Sue Martin, MA, REAT 
Core 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.

Camara Meri Rajabari, LMFT
Core 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.

Maryasha Katz, LCSW
Associate 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
Associate 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.

Ruella Frank, PhD
Associate Faculty

Ruella Frank, Ph.D., is founder and director of the Center for Somatic Studies, NYC, and faculty at Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy and the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. Ruella also teaches workshops and training programs throughout the United States, Mexico, South America, Canada and Europe. She is author of articles and chapters in various publications, as well as the book Body of Awareness: A Somatic and Developmental Approach to Psychotherapy, (2001, GestaltPress, available in five languages), co-authored The First Year and the Rest of Your Life: Movement, Development and Psychotherapeutic Change (2010, Routledge Press, available in three languages, and The Bodily Roots of Experience and Psychotherapy (2022, Routledge Press). 

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

Angela Porter, MA, LMFT
Associate Faculty

Angela Porter, MA, MFT is a somatic therapist, trauma treatment, and addictions specialist, with a primary focus in group practice, and work with other therapists and clinicians. She trained in Gestalt, body-centered, and Somatic Therapy at Esalen Institute, Counseling Psychology at The Wright Institute, and is both an instructor and practitioner of BREEMA and a practitioner of EMDR. Facilitating the connection between body and mind is the foundation of her psychotherapeutic work.  Angela also serves as adjunct faculty at JFK and CIIS graduate psychology programs, teaching courses in clinical supervision, group therapy, and somatic approaches for treating trauma. She has recently launched Blackbird Institute in Oakland CA, where she works training and offering clinical supervision to psychotherapy interns and associates interested in treating trauma through a developmental, somatic, evolutionary and transpersonal lens.

Sheila Rubin, MA, LMFT, RDT/BCT & Bret Lyon, PhD, SEP
Associate Faculty

Sheila Rubin, MA, LMFT, RDT/BCT and Bret Lyon, PhD, SEP are the founders of the Center for Healing Shame. Through their trainings, they have taught hundreds of psychotherapists throughout the world how to more effectively identify and work with shame. They are master therapists with over 30 years of experience, internationally sought-after keynote speakers, authors, teachers, and directors. They are leading authorities on Healing Shame. Their new and important book, Embracing Shame: Turning Shame into an Ally will be coming out from SoundsTrue in October 2023.

Bret has been a teacher of Somatic and Emotional Mindfulness for over 30 years and holds doctorates in both Psychology and Drama. Sheila is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a Registered Drama Therapist and a Board Certified Trainer. She has served as adjunct faculty for the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) Drama Therapy Program and JFK University’s Somatic Psychology Department. 

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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