Staci K. Haines is the developer of generative somatics and the Somatics and Trauma courses. Her work emerges from the Somatics tradition of Richard Strozzi Heckler integrating Polarity Therapy, Gestalt, Vipassana meditation and Aikido. Staci integrates her extensive study in personal and social change, trauma and recovery and Neuro-Linguistic Programming into this unique and powerful work. She is a senior teacher in the field of Somatics and leads courses in Somatics and Leadership, Somatics and Trauma, and Somatics and Social Justice. The current focus of generative somatics is to bring the transformative power of somatics to serve the social justice movement. She has been working and teaching in the field of Somatics for the last 16 years.
Staci is also a founder of generationFIVE, a social justice organization whose mission is to end the sexual abuse of children within 5 generations through survivor leadership, community organizing, transformative justice approaches and movement building (www.generationFIVE.org). She has also been working and organizing re: child sexual abuse prevention since 1992. Staci is committed to the intersection of personal healing and social justice work, and sees that both have to be addressed to bring the change and justice we want in the world.
Lastly, Staci is the author of Healing Sex: A Mind Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma (Cleis 1999, 2007), a how-to book offering a somatic approach to recovery from sexual trauma and developing healthy sexual and intimate relationships. Her book has been nationally recognized and translated into German, Japanese and Spanish. Healing Sex (S.I.R 2004), a DVD of the work, features actors and real life testimonials, focuses on using somatics to heal from various forms of sexual trauma. Healing Sex includes both men and women as survivors of sexual trauma, and represents people from a diversity of communities, and has both English and Spanish subtitles (www.healingsexthemovie.com).
 

Spenta Kandawalla is committed to making somatics relevant and transformative for oppressed people. She has spent the past three years working on the integration of somatics and social justice at generative somatics, providing training, support, and development to all gs programming. Spenta has studied somatics for the past seven years with Staci Haines and Richard Strozzi-Heckler. Prior to gs, Spenta organized queer and trans low-income youth of color, providing training in participatory action research, developing their leadership skills, and pushing for youth voice and decision-making at all levels of organizational, community, and political processes. Spenta simultaneously worked with organizations and communities to build their own capacities to center impacted leadership and create just, democratic processes and structures. If she could, she would go back and do it all again with a somatic orientation in order to facilitate more healing, build more resilience, and increase the power and effectiveness of all the young people and adults she interacted with.
Along with somatics, Spenta studies acupuncture and herbal medicine with hopes of re-radicalizing community-based healthcare. She feels deeply grateful to spend her days near the ocean, big trees, interesting people, and with an incredibly kind dog.

Jennifer Ianniello, MFT is a somatic psychotherapist specializing in trauma recovery. Curious about the impact of trauma on the body, she began studying somatics in 1996 and started on the Generative Somatics path in 2004. Jennifer received her Masters degree in Somatic Psychotherapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She continues ongoing coursework in leadership and somatic bodywork at Strozzi Institute. She is an ongoing, committed learner in the intersection of somatics and social justice. Jennifer joined the Somatics and Trauma teaching team in 2008.

Passionate about the use of skilled touch in psychotherapy, Jennifer co-authored a research paper on touch interventions in somatic therapy in 2005 and presented on the effectiveness of the Generative Somatics discourse in her Masters thesis on healing trauma. Previously, she worked as a therapist at Holos Institute and Alvarado Elementary School in San Francisco. She had a bodywork practice for 11 years and believes strongly in the relevance and potency of informed touch to deeply heal ourselves, our relationships and our communities.
 

Vassilisa Johri, LCSW is a social justice therapist who has been working with oppressed communities for over fifteen years in both crisis intervention and prevention/wellness capacities, blending clinical skills with a social activist perspective. Vassi began studying with Staci Haines and Generative Somatics in 2006 when she found herself questioning the effectiveness of individualized talk therapy in healing ongoing trauma impacted by debilitating social conditions. She participated in the Somatics & Trauma course, the Somatics and Social Justice Collaborative pilot project; and attends trainings through both Strozzi Institute and Generative Somatics.

Vassi has worked with multi-impacted populations: adults, children, and families living with physical & mental illness, drug addiction, interpersonal, community, and systemic violence, poverty and oppression in Oakland, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD. Until recently, Vassi was a therapist at the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center, girls’ unit. She is now the Youth Development and Wellness Coordinator for the Ashland Youth Center, which is currently being designed and built. Vassi is committed to utilizing the Generative Somatics methodology towards transformative healing and liberation. She loves her dog, Chai; being with chosen family, community, and nature; and finding her place in the ocean of things through surfing. She believes hate is easy. And love is the revolution.

Liu Hoi-Man is an immigrant from Hong Kong. She has 20 years experience of non-profit work and has worked extensively with children with developmental disabilities and victims and survivors of domestic and/or hate violence in the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) communities. She has been involved with Generative Somatics since 2004 as a student, teacher assistant and now is a teacher in the Somatics & Trauma course. She has taken leadership and bodywork courses at the Strozzi Institute and is the assistant instructor for the School of Embodied Leadership (SOEL) for women at Strozzi. With over a decade of experience in bodywork, intuitive counseling and energy work, she also does individual somatics healing work with people on their journey of healing personal and social trauma. Her main resilience practice is dragon boat racing and any sports that has to do with the ocean.

Elizabeth D. Ross has been seeing clients in a somatic practice for the past four years. Previous to this she worked in HIV client advocacy for more than a decade. During those years she attended the 1995 Harm Reduction conference and the fire was lit: she started the then-illegal syringe exchange program in rural Mendocino County in 1997, initiated services for HCV positive people, conducted the county-wide HIV testing program, overdose prevention and street-based outreach. Out of this work she spent one year participating in the generationFIVE Community Organizing Project, interviewing clients of the needle exchange and looking towards how to address deep histories of violence, and the intersection of drug use and child sexual assault (csa). She spent two years in Somatics and Trauma, 2005-6, and completed studies at Strozzi Institute in the Somatic Coaching program. In her individual practice she sees clients both in recovery and actively using, survivors of csa, on-going violence, eating disorders and severe trauma. She strives to balance her work as a printmaker and painter while running the farm, seeing clients and participating as a teacher in the Somatics and Trauma course. A source of inspiration is the legacy of radical political organizing from her family and the astounding beauty of the land and gardens she lives and tends.

Lisa Thomas-Adeyemo is a passionate Southern born Healer, Priestess, educator, song weaver, social justice advocate and proud Mother, dedicated to being a midwife for deep healing and transformation within community. As a politicized educator, Lisa has worked with middle and high school youth and adults challenging beliefs, stereotypes and behaviors that lead to sexual, gender, and race based violence and oppression, and has facilitated groups for youth of color exploring positive body image, self-esteem, song weaving and building spiritual awareness of self. Lisa’s life path as a community based healer is continuously influenced by a diverse and eclectic blend of spiritual traditions and therapeutic modalities and she has spent over a decade practicing the Healing Arts and advocacy work with survivors of rape and sexual violence. Lisa is currently the Director of Counseling at San Francisco Women Against Rape and a committed student and teacher of Staci Haines’ path work of Generative Somatics.