3 not-for-profit humanitarian outreach programs in both the United States and Third World nations.

• In 2000, Dr. ZZ returned to Southeast Asia for the first time in ten years as a volunteer for the World Peace Prayer Society when she co-delivered a relationships workshop at the Silver Dove Peace Congress in Chiang Mai, Thailand and later traveled to Bali, Indonesia. As chance would have it, she ended up living in Bali for two-and-a half years, studying shaminstic healing modalities, counseling English-speaking ex-pats, authoring an ongoing advice column in the Bali Advertiser newspaper, and participating in the mission to assist victims of the 2001 Bali bombing. Later, she traveled to Thailand and, in 2004, was on-the-scene in the South Thailand islands to assist in the aftermath following the Asian tsunami. That experience, however, was enough to prompt her to return home once again to the United States in 2005.

• Over the years, Dr. ZZ has visited close to 30 foreign countries, has lived in more than half-a-dozen of them, and has worked and trained with healers, shamans, volunteers and peace-makers from all over the world. Presently, she lives in Sarasota, Florida with spiritual partner, holistic healer, and visionary artist Jack Alexander. She writes for Transformation Magazine and collects reusable computer equipment for donation to Haiti, Cambodia and local Computers for Kids programs. Devoted to enjoyment as the highest form of worship, she lives the spirit of the World Peace Prayer Society peace prayer, "May Peace Prevail on Earth."

• Her standing invitation to adults of all ages is to join her in revitalizing the zest and enthusiasm of "living well, loving well and learning to let go." She offers short-term counseling and one-day, weekend and week-long intensives that she co-creates for couples, individuals and groups of any size. She also offers Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, health care advocacy, and counseling in matters of nutritional balance.

• Dr. ZZ is a Third Level Old Soul Artisan/Sage and a Master Number 11/11/22/44. Her honesty, openness, integrity and enthusiasm play an inspirational role for the many people whose lives she touches.