Hello there,
My name is Karla. I live in The Netherlands with my Dutch partner and our son.
In this blog I write about the ways consciousness changes in relationship to landscapes, motherhood, migration, contemplative practice, and ordinary life. I am especially interested in the boundary between self and environment: the ways nature, weather, movement, attention, memory, institutions, and infrastructure quietly shape how we experience ourselves and the world.
Some posts are more essayistic, others more personal or observational, but together they form an ongoing exploration of perception, ecological belonging, and everyday life as an expat mom in The Netherlands.
If you would like to know more about my contemplative and professional path, keep reading.
My relationship with meditation began early in life through my upbringing, but it became a more intentional practice during my university years. Between 2004 and 2006, while living in Seattle, I attended different Buddhist communities and sanghas and learned meditation practices from several traditions, including Korean, Tibetan, and Japanese Buddhism. In 2005 I also followed a mindfulness-based program at the University of Washington.
After university I worked as a teacher within the international American school system, where my interest in education, attention, and contemplative practices continued to deepen. Over the years I followed different mindfulness and contemplative training programs, including courses through Mindful Schools focused on supporting social, emotional, and academic development in K–12 education.
In 2012 I decided to formally combine my interests in education and contemplative practice and enrolled in a research master’s program in educational psychology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, including a one-year internship at Leiden University. During those years I developed mindfulness-based interventions for teachers and conducted qualitative and quantitative research with Belgian and Dutch student-teachers.
In 2016 I accepted an appointment in Leiden and worked for several years at Leiden University, first as a researcher and later as a lecturer. As my practice deepen, my work gradually shifted toward questions of identity, ecology, peace processes, and the ways human beings relate to the natural world. I became especially interested in environmental identity, environmental peacebuilding, and the relationship between selfhood, landscape, and social systems, including emerging ideas such as the Rights of Nature.
Throughout all these years I have maintained a meditation practice, which has lead to subtle but continuous inner shifts. For the last several years my practice has been influenced by the guidance of Martine Batchelor and by more secular and inquiry-based approaches to contemplative life.
Alongside writing, I continue to work in education, currently at The American School of The Hague, and remain involved in contemplative communities and practices. I also occasionally advise educational institutions and facilitate mindfulness-based workshops to schools and higher education institutions in The Netherlands.
Feel free to reach out if something here resonates with you.
También hablo español en Nederlands.
Self-Ethnography 