A Latin woman who not only grew up in a poverty stricken area exposed to crime and lack of resources, but also became a teen mother under the same circumstances - Lynette has lived experiences with the stresses of parenting and hardship.
Understanding what it’s like to feel worried for the future of yourself and your child.
Trudging through overwhelm, feeling alone, and deeply needing support.
Wisdom Blooming was founded to fill a gap in support for the Tucson community with the understanding of reaching back a helping hand to those who are trying to rise out of similar situations.
As the daughter of a worker’s rights activist, dedication to positive change within the community is deeply rooted in her family’s way of life. As a teen mother and a member of an underserved community, Lynette had to face some difficult choices - repeat the same cycles of overwhelm, internal disorganization, and stress that would set her children up for continued cycles of suffering or seek out empowering opportunities to catalyze positive life changes.
She chose to seek solutions and began to study and practice healing. With every yoga class, meditation workshop, and coaching series the break in overwhelm expanded into a spaciousness that grew her capacities and skill set for managing stress. The practices that changed the course of her life and those of her two children, are the same practices that became the foundation for the children's social emotional curriculum she developed. Wisdom Blooming exists as a liberation movement to rise together by giving people the skills that empower confidence, resilience, compassion and mental wellness.
Moni is a queer, non-binary, white-bodied nervous system therapist. They have been in private practice since 2006, facilitating healing through nervous system regulation and supporting systemic coherence. In addition to their work as a somatic practitioner, they spent 6 years as Assistant Faculty and Lead Mentor with Organic Intelligence (OI), mentoring students and co-teaching the three year HEART program with both Steve Hoskinson and Robin Craig. Prior to that they spent nine years assisting in the Somatic Experiencing (SE) three year programs
Moni practices coming from the belief that every body has an intrinsic impulse towards being whole and healthy. They feel that compassionately tending, witnessing, and reflecting this impulse with positive reinforcement helps individuals get to a place of integration, wholeness and feeling fully alive and engaged in this world.
Moni has a particular interest in supporting the LGBTQIA+ community and is working to address and support collective liberation from systemic oppression
COLLECTIVE TEAM
Moni Kuhel LMT, CNMT, SEP
they/them
Lynette Maya OIC
(she/her)
Lee Datura OIC, BCST
(she/her)
Lee is a European-ancestored community builder living and working as a somatic practitioner and biodynamic craniosacral therapist on the lands of the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui peoples. Ancestral lineage repair and animist psychology are two pillars of her work and life.
Lee’s background carries the currents of many streams; that of frontlines organizer, community facilitator, grower and lover of plants & herbal medicines, and abolitionist. She believes fiercely that for any of us to be free we must all be free and that healing work is community care work; healthcare and wellness support must become accessible to all.
Porter Witsell OIC, EOLD
(she/her)
Porter is a white-bodied nervous system regulation specialist in the field of Organic Intelligence and an end-of-life doula. She has a private coaching practice, runs a community paramedicine program, and facilitates movement research and somatic inquiry spaces.
Porter comes from frontlines organizing, first response, movement research, somatic inquiry, and deep play. She knows that relationships are fractal, and begin within the body. She has learned that if we let the body metabolize experience, it will, and that the body can also imagine and embody better futures and illuminate what actually matters.
She most often works with youth and families, folx with terminal illness, couples, and community organizers.
Chrysta Faye OIC, LMT
(she/her)
My name is Chrysta and I am a white-bodied, cis- woman working as a politicized somatic practitioner and bodyworker in Chukson, aka Tucson, AZ.
I have been imagining new worlds for most of my life, and working towards creating structures and access that make these new worlds possible. When I started to work with justice and liberation movements in the late 90’s, the landscape was very different, and we didn’t have much acknowledgment of our own physical and emotional needs. We fought hard and burnt out hard. During the Social Forums of the early 2000’s, I was introduced to healing justice and I experienced what could be possible with our nervous systems starting from a different place. My work began to shift from the front lines to the healing spaces. I am here to honor all of those who came before me, and as a path for all those who will continue on in the struggle towards justice, equality, and liberation. And always in solidarity: Another World is Possible, Another Reality is Necessary.
Johnny Gutierrez BS, ACC
(he/him)
Johnny is a Somatic & Mindfulness practitioner working in private practice in Tucson, AZ. Some of his identities include Filipino, Cuban, queer, cis male, meditator, musician, and spirit seeker. His work focuses on supporting folks in moving from feeling overwhelmed, stuck and unfulfilled to feeling embodied peace, confidence, and courage, knowing who they really are and what they can offer the world.
Johnny is trained in the somatic modality of Hakomi. This intuitive, gentle, and body-based modality is reflected in the presence he holds. When with clients, his intention is to create a container for their body’s wisdom to naturally guide them towards healing, clarity and integration. His greatest strength is his deeply grounded and accepting energy, which are potent ingredients for change.
Johnny worked as a mechanical engineer for 9 years before transitioning to being a somatic practitioner. This work taught him how to recognize nuanced patterns and apply creative solutions. His own transformation through men’s work, tantra, meditation retreats, earth-based spirituality, and ceremony put him on the path to deeply connecting and integrating with his own body and emotions, and eventually offering that healing opportunity for his clients.
Website: www.JFGcoaching.co
My name is Kevin; I’m a white-bodied politicized somatic practitioner, teacher, experienced group facilitator, and craniosacral therapist based in Chukson, aka Tucson, Arizona. For over a decade, I have supported individuals and groups in private practice, renowned residential treatment centers, online trainings and courses, in-person retreats, and social justice & community outreach contexts.
My understanding of what is – and what is not – supportive of individual and collective liberation is informed by my experience working both outside of, and within, “western behavioral and mental health” settings. I’m deeply grateful for all that I’ve learned, and the gifts I’ve received, from the thousands of folks I’ve supported in individual and group settings, and the many wise, gifted, and effective providers and healers I’ve collaborated with over the years. One way I aim to honor them and their dedication to helping folks heal, is through my practice which includes critique of “treatment” enacted through models that emphasize pathologizing and treating symptoms at the expense of supporting an individual’s system in the context of apt responses to larger systems of oppression.
My work is offered through the primary lens and protocols of Organic Intelligence (Steve Hoskinson), and is further informed by mindfulness and nature-based practices, lived experience, humor, and Interpersonal Neurobiology (Dan Siegel), Relational Trauma Therapy (Merete Holm Brantjberg), Internal Relational Focusing (Eugene Gendlin tradition), and We Will Dance With Mountains courses (Bayo Akomolafe).
Kevin Lanoue OIC, LMT, JD, CST
(he/him)
Ceci McDonnell, OIC
(she/her)
Ceci McDonnell is lineage keeper and elder of the Sonoran Desert Somatic Collective. She comes to the collective having spent her life in peace movements, abolition work, and defending and serving people who would otherwise face an unjust system alone. Her anti-oppression lens has direct roots to her Irish lineages and the rich inheritance of anti-colonial Irish resistance movements She came to somatic work as a therapist, and has continued as a mentor and teacher.
Ceci has supported almost every collective member and added her radical insight and love into the mentorship. She brings a rich oral tradition of story telling, poetry, animism and reciprocity to all of our trainings. As a collective, we honor her and thank her that politicized somatics has a lineage of justice and love at its core.
Collective Comrades
Collective Comrades are beloved community members who live and work outside of the region. We are excited to share that several collective comrades are bringing their skills as assistant mentors/mentors in training for our upcoming Politicized Somatics Training.
Jessaca Kéet, OIC
she/her
Jess is a community weaver, anti-racist and disability justice advocate, singer, dancer, and politicized somatic coach. She is a queer Indigenous person of Łingít and European descent born in the Tongass rainforest. She is warm and curious, weaving her fascination with the cosmos, the natural and the unseen worlds with deep listening, story, humor, and play to offer expansive support toward embodiment, connection and liberation.
https://www.eternalweave.com
Ady Olvera, OIC
she/her
Ady Olvera is Mexican-Indigenous, a mom, with roots from Nayarit and Michoacan, living on unceded Bay Miwok lands in Northern California. Ady is an trauma informed coach certified with Organic Intelligence and a Somatic Practitioner studying under the wings of Sonoran Desert Somatic Collective staff. Her 20+ years of experience working in the nonprofit sector and with communities has moved her to find ways to support individuals who are surviving capitalism, resisting fascism, shaking off micro-aggressions, and are working towards breaking cycles of oppression. Ady believes that every human being -- activists, teachers, keyboard warriors, healers, nurses, parents, teens, elders – needs gentle support to allow whatever needs unfolding to materialize and shift when ready. Whether the support needed is a simple smile, spiritual in nature, exploring systemic power, talking about relationships, or a gentle peek into one’s own body’s wisdom, Ady approaches conversations with judgement-free curiosity, understanding and compassion. Ady can be summoned at linktr.ee/healingsidekick.