Meet Dr. EL, your LoveLife! guide

We all deserve a life we love, but it starts with a healthy body.

If you’re looking for a true partner in proactive healthcare, someone who practices the kind of hands-on, gentle medicine that can keep you feeling vibrant, strong, and ready to meet the myriad demands of your busy life, you’ve come to the right place.

If you’re feeling tired, achy, stressed, and just not as energetic as you used to, or if you’re coping with chronic illness, you’ve also come to the right place. In searching for the right members of your health care team, your most important question shouldn’t be “what kind of doctor are you?”

Your most important question is:

what do you know – and believe – about the human body?

After spending my life and Career Part One as an athletic trainer, helping performance-focused, highly trained men and women to prevent injury, and to rehabilitate their muscles, joints, and ligaments when something did go wrong, I began to see the human body and our human potential as connected. Fitness and good nutrition were the starting points for my interest in whole health and wellness, and it was a great place to start.

I had graduated with a degree in athletic training from Boston University, and I was passionately committed to my clients. But as the years went by, I started to feel I could do more to impact their bodies, their strength, and their abilities. The people I worked with were premier athletes; they played ice hockey, soccer, lacrosse, and field hockey, all strenuous, high-impact sports that demanded an incredible level of fitness. My clients were strong, hard bodied, fast—but not always healthy in the balanced way that a full-life approach demands.

There Had to be More I Could Do

I had steadily moved forward in my career, taking on the role of manager of a personal training program in Cambridge, Massachusetts and an educator for other personal trainers, but I was being drawn toward a deeper investment in human health. I said good bye to Boston, and headed to Portland, Oregon.

I Found What I Was Looking For:

The Basic Foundation of Proactive Health

Once enrolled in the National University of Natural Medicine (Formerly National College of Natural Medicine) in Portland, I studied the same science-based curriculum as any physician: anatomy, pathology, biochemistry. I learned about labs, medical imaging, and minor surgeries. But layered on top of that field of study were the basic foundations for healthy living, and a focus on health care that may be more personal than anything you’ve experienced in your life thus far.

As a naturopathic physician, my approach to health is based on body, mind, spirit, and something else that is indefinable: a zest for life that we either have and we flourish, or we’ve lost and that’s opened the door to illness.

When I graduated in 2011, I had a doctorate in naturopathic medicine and a certificate in midwifery. I completed a two-year mentorship in integrative women’s health, and a one-year apprenticeship in midwifery and pediatrics. I have studied biotherapeutic drainage and holistic pelvic care. And I’ve recently advanced my understanding of homeopathy at the New England School of Homeopathy in Boston, Massachusetts.

Today, I practice naturopathic medicine from my clinic in Westport, CT (Shalva Clinic), where I work to create proactive health for my patients. I believe that we each are here to create something beautiful with our lives. Everyone on earth shares atoms that first came from stardust. Follow me for my Love Life!™ guide to healthy living and make a life that really shines.