THERAPY, DREAM WORK, MUSICAL CEREMONIAL CIRCLES AND EVENTS, CEREMONIAL DESIGN
Meet Elana
Elana has been training in dreamwork and has a Jungian lens in her women’s work, as well as her training in Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy. In her work with people her focus is on cultivating their capacity to see, hold and own their own reactivity as an aspect of their inherent wholeness. Understanding and working with shadow, triggers and projections is a lifetime journey for which the inner work of emotional honesty is key. The co-regulation that happens in depth oriented group work can bypass defensive systems and bring people into a more honest encounter with their feeling and mythic selves. Elana is also a jazz singer, and loves to bring music whenever possible into depth work.
THERAPY, COUNSELING, HEALING, MUSICAL CEREMONIAL EVENTS, CEREMONIAL DESIGN, P.A.T. GUIDING, PREPARATION AND INTEGRATION
Meet Alan
Alan’s youthful creative spirit is never far from the surface. His unique weaving of body based somatic therapy, music, improvisation, encounter work and ceremonial lineages combine to offer a dynamic approach to interfacing with our internal and external landscape. He has a way of cutting through tired narratives, right to the heart of our raw and vulnerable direct experience of ourselves and life.
Alan has been enthusiastically participating in the Men’s Movement since the 1980s. For several years he has been engaged in working with the Mankind Project in a leadership role and has been involved in helping to produce large Men’s initiation events. He has lineage from Uncle Henry Tyler of the Arapaho Nation with whom he sat in countless ceremonies for over twenty years. In the spirit of the gift economy, Uncle Henry and other indigenous elders were insistent that these beautiful spiritual technologies be offered freely and with generosity. Alan is a devoted and long-time practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, which informs his vision and his work.
Alan is an instrumentalist, singer/songwriter, recording artist and music educator. He has studied the art of “circle song.” with Bobby McFerrin. One of his greatest delights is to help folks discover their often hidden genius in allowing themselves to cut loose with vocal improvisation in a safe, fun circle of community. This skill also serves to get joyful energy moving in ceremonial settings such as song circles, to help invoke a deeply nourishing space of reverence and community connection.
Words from Alan
I started my explorations of healing and transformation with a student of Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy, in the 70s. My work is informed and inspired by three magnificent, potent lineages of wholeness:
One: an indigenous wisdom lineage: In my twenties I was adopted by an Arapaho medicine man and ceremonial elder and spent many years participating in medicine ceremonies with him. I was blessed to be immersed in an authentic indigenous spiritual and shamanic path of reverence and respect for all of life.
Two: Tantric Nath and Vajrayana: Also in my twenties, while going through a dark night of the soul, I met the renowned Advaitist master, Nisargadatta Maharaj in India. My humor was restored and I began a lifelong love affair with the paths of awakening through the view of non-duality. In the early nineties I took refuge with a Dzogchen Lama in a Tibetan Buddhist, Vajrayana lineage, Tsedrup Tharchin Rinpoche. I am still attempting to be a sincere practioner of these teachings.
Three: modalities of somatic, body based psychotherapies: the adventure with these modalities started with gestalt many years ago and I am now a student of Hakomi. This astoundingly effective way of making a direct connection to the somatic experience of my clients can seem miraculous at times. With Hakomi your own body wisdom is our guide for each session. As the therapist I am following your lead in a collaborative dance. As we invoke this somatic wisdom within a field of mutual rapor and mindfulness, it is always delightful and surprising to see where we are led. The organicity of this deeper part of the client’s being knows what is wanting to brought to light. With a spirit of adventure and exploration, patterns and core beliefs can be uncovered and transformed with ease and kindness, invoking more aliveness and freedom.
Words from Elana
What can I say about myself? Most of the time I feel pretty cooked in the great cauldron of profound disillusionment. I’m coming to understand that this is just the growing inability to put buffers, in the form of comforting narratives, in the way of directly experiencing life as it is in all of its brilliant and brutal glory.
My life experience predisposed me to orient this way through a relentless series of challenging life initiations, which I fought and resisted like crazy, yearning for comfort and safety. Slowly I began to understand that there would be no escape, and that the life teacher had set this up for me to strip me of the life I thought I wanted for the life I needed and was called to live.
There were many years of wandering in the wilderness of my internal and external landscape - where the old ways are dead and the new way is not yet clear. It took me many years to find my way to Jungian thought and dreamwork. Decoding mythology and fairy tales through a Jungian lens revealed maps of this terrain that proved enormously helpful. It gave me a language to express the deeper currents of what I was experiencing, and dreamwork gave me a bridge to better understand and listen to my unconscious workings and wisdom. So much of inner work is to mine the gold from our unconscious and bring it into our conscious awareness without being hijacked by it. It's a little like learning a new language, or decoding a puzzle. It's a fascinating journey, and like a good fairy tale - full of wonder and trials.
If I had had a wisdom context to experience this dissolving of my personality-based identity sooner, it would have saved me years of confusion and suffering. As a result, I can’t help but want to provide that for others facing such a passage without having a notion of the profound alchemical and transformative journey they have embarked upon. I am committed to providing a space of depth awareness in all life and death passages and transitional life events, whether it’s through rites of passage ceremonies, song circles or individual counseling.
Becoming a Hakomi Therapist has been like finding the modality match for my deepest heart/wisdom offering. I am so excited to be able to offer sessions, and to incorporate it’s relational skill set into all of the offerings that I and Alan do.
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Carl Jung
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.” Ibid