We honor our teachers in these fields both direct:
Sage Hayes, Nkem Ndefo, Meenadchi, DeeDe, Dawn, Shilpa Jain, Devika Shankar, Elaine Zook Barge, Lisa Collins, Katie Mansfield, Andrea De La Madriz, Dave Berger, Diane Poole-Heller, Joshua Sylvae, Mahshid Hager
and indirect: Prentis Hemphill, Staci Haines, Peter Levine, Grace Lee Boggs, Resmaa Menakem, Parker Palmer, adrienne maree brown, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and many more.
We honor the beloveds who are in close practice with us:
Our personal and political home with Sweet Freedom Farm
Our practice space with Taganyahu Swaby at Yaad Wellness
Our network of colleagues and collaborating practitioners
and every client we've worked with: your healing teaches me every day.
Advanced training in Somatic Experiencing Trauma Resolution (SEP)
Certification as a Resilience Toolkit practitioner
Certification as a STAR (Strategies for Trauma Awareness & Resilience) practitioner
Training in Emergent Strategy's Holding Change facilitation and mediation models,
Training as a Conflict and Grief Circle facilitator
Training in Dave Berger's BASE approach to Concussions & PTSD
Training in Sage Haye's Embodied Liberation approach to SE
Training in Diane Poole-Heller's approach to Neurobiology & Attachment
Training in Resmaa Menakem's Somatic Abolitionism
Training in Meenadchi's DNVC (Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication) approach
Thousands of hours training & practice in Ashtanga Yoga Mysore rooms
and ongoing learning with mentors, colleagues, and community in workshops, trainings, life together.
I live in a fiery, mystic, chronically ill/disabled white body oriented to the hope of healing and repair. I work dedicated to betraying whiteness, ableism, and to the building of community systems that abolish police and prison industrial complexes.
I am definitively and thoroughly shaped by the language, values, culture, landscape, and people of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where I lived my first 17 years.
I am committed to mentored learning and unlearning around how to hold my biography, trauma and illness, various forms of power and privilege, and the stories that led me to this work.
My healing journey has been through roles as harm-er as well as harmed, and I value companioning those of us working to call in and befriend the inner monsters.
Our sessions support each person in equipping themselves with the knowledge and tools they need to come home to themselves, integrate difficult experiences, re-pattern physiological and/or socio-emotional responses & show up for their lives with their whole selves. This work also often involves supporting capacity (in community) to interrupt systemic barriers to wellness. As we build personal resilience, we are able to engage with stress/trauma cycles and participate in transforming the violence in those systems.
As much as possible, we work in community settings with networks of diversely skilled practitioners, forming alternatives to compartmentalized care models that often perpetuate harm. I do not hold a conventional therapy certification and do not work under state requirements. I am not a mandated reporter.
We work in-person in Catskill, NY, Mahican Munsee land, and on zoom in several states and countries. Sessions are 75 minutes long, and often include a combination of story, movement, & nervous system tools. Mutual aid is available if financial exchange is a challenge, and sliding scales are in place for 1:1 work.