The Ouroboros Collaborative is a devotion to rebirth - to the growth, the shedding, the cycle. It is an offering of storytelling, healing, and expression.

This platform emerged from an organic need - a container for kindred visions and evolving work. It is not a portfolio. Every project here is in motion, becoming. This is a dreamscape. This is a spell.

It is the convergence of a mercurial life: the journeys and the hardships, the academia and the apprenticeship, the rejection and the rejoicing.

I am neither old nor young, neither ignorant nor wise. I am here: elegantly existing, daily seeking a deeper sense of balance. I bow to the threads and tools that have woven their way into my field, guiding me to this moment, and shaped by my Mexican and Finnish lineages. I stand in reverence for the land, for movement, for plant medicine, and for the inherent feminine wisdom braided through this sacred trilogy.

-Natalie Koski-Karell, August 2023

Garden of remembering & forgetting, Slobodan Dan Paich, May 2016

Listed here are a selection of impactful mentors and trainings, and some recent special accomplishments:

  • Dance and Theatre Arts practice since 2003

    • Many wonderful schools, teachers, mentors, collaborators, and groups… the Contact Improvisation & somatic movement community in San Diego, Jess Humphrey and Portal, Eric Geiger, Tess Collins, Amanda Turull, Richie Villa, Meesh Herd, Emily Aust, Axis Syllabus, Slobodan Dan Paich and ArtShip, Kris Rulifson, Aikido of San Francisco (Sensei Rob Schenck, Godan, Sensei Gerard Enriquez, Yondan) and Gassaku Aikido (Sensei Thierry Diagana, Rokudan), Anna Halprin & the Tamalpa Institute (Life/Art Process), ODC, Margery Fairchild, Martin Schwartz, Jo Kreiter, Elizabeth Boubion, Carol Cadby, Luke Jorgensen, KJ Holmes, Nita Little, and more.

  • The Mythic Body mythosomatics study with Joshua Schrei of The Emerald Podcast (2024-2025)

  • “Once there was & Once there was not” (Co-director & Producer); Official Selection (2024): San Diego International Film Festival, Contact Dance Film Festival, Festival Internacional de Cine de Ciudad Madero, Fesitval Fotogenia CDMX

  • Policy & Advocacy Apprentice, Multi-Disciplinary Association of Psychedelic Science (2023-2024), part of the State Bar of California Pathway Program

  • “Palindrome” (Choreographer), San Diego Dance Theater Emerging Choreographers Showcase (2024)

  • Herbalist studies since 2012: in many ways I am self-taught and remembering (as we all are when we work with plants), but I am also indebted to more formal training from these gracious schools and teachers — Ancestral Arts fka Ancestral Apothecary (Oakland, CA), Scarlet Sage (San Francisco, CA), Self-Heal School of Herbal Studies & Healing (San Diego, CA), The Herbal Academy, and many other teachers (human and plant) along the way.

  • Art of Ritual Theater with Isis Indriya and Eve Bradford (2023)

  • Sacred plant medicine ceremonial path (North & South American traditions)

  • 15+ years of yoga practice, including 200-hr Yoga Teacher training at Trilogy San Diego with Gabrielle Blachley (2022-2023)

  • Dedicated mindfulness meditation practice since 2009, originally Jon Kabat-Zinn lineage

  • Nautralist Trail Leader with Naturalists at Large (Joshua Tree, Malibu Creek State Park, El Capitan State Beach, Catalina Island, 2021-2022)

  • Cultural anthropology research on the Zapotec temazcal ceremony, in residence at pocoapoco, Oaxaca (2021)

  • Cultural anthropology research on waste in Bali (2019)

  • Co-Instructor & Reader for American Environmental History, UC Berkeley (2019 - 2024)

  • Capstone thesis on land use planning & tribal law for Yurok Tribe, Klamath River (2019-2020)

  • B.A., Theatre & Political Science - Boston College; J.D., Environmental Law, Cannabis Law & Drug Policy, Cooperative Law - UC Law of San Francisco, FKA UC Hastings; M.C.P., Environmental Planning & Urban Design - UC Berkeley

  • Community Land Use Planner, City of San Diego (2022 - Present)