About my practice
I support trans and queer individuals and couples/relationships to reconnect with our dignity, wholeness and power through somatic therapy.
The realities of ongoing trauma and oppression may leave you feeling stuck, frozen or disconnected. For those of us who are survivors of embodied trauma, we may come to a gut feeling that just talking about the experience isn’t going to transform what happened in body, mind and spirit. Learn more about my approach here.
I offer space to ground with what matters to you, tapping into your dignity and wholeness to live more fully into the changes you want in your life and in our world.
Image description: Jay is smiling, their face and upper torso visible, looking towards the camera. They are wearing a light jean shirt unbuttoned over a black shirt. The background is a blurred image of a tree trunk with gray, brown, and green tones.
Photo credit: Ariel Appel, contact them at ariel.s.appel@gmail.com to learn more about their photography work.
About me
Teachers and lineages in the work
I am grateful to be one part of a wider ecosystem of care workers, politicized healers and movement organizers dreaming and building towards a more just world. I honor my many teachers, including my closest relationships, plants, landscapes, bodies of water and ancestors, alongside my most epic conflicts and mistakes. My work is influenced by my own ongoing personal healing journey, and shaped by legacies of resistance, especially healing justice and transformative justice.
My therapy practice is informed by over ten years as a community mediator and organizer inside of social and environmental justice movements. I have an MA in Somatic Psychotherapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies. I am honored to be in ongoing learning with the following teachers: Phillippe Citirine, Lacy Martinez, Angela Porter, Dr. Vanissar Tarakali, Wes Somerson & Jennifer Ianniello. I offer therapy informed by lineages of liberation psychology, generative somatics and harm reduction.
Some of my identities
I am a white, trans nonbinary, queer, disabled, Ashkenazi Jew raised on Dakhóta and Anishinaabeg lands in the upper Midwest. My practice is based in Huichin, also known as Oakland, California.
In consultation or therapy together, you are welcome to ask me about any of the above, or other aspects of my identity not listed here. I will let you know if I am available to share more, and we will talk about it together in the service of our work.
Image description for lower banner: Green fern fronds arc from a black background in playful angles throughout the image at close range.
