Casey Kochmer
I am a Taoist, rooting my lineage from the natural school of Taoist discovery. I have been a Taoist my entire life. As a child, I spent most of my time wandering rivers and forests, exploring nature. I spent countless moments wandering up and down rivers and learning how to flow with life and nature. I consider nature itself to be my first true Taoist teacher in life.
Being a natural Taoist is lovely, but we are each interconnected in a larger society. Humanity has created a complicated entanglement of rules and beliefs to navigate. So I went out and explored humanity for 15 years. I started as a marine biologist, but I just enjoyed physics too much, which led to my choice to be a physicist and mathematician. True story, I was told by a job recruiter at AT&T all I could do with my physics degree was to wash test tubes for AT&T. I then got a mechanical engineering degree for washing dishes besides cleaning out those test tubes. I was wrong; it didn’t help me wash dishes… but that’s life: live and learn.
I then went off in disguise to discover what it meant to be in mainstream culture. I worked at first as a mechanical engineer building scientific products out of Teflon. Then for a few years, I built paper airplanes and jet planes. Every three years, I would switch around for something new to experience. Later, I began computer programming and chasing logic patterns. I spent time exploring the Internet and building Drug and Alcohol treatment systems to help people recover and get aid. Later, I spent a year writing a few boring programming books. However, I did manage to slip poetry into those programming books. So officially, I am also a published poet. Heh! 😉
In 2001, I decided western culture was indeed crazy from my perspective, and it wasn’t fun crazy.
I decided to return to my Taoist background and help others live better with a Taoist practice of acceptance.
A Personal Tao grew out of this. Here I am today, twenty years later, still helping others live a better life. I teach Taoist practices (assisting people in embracing or improving their stories in life) and use kindness to improve the world.
Of course, this history isn’t complete; I could write an entirely different bio about my personal goals to improve the public mental health care system, how I married my love Julie after knowing her for three days, stories about wandering the streets helping people, a corporate consulting business, a lifelong healing practice I have been refining. We are each a rainbow of experiences and stories, and we each have much to teach and show in our stories to the world.
The lesson being: never define a Taoist Master by degrees or the past. Instead look to the actions of the heart and in the now. A Taoist is never who you expect, but rather the person living fully and uniquely as themselves while teaching acceptance along the way.
What’s next? We will see tomorrow; It’s always a day at a time.
Julie
As a child, my mother taught us how to make jewelweed juice as an herbal remedy for our poison ivy, and we brewed lemonade from sumac berries. I ate wild elderberries and had magical experiences with plants at a young age. I continued to expand this knowledge as an adult by working for the Forest Service in Washington State and learning about native plants. I completed my Master’s with a focus in Ethnobotany and went to the Southwest School of Botanical Medicine (500 hours) in 2002 to learn about Western Herbalism with Michael Moore and Donna Chesner. Now, I integrate plants into my daily life and help others to do the same!
While in graduate school I went into a public health career working to improve access to public data through health information technologies. I served society at the federal, state and local levels for 15 years. These experiences gave me a broad range of skills and an understanding of public health and service.
My experience facilitating movement meditation started in 2002 at a studio called The Dance Matrix, in Bisbee, Arizona while studying Western herbalism. The experience of being in the desert was a magical part of my transformation.
I continued to explore Soul Motion with Vinn Marti, 5Rhythms with Gabrielle Roth and BrainDance with Anne Green Gilbert. I spent over 450 hours studying with these teachers including several ten-day intensives such as Vinn Marti’s Soul Motion Mastery and Gabrielle Roth’s Medicine Dance as well as Mirrors, an in-depth look at the ego. I found these practices helped me to be a more well-rounded person and move through life with more grace. I often tell people that I would never have become a mother (one of my great joys) if I hadn’t practiced the 5Rhythms. Teaching movement meditation and creative dance for over a decade has helped me deepen my dance as a spiritual practice.
I have been a life coach since 2012.
To discover the Tao is to embrace the motion of our life. Experience connections, freedom and wild wisdom on the dancing path!
Our Business
Hilo Hawaii
Aloha!
We are a business founded upon kindness. Julie and Casey work to promote kindness and guide others to discover a complete life.
Our services include:
- Teaching Taoism
- Holding personal retreats
- Guiding people through a midlife crisis
- Working with relationships
- Helping people shift jobs or retire with grace
- Implementing kindness within businesses.
We have walked thousands of people successfully through a midlife crisis. Our process is simple and very efficient. Through regular meetings, we help people discover how to strengthen themselves in a manner that flows with their life’s direction.
We work with people via phone, internet, Zoom, WhatsApp and in person.
We also offer personal one-on-one retreats tailored to meet your specific needs and goals. Unlike other retreat centers that create large group experiences, we focus on you as an individual. Your retreat is unique so you can experience personal growth in a deep and profound manner.
Casey specializes in Mid-Life Transformation and teaching Taoism. Rather than watch a life break from a crisis, he helps each person transform relative to their needs and dreams. This sometimes includes helping a person create a path for his or her retirement.
Julie specializes in meditation practice and personal coaching.
This is teaching, not counseling. Our goal is to re-introduce both growth and balance into a person’s life. We help people evolve past their old stories. Our teaching uses your own life as the source of materials to learn from. This makes the process personal, precise, and quick.
The best way to understand our work is to read through our recommendations and see the profound personal benefits of actively living to one’s essence.