KARLA McLAREN IS an award-winning author and pioneering educator whose empathic approach to emotions has taken her through the healing of her own childhood trauma into an empathic healing career and now into the study of sociology, neurology, cognitive and social psychology, anthropology, and education. She is the author of books, audio learning programs, and online courses that focus on emotions and empathy.
Karla has taught at such venues as the University of San Francisco, Omega Institute, Naropa University, Kripalu, and the Association for Humanistic Psychology. In addition, as a prison arts educator with the William James Foundation, she has used singing, poetry, drumming, and drama to help men in maximum-security prisons explore and heal long-held emotional traumas.
In her academic career, Karla served as a researcher and editor on the books When Killing Is a Crime (2007), by Tony Waters, and Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2006), by Janja Lalich. With Dr. Lalich, Karla has coauthored a sociological research study on the multiple stigmatizations that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning people experience in fundamentalist religions,63 and she is coauthoring a study about children who grew up in cults and escaped. She is currently developing new forms of empathy and social-interaction curricula for neurologically diverse people.
Karla lives in Sonoma County, California, with her husband, Tino Plank, who is a master’s-level nurse educator working in hospice and end-of-life care.