After moving back to her hometown of Kalamazoo, she served as Director of Western Michigan University's Holistic Health Care Program (HOL) for four years and received tenure as an Associate Professor. Her contributions to WMU include developing the undergraduate minor in holistic health, teaching courses on holistic philosophies and methods including spirituality and health, and publishing book chapters and research articles in the areas of psycho-spiritual approaches to counseling, health promotion, and the emotional benefits of journaling. She continues to teach in the HOL program as an Adjunct Associate Professor, while serving as the co-founder of the Center for Psychotherapy and Wellness.

Psychotherapeutic Training
Karen has been offering psychotherapy since 1993, using a relationship-centered and whole person (mind-body-spirit) approach. She feels fortunate to have received academic training in a breadth of therapeutic orientations including humanistic, interpersonal process, cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, feminist, and body-centered. This background offers a richness in her healing work with adults, couples, and adolescents. She has a particular appreciation for the Internal Family Systems approach to therapy (www.selfleadership.org), and has completed the Basic and Advanced Trainings through the Center for Self Leadership. She has also studied several non-traditional approaches to healing. In recent years, she has mentored with Cindy Libman, LICSW, who offers an integrative psycho-spiritual approach to therapy. Her counseling has also been deeply inspired by Patricia Gatto-Waldon, Ph.D., who first taught her the healing power of compassionate presence.

Training and study in spirituality and the healing arts
Along with her academic education and therapeutic training, Karen has studied numerous spiritual traditions and healing practices that have greatly influenced her professional work. In addition to her Christian upbringing, Karen feels grateful for her exposure to a variety of contemplative, mystical, and devotional spiritual traditions. She has been fascinated by studying and experiencing the common essence and unique aspects across East/West, masculine/feminine, and theistic/non-theistic religions, and has a particular affinity for heart-centered spiritual practices.

Her love of Hatha Yoga began in 1991. She was blessed to study for four years with her first teacher, Morris Knapp, who offered a transmission of the essence of yoga with profound simplicity and humility. She received her yoga teaching certification from Kripalu in 1994, and has continued her own practice since then. She is especially drawn to offering yoga from a contemplative and feminine approach, emphasizing the fluid movements that arise when we connect with our own inner wisdom with a sense of compassion and honor for our unique beauty. Currently, she offers "juicy yoga" sessions, which weave yoga with music, poetry, and reminders of the sacred.

Karen has studied and practiced various approaches to meditation since 1990. This includes her meditation training within the yogic tradition, as well as studying vipassana/mindfulness, Shambhala, and Christian centering prayer. In the past five years, she has been especially touched by the transformative teachings of Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron.

"My professional work reflects an integration of my studies in academia, and in various spiritual traditions and healings arts. It is also greatly influenced by my life experiences, including being a wife and mother of two children. I appreciate the "realness" that motherhood has offered to the many theories and practices I've been exposed to. It has redefined how I think about health, balance, and ideas such as "enlightenment," and has brought a humility and humor to my life and work for which I feel especially grateful."