About Me
Hello,
My name is Susan J Katz and I am glad you have come to visit my website!
My life has been one of questioning and curiosity, adventure, and exploration, in both the external world and the greater internal, spiritual one.
I derived my first career, as a Biologist, from my affinity with Nature as a child growing up. I learned the science of how living things and the natural world worked, and as a University Laboratory Research Associate, learned how to manipulate or recombine DNA, the material that creates our genetic stories.
I had gone deeply into the chemical mystery of how life worked, but wanted to know more. My work shifted away from the DNA laboratory toward inner growth, through learning the internal martial arts, including Tai Chi Chu’an, the exercises of Chi Kung and studied their philosophical foundations as found in the I Ching, or Book of Changes. I easily grasped and absorbed these arts, and in 1984 my teachers charged me to become a teacher, as well. I stepped away from the laboratory work.
Beginning with that auspicious time, my students came to be my teachers, and their keen questions piqued my curiosity about the nature of our spiritual selves further.
After many years, more internal barriers to reaching my desires dropped away. I embraced my life-long desire to play the Oboe. My deepest levels of spiritual connectedness and self-expression became obtainable through playing this most lovely and evocative double-reed instrument.
I went back to school, into full-time studies in spiritual care and sacred music. There, instead of being pigeon-holed as a square peg in a round hole, I received affirmation and encouragement to develop my gifts of being highly sensitive and intuitive, traits that had previously been a burden in my life and relationships, now became my strength.
I focused on serving the needs of people with mental, physical, and financial barriers. Whether teaching Tai Chi Chu’an with seniors or sitting at bedside with patients living with HIV/AIDS, the focus remains; on providing the sacred work of Presence, of going alongside those who are striving to find spiritual connection that may have been lost, and who have the desire to find it once again.
I hold Certificates in Grief Recovery Training and Peer Group Facilitation and am an Emergency Responder with the Canadian Red Cross. I hold membership and professional practice insurance with the Canadian Association for Spiritual Care (CASC), and membership in the American Psychological Association (APA). I am a freelance musician, playing the Oboe and Cor Anglais.
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More details about my career path are on my profile on LinkedIn.
Thank you for visiting!