Somatic Psychology Program

Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania Amish country. After going to Oberlin College in Ohio for creative writing and women's studies, I moved to California in 1991. For about three years I worked as a delivery driver for a bakery collective. Then I realized I wanted more time to devote to my writing, which wasn't possible working 50 hours a week. Eventually I decided to become a massage therapist so I would have more time free. Giving and receiving bodywork was one way Somatics entered my life. Around that time I also started as a client of body-based psychotherapy, but it took many years before I felt the strong desire to work with others in that way. While supporting myself doing bodywork, I got an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, where I wrote a novel called Slant Six. [Read a chapter from Slant Six in Lodestar Quarterly.]

I'm also involved in a Jewish renewal community in Berkley, Chochmat HaLev, which means "Wisdom of the Heart" in Hebrew. I think of Chochmat as embodying the mystical spirit of Orthodox Judaism, along with expansive and politically progressive concepts about G-d and community. In services we have joyous music, singing, and dancing, which in me really create a somatic sense of the divine. The spirit literally comes right from my heart as I breathe and move myself closer to compassion and connection. A mindfulness and meditation practice is also a core element, which connects with Somatics and certain Eastern traditions that I'm learning about here at CIIS.

What were you doing before you came to CIIS?

Before CIIS, I worked with a nonprofit called Community Works, which brings art into settings like schools and jails. I was an artist in residence at a public high school, and I facilitated two oral history projects that integrated art and writing into the learning process. For the first project we invited Bay Area folks who participated in the civil rights movement to come share their stories with us. For the second project, we invited Bay Area Japanese Americans who had been put in the internment camps during World War II. I loved guiding the students as they listened to these stories and responded to them in writing. The whole process made the history more real, and the students also spent time thinking about today's personal and global freedom struggles. One of the elements I used with them is common to writing and Somatics—working with the five senses. What did it sound like? What does it look like in your mind's eye? How did that experience feel to you? Of course, the art of listening is essential in both as well.

How did you become interested in massage therapy?

After work at the bakery, we'd be really tight from lifting all day, so we'd give each other massages. The other drivers and bakers said that I knew exactly the "right spots" to work on, and I realized that this ability to zero in came from my knowing how my own body felt during a massage—what I now call mindfulness.

With my clients, one of my main goals is to support them in growing their own somatic awareness and consciousness, to help them learn how their bodily experience is so fully entwined with their emotional selves, their psyches.

What led you to the Somatic Psychology program?

My mother is a therapist, and she talked a lot about body-based practices and movement. She recommended that I consider some body-based therapy. I had gone to a traditionally trained therapist, but found that the experience wasn't very deep, so I decided to go to a Rosen Method worker (who is now a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist). I've been working with her for more than 10 years now. It was through our practice together that I started to see how wonderful it could be to work with people in a psychological way that embraced the body as part of the psyche.

As a massage therapist, I saw how my clients carried a lot of emotions in their bodies—releases would happen on the massage table, and I had to be very careful not to overstep my role as a certified massage therapist, while still supporting them and holding a safe space. Eventually I felt hungry to do some focused learning and began looking into Somatics programs.

What specifically appeals to you about CIIS?

The fact that CIIS had a Somatic Psychology program was a huge thing for me. I chose CIIS because I'd heard that the Institute emphasized community. The cohort system has given me a wonderful community to belong to. The care, love, safety, and fun that I feel with my fellow cohort members has been invaluable—helping me when I'm having a hard time, when I'm brainstorming for papers, or when I just want to go out and be crazy in a playground. I love that although some of the material we work with in class is pretty intense, we also know how to have a good laugh. We love to play!

What have been some of the best aspects of studying in the Somatic Psychology program?

I feel enlivened in so many parts of my life by what I'm learning. My time here has deepened my experience of being a therapy client too. Sometimes I'm ripped open by the deep experiential stuff, but in the Somatics program I feel like we get support when we're feeling "freaked out." No one is expected to keep it together all the time because some of the learning we do ends up being so personal. But then it's cyclical. You may feel very raw emotions, but gradually see those emotions shift, resulting in change and amazing insights. That's a pretty profound piece of my learning here.

Describe how and why a specific course has had a significant impact on you.

I was excited about a research project I did for my Human Development class. I interviewed a number of different people, looking at the idea of multiplicity in identity—how we all hold multiple selves. We tend to think of adolescence as a time when people are breaking away from family and enacting different selves outside of the family world, but I was interested in elementary-school-aged children, seeing if they held different identities in different situations.

I discovered something incredible in my interviews that I wasn't even looking for: all the people I interviewed talked about secrets they held as children, and about a powerful moment when a new kind of person emerged from inside of them—a "somebody" they had not previously known themselves to be. It was amazing how each person whom I interviewed had stories of these two types that seemed to emerge organically, and that they told them to me with so much energy and excitement—these secrets and moments of becoming were still so somatically alive. And what I believe is that the secret might have been a seed toward becoming something other than what their parents wanted them to be. The "moment of becoming" was like a kind of birth.

What's next for you?

I'm currently working at our Center for Somatic Psychotherapy, and I'm looking to continue on in a private practice internship. I'm thinking about becoming a mom soon, too! Eventually I would love to run groups on writing as a healing art, integrating movement and somatic mindfulness into the practice.

Somatic Psychology Program