Collaborative Inquiry

As an educator, my primary interest is in teaching processes of collaborative inquiry that pay close attention to and honor multiple kinds of knowledge, the social and cultural contexts of individuals’ learning histories and embodied experience; and foster an ongoing commitment to inquiry. I use poetry and creative writing to challenge more traditional academic notions of knowledge production and evidence, helping students to explore precision in language—their own and that of others—as a tool of self-authorization.

In my own research and writing, I am concerned about the ways in which cultural and political identities and dislocations impact empathic attunement between therapist and client, teacher and student, and between students. I am also interested in the ways in which embodied resistance to cultural norms shape notions of the individual’s role in cultural production and change. 

Additionally, my clinical work focuses on developing notions of queer kinship and queer family structures, and the ways in which people navigate the spaces between queer chosen families and families of origin.

Praxis

I served as Chair of the Queer Bodies in Psychotherapy Conference in San Francisco (2008), hosted jointly by the Somatic Psychology Department at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and The Center for the Study of the Body in Psychotherapy. The conference brought together LGBTQI and straight therapists, queer theorists, somatic therapists and practitioners, members of various queer communities, scholars, activists, and educators to surface questions, share best practices and case examples, and develop theories about how queer sexualities, identities, and lifestyles are held, facilitated, and explored in various therapeutic contexts.

I was a faculty member of the Somatic Psychology department at CIIS, where I advised students, taught and designed curriculum around issues of multicultural and queer development, and taught a graduate-level course entitled Queer Bodies in Psychotherapy. At the Center for Somatic Psychotherapy, the training clinic of the Somatic Psychology department, I was a clinical supervisor and designed and conducted trainings on sexuality in the (counter)transference.

Additionally, I was a faculty member at the Women’s Therapy Center in Berkeley, CA, where I taught courses including, Embodied Social Justice in Relational Clinical Practice, Starting a Private Practice, and was a clinical supervisor for interns in both a two-year feminist relational psychotherapy training program, and a one-year advanced training program.