Phileena is an author, teacher, spiritual director, retreat guide and yoga instructor.

She is passionate about spirituality and making the world a better place. With a rare gift for communicating the dynamics of the spiritual journey, Phileena gracefully guides others toward personal growth, bringing harmony to the active and contemplative dimensions of life.

For some reason we imagined that just the “thinking life” would elicit and feed the spirit.  The soul is fed much more by the “symbolic” life too, where action and contemplation meet, where the inner and the outer learn to operate as one, where words become flesh, where God is no longer just an idea, but the heartbeat of life itself. Phileena gives you many avenues by which to live such a full and enfleshed life.  She tells you to stop “thinking about it” and to try it!  That is when it works.
Fr. Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Center for Action and Contemplation

Author

Phileena’s discerning guidance has been featured by Center for Action and Contemplation’s Conspire, Sojourner’s Summit, Q Ideas, The Work of the People, Catalyst, Immerse, Darkwood Brew and more.

She is also the author of Pilgrimage of a Soul, a provocative theological narrative set along the Camino de Santiago, and Mindful Silence, a vulnerable exploration of the Christian contemplative tradition.

Visit Vimeo on Demand for Mindful Silence video series.

More writings

Phileena writes here with such simple clarity—and easy readability…Mindful Silence contains not just her wisdom but the spiritual wisdom of the ages.

Richard Rohr, OFM

A courageous and groundbreaking effort to build a bridge between those two communities of Christians, still largely unknown to each other, where the heart of Christ burns so brightly: the evangelical and the contemplative.
The Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault

Speaker

Phileena is a wise soul who has faced the some of the world’s most challenging needs head on and draws deep from the contemplative tradition for guidance. She speaks with the passion of someone whose heart has been broken, but communicates the hope of one who knows that ‘all will be well.’ Listen to her.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Associate Minister St. Johns Baptist Church, Director School of Conversion, Editor New Monastic Library Series

 

Gravity

A Center for Contemplative Activism

Phileena co-founded Gravity for people who care about their spirituality and want to make the world a better place. Gravity operated for ten years offering public meditation sits, contemplative retreats, spiritual direction and enneagram workshops and consultations. That work came to a close in 2022 to allow Phileena to become even more available for seekers like you.

Spiritual Director

Phileena is a trauma-informed certified spiritual director in the contemplative-evocative method, via rigorous three-year training in the Jesuit (Ignatian) tradition, with additional training in Bio-Spiritual focusing.

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Retreat Guide

Phileena leads contemplative retreats for people and communities who are interested in living with greater conscious awareness. Retreats engage all three intelligent centers: head, heart, and gut, and integrate conceptual frameworks with embodied practice.

Find a retreat

Yoga Instructor

Yoga has been a really helpful practice for Phileena in her spiritual journey. As a certified yoga instructor, she gently guides her students to integrate the mind, heart, and body in a way that brings greater presence, awareness and self-acceptance.

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