The Ouroboros Collaborative is faith in rebirth, in the growth, in the shedding, in the cycle. A devotion to storytelling, healing, and expression.

This platform evolved out of an organic need for a container of related projects and visions. This is not a portfolio - in fact, all of these projects are works-in-progress… this is a dreamscape, this is a spell.

This is a coalescing of a mercurial life; the travels and the travails, the academia and the apprenticeship, the rejection and the rejoicing.

I am neither old nor young. I am neither ignorant nor experienced. I am elegantly existing and everyday attempting an acute sense of balance. Bowing to the various threads and tools that have woven their way into my field, landing me here, in this moment, dedicated to land, movement, and plant medicine and the inherent feminine wisdom embedded in this 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… including Jess Humphrey and Portal, Eric Geiger, Tess Collins, Amanda Turull, Richie Villa, Meesh Herd, Emily Aust, the Contact Improvisation & somatic movement community in San Diego, 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), San Diego International Film Festival official selection (2024)

  • “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), and many other teachers (human and plant) along the way

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

  • Legal & Policy Apprentice, Multi-Disciplinary Association of Psychedelic Science (2023-2024)

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

  • 200-hr Yoga Teacher trained at Trilogy San Diego with Gabrielle Blachley (2022-2023,)

  • Dedicated mindfulness meditation practice since 2006, 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 - Present)

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

  • M.C.P., Environmental Planning & Urban Design - UC Berkeley

  • J.D., Environmental Law, Cannabis Law & Drug Policy, Cooperative Law - UC Law of San Francisco, FKA UC Hastings

  • B.A., Theatre & Political Science - Boston College

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