Our Instructor

Dr. Erin Walborn-Sterantino

Director and certified MBSR teacher at the Mindfulness Center of the Capital Region, Rensselaer NY

Doctor of Audiology at Audiologic Solutions Hearing Center, Rensselaer NY

Dr. Erin (as her patient’s fondly call her) has been improving the quality of people’s lives for over 25 years. In 1995 she started Audiologic Solutions Hearing Center after seeing a need for improved hearing and tinnitus care with a focus on excellent customer service. The business grew and thrived and she successfully sold the practice to another audiologist after providing 20 years of care. Dr. Erin continues to work at this practice under the new owner and continues to specialize in the treatment of hearing loss/tinnitus and sound sensitivity. 

In 2010, Erin joined the Awakened Heart School run by Mimi and John O’Neil located in Albany NY. It is through this school that she learned buddhist/Sufi meditation practices and she continues to practice with this group today. In 2012-2014 she studied Energy Diagnostics with Joy Adler, who is a master teacher at the Barbara Brennan School of Energy Healing and has also studied Transcendental Meditation. She has been on a lifelong spiritual path that includes daily meditation and yearly silent retreats.

Around this time, Dr. Erin started to combine her knowledge of mindfulness with her practice of audiology to help those suffering from Tinnitus (ringing in the ears). She presented on the topic at the NYS Speech Language and Hearing Associations annual meeting before mindfulness became a buzz word and showed how adding mindfulness/meditation can aid in the treatment of tinnitus to a greater level than just sound therapy alone. She has also seen through the Tinnitus Functional Index how much her patients have improved in their quality of life, resilience and greater sense of control by adding mindfulness along with traditional sound therapy.

Also around the same time, Dr. Erin suffered a medical condition that caused her to lose all her balance on her left side and to have double vertical vision in her right eye. Medical imaging could not find the source for this illness and she was left to fend for herself. She is convinced that stress was the cause.  She took a month off from work and devoted her time to meditation, traditional medical treatments such as physical therapy along with alternative treatments such as acupuncture and Energy Healing. She has since recovered and can appreciate how mindfulness has played a role in her healing.

In 2019, Dr. Erin was introduced to a program called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). This is a secular program (non-religious) that was originally started by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979 and is now being offered around the world. This program combined her love of science and the body with her passion for meditation and she knew this was her next pathway. She did her teacher training at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center and at UCSD School for Mindfulness Studies and is completing the mentoring process to finalize her certification. She started the Mindfulness Center of the Capital Region to be able to offer this training to her existing patients, but also to open it up to people around the globe. 

Dr. Erin wants everyone to know that stress is not just a word that is tossed around lightly, but is actually a physiologic change taking place in the body, and that overtime, these changes can cause and contribute to illness and poor health.  By taking your healing into your own hands, in addition to mainstream medical treatment, you will be giving yourself the greatest gift that no one else can give you. 

To speak to Dr. Erin directly, you can reach her by email at erinwalborn [at] gmail [dot] com.