IN-PERSON SESSIONS IN LOS ANGELES (PASADENA AREA)
ONLINE SESSIONS ACROSS THE WORLD
INDIVIDUALS ~ COUPLES ~ GROUP WORK
You may have learned to manage yourself without knowing how to inhabit yourself. I know this as a practitioner and in my own body.
I lost both parents at eighteen months, before I knew how to grieve. My body did what bodies do to protect us: it began to contract, numb, and fragment to survive.
Born in one place, raised in another, carrying an undercurrent of never truly belonging anywhere, in my late twenties I moved to Los Angeles from Brazil, away from everything familiar, to get to know who I was underneath the unspoken pain.
Over time, I returned to my body, the one place that has always been mine to inhabit. In returning, I remembered my voice, my belonging, and the medicine found in feeling and expressing.
My offering is that returning and remembering. An invitation to know your body more intimately, and come to trust it as source of living wisdom and guidance through the mystery of your life.
A process of healing and flourishing led by your body.
This work isn't conventional. It weaves together solid, research-backed therapeutic foundations with the language and wisdom of a body that senses, feels, intuits, expresses, and makes meaning beyond the worn-out stories that our conscious minds are used to living by.
Unlike approaches where the body is secondary, here it is central. This is integrative work.
You will learn to draw resources from your life story, and remember that there is deep wisdom in feeling.
Your body will not be corrected, measured, or pathologized, but invited to speak what cannot be expressed through words alone. In the process, you will learn to be present with and articulate your experience, and align what you feel inside with how you show up outside.
More than a methodology, this is a path of remembrance that brings us back to ourselves.
The work I offer gave me a structure to work with intuition, felt sense, and non-conscious material that transformed the way I move through the world, and how I experience myself.
It offered me a path out of chronic survival and back into agency, ease, and trust in my own body, my capacity, and the flow of my life.
I've learned that experiencing ourselves as creative beings is how we remember who we are. How we meet ourselves and become known. How we deepen our relationship with land, ancestry, others, and the mystery of our lives.
We learn to be in the world by learning to be in our bodies.
Learning this changed everything about how I work and how I live, and knowing this carried me through the hardest moment of my life, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 36.
Who this work is for
I work with people of all genders, centering the experiences of women. Much of my work is concerned with dismantling what patriarchy has inscribed in our bodies - the holding patterns, the silencing, the pressures to fit in and perform, the inherited stories about what we are allowed to feel, take up, and become.
I welcome anyone willing to question the narratives they've inherited and eager to find new ways of being with themselves and in the world.
Whether you're new to this type of work or a seasoned traveler, I meet you where you are and support you to move forward and grow more wholly.
This work is for those who feel estranged from their bodies, and also for those already feeling at home in their bodies, wanting to expand self-expression and self-intimacy, and live a more creative and soulful life.
You don't need to "know how to do" anything I propose. You just need to arrive with curiosity and a little courage. The rest, we'll do together.
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How it works in practice
I work in private practice and with groups. Individual processes follow a rhythm similar to conventional therapy, with flexibility for longer sessions or wider intervals depending on your needs. I offer one-time sessions, following an initial assessment of your needs and readiness to determine whether a single session is the right fit. For groups, I offer occasional public workshops and custom-designed experiences for private groups, organizations, and community spaces.
These are always spaces of deep listening and attuned reflection, where the body is the authority in the room.
We work with somatic movement, expressive dance, spontaneous writing, intuitive drawing, conscious breath, voice, embodied imagination, and depth-oriented inquiry; not as techniques to master, but as doorways into what lives beneath conscious awareness - emotions, implicit memories, old scripts, silenced desires, dormant talents, and parts of yourself longing to be known.
Nothing is imposed or mechanical. The creative process becomes one with the healing and flourishing process. What matters isn't to "do it right", but to give yourself permission to show up as you are, attune with yourself, and let your body reveal the way forward.
Over time, people find not only an expanded capacity to navigate emotional life, but a greater ability to listen underneath the noise to the voice within, communicate authentically, play, feel grounded and self-trusting, and receive and give love with an open heart. They discover within themselves the resources to change what is no longer working in their lives, and to navigate the challenges that come their way.
This is work you feel in your body and see change your life.
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Methods and approach
SOMATIC MOVEMENT THERAPY AND EDUCATION
A body-based approach to healing and learning that helps people connect more deeply with their physical sensations, emotions, and movement. Through guided exploration, it supports self-awareness, emotional regulation, and creative expression, while encouraging healthier, more integrated ways of moving and being in the world.
TAMALPA LIFE/ART PROCESS®
A movement-based expressive arts approach that uses dance, drawing, and creative writing to explore personal stories and life themes. It helps people connect body, emotions, and imagination, turning lived experience into art as a way to heal, gain insight, and create new possibilities for living.
SOMATIC PARTS-WORK (IFS-INFORMED)
Grounded in the somatic experience, we explore the different “parts” of ourselves—such as inner critics, protectors, or vulnerable parts—through sensation, movement, creative expression and narrative. By engaging these parts in the body, we can listen to their needs, release old patterns, and integrate them into a more connected, whole sense of self.
SOMATIC MINDFULNESS
The practice of bringing awareness to the present moment through the experience of the body. By tuning in to breath, movement, and felt experience, it supports emotional regulation, reduces stress, and deepens the body-mind connection.
INDIVIDUALS AND COUPLES
A space for ongoing, focused support that moves at your own rhythm. We explore what wants to be heard and what needs to be worked with for you to feel more wellbeing, responding to your needs as they evolve. This is the kind of work that compounds over time: organic, meaningful, and lasting.
GROUP PROCESSES
To heal and grow in the company of others is its own medicine. Group sessions offer space to feel, play, and be witnessed; weaving somatic movement, expressive dance, and creative arts within a container of care. We learn from one another, and remember together what our bodies already know.
Listen
Is it love or anxiety?
Sometimes we confuse feeling anxious with falling in love. In such moments, we replace the real tragedy of our lives—the pain that we need to face if we want to heal, grow, and have healthy relationships—with drama. And drama is seductive, because the anxiety of highs and lows occupies us and gives us a reason to avoid facing our own existential anguish.
As a Professional Member of the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association, I meet the high Standards of Practice and uphold the Code of Ethics.
For more information visit www.ismeta.org
I am a certified practitioner of the Halprin Life/Art Process®, an integrated approach to healing and creativity that explores the wisdom of the body as expressed through movement, dance, and imagination.
For more information visit www.tamalpa.org
Some of the images I use were found on Pinterest, and I do not own the rights to them. If you are the creator or know the original author, please reach out so I can provide proper credit