Four decades, one steady question.

Her path.

Connirae began her work in the early years of NLP, drawn to its promise of reliable, precise pathways to change. She holds an MA in clinical psychology from the University of Colorado (1979) and a PhD in psychotherapy (1989). She became an internationally known trainer and author. But found that, for her personally, the field’s methods didn’t fully work.

A week-long seminar with the psychiatrist and therapist Dr. Milton H. Erickson brought a profound change. However, it faded and left her searching for a way back to the peace she’d briefly known in his office and the following weeks after the encounter. Not through what Erickson had done, but through something repeatable and that would last.

That search led to Core Transformation. She developed the method in 1989 and with the help of her sister, Tamara Andreas, she wrote the foundational book, Core Transformation: Reaching the Wellspring Within. It meets unwanted patterns through what someone most deeply wants underneath them. Tamara went on to become an international trainer of the method, helping it reach further than either of them could teach alone.

The Wholeness Work emerged almost two decades later, from a quieter question: what would happen if attention turned not to the patterns at all, but to the felt sense of the self holding them? The method that followed is precise enough to be taught and repeated, gentle enough that no one needs to re-live what hurts.

Where the work is now

The Wholeness Work has travelled further in the last two years than in the decade before. In 2024 Tara Brach wrote the foreword to Connirae’s book on the method and hosted a public conversation with her, calling the work deep and impactful. Connirae still teaches it in person each year; from September 18–28, 2026, she led ten days in Cologne. She writes on Substack, and also speaks on podcasts about how deep change can be gentle and lasting, and lives in Boulder, Colorado.