Research Interests

somatics, racialized trauma, ecofeminism, maternal studies

Biography

tayla (she/they) is a biculturally Black living body engaged in somatic decolonial Black feminist scholarship, education and counseling. tayla has a master’s in somatic counseling psychology and a doctorate in women’s spirituality from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Currently, tayla provides somatically-oriented therapeutic containment for private clients, serves as a lead facilitator and co-director for Weaving Earth, facilitates organizational diversity, equity and access trainings, and teaches special topics in race, political somatic psychology, and liberation practice at the university level. they have authored several resources on somatics and personal-social transformation, including Nourishing the Nervous System (2024), Locate Your Liberate (2022), and Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices (2018).

tayla lives in the Anishinabeg territory of so-called Marquette, MI with their two young children, spouse, and dogs.

Publications

”The Good Earth: Finding Faith in Our Bodies and in the Land” in Ecological and Social Healing: Multicultural Women's Voices - Routledge, 2024.

Disruption, Reclamation and Delight: A Black Mother’s Childbirth as Transpersonal Liberatory Consciousness - Dissertation published via ProQuest, 2024

Nourishing the Nervous System (print and audiobook) - Loam: 2020 & 2024

Being in our Bodies - Humans and Nature 2023

Locate Your Liberate - Loam: December 2022

“Righteous Womb” in Waking the Ground -  Loam: 2021

“The Gap” in Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices: toward an inclusive somatics - North Atlantic Books 2018