Somatic Psychology

At the 2026 Scholarship Dinner, CIIS students and donors gathered to celebrate the journeys that generous giving makes possible.

Don Hanlon Johnson, founder of the first graduate Somatics program in the U.S., retires after more than four decades at CIIS.

Parts Work, also known as Internal Family Systems, developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz, is a transformative tool that conceives of every human being as a system of protective and wounded inner parts led by a core Self. Parts Work allows you an all-access pass to wholeness by understanding, befriending, and leading the multiple voices within yourself.

In this episode, CIIS Somatic Psychology Professor Christine Gindi talks with psychotherapist and author Britt Frank about using Parts Work to meet our inner critics, inner children, and inner shadows to help tame anxiety, heal trauma, and overcome self-doubt.

This episode was recorded during an live online event at California Institute of Integral Studies on August 14th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Discover your fit among CIIS' five counseling psychology concentrations, each offering a unique path to becoming a transformative healer.

We are living in a world where the depths of division, violence, and destruction can no longer be ignored. Escalated forms of harm require an equally escalated response. Yet social movements often use tactics that tend to escalate an “us vs. them,” “right vs. wrong” worldview not conducive to healing. Activist, trainer, and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice Kazu Haga argues this binary worldview is at the heart of what is destroying both our relationships and our planet. If healing is our goal, we need social movements that center relationships.

In this episode, Kazu is joined by Assistant Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies in the Somatic Psychology program Deanna Jimenez for an inspiring conversation exploring insights from his decades of work in restorative justice and from his latest book Fierce Vulnerability. Kazu invites you to mobilize the power to stop harm by cultivating love to heal it.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on May 8th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

As we continue to navigate years of collective upheaval, are there ways for us to face the complexities of our time with joy, authenticity, and connection? Prentis Hemphill, embodiment practitioner, therapist, and activist, shows us that we don't have to carry our emotional burdens alone.

In this episode, Prentis is joined by comedian, author, and filmmaker W. Kamau Bell in a grounding conversation exploring the principles of embodiment awareness and how we can create a future in which healing is done in community.

In the conversation Prentis shares ideas from their latest book, What it Takes to Heal, which draws on their experiences as a trauma survivor and a clinician, as well as lessons learned from their time as a social movement architect. Prentis invites us to heal our bodies, minds, and souls, to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to bust down the doors of disconnection and take the necessary risks to reshape our world towards justice.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on June 27th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In the context of non-monogamy, compersion or the emotion of positive empathy is understood as sharing our partner’s joy regarding their other intimate relationship or relationships. Drawing upon her seminal research with consensually non-monogamous individuals, author and mindful dating and relationship coach, Dr. Marie (two-un) Thouin, unravels the complexity of compersion in her recent book, What is Compersion?, the first ever book to offer a comprehensive model of compersion and a practical roadmap to cultivating it.

In this episode, Dr. Thouin is joined by Poarch Creek Two-Spirit Indigequeer activist, artist, sex therapist, and somacultural theorist Dr. Roger Kuhn in a conversation exploring compersion as a roadmap for radical love in monogamous and non-monogamous consensual relationships.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 8th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

For over 40 years somatic sex educator Dr. Betty Martin has explored the nuances of consent. In her framework and book, The Wheel of Consent, Dr. Martin traces the fundamental roots of consent back to our childhood conditioning. As children, many are taught that to be “good” we must ignore our body’s discomfort and be compliant. As adults, this conditioning remains with us until we unlearn it. The implications of this approach to consent education extends beyond touch and intimate relationships. When we forget how to notice what we really want, we lose our inner compass. When we continue to go along with things we don’t feel are right, we lose our ability to speak up against injustice.

In this episode, Dr. Martin is joined by Poarch Creek Two-Spirit Indigiqueer soma-cultural sex therapist, sexuality educator, writer, activist, and musician Dr. Roger Kuhn for an empowering conversation on the psychology of consent. Drawing upon her life’s work and The Wheel of Consent, Dr. Martin shares deeply nuanced ways to practice consent as an agreement that brings integrity, responsibility, and empowerment into human interaction—starting with touch and relationships—and further expanding our understanding of consent to social issues of equality and justice.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 30th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Generational silence is a term applied to families who have experienced suppressed thoughts or repressed emotions for at least two generations. Generational silence addresses both the cycle and impact of issues like substance abuse, religion, racism, education inequality, and parenting. In her latest book, Breaking Generational Silence, mental health expert Nicole Russell-Wharton speaks from her Black experience about how slavery left an intergenerational impact on her family and how understanding and healing the root of silence can finally break the cycle for generations to come.

In this episode, Nicole is joined by Assistant Professor of Somatic Psychology Deanna Jimenez for a transformative conversation exploring generational silence and healing from inherited trauma.

This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on February 13th, 2025. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Resmaa Menakem is a healer, therapist, and a licensed clinical social worker renowned for his bestseller My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Resmaa is the originator and key advocate of Somatic Abolitionism, an embodied antiracist practice of living and culture building.

In this episode, CIIS Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Rachel Bryant has a transformative conversation with Resmaa about his recent book, The Quaking of America, and how we can heal the historical and racialized trauma we carry in our bodies and our souls.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 10th, 2023. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In her latest book, Casting Indra’s Net: Fostering Spiritual Kinship and Community, activist, counselor, and Buddhist teacher Dr. Pamela Ayo Yetunde shares ways of creating kinship and community through the metaphor of Indra’s Net—a universal net in which all beings reflect each other like jewels.

In this episode, Ayo is joined by somatic and transpersonal psychotherapist Deanna Jimenez for a heartfelt conversation that is both a call and a primer for community-oriented models of well-being in our age of polarization and turmoil.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 3rd, 2023. We had some technical issues during this event that have resulted in audio quality that is lower than our usual standard, but we felt it was important to share this conversation regardless. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

How do ordinary people with busy lives leverage our actions in support of liberation, justice, and authentic connection? How can activists and social change-makers avoid burning out? How does the body factor into what our social movements might miss? 

Drawing on the somatic arts, trauma-informed psychology, and anti-oppressive movements, scholar/activist Rae Johnson helps us explore and transform the political realities of our everyday lives in a new way: by harnessing the felt experience of our bodies as the sites of our activism. In this episode, vocalist, sacred scholar, and artivist Amber McZeal talks with Rae about their latest book, Embodied Activism, and their perspectives on changing the world, one body at a time.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on August 23rd, 2023. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, psychotherapist, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she's always pursued the same deeply personal mission: to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred.

Her latest book, Falling Back in Love with Being Human, is a transformative collection of intimate and lyrical love letters that offer a path toward compassion, forgiveness, and self-acceptance. Whether prayers or spells or poems—and whether there’s a difference—she writes to affirm the outcasts and runaways she calls her kin.

In this episode, Kai Cheng is joined by qwoc expressive arts therapist and CIIS Counseling Psychology programs professor Jenna Robinson in a conversation about love and what it means to truly embrace the beauty of being human.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 19th, 2023. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

What role does dominant culture play in how we experience the sensations, thoughts, feelings, and deeper existential mysteries of our bodies? Dr. Roger Kuhn, a Poarch Creek Two-Spirit Indigequeer activist, artist, sex therapist, and somacultural theorist, believes that Two-Spirit people hold a unique and valuable perspective. Straddling colonial imposition and tribal significance, Two-Spirit identity offers a powerful decolonizing framework to achieve freedom and navigate the toxic systems of domination that impose upon the precious truth of who we are.

In this episode, Dr. Kuhn is joined by queer nonbinary therapist and mediator Jay Tzvia Helfand for a conversation illuminating the ways our bodies offer portals to our own liberation and how viewing our bodies through a somacultural lens can help us better understand how dominant culture informs and, all too often, misinforms our relationship to our bodies.

Dr. Kuhn discusses his latest book, Somacultural Liberation, based on his revolutionary mode of inquiry, Somacultural Liberation, an embodied practice that helps people connect with the intersections of their identity. Dr. Kuhn’s approach illuminates the full impact of our cultural reality in shaping both our individual and shared sense of self.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 20th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Renowned developer of Somatic Experiencing Dr. Peter A. Levine changed the way psychologists, doctors, and healers understand and treat the wounds of trauma and abuse.

In this conversation with CIIS professor of Somatic Psychology Rae Johnson, he shares his own experience of severe childhood trauma and how he helped thousands of others before resolving his own trauma. Sharing insights from his recent memoir, An Autobiography of Trauma, Dr. Levine explains how being guided through Somatic Experiencing allowed him to illuminate and untangle his traumatic wounds and shares the history of the Somatic Experiencing method being derived from his studies of wild animals in their natural environments, neurobiology, and more than 50 years of clinical observations.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 16th, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Writer and somatic facilitator Abigail Rose Clarke reminds us that truly meaningful embodiment practices nurture our relationships among self, nature, and community. In her latest book, Returning Home to Our Bodies, Abigail offers guidance for harnessing the vitality of curiosity and experimentation, accessing nature as a path to possibility, embracing the necessity of difference, exposing the lie of universal isolation, uncovering the truth of endless capacity, and exploring awe as a driving force for transformation.

In this episode, Abigail is joined by second generation astrologer, intuitive, somatic educator and practitioner Renee Sills in a conversation that imagines a world beyond systems of domination, marginalization, and isolation to nurture embodied, whole-community liberation.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 6, 2024. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

NOTE: This episode features guided participatory rest practices that include moments of silence at the beginning and end of the conversation.

Restoring your body, mind, and spirit amid change is an act of courage, empowerment, and hope. Drawing wisdom from yoga philosophy and her many years of teaching experience, yoga teacher and activist Octavia Raheem offers motivation and guidance to restore ourselves through various forms of change in our lives. Her practice comes to life in her latest book, Pause, Rest, Be, where she provides simple restorative yoga poses and offers short teachings and reflections to see us through times of ending and beginning as well as liminal or transitional space.

In this episode, somatic and transpersonal psychotherapist Deanna Jimenez joins Octavia for a conversation on how slowing down, stillness, and deeper connection to our own transitions empowers us to move through personal and collective shifts with more grace as well as what it means to navigate change with presence and courage.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on April 13th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? For far too many of us, we have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic and damaging pace. In this world, rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it asserts our most basic humanity.

Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop is an artist, theologian, and the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form of resistance by curating sacred spaces for the community to rest through Collective Napping Experiences, immersive workshops, and performance art installations. Tricia’s work is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism.

In this episode, Tricia is joined in a conversation with Damali Robertson on the liberating power of rest, daydreaming, and naps as the foundation of healing and justice. Sharing insights from her latest book, Rest Is Resistance, Tricia casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on October 20th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Our Graduating Student Reflection Speech at the 55th Convocation Ceremony of California Institute for Integral Studies

Astrologer and psychic medium Jessica Lanyadoo is joined in conversation by M.A. in Somatic Counseling Psychology student and local actor Madeline H.D. Brown to discuss self-compassion, astrology, and why you should never look at your crush’s chart.

This episode was originally recorded live with an in-person audience on March 20th, 2019. A transcript is available below.

MDMA is currently in phase three of clinical trial research studies for the treatment of trauma in the United States, Canada, and Israel.

In this episode, clinician and CIIS professor Gisele Fernandes-Osterhold has a conversation with Israel-based MAPS clinician-researcher Keren Tzarfaty on the benefits and therapeutic applications of MDMA assisted psychotherapy. Keren and Gisele go deep into the nature of the psychedelic experience, the principles that guide the therapeutic work, and the new paradigm this study offers to treatment of PTSD and to psychotherapy in general.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on April 6, 2021. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

In this episode, author and teacher Oren Jay Sofer is in conversation with Somatic Psychology Professor Terese Gjernes about mindful and nonviolent communication skills.

This episode was recorded during an event on December 12, 2018 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California. A transcript is available below.

We all experience anxiety. Regardless of how bad it can feel, anxiety is part of what makes us human and may not necessarily be a bad thing. According to psychologist, author, and anxiety researcher Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, that uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty can be productive.

In Dr. Dennis-Tiwary's work and writing she addresses both generalized anxiety—which we all face—and anxiety disorders, when our anxious reactions and feelings prevent us from functioning effectively. In this episode, somatic and transpersonal psychotherapist Deanna Jimenez talks with Dr. Dennis-Tiwary about her latest book, Future Tense. They explore looking at anxiety in a new way to offer hope to those suffering from it along with a way forward to better managing anxiety to spark creativity and joy for a more productive life.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on June 2nd, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Being a healer today often means navigating complexities and challenges. Healers of all modalities can feel sidelined, underfunded, or delegitimized within a Western capitalist framework.

In this episode, licensed psychologist and CIIS faculty Elizabeth Markle talks with somatic psychotherapist, author, and podcaster Laura Mae Northrup about her latest book, Radical Healership, in which Laura offers an authentic, spiritually grounded approach to finding a true path to working in a healing profession.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 2nd, 2022. Access the transcript below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Over the past 17 years, queer autistic author and educator Nick Walker has played a key role in the emergence of the neurodiversity paradigm—a framework for scholarship, practice, and social justice work where treating human neurocognitive variations such as autism, dyslexia, and ADHD as medical disorders is understood to be a form of systemic oppression along the same lines as the pathologizing of homosexuality in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In this episode, Dr. Walker is joined by writer Dan Glenn in an uplifting conversation exploring her newest book, Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. They also discuss the edges and intersections of neurodiversity, gender, Queer Theory, embodiment, creativity, somatic psychology, and the human capacity for transformation.

This episode contains explicit language. It was recorded during a live online event on February 16th, 2022. A transcript is available below.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Fifty years after meaningful efforts toward civil rights, the United States remains overwhelmingly unjust. Our current solutions to make the world more equitable and just—from desegregation to diversity and representation—are not enough.

In this episode, somatic psychologist Sherri Taylor talks with author Calvin Baker about his book A More Perfect Reunion, in which he presents a profound, masterful reading of US history from the colonial era forward, along with a trenchant critique of the obstacles in our current political and cultural moment. It is also a timely call to action.

Calvin and Sherri's conversation reminds us that we live in a revolutionary democracy and that we are at a crucial moment to finish the revolution.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on July 23, 2020. You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Somatic therapy combines talk therapy and bodywork to treat a wide range of psychological and physiological conditions, ranging from stress and anxiety to depression and PTSD. Nowhere has somatics proven more effective than in the treatment of trauma.

In this episode, author and somatics practitioner Staci Haines is joined in a conversation with therapist and CIIS professor Emily Marinelli. They discuss Staci’s book The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice, and share a restorative justice approach to somatic therapy, integrating mind-body healing with social activism.

This episode was recorded during an event on February 6, 2020 in front of a live audience in San Francisco, California.

In this episode, journalist and poet Minal Hajratwala draws from the realms of creativity and politicized somatics to talk about migration and the body. This event was part of the Haresh and Joan Shah Lecture and Performance Series.

This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 21, 2018.

You can watch a recording of this episode and many more episodes on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel.

Counseling Psychology students connect with 60+ agencies at the annual Practicum Fair

Stage Ai's Summer Blossom festival brought CIIS values to life in China through arts, healing, and cross-cultural connection.

Somatic Psychology student Adrian Orozco Blair works at the Living Arts Counseling Center. He is now completing 1 semester of post practicum at this same site.

Spotlighting on the 6 degree programs in CIIS' School of Professional Psychology and Health

For more than 30 years, CIIS' 6 Psychotherapy Counseling Centers have been providing low-fee services to the Bay Area

In the Bay Area, our need for increased and better quality mental health services is urgent