
Our
Team

Melissa Kaplan
Somatic Practitioner
Melissa Kaplan, is a somatic therapist and spiritual activist, based in New York. She believes that eros is the awakening force that transforms our defenses, our negative beliefs, distorted feelings and disconnection from animism. She works with trauma that is held in the body in order to increase our capacity for pleasure and ground in our true selves so that we may step into our most expansive and rooted emotional leadership. She teaches self-intimacy through body, spirit, emotion and connection to land. Melissa was an international CEO for more than a decade and an alumna of Harvard Business School.

Courtney Reed-Marsh
Guest Somatic Teacher
Trained as a fiction writer, with a deep love of myth and a publishing industry background in personal story-based nonfiction, I thrive in the liminal spaces where well honed craft comes together with image and metaphor, lived experience and collective knowing to bring great storytelling to life.

Debra Rosenman
Somatic Story Coach
DEBRA ROSENMAN traverses the wild terrain of soul as a writer, author, book midwife, developmental editor and ghostwriter. She is the author/editor/designer of The Chimpanzee Chronicles: Stories of Heartbreak and Hope from Behind the Bars, which has garnered 15 awards to date, including Grand Prize, Nonfiction from Next Generation Indie Book Awards; Winner, New Nonfiction, International Book Awards; Gold Medal, Anthology, Independent Publisher (IPPY) Awards; Winner, Narrative Nonfiction-Animals, Best Book Awards/American Book Fest; and Winner, Anthology, National Indie Excellence Awards. She also won NYC Book Awards Distinguished Favorite for Book Interior Design.

Barbara Saunders
Somatic Story Coach
Barbara Saunders is a published poet, journalist, and writer of scholastic nonfiction. An educator at heart, she earned a psychology degree from Stanford and worked as a recovery counselor, entrepreneurship instructor, and fitness trainer before discovering embodied story coaching.

Uma Girish
Somatic Writing Guest Instructor
Uma Girish is a Writing and Spiritual Mentor, Human Design Guide, and Award-Winning Author who was born and raised in Southern India. She is the author of three books, two of which won Honorable Mention in the Chicago Book Awards the year they were published. Uma’s mission is to guide women who are navigating loss to transform their pain into purpose. Uma lives in suburban Chicago with her husband of 32 years.

Candace Walsh
Somatic Writing Teacher and Editor
Candace Walsh is a doctoral student in Creative Writing (Fiction) at Ohio University. She has edited three essay anthologies including Dear John, I love Jane and wrote the memoir, Licking the Spoon (Seal Press). She received her MFA in Fiction from Warren Wilson College and has been a freelance writer for almost fifteen years. She has written for Blender, New York Magazine, Mademoiselle, Newsday, Sunset, Travel & Leisure, Mothering, German Vogue, Huffington Post, Food & Wine, and more