About Char

 I am a trauma/stress healing companion and resilience practitioner with heavy influence from the Somatic Experiencing field and Nkem Ndefo's training on the ethology model of stress. 

I hold certification as a STAR practitioner and a Resilience Toolkit facilitator, am in training as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, work as a Healing, Conflict, and Grief Circle facilitator, and a Holding Space Consultant with The Institute for Birth, Breath, and Death. 

 I came to this work at what I thought was the end of my life. I was suffering deeply from unresolved trauma, chronic disease, self-harm habits, and destructive relationship patterns. I walked into Somatic therapy wanting simply to clean some things up before I was done living. My healing journey has been through my roles as harm-er, not just harm-ed, and so I deeply value being able to companion those of us working to call in and befriend the inner monsters. Because of the journey through my own past and physical traumas, my offerings are highly intuitive and integrative.

I am a white-bodied practitioner who is definitively shaped by the language, values, culture, landscape, and people of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where I lived the first 17 years of my life. I am committed to ongoing, mentored learning and unlearning around how to best hold both parts of that biography,  my various forms of power and privilege, and the story that led me to this work. 

I am deeply rooted in my physical practice, integrating somatic healing with Ashtanga Yoga, and lean on the shoulders of the mentors and friends who have truly seen me in my messes and who chose anyway to walk patiently towards healing with me. 

I work with individuals and groups to develop safety, wholeness, and transformative agency through or after traumagenic situations. 

Our sessions support each person in equipping themselves with the knowledge and tools they need to show up for their own lives with their full resilience capacity. As we build a safe relational container, we can practice interacting with difficult sensations and moments with incrementally stronger capacity. And as we build that resilience, we are able to engage with trauma cycles and participate in transforming the violence in those systems. 

Recognizing the systemic and repetitive nature of harm, we collaborate to interrupt the patterns we find ourselves in. This requires that I continually interrogate my own role in the process, and I am committed to transparent accountability with my own support people, including my teachers. 

As much as possible, I work in community settings with networks of diversely skilled practitioners, forming alternatives to the compartmentalized "care" models that often perpetuate harm.

 I do not hold a conventional therapy certification and do not work under any state/association requirements. I am not a mandated reporter.