Watch the Info Session
Recorded Live on: 
May 11th, 2024 

  with Dr. Albert Wong, Program Director

Maryasha Katz, LCSW
Core Faculty

Maryasha Katz is a Jewish Queer Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Dancer, and Life Coach. She is a member of the Adjunct Faculty in the Holistic Studies and Graduate Psychology Departments at JFK/National University and Palo Alto University. She has extensive experience working with trauma with a focus on sexual assault and domestic violence. In addition to her private practice, she provides supervision and consultation to other psychotherapists and organizations. Her skills in online course development have put her in high demand during these challenging times. She has also worked as the Counseling Department Supervisor and Sexual Assault Department Manager at Women’s Crisis Support~Defensa de Mujeres, as a Self-Defense Instructor, and as a Trainer.

Michael Clemmens, PhD
Core Faculty

Michael Craig Clemmens, PhD, is a psychologist and trainer in Pittsburgh. He is a lead faculty member of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and teaches at the Metanoia Institute in London and at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. He is the author of Getting Beyond Sobriety: Clinical Approaches to Long Term Recovery (1997), Embodied Relational Gestalt: Theory and Applications (2019,) and numerous articles on Gestalt therapy, body process, and addiction. He travels extensively nationally and internationally teaching and offering experiential learning opportunities. He specializes in working with somatic process in clients and restoring "somatic intelligence" for clients who are dealing with historical trauma.

Shirley Dvir
Associate Faculty

Shirley is the founder and lead teacher of Relational Somatic Healing and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. For over 10 years, she taught as a Certified Hakomi Teacher at the Hakomi Institute of California, John F. Kennedy University, California Institute for Integral Studies, and Shiluv Center in Tivon, Israel. She has also supervised associates pursuing MFT licensure and currently mentors licensed practitioners. She has training in psychodynamic work, attachment, EMDR, Sensorimotor Trauma Therapy, the Enneagram, family therapy, CranioSacral Therapy, and Body Mind Centering (Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen). Her main work today focuses on healing relational wounds with safe embodied touch. 

Sue Martin, MA, REAT 
Associate Faculty

Sue Martin, MA, REAT, has over 40 years experience working in the field of trauma. In 1977 she cofounded one of the first shelters for battered women in the country and then, Futures Without Violence in 1980. Sue has taught students, professionals and community agencies for many decades. Known for her dynamic and passionate teaching, She served on the faculty of John F. Kennedy University from 2007 to 2020, teaching courses on Working with Trauma and PTSD, the Psychobioimmunology of Stress and Embodied Expressive Movement. Sue has supported hundreds of students to learn to listen to their body’s wisdom and to follow the depth of knowledge discovered therein. She is a proponent of simple practices that support embodying our essential/highest nature. Sue has a private practice in Berkeley, California and is a longtime student of the Diamond Heart School for Spiritual Development, where she is currently in the teacher-training program.

Bill Say, MA
Associate Faculty

Bill Say holds an M.A. in psychology, and certification in Process Work and Core Energetics. He is an adjunct faculty member at the Wright Institute, California Institute of Integral Studies, JFK University and the Process Work Institute. He brings many years of experience to private therapeutic practice, diversity awareness training, conflict resolution and community building, with work in the US, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Bill is Japanese Korean American, cis and male and straight identified, middle-class, spiritually oriented, socially introverted, married to Linda and parent to Gabe. His website is: http://www.billsay.com

Sheila Rubin, MA, LMFT, RDT/BCT
Associate Faculty

Sheila Rubin, MA, LMFT, RDT/BCT is a leading authority on Healing Shame. She co-created the Healing Shame – Lyon/Rubin Method and has delivered talks, presentations and workshops across the country and around the world, at conferences from Canada to Romania. Sheila has been presenting Healing Shame workshops with her husband, Bret Lyon, for over 10 years; she has been presenting workshops for therapists about working with shame, eating disorders, and child and family trauma for over 25 years. With Bret Lyon, she is the co-author of the upcoming Sounds True book, Healing Shame: How to Work with This Powerful, Mysterious Emotion―and Transform It into an Ally.

 Camara Meri Rajabari, LMFT
Associate Faculty

Camara Meri Rajabari (she/her) is an arts-based, somatic, ancestral psychotherapist, professor, activist practicing and living in the unceded lands of the Chochenyo and Ramaytush Ohlone peoples called Oakland, California. Her private practice specializes in anxiety, depression and intergenerational trauma experienced by Black, Indigenous and People of Color. She is also trained psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist working offering psychotherapy for clients experiencing complex ptsd. Camara’s approach is person-centered, imaginal and inclusive. Her work focuses on intergenerational trauma, ancestral resiliency and the exploration/liberation of consciousness.

Pat Ogden, PhD
Associate Faculty

Pat Ogden, PhD is a pioneer in somatic psychology, the creator of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy method, and founder of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute.  Dr. Ogden is trained in a wide variety of somatic and psychotherapeutic approaches, and has over 45 years of experience working with individuals and groups.  She is co-founder of the Hakomi Institute, past faculty of Naropa University (1985-2005), a clinician, consultant, and sought after international lecturer. Dr. Ogden is the first author of two groundbreaking books in somatic psychology: Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy  and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment (2015) .

Albert Wong, PhD
Core Faculty, Program Director

Dr. Albert Wong is the former Director of Somatic Psychology at John F. Kennedy University and a leading clinician and educator in the field of somatics, healing trauma, and the body-mind connection. He served as residential staff at the Esalen Institute and as Core Faculty at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he taught classes on Somatic Approaches to Trauma, Therapeutic Communication, and Theories and Techniques of Trauma Therapy. He has been featured on PBS, in Time Magazine, and his work has been published in titles ranging from the scientific journal Biological Cybernetics to the book anthology Radical Spirit. He is the founder of Somatopia, an online educational platform that is dedicated to creating an embodied world.

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