To speak about who I am as a therapist and educator is to speak my life story.
I was touched by loss very early. I lost my parents at eighteen months of age, when a person doesn't yet have the resources to integrate an experience so extreme. My body began a process of what I see as fragmentation, that deepened as I experienced complex trauma growing up.
In my twenties, I felt hungry for life, but also adrift. I sought out relationships where I felt I couldn't be myself fully, where I felt I needed to continue fragmenting. I didn't realize it then, but I was afraid of becoming attached to people and losing them, so I often ran when things became challenging, or intimate. I managed myself by trying to control myself. I treated my body more like a prize I carried than a gift that carries me.
In my late twenties, my story began to change. I came in contact with somatics and expressive arts through my own therapeutic process, and I began to recognize the medicine in my own body.
It was in returning to my body that I remembered my sense of aliveness, agency, and capacity. I learned I can be strong in my softness, and I softened. As I deepened intimacy with myself, my relationships deepened too, and my life began to flow in the direction I was being called into.
I love working with people who have experienced hardship and feel there is more for them - more to life - while also feeling a bit stuck and unsure how to create the life they long to live.
My clients are usually sensitive, curious, and highly capable people, who sense their bodies are wise and have resources to offer that go far beyond what intellectualizing their past could ever give them. They often come to me feeling like they've been holding themselves together through tension, forceful effort, and vigilance for a very long time, longing to soften and reconnect with their inner wisdom and creative fire. They are hungry to feel more alive, and unsure how to tend the flame.
Many already understand their history and patterns, but feel that intellectual understanding isn't enough. They sense that their body needs attention, and I offer support in the practice of listening and responding to the inner voice, that so often gets buried under the noise.
I've worked with groups for a decade, and in private practice for five years, with a focus on supporting women and girls (but not only) to harness the power of their creativity and intuition into the medicine they need to flourish and live authentically and soulfully.
I am a somatic therapist and educator, working primarily with somatic movement and expressive arts, fully certified in the Halprin Life/Art Process® (an expressive arts therapy methodology of the Tamalpa Institute), registered as a Somatic Movement Therapist and Educator with ISMETA (International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association), and certified as a meditation and mindfulness teacher, having studied both secular and Buddhist philosophies. I am currently studying Jungian depth psychology at the graduate level. My practice is also informed by studies in trauma, humanist and depth psychology, other somatic movement modalities such as Authentic Movement, psychoanalysis, feminism, Internal Family Systems, and embodied spirituality.
My work addresses both individual experiences and the spaces we inhabit together, exploring the intersections between the personal and the collective.
I celebrate diversity through a lens of cultural humility, feminism, and anti-discrimination. I'm particularly passionate about sharing my work with women from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and with marginalized communities.
My style as a therapist and teacher is collaborative, reflective, and imaginative, rooted in fostering growth that aligns with each client's personal values and desires.
I have worked with women and men of various ages and backgrounds, with cancer patients, at-risk teens, and elderly populations affected by dementia.
My own breast cancer diagnosis in 2023 deepened my understanding of the essential role of the expressive body in healing and living well. It taught me many lessons on being human in bodies that are simultaneously fragile and strong, that I now carry forward in my work.
I lean on an intentional and inclusive ethic of care to create healing spaces and foster meaningful connections through my offerings.
"ANA LIZ HAS A BEAUTIFUL IMMERSIVE QUALITY, BOTH IN HER MOVEMENT PRACTICE AND IN HER ART-MAKING PROCESS. SUCH OPEN VULNERABILITY ENCOURAGES BOTH THOSE WHO WITNESS HER, AND THOSE WHO WORK WITH HER, NOT ONLY TO BRAVE THE SHADOW SIDE OF THEMSELVES, BUT TO EMBRACE THE HEIGHTS OF JOY, SELF-LOVE, BEAUTY, AND ACCEPTANCE."
-Sarah Lovett, PhD, RSME