Education & Study

Some Recent Trainings and Influences…

EARLIER EDUCATION AND WORK:

I hold a MA degree from New York University (2020) in Drama Therapy and a BA in Theater Arts Performance from California State Uni of Long Beach (2014). Prior to private coaching, I have extensive experience as a Drama Therapist and Counselor in acute psychiatric hospitals, partial hospitalization/outpatient groups, community settings, older adult care facilities, and residential treatment centers for co-occurring mental health and substance recovery. I have worked with individuals and groups across the life span navigating trauma, anxiety, depression, disordered eating, mood challenges, experiences of hearing voices/seeing visions, and life transitions often compounded by social and cultural dislocation. I have a special passion for supporting 2Slgbtqia+ folx who come in contact with these systems through a liberation focused lens. I am greatly in awe of and influenced by models of co-care in recovery community and peer communities. I do my best to disrupt professionalism, and navigate co-created boundaries with people I support.

Disability Justice:

At this time I identify as a non-disabled person (in the context of physical ability) and neuroqueer within what is perceived as the neurotypical/neurodivergent binary in colonial westernized psychiatry. I relate mostly to ADHD type experiences of energy, attention, thinking, creative process, organizational capacities, processing speeds and some more traits I am still exploring. I also recognize many overlaps within complex trauma experiences, and I am always unpacking this and striving to be a co-conspirator for the movement of disability justice and madness. I hold an open inquiry about my ongoing changing abilities/capacities. My connection to supporting disabled people is informed by engagement as an advocate within disability community in a variety of artist, community, and mental health spaces. My life experience also includes being a loved one, a family member, and in relationship to many folks who identify as living with a disability, as disabled individuals, and/or oppressed by abeleist systems (all of us!). I have much room for growth and invite all dialogues here. I believe in supporting your needs as they arise and transform. I will do all I can alongside you to accommodate diverse participation and access needs. We will discuss this when we meet for a consult call. If we work in person, we will discuss our COVID needs and work together accordingly with masking & testing. The office has windows, fans, and air purifiers. running in the office and waiting room.

Yoga and MOVEMENT:

I hold a Trauma Informed Yoga Teacher certificate from Exhale to Inhale (non profit bringing yoga to survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault). I am also a certified yoga instructor. My most recent training with Alchemystic Studio focused on yoga philosophy rooted in social justice practice and re-indiginzing yoga in the West. I recognize that Westernized appropriated Yoga is bound up in white supremacy and caste supremacy. It is the responsibility of anyone who engages in these practices to be acknowledging history and present harm, particularly the supremacist politics embodied in yoga spaces and trainings. I am taking up the intention in how I practice and who I learn yoga practices from to be in liberatory spaces re-indiginizing yoga. There is much to be learned and more to be done to mitigate the harm of my former trainings which de-contextualized yoga from caste and supremacy culture.

Other movement influences I draw from include psychophysical theater technique, sensorimotor theories, somatic attachment, and my background of theater and dance practice.

Affiliations:

Psychology Today

Mental Health Care Workers for Palestine

Inclusive Therapists

Certified on OPEN PATH COLLECTIVE & HEALING ARTS COLLECTIVE

Queer Healers

Registered Drama Therapist (#822) with the North American Drama Therapy Association

NYU MA in Drama Therapy 2020

RYT 200