Collective Healing Systems Consulting
Trish provides consulting services for Non-Profits and Wellness Organizations looking for meaningful, long-lasting, somatic-based approaches to healing the effects of cultural trauma.
Click here for Trish’s full CV.
Trish’s Training
Trish completed their MA (2010) and Ph.D. (2012) in Feminist Studies from the Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies Department at The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Trish’s coursework and training was focused primarily in feminist praxis and transnational feminist thought, and the theoretical frameworks that their Collective Healing Systems approach to consulting is rooted in are heavily influenced by Women of Color feminisms and feminisms from the Global South.
Trish’s methods are collaborative and coalitional, using an intersectional lens to understand how power operates in and through us in subtle and not so subtle ways, in various scales, scopes, and contexts. Trish’s interventions honor the tension between the macrocosm (institutional structures) and the microcosm (daily acts and relationships).
A self-identified Spiritual Activist, Trish does not separate spirituality from DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) work. Trish’s work is in the lineage of Gloria Anzaldua, M. Jacqui Alexander, Leela Fernandes, bell hooks, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Lama Rod Owens, and Rev. angel Kyodo Williams who all espouse a spiritual activist framework for approaching DEI work. Trish’s work is simultaneously influenced by many outside of this lineage: Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, June Jordan, Barbara Smith, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Satya P. Mohanty, Paula Moya, Resmaa Menakem, and Linda Martin Alcoff.
Trish’s book, Transnational Testimonios: The Politics of Collective Knowledge Production was published as part of the Decolonizing Feminisms: Antiracist and Transnational Praxis series at The University of Washington Press in 2018. Piya Chatterjee is the Series Editor, and Angela Davis, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Richa Nagar, AnaLouise Keating, and Margo Okazawa-Rey have all served as members of its advisory board.
With over 18 years of teaching courses in departments of English Literature, Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Environmental Studies, Trish has most recently taught as a graduate instructor for the Women's Spirituality program at the California Institute of Integral Studies teaching courses on Spiritual Activism, Transformative Social Change, and Transformative Justice.
Institutional Experience
Before leaving academia full-time in 2019, Trish served on a number of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) related committees at SUNY Adirondack and Champlain College, where they worked on equity-based hiring practices, curriculum changes, student and faculty programming, while chairing and serving on search committees explicitly devoted to DEI initiatives.
Trish’s long list of professional service, which can all be found on their CV, includes being a founding member of the DEI Task Force at SUNY Adirondack and serving on the Diversity Council at Champlain College, both of which were under direct advisement of the College Presidents. Trish also co-advised the Student Government Association at Champlain College and LGBTQ+ student groups at SUNY Adirondack and Champlain College. Trish led LGBTQ+ trainings for administration, faculty, staff, and students at SUNY Adirondack, and served on the Lavender Graduation Committee and Multicultural Affairs Committee at Champlain College, the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Regional Consortium between SUNY Plattsburgh, University of Vermont, Saint Michael's College, and Concordia University. While still in graduate school Trish also served on the LGBTQ+ committee, Graduate Curriculum Committee, and the Feminist Studies Graduate Association Committee at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Trish’s approach to Collective Healing Systems has developed out of all of these experiences, in combination with their training in somatics and energy work, as they have come to understand that we cannot simply change structures through the education of the mind.
Trish understands systemic inequity as energetic and embodied forms of oppression that continue to be passed down generation by generation. Their Transformative Consciousness curriculum is a form of praxis that extends across mind, body, heart, spirit to work at both microcosmic and macrocosmic registers in order to decolonize existing structures and ways of being.
Inner flows outer, and change must begin within each of us in order to effectively create change in the world.
Mindfulness & Meditation Programming
As we each focus on our daily mind patterns and habits, and how these show up in our relationships and behaviors, we become more aware of the energy we are bringing to usher in new ways of being on the macrocosmic scale. This inner work is crucial in creating more equitable systems for all to thrive.
Trish has led mindfulness and self-care programming in Non-Profits, Wellness Centers, Affinity Spaces, and Student Affairs teams.
Whether it’s an informal virtual drop-in program, a wellness retreat, or a more formal workshop, Trish enjoys bringing pragmatic mindfulness tools into Higher Education, Community Centers, and Non-Profits.
Sample programming includes Self-Care for Changemakers, Self-Care for Educators, and Mindfulness for Social Justice Advocates.
Transformative Consciousness Curriculum for Transformative Social Change
Trish’s self-designed Transformative Consciousness Curriculum is a blending of mindfulness, somatics, and social justice approaches to addressing cultural trauma. It is rooted in the reality that institutionalized racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, etc., cannot solely be addressed through the facet of the mind.
While education and informed dialogue are central components of equity-based practices, increasingly, research shows that trauma is stored in the body. Therefore, the Transformative Consciousness Curriculum blends a mind-focused education with targeted somatic work that seeks to dislodge stored trauma in the body so that more meaningful dialogue can take place. It accomplishes this by bringing participants into awareness of their body while providing them with practical tools to enable them to physically work through challenging situations and difficult dialogues around social issues.
The Transformative Consciousness Curriculum takes the perspective that social inequity is a zero sum game. It understands that everyone in the collective is traumatized by oppression— “oppressor” and “oppressed”—regardless of how much or how little social privilege a person experiences. What differs is how this trauma is experienced and its particular effects on the body and psyche of the person—including how their body is (in)visibly marked, cultural scripts projected onto the body, accumulated lived experiences, and received intergenerational histories and lineage.
The Transformative Consciousness Curriculum offers online courses and institutional programming that uniquely blends breath work, somatics, meditation techniques, feel and process tools, social justice focused readings, situational analysis, journaling, dialogic techniques to manage fear responses, and personal inner trauma work. It understands that collective change depends on inner transformation, and offers practical tools that allow participants to deepen their relationships with themselves and others to begin cultivating more compassionate social relations.
Transformative Consciousness Curriculum in Higher Education
In the educational setting the Transformative Consciousness Curriculum asks what somatic work needs to be done to supplement classroom education so that students can “show up” for these difficult dialogues on the “isms” while feeling safe in their bodies. Sample question sets include:
What does it look like to do intentional body work with students to provide them with tools to enter these conversations so when they feel triggered they can draw upon their toolbox to “rewire” and focus?
What tools are needed for such work? How can this be implemented as a pre-cursor and/or simultaneous education to “heady” classroom discussions?
What training do staff and faculty and administrators need in order to role model and cultivate such a culture for students?
What techniques and practices can be shared with staff, faculty, administrators, and students for their own self-care?
The Transformative Consciousness Curriculum engages staff, faculty, administrators, and students in such questions while providing pragmatic and tangible tools, concepts, and exercises.
Transformative Consciousness Curriculum in Wellness Spaces
In Wellness settings, the Transformative Consciousness Curriculum asks spaces to consider ways in which their services are spiritually bypassing and not engaging with social differences in ways that are inequitable, exclusive, and harmful to clients of marginalized identities. Practitioners, teams, and teachers are asked to consider:
What does building an inclusive container for clients look like? Where does it begin?
What would it look like to curate—and co-curate—sacred space with a diversity of clients in mind from the outset?
What internal work do I need to do to engage in deliberate compassion, empathy, and patience with awareness of differences of histories, identities, and power dynamics between myself and my clients?
How do I stay open and curious with myself and my clients without assuming identities, experiences, and life paths?
What do I need to read/learn to become more knowledgeable on how to provide quality services to clients from socially marginalized backgrounds?
What histories do I need to verse myself in? What are the histories attached to my ancestral lineage?
How do I radically de-center socially dominant identities and norms from the healing spaces I strive to create in order to honor and hold space for a multiplicity of bodies, identities, and life paths?
Are there any clients from social backgrounds that I feel less comfortable holding space for? Why? What would I need to do on my end to become more comfortable holding space for clients of these identities and backgrounds?
