Meet Sharon Rose
By the time I graduated from City University of New York at Queens College, I had two dreams. One was to live in the country, and raise animals, especially horses. I wanted to learn how to be self-sufficient, how to live off the land. The other was to start a school that respected the needs of students, including offering a variety of ways for children to learn, rather than focusing only on the subjects to be taught. After graduation, an opportunity arose to work at an alternative school in Southern California. I got on a train in Grand Central Station, and traveled across the country to begin my career as a teacher, in a private school in Culver City. I felt like Siddhartha, a spiritual adventurer, following the call of my heart. Mountain Playschool - Play Mountain Place was a wonderful place to start my career. I learned with the children, engaging them with creative dramatics, reading, math, and conversation. The teaching staff offered a full range of academics, from which the children could choose each day. The teachers also showed the children how to manage their emotions. In 1976, this was indeed alternative to the public school option for educating children. It still is.
The founder of Play Mountain Place passed away that year, and there was great upheaval at the school. I made the decision to travel to West Virginia with friends to live on an organic farm. This proved to be an incredible learning experience, with animals, gardens, and nature in my surroundings, rather than buildings, streets, and cars. Together we raised a large organic garden, horses, chickens, rabbits, cows, and pigs, with the help of our farm dog and cat. Draft horses were used for farming, not tractors. I learned how to cook with vegetables straight from the garden. I knew exactly where my food and water came from. I canned vegetables, froze berries, and stored potatoes in the root cellar. I made butter and yogurt. I baked bread. I taught at the local elementary school. It was a new way of living for me, and I realized that for many rural families all across America, this was a way of life. I had connected in a deep way with the land.
I moved back to Southern California ten years later. It was while living in Encinitas, San Diego, that I found my true guru, Paramahansa Yogananda, through the Self-Realization Fellowship teachings. I began meditating, and attended weekly group meditations and inspiration services. My spiritual life blossomed. I learned Nonviolent Communication with psychologist Marshall Rosenberg in 1994, in an intensive training program in Switzerland. I began to teach Nonviolent Communication (NVC) as Heart Language, and practiced it in all walks of life, including my position as weight management counselor. Yearning for forests and a place I could call home, I migrated once more, to Santa Cruz, CA, in 1996. I continued teaching NVC as Heart Language, and also studied astrology with Risa D'Angeles, and shamanic journeying with Beth Beurkens, a student of Sandra Ingerman. My work with Beth culminated in a vision quest in Death Valley, three days alone, in the spring of 2000.
During this same time period, from 1998-2000, I was enrolled in a two year course of study in Nutrition with the Institute for Educational Therapy, now called Bauman College. Then suddenly, my dream of owning a school came to be. In June of 2000, I became the owner of Rose Blossom Nursery School in Aptos, Santa Cruz County.
My trainings in Nonviolent Communication have continued over the years. I attended another international intensive training for trainers in 2014, several NVC trainings for teachers, and weekend NVC trainings, including a couples weekend. I also learned NVC Dance Floors with Gina Lawrie, who co-created it with Bridget Belgrave. Rose Blossom Nursery School is an NVC-based preschool focused on cooperative learning and building community, while integrating music and art into playbased preschool learning activities.
My interest in shamanic cosmology and healing practices has led me to receiving Munay Ki rites from Patrick Gillis, who studied with Alberto Villoldo, experiential trainings with Jose Luis Herrera, who is a master shaman of Peru and director of the Andean Research Institute, and Peruvian energy healing with Joan Parisi Wilcox, author of Masters of the Living Energy: The Mystical World of the Q'ero of Peru.
In 2017, I received a Masters Degree in Spiritual Counseling from the Academy of Soul Manifestation, founded by James Twyman, author of The Art of Spiritual Peacemaking, with the intent to be of service to those seeking support for their soul's journey.
In 2018, I worked with Patricia Costa, who is a Certified Matrix and EFT Practitioner with a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology. These gentle Emotional Freedom Techniques allow negative emotions and trauma to move out of the body, can release chronic stress, and help us move through limiting beliefs, physical pain, and emotional pain. Introduction to EFT, Gary Craig
Now, in service to you, I use all of these tools and practices to offer compassionate listening, emotional healing, health coaching, and spiritual guidance, to support you in your healing, and your soul's journey to Self-realization.
