31 years on one path, in service of the second half of life.
Mindful longevity guide and meditation teacher, with a lifelong practice in body-mind mastery. Founder of The Art of Aging Mindfully.
I started teaching when I was 20 years old, and I never stopped. The first thing I learned to train was the body. I began as a personal trainer, earned my certification as a strength and conditioning specialist, and became a licensed massage therapist, learning the body from the outside in: how it moves, where it holds tension, what it needs to recover and grow stronger.
Yoga and meditation came next, and they changed the direction of the work. The postures led to the breath, the breath led to the mind, and the mind turned out to be the real subject. Over the years the practice moved from the gross to the subtle: from muscle and movement to attention, identity, and the quiet work of staying clear under pressure.
People assume this was a series of reinventions. It was not. This has been one continuous path. The same throughline, lived deeper over time. Every stage built on the one before it. The strength work taught me discipline. The bodywork taught me to read a person without words. Meditation showed me what all of it had been pointing at.
I am 51 now, and the work has matured into something simple to say and demanding to live: helping people meet the second half of life with strength, clarity, and purpose. What I knew at 20 was the body. What I know now is what the body was always trying to say about the mind, and about how we age.
Everything I teach rests on five pillars. They are not a program you finish. They are a way of living that holds up over decades, and the order matters: the mind comes first, because a steady mind is what makes the rest sustainable.
See the full method →
These experiences taught me to meet adversity with a positive attitude, faith, surrender, and effort.
Four marathons and hundreds of road races over multiple decades. It tested character every time. There was always the option to slow down, to quit, to never lace up. When the body reaches its limit, one’s true character is revealed. A long run mirrors life. Finish enough of them and you see yourself as a closer, where finishing hard things becomes a part of your personality.
Years of Jeet Kune Do in my early twenties, Bruce Lee’s art: stick fighting, grappling, and kickboxing in one practice. It tested my patience. I was not good at it at first. It asked me to show up and put in the hours long before any skill arrived. I learned firsthand that with enough patience and consistency, you can learn almost anything.
A steady practice for 21 years, since I was 30, with the breath as the object of concentration. It shows me the difference in myself day to day. On the days I skip it, I am more reactive. On the days I sit, I am steadier and more present. Consistency is everything, and the morning sets the tone for the day that is coming. I am programming my mind so that it becomes a servant to my will.
Two long silences: a 10-day Vipassana retreat, and 28 days in the Peruvian Amazon with a Shipibo shaman. Silence taught me that speech is precious, and how often we spend it on noise. Underneath the noise, I met the quiet mind that was there all along. Peace of mind is the greatest treasure. The influence of silence shows up in how I teach now: simply, with less clutter, so the practice can actually land.
Twenty years pursuing advanced asana: handstands with my legs locked in lotus, leg-behind-head postures, deep twists and binds. It asked me to keep showing up for something slow to reward. Continuous practice produced remarkable results; I unlocked my body completely. But mastery also means knowing when to evolve and downshift: at 51 I retired most of the hardest postures to support how I age, and turned to the subtler work beneath them. The posture was never the point. The real fruit was the disciplined mind I built.
My thirties were my decade as a traveling teacher. Across India: 14 states and a 10,000-kilometer motorcycle journey from Goa to Manali. In Peru: a six-week pilgrimage in the Shipibo tradition, and Pucallpa into the jungle. The road tested my flexibility and my nerves. It taught me that people everywhere are basically good. Customs change from place to place, but the wants do not: time with family, honest work, and the room to ask what it all means. I did not learn that from a book. I watched it prove itself, town after town, across the world.
We train to master our own mind.
For the past two years I have been healing from a serious neurologic injury, one that changed how I move and affected my gait. The postures on this page are real. They are also, for now, the past. What all those years of practice were quietly building is exactly what I need today.
So I lean on the other lens of the work. I still sit each morning. I still teach meditation and breath, and I share the physical practice in the shape my body can hold now. The steady mind I spent decades training is what carries me through this. It turns out that was the real fruit all along.
It is also why I teach the way I do. I am not speaking to you from the far side of ease. I am in it with you, meeting my own body where it is, one honest day at a time. If you are stepping into the second half of life and everything it asks, that is the ground we stand on together.
For years I worked with some of the most successful people in the world: professional athletes I trained as a strength and conditioning coach, including players for the New York Yankees, along with figures in Hollywood and at the top of high finance. What I saw up close, again and again, is that everyone is human. The titles and the bank accounts change nothing underneath.
No one stands above anyone else. Behind every public life is a private one, and in private we all face the same psyche: the same fears, the same questions in the quiet hours. Suffering is the thing we have most in common. Mindfulness is what turns that shared suffering into compassion, for others and for yourself.
A few things have held up across all of it. Effort shapes character, and there is no shortcut around the work. And the real measure of a life is not wealth or status. It is love, and how honestly you have come to understand yourself.
Of all the skills I have developed on this path, meditation is the one I will carry to my last day. Even when the body is injured or failing, the mind can still be fortified. The mind we make is what we keep when everything else begins to fall away.
Three places the work lives now.
The Center in Germantown, New York, is the home of the practice: live classes and a community building strength and clarity together, in person and online.
One-on-one coaching is the deepest way I work with people: the full method applied to a single life over months, for those ready to invest seriously in the second half.
The Art of Aging Mindfully is an ongoing conversation about how to age well and keep growing: the method thought through out loud, week by week.
If something here resonates, there are a few ways to begin.