My name is spelled uniquely but pronounced Sasha. I use she/her prounouns. I am a tensegrity medicine, bodymind healer, and occupational therapist who is in practice with pause, dreaming, remembering, playing, and listening to the messages of the body. I guide folks to listen and be in their own unique shapes despite societal “shoulds” and unique life experiences. I love to study patterns and systems and make connections in the ways they/we relate.  I am currently in play with these questions without the expectation of answers but hopefully more curiosity: What are our bodies capable of? How do we strengthen neural pathways of peace? What does it feel, taste, look, sound, dream like to be a shapeshifter? How do we change the language of healing and wellness to include the wholeness of every Body? What do non-humans teach us about health, wellness, and our bodies? Who are we--when we think we are not ourselves?

I have a unique background working with children and adults with various physical, cognitive, and sensory backgrounds. I companion individuals curious to learn about their bodies young and old. Some western diagnoses I have worked with include muscle pain (shoulder, knee, hip, back) and weakness, fibromyalgia, post stroke and traumatic brain injury, anxiety, cerebral palsy, autism, prader-willi syndrome, ADHD, sensory processing disorder, developmental delay, and various genetic disorders. I have companioned folks back to their bodies after experiencing sexual assault, domestic violence, grief and loss, medical trauma, and state sanctioned violence. I am interested in how our environment and experiences create patterns and affect our function, shape, posture, resilience, and mind. In our time together we will explore messages from the body that show up as pain, discomfort, joy, diagnoses, and more; we will break down tasks and activities to develop skills related to function and needs; and create and expand on meaningful roles, rituals, ceremony, and daily routines.  

I graduated with a BS in Psychology and BA in Humanities from Seattle University and MS in Occupational Therapy from the University of New England. I work with clients from as young as <1 years old to 100 years old. I have previously run listening practice groups, stress management, and independent life skills groups in the Cumberland Country Jail and Tri-County Mental Health in Southern Maine. I’ve worked closely with educators, speech therapists, and mental health counselors at a therapeutic day school in Washington and as a school-based OT in the Federal Way Public Schools. I started my private practice in response and rebellion to what I saw as failures in our current health care, jail, mental health, special education, and school systems. I challenge the standards of “normal” and how they are upheld in our society. It will be my lifelong work to disrupt systems of violence and move, stand, sit, lie down, rest, stay silent, speak, hide, collapse, share, and teach in the name of love for myself, you, and the collective us, through the gift and practice of listening to the body.  

I currently have an in-person touch practice; a distance energy work and guidance practice; I co-keep various community grief gatherings; provide in-house I-Ching and tarot readings, workshops, embodied conflict resolution, and healing work to organizations large and small; and I am exploring a practice in gift economy, healing justice, and healing as mutual aid. I love to spend my free time learning, surfing, being in nautre, cooking, dancing, taking in various mediums of art, especially music and poetry. I embrace and love my multi-racial identity (Chinese, Japanese, English). (I acknowledge words and the English language are limiting and identifiers or how we use language will change with the times.)

  I am here to remind you of a deeper pause.

Together we create sanctuary within the beautiful messes we experience in our inside and outside world. We dream up tools and toys that aid in self-reflection and self-healing. We co-create space to be with and travel in the re-membering and acceptance of all the flows, to a sense of home, that are sometimes forgotten, messy, and hard to navigate alone.  There is no right or wrong way to be during our time together. It is a practice.  And it will feel risky, messy, and playful--to feel comfortable enough in the discomfort to try on different language, shapes, and shifts that fit exactly to you. I encourage you to go slow and try on and acknowledge shapes of contraction, expansion, and every thing in between in our space together.

Contact me for a free 15 minute consultation if you are interested in working together!

My experience and practice is constantly being inspired, questioned, and transformed by:

• Tensegrity Medicine (Kelly Clancy https://kellyclancy.com/)

• Jungian Somatics (Jane Clapp and Laura Wenger)

• Sensorimotor Modulation/Sensory Integration techniques

• Abolition, Healing and Transformative Justice movement work

• API Chaya and their work with survivors and anti-violence (https://www.apichaya.org/)

• Shamanic and Scientific healing-mentoring with Robert Woo (https://sevenhawks.com/)

• Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (Dr. Ross Greene)

• Poetry and Wisdom of Alexis Pauline Gumbs

• Interoception Awareness/Body Awareness

• Making Sanctuary and Dancing with Mountains (Bayo Akomolafe https://bayoakomolafe.net/the-emergence-network/)

• Developmental, Individual-differences, Relationship-based (DIR) Floortime Model techniques

• Skill in Action: Yoga with a Social Justice lens (Michelle Cassandra Johnson https://www.michellecjohnson.com/)

• Indigenous teachings of Cranial-Sacral Therapy

• Biotensegrity (Graham Scarr)

• Psychological First Aid, Cultural Somatics, and Somatic Abolition (Resmaa Menakem https://www.resmaa.com/)

• Polyvagal Theory (Stephen Porges)

• Intergenerational trauma-work and the study of epigenetics

• Breathe for Change 200-hour yoga teacher training

• Chinese Astrology with MissTANGQ

  The ancient Way of the Dao and I Ching

• Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism (adrienne maree brown http://adriennemareebrown.net/)

• Ancient practices, medicine, and wisdom from my Ancestors around wholeness, the body, love, Earth, self-acceptance, and compassion especially guidance from the Medicine that lives in my familial lineage

Currently reading and studying:

Dreams: A Portal to the Source- Edward C Whitmont and Sylvia Brinton Perera

What It Takes to Heal-Prentis Hemphill

The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ + Health- Zena Sharman