About Misa

I return, again and again, to the evolving wisdom, compassion, intuition, and love that already exists within the mind, heart, spirit, and body. For me, years of struggling with body image, perfectionism, eating disorders, depression, and addiction ignited a deep longing for spiritual connection and expansion—and a fierce hunger for a more peaceful, self-loving, and authentic way of being.

There is a certain humility that arises when we realize we cannot climb the path to wholeness alone. Through years of therapy, the 12 steps, outpatient treatment, and the transformative experiences of motherhood and marriage, I came to know the power of self forgiveness and letting go. True healing began with my own surrender and the willingness to receive from others. I am endlessly grateful to the many souls—mirrors of truth, reflection, kindness, and compassion—who have helped me along the way.

Dance as the healer:

A profound shift occurred when I began dancing again in 2011. Dance was the alchemical catalyst that gave my body a voice, a way to express what it had been carrying all these years. I could release, play, get it wrong, and feel all that needed to be felt. The creativity fed me and emotions became my teacher as I learned to befriend every single one.

To this day, the dance continues to heal and transform my thoughts, emotions, and belief systems through the powerful and life-changing interplay of music, movement, intentional energy, and archetypal patterns.As science continues to affirm dance as a potent somatic modality, I remain committed to empowering myself and others to release one story, one belief, one layer at a time.

The Art of Living through the Heart of Dying:

Grace, synchronicity and just asking for help, brought the right teachers into my life, both for my journey in dance and for my spiritual growth. Becoming a certified death doula further deepened my relationship with grief, death and Source, and that experience brought me to my spiritual mentor, who guided me on two Vision Quests— catalysts in transforming my life (including the move to Asheville from Boulder). Turns out, we cannot fully live until we have a courageous and willing relationship with death, and not just a physical death, but all the ways we live and die in one life, one year, one breath.

Inevitably, my love for dance and devotion to Source became inseparable as they merged into one wholistic, healing path. Thus, Soulpower was born.

Eventually we understand that the learning never ends and that birth, death, and rebirth is a constant, transformational cycle. Fixing is not the end goal, but awareness and making our everyday human life a conscious, loving practice is. This is what Soulpower Living is—devotion to life as ceremony through spiritual embodiment.

The Background:

On a practical level, this work is grounded in my background as a dance instructor, an occupational therapist specializing in sensory integration, a certified death doula, a group fitness facilitator, a certified Earth Medicine practitioner, and an enthusiastic student of the mysteries of life and cosmos, the Dreamspell and Mayan calendar, and the Awakening (or more recently termed—the Remembering).

For the past eight years, I have walked a path of studying the old ways of the original peoples of these sacred Asheville lands, with humility and reverence. I’ve been honored to learn through the teachings of Will Rockingbear, as shared by his apprentice Greg Lathrop and elders of the Earth Green Medicine Lodge. I continue to support others on this sacred path of remembering and reweaving, in the same ways I have been and continue to be supported.

Service:

Outside of Soulpower, I serve with the nonprofit Dance To Be Free, bringing the healing power of dance to women in prison. I also volunteer as a firekeeper for the Crossing Fire at the Center for Conscious Living and Dying. I am a mother of two, and a partner of 27 years. I am half Japanese, the daughter of a sharp, tough, and loving Japanese mother, and a war veteran and Naval officer father, now buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Continuum:

Most recently, training in Light Body Activation (June 2025) has affirmed how essential it is to be in continual awareness and practice with our own energy field. We are here to remember what what we’ve forgotten. To “know thyself”—inwardly, energetically, multidimensionally—is essential for wholeness, harmony, and an awakened life. The continuum is in our reciprocity of giving and receiving, the balance of tending to ourselves and tending to our families, communities, our Blue Mother Earth, and our future generations—to all our relations.

In harmony,

In Lak’ech Ala K’in—I am another yourself. You are another me.

Love, Misa

Credentials:

• Light Body Activation Training, Yelapa, Mexico, June 2025 with Barbara Blum

• Internal Family Systems (IFS) Online Circle—Continuing Education for IFS informed training April 2024, 2025 to current

• Life Coaching Certification for Health Professionals with Guerrette Institute 2023

• January 2021, November 2021 Dr. Joe Dispenza Weeklong Advanced & Advanced Follow-Up Retreats

• The Golden Serpent Shamanic Priestess and Temple Arts Program with Caroline Padgett 2019-2020

• Way of the Shaman® Training with Robbie Staufer, 2017

• Certified Death Doula Training with Conscious Dying Institute 2016-2017

• PsychoPomp Training with Nissa Howard 2016

• Certified Soulsweat Dance Teacher Training 2015 Boulder, CO

• Earth Medicine School 2012-2014 with Pixie Lighthorse, Level 1 and 2 Certified

• Licensed and Registered Occupational Therapist since 1996, graduating Magna Cum Laude from University of Florida. Specialized in Sensory Integration and Pediatrics

• Vanderbilt University, School of Engineering and Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps 1989-1990