Are you a nonbinary or trans
visionary who is ready to plunge
into your healing?
Are you seeking powerful
somatic practice and deep
somatic bodywork to shift
outdated patterns
that are no longer serving you?
Is this your moment to invest time,
resources and
energy into this next chapter
of your inner liberation?
Our bodies feel pain and pleasure.
Our bodies are holding the stories we need to tell.
Our bodies are trying to take care of our spirits
in this terrible and enchanting world.
Our bodies have questions, answers
and wisdom inside
just waiting to be heard
even if it’s hard to listen sometimes.
Together we can breathe, shout, laugh, tremble,
and maybe even dance your way through trauma
and let past tension unwind.
So you can be as present for who you are today
and energized for what you care about now.
Greetings! My name is Phillippe. I am a strange combination of playful and serious. My style is warm, curious, collaborative, and fiercely non-judgmental.
I will partner with you to electrify somatic transformation guided by your desires. We follow your sensations and impulses to unwind trauma, stabilize your nervous system and resource your spirit.
With your longings as our guide, we meet weekly over over zoom using breathing, body postures, props, and self-touch to catalyze internal change.
Then we co-create daily practices to ensure these new possibilities take root in your body and your life.
I believe that our trans bodies are vast vessels of wisdom, magic and creativity for new futures. Our breath, our bones, our blood are alive with energy that wants to flow and express our life force. We are a brilliant force of nature. Yet we are can learn to inhibit our voice, contract our organs and suppress our feelings during childhood and adulthood as our powerful and tender spirits interact with this world.
Capitalism promotes, perpetuates and thrives on disconnection from our bodies, feelings and spirits. And thus from nature. This is how harm to ourselves and others happens.
Politicized somatics is a reclaiming of our embodied way of knowing. And the healing power within each of us.
Somatics isn’t new. All of us have a lineage of embodiment practices whether we were able to stay connected to them or not. We need somatics precisely because of the legacies of domination, extraction and colonization. And we must hold the wisdom of this path in a historical and current context. Learn more about my living lineage of generative somatics here.
Present-day somatics is just barely beginning to acknowledge how racialized capitalism, christian hegemony and hetropatriarchy systemically and violently co-opted and disconnected peoples and communities from their embodied traditions, rituals and practices. Because of this legacy, this somatic path home to ourselves is full of contradictions.
The need for responsibility and accountability is necessary and overwhelming. Especially around the risks of cultural appropriation particularly for those of us with race, class and settler privilege who have been severed from our own land-based healing lineages. I am deep in this life-long process with my colleagues and community.
I hold a deep anti-oppression framework exploring how we are each uniquely shaped by layers of experiences of both privilege and marginalization.
I am committed to your healing path and our collective liberation. I encourage exploring these complex intersections of race, class, ability, and health in our work together.
Movements for disability justice, decriminalizing sex work, fat liberation, harm reduction, and ending the root causes of child sexual abuse inform my practice. I am poly and kink experienced.
I offer gratitude to my teachers and mentors: Jennifer Ianniello, Staci Haines, Dossie Easton, Mary Michael Wagner, Taquelia Washington, and Janelle Railey. I am proud to donate a portion of my fees to The Black Embodiment Initiative, Mental Health Liberation and The Nap Ministry.
Together, we can heal limiting patterns of protection from stress, trauma, and social inequality and embody the vibrancy and power we need to create bold, sustainable movements for social justice in our communities.
Our healing is possible, necessary, and desperately needed.
About Phillippe
I am descended from several generations of British and German settlers mostly educators, artists, entrepreneurs, and merchants. I am shaped by being white, middle class, able-bodied, nonbinary, femme, queer, and a survivor from the south. Raised by cats, I came of age amongst punks and queer AIDS activists.
At age 16, my first act of organized rebellion was distributing sex-positive information and safer sex supplies to teenagers in conservative regions of the southern united states. I dedicated my life to trans liberation shortly after meeting Leslie Feinberg. As an undergraduate student, hir revolutionary working class, multi-issue organizing inspired my politics forever.
During my decade on Ohlone land in the san francisco bay area, I participated in collective liberation movements and trained with generative somatics. Generative FIVE, Catalyst Project and The Bay Area Childcare Collective were influential political homes. Committed to trans healing for and by us, I earned my degree in Expressive Arts Therapy and license in Counseling Psychology, and then returned to Cherokee land in north carolina.
My trauma healing process, youth organizing experiences, and personal gender journey inspire my somatic practice today. In my spare time, I am often found with a cat sitting on my lap or consensually attempting to do handstands on other people. And obsessively wondering about the revolutionary potential of marginalized healers. I am always learning from my community of bodyworkers, herbalists, somaticists, activists, and movement artists. I resource myself by belonging to my queer chosen family, moving my body, and spending time outside in the gorgeous blue ridge mountains.
Education
Generative Somatics Coaching for Social Justice: Somatics, Trauma & Resilience Level 1, 2 & Advanced, Somatic Bodywork 1, 2 & Advanced with Staci Haines, Jennifer Ianniello, Mawulisa Thomas Adeyemo, Lui Hoi Man, Elizabeth Ross, and Richard Strozzi– 15 years of training with ongoing professional consultation, 2009-present
Masters in Counseling Psychology and Expressive Arts Therapy- California Institute of Integral Studies, 2011
Queer + Trans Internal Family Systems (IFS) Foundations Course, 36 hours, Nic Wildes and Sand Chang, online, 2023
Certificate in Advanced Clinical Supervision, 52 hours, Smith College of Social Work, Northampton, MA/online hybrid, 2023
Restorative Yoga Training, 16 hours with Kimberly Puryear, Asheville Yoga Center, 2020
Yoga, Psychology, & Trauma Training, 14 hours with Janelle Railey, LPC, RYT, Asheville, 2018; covering addiction, attachment theory, somatic experiencing, trauma-informed yoga, affective neuroscience, and mindfulness meditation
Polarity Therapy for Social Change: Levels 1-6 with Suzanne Roberts, 2015-2017
Anne Braden Anti-racist Training Program, 150 hours, San Francisco, 2008
Selected Training
Advanced Somatic Bodywork Seminar, 20 hours, Jennifer Ianniello, Asheville, NC, 2023
Food For Thought: IFS, Body Trust, and Eating Disorders, Sand Chang, online, 2023
Systemic Trauma in Couples Therapy, Akilah Riley-Richardson, online, 2023
Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Trans Communities, Sand Chang, online, 2021
Pregnancy, Birthing and Chestfeeding Support with Homegrown Families, online, 2021
Generative Somatics Politicized Healers Network Trainings, online, 2017-2021
Disability Justice, Fitness Culture, and Releasing Internalized Ableism in Yoga Practice with Think Again, online, 2020
Healing Childhood Attachment Trauma: addressing familial abuse, addiction, grief, and loss, Asheville, 2020
Racism Recovery Center with April Harter, online, 2020
Working with LGBTQ+ Muslims: Unlearning Unconscious Islamophobia and Building Skills for Relational Healing with Shenaaz Janmohamed, online, 2019
Are you Doing it Wrong? Racism in your therapy practice, Asheville, 2019
Working with Trans Folks Responsibly with Sand Chang, Asheville, 2018
UNtraining White Liberal Racism, Berkeley, 2008
image description: a white nonbinary person with medium length brown hair wearing a black velvet tank top with neck, chest and arm tattoos is looking deeply towards their left. they are in front of blurry tropical plans with a strand of twinkling lights.